Surprise... for free!

I had a plan...but hesitated to pursue it. Kasi naman palagi na lang ako ang nangsusurprise lang...hmph! But then buti na lang tinuloy ko pa rin, hehehe! So this is what happened.

We stayed in a hotel for our first 3 months here and because of that I registered to a certain hotel point system rewards where I get credited of number of points for each day of stay in that hotel or even to some other hotels which are part of their hotel group. An accumulated number of point can be redeemed for rewards (which you can choose from many options). For those in Dubai, this is similar with "Air Miles".

As of end of January, I already accumulated 70,000+ points which I can redeem for $350 Gift Cards from a wide selection of stores. So, I had an idea then! I was planning to use the GCs to buy my gift to Randy on Vday and his Bday! But it my mistake that I only called to redeem the points, 3 days before the Vday and 6 days before his Bday! The rep told me that it would take 2 to 4 weeks before the GCs will arrive. So I talked to almost all the reps to make it possible to ship the GCs asap! Then, they told me to pay $25 to expedite the shipment, so I paid.

On Feb 13, Randy texted me that there's a UPS note in front of our door telling him to pick up a certain package for me which they left at the leasing office of our apartment because no one's around when they came. So I told myself, "This must be it!". Randy had no idea. He got the package na but I still never told him about it. But then, he opened it, without telling me! (I was still in Indiana at this time and by the way, I chose GCs from Circuit City, a gadget store). I thought medyo may idea na...but then he was thinking pala na bibili ako ng flash with those GCs...so medyo kinabahan sya since flash nga ang gift nya sakin (see my previous post). On Friday night, when I arrived, he surprised me with his gift... but there, I also told him that the GCs are for him...hehehe! I am supposed to buy him PS3 and would just add extra on the total amount. To cut the long story short, we were able the PS3 he's been dying to have:

O diba, nakalibre ako ng gip! hehehe...Thanks to triprewards! Pero hindi pala, I was also forced to buy the TV kasi napag alaman namin na sobrang mahal ng wire na ginagamit nila dito to run the PS3 on laptop screen. Since we still don't have TV and dahil medyo nanlumo si Randy when he knew na hindi nya pa magagamit ang PS3, I had to use yung money na pinagbentahan ng TV namin sa Dubai to buy the new TV...anyway, that's the main use of it, right?!? hehehe...

P.S. Now, I'm again earning points in my triprewards account...hmmm... sana nga redeemable to cash na lang ang points para magamit ko rin to pay the utilities, rent, etc, hahaha...parang naging income ko na ang points :)

My 2008 valentines day

"Marami ang namamatay sa maling akala" -- this phrase hit me after the valentines day. As most of you know, my better half has no sense of surprisal. Sometimes he would even prefer not to celebrate occasions. Well, I can't blame him because they were brought up like that...before, he and his siblings would not even be greeted "happy birthday" in their house. (Wawa naman Randy boy noh?!? hehehe). I've been trying to change him since we became "we". I'm actually the opposite. Almost all the occasions of the year are so special to me...I would throw tantrums before if my parents or my siblings wouldn't greet me "happy birthday" first thing in the morning. And I also love giving surprises!

Last valentines day, Randy and I were away from each other. I was working onsite at Indiana while he was in Illinois. I just usually go home on weekends. So, since we're away, I didn't really expect that he would have something for me or even greet me. In other words, I already gave up changing his impression on occasions. I was even a bit snappy at him last Feb 14. Because everytime I think that I have a husband but no valentine, I get really pissed off. He greeted me "Happy valentines day" on the night of Feb 13. But come Feb 14, nadah! No greetings, no pasaring, as in nothing! So, there...I was really mad deep inside. I have plans to surprise him but always was taken aback to pursue it because of this. In the night of Feb 14 (Thursday), he asked me where his "lotion" is. So I told him, "it's under the bathroom sink".

On Feb 15, I already went home to Illinois. Upon arrival at home, he was again asking where his lotion is! Well, I got really pissed off...I still have in my head that time that nothing unusual happened in my valentines day. So, with burning eyes and face, I stomped to our bathroom, opened the sink closet, and voila! I found this:

I was stunned and went back to the sala with tears drooping from my eyes. And he was smiling intently at me. I told him I will read the message in the card before we sleep. But he insisted that I read it on the spot. So I read it. It has a very touching message...plus an instruction at the bottom. That I need to search for my gift which is just near the sponge bob figure placed on top of the fridge, just in front of the cupboards. This is where I found my gift...inside the cupboard:

It was covered with green wrap and magazine leaves. I was soo eager to open it that I forgot to take a picture of it. But here it is:

It's a Speedlite 430EX!!! I've been wanting to purchase this for so long but always shift my attention to some other things like clothes, bags or shoes, hehehe. I even can remember posting n one of my friendster surveys that this is the one I want to receive for Valentines Day! According to Randy, he was not able to read it (wushuuu!). He also told me that when I was in Indiana, he contacted Edward (my colleague who went back to Dubai from Indiana for his vacation) and asked for my client's address because he's planning to send me flowers. But Edward doesn't know the address, hahaha! It's a very huge facility kasi. And he didn't want naman to send the flowers to the hotel...wala raw appeal, asus!

So, there! As I've said before, my 2008 valentines day has now become my most memorable valentines day! I just wonder if 2009 would beat it.... hmmm...

new haircut! (totoo na to, promise, hehehe!)

Oh well, I've been wanting to do this and finally, I was able to do it last weekend! It was funny coz the hairdresser kept on asking me if I'm really sure that I want to cut my hair really short. Before, the length of my hair was almost close to my waist (that is measuring the longest part of it since I have layered hair). But my hair became really dry because of frequent blow-drying and being too lazy to do the Matrix oil treatment once a week (as prescribed by the "rebonder" -- nang imbento ng term eh no).

And since I really hate seeing the ends of my hair which are soooo as in "uber" dry, I decided to cut them (more than) half off! And these are the pictures of "before" and "after":

BEFORE: AFTER:

Now, what do you think? Sabi ni Randy parang naging "in" daw ang itsura ko, hehehe. (Ah ganon, dati pala mukha akong losyang, yari ka sakin!). I feel more comfortable now with my new hair, parang gumaan ang pakiramdam, hehehe. Feeling ko kasi lahat ng sustansya ko sa katawan, kinukuha ng buhok ko dati :(

Soooo bussyyy!

I actually have lots of things to blog about but my time isn't really cooperating. Not that I'm busy with work, but I'm soo busy managing my personal, career and married life, naks! Seriously, lately I have lots of things to do. We just moved to a new apartment and now slowly buying things to fill in our empty habitat.

I haven't blogged about the v-day happening or maybe I should call it post-vday! Well, I can say that this vday has beat out my 2004 vday (fyi, I was considering before the 2004 vday as the most memorable one). And today is Randy's birthday, of course I also have some stories and pictures to share.

I haven't been busy like this before (well, I'm talking of being busy with non-work related stuff).

Have a nice week ahead for everyone! :)

Happy puso!

...just wanna greet everyone...

HAPPY PUSO!

Well, this is the first time that I celebrate valentine's day away from Randy. But eventhough, I'm not sad or lonely at all. Maybe I know that he's just 155 miles away (to be exact!) from me...

Good thing though that we'll celebrate his birthday together on Sunday. What's in store? Hmm...nothing much.

Is it really worth to buy iPhone?

Related to my previous post, I already got hold of the phone that everyone’s talking about (okay, somebody might react…not “everybody” but “most people” should be more appropriate…if you can’t live with “most people” term that I used, then just shut up, you’re not a normal being then).

There are actually lots of people I know who kept on bugging me to get them iPhone and ship to them. But I just kept on saying that I couldn’t think of a way to purchase an iPhone for them without the AT&T contract. I tried opening/using my phone without activating it with AT&T but it didn’t work. And I don’t want to take the risk of buying an iPhone for them and only to find out that it really doesn’t work without the AT&T contract. I know there are some who sell unlocked iPhones but I’d rather suggest to just buy the iPhone from these people instead of me buying for them and shipping those to them (take note these iPhones that I can buy here are still “locked” so they might still need to have them “unlocked”). So, that’s the explanation I have for those of you asking me to buy iPhones. J

It’s been only 3 days now since I officially became a proud owner of such phone. Why proud? Let me prove my point. Everytime I take out my phone (but not necessarily showing them off), I can always (and I mean always!) hear the people around me start talking about iPhone or Apple products. This usually happens in restaurants. Some of the quotes I heard were:

(1) “…nothing can beat that plus it’s an Apple product!”

(2) “…well, I just hope they would offer that in other network providers”

(3) “…I heard they will start opening the market in Europe soon.”

(4) “…that phone is really cooooolllll!”

(5) “…One of my nephews has that…so my son is now also crazy over it. And me too!”

So, there… so it’s indeed right to use “most people” in my first sentence of this post (pasintabi lang sa mga Apple antagonists).

As I’ve said, it’s been only 3 days… but then I haven’t found any weak point of the phone. I got the newly released (Feb 5, 2008) 16GB iPhone which is fairly enough capacity to store music, videos, photos, etc. It comes with a dock, headset/earphone, USB charger, charger adaptor, wipe rug and Apple stickers (which you usually get in Apple products, hehehe. Pati yun sinama eh noh).

Just like with its countless advertisements, it has many, many features which you will find very enticing. Instead of enumerating them, I prefer just to enumerate the functions I discovered which I really enjoy making use of. I didn’t bother to read the manual, my bad! I was too excited to use it and plus, I was kind of familiar already with the basic functions (ikaw ba naman ang maka-more than sampung balik sa mga Apple stores “ever since the world began” para lang takamin ang sarili mo, bwahahaha!).

So, here are the functions I really appreciate. This just a very personal list and should not be used commercially (as if naman na may magkakainteres na ireproduce ang mga yan, hahaha!). Some of them are also capabilities of my previous phone which I already handed down to my hubby, but there are still many many more features! Actually I still can’t think of any capability of my other phone (which I use) that does not exist with iPhone…

(1) Voicemail is very much easy to access. There’s a separate menu/option for Voicemail. I might need to quote here the wikipedia -- "The iPhone includes a Visual Voicemail feature allowing users to view a list of current voicemail messages on-screen without having to call into their voicemail. Unlike most other systems, messages can be listened to and deleted in a non-chronological order by choosing any message from an on-screen list." -

(2) Text messages, weather data, etc. cannot be easily deleted. Sometimes, we mistakenly delete some of our data, but iPhone has this function that before you can delete a specific data, you first have to flip the stop sign vertically and press . No more erroneous deletion of data!

(3) The Weather Channel for multiple cities. For a frequent traveler and moreso, driver, this is very much needed. This is one my must-haves these days!

(4) There’s a Sleep/Wake mode to conserve battery life which also exists in my Treo before.

(5) Wi-fi capable that you can turn on/off. With this, you can surf the net either thru wi-fi or AT&T network (e.g., Edge).

(6) This is my most favorite -- Google Maps! You can select if you want to show the:

a. Satellite – this is like the Google earth! So you can actually see the buildings, streets and other establishments!

b. Hybrid – just like the Satellite in letter A but with the street labels! Navigation made easy!

c. List/Map – this is the standard google map that you can find online.

…and just like the normal google map online, you can drop pins (or in other words, add another destination along your way or change route), and also you can ask for directions with Start/End customizations.

d. It also has a compass for you to know the right direction

(7) Contacts – you can store multiple numbers and other infos (with customized labels for your own reference) for a single contact/name.

(8) Mail program where you can store your gmail, yahoo, etc., or even your company’s email provider. Plus, the mail program is also highly customizable (e.g., how often do you want your iPhone to check for new mails, how many messages you want to be displayed, Font size, Signature, etc)

(9) Youtube player

(10) Usage monitor – this records the total number of minutes and megs of data consumed. It also maintains a monitor of the total number of hours you have consumed since the battery’s last full charge. This is even categorized as “Usage (this is when you’re using the phone)” and “Standby (idle time)”

(11) When a phone number is being showed in your mail or in your browser page, you can directly call that number by just tapping it! This is also a capability of the recently launched Leopard OS for macs.

(12) Widely customizable iPod! It has many settings on how you want the songs to be played.

(13) World Clock – I can easily check the current time in many different countries/cities. This one is very useful function for a frequent traveler or just someone who often meets either by teleconference or online with some other business colleagues.

(14) You can easily access iTunes. One of the best ways to kill the time!

(15) You can store “Favorites” from your contacts to easily access the numbers you frequently call.

For more information of its features, visit the Apple website or this wiki.

So, to answer the question if it’s really worth to buy iPhone, well it depends on your priorities. For me, I’m willing to spend more as long as I get my “needs and wants”… but of course still having something left for other necessities.

We're moving!

Whew..tired..tired...and tired. I just came from work, started packing our things and finally finished loading our stuff in the car. We're finally moving to an aparment somewhere in Mount Prospect, IL tomorrow. Can you believe it...that we haven't seen the apartment and yet we're transferring already? Oh yes. We had no choice. We had no time left..because I'll be driving towards Indiana on Monday morning.

I just hope that our apartment will just be fine. This was referred to me by a friend I knew through the Chicago thread in Pinoyexchange. By tomorrow, we'll be neighbors and we'll do the weekly grocery together.

I'm just hoping for a peaceful and enjoyable life in this new apartment and neighborhood.

P.S. I just heard there's a nearby Pinoy store. That is really a plus!