wander lust

what's cooking?

well, i decided to ask my doctor if am able to undergo RAI (radioactive iodine) to finally put an end to my hyperthyroidism. my endoc admitted that i am kind of hard to treat because i have been enduring medications for almost a year now and my thyroid hasn't gone back to normal yet. 

i hate going back to my endoc everytime due to endless bloodtests, medications here and there haiz. it is exhausting to be a thyroid patient. i finally decided to undergo RAI to put an end to my ethereal bloodtest since the phlebotomists are also having a hard time drawing blood from me 'cuz i think i have turned into a vampire and i don't have blood anymore regardless of how i drink too much fluid! 

photo not mine, got it from google images

anyways nuff of that all i wanna do is to be normal again and not worry about my health getting in the way. i get tired too much because i am hyperthyroid thus everytime i do long walks especially uphill i am running out of breath. it wasn't like that before and i want my healthy life back especially now that my twinnie and i is cooking up a trip to cambodia this coming summer for our birthday. 

speaking of our cambodia getaway which is not in a couple of months from now, we originally thought of getting a travel package through a travel agency (so they make our itinerary for the trip).  the only problem was, their travel packages does not include airfare which is the bloody part. so, we just decided to make our own itinerary, booked our own flight and arranged tours with the hotel direct instead of going through travel agencies because it's really hard not having any control of your trip as travel agencies do it in such a way that everything must go on as planned. 

well see how it works. i'll definitely blog about it to help my fellow wander lusters who are organizing their trip themselves to siem reap. my sister and i are planning to go on as backpackers to save ourselves from the troubles of losing any baggage. 

as of right now were busy scouring the web reading blog after blog to aid us in our trip this april. as much as we hate boarding a plane to cambodia on the actual day of our b-day but i guess we don't have much of a choice as airplane seats to siem reap are getting sold out really fast. my oh my.

Happy Hearts Day

happy valentine's day! people celebrate heart's day differently may it be with a special someone or just simply spend it with your family. it doesn't really matter anyway as it's not declared a public holiday. i celebrate payday more than valentine's day as it comes twice a month! :D

anyways, i got my order! the infamous red velvet crinkles today. i bought it online and they travelled 2-3 days through land, was shipped via local courier and walah! it came through today to my heart's delight. i know it's sinful for a dieter like me but whadda heck at least i tasted it to my tummy and palate's content. i bought them for 160php per tub (18-20 pieces) plus shipping fee. it wasn't your ordinary crinkles because it's chewy and the cream cheese filling added that extra something to its taste. it's compact so it doesn't crumble easily  because of the filling that holds everything together.  my rv crinkles arrived exactly today to remind me of the little things that makes the heart happy.

tahday is heart's day for god's sake. happy valentine's day folks. from the bottom of my hypothalamus! ;)

the ghost bride, yangsze choo

“And to the one who has led me through the valley of the shadow of death. (Psalm 23:4)”

*ghost marriage*

“The folk tradition of marriages to ghosts or between ghosts usually occurred in order to placate spirits or allay a haunting.”

Excerpt From: Choo, Yangsze. “The Ghost Bride.” © 2013


• Setting : 


Malaya, 1893 - is the historic name of Malaysia before independence. British Malaya was a loose set of states, including Singapore, that was under varying degrees of British control from 1771 to 1948.




• Characters and Meanings of their Names:


• Li Lan (Beautiful Orchid) - main character of the book and was fixed marriage (as a ghost bride) to the deceased lim tian ching.


• Tian Bai (Bright Sky) - li lan's love interest. 


• Lim Tian Ching (Eternal Sky) - alleged poisoning, caused of death; li lan's prospect husband and came from a wealthy clan. cousins with tian bai and yan hong. 


• Fan (Fragrance) - li lan met while she was a wandering soul. helped li lan get to the 'plains of the dead'


• Yan Hong (Red Swallow) - lim tian ching ang tian bai's female cousin.


• Er Lang (Second Son) - lin lan met while she was a wandering soul. significant character who was not human but rescued li lan from all the trouble she's been through whilst in the world of the afterlife. li lan's 2nd love interest. 


• Amah - li lan's grandmother


• Third Auntie - helped li lan to escape from the ox headed demons whilst at plains of the dead. 


• li lan's father - opium smoker, wallowing in debt  thus the reason why li lan needs to marry a man from the lim family. 


Synopsis: 


li lan's mother died when she was little due to a chicken pox outbreak. only li lan and her  father survived. her father became socially withdrawn due to the marks left by the pox. her father's business ventures failed thus left him in debt with the lim family thus resulted to li lan's becoming a ghost bride to the only deceased heir in the family lim tian ching. li lan was raised by her Amah (grandmother) because her mother died young since her father became an opium smoker although lived in the same household. 


li lan met tian bai during her visit to the lim family mansion and became attracted to tian bai at first sight not knowing he was lim tian ching's cousin. 


lim tian ching haunted li lan in her dreams telling her how she should behave once she marries the later. after li lan told her amah the two went to a medium to ask for advise. the medium told li lan to burn funeral money and write her name on paper. although the situation seemed hopeless the medium gave her this powder which she have to take if ever she gets haunted again by lim tian ching along with some herbs plus this yellow paper which she needs to place on her bedroom window to cast him off. during the first few days the medium's advise worked but the haunting continued on so li lan took more of the powder which caused her overdose and was comatosed because she was prescribed an 'opium' according to the doctor who examined li lan. much to amah and li lan's father shock. 


li lan became a wandering soul with transparent thread attach to her. she bagan travelling which started out when she first set her foot outside her abode. she was not able to come back to her physical body in a long time because she recounted that there were ox-headed demons guarding her house and will no longer allow her to get back to her body. 


it was a lengthly but interesting ebook by the way because of li lan's journey to the plains of dead (destination of people who died). li lan met Fan, an earthbound soul who's been spying on her lover life since she died. fan thought li lan was an angel and helped her to cross the plains of the dead in exchange for funeral money and items which fan would later on use for her and her lover when the time comes he dies as well. 


going back, while wandering li lan visited tian bai in his dreams by using her thread as a way of communicating with him (as per fan it's a good way to communicate to the living) she learned that tian bai had a relationship with a british girl in hongkong. 


then came er lang.


li lan thought er lang was the same guy she saw during her and amah's visit to the medium. she saw er lang talking with the ox-headed demons whilst in the forest. er lang caught li lan following him (the over confident eccentric guy with his self confessed good looks that makes many women swoon) who happens to be not human and wears this oversized bamboo hat. 


li lan crossed the plains of the dead withvthe help of fan. if you ask me what it means it's actually like the afterworld version of li lan's hometown except everything else there is lifeless, no blood but wounds exists. prior to that li  lan also met chendan, a horse which just sprouted from nowhere. i presume it came from tian bai when li lan asked for him to draw a horse and burn it for her (as a funeral offering of which tian bai was not aware of) thus spawned chendana. li lan was told previously by fan that she needs to have transportation to cross the plains of the dead. 


many things happened in the plains, li lan met her mother whom she thought was the third concubine. li lan was happy they met on the afterlife although she's not technically dead. she got locked up because she was accused of being a spy, lim tian ching found out about her thus the ox-headed demons were supposed to see her in the plains of the dead court etcetera.


 let me fast forward, li lan found that the third auntie she knew happened to be her mother and traded her youth for li lan to survive the pox outbreak then helped her escaped. er lang also helped li lan escape the ox-headed demons. li lan grew this fascination with er lang who happened to be a dragon. she escaped the plains in short after having heavily chased by the bird demons in the sky with the help of er lang who came badly wounded. li lan thought er died and never knew about his fate until she came back to the world earthbound spirit again. 


li lan found that fan possessed her body and tian bai and her is supposed to marry to her father's delight because all of her family's debt were paid for by tian bai. fan told li lan to go away because she will be a forgotten sooner and her soul would turn weak. li lan was revived by er lang's 'qi' (in hindu i think 'qi' means life force). fan, in li lan's body was summoned by the ox-headed demons to the courts of hell but never got there according to er lang. 


going back, lim tian ching accused tian bai poisoning him and kept telling li lan about it. later on i found out that yan hong, the cousin, was the accidental murder because she made lim tian ching drink this tea to cause him extreme headache but eventually seizured and accidentally died. 


li lan fell in love with the handsome er lang in his human form and dragon in his underworld form. he offered li lan marriage but set her expectations that their life won't be normal. er lang before i forgot is one of the courts of hell officials so he's got many powers ok?  at the same time by the way li lan accepted tian bai's offer to marry but soon realized she loved er lang the most. 


li lan weigh the pros and cons of marrying tian bai aiming for a life of ease because of tian bai's family wealth but later on decided to marry er lang. love prevailed. 


the end. 


so, what's my take on the book? t'was really nice i should say so myself because of how creative yangzse choo illustrated the plains of the dead in my head. i've known in the past that the chinese bury fake money for their deceased relatives to help them get by in the afterlife as they will spend it there, burn drawings of things so they will have their version in the plains of the dead.  it is a love story with so much more twist and made me see things differently although the book is of course fictional. li lan's adventures in the afterlife turned really exciting and heart racing at times because reading the book made me see a motion picture in my head. i really enjoyed it a lot because of its queerness and never boring turn of events. the courts of hell according to yangsze choo depicted the corruption literally in the government and bureacracy. i'm giving her  five stars in Goodreads for this book. a must read bookworm. 


if my personal synopsis confused you, go figure and read the book yerself! :) 




ebay shopping spree

I got my belkin case for my ipod nano 4th gen last monday february 3. i made my purchase last january 16 and t'was shipped the day after by the eBay seller from Halesowen, West Midlands UK. 

t'was fast considering it'll go through customs first then transferred to the courier company and so on and so forth. estimated delivery supposedly was between january 27 - february 13, 2014 and i got lucky 'cuz my belkin reached our local post office much sooner than i expected! wee! 

i bought it for £2.00 btw plus shipping so not so bad really because it's very hard to find ipod nano cases here in the PH these days. the case came with free screen protector. this is not gonna be the final leg of my eBay shopping spree for sure!  

book review: let's pretend this never happened by jenny lawson

let's pretend this never happened (jenny lawson), 2012

finished reading this hilarious ebook by jenny lawson november or december of last year. let me just share that the book is sort of  jenny lawson's autobiography. i'll just share quite a few of the highlights. 

jenny is a mom blogger and as per wiki  suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, OCD, ADD, depression and anxiety disorder. jenny is from wall, TX and grew up with a taxidermist father. her dad would sometimes bring home wild animals and or animate dead ones by pretending they are talking animals. so just imagine how weird things went for jenny and her sister. it was narrated in such a hilarious way although personal account with matching photos from start to finish.

jenny got married to victor early who came from a well off and normal family. jenny lost het first baby because of her medical condition but later on had her daughter haley inspite of difficulty with pregnancy due to blood clots (sorry i forgot the medical term). 

it was hilarious from start to finish i guess it's cuz of the way she made things sound so positive from losing a baby down to the death of her pug dog (after having bitten by a poisonous snake) who's corpse almost got taken by vultures. btw she had her pug cremated and shipped to her and placed the poor thing in an urn like a dearly departed human. 

it's good to read hilarious books as a breather sometimes because it takes you away for a while from this world. i recommend it to people who wants to laugh out loud for once and veer away from normalcy. this book justifies that normal is boring. 

my next review goes to yangsze choo's 'the ghost bride.' another wonderful book i am currently engrossed with so watch out...

i need a freakin break

time off from work is very precious for me. 8 by 5 (8 hours/5 days a week) can be very exhausting at times especially if you barely get a vacation. that's really flaky. 

I've been with the BPO industry for going a decade now. this job puts money on my pocket more than any regular jobs could give yet stole so much from me, TIME. 

people working for this kind of industry is unable tC celebrate Philippine holidays for as much as we'd love too because we just don't celebrate any holidays at all. lucky for you if you work for aussie accounts, they're big on boxing day, Christmas and NY celebration but american accounts especially technical support for US products and services, you're lucky to even celebrate christmas because the yuletide season is no time to rest nor slack off at work. geez. we get paid for Philippine holidays double but not for american holidays yet you have to come to work to serve them. this is how capitalism works. 

those country outsourcing manpower from third world countries earn more than double due to cheap labor. people who work for BPO companies may be known to get above the minimum wage but those who outsource get richer and the meager gets meager of course. take it or leave it. that's how it works.

sorry for my rants. i am just pissed off with how the system works. if only our country is able to provide reasonable job opportunities for everyone, no Filipino would brave the wee hours of the night just to add 15-20% if not less for night differential on their monthly wages with companies barely offering hazard pays. it sucks but you just have to deal with it because there's no other jobs in this country which is able to offer much higher salary than BPO companies.

the BPO industry is NOT a job for no-brainers like most people think. people like myself who work for reputable outsourcing companies requires one to have exceptional english proficiency for as much as possible, computer literacy and must be adaptive enough to withstand the never ending challenges and constant changes. we endure 2-3 months of paid training like any other industries with only two options, pass or fail. no health card benefits, leave credits for some companies until you get regularized. imagine how difficult that is? no vacay for 2 months? good thing i have been enduring this kinds of things because i have already equipped myself with experience in this industry which made my job-hopping to another company easy. 

this industry also does not prohibit someone who is above their 30s or 50s job opportunity although the HMO benefits would be the same as the younger employees. 

what makes me fume mad is that when there's a high attrition rate (people resigning from work) they shrink the work loads to those who remain. how infuriating not to be able to avail your vacation leave credits because of the way they manage their work force is out of control? sucks. nobody wants to get so freaking tired and this is how foreign capitalist enslaves us. corruption is not just limited in the goverment e? 

i badly need time off from work darn it.