Anyway. Last night I was supposed to meet Lori at 7. But because of unforeseen circumstances, I couldn’t make it, so we moved it to 8. But then I still couldn’t make it, so we had to cancel it. Which is a bummer because I had been looking forward to that. And it was even more a bummer because Lori had waited for me for nothing. Sorry, dear.

I was pretty bummed out so I decided to run errands at Megamall. And I didn’t get to do those errands because the stores I was supposed to get stuff from were already closed. BOO.

I guess I was pretty listless as I floated around Megamall just to blow off the bad vibes. I bought my favorite C2 drink to cheer myself up a little. And then I thought, “Hey, maybe I should look for the Chuck DVD again.” I’ve been looking for the Chuck Season 1 Box Set for months now, you see, but all the stores I’ve been to were always out of stock. I’ve been to all record and stores in Trinoma and SM North, but they all didn’t have it. Apparently, Megamall’s Odyssey and Video City didn’t have it when I went there last night, either.

But then, finally, I went to Astroplus. It was nearly 9 PM then, and the crowd was dangerously thinning. The staff was preparing to pack up, too. I was staring at the TV series rack…Chuck wasn’t there. I sighed and was about to turn around, ready to go back to the apartment and just sleep off the exhaustion when one of the sales girls spoke up.

“Can I help you?”

I turned to her and gave a small smile. “I’m looking for Chuck,” I said, knowing full well that she’d say that they didn’t have it, as all the video stores had told me before.

But then, she turned around to the shelf behind her. And she pulled out the Chuck Season 1 DVD set, saying, “It’s the last one. Maybe it’s here just for you, hm?”

I swear, I broke into a wide grin, clearly displaying how much of a fangirl I was.

“Yeah.”

When I got to the apartment, still grinning, I realized: the salesgirl was precisely right. The Chuck DVD was there just for me. And it was there for me at the perfect time. If I had gotten Chuck earlier or if it had been available in all stores then maybe I wouldn’t have had something to cheer me up on July 29th of 2009. Maybe I wouldn’t have that giddy feeling I felt when I saw it—like what a treasure hunter would feel upon seeing a concealed cave of priceless relics.

Yeah, the Chuck DVD is really a teeny tiny thing in the grand scheme of things, but I couldn’t help but compare it to other more important things. God has been like that with me, I think. He loves to surprise me with His blessings, and surprise me BIG TIME.

And that—not C2, not Chuck—was what kept a smile on my face until I finally fell asleep.

Up from the floor on the count of ten
Oh you get up, you get down and you try it again
First, at the MRT station, some old lady (who looked like a sweet little old lady) literally shoved me aside so she could go inside the car. Take note that I wasn’t actually in her way. I was just standing beside her, and honestly I was going to let her go first. Oddly enough, everybody else sort of paused instead of selfishly shoving their way in, too—as was the culture in the ladies’ car in the MRT—so I was able to regain my balance and squeeze myself in. It was a strange, strange experience to be shoved by an old lady. But, you know, I let it slide. Still, it sort of jolted me awake. Haha! Well, good morning to you, too.

Opening track: Try it Again – The Hives

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?
The mood in the office was the usual early Monday morning mood, but with a dash of excitement to taste. Victory is having it’s 25th Anniversary on July 24th, and ticket sales was going to open today. I was sitting at my desk, and I had just started the 30-minute countdown on plurk and twitter when we received the announcement: the online ticket reservation was down.

All together now: WHAT?!

On top of that, the ticket stalls had apparently missed checking their inventory because most of the outlets didn’t have ticket paper at hand. So how were they supposed to print tickets?

Remind me why we got a third-party ticket provider? Oh yes: to make things easier.

Track of the moment: Ironic – Alanis Morisette

Everybody wants to come to my party, that’s right
Everybody wants to come to my party, uhuh
It was insane, I tell you. Everyone scrambled to fix whatever what was wrong, to talk to our ticket sales provider, to take back our exciting countdown, to formulate our response to the crowd… Phones, both landline and mobile, started ringing. IMs started popping up on my screen. Insane!!!

And if that wasn’t enough, something else happened. Because the site where online registration was supposed to happen wasn’t there, EVERYONE went and turned to our official website for guidance. Our web server couldn’t take it. It crashed.

Oh, for the love of—!

When the malls opened at 10 o’clock, reports from people on site said that people RAN to the stalls. Oh, wow. As someone said later, it beat the rush to the Pussycat Dolls ticket sales hands down.

Track of the moment: My Party – Plastilina Mosh

Sticks and stones and animal bones
Can’t stop me from having a good day on a bad day
You can NOT imagine what it was like. And all this before 9 o’clock. Good thing we got to work early. And good thing my partner, who was still at home, was also online waiting for tickets, so she helped me contact our web provider and get the server going again in minutes.

The morning was insane (I can’t say it enough) but we realized that it was a good thing. It just shows how incredibly excited the people are for the event. And, if the text messages and mobile plurks and mobile tweets giving on-site reports were any indication, it showed us how much the people were willing to help the community in their own way.

Later comments on the Victory Facebook were awesome, too. There was one who said, on getting the faaaaaaaaaaar seat in General Admission, “that’s okay, we’ll bring binoculars! As long as we’re there!”

I love my church.

Track of the moment: Good Days and Bad Days – Kaiser Chiefs

I hope I get by today…
I hope that I fall into place
The good thing about my job and my office is this: we all know that everything’s going to fall into place. As chaotic as the day had been — and as chaotic as the tomorrow will probably be — we all know it’s going to work out because our God is bigger than our problems.

This day went by in a second. Needless to say, my day still ended with a smile on my face. It’s all good. Life is good. God is good.

Track of the moment: Fall Into Place – Apartment

Alright, don’t worry, we’ll all float on
And we’ll all float on alright
Today was certainly an educational day. And a highly exciting day, for everyone involved! Haha! True, there were frustrating moments, but we just gotta move on from there. So now I’m going to head out of the office, earphones on, and my soundtrack playing.

What. A. DAY.

Ending track: Float On – Modest Mouse

At this moment, the official Victory@25 website tells me that we have 63 days, 5 hours, 8 mintes and 34…33…32 seconds to go until the party. Aren’t you excited? I’m excited. Are you? I am!!!

I’m sure everybody’s excited, our office visibly so. Ever since the ball started rolling on the planning, there began a certain buzz in the office. Even when we weren’t actually talking about it, the thought was still there. At the back of our heads, we keep thinking: What promotional stuff can we do? What contests can we hold? Whose old 1980s big-hair-big-shoulderpads photos can we show? Whenever the I see or hear the anniversary teaser I get goosebumps all over, and a really big, giddy grin.

But, to be completely honest, this also must be said: if you step into my office, you can actually feel the tension and the stress that occasionally shoots up to high — and I mean really high — levels. I haven’t been able to make time to blog for a month now. There are times that I get home and I literally collapse on my bed — with my uniform and shoes on, and still holding my bags — and my roommates won’t see any sign of life until midnight, or even the next morning. There are even moments in the day when trying to think of ideas to make the event fun doesn’t seem so very fun anymore.

But you know what? It’s all good. Because, at the end of the day, this isn’t just an event. This isn’t even just a party to brag about how cool Victory is or whatever. This isn’t even about celebrating our work for the past months, or the past years and how big our numbers are now. This is God‘s party. This is to celebrate God, and how simply AWESOME He’s been to every single one of us in every single day in the last 25 years.

And that makes it all worth it.

Whenever I remember that, I get smiling again as I work, and life is sunshine and happiness all over again.

How about you? Has God been great to you in the past years? Are you going to the Araneta Coliseum on July 24th to celebrate His goodness? You are? Awesome.

Spread the word about the Victory@25! Connect to Victory in Multiply, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, and Plurk! And don’t forget to visit VictoryAt25.com, too! See you there!

Presenting…

my new pet…

pandaaaaaa!

Ain’t it ever so cute? I luv it!!! It’s so small it can stand on my hand and look at me with those adorable bead eyes. Heeheehee… It now stands on my office desk and watches me while I work.

I’m still trying to think of a name, though… I started looking into Japanese names, but I considered using Chinese for this little one since it did come from Beijing. So far the possibilities are:

Xiao xiao – means “small”
Su Lin – means “a little bit from something cute”. Also the name of a panda in San Diego.

Or simply Panda. Go with simple but effective. LOL!

Any suggestions?

//EDIT
He now has a name! The suggestions that came in were:
Bruno, Bantay, George, Kot (as in Pandakot), Kekok (as in Pandakekok), K (as in PANDAk), Zebra (kasi black and white), Zhebra (kasi Pilipino, so may ‘h’ na siningit kung saan), Penda, and Mangix (hindi ko alam kung saan galing to).

But the winning name suggestion is: Coco, as in Panda Coco. Some might get the pun, others might not, but either way, it sounds…fitting…for some reason. It doesn’t have any deep meaning, which is strange for me, the one who always picks names for their meanings. Hehe.

The other name that I got a kick out of was the Kekok suggestion, but I will not name my panda that. I allowed people to use that nickname for Coco, though.

Many thanks to my Plurk friends who gave me the suggestions!

Eventful but deflating.

A storm made life hard for everyone (especially us who still had to go to work despite the fact that the government cancelled all classes and closed offices), deadlines hounded me (so much so that 13-hour shifts have become a regular thing), work had been incredibly intellectually and emotionally draining (even more than usual), I had to “let go” of an employee (who didn’t want to go, but I’ll use the phrase “let go”, anyway), my mother got sick (and it was so very hard to sit there beside her helplessly), and I didn’t get to go to the Mrs. Fields blogger meet thingy (and I probably won’t be able to go to the second Taste Asia meet) that I’ve been waiting for for nearly a month.

Typing out that paragraph just made me feel weak all over again. It wasn’t depressing 24/7, of course, and yes, none of those things made me feel like it was the end of the world or something… But still, it was, like, one after the other day after day and it made my emotional energy go lower and lower, and everything just seemed duller and duller.

But you know what? If I learned anything about unfortunate events, it’s this:

It’s the crappy times in life that make the great times feel even greater.

The stark contrast makes white look brighter, and black look darker. It’s like ice-cold water after a hot day, getting peace and quiet after the neighbor stops the noisy racket, or lounging on a sofa after a long traffic-jammed ride home.

Heh. Just thinking that makes me feel better already.

I’ve been told many times to focus not on the temporary, but instead on the eternal. Heck, I’ve told that to other people, too. But sometimes, I just forget. But when I do remember, it never fails to make me smile.

The trick now is toughing it out till the better times come.

It’s just that Aileen‘s twitter keeps bugging me. (It isn’t meant to bug anyone, of course.) It keeps saying “Wanted still: localisation editor“. Not all the time, but it pops up every now and then.

I bet you don’t see what’s so wrong about that Twitter status. You know why? That’s because there IS nothing wrong with that Twitter status. So why is it bugging me?

Easy.

‘Coz I want the job.

But then I don’t.

Harhar. Talk about indecision. I heard about that job opening when Aileen posted it in GPhilippines on… April… I think. And I’ve been mulling it over every once in a while since then.

Ever since I fell in love with Google —umm…yeah. I’m a Googlephile, if you haven’t noticed yet from my recent posts— I’ve been wondering what it’d be like to work there. It sounds super awesome, and…

Well, come on. It’s Google!!!

Plus, given the fact that I’m pretty obsessed with translation (as most of you have seen from my previous rant, lost in translation), I guess you could say it’d be a good job for me if I get hired.

That is, IF I apply at all.

I probably won’t because
(1) I don’t meet the requirements [namely the first],
(2) my passport is expired,
(3) I like my present job [Okay, so it's not as cool as working Google, but I like it, anyway], and
(4) there is no number 4.

Oh, wait, there is! Number 4: I’m making way too many excuses, it makes me wonder if I actually do want the job or not.

Riiiiiiiight.

I guess I just have this occasional tendency to box my “dreams” or über-cool things to be… well… to be precisely that: dreams and über-cool things that I can’t reach. Most times I actually muster my guts and dive into the unknown (like I did when I applied for my current job), but sometimes the nervousness bug bites me. And so I limit myself. Because of that, I end up not getting that über-cool thing, like I chalked it up.

Sucks.

Ah, well.

In case you would like the job, and have more guts than I do, then, by all means, click the link at the top of this post, and try your luck. ^^

Reading
A lot of things, actually. There’s a handful of unfinished books in my shelf, although nearly half of them, I’ve finished reading once before, like The Hobbit. The Lupin books are in my PC, though. I wish I was reading The Tower of Geburah again. I don’t know why, but with the brewing talk of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, I suddenly missed Geburah. Hm. I don’t know the connection, though… Magic, maybe?

Watching
Prison Break – Blame it on Scofield. Season 3 won’t start til September… Rawrrrrrr.

RomeoxJuliet – Probably the only anime I’m watching right now. Hehe.

Heroes – Prison Break kind of dethroned this from the top of my “addicted to” list, probably because they keep taking them so-called breaks. The season’s ending in a few weeks, I think, since Episode 20′s coming out tomorrow… I’m sure the season ender’s going to be a cliffie, and then the next season won’t be for several months again. Argh.

Lost – I’m kind of beginning to lose interest, actually. Partly because of Prison Break, partly because I’m a Jate fan. Hihihi.

Listening to
Phantom Planet, Michael Buble, Jason Mraz, and Duncan Shiek on repeat play. but I’m kind of looking into Carpenters songs because my brother said it’s the right range for me. Plus I discovered that I can sing Carpenters songs almost flawlessly in front of an audience, even with a migraine pounding my head.

Eating
Nothing. I enjoyed myself too much with my Tofu Steak lunch. ^_^

Drinking
C2. What else?

Writing
For the first time in almost four years…. I’m writing Java code. Surprising, I know. Java was my favorite PL in my sophomore year (and still is, I guess), but it’s been four freakin’ years since I did any programming! It feels silly to be researching on the foundational classes all over again. *sigh*

Wishing
That holidays are holidays for me, too.

I mean, sure, the Internet is a significant chunk of my life — a really huge chunk at that — but the realization that I’ve been blogging about almost nothing but the Internet pretty much concerns me. Just look at the recent posts, will you? They’ve been about other people’s websites, the Pepsi contest, my blog and SEO.

I haven’t been writing about me.

Me as a person, me as a daughter, me as a friend, me as a girl. Self-centered, I know. But it’s still kind of alarming. Does that mean I’m that wrapped up in the net? That my world revolves around it now?

Ha! Bollocks! Of course not!

Still, it does appear that way, doesn’t it?

To tell you the truth, my routine for the past weeks had been work-sleep, work-sleep. There was a point about a month ago that I kept dreaming of our system. I was programming in my dreams. No exaggeration. The great part about it, though, is that there were several nights that I actually solved a debugging problem in my dream. When I woke up, my first thought was “This is AWESOME, I can’t believe I figured that out!” My second thought was “Oh no… This can’t be right. I can NOT be dreaming of programming.”

Let it be known, though, that I still actually have a life outside the computer. I still have a family at home, with whom I’ve been marathoning Prison Break and Cirque du Soleil and Oscar Award-winning movies with. I still have friends I see on weekends. I still have my God I praise every day.

I don’t know why I haven’t been writing about my life like I did before. Change of writing style? Not really. Tilt of interest? Maybe. Tweaking of lifestlyle? Most likely.

So, in case you run into me one of these days and I start yakking techie terms and about my adventures with SEO, please please grab me by the shoulders and say, “Sarah, stop being a geek for a second and talk about something else.”

That, or just stuff a chocolate in my mouth.

By the grace of God, not yet.

Work has been insane, but I’m still smiling.

Even as I bang my head on my desk.