The clock is ticking, the days are moving and Christmas is coming. 89 days to go dear friends! My newest hanging out place is Gloria Jeans in Megamall. This mall is the closest to my home as of the moment and Gloria Jeans is where I get a free Wifi connection. Plus the pastries and coffee aren't that bad. But of course, nothing really beats the Starbucks coffee experience. Now that brings me to my main subject for this entry.

I am currently reading "How Starbucks Saved My Life" by Michael Gates Gill. It's actually his biography. It's about a man who has everything, lost everything, and found it all again (even more) in... well... Starbucks of course. Gill is a son of well known writers. His father, Brendan Gill, is the writer of the best selling book "Here in New Yorker". Michael graduated in Yale University and had a promising career at J. Walter Thompson company, the largest advertising agency in the world, for 25 years. He started off as a copywriter and eventually went up as the Creative Director. But things do change. After the 25 years of hard work and loyal service, the top management decided to let him go. The new chairman of the board wanted "young" people in his team. He thought of suing the company for the unjust termination, but he felt he needed the connection with JWT to start again. He established a mini-consulting company but it didn't last. Now there came the difficult part, together with financial concerns, he had an affair and impregnated a woman which made his wife decide to divorce him. What's more, he was diagnosed to have a small tumor in his brain. He got desperate. He was 63 years old back then. Who wants to take a 63 yr. old man for a job? But then he found an answer in his last coffee luxury in a Manhattan Starbucks. A young African-American woman approached him and jokingly asked him if he wanted a job, which he took seriously. Desperate for a job, Michael ended up working as a Barista. But working in Starbucks made him realize a lot of things. Things he never learned as an advertising executive and made him more fulfilled than ever.

Tom Hanks bought the story, he will be producing and starring in the movie adaptation of the book which would probably come late next year. What can I say, I loved this book! It made me realize a lot of things too. For one thing, I finally believed that it’s not all about money and prestige. Happiness in a job doesn’t really mean higher compensation and promising position. Success doesn’t really match with Self actualization. This story is far more realistic to me than those rags-to-riches stories. Of course those things are real but I just don’t have the confidence that I’d end up on the top like those struggling heroes. But that’s beside the point. This book would teach you to make most of what you have. Definitely, every suffering individual would find their time in the most unexpected place. But hey, that doesn’t mean I’m inspired to work at Starbucks. Definitely, the right job for me would come.

My brother’s leaving for Japan this coming Monday! His company is sending him for 3 months training. Talk about luck, I’m really happy for him but I have to admit that I’m dying of envy! Heck I’m dying to go there that I’d trade half of my life span for the chance of getting in my dream land. How come an opportunity never opened to me? And it all ends up to hatred. I hate myself, I hate my life for I encounter nothing but failure. –sigh- I just hate the idea that some things are not meant to be.

Text Chronicles

I’m a Globe handy phone user. Ever since Globe network adopted the unlimited texting scheme (all thanks to Sun Cellular Network), I’ve been a sucker to this unlimited message forwarding. Be it quotes, jokes, anything is “possible” hehehe. Hell, for 3 months I’ve accumulated 65K+ messages SENT. Though I’ve recently withdraw from this practice, I still get various forwarded messages from other Globe users in my phonebook. I suppose that if you have such friends, you’ll be updated on the latest text jokes in town. Whoever is not aware of the all time Erap-jokes which I don’t really find funny at all? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a pro-Erap. Politics is just out of my system. I just don’t find it amusing at all, period. And then there’s the text chronicles. By chronicles I mean those jokes that are connected to the other, there’s something common and connection from one another. One example would be the Tagalog homonyms of various English words or phrases (e.g. If rain [efren] Bata Reyes, Recharge [Richard] Gutierrez, etc.). And then there’s this series of jokes that starts with such serious quotes only to find out it was actually quoted by… say a balot vendor, a shit, gas price and almost anything irrelevant, even a smiley! Now the lastest text chronicles that a texter can find is the “Inday” chronicles.

As we all know “Inday” is a common household maid name. And yes, she finally found her way to stardom through SMS hahaha. Our protagonist this time is no ordinary maid. She speaks English well. That’s the gist, a helper who speaks excellent English. Inday expresses simple thoughts in complex English statements that would make average IQ individuals nosebleed*. What makes it really funny (at least for me) is her interaction with other persons. At one time Ederlyn (another famous text figure hehehe) confronted her, then a guy Dodong is asking to court her, there was even this instance when her employer finally noticed her excellent English skills. Her biodata was also spread, and boy talk about high caliber credentials minus her employment as a helper of course. So I wonder, when will Inday finally let go of her job and look for another promising one? She should try call centers hahaha!

*In Filipino context, nosebleed denotes that a person is having difficulty in understanding what another person is telling him. But in Japanese context, nosebleed is actually associated with perversion.