I woke up with the sound of a pig squealing… not the regular “I am a pig, then I squeal” but a “please do not kill me” kind of squeal… poor pig.

In preparation for tomorrow’s town fiesta, my neighbors are busy getting ready for their huge fiesta celebration. It’s the middle of the day now, and I must have heard 3 or 4 major pig slaughtering squeals in the neighborhood. The sound of tricycles traveling back and forth had increased somehow. I also heard more commotion next door, since our neighbor is a big Red Horse distributor. More orders to fulfill then…

Since we are new to the place, I guess it is understandable that there wouldn’t be any preparation in our home. Having no extra money to use for celebrations such as this, I am already thinking of ways to spend the day– perhaps out of the house as to avoid visitors I have not invited. I guess there is nothing new to the habit of trying to avoid the wrath of fiesta-goers… my parents have done the same a couple of times before. We usually go out of town the day of the fiesta and return the next day.

That actually make sense when alot of times during fiestas, strangers actually comes inside your house to eat. Since fiestas mean sharing and celebrating the feast of a certain saint of the locality some actaully believe it is bad luck to turn away anybody. I actually gave away some coins to a mother and son singing some sort of tune infront of my gate minutes before lunch time.

Unlike me, my aunt who is a businesswoman who is quite influential in the area has already pre-ordered 20 lechons to be delivered to every government offices and group of people on the day of the fiesta which is tomorrow. I gasped when I heard of this and my cousin had explained the rationale behind their mother’s fiesta tactics. Since their family know of som many people, to avoid cramping into their home and too much drinking, they have found out that it is way peaceful and cheaper to deliver lechons to the offices of friends and even corporations who deals with them rather than inviting them into their home. No drinking squabble to fix, not alot of dishes to wash and fewer people to entertain into their homes. If there are people in their house these would be personal close friends of the family. More intimate this way, they said.

Well, we can celebrate fiesta any way we want, but mostly, families begin fiesta by going to church. Us who have no means to celebrate, run away and hide… Nothing new to that…

My toddler is ready for potty training. My eldest daughter was potty trained at one year and 5 months, while the next a little over 2 years. Now, my one and only boy is going to begin his potty training today and I am honestly scared and not looking forward to it.

I have been meaning to begin his training months ago. However, since we have moved house 2 months ago, it is rational for him to familiarize himself with the house first before we could begin potty training as potty training has alot to do with confidence, awareness and anxiety to children.

We are more or less settled here now, and I am honestly tired of changing diapers and is looking forward to some savings since his nappies cost an arm and a leg. Having moved and changed lifestyles eversince we left abroad and settled here, I have not changed diapers since the children are very sensitive and when I did try to downgrade the nappies to those cheaper ones, their bottoms became riddled with rashes that I declared it not worth it to change their nappies. The children’s comfort and sanitation should remain a priority, I surmised.

So, after reintroducing the mighty potty to my boy and I explained to him that he needed to inform Mommy if he wanted to do a pee-pee or poo-poo so we could do it together at the potty. Then I realized that I have never potty trained a boy and I thought there might be some confusion with the urination side since my boy has only seen and been aware of girls ever since we left his father last year. No role model…

I have read in one of those i-village articles that boys are sometimes easier to teach how to urinate by teaching them to do it sitting down. My sister who has a son swears by it also… however, I hesitate to take her opinion to heart because her son still continue to pee on the bed even at 5 or 6 years old! My daughters has never really given me trouble with bedwetting…

Anyway, my boy used up 6 briefs and 2 pants already. Since this is the first day, I tried my very best not to be mad and to be encouraging especially after his accidents. I still praised him for being a big boy for using his briefs and potty. At least everytime he pees on himself, he would ran to me and say, “potty now.” Then he would ran to the potty after he had informed me. At least I am happy to know that our problem just sequential. Any potty stories to share?

Powered by Zoundry Raven

I have just downloaded the much awaited Firefox 3. I was tempted to check it out during their much read Download Day, but I hesitated because I wanted to wait for the feedbacks and after reading it from Blogher, I checked again and downloaded it TWICE. Twice?

After downloding the .exe file, and I was ready to install, I got the message “file corrupt” and I could not install. I downloaded again and got the same message. After two futile attempts, I googled “firefox 3 file corrupt” and got alot of links. Made me feel I was not alone, so I started reading the links and got nowhere. I checked the release notes of Firefox and got this:

You can talk to other users in real time by joining the #mozillazine channel on mozilla.org’s IRC server (irc.mozilla.org) with an IRC client, such as Chatzilla. (Chatzilla comes installed in Mozilla by default, and can be added to Firefox as an extension.) In addition to #mozillazine, there are channels for support and discussion of specific Mozilla products including #firefox for the Mozilla Firefox web browser and #thunderbird for the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client.

I installed Chatzilla and got into a world I have never known until now. So many techies just talking about Firefox, how to customize and tweak the CSS of Firefox… So I threw in my question and Nathan responded and asked what the file size was. Perhaps trying to determine if I downloaded the right program. He then asked me what my virus scan program is and he advised me to turn it off before downloading the Firefox and reinstall. True to his word the Windows XP started to extract the files and Firefox was installed. Viola! Now its time to find out what the buzz is about…

To download Firefox 3, click here or click the button below.

My children and I had nasty asthma attacks last week triggered by the smoke after my neighbor decided to burn dried leaves with trash infront of my rented house. I took the children to the clinic last saturday and monday morning, my eldest daughter’s asthma took a nasty turn and my aunt decided to take her to a different doctor and that doctor decided she is not letting us out of the clinic and she wants to treat my daughters in the hospital.

When my children were admitted, the personnel in the emergency room refused to accept our HMO and refused to admit my children without downpayment of P10,000. My cousin whose father is a good friend of the owner of the hospital convinced the cashier not to charge with the guarantee that my HMO will cover the hospital bills. She looked at our card and shrugged that my HMO is not accreddited with their hospital.

Luckily, my children and I are insured and our HMO is international and is accepted anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the small private hospital in the city refuses to make the effort to check our HMO and insurance coverage just because they are unfamiliar with the insurance firm and they needed to call an international number to verify coverage.

It took me half a day just to convince them to call and only 2 calls to my husband’s company to seek their assistance to contact the insurance company since the hospital refuses to call them since they’d have to use the international toll free number. You could only imagine my despair and anxiety since TWO of the children were admitted and though the hospital bills will not be as expensive as the hospitals in Manila, the fact that I do not have money pouring out of my ears makes this recent hospitalization a heart throbbing, mind boggling and headachy experience.

Our coverage is comprehensive. When I delivered my youngest in a small international hospital, out in the southern province in Thailand, my delivery and all check ups were all covered by the insurance. It did not take them long to get a Letter of Guarantee and everything was covered, no money out for me.

My husband’s company told me that the hospital should email the HMO and they will respond immediately in a matter of minutes, but when I asked the hospital if they have internet facilities, they said they have no internet. What?! No internet? Not even dial-up? Anyway, so it was non-existent, so I had to convince the hospital administrators to call my husband’s company so they can more or less convince my hospital that we are indeed covered.

All these haggling and convincing took me out of my daughter’s room for almost half a day in total. I kept on going in and out of the room just to make sure the hospital is making their effort to contact my HMO. Good thing my HMO in Antwerp called the hospital after my husband’s company called them to call the hospital and send them the precious Letter of Guarantee. I could not believe I had to go to all of these nonsense when in Manila we have charged more than what was charged here, and our HMO covered everything. It made me think of other people whose family members are hospitalized and they have no HMO or even with HMO that are not recognized by hospitals. How about those patients who doesn’t have the means to pay their mounting hospital bills? It reminded me of the documentary Sicko, by Michael Moore, wherein he showed how the socialized health care of countries like Canada, France and Cuba differs from the health system in the US.

Watching how the uninsured American struggle with system seem so pathetic compared to the health system that the Filipinos currently have. Makes me laugh remembering my father’s relief when some of my mother’s hospital bills were shouldered by PhilHealth. What if the regular Filipino knows that in Canada, people can go to the hospital and be treated fairly for free at all times? I can only imagine the happiness of Filipinos in Canada are experiencing. No need to put downpayment in private hospitals. No need to plead for doctors to give you discounted professional fees… I wonder, would our health system improve like that of France and Canada? In my dreams, perhaps…

Somebody found a $20,000 worth of earrings in the garbage dump in Staten Island. Makes me wonder what else could be in those garbage

Powered by Zoundry Raven