I got myself two new hobbies. Swimming, the act of moving from point A to point B in a medium in a state of liquidity and whose density is usually around 1 g/ml (more commonly known as water to the uninformed), and Gymming, the act of going to the gym. Hence the title of this entry.
My previous hobby was soccering but I had been soccering for almost a decade (my gadz, how time flies) and aside from thinking that it's high time to get a new sport activity, I've got this slight left foot pain/injury that's keeping me from effectively kick balls of any kind (soccer balls, biological balls, you name the ball, I can't kick it).
Why swim and gym? Why not sing and dance? Or skate and bake?
Well, swim and gym sounds nice (hey they rhyme!), and singing and dancing is really not my thing. My earliest attempts at singing and dancing was a traumatic experience. I vaguely remember people panic and scream "call for help! this kid's having an epileptic seizure!" Having a spoon shoved in your mouth (the rational being to keep you from biting your tongue off) and various strangers groping your young, fresh and innocent body in an attempt to "hold" and "keep" you still are not things you want to happen when you try to sing/dance. So no to the sing and dance combo. While skate and bake almost sounds nice (hey they almost rhyme!), the mental imagery of baking pastry while in skates doesn't strike me as cool or even sane. Swimming and gymming it is then.
The kicker here is that there's this gym with an indoor pool 297 steps away from the office (you can count the steps yourself to verify!). And the kicker to the kicker would be mike felps winning 8 golds in the last olympics and it inspired the dolphin in me to get out there and swim.
I've been swimming quite regularly for two months now. Before this regularity, the only swimming stroke I knew was freestyle (aka front crawl) and breast and back stroking.
The freestyle I learned in just a few years ago in a Red Cross sponsored summer clinic. As the only adult in this swimming class, my classmates being 5 to 7 year old brats, you can imagine the pressure to perform (must float and move forward, must not let 5 year old kid do this better).
The breaststroke and backstroke I deduced from the words used. My version of breaststroke goes like this: Stand on the pool's edge, swimming cap and goggles on. Look down at the water's surface in a 45 degree angle. Place right hand on top part of right breast ..err.. chest (hopefully yours) just above the right nipple. Do the same for the left side. You probably know how this is going to end but if you don't, then move your hands in a circular motion around the nipple. Tadaa! Breast stroke at it's primitivest. You can do the same for the backstroke. You may not have nipples on your back to guide you (well, you shouldn't really), just stroke your back in a circular motion the way you find most comfortable.
During the regularity of swimming, I've been practicing my freestyle, and learning the breaststroking and butterflying the way they should be done. How can I not learn when I've got the two best teachers in the internetz, google and youtube. Google to provide the information, and youtube to show how it's done.
To date, I still have no idea if I'm doing things right. What I know is that I'm able to move from from point A to point B in a medium in a state of liquidity and whose density is usually around 1 g/ml (more commonly known as water to the recently informed but forgetful) in strokes called freestyle, boobstroke and butterfly. I'm not even sure if I'm doing it the way youtube showed me how. But it does feel I'm doing it right. Oh well, until someone tells me otherwise I'll just listen to the dolphin in me.
Wednesday, October 1
Sunday, August 31
Mild mannered ex-programmer
[8-30-2008]
My resume shows that it's been a while since I've been a legally employed programmer. (While it sounds so crazy exciting rebellious cool to be tagged as an illegally employed programmer, images of late night hacking fueled by caffeine, nicotine and porn fills your mind but in reality, being an illegally employed programmer means that even with your meager salary, your employer has not been paying taxes, social security benefits in your behalf. Godamn that's illegal!)
A year and five months.
Not that I never thought I'd miss programming. I still do every day programming stuff. Just a few hours ago, I programmed my alarm clock to 'alarm' at 7:00 am US eastern daylight savings time to remind me of my 'job' at 9:00 am US eastern daylight savings time. Just a few minutes ago, I programmed my wrist watch to 'wrist' at 8:00 am EDT to remind me that a bath has to be made (Only in this page does 'alarm' == 'wrist'). And just sometime ago I programmed the radio to receive free music at a specific frequency (also called turning the radio on and listening to a certain radio station).
Now anyone who read the last paragraph could say, hey I could do that. That makes me a programmer too!
No shit. Maybe you are, but I don't care. What I missed was software programming. Software, may sound almost the same with tupperware and somewhere but take my word, there's a whole world of difference.
For a year and month now, I've been a legally employed technical support professional, also more popularly known as a call cenner agent (Note the silent 't' in center). I can't tell you the specific cenner I work for but I could let you know in hard to decipher word puzzle. The company cenner name starts and ends with 's', and has 'yke' between them. Oh they have a website at www.sykes.com. For those high IQ readers who solved the puzzle after intense calculation, keep it to yourselves ok?
This was suppose to be a short stint, but a year and month and two promotions later, here I am still.
Well a few good things happened. I use to envy those annoyingly pretty call cenner guys and girls with their enviously annoying american accent and seemingly good verbal grasp of english. Don't you just hate those call cenner people with their fit, sexy frames with fashionable clothes, cigarettes on the right hand, expensive foreign iced coffee on the left, yap away at volume that anyone within 2 meters away would hear them say and use fake american accented words when a normal conversational tagalog/bisaya word would do.
Now I'm part of that demographic, I still hate and get annoyed when I see/hear those people. The good thing I was talking about earlier is that I now know that my verbal english skills have improved. I may still be unfit (unfit leaning towards malnutrition not obesity ever since forever) and unfashionable (a wedding you say? could I go wearing my spartan flipflops?), but damn it, english, me speak better.
It's always been an area of improvement for me. While I've always been satisfied on how I write in english, speaking the language is another story. I've been to the isteyts for a short vacation twice during my software programmer days and for some reason my version (I'll call this version 1.0) of english back then would only warrant blank stares and/or puzzled looks from native speakers.
It's the accent and pronunciation and choice of the words. With english version 1.0 apple would sound like 'apol' instead of 'epol,' pizza would be said like 'picha' instead of 'peetza.' And the choice of words, man, I had a tendency to speak the way I write right now. Which to me would sound weird, saying words that are only meant to written down. (I racked my brains for examples but I couldn't think of any for now. I guess once verbal english version 1.0 was replaced with english version 2.1, there's no turning back)
And so presenting version 2.1! Who wouldn't improve after regularly speaking to americans every working day for a year?!?
It's not that I now sound like a native speaker, but I could say with certainty that the large area of improvement was decreased by two square meters. Though, I've noticed improvement a few weeks into the program. QAs who monitored my calls would ask, "Your grasp of english is pretty good, were you working in call cenner before?" To which I would raise my chin a bit, hands on waist, smugly smile then say "Oh, you know, this is actually my first call cenner job" and then this would continue in my head, "Did you only ask that question since I sound like I've been speaking english my whole life? Oh you flatterer. *blushes* (For some reason, I blush quite a lot in my mind)."
I'm set to vacation in the estates again late this year. Let see if this self-proclaimed improvement's not all in my mind. Well if ever it's all in my mind, I could always look forward to improving to english version 3.4 (It goes all the way to Version 99.0 by the way). My resume shows that it's been a while since I've been a legally employed programmer. (While it sounds so crazy exciting rebellious cool to be tagged as an illegally employed programmer, images of late night hacking fueled by caffeine, nicotine and porn fills your mind but in reality, being an illegally employed programmer means that even with your meager salary, your employer has not been paying taxes, social security benefits in your behalf. Godamn that's illegal!)
A year and five months.
Not that I never thought I'd miss programming. I still do every day programming stuff. Just a few hours ago, I programmed my alarm clock to 'alarm' at 7:00 am US eastern daylight savings time to remind me of my 'job' at 9:00 am US eastern daylight savings time. Just a few minutes ago, I programmed my wrist watch to 'wrist' at 8:00 am EDT to remind me that a bath has to be made (Only in this page does 'alarm' == 'wrist'). And just sometime ago I programmed the radio to receive free music at a specific frequency (also called turning the radio on and listening to a certain radio station).
Now anyone who read the last paragraph could say, hey I could do that. That makes me a programmer too!
No shit. Maybe you are, but I don't care. What I missed was software programming. Software, may sound almost the same with tupperware and somewhere but take my word, there's a whole world of difference.
For a year and month now, I've been a legally employed technical support professional, also more popularly known as a call cenner agent (Note the silent 't' in center). I can't tell you the specific cenner I work for but I could let you know in hard to decipher word puzzle. The company cenner name starts and ends with 's', and has 'yke' between them. Oh they have a website at www.sykes.com. For those high IQ readers who solved the puzzle after intense calculation, keep it to yourselves ok?
This was suppose to be a short stint, but a year and month and two promotions later, here I am still.
Well a few good things happened. I use to envy those annoyingly pretty call cenner guys and girls with their enviously annoying american accent and seemingly good verbal grasp of english. Don't you just hate those call cenner people with their fit, sexy frames with fashionable clothes, cigarettes on the right hand, expensive foreign iced coffee on the left, yap away at volume that anyone within 2 meters away would hear them say and use fake american accented words when a normal conversational tagalog/bisaya word would do.
Now I'm part of that demographic, I still hate and get annoyed when I see/hear those people. The good thing I was talking about earlier is that I now know that my verbal english skills have improved. I may still be unfit (unfit leaning towards malnutrition not obesity ever since forever) and unfashionable (a wedding you say? could I go wearing my spartan flipflops?), but damn it, english, me speak better.
It's always been an area of improvement for me. While I've always been satisfied on how I write in english, speaking the language is another story. I've been to the isteyts for a short vacation twice during my software programmer days and for some reason my version (I'll call this version 1.0) of english back then would only warrant blank stares and/or puzzled looks from native speakers.
It's the accent and pronunciation and choice of the words. With english version 1.0 apple would sound like 'apol' instead of 'epol,' pizza would be said like 'picha' instead of 'peetza.' And the choice of words, man, I had a tendency to speak the way I write right now. Which to me would sound weird, saying words that are only meant to written down. (I racked my brains for examples but I couldn't think of any for now. I guess once verbal english version 1.0 was replaced with english version 2.1, there's no turning back)
And so presenting version 2.1! Who wouldn't improve after regularly speaking to americans every working day for a year?!?
It's not that I now sound like a native speaker, but I could say with certainty that the large area of improvement was decreased by two square meters. Though, I've noticed improvement a few weeks into the program. QAs who monitored my calls would ask, "Your grasp of english is pretty good, were you working in call cenner before?" To which I would raise my chin a bit, hands on waist, smugly smile then say "Oh, you know, this is actually my first call cenner job" and then this would continue in my head, "Did you only ask that question since I sound like I've been speaking english my whole life? Oh you flatterer. *blushes* (For some reason, I blush quite a lot in my mind)."
Wednesday, January 9
and after a lifetime of not blogging...
i've decided to clean up my web space. at least add more color or pogifying widgets or interesting links, better color combination, remove all old entries and compile it as an ebook.
lots of things to do, as always, so little time and bandwidth. but i'm pretty confident i'll be done with these in at least 2 years so by then i could continue to update friends, lovers, countrymen of my current status. (currently alive, in a relationship, poor)
sigh. see you soon
lots of things to do, as always, so little time and bandwidth. but i'm pretty confident i'll be done with these in at least 2 years so by then i could continue to update friends, lovers, countrymen of my current status. (currently alive, in a relationship, poor)
sigh. see you soon
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