Simple Life, Simple Problems

Locker Room Wisdom

The only thing I had expected to gain from going to the gym was fitness. Little did I realize that there was much more to gain, like advices you get or overhear in the locker room. Some are wacky, some ironic, some true but all are interesting, to say the least. Here’s some I’ve picked up…(you supply the comments)

1. To gain your ideal weight, eat only meat buns for one whole week.
2. The best (and cheapest) steak in town is just a block away from the gym (tip from one of the gym instructors).
3. Instead of eating chocolates when you’re hungry, try bananas.
4. Exercise more so your husband won’t go looking for another woman.
5. You must look stylish while you exercise…buy these exercise costumes from me!
6. When you exercise a lot, you’ll be so addicted to it that you'll look for it everyday.
7. Gym instructors usually punish you on Mondays with high impact exercises for your lazy, pig-out weekends.
8. Manang (Big Sister) Alma, the cleaning lady, sells the best bibingka (rice cakes).
9. The thin ones are often addicted to exercise...the fat ones have to drag themselves to the gym!
10. You must wear bras with maximum support if you are going to jump up and down at aero!

Born Yesterday(?)

This morning, I woke up to the sound of my cellphone’s robotic text tone. Trying to clear the sleep fog from my brain, I checked the message and boy, did the message zap the fog away fast!

“PHIL. CHARITY FOUNDATION inform (sic) that ur CELPHONE NO# had won (800,000.00) During our 50th annvrsry text ur NME, AGE& ADDS. 4MORE INFO, CAL NOW, REY T. OSMENA. +639286087535”

Whoa! Brain jumpstarts….
Hmmm…Brain starts whirring…
Oh…Brain realizes that owner of brain is not born yesterday…
Yeah, right…Brain snickers…
Duh! Brain wonders if people actually believe is kind of baloney…

But after that less than 30-second-knee-jerk cerebral processing, I began to wonder again, but what if…?

As they say, there’s a sucker born every minute…I don’t consider myself one, but in this case, I decided there’s no harm checking this one out, but not by replying to Rey T. Osmena and thereby biting the bait. I texted my dear lawyer-friend and got her reply:

“That’s a hoax. Call PCSO and ask if there is such a foundation and promo.”

Well, for a minute I began fantasizing on what to do with 800,000.00.. the currency was indicated, so I started wondering…

Yen? Yikes, hope not…
Peso? Hmmm, okey lang
US Dollars? Hmmm….wish wish…
British Pound? Hmmm….Yes! Yes!

Oh, well…no harm done. But I wonder about others who’ve been suckered into this scam…I wonder how much they ended up losing.

Well, to Rey T. Osmena, (or whoever you are using somebody else’s name), you will definitely reap what you sow.

Beware of Korean Dramas!!

Since I’ve been based in Davao for the past three months, I have spent my bonding times with mom watching Korean dramas on DVDs. I have had friends tell me that they are addictive, and that they have great plots. Since I have never really been a soap fan, I never bothered to check out how true (or false) my friends’ claims were.

And then I came home to a mom who's on a self-imposed retirement—and filling most of her time watching Korean soaps (the DVDs are faithfully supplied by her friendly suki Abdul in downtown Davao). So how do I bond with her when her eyes seldom stray from the TV???

The first one I watched with her was a weepy one called ‘Spring Waltz.’ It just happened that I liked it and got really hooked—even to the point of enduring the really dragging parts of the soap.



The English subtitles were impressive on the first half…so by the time the English went from bad to undecipherable, I was already far too emotionally involved with the romance of Eun Jung and Jae Ha to break away. But since the weepy tale did have a good plot, good-looking actors (a must for me, after all, this kind of stuff is supposed to be escapism, right??) and it ended happily, nobody had to stick a gun on my head to get me started on the next Korean soap.

That’s how it started to get frustrating.

The next one was 16 dragging, weepy episodes long (my mom cried at every episode) and, que horror! the lovers both died at the end!! Argggghhhh!!! How could the producers of the show be so sadistic as to pull my emotions up and down like a yoyo through 16 episodes only to send me crashing at the end?!

Because I am an idiot, I allowed myself to be conned one more time. I found myself shattered, yet again, when the heroine died on me, leaving me dismayed at having to cope with another tragic end!

So this is a word of caution to all of you who are still on the verge of getting hooked—if you don’t want to fall prey to sadistic Korean directors, check out the ending first!!!

Ok, I think I’d better get back to having a life now…

PS. Check out Super Rookie though, it’s funny, has superb English subtitles, the lead actors are good looking, and most importantly…it has a happy ending!


PPS. At least I got to bond very well with mom…and this is still my (best) excuse for watching Korean dramas…

Cherish, Dont Cling

In the past three months, I saw:
My laptop crashing.
My eyeglasses snap.
My wristwatch break.
My thumbdrive not working.

Weird that all of them should go, one after the other. In a span of a few months. For every object that broke, I kept saying to myself, these are just “things.” There’s more to life than “things.”

Knowing this has not kept me from feeling ticked off, to say the least. It’s not just that they happened one after the other, or that this has set me back financially—big time, but it's more the sentiments I’ve attached to these things. Each one has a special reason for being bought, and as I use them, memories pile up to make each thing more valuable than the price I paid for them.

I can choose to go on and feel miserable about it—hey, its fun to wallow in self-pity. But I have a life. So I choose to move on. I realize that these things could’ve been broken relationships, friends who’ve moved, or dear ones who’ve left this life. I’ve had my share of these as well…and I chose to move on as well.

But I have been learned somewhere along my journey, to
Cherish…family, friends, memories, things with special meaning, and not cling on to them, instead, cling on to…God’s Word, His love and His promises.

CONGRATULATIONS, 24!!!

Cheers to the Greatest TV Show on Earth! You deserve the Emmys!