When you are a webworker, the internet connection is crucial, so when Globe in our area went down without prior notice, my kids and I went on a huff to look for a place with very good wifi connection.  Since our favorite place to hang Apple Tree Resort and Hotel also has Globe, we had to find an alternative.

My requirements for a good place to hang are:

1.  Has internet connection (wifi or cable)

2. Has a Swimming Pool

3. Good and affordable food

We found them all at Cha-Li Beach Resort.

The last time I was at Cha-Li was almost 20 years ago.  Then, it was just a small place with thatch huts for day time swimmers.  They did not have a pool yet.  Once I have checked the amenities of Cha-Li using my mobile connected through GPRS, I called them to ask about the internet connection and their rates.

Ivy, the amiable receptionist confirmed that their internet is up and running at that their service provider is PLDT, I booked and we packed and left for the city.  When I got to the resort, Ivy took me around while we find the cabana with the strongest wifi connection.

We settled in at Cabana Naranja.  The cabin has 2 queen sized bed, full tub and bath, plush pillows, aircondition, cable television, and yes, my very important wifi connection at the veranda.

The children loved Cha-Li.  It has a good pool, although I would have preferred a kiddie pool, but since they only have one adult pool, the kids have to make do and wade on the shallow end.  While they are in the pool, I am at their restaurant which is close to the pool and has yes, my wifi connection!

Although I had to shell out almost $150 for the weekend, it was no biggie since I managed to stay in contact with my work and my kids had a break from the usual house related activities and they all spent their time on the pool and the beach!  A win-win situation!

To book and for more info:

Cha-Li Beach Resort and Conference Center
Zone 3, Cugman, Cagayan de Oro City
Philippines, 9000
Phones: (+63) 88-855-5941
info@chalibeach.com

I have just received news that the mother of my friend Melba has just passed away.  I sincerely know how she feels right now.  This news brings back memories when my own mother died two years ago. Not only that, this reminds me of the death of my older brother Joemen almost 5 years ago.  Death of a family member is not new and for the longest time, I can say that the feeling of loss eventually fade but the memories linger.

I hardly remember my mother now.  But certain things, a smell, food, and certain sound triggers some memories and I am reminded of her.  How she smiles, how she laughs and the food she cooks.

She died of pneumonia which was caused by her heart ailment.  She has endured an open heart surgery at the age of 32 as well as a lifetime of paralysis.  Her last months on earth was not very comfortable.  She spent months in the hospital shivering and whimpering and as my older brother said, she spent hours hanging to her cellphone hoping she’d receive a phone call from me and my sister.

During that time she was in pain, I was also undergoing one of the most painful times of my life.  I never knew she was dying, and when my children and I were on our way back home, and in transit in Bangkok, she had quietly passed away. Looking back, I sort have  understood and taken this as a sign that she knew I was coming home and on my own way to recovery from a very painful separation from my husband and the breakup of a seven year marriage.

I dealt with the death of my mother swiftly, knowing and recognizing the fact that death was inevitable and that she was finally home on the other side.  Do I believe in heaven and the concept of life ever after.  No.  Although born and raised by staunch Catholics, I believe that death is a finality and end of life.

My brother’s death was sudden.  He died at the age of 42.  His death was more painful to me than my mother’s since he was healthy and all of a sudden had myocardial infarction while on a meeting with colleagues.  He even called me hours before he died. Demanding me to see him at Makati Medical Center, and to bring food.  Looking back, I thought it was hilarious and was laughing as I prepared a cake for him the next day and my husband and I picked up his wife, Luchie who was on her way from Mindanao to see her husband who when we got to Makati Medical Center was already in ICU and was not expected to live. I was in shocked but the thought of death never came to me.

He died with me, my daughter, his wife and my husband on his side.  He made one long gasp for air and died.  His chest went to high up and he sort of reached up for some invisible hand.  He died peacefully and I was in shock and saw the grief and look of his wife, Luchie and I can only imagine the pain she felt.

While the death of Joemen was unexpected, my mother’s death was a gift.  Her death has finally ended her physical pain.  Her death has brought her relief and to the people who was looking after her.

So how did I get over the deaths in my family?

Acceptance eventually come. Handling grief is the most painful hurdle.  Transition difficult and painful.  I handled some of the death arrangements.  I took care of her things and which of her things to give away.  I kept some of her things, but I eventually gave her clothes to charity and her bags and shoes to relatives who wanted them.  Parting away with the material things she held valuable and kept was not very easy for my father.  He wanted to keep everything.  I had to wrangle and rationalize with him that while my mother’s things give him comfort, the fact remains that he had to deal with her death one way or the other.  The fact remains that she is now gone and we are still alive and we needed to continue living.  She would have wanted us to keep going on and it gives a smile on my face whenever I am reminded of her funny laughter and her addiction to telenovelas.

I treasure my memories.  My mother has been through so much pain and adversity.  I teach my children about the normalcy of death and how it can come swiftly to people who are healthy and young.

Don’t forget that you are still alive and you need to focus on the tasks at hand.  I remember that when my mother died, my father seemed to have lost his purpose.  Once he has accepted the death and the finality of Mama’s death, he managed to move on with his life now and continues to enjoy life without her.

Think about it this way, if your parent was still alive, would she or he want you to do this on yourself.  Most likely not.  Life went on for me, and the death of a love one is just one painful episode in your life. The loss feeling of loss will fade and you will eventually find and refocus your life once you have accepted the death of a loved one.

Death is part of life and it comes and it goes.  Life goes on for those left on earth and it might be unbelievable for those who has just lost a loved one, but we eventually will feel better.  The pain will cease and the memories of pain will come to bay and eventually fade.

I know I have neglected my blogs for awhile and the excuse is the same yes, blah, blah and blah…

Anyway, so far alot of things has happened recently.  We have moved homes and I am happy that after a quick house move, the kids had adjusted so quickly again.  This house is much closer to the school, and bigger in terms of space.  One of the nicest things about this house is the fact that it has high ceilings.  It also has several doors.  2 on the side and one on the front.  I found out that when 2 doors are opened, the house felt cozier and breezier.  One of the pluses is its location– a corner lot and even inside the house, I can feel the sea breeze coming in.

View from my work table...

Ventilation is great as well and I am looking forward to lesser electricity bill as we won’t have to use the electric fans 24/7 now.  I have also created my own work corner.  The location is good as well.  From my desk, I can see the people going inside the house and the gates.  I can also see the plants outside which is refreshing.

Thanks to the mahogany trees planted opposite the house, it has given the street including my porch a relaxing shade.  Hayy, this location is so conducive to sleeping and relaxation.  (:yawn: )

Alot of people are scared of change.  Since I have decided to move on with my life, I have adhered to the fact that the only thing that is scary about change is the fact that it is CHANGE.

It is hard to make a decision to change.  Ofcourse it is easy to utter the words, “I have change,” but come on be frank and upfront.  Change is hard and it is scary most specially to the process of change itself.  Change is good because this means another for starting over– let’s say “tabularasa.”

Change has given me back my freedom.  Change has given me peace of mind.

What about you?  How badly do you need change in your life?

Babies hanging on the doorway... how cute!

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Yes, I have been guilty and I have neglected my own blog for awhile now.  Suffice to say I am busy trying to make ends meet since my tenant in Manila is scheduled to move out soon.  We haven’t have any income aside from my earnings in oDesk for 2 months now.

She's eight years now

I am just amazed how my hardwork and sleepless nights and barrels of coffee continue to pull us through.  I am just happy that we are okay and we continue to thrive.  There is hope… there really might be a God.

My daughter Alis turned 8 weeks ago.  Yes, my oldest is 8 years old.  She has grown alot the past month and has gained some weight not to mention some ass.    Thanks to the Papua New Guinean gene, physique wise she will definitely be a head turner when she grows up.

Work with oDesk is fine except that the sleepless nights took and sapped my energy weeks ago that I had to let go of one of my top paying and demanding client.  Sayang, I know.  I really liked working with him.  But I was not getting enough sleep and I felt like burning both end of the candle and I simpy couldn’t work anymore.

After sending my resignation letter I thought, shit I could have just asked for a short break– I knew he would have given me a break, but I knew he needed so much help with all the things he has to do everyday. Anyway, bye to Vee for now.  I hope to bump into you one of these days.  Skype and Gmail will always be there…

And to Alis, keep your head up. You are going to be one fine woman and like I promised, we are okay and will continue to be fine.  I love you.

It was just so freakin hot where we’re at.  The weather was hot and balmy.  It’s was just like inside a steamy sauna room.  I remembered my first sauna experience at Fitness First years ago and I almost died inside.  It was just so balmy– I mean, that was what the sauna was about.  But I swear, I couldn’t breathe inside the room, and I was getting lightheaded even.

I thought the 10 minute sauna would kill me… it didn’t.  Anyway, the heat here was tolerable and the children were enjoying their day outside with the neighbor’s children.  I heard their merriment as they told me their first attempt to fly a kite.  Boy I have never flown a kite before.

They were just so happy.  One of the older girls made a simple kite for my daughters. It was just one of those ones made of bamboo strips and simple chinese paper and nylon.  It was a joy watching my children play on the vacant lot near our house.  Hearing their peels of laughter was music to my ears.

How about you?  How was your day?  I sure hope it was as good as mine…

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We do not have a television.  I have thought of buying one, but decided on buying a PC instead.  The children obviously liked the PC as I bought it fully-loaded with games.  Not only that, since I got Globe Broadband, our internet life has never been this good.  Now, I can work full time as a freelance webworker in oDesk and we also have loads of information at the tip of our fingers– oh, the advantages of the internet is countless.

I read my news, blogs using NewsNetWire.  I keep track of over 300 RSS feeds daily, and I fire it up as a rule only twice a day.

Tyrell my 3 year old can watch all the Spiderman cartoons that he like and my daughters can play all the dress-up games in Y8.  Not only that, they can watch their movies and reruns– all in YouTube.

Today my daughters Alis and Freida received their ribbons.  Pascalis is 5th in her class.  I am so happy that she managed to get a ribbon since she really worked hard this year and struggled with Filipino.  Freida made it to 4th in her class as well as Most Behave Award.  Naks…

Anyway, to make it worse, I took the digital camera with me without the batteries… DUH…

I also took the opportunity to drop by digitalhub to seek the help of an Apple Technician.  Well, it was confirmed that my adapter was indeed fried and I needed to replace it.

It cost me

I panicked the other day when I woke up to rush to my Macbook to work and discovered it failed to charge overnight.  I was surprised to see the battery life at 22%.  I tried wiggling the adapter and noticed that the green indicator was off.  I went to Mac website to search “battery” at support and went nowhere.  To make it worse, one of my clients went online and asked me to help with the research for an article he was doing an I almost died…

This was perhaps the worst day of my life as a webworker.  I panicked and turn off the dying Macbook and rushed to my daughter’s PC and when I go there, I realized that all my important data were in the Macbook…  In short, I did my work in the PC and proceeded with the search for answer.  I dreaded that something worse must have happened to my Macbook.  Dang, how much would a new battery cost?  A quick check at the Philippines Apple Store gave me the figure of P6,990 for the battery…

What???  I almost cried…

I checked philmug.ph for help and I got immediate response and the advise that I got was that the problem was probably the adapter or the battery.  Since my children and I were scheduled to head for town the next day, I used their PC for my webwork and I was simply lost.  The bookmarks in the other PC was not updated, not to mention that my passwords were all in my Macbook.

I was lost… and to make it worse, my children kept hounding me if I was done with work because my daughters wanted to use the computer and play online games at y8.com.  Ayay!!!  My head started to beat and I felt like dying, so I decided to…

Having launched my freelance work full time now has given me confidence and more sense of independence.  Although I love the fact that I am earning some dollars into my account, the manifestations and effects of my work is beginning to take its toll on me and my children.

Time Zone Difference.  My work hours start at 6pm.  I needed to report to my clients and receive instructions either via Skype or email.  At first I managed to wing it.  Sleeping a couple of hours during the day and taking short naps at night whenever I can.  When I am expected to report or speak with my clients, I set my cellphone and alarm and it worked for awhile until I started to feel the effects of sleepless nights.

For one, whenever I am awake, my children especially the small ones wakes up too.  It seem like they have a mommy is awake detector…  I started missing sleeps and these affected my work as most of my tasks are time bound.  Not only that, whenever the babies are up, they both wanted to be cuddled.  Just imagine me hunched infront of the computer trying to finish article, or trying to create a powerpoint presentation or monitoring website activities while cuddling one and even two children on my lap.  It is a wonder I still managed to finish, beat deadlines and receive good feedbacks on my work.  To me, this is one of the indications that I am good at this, and I can be better.

Financially, I am beginning to enjoy the fruits of my hardwork and late nights.  I have already opened accounts on several local banks and have been saving more.  The feeling of independence is definitely great… and yes, I can now buy all the books that I want without blinking and hesitating.

Finally!  I snagged lifediscourse.com and got my friend Emily to install this cool theme for me.  I am so happy with the entire look and look forward to tweaking the theme and installing my own plugins.

I am currently very busy with my freelance work and I am currently adjusting to my work load.  My children are also adjusting with my work as I am up late at night since I work during EST and GMTimes.  It was pretty confusing and my body clock went haywire for awhile.

I have also installed several widgets in my Macbook so I can track time and my to-do list.  At any rate, I am happy that I am earning some cash myself and I did not have to worry about our finances now.  I have been praying hard for this and I am happy that I am able to earn additional income for my children and myself and I didn’t even have to leave the house!

I am just in cloud nine!

Thank you to Emily again and to my friends Karen and Cherryl who are with me all the way.  I love you guys!