What Have You

The inaccuracy of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) is truly unbelievable. I was watching the news last night and their alleged satellite video of typhoon Frank shows that Ilocos Norte was flagged as Signal number 2 where in fact there’s no raindrop or morning dew in this province for the past 15 days. I was laughing at the report because many people think our streets here are flooded and trees have fallen on the ground due to gusty winds and thunderstorms (wow, weather terms, baby!). Ilocos Norte is dry as the Sahara desert at the moment and everyone here finds it difficult to breathe because of the lack of moisture in the atmosphere.

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My old hard disk problems are here again - my hard drive’s data are lost due to bursts of short power outages here in Ilocos Norte because of weather conditions. Now, it’s become my problem again to recover my hard drive data which will consume so much of my time and energy. Hard drive recovery is such a painstaking task, I tell you.

Maybe some of you think that there’s a storm here in Ilocos Norte, but hell no. There’s not a single drop of rain. Heat wave did strike the heart of Ilocos Norte for the past few days and many computer users like me complain of hard disk and memory problems because of too much heat. Yeah. Can you believe that? While people from nearby provinces complain of too much water because of the storm, we complain here of the lack of water. It’s like living in a desert. To add insult to injury, my internet connection has been down for two days now and I’m terribly pissed.

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The movie of Sharon Cuneta “Caregiver” perfectly depicts the life and frustrations of Filipino caregivers abroad. Most of our caregivers are nurses or nursing graduates, in case you didn’t know. I haven’t seen Sharon Cuneta’s movie and this is not going to be an article about showbiz or movies.  It’s about Pinoys abroad working as caregivers.

The Philippines is Canada’s best source of caregivers. I know because one of my former flames went there in 1999. She’s a nurse four years my senior. We had plans of getting married and this is no secret to my present wife.

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As part of my 24th(?) birthday celebration, I am giving away prizes to select bloggers (people who greeted me yesterday and a few days before) who have been very good friends in the blogosphere for many months now. There is no catch here. No requirement. No RSS to subscribe to or whatever. Just freebies. Want to know who they are? Scroll down.

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Too much alcohol in the body can make your head spin, hence the origin of the word “hangover”. People during the ancient times observed that when they drink too much wine or rum, they hang their heads over their boats, the railings of their homes, veranda or porch.

To reduce dizziness when the body takes in too much alcohol (beyond the body’s threshold), either you drink Alka Zeltser, 2-3 cups of black coffee and take a cold bath as soon as you get up in the morning (or lunch time, like in my case wherein my usual waking time is between 10-11am). If you prefer to experiment, try some combinations (or variations of combinations) of the three suggested detoxification methods.

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I’m renewing my driver’s license today and you know what, this has a terrible health implication on my part. Not only will I not be able to blog till 5pm today but anticipating the stress I can derive from falling in a long line standing up (of course!) is already killing me. In my sad experiences of renewing my driver’s license at the Land Transportation Office, my legs and feet get swollen after a whole day in the queue. I feel like the blood flow in my lower extremities is restricted due to my bad posture during the long wait. Waiting is stressful. That has always been the case for me. Likewise, I can be very impatient at times and lose my temper when the processing of documents seem to stop at the booths.

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A while ago, I posted about the Firefox 3 download in progress and how I intend to test it for others’ benefit. Sad to say, the download speed of the English version is slow and it took me hours to download the file 5 times because the installer is corrupted. The release date of Firefox must have created a commotion among users that their servers have been flooded by downloaders.

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Firefox 3 release date is today (June 17) but up to this hour I am still seeing the release candidate (RC) version of Firefox. I thought the official release is the one going out today ready for download. I have been using Firefox for more than 5 years now and though I love this browser, it does come with some handicaps. One of those is the consumption of too much memory (RAM) and 100% CPU whenever it fails to load due to some reasons like a power outage.

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Daddy. Papa. Dad. Pops. Puppy. Tatay. Tatang. Itay. Pare. Brod. However you call your father, don’t you think it’s time to greet him “Happy Father’s Day!” today?

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Yes, dear readers of this site called a weblog, you read it right - (YAHOO + GOOGLE) = (YAHOO - MICROSOFT). You got the math? If not, then sorry. I’m sorry because the dream team of many bloggers (YAHOO + MICROSOFT) will not happen anymore.  The matrimony between the two search engine moguls has been sealed with a kiss, leaving Microsoft network in the background watching the events as they unfold.

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Staying up late at night (reviewing for the exam, working overtime on a project or even blogging till the wee hours in the morning) can cause acne and skin problems. I have observed this in me and my former classmates in college. My wife also develops acne whenever she stays up all night. This is true especially when you do it for a prolonged period of time. Also, having a sensitive skin (like what I have discussed in my article “Do You Have a Sensitive Skin and Acne is a problem?“) makes you more prone to having acne than those who have better skin tones.

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I was thinking of changing this blog’s design but I changed my other blogs’ themes instead. One of which is www.blog2learn.com which I changed about a week ago.

For this site, I think I’m going to stick to this theme for a while. I’ve changed so many templates in this theme already and there might be more trouble than benefits if I will try to change themes at this point. Read the rest of this entry »

Changing WordPress themes is very easy. First, download a free WordPress theme that you want (Google for the keyword “Free WordPress Themes” and see how many millions of pages will come up). If your blog is self-hosted, then you could upload the downloaded theme folder to your server vis FTP. In my case I use Filezilla as my FTP client. Some people find this difficult but if you have setup your Filezilla FTP configuration properly, then you can proceed without a hitch. Second, upload your chosen theme to your themes folder (usually it’s the /public_html/wp-content/themes/ folder in your server). After that, login to your WordPress dashboard and under the Presentation tab, you can choose the theme you want.

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Drug addition or substance abuse is not only a problem here in the Philippines. It is a threat to everyone everywhere. It does not only destroy the capability of the drug dependent to think clearly. It also strips him of his morality. Statistics of drug dependents or addicts in the Philippines in 2006 has reached 60,000 (a rough estimate). From a health worker’s point of view, this number is startling given the available facilities in the country and the effects this number has on social processes and national image.

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Meeting friends online through social networks like Friendster, Myspace and Facebook is truly cool. In fact, I frequent my Friendster account every now and then but I don’t stay long. Recently, my login time is 5 minutes max just to check who viewed my profile and sent me messages through its messaging system.

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Many Filipinos, especially Nurses, working in Canada sometimes complain of their workload. You know abroad - it’s work, work, work. Filipinos living here in the Philippines are much luckier for being able to relax anytime they want without much worries unlike our OFW countrymen scattered across the globe whose stress levels are sometimes beyond the charts. Mind you, there are many of them in Canada.

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I was scanning my wife’s notes and going through other stuff when an old note that is “A Nurse’s Prayer” caught my attention. This is a standard prayer supposedly “recited or murmured” by nurses whenever they start their work. In the Philippines, I doubt if any nurse prays before working. I also doubt if any Pinoy nurse knows this prayer by heart. It’s quite short and easy to memorize but it’s a very good reminder to the nurse of his/her duties and moral obligations. Read on and see how important a nurse’s roles to other people are. Here it is:

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