“I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to live in the Philippines…”

… I quote my officemate, to whom I showed several pictures of me and my Ozzie’s vacation at Taal, Batangas, Bohol, Pagudpud and other wonderful spots in the Philippines.

Ouch.

“Yeah. To tell you the truth… I mean, this is a great country… but if it weren’t for my parents, I wouldn’t be here [in another country]. I would’ve stayed there”, I replied.

I love the Philippines. If you’re a middle-class citizen, everything is fine. Or at least that’s how I feel. Life is wonderful, the culture is rich and the people are great(there are exceptions, of course). Hey, I just learned that the Philippines is now a second-world country.

It all boils down to law and government, doesn’t it? The corruption and injustice… it’s heart-breaking. I remember the first time an MMDA pulled us over because we passed a red light. It was terrifying. “Ser, 3 days na seminar to. Reckless driving yan, blah blah blah”. The stuff that I used to only see on TV – like on “Isumbong mo kay Tulfo” or something, was happening to us. I never really thought corruption was real. Welcome to the real world, hunny. [Now that it got me thinking, I should've let my tears flow. I know a friend who cried and got out of the ticket [i.e. lagay] (girl, syempre. Baka batukan ng pulis pag guy yung umiyak)]

Well, poverty and crime is another thing. A few years back, my purse almost got snatched. (who doesn’t have his own story?) I would’ve let go if I could, but I was holding a book across my chest [Head First Servlets and JSP!]. I was so terrified, I just froze while he was struggling to snatch my purse. Had he aimed for the laptop bag that I was carrying, I wouldn’t be blogging on Cozy right now.

Despite all that, I the Philippines is still my home. I love it there.

“Look at that. It’s like paradise.“, my officemate pointed out.

“Yes, I know.”

I’m tired. Give me my hour back.

We lost an hour due to DST. Starting this year, DST is 2 weeks earlier than usual. It was sad to lose an hour yesterday, especially when you don’t own your time anymore.

I’m not really that excited with DST. It doesn’t really change anything, except that I have to leave when it’s still kind of dark. That’s because thanks to our new VP of Engineering, and his ‘highly encouraged 11-hour workday (excluding lunch)’, it’s also dark by the time we can go home (around this time, sunset is ~8pm, by next month sunset should be ~9pm).

Well, I hope when this ‘highly encouraged 11 hour workday’ is all over, I can enjoy some sunshine.   [I hope the long work-hours won't last till the end of DST. That would be so sad.]

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature

I noticed several times that my Skype chat sessions/windows appear on my PC at work. Uhm, that’s fine. Except that those chats were the ones I had the night before, obviously not from my office PC. I left my Skype logged in the previous night. But should my chat sessions automatically appear on every PC that I am logged in?

On another instance, I also remember my Ozzie and I had a chat on Skype that went on something like this:

…
Ozzie: Okay.
Me: Okay.
Me: Huh?
Ozzie: Why?
Me: What? I didn’t type that.
Me: What?

Then my brother went to my room and asked how I did that. “Did what?“, I asked. Then it dawned unto me that I was still logged in on Skype on the other PC (that my brother was using at that time), and he was the one typing the other lines.

This is designed behavior, so they say. https://developer.skype.com/jira/browse/SCW-268?page=comments

I’m not going to debate on that. It’s their app. I just think that it’s a security risk (risk due to user stupidity, I guess. ).

I have nothing against Skype. As a matter of fact, I love Skype! The audio and video are excellent. I can’t imagine life without Skype. (The quality is better and much faster than the Gizmo Project and Yahoo Messenger [definitely], IMO)

I’ll just make sure I log out every time, and I’ll be fine.