this is a mail i sent to meralco lucena people last summer. i hope it shows how we work. you will find more pics of the place in facebook nga pala, and pics of happy people who have gone there.  the page is ‘Pansacola Beach Resort’. re how to get here to Mauban, you can either ride a JAC Liner bus from cubao or buendia, to Lucena City. from lucena, you either ride a bus from the Grand Terminal to Mauban, or go to SM or Pacific mall and get on a van to here. if you are bringing a car, a cousin runs a camping site on the eastern side of the island and their website has a map on how to get here. type cagbalete.com and villa cleofas will appear. when you have made the necessary arrangements and wants to confirm a reservation, you will have to deposit an amount to  BPI savings account #8859048529 under romel pansacola. you must then tell me when you have deposited so i can confirm and list it down, and please bring the slip when you come to facilitate computations. have a great day!

i don’t know how and what you found out about our island, so here goes additional infos. cagbalete is a white sand island about 40 mins out of mauban. it has an area of about 1,610hectares. our place is at the southern end which means we are at a point nearest town. ours is a small manageable place that has just nine structures that can be slept in, though i have to mention that not a few guests chose to sleep right on the  beach. we have group sleeping arrangements and different sizes of huts to accomodate different group sizes. two of the bigger huts have a maximum capacity of 20pax (4k ),available only for catered groups, four have max caps of 10pax ( 2k ) the tree house wt a cap of 6pax ( 1.8k ) and 2 smaller huts wt caps of 4 each (1k). when we say maximum cap, it means people have to add 100pesos for numbers in excess of the cap. that is to say if a group of eleven chooses the 10pax cap hut, they have to pay 1.6k. the two bigger huts have their own t&b in them while the smaller ones share common t’s&b’s around the area. we provide guests wt mattresses, beddings and pillows. we are not connected to the luzon grid pa, so power is by gen set. light is on from 6pm to 10pm when a group rents, and up to 6am when we are serving food to guests as we need light to cook breakfast. there is a videoke for the musically inclined..and not, though we have a tone down time(10pm) and shut down time(12am) if there are other groups in the place.

Tama na. Tama na.

I’m sick of systems and I’m sick of rules. I’m sick of excellence and how it makes those seeking it become inhuman. I think I might even be sick of myself.

Endorsements, demands, questions, care care care I don’t want to care anymore. I feel like this almost every day. Just a little bit more and I’ll drop everything and walk away for good. Nakakaiyak, nakakainis. They say it’s noble, it’s rewarding, but I don’t know if it’s worth it.  So help me, God.  Please.  That’s what I said when I took the oath.

There’s been a change in plans.  My move date has been rescheduled- I’m moving out on the 29th instead of the 15th.  Even so, my co-worker and would-be roommate Lyza becomes my housemate the day after tomorrow.  My family is adopting her until we move out.  I’m getting a new sister haha.  It should make for an interesting 2 weeks.  Full house!

Of course, all that also means another two weeks of MRT hell.  It’s not healthy riding it.  Not only does it give you the urge to commit acts of violence against your fellow passengers, it’s so crowded that you can get bruises and become infected by a million different flu viruses and random bacteria in the air.  We were practically breathing each other’s lungs in there.  The good news is that we found a way to by-pass the rush hour crowd.  Going home from GC, it’s to take the train Ayala-Taft-Cubao.  Seats galore!

By the way, my judgment is probably impaired now.  See, I know someone whom I always believed was gay. That was my very first impression; it’s one of those things that you just know. Instantly. And was I ever wrong. Oh geez, I was off by a few hundred miles on the radar.

He recently became the topic of conversation between my friends and I- they say he’s been asking about me.  That got me wondering, “are we talking about the same person here?”  And we were and I learned that I was the only one who thought he was gay. Wow.  I really, always thought he was.  I had absolutely no doubt about it.  I believed! I could barely keep myself from saying that.  He is, to my complete and utter shock, straight. Not that being straight is a horrible thing, but how could I have been so wrong? I am so bothered by the fact that everyone except me thought he was straight. Argh.

We’ve recently transferred to our new, insanely huge, insanely equipped, and insanely expensive hospital.  I like that it’s insane, but whoa, I am not kidding when I say “huge”.  It’s like one gigantic complex made up of three buildings.  The hallways go on forever.  And I mean FOREVER.  I’ve only been inside one of the three buildings, and I haven’t even seen all the floors yet.  I should’ve expected that though, since the whole place is located in GC, about 3 cities away from where I live.  The way I see it, a block in GC would be equal to 2 or 3 “normal” blocks.

Anyway, I’ve been taking the MRT to GC for the past week.  Commuting to GC isn’t much of a problem (even if I lose sleep waking up veeery early to beat the morning crowd), it’s getting home that drives me crazy!  You can’t help but want to kill.  Riding the train from Ayala/Guadalupe to Cubao during the rush hour is like going to war.  The MRT’s a battlefield.  Or a trash compactor.  You’d feel way more comfortable in a sardines can.

I don’t think I can take commuting to GC once we start on shifting schedules, so I spent about two months looking for a nearer place to rent.  I was lucky enough to find a room (at one of my friends’ house, oh yeah).  I love that her unit’s number is 133, same as the number of my house.  I’m moving out next weekend so I guess I have to start packing as early as now.

Bye bye family.  I’ll be home on weekends maybe.  I hope I don’t get separation anxiety.

I couldn’t concentrate on the work I had left to do.  I was actually crying in the nurses’ station because everything was going horribly horribly wrong.  All the little things just kept adding up, from non-answering doctors, non-infusing IV lines, blood transfusion problems, less than 40cc of urine output from a kidney patient (that’s roughly 2 tablespoons), freaking needles, and angry co-workers.  If I mentioned them all I’m sure it’ll take up several paragraphs.  No wonder a lot of the other nurses I knew wanted to quit. I got dumped with a garbage bag full of things-that-can-possibly-go-wrong-during-your-shift.  I tried really hard to keep myself from crying but I couldn’t help it.  It was so embarrassing having to cry like that.  Thank God I didn’t do it in front of my patients.

It took me until 10AM to finish everything for the unit, then I had to go down to the ER which took up so much time processing because I literally had to go around the hospital wards looking for forms, which my own and about half of all the units didn’t have.  Freaking forms!  I finished all that, along with filing an incident report.  That had me going back and forth from 1st to 2nd to 5th floor.  So much paperwork.  I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch anymore (who the hell could eat in a condition like that anyway).  It took so long that I actually saw the nurses for the afternoon shift.  Shit.  I never want to have to go through another incident report again, or work on another night shift.

That’s it.  That’s pretty much the latest thing in my life.

This always makes my day!  Buskers in NYC.  I love the music, the WORDS, the people.  Everything in the video goes together so well!  Happy, happy, happy.  I could watch it all day.  I could listen to the song aallll day long.

This is random, but does anyone remember the band that used to always play in Greenhills years ago?  Each of the band members were blind and they all wore white shirts and dark, dark sunglasses.  They had this white wooden box where people could put in some change or whatever they had to donate to them.  They’ve been there ever since I was a kid and my mom always gave me coins to put in the box because she said it was the only way they made their living.

I started seeing less and less of them ever since Greenhills went under new management and they moved the band to a spot outside the malls where not a lot of people passed by, until eventually they were gone.  I wonder what happened to them?

Video found via colormekatie.  I recommend looking through the other entries on the site. 

Thankfully it was just my sketchbook and a few notebooks that my brother lost (too bad for the others) but still, I want my sketchbook back! You can't replace the drawings I had in there. Grrrr.

There are cicadas in the trees around the mini-park/garden walkway at Virramall Greenhills. Yup, that part that used to be a rectangular pond where you could go fishing for a fee (I really miss the old Virramall, Greenhills just isn’t as fun to visit anymore). I stayed there for awhile to hear the mass at the chapel nearby. I wasn’t aware there were cicadas at all because they kept quiet during mass, but when the priest said the whole “Go in peace” bit at the end, they just started chirping as the people dispersed. So cool, it was like they waited for the mass to end. It just really made my day. Reminds me of mornings in high school- never complete without their deafening sound hahaha.

I prayed together on the phone with her for her dad’s quick rescue and they retrieved him not more than an hour after, but they were too late… This is the third time in such a short time that a friend’s parent died, all of them only a week or so apart. We actually talked about that a few days ago, about how other people’s relatives died at this time of the year…

Come to think of it, my friend has been talking about her dad a lot during the past days. I don’t know if that meant something. Like a sign maybe.

I think people know it when they or someone close to them will die. Most of the time, no matter how sudden it is, people won’t die without warning. They’ll leave signs. They’ll tell you they love you. They’ll do something they usually don’t do. That’s all I have to say for now.

Close your eyes for awhile.
They’re everywhere- the white uniforms, the sighs of pain,
those helpless eyes…
We haven’t lost anyone yet
but it somehow feels that way, doesn’t it?
I don’t know who suffers more, you or the man on the bed
How can I help you? Tell me how I can help you…