Davao Convention Center's Christmas Bazaar 2008

It's that time of the year again when shopaholics go crazy over sales and bazaars. This is probably so because this is the only time they have an excuse to go shopping-gaga to buy gifts for themselves and their loved ones for a year well spent, financial crises and economic downturns aside.

Today, the Christmas Bazaar held annually at Davao Convention Center will open its arm to usher in the rush of holiday spenders. Available merchandise ranges from very small trinkets that makes the cutest giveaways for acquaintances to the latest styles in clothing that would surely catch the interest of fashionistas and to serious purchases like big wooden furniture. This year's bazaar will be open at these dates:

• November 28 - 5PM to12MN
• November 29/30 - 10AM to 12MN
• December 01 - 10AM to 9PM
  

One of the booths will offer my friend Rhea's fashionable items. She sells cute tops, eye-catching dresses, funky watches and minor but all-too-important accessories, some of which she made on her own. She also sells these products at Stylistica, her online store at Multiply.

What I love the most in the bazaar last year was the food options, which were delicious and very affordable. Hopefully, this year's offerings will satiate the discriminating taste of Davaoeños.

It's too late to book a booth right now but for any inquiries, one can contact the organizers at (082) 222-3494 to 96. Davao Convention Center, or more commonly called DavCon is located at F. Torres St., Davao City.

shopping bag pic from here

Motivation: Blogging and Memories

They say out of every hundred people, only one knows how to motivate themselves and sustain that motivation. Call it self-motivation, although that word's technically wrong because no really makes you do whatever it is you're doing, or call it intrinsic motivation-- that good feeling of satisfaction, sense of control and that sense of being-ness one gets from an action. As much as I'd like to be one of those, I'd be the first one to admit I'm not. That is why at work, I need encouragement, assurance and the occasional acknowledgment to be able to excel, or even to simply slug it through when work becomes boring and repetitive. I'm someone who needs extrinsic motivation.

It is in this vein that I've pondered about this shrine that insists on my so-called existence in cyberspace. Now that a month have passed by, I can say I have certainly expanded my knowledge in the technical aspects of making an online journal. However, like work, it has become a bit of a burden. What should I write about and how to write it has become a headache. And like work, I need to have something that should motivate me to keep on blogging.

I thought about it and have only succeeded in making my headache worse. Then it suddenly hit me. The reason for this was because I was expecting an audience, when in fact, there was none. I guess I was too caught up in generating traffic, which shouldn't have been the case because this is after all a personal blog. As much as I like to make my life interesting, it really isn't. And what I have to write here only registers to those who know me and have interacted with me in real life.

I thought back to remember the reason I started to blog in the first place. I remembered I did it because I wanted to write. In writing one gets to fully internalize the experience- to look at it from different perspectives, to justify things after the initial rashness of the action has gone, to delineate what are blurry and hazy, and more importantly to immortalize it; to keep the memory after a few minutes, a few days, or even years had passed.

Truthfully, I have gotten bored from blogging. Like I said, I'm someone who need extrinsic motivation and I do get pretty lost when left on my own. However, this won't stop me blogging with the motivation that someday, I may need these old memories to know who I am, to feel better about myself and the future, when the recent ones will fail me.

image from here

World AIDS Day: Spread The Word

I was hopping from one blog to another and found myself on a random blog, Diverse Reality, on the internet (actually the author is my first visitor using BlogCatalog). One of the items on the top of his page caught my attention. It told me that "Bloggers Unite - World AIDS Day". I clicked on it and was directed to Bloggers Unite, a group of bloggers that participate by writing on different issues that they advocate every month (I suppose if you have something to say AGAINST it, you can opt to do so).

Right off the bat, I warmed up to the idea of helping a cause by writing about it on my blog. I am not one who can easily make beautiful prose (it might appeal only to me) nor am I the strongest of writers. However, whatever little thing I can write here, I can afford to do so, just to "make a difference" even in the tiniest of ways. In other words, to be counted.

I signed up and here is my post for this month's upcoming event on the 1st of December: World AIDS Day.

Here in my beloved third world country, AIDS is something everyone is aware of but does not really know about. It is an illness that everyone is afraid of and there is certainly a stigma around the whole thing.

For example, an AIDS patient becomes notoriously popular in any of local hospitals here, even among the health practitioners. Anyone suspected of AIDS will be talked about, with nurses either getting way too excited because of the experience (the novelty of it, I guess) or way too afraid to get infected through a myriad of different ways. I know this because I was once a nurse-student.

There are still a lot of things that people don't know about AIDS. Testing for this certainly isn't popular. I think one of the major reasons why this is so is because it doesn't seem real in this place where you don't know anybody at all who has it. Perhaps people who do have it will do all he/she could to hide it. What people doesnt know here is that it is a critical issue all over the world already. With health practitioners reacting like that, then there is definitely a need to increase awareness of the issue. It just won't do that people here won't take the precautionary measures, to take the extra steps to be protected against AIDS simply because the possibility of infection is too remote a possibility.

The world is shrinking as it is becoming "global" and it is always better safe than sorry-- before the reality of this illness strikes home. To my visitors, please join the campaign. Be part of Bloggers Unite and increase AIDS awareness!

Colourise-ing My Blog

Before I finished customizing the Dilectio template, I decided to shift to a different one. I really had a hard time with the background and all the other things I wanna put in there. I searched for other templates and was tempted by the simplicity of Colourise which was designed by a fellow Pinoy. Apparently, it was a generic CSS template hosted at Style Shout and was converted for Blogger use at ThemeLib.

Admittedly, it is way too dark but I think I can tweak or reverse colors in the near future to suit my purposes (no promises for now though) but as it is, I like it. That is why, my Plurk timeline background now also has this.

Back to Back Party!

Sutherland Global Services, my BPO employer, celebrated its annual day last February 22 at The Venue. There were moments of boredom (some speeches can really bog down a program) but for most of time, it was fun (Madame Chaka, keep your fake boobs in!), exciting (Oooh, 10K boys!) and and very very entertaining (Kamikazee rocks!).

The food left me a bit wanting, the drinks, or lack of it, could have suffice for whatever the night lacked, the prizes were too few for an "annual" day, and some agents had to go on duty on this one night of revelry but I guess one can't really complain when the company rarely gives a party or celebrates like this. What I'm saying is, at least it EXISTED so, thanks from the bottom of my callous heart. Seriously.


On a more dramatic note, after the local band have packed up and the people have finished dancing to their heart's content, two associates (or co-employees) of mine have sparked up an argument which made me walk out of the room because I can't bear the wacky tension they have suddenly created. One misunderstood comment, one snappy comeback and the room suddenly felt oppressive and too crowded-in. I wonder why people can't be more agreeable and less confrontational. It's not about who the bigger asshole is but who the losers are-- them. If trying to be friends with everyone is over-rated nowadays, there's at least something to be said for not having someone whose mere presence boils your blood; for not having a thorn in your heart at all. Let bygones be bygones, perhaps?

***

After the party, we went to Cogot to celebrate Wanda's birthday. There were actually a lot of Sutherlanders in the area but we were just a small group of 10 people around a single monobloc table. BJ was generous enough to order a pulutan of Crispy Pata and Kinilaw as his gift to Wanda. I was too hungry to be satisfied with just that so I ordered and finished off in a record-time of 5 minutes Lechon Kawali rice. We had fun doing what we liked to do most, which is talk about other people's business like it was our business while keeping a steady supply of Redhorse passed around among ourselves. It was not really the nicest thing to do, and definitely not the best way to foster friendship, but it was all done in good spirit.


There were only a couple of drunks at the end of the drinking session; in fact, I didn't feel like I drank at all but I didn't mind. The tiring night and the promise of cool rainy day was too much of a reason and a temptation. It made me want to go home immediately and just sleep the day away.

More pictures here.