Of Human Billboards and Double Monitors

Funny how today’s businessmen find all sorts of ways to advertise or market their products. From internet marketing, to print, to commercials, to gargantuan billboards or endless gimmicks all designed to catch our attention with varying degrees of effectiveness.

I remembered when we went to Boracay last year, there was this massage parlor along Station 2 which never failed to make me smile whenever I passed by their shop. Their staffs were lined up outside and whenever people will pass by, they would chant these words:

Hi Sir/Ma’am massage

Try our massage

Massage now Sir/Ma’am

Try now

I’m not sure if that were the exact words but I got a serious case of LSS when I was there. How could I not when they would chant those very words every time someone would pass by their shop, which in Station 2 standards means like every second. I found it quite funny especially how the girls delivered it. Although when I heard it for like the 35^th time, it wasn’t quite funny anymore wtf.

Here in Manila, one of the latest forms of advertising is the human billboards. They’re basically people who walk around the city’s streets with mini billboards that they carry like backpacks. I guess the reason why they’re quite popular nowadays is because they’re cheap plus they’re quite personal since the people who carry them can interact with their target market.

In Ortigas, where I work, you would find many of these human billboards walking along the streets. But there is one that really caught my attention. Since last week, everytime I pass by Julia Vargas on my way to the office, I would find this group of human billboards standing near McDonald’s at El Pueblo greeting every passerby in unison to advertise their instant noodles. Their chant goes like this:

1,2,3

Hi Ma’am, Hi Sir

Tekki Shomen noodles po

Ingat

I never failed to smile whenever I heard them. They’re quite funny. Especially when they would count from one to three before they start so they would be synchronized when they greet you. From the MRT station, I walk a long way just to get to the office under the scorching heat and humidity of the summer sun and hearing them kinda takes away the stress and heat and replace it with a light heart and smile instead. And because of that I’m definitely buying their instant noodles. Hope to hear them again later.

Anyway, would like to share with you a picture of my workstation at the office.

I work with two monitors which is very convenient especially since I didn’t have to press alt-tab that often just to switch from one file to another. Guess when I move to a new job I will have a hard time getting used to working with a single monitor again.

We are currently organizing our team’s team building this May 21^st and I’m quite excited because I think that would be the only time I would be able to go to the beach this summer wtf! Huhu! Had to cancel the CamSur trip next month because we have more important things to spend our money on and save up for. Top of the list of course is the Permanent Residence application for Canada. Hope everything will fall into place for us. *fingers crossed*

buhbye Caramoan T__T

On a side note, we have an activity in the office wherein the departments would compete in beautifying their respective offices with a summer theme using recyclable materials and on Friday, we would all wear summer outfits for the event. Then last night, our department manager sent an email to one of the organizers putting all of us in copy saying "could you please define what exactly do you mean by summer outfit? because i'm afraid some people will misinterpret it and wear daring outfits...". Haha! So funny! Like we would wear two-piece swimsuits to the office!

Beach = Happiness

Got my dreams, got my life, got my love.
Got my friends, got the sunshine above.
Why am I making this hard on myself
when there's so many beautiful reasons I have to be happy.
-Natasha Beddingfield

Ahhh... so beautiful.

This is my new mantra in life (one of them, at least).

So true and so appropriate to my life right now. There's just so many things - crazy, mind-blowing things - that's been happening lately and sometimes I feel like giving up. But this song reminded me that there are so many good things to be happy about.

And one of them is this...

{source}
I'll be seeing you soon.


Canyon Cove - Nasugbu, Batangas. So pretty. Just looking at the beach and the infinity pool makes me salivate. Gotta-plan-the-next-beach-trip-soon.


cutie Zanya enjoying the pool. so cute!

Ain't life grand?

xoxo

Because my dreams are bursting at the seams

Yesterday, I ended my post saying I'm off to bed. That didn't happen though. Because yesterday I had another case of insomnia attack. Like really. I've been lying on my bed for hours with the lights turned off but sleep simply evades me. So at 4am, I decided to use my idle time and wrapped the gift of the boyfriend instead.

And since I’ve no extra gift wrappers from last season, I scavenged through my drawers and found these stack of brochures from my recent trip to Singapore and Malaysia. I never realized that I’ve brought back that much stack of junk home. What I’m going to do with all of them (plus the other stack of brochures I brought home from Spain), I have no idea, but I couldn’t find it in me to throw them all away despite the fact that their taking up lots of space in my already cramped drawers.

But I found one good use for them – I used some as a gift wrapper for the boyfriend’s gift. Cleverness!

my masterpiece. that little pop-up figure with two owls up on a date came from one of the brochures. they're so cute so I just have to add them up.

another angle. you can see on one half of the box is a brochure of the Singapore Flyer and the other half is from the brochure of the KL Hop-on Hop-off Tour Bus.


a close-up of the owls.

It's Monday, oh Manic Monday. My work this week starts at 10pm so I have another few hours to catch up on sleep. Bye for now. Babooshie!

So I drew a new face and I laughed

Before anything else, Happy Easter everyone!!!

So, after many months, I finally got myself to blog again. I know I’m always saying that I’ll blog regularly, but I just fail everytime. But if you just know what’s been happening to me for the past couple of months or so, I’m sure you would understand. Life has just been downright crazy. And that’s an understatement even. The craziness isn’t over yet but what the heck?, let’s just keep the dice rolling baby. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway except to just let it play itself and hope to heavens that I’ll still be sane afterwards. So cheers to that!

It’s exactly 1 hour into the Easter Sunday and here I am blogging away while watching a re-run of the AI eliminations (Didi got booted out, boohoo!) because I’m all alone and the boyfriend won’t be coming home tonight. Just arrived a couple of hours ago from Tarlac where I spent the Holy Week in a very fruitful and religious fashion - sleeping the whole day! Seriously, I think the number of hours I spent there sleeping exceeded the hours I am awake. That meant less family time but I can’t help myself, I’m just so tired. T__T

In the meantime, the boyfriend will be back tomorrow morning from Bulacan where he spent his Holy Week and I just can’t wait to give him my post-anniversary gift. Uhm, yeah, we celebrated our 2^nd anniversary on the 29^th and I still haven’t given him any gift. So I went to the mall to buy him the overdue present but then I remembered that the gift that I wanted to give him requires that he come along with me because it needs his exact measurements. I’m not quite into buying things that doesn’t fit their recipients and just have them resized or returned if they didn’t. I’m OC that way. So I decided to forego that gift for some other occasion and just opted to buy him flip-flops instead. He’s been planning to buy one so I did him a favor of not having to shop for it himself by buying it for him. Oh, I’m such a sweet girlfriend. Hehe! He wanted Havaianas but the shop is on the annex building which means lots of walking and I’m not in the mood to walk that far and besides the mall is about to close anyway so since the nearest store is Ipanema, I bought him Ipanema instead. Beggars can’t be choosers. *evil grin* The problem is, when I got home and I checked his slippers, I realized that the size I bought was a bit small for him wtf! So what I did was I put the receipt in the box so that when it doesn’t fit, I’ll just tell him that we’ll just have to return them and get a bigger size and happily tell him that the good thing about it is that he can choose a different design or style if he wants. I’m a genius. *evil grin*

On another note, since it has been ages since I last blogged, it meant that I have yet to blog the next installment of my Madrid trip and the Barcelona trip of last year, and the Singapore and Malaysia trip of 2 months ago. A while ago I saw again the movie Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo and it made me awwweeedd so much because it showed some of the places I visited in Barcelona. God I miss Barcelona! And Madrid! I hope one day I can go back and say Hola and Muy bien again.

It’s the height of summer here in the good ole Philippine islands. The weather is scorching hot. Everyone on Facebook has been posting pictures after pictures of their summer escapades while we poor folks don’t even have a plan on yet on where we would go this summer. The boyfriend and I have been joking on packing our things and going to Boracay one weekend but of course we both know it wouldn’t push through. We’ve just been on an out of the country trip so another expensive trip is out of the question. Perhaps an inexpensive one will do. Like the nearby public swimming pool perhaps? Uhm, definitely not! Maybe I should start researching about Anawangin or Anvaya Cove. Hopefully it won’t be that expensive considering it’s just on the main island. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed. If not, I can still rely on my company’s team building for a free summer escapade. Yeah!

Anyhoo, will update this blog soon. For now, I'm off to bed. Ciao!

On the Rebound

my world fell apart.
i have been torn asunder.
i was broken.
yes.
but like a phoenix
i am reborn from the ashes.
stronger and better than i ever was.
do you really think i was that weak?
i'm made of stronger stuff than that.
i have a really good teacher.
you...