Love, Where are you?

I have been meaning to write since I have the much needed vacay from school.  I've exhausted a week so far out of my 2 week break and tell you what, I have done nothing but to abode laziness in my system. The idleness is driving me nuts though. School literally engulfs me into the blackhole of studying and fully disconnect me to my friends. So I thought I will make this week as a "reconnection week" with some friends I haven't talk since forever. 

From different variegated conversations with different friends; There is one friend of mine who asked me a question which I didn't have the answer off hand. She is a friend of mine back in college whom I didn't know have secretly looked up to my pretty lame aspirations in life which I've once said in one of our drunken college nights. One of her great dream is to be married to an American. When yours truly happen to be married to one, just made her paddle the boat harder to the coastline of her dreams. Her question was; Why I can't find a decent guy to date online? My first reaction was... define decent.

As I retrocede from the chapters of my life. Greg and I didn't met on an online dating site rather it's one of those boring days on Skype. I can't just make up an answer which I know would impact the way she thinks about men here in United States.

Ladies, I am not here to tell you that this is how it goes. I am speaking from what  I can see on the surface from the different layers of the online dating whirlpool.

Finding love in Chat rooms.

Set yourself for quite a long haul. I can't tell you enough that by the time you even consider yourself entering this not so welcoming Chat room, you have already set yourself to disappointment. Guys from all over the world in the internet can't hold their selves even for 2 seconds just to be respectful and gentleman enough to get to know you first before asking you to show your private parts. This is the reason why they all flock in these rooms. They are not there for love, they are there to have fun, to see what's between in those legs. It's like looking for a needle in the haystack for a man who would actually be polite to ask more about yourself. Men from other countries doesn't seem to see how important respect is for few Asian ladies.  Filipinas are one of the few conservative ladies who would shut down when asked to be "all the way" on chat talks. When guys engage in a quite torrid conversations, some ladies feel awkward and feel insulted, and defeated from their expectations. But in all honesty, your purpose doesn't belong to these rooms. Unless you find a man who is searching the same thing as what you are,in the same room, that's the only time it'll work. 

I have a friend who came up to me and shared her story how unbearable it was for her to be fully attached to this guy, who have showed a genuine interests towards her but she was left with a broken heart when the guy disappears without saying goodbye. 

Love on dating sites maybe?

I would assume that the only reason you have that well structured profile in your favorite dating site is that you  have had the fair share of heartaches with these guys around your area, or even in the country. It's not bad to find love in these websites but you have to be very, when I say very, very careful. You have to guard your heart and sift  all these intentions coming from the guys you have met so far. There will always be a bad guy, and without a warning they would penetrate your vulnerable heart. There are a lot at stake when you open your heart to the possibilities to be with someone you haven't seen in person. There is the price of being once again attached to your feelings of wanting to make things work so badly, also not meeting your expectations about this person, together with all these; how would you address the pressure of intimacy which is pretty much the core of every relationship. Ask yourself, are you ready to be that person who would not feel silly doing peculiar things on webcamera just for the sake of love?  The key here is to carefully put bits and pieces about this person who would first of all want to get to know you. Decipher how they treat and address your presence. How does he say things, does he makes premature "too good to be true" statements? These are some pretty essential questions you have to add in your guidelines when venturing love online. Always make yourself  feel wanted by someone, if you can't feel its a two way street, let it go. Don't hold onto that little gut that this person would feel the same as what you feel, considering the amount of distance between the two of you.

A lot of people think that online dating is much easier than dating the traditional way because there is less physical pressure. However;  It's a wrong assumption because they don't know how much you can be so invested on your emotions without the assurance that you'll be compensated.  

You might be asking me now..."Then what's the difference between Chatroom and Dating sites anyway?" The answer is "Purpose". Where do you go when you need a bread? Don't go to the hardware!

We all have our bars set I would hope on how far we would go in terms on finding that right person, in any way. The extremities of these circumstances comes with unusual decisions that we might encounter along the process of getting all the pieces of the puzzle fit together to have a good picture how life would it be with this person. Family members might decry your persistence. You might blame yourself in some point for being so gullible for letting yourself open up,but its normal. Just know that when you have done enough to find that one person on cyberworld you believe is meant for you, maybe it's time to look in a smaller perimeters. Look around. Maybe you're just not letting yourself notice him.

Weight gain is self -esteem lost

Yet another compulsive shout out in the middle of my work out. So random that I just literally just shut off the DVD workout I have been using for quite sometime now.  I said, I have battling this weight which I have gained so far from eating carelessly and now I can't seem to loss the numbers. It's hard but I stayed diligent to achieve my goal. And here I am,  I can't complain of my weight anymore rather just maintenance.

Every girl's dream is to have that perfect body. So perfect that you starve yourself and restrict from eating the right food for your body. Which is WRONG!  All it takes is choosing the right food, right time to eat and right amount of  food to shove in that hungry mouth. Take a look at the picture below. 

The first picture was when I was in my "Desirable body" and the second picture is when I have gained 20 lbs from the base weight I was and including the 2 lbs of muscle mass I have toned so far ever since I have used Jillian Michael's 30 day Shred Out. Everyday, as much as I feel enervated from the 20 minute work out DVD, to me being healthy is my top priority. Yes, it is also important to look good, and tone but looks is just something you can't choose in time of sickness. You can have 36-24-36 measurement but if you can't manage to walk even 10 minutes, there's something wrong sister. 

I am writing this because I would like to encourage everybody to dedicate at least 20 minutes of physical movements and refuse to live a sedentary lifestyle. If you are able and fully functional individual you can have a healthy day everyday. We all know that United States offers  a wide array of cultural recipes on the table, it is hard to decide which restaurant to eat out in Friday nights, if its Buffet; more and likely you'd settle there like what happened with me and my husband. However, soon I realized I often times feels farouche wearing those sleeveless shirts, It was time to take an action.

I goggled and searched which one might fit my schedule best and a work out that will keep me motivated rather impatient. P90x was has well rounded reviews, but I thought it was too drastic and time consuming for a nursing student like me. So I settled on Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred out DVD. I have been using it for over a month now and I can definitely say its working for me. My endurance and agility has been continuously improving so as my body. I have lost 14 lbs in a month and gained 2 lbs of muscle mass.   I am very finicky on choosing the serving of my food, but mindful of the calories. 

I know food is very addictive and prodigious. It's very hard to negate the invitation that our fridge stores for us. But when you watch the show, "Extreme Makeover: Weight loss edition" people struggle in so many things that they turn to food as their comfort and as soon as they found it, it is so hard to turn their backs and control the seduction. What I would like to impart here is that, I wasn't as much as overweight like the ones on the show but I  know how it feels like when nobody is there to talk to you in hard times. It was my personal battle to stop eating, and also procrastinating that I would watch my food the following day. But I never did. There, 30 lbs easy! I strongly discourage you to take this path.

I can't make you stop on indulging or make you move maybe , but there is one thing that we have in common; that is weight gained is self-esteem lost. Think about the times when you never had a problem shopping for jeans because the  your size was never kept in the storage room, think about a time that your loveone would put his arm around you, but you have all these unwanted cellulite which are so embarrassing but its there, think about a time that you might have to rely on a machine to keep you going everyday, or insulin that will make your body hate injections. THINK about all these. Its not yet too late. Walk, do something, and get healthy. I did it, and so can YOU!

A little push.

I have been in the nursing school since Fall of last year yet it feels like yester years already. I know its drastic and nobody will hand the degree to me in silver platter but I am in the point now of really breaking down. However, there was one reason that feels like the Almighty God had whispered to me and showed me that life is too short to continuously seek yourself to what you really want to do for the rest of your life.

A day ago, I just finished my Geriatric clinicals. If there was something as a reward for cleaning feces and giving bath to an uncooperative person; hearing them trying to utter the words “THANK YOU” in consideration of aphasia, staunchly gives me a wonderful feeling of appreciation beyond words they could ever spoken. These elders have endured their life and now has come to the part where we all will going too. Being confined in the nursing home with bunch of caregivers who acts like animals in giving a so called “Care” to these pityful elders; definitely gave me push to keep going and finish what I have started. We will never know ahead of time how are we going to be treated in our old age, I expect the same treatment to me as what I am giving to them now.

It’s not for the money alone why I decided to engross in the nursing school, but there is nothing priceless enough to see a person who is suffering on something and having someone who makes that person feel better despite of what s/he is going through. And as a nurse in the making, I truly believe that I can be an instrument to these people in restoring their health and see them living  life we all want to culminate in a good way.

The road I am taking now is not as green as it can be, but because of the people around me who serves as my succor in all ways, I know I can make it up until the end.

Cumpulsive Shoutout

I was studying like 2 seconds ago for like 8 simultaneous hours today and here I am writing a dreadful entry just before midnight hits up. I guess you can call it as I didn't have the greatest week ever. Oh hello me, I don't have a life anyway so forget weekends. All I do is bust my rare studying for something that getting a 100% is like meeting Elvis Prestley in a men's bathroom. 

This entry is about my frustrations and my dainty little swallow happiness coming from a incarcerated feelings of last week. 

Reality slapped me couple of times this week. Reality of what I get myself into, Reality of being such a passive student way back high school and hating Math to the top of my lungs, and Reality of you'll never know what you want to know unless you asked! 

I know I have a soft heart to mostly 3/4 of the population of this world but I have never seen even in my wildest imagination to be a Nurse. Yet, I am trying to be one. I was merely thinking that because I can't be the dumbest student in a certain school, I can do it with by just holding on to the confidence I have earned for myself. But listen, here's the thing that I just realized.. "Being Confident on something is not bad, but if you don't back it up with effort, Confidence is useless" I thought I was studying that hard, but still it wasn't enough. In high school, Math was my least priority. But now, this B**ch is hunting me. It frustrates me because from the rest of my courses that I am doing wonderfully, Basic Pharmacology seems to be flunking me. I refuse to fail this course! Everytime I think about failure, its like a default thing that I can't help myself not to think failure is my rescue.

Ask and you shall know. There are times that we let ourselves be bothered, smothered, and butchered with halo feelings that we want to solicit the  answer. Like wanting to know if someone feels the same way towards you, or simple like asking someone Why from What. I know what you we're thinking... Did you just say "it wasn't the right time to ask".. so then when is the right time for you? I hope by that time, the answer that you want to know is still the one you expect to hear. As for my case, forget the hot flashes before I asked the question, what matters the most is that I knew what I want to know by taking that risk that regardless what will the answer be... I still let myself free from confusions.

Have a good one beautiful souls.

Nursing: A lifelong Commitment starting in "School".

Ok. Let me just take a breath for a sec before I hang off my hiatus.

"Temporary insanity for now...lifetime of success later."

I would have never imagine that after putting myself into Nursing school I'd still be able to write here in my little corner. I'm just glad that I moved another notch higher in this career path I'm working on. Knocking off my second semester,  it's been over 2 weeks since my program has begun and I can tell now that this will be a long, restless, tedious another 14 months of my life. I've been having really, like serious studying time of minimum of 8 hours each day. Now, I can honestly say that to be Practical Nurse is not for everyone. If you are the person that doesn't go over that extra mile to accomplish something so bad, you are barking the wrong tree my friend. 

Negative People! Oh boy they are everywhere. However, they must have mistaken MY classroom as their cafeteria. Every chance we get to have a break, I can't avoid to have someone who is such a pessimistic of her/his performance in school. "I can't know everything", "It's just "a lot" to learn" yada yada yada... (famous lines). Damn right, It's a lot. You want to be a Nurse and make big bucks then the way will be steeper, and rocky before you reach that green pasture. I have told some of my classmates, now my friends to "Not Surround yourself with negative energy because that someone will drag you down." We all know that when you  knock that door for Health Care field, especially Nursing, anticipate hardships, because it's going to be very compact with people vying for "LPN", "RN" titles of competitiveness in this field. The reason is you will be dealing with people's "LIVES" that even a single misplacement of decimal point for a medication dosage does make a difference. So these things has to own your mind. Once you take that life away from someone, Can you give it back?

Everybody can learn something but can't be a teacher. Teacher is an effective person to be able to relay and put the information and knowledge out there to gear up the students and actually have the students receive and understand the rationale behind every subject matter. If you lack even one of those, You are not an effective as you think you are. My classmates and I have been having so much difficulty with this instructor who is very nice indeed but s/he is just not as good as a teacher to get a collective positive feedback from the students. It's the way s/he teaches. We almost think that we have to do it on our own because we don't even know what book s/he is using when lecturing. When we ask, we don't get that definite answer. Yeah, It's hard.

Math Problems now. 

Some of us hasn't been in school for couple of years. Dealing with addition, subtraction, multiplication and dividing fractions and decimals wasn't an activity of daily life to really sit into and solve these operations. I, myself felt rusty at the beginning but it just takes few practice refresher to be able to deal with these operations again. But at lot of us in the room is really having a hard time catching up. Why I am stressing this up? It's because we are using this operations in our Pharmacology class.

I've been frying my brains out with so much information from what the instructors have been telling us to do, memorize by heart and by soul these million words of medical terminologies, Physiological diagrams and bombarding us with pressure to study harder for of course at least 5 quizzes each week, plus huge chapter tests every course, you are looking about 10 times you're brain is to be tested  every week how far you have gone. (whew!) So far, we haven't been weeded out yet but I see it coming. Someone has dropped all his/her classes.  To give you an idea what I will be going through, the previous classes from the past 3 decades had started with over 60 students, and only half of them had taken a state board. (Now I feel more stressed!)

The good part in the opposite of this spectrum is that I've met really nice, helpful, cool friends that I can somehow lean on away from this aghast flora. Also, my husband has been very helpful on helping me catch up with my Math sections which is my weakness. So as my mother in law who serves as my third hand on other things. So far, so good, the grades I've been getting is in equilibrium with my effort which I wish I could maintain up until the end of this program.

I wish everyone who have decided to be a Nurse and be a lifelong care giver. Hang in there!

Let's push that luck!

Bloggers of all walks of life.

Ever since I was a child, I have this common denominator to enjoy people's attention. Being the center of attention makes you feel me feel overly special. (Slap!) You want people to talk about you and sink in to all the wonderful comments about they tell you. But as I grow older, I got soaked up with this attention which I believe 90% of what people are saying were just flowering words which I ended up questioning myself if all what they said were true. Come on now!, I can't be the best person to play the guitar! and I can't be the most smart person in the family while others have top honors than me.

I'd say as we go through our metamorphosis, we change our perspective in life. I, back then wanting to be the talk of the crowd, but now, I would like to be talker, and being listened to. And the only way I would be able to do that is to write what combusting in my head. It doesn't matter how my readers/listeners will take it, what matter is I know someone, in some way, a reader that has open his mind , once listened to what I had to say.

Bloggers of all walks of life has so much to express in their own little way, in their own little webpages. And whatever caused them to blog must be something really significant for them to share it around the globe. As a blogger myself, I blog because there is a piece of me that is only good in submersing myself into a deeper understanding as a result of my expression of something I couldn't put up in words and actually confabulating it with someone. The rushing words in my head feels like a time bomb that if I can't put them into composition, it'll hang me on that moment.  Bloggers as well have the creative mind to morph their ideas into usable ones, Or thoughts to push someone else's self esteem. Motivate them to get out of one's shell. More importantly, Bloggers has the say of what has media will never show to the slope of audiences. This global village of modern world has so many ways to speak up and let people know that our ideas, thoughts, experiences, knowledge and even our self is way very interesting to be dated down.

Bloggers might be narcissistic or vain, or bitter, or alike; But being such is one way to be fully committed to ones point of view and point it across to the readers and even inflict it to them. Whenever I read blogs of my fellow writers about how they feel, what they think, what they are happy about, their days, their sadness, their passion, what they want to do in life,  It gives me the opportunity to get to know someone through his/her words and make a picture out of it and really see through their window. I often encounter some scenarios which sometimes feels like dejavu to me. It makes me feel I am not alone.

Year Ender Realizations.

Early this morning, I was cold and sullen. All I was praying a night before was a bright, lots of sunshine day so I can do my weekly jogging at the community park. Yet, I became bitter more so sluggish. Then I came to realized,  You can't always have what you wished for.  It's just life, All you can do is pray, hope that tomorrow is going to be a brighter one. If it doesn't happen, life has given you a lot of lemons, enough for you to make a lemonade.

 But this entry is not about the cold and melancholic days I had, or else I would have to stay overnight and keep my eyes peeled and write. These are about few "Culminations" that 2010   I think  reluctantly gave me.

First off,

• There are people who will unexpectedly show up in your life without your valid discernment why they came,....and go.

At times, I question myself why I have to meet them, only for me to have rancorous memories against them. As much as you don't want to hold on to the past but it kills you to think what was the point why they have to intervene and make you question  even more complicated things you have in hand, in your naturally mazed life. The result is, you eagerly find the connection of their presence and start an imaginary conclusion, which led to deception of oneself. Worst thing is, when you have fully fathomed a tangible reason, the person will once again come back. Can I just pull the trigger?

Simple tip!  Be very careful in being comfortable within their presence, there's only two things you will end up savoring, You trust the wrong people, and pushed away the right ones.

• I discovered a cloaking trait inside me.  

You think you already know yourself  by knowing what to answer to a question of your favorite song? Perhaps, Your favorite food? What about, what was the greatest compromise you ever have to do this year?

That question was one of the unruly questions I have to deal with this year. Choices were available but were not the best. As a resort, I have to settle and be contented of what was handy, against a nonnegotiable and adamant me.  In life, if we expect everything to fall into its places as what we want them to be, It's boring! All of us go through few perplex scenarios, however these distresses will make us appreciate our lives even more as we look back. I know there will be a time, you will also tell yourself. I just shook them off!

• My life has finally reached its transition point from its previous chapter. 

From a girl who came from an a third world country then settling to the most powerful country in this planet, From riding public transportation, to a girl who drives her own car. From lenient educational system to an uptight one, all of this had happen ever since I moved in this country. It was hard, celebrating my first Christmas and New Year (and now second) out of 22 years of my season. But now, everything is slowly getting real to me that I definitely have a new life here. I have changed career path from Engineering to Health care, full pledge wife to my husband, meet new circle of friends, have gotten used with the food, weather (including the unwanted allergies), hectic life from a laid back one. I have felt more secured and protected by the law enforcement unit of this country. I may not be a full, liberated citizen yet, but I have every right to claim that I am a resident (of course legally) in this wonderful country. So I refuse to be a dependent  to anything, that being said, to the government or to any of the people that has been continuously caring for me. I want them to be proud of my achievements so I will continuously work on them.

• I loved myself more. 

Just like my country,Philippines; An average of 20 typhoons  annually hits my country. That explains why people from this country are indestructible. We've been there, done that and still, we rise up and keep going. Positively saying, I possess the same trait why I have this robust self that what ever life throws at me, I'm pretty sure I can handle it. I have had forlorn times after I moved here. These destitute memories have caused heartaches to the people I love and care for me from here and back home. There are a lot of messy situations I was once in and I even felt hopeless to reach my goal in life, But  I refused to be be defeated by the situation.  I've learned to stand with my beliefs, and not let anybody make another decision for me. I've been continuously searching the light in my darkest alley, guided with my dreams and aspirations without letting someone telling me the directions. This, and only this way, You can  love yourself.

I learned to compromise (Realization 2) and  I did not let Unexpected People (Realization 1) to derail my path, for me to fully inculcate in myself, I have an anew life to discover, explore and leave colorful trails (Realization 3) and last but not the least, I have all the reason to love myself even more. (Realization 4).

 At the end of every year; It's like by default, we tend to weigh in the negative circumstances more over than the positive ones. 12 months was long enough to make right choices and decisions. 365 days were opportunities to live a more meaningful life each day and forward. Without remorse and unhappiness. The less we mind other people's business the more time we have to recollect all the corporeality we have had through the entire year and do something from all the bad judgments we've committed. For me, this reigning year will be another year to look forward and count all the blessings I shall be receiving from God.