I’m getting paid to get a massage…

Yesterday when I woke up, I had the biggest knot on my lower back. The pain would not go away the entire day. I was miserable while I was at work and had to keep moving so I can get my mind off the pain. When I was done with my night class, I was walking to the staff lounge to grab some coffee to push myself for the last 2 hours of work. I ran into Peter, a massage professor at the college I teach, and he desperately needed an extra body for one of his students to work on. I checked the lab to make sure that it wasn’t busy. I was lucky that there was only one student typing and I asked her if she needed anything. She told me she will be typing for a while and she didn’t need me. I went to the massage therapy classroom to get a massage. I told him that my lower back has this huge knot, and the student gave me a deep tissue massage. When he was finished, I felt like a new person… I love my work because I just got paid to get a massage =).

Haircut...

Yesterday, I had the most painful haircut in my life. You may ask how a haircut is painful since hairs are dead cells. Well, I went to the local barber near my house and told the lady just to trim the top because last time I got a haircut, it was too short. I wanted to grow the top so it can be the “prefect” length for this time. She asked how I usually style my hair. I just told her anyway my hair feels like doing that day. I thought it wouldn’t matter since it would be a trim.

Well, she used this type of scissors that truly just gave a trim. It’s hard to explain what it looks like, but it had teeth and a blade. The way that it is used is by pulling on my hair while trimming the edges. I asked her if it’s normal for all the pulling, and she said yes. I didn’t tell her that it was hurting my scalp because I didn’t want to show her I was in pain. I just sucked it up and let her do her thing. I must say, there was a tear forming after the first cut. Well the haircut turned out great, and I’m willing to go through the pain just to get the same style =p.

No Support...

I am bothered by something that I heard today. I tried calling people to vent this out, but it’s Friday night, and people tend to busy. I don’t blame them for “not” being there because if I was back in the bay, I would be out too.

I labeled this blog “No Support” because there is someone I know that I feel I have no support in my life decisions. A little background is needed so this blog can make sense. Growing up, I always been confident in what I wanted to do. Every where I went, I would say I want to be a doctor. As I grew up, I found other interest that distracted me, for example computers. I always found computers easy to understand, so a period of my life I was studying computer engineering. But the college life distracted me from that, so I decided to change my major to business. Having a business degree can open a lot of doors because basically our entire world depends on business theories.

So I am out here in Vegas trying the business thing, but I found out that I don’t like it. The business world consists of being a competitive person, and that’s not really me. I tend to go with the flow and enjoy life. Being here in Vegas, I was able to do a lot of soul searching and decided to go back to school for a nursing degree. I basically resurrected the idea of being in healthcare. I feel that I made a great life decision.

My parents are fully supportive in my decision. Growing up, my parents didn’t really express how they felt with my decisions unless it was against what they believe. When I had a long talk with my mom about being a nurse, she was extremely happy. When I attended my grandparents going away party, my mom would not stop talking about it. I can tell she was very proud of me. When my dad and I were cleaning the house, I did my normal complaining and said I don’t want to have another party here in the house because I’m tired of cleaning last minute. His response was, “We are going to throw a big party when you graduate from the nursing program.” He was straight up serious. Like I mentioned before, my parents are supportive, but they just don’t express it. It’s the greatest feeling to know and see how much they approve of my decision to pursue my nursing career.

Here is the thing that is bothering me. One person that shows lack of support is my older sister. Before I moved here, a mutual friend told me that my sister thinks the idea of moving to Vegas is a bad and stupid one. I was determined to find a job and prove her wrong. Like I said on my old blog, I’m glad that I moved here because I decided to pursue my career (nursing). Then today, I talked to my cousin, and I got the impression she doesn’t support me once again. One of her responses was, “You don’t know my brother.” What does that suppose to mean? I know I’m not a quitter. I do change my mind a lot, but I do my best to finish the objective. When I was talking to my cousin, he defended me and told her not to underestimate me. THANK YOU KUYA!!! THAT MEANS SO MUCH TO ME.

My whole life, she treated me like s**t. When we entered that age where I thought I can hang out with her friends, she would push me away. If by chance, she invited me to one of her parties/gatherings; it feels like my presence was a nu sense. When she lived in San Diego, I went and visited her, and the moment I got in the car, I got an ear full of yelling because I told her I wanted to go to Church because when I went to Diego, it was Holy week. She got mad at me because I guess she had other plans and straight up told me I’m not like other college students. She had no right to yell at me because I wanted to show respect to my religious beliefs. A similar situation happened again when I came back to the bay for my auntie’s wedding. She had attitude with me as soon as I got in the car. I tried my hardest not to give attitude back to her, but there was so much stress in the air, I had to yell back at her after 30 minutes of yelling from her. On top of that, she doesn’t even ask for something, she tells me to do it. I just tell her now, “Why don’t you ask instead of demand,” and walk away because I don’t want to show her that I got mad at her. I don’t understand why she treats me this way. What did I do to her?

I tell my parents how she treats me, and they just tell me that’s how your sister is. I can’t accept that because no human being should be treated the way she treats me. I was always taught respect your elders, but the way she treats me, I’m at the point where I believe, “In order to get respect, you have to give respect.” Because of the lack of support from my sister, it’s just giving more fuel to finish my schooling. Maybe, just maybe, this will shut her up and treat me better.

Bitter – Sweet

I had a bitter sweet weekend. I flew back last Friday to attend my grandparent’s going away party. I rushed from work to pack up my things and head to the airport. When I arrived there, and checked the prompt, I was surprised that my flight was on time. So I was at my terminal waiting for my flight and I saw people I knew. It was my old mentors from my church. It was great to see them again because I haven’t seen them over 3 months. We talked about almost everything and the time just flew by. I looked at my watch and told them that I had to start lining up. I knew that the previous flights to Oakland were delayed and the plane was going to arrive 2 hours after my flight. Well, since my plane was under booked, Southwest decided to put all the passengers from the 3 delayed flights into my plane. So instead of leaving on time, I left 1 hour late. The plane had to be re-fueled because of the extra weight, and all the baggage had to be transferred from the other 3 planes into mine.

The party was held at my parent’s house and a lot of people came to say their farewell. It was a great party, but I was very tired from all the last minute cleaning and my normal errands I had to do during the party. I had to leave the party for awhile because my other cousin was having a birthday party the exact same time as our party. My plan was to only be gone for a half an hour, but it turned out to be almost 2 hours.

We took a lot of pictures for our remembrance and I plan to put something together and give it to all of my family members. I’m either thinking of an album or put a slideshow/video show together. What do you think?

The reason I named this blog “Bitter – Sweet” is because my grandparents are happy to go back to the Philippines where they grew up, but I’m sad to see them leave. If possible, I would like to go to the Philippines end of this year and visit them. I will miss them.

A Typical Day At Best Buy…

So I went to Best Buy today to buy new batteries for my DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex). When I pulled up to the parking lot, I thought it will be an ordinary day, but I was wrong. The first thing I witnessed was a hit and run. Nothing to big, just a minor fender bender… well more like a scratch. I drove up to an isle and stopped because a Honda Civic was reversing to pull out. I gave this senior citizen at least 20 feet of clearance to make sure she can get out. For some reason, she only reversed ¾ of the way and popped her car into drive. She slowly turned the wheel and started to move forward. Before she even started to move, I thought to myself that she doesn’t have enough clearance. Of course I was right, and she hit the car to her right. I thought she would at least stop and look at the damage that she caused, but nope, she reversed, put her car into drive, and drove away. I can’t believe people like that. This is how I feel about drivers test. When a person becomes a senior citizen status, they need to take a mandatory drivers test every year. One of the requirements on that test SHOULD be depth perception. I’m not kidding. There are so many senior citizens hitting things like trash cans, the curb, and even mail boxes. Also they should test reaction speed. It’s a know fact that the older a person gets, the slower the reaction time is.

Okay, now I’m in Best Buy looking for the batteries that I need. I need to give a little background story. As I mentioned on my other blog, I used to work at Best Buy. When I was employed by them, I worked in one of the worst departments. My old co-workers even asked me, “How can you work in customer service and deal with angry people all the time. I don’t have the patience for that.” Well it’s true. I do have to deal with a lot of angry customers and I have a lot of patience. Actually, I only dealt with 20% of angry customers a day. The rest were really nice people, simple returns or exchanges, and problem solving for other departments.

During my time at Best Buy, I’ve seen customers scream and yell, say curse words, and even one time, I had a CD thrown at my head because I wouldn’t return it for the customer. I can see why a customer would be angry, especially at the Geek Squad. People check in their computers to get fixed. Geek Squad tells them they are going to do the best they can to fix the customer’s computer, but they tell them that labor is non-refundable. Depending on the store and how strict they are, they follow that rule to the “T.” There are times when it takes weeks to repair a computer because there is lack of staff, but there are also times when computers sit in the back because they are forgotten.

Today I watched a guy yelling at the management team and a Geek Squad member. Of course this guy made a scene. He was saying, “I want my money back, go ahead and call the police, and you want to hit me.” The managers asked the guy to leave politely, but he wouldn’t leave. About 20 other Best Buy workers gather around this guy to try to get him out, but he would not budge. Finally one of the managers got in his face and yelled, “Get out!!!” This is nothing new to me. He walked out, but tried to get back in, but the managers and Best Buy workers would not let him.

This part is the new thing. He started to swing. I looked around for a quick second, and everyone in the store was looking at this fight. They had this 6’5” Best Buy worker hold this guys arms so he would stop swinging at the manager. The manager remained calm and didn’t swing back. I think he didn’t fight back because it might cost him his job. The guy just walked off hella pissed off. He probably realized that the cops were coming, which they did and came late, like usual.

I’ve seen fights before like in clubs and bars, but never in a family type of store. How can a person act like this in a public place? I guess I will never truly know because that is not my personality. Oh well, it made my day exciting.

Atlantic Starr - Always

Have you heard of the song Atlantic Starr – Always? If you haven’t, you must be hiding under a rock. This song can be heard on slow jam cds, weddings, and on the radio. Anyways, I love this song. I have a lot of memories linked to Always. It’s my sisters wedding song, and someone who I care about sent me a text of the lyrics. So I decided to learn it on the piano back in January 2007, but I’ve been so busy that I had to put off. I finally finished it last month. This song will Always be an old time favorite. I guarantee you that you will hear this song in some time of wedding =p.





You can find other videos I posted on youtube.com/pinoygem22

Move to Las Vegas. Was it the right thing to do?

I opened this blog to vent out any thoughts that I may have today and the future. A major thought that's been bothering me is the idea of moving to Vegas. Let me give you a little background on my decision why I moved here. May of 2006, I supposedly graduated college, but one class held me back. I can’t really blame the professor because I barely put any effort in that class. Being a typical college student, I barley even studied on my last semester. Considering I only “failed” one class, not bad, right? I was only 1% away from getting a passing grade. Well, anyways, after “graduation”, I enjoyed my summer and traveled around the United States till my money was exhausted.

The following fall semester, I completed the class with flying colors considering I already knew the material; on top of that, I had a great professor. During the semester, I stayed at my parent’s house, so I commuted from Pittsburg to Sacramento twice a week (It’s an hour and a half one way). I also worked “part-time” at Best Buy. The reason why I quoted part-time was because I expected to only work at least 20 hours a week just to help pay off my debts from my travels, but I found myself working almost 40 hours a week. The reason I chose to work at Best Buy because I used to be employed by them when I was 18-years-old. I knew that they would re-hire me because of my experience.

When I finished my class in Sacramento State, I asked my managers if there was any room on the corporate ladder. Of course they would say yes. Just like before when I was 18, “Best Buy” broke their promises as months just passed by. I became really frustrated with my store and I clearly vented it out with my ex co-workers. I felt like I didn’t really improve in my life considering I was doing the EXACT same job when I was 18.

Oh yeah, before I forget, during this time I worked at Best Buy, I was dating a girl who I knew my whole life and the relationship ended. I was truly heart broken that it ended, but the only person to blame is me. I’m the one who decided to leave… So fast forward to April of 2007. I became really frustrated with my life and decided I needed a major change. So basically I packed up my things to move to Vegas knowing that the job market is great over here.

I applied to tons of jobs, and I got a few offers, but it didn’t really suit what I wanted as a career. A month and a half passed, and my savings was just slowly depleting. I knew I was being really picky and I told myself that whoever offers the next job position, “suck it up and accept it.” Now I work at a local college as a teacher assistant. It’s a great job because I barely do anything. I can honestly say that I work hard only for 2 hours a day. On top of that, the head of my department is short staffed, so I’ve been working overtime like crazy. Here’s an idea what I do. I come in around noon, file some things and then I sit at my desk. I bring things from home to keep me entertained, for example, I bought the program Rosetta Stone to learn Tagalog. I’ve always wanted to learn my native tongue, so it’s a great opportunity to learn right now since I have a lot of free time. About 6ish, I have to read to the college students. After I read, I take my dinner. Then around 7, I pop in a movie that I brought from home. This is one of the best jobs that I ever had. I get paid to study and watch movies!!!

Okay, that was a big background. If you forgot the reason why I am writing this blog, here is a recap. Was moving to Vegas a good idea? This is the way I see it. Here are the positives: I have total freedom, I don’t have to deal with family drama on a daily basis, my skills on the piano and guitar increased, I found the time to study Tagalog, I chose a new career (more on that later, maybe on a different blog), and one of the best jobs in my life. Some negatives: Missing family events, just the ordinary weekly visit at my cousin’s house, I really hate the feeling of leaving my family every time I visit the bay, it seems like I’m spending more money than ever, I have no close family members here in Vegas, no close friends, and it seems like I’m always hungry. I eat my normal 3 to 4 meals a day, but it’s not always home cook meals that would fill me up. I can cook, but I just don’t have the time because I work so much. On top of that, I plan to get a second job to help relieve my credit debt, so I definitely won’t have anytime to myself.

So was moving to Vegas the right thing? I don’t know =/