Words to Live By

I do not normally make New Year's resolutions.  I figure that unless I am tracking results for failure or success YOY (year over year) I can make them anytime.  I also normally do not read advertisements but this one from the Humana Reader's Digest Healthy Living Plan was just too good not to share.
Measure Up: How to help keep yourself in good health.

• I will memorize my cholesterol and blood pressure numbers.
• I will purge expired medicines from my medicine cabinet.
• I will live as if my doctor were watching.
• I will make a list of the health screenings I should get, and set up those appointments.
• I will wear sunscreen.
• I will change the batteries in my smoke detectors every time I change the clocks.
• I will get myself a better sleep pillow.
• I will designate someone in my cell phone as my ICE (ln Case of Emergency) contact.

Live More: Easy ways to bring exercise into your day.

• I will walk, not drive, if possible.
• I will take the stairs whenever I need to go up or down two or fewer flights.
• I will stand when talking on the phone.
• I will spend at least four hours a week outdoors,  no matter what the weather.
• I will get up and move during the commercials.
• I will sit less.
• I will ask my favorite neighbor to walk with me for 30 minutes.
• I will walk the dog instead of just letting him out.

Eat Well: Ways to make healthy eating decisions.

• I will eat at least one piece of fruit every day.
• I will avoid eating after 9 p.m.
• I will try at least one new recipe a week.
• I will only eat between meals if I include a fruit or vegetable in the snack.
• I will have veggies take up more room on my plate than grains or proteins do.
• I will eat a salad every day.
• I will eat dinners I wouIdn't be embarrassed to share on Facebook.
• I will put my fork down between bites.

Enjoy Life: Tips to relieve stress and live happier.

• I will start planning my next vacation.
• I will say "hello" at least 10 times a day.
• I will clean and organize one drawer or cabinet each week.
• I will make a binding date instead of saying "we should get together sometime."
• I will read a book or two each month, not just read about them.
• I will spend four hours a month volunteering.
• I will listen to live music once a month.
• I will not keep having the same old fight with my significant other.

One more.....if you celebrate the holidays at home

• I will share leftovers at the social clubs I attend.
• I will bring extra food to a homeless shelter or kitchen.
• I will send family and friends home with doggie bags.
• I will freeze leftovers instead of eating them all.
• I will donate nonperishables to charity or a place of worship. .
• I will give extra food to a neighbor with a large family.
• I will reuse food to make lunch or dinner instead of throwing it away.
• I will host a post-holiday party with my extra food.

Just pick a few and you do not have to wait until January 1, 2012.  Have a great year ahead!

Which One Are You?

I am a self-confessed Facebook addict. I have the app loaded on my iPhone and I check notifications every few hours. Since I am on it on a regular basis, I have noticed that there are different kinds of users. Based on my observations, let me define them.

Preachers

These are the ones who love to post quotes about God, life, and how the world can be a better place. A few are subscribed to the app "Daily Quotations."

Entrepreneurs

Business people disguised as "friends." They tag you in their albums hoping that you either purchase something or have a million other friends who see their products.

Event Planners

The ones who use Facebook to organize events like high school reunions and star-gazing events.

Stalkers

The ones who use it to keep track of old boyfriends/girlfriends. Not me. Really, I have never looked mine up, not even once !-)

There is the other kind who never make their presence felt but is up-to-date on the "top stories." Hint: Be careful about those settings. Make sure they are set to "friends only."

Facebook Snobs

They don't post, they don't comment or press the Like button. These are those who think being on Facebook too much means you do not have a life.

Gamers

The ones who have two accounts, one for their lives and one for "Farmville."

Socializers

These are the ones who use Facebook strictly to catch up on the lives of old friends, acquaintances, and distant relatives.

Sharers

These are the "I love this song, video, news article ....so you must want the link."

The other kind are the ones who love to share pictures of family vacations.

Networkers

The ones whose friend request you feel you cannot ignore. In other words, people you never get to see outside of work.

"Tweeters"

They give running commentaries and update their status every hour.

Chatters

They use the application strictly as a chatting tool.

I will be the first to say I am a combination of more than one of the above. There is no right or wrong as long as we all respect each other and adhere to the same good manners that are expected when we share the same space. I forgot, the last category are the ones who still use "Myspace."

Navigating the Education System

My husband and I were born and raised in the Philippines. Needless to say, we were educated in our native country. We went through Kindergarten, Prep, Elementary School (Grades 1 through 6), four years of high school, and then moved on to College. It seemed really simple especially since both of us went to the same elementary schools and high schools respectively. Unless you really missed the mark academically, or partially burned the school down, acceptance was a foregone conclusion. Entrance to a college was through taking the NCEE (National College Entrance Examination). Some universities demanded a higher score than others, and most did conduct their own entrance examinations but that was about it. Parents normally paid for education, and children were not expected to take on a job or pay off student loans after graduation.

Fast forward and we found ourselves living in San Diego, CA with a 5-year old ready to get into the educational system. He had already been in daycare/pre-schools most of his life due to the fact that not only were we both working, but it was widely known that your child was disadvantaged if he did not already have basic reading and writing skills. I read to Jason while he was in the womb and mostly almost every night after he was born until he could read by himself.

Free public education is a right in this wonderful country; however, where your child goes to enjoy that privilege is based on zoning laws. We had just purchased our first home in Chula Vista and while it is a good area, I had a problem with having no choice in terms of where we were supposed to enroll him. There is always an option to transfer to a different zone but it is something we would have had to apply for every year and was based on availability. There are no guarantees. In addition, we had always wanted a good Catholic education for Jason. So I did my research and decided to apply for his acceptance to a private school which was also nearby to both of mine and Henry’s places of work.

We went through an interview and so did Jason who I am pleased to say passed with flying colors. That took care of Kindergarten, Elementary School (Grades 1 through 6), and Middle School (Grades 7 and 8). Up to now, I am not sure about the value of adding those two extra years except that perhaps he was older and more emotionally ready for high school? I remember that classes in the Philippines always started at 7:45am and ended at 4:45pm while in comparison, Jason’s school day ended at 2:45pm. During his last year in Middle School, he had to apply to a high school of his choice and while we had no fears that he was going to be accepted, we did get what they call “sticker shock.” Including the after-school fees, we could have bought a small house in the Philippines after those 9 years of education. But I digress, and he is so totally worth it.

Orientation for freshmen and their parents came and then I started really getting confused. I do not remember having a choice in terms of what subjects we took in high school. Moving classrooms was minimal, the teachers came to our classrooms and my classmates for a particular year were the same set of people. High school over here is more like college over there. You were told what the requirements were for graduation and how you got there was your choice. To add to the confusion, they throw in AP (Advance Placement) classes to the mix. These are equivalent to undergraduate courses in college. Advanced Placement classes are graded differently than other classes offered. I used to get confused why someone would get an average of 4.18 or higher if an "A" was equivalent to a 4.0. I quickly learned that getting an "A" in an AP class or an honors class was equivalent to a 5.0.

The bottom line is that someone who wishes to get into a good college needs to take them. There are prerequisites before you can enroll in an AP class and there is a test that the student needs to take after taking the class so participating colleges can grant credit to students who obtain high enough scores on the exams to qualify. Whether or not the actual college you end up going to will actually give you credit is another matter.

Then there are the ACT and SAT exams. These are the two major college entrance examinations administered in the United States today, and are designed to allow college admissions officers to judge all students by a common measurement. I almost panicked when I received a letter in the mail advertising a prep course conducted at his school for these exams at the beginning of Jason's sophomore year. Was it not too early? Did we miss a deadline due to ignorance? I was very much relieved to find out that he did not need to take either one of the tests until his junior year so he will be enrolling in this prep course next year. He has an option of buying the 600-page review material and studying on his own but while he is a good student, we are not going that route.

Planning for your child's college education is a full-time job and I am not even going to cover the financial aspects of it on this blog. Since my son did take a practice SAT and ACT, he is now on a database somewhere and we constantly get mail from different colleges and universities. The amount of information out there is mind-boggling. In addition, we get mail from such organizations like The National Society of High School Scholars and the Congressional Youth Leadership Council indicating that he is privileged to have been invited to join their organizations. The question is, should he? Does he need all of that trimming on the side?

His grades are excellent, he is involved with the student body organization, the student newspaper, and just recently made the junior varsity volleyball team. He is awaiting word on an internship this summer so that he can show on his college application that he is responsible enough to show up somewhere daily and produce work. I am already exhausted just thinking of the actual college application process and the deadlines we have to meet. Please let me know if I missed anything.

Hard Copies

I finally had the time to go through boxes in an effort to rid our house of things that I deemed were unworthy of storage space when I came across a stack of cards and letters that my husband had kept and lugged from one duty station to the next. He had kept each and every single piece of correspondence I had sent him when we first met. My book project was born.

I knew that the letters he sent me were lying around somewhere but I thought that I had left them in Cebu for safekeeping when I moved to Guam to start our married life together. His nose was out of joint until I told him that if I found them (since his letters were considerably longer than the ones I sent him), that it was his task to write volume two. I was on page 54 and had already invested a couple of weeks on the draft when I found the stack in the back of the linen closet. I had already even shared a few of those pages with those who were there "in the beginning" of our love story.

I can't help myself, the story would not be complete without including his letters and so I am back to page one. It is slow progress; my first task was to put them all in chronological order. There are more than a hundred letters that need to be transcribed, probably another hundred cards that need to be scanned, which encompassed the almost two years we had a long-distance relationship.

Then I started reading. I am glad we kept those letters. I have proof that we were once madly in love. Any couple who has been married for more than a decade knows that while love matures into a deeper level, it is good to be reminded of how it once felt when everything was new. While I sometimes make gagging sounds when reading some of them, it is nice to reminisce and marvel at how far we have come.

In this day and age of e-mail, instant messaging, low long-distance rates, and Skype, our use of snail mail back then seems so archaic; however, they served a purpose of bringing to life a story that I can hand down to my son. May he not gag on it :-)

Happy Valentine's Day

I found this old card in one of my "organizational missions" this morning. I think it is fitting that I publish it today. If you look at the date, it says 14/02/92. I was living in Hongkong then which explains the format.

This was hand delivered by a fellow flight attendant to my boyfriend at that time. My handwriting leaves much to be desired so I am transcribing what it said.

"Here is to our first Valentine's Day together. I'm really praying that this will just be the first of many more in our lifetime. I love you a whole lot. Take good care."

To Hilda, thank you wherever you may be and I hope you have found the same kind of lasting happiness. To my husband, Happy Valentine's Day.

The Year in Review

While most people take the beginning of the year as a time to make new resolutions, I like to take this opportunity to look back and reflect on what was accomplished, and more importantly what was not.

The significant moments are easy enough to identify, all I need to do is look at my shutterfly homepage because I like to capture those on camera. January 1, 2010 started off with the day spent at the San Diego Auto Show. A week in March was spent as part of the pre-opening crew at the Loews Atlanta Hotel. On Easter Sunday, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck San Diego. I remember this clearly as we were at a party and the kids were outside searching for eggs. While this was not my first experience with earthquakes, it had been some time since the 8.1 quake we experienced on Guam in 1993 and it left me quite shaken.

I have a lot of pictures of my high school reunion which took place in San Diego. It was good to reconnect with some people I have not seen in decades. I am sure everyone would agree that the ties that are formed in our youth are hard to break and so are old perceptions.

I had more work trips than I would have liked. Aside from the trip to Atlanta there was one to Las Vegas for a software conference at the Aria. Next was a trip to our corporate office in Manhattan for a business consultation and quickly followed by the main event, a 2-week training stint in White Plains, New York. While my husband tried to be as supportive as possible, it did cost him vacation days since he would in turn take off work on some days to ensure that our son was taken care of. To this, I say "thank you".

Last year was the year I saw my sister get remarried. It was not an easy path,and I was very happy for them. I got reminded of her yesterday when I saw someone remark on TV that we all make good and bad decisions in life. The most important thing is to make those decisions right. I applaud them for that and for staying close to God. An added bonus was my mother's presence.

I got to go home to Cebu last year. I have a lot of pictures of those, mainly because I wanted my husband to feel that he came with us so I would post an album almost every couple of days. My only regret is that there is never enough time to see everyone we want to see. To those who felt slighted, my apologies. Leaving is also always very hard. I miss my mother and those specially close to my heart. You know who you are.

This was the year I tried to ski and failed miserably. This was also the year of a failed relationship. I do not give up on people lightly. I have learned through experience that sometimes no response is the best response. Maybe time and God's intervention will heal wounds that run deep.

The year ended with me, my husband and my son spending New Year's Eve doing something we really enjoy. I pray that the year 2011 brings peace and prosperity not only to my immediate family but to everyone who reads this. Here's to a great year ahead!

Driver's Handbook - No Laughing Matter

My son is about to take the test for his driver's license permit. He was studying last night and started chuckling as he was reading the handbook. He commented that he could do a comedy act since there was so much material available.

One of our favorite sections was "Mistaken beliefs about seatbelts".
• “Seat belts can trap you inside a vehicle.” This myth often describes a vehicle that caught fire or sank in deep water. A seat belt may keep you from being “knocked out.” Pause. Therefore, your chances to escape are better if you are conscious.
• “Some people are thrown from a vehicle in a crash and walk away with hardly a scratch.” Your chances of surviving a collision are five times better if, upon impact, you are not thrown from the vehicle. You think????

As he continued to read a few things out loud, I am thinking that we are in serious trouble if current drivers did not know any of these listed below. Some things should be obvious but are not.
1. Do not squeeze a bicyclist off the road, and allow a safe clearance when passing a bicyclist. The illustration below drives home the point.

2. Never make a U-turn:
• Where a “No U-Turn” sign is posted.
• When other vehicles may hit you.
• On a one-way street.

3. Never park or leave your vehicle:
• Where a “No Parking” sign is posted.
• On a railroad track.
• On the wrong side of the street.

4. Special Parking Rules
• Never leave your vehicle until you have stopped the engine and set the parking brake.

There is a special section which my son took special pains to point out.
• Do not honk to alert other drivers that they made a mistake (because of course it is their right to get onto that carpool lane when there is no cop around). Your honking may cause them to make more mistakes or to become angry and retaliate. I normally get the finger.
• Do not honk because you may be angry or upset. It does not say anything about yelling.

Finally....the "Things you must not do" section.
Do not dump or abandon animals on a highway.
Do not wear a headset over, or earplugs in, both your ears.
Do not allow anyone to ride on any part of your vehicle not intended for passengers.
Do not tow anyone who is riding a bicycle, in a wagon, on roller skates, on a sled, on skis, or on a toy vehicle.

The author(s) of the handbook must either have a pretty low opinion of drivers or is an aspiring writer for Comedy Central.