8.31.2012

Ang Friday ko, bow

MandyOffice Rant:

Does it bother you when a co-worker starts to follow you up on some unfinished business outside the office? I know, right? (hey, do i say this alot???) Totally annoying.  You are in the middle of the mall deciding if you should get that red jacket and if it would fit you and if it would look nice on you, and this person you work with, who thinks she is higher than you or something, but has the same rank as you have, would quietly go beside you and would say, in a voice audible to your friend slash co-worker shopping beside you, that your report is due the next day or week or whatever!  Come on, girl,  do I look like I am working here???I am shopping, like you are, ok???

This happened to me a lot of times, maybe because I do field work, which means they barely see me in the office, but hey, there should be clear cut rules on how to follow up pending reports, like calling, maybe, at official hours, for goodness' sake???

The reason why I am ranting about this is I just became a witness to this in a public vehicle with hub hours ago.  Everybody was tired from the hike (hey, who ever  thought of planting trees in a mountain watershed in the middle of the rainy season???), with rubber shoes and denims full of mud, when this girl, who happens to have an office at a higher floor which made her think that people on the ground floor are lower than her, duh, followed up Hub who was seated beside me, on a report.  I mean, hey, you can ask some other time, girl.  Not on a public vehicle stuffed with muddy people.

More Office Rant:

Treeplanting at Busol Watershed is a noble idea.  You gather all the government employees of the entire City of Baguio, assign them a piece of land in a designated Cordillera Mountain, and let them plant ten seedlings each.  That would be very good PR to a city who recently was a witness to a corporation who promised to plant a thousand seedlings in exchange for the trees they would cut in the center of the city to give way to a parking lot.  I am also very open, totally warm and fuzzy over the idea, because I, myself, am totally in love with plants and trees and anything green (In fact, when I was a kid, I would plant grass all over our walkway). I even intended to smuggle a couple of tree seedlings and plant them in my backyard.

Yup, that was the plan.  Go there at Busol watershed, take beautiful pictures for Redgage (except that I lost my stupid memory card), and love, love nature.  Reality check!!! The DENR obviously loves our collecting agency so much, that they designated our tree-planting area in the middle of nowhere, which made us trek through zigzaggy muddy foot paths, climb slippery stones with no plant to hold on to, except over-grown grass.  The trek was like around a half-hour, obviously, it seemed longer to an old fogey like me (never mind that I am a self-proclaimed treadmill fiend, doing about four to six kilometers a day).  A great way to enjoy nature, really (not!).

I guess I have to give up my dream of keeping in touch with nature.  I am meant to just look from afar where there is solid, unmuddy ground and observe people getting their nails dirty planting ipil ipil trees.

Besides, who ever thought of planting trees in the middle of the rainy season anyway???

8.13.2012

Clueless in this blogoshpere

I have used the internet in the recent years for the basic stuff.  Facebook, e-mail, the occasional research (all job or personality improvement related), a way to touch base with friends.  Sometimes, I check out The Female Network's Girl Talk to catch up on what's new on make up, hair, home improvement, usual celebrity chika (I tend to hang out there a lot).  Oh, when I say I check out Girl    Talk, it is not that often.  I do it in between my demanding job as an examiner, which means that even if I do have field work, audit work would be very time consuming that I would need to work at nights and weekends.

Fast forward to November 15, 2011.  The Code provides that I need to be transferred if I stayed three years in the same district.  I have been in the Baguio District for years and I wouldn't have the heart to leave my family and be transferred to a far-away district.  Solution:  settle with office work and do review work.  Okay.  That would be easy. And. it. was. easy.  Way. too. easy.  I have days trapped in terrible ennui.  I wondered which was easier.  Doing nothing or doing a lot.  Work, the really heavy stuff, came far and in between.  I was finally able to discover running.  Oh, okay.  That was what I only did. Run.

Fast forward again to March.  Finances were not that good compared to when I was busy.  Opportunities to earn extra are not generally popping up.  I turned to Girl Talk and read up on Feng Shui.  I made little changes which, miraculously, helped.

Then came May.  I was antsy.  I wanted to write.  I have always wanted to write.  I became an accountant only because I thought I would have a fair chance at job applications. Besides, I always took up something that is the complete opposite of who and what I am.  Obviously, I hate Math.  I so detest Math.  You can actually ask my Trig teacher (she now owns the school my two girls went and where my son is going).

I signed up, but still did not write.  I wanted to do something easy.  Something that would not tax my just-recovered grey matter (working as an examiner was torture, I swear).  I signed up with Scribie.  It offers transcription service that would pay you one dollar for a six-minute transcription.  It was easy. As long as you pass up transcriptions with speakers having unusually heavy accents and transcriptions recorded like they were being chased by dogs.  I recently got promoted as Reviewer.

Later, I discovered Just Been Paid (a little of that later), myLot and Triond.

Obviously, the world wide web which started out by scientists at CERN (will research on that. It was mentioned in detail in a Dan Brown book.  I would like to think that if ever one opens Dan Brown's head, trivia will go pouring out)has become so big and its power, limitless.  I would like to find myself one day totally in sync with it.




8.03.2012

Discovering myLot



MyLot is the brainchild of a company called Waseringtech and opened its door in April 2006. The name 'MyLot' was originally used for a site which dealt with garden equipment (a 'lot' means a piece of ground and is sometimes used to refer to the ground around one's house, a backyard or a garden). The word 'lot' can also refer to a group of friends or a community one belongs to, so it is quite appropriate for a site like this with a community 'feel' to it where one can meet and discuss almost anything. 

One very unique thing about the site is that it pays members to participate and that the payments are not based on how many posts you make but on the quality of your participation.

A lot of people value the site as a place to meet and interact with friends, to learn all sorts or things and to generally have fun. The earnings become more of a 'bonus' than anything else, though, of course, it's always rather nice when you reach $10 or more by the end of any month and know that you are due to see that in your PayPal account in 15 days time!