An employee of mine reported for work this morning with a swelling right eye. His eye was teary and red. I asked him to consult the company physician right away. “The swelling and redness was already an obvious sign of irritation as a result of wearing contact lenses overnight” – the doctor explained. He was given the best eye cream and was advised to go home and rest his eyes for a few days.

Contact lenses must be used with strict discipline. They may seem more convenient to wear than glasses, but they are so much harder to maintain. I too used to wear contacts before but I shifted to glasses because I was too lazy to clean up the lenses everyday. For those of you who are like me (too lazy), better use glasses or better yet, ask your doctor about laser eye surgery.

It was a day to remember and it happened less than a year ago - April 24, 2008. I was in my off-white dress, he was in his tuxedo shirt, and we were at a restaurant in the hotel that we were staying at in Greece.

I’ve never seen him looking as dashing as that and I was blushing like hell. We ate a sumptuous dinner then after we had a bottle of red wine. And as we were looking at the starlit sky, we talked about what we both wanted for the future. Suddenly, he kneeled down and I felt my heart started pounding erratically. He said, “You are not perfect and you never have to be because I love you and no matter what happens whatever you do, I will love you for the rest of my life. Will you be mine?”.

Well you can all guess what happened after that. It’s been almost a year since that night and he still loves every single bit of me more and more each day.

Regular company outing is actually recommended not just for relaxation but also for promoting camaraderie among our colleagues as well. This is why teambuilding activities are carefully planned to make sure everyone enjoys them.

This year, I’m in charge of finding the venue and planning the activities for our summer outing. Compared to the past years, I got a lot of requests on where our activity will be held – majority of which are hiking requests. I guess they got bored with the beach resorts so they want to try something different this time. Considering that a lot of people in my company IS getting fat from just sitting in front of the monitor the whole day, hiking is definitely a good idea for a company outing.

Since most of my colleagues have their own digital camera or camcorder, I think it’ll be great if the activity will be an MTV creation of some sort. This way we’ll get to enjoy the scenery, bond with friends and new acquaintances, and best of all, have our own company music video. “Where’s the challenge there?” you ask. Well, winners get a week long paid vacation. Losers … hmm… salary deduction for the week long vacation of the winners. Haha, kidding guys!

Have I told you that I’m a self-confessed console freak? Since I was a child, I preferred toys with electronic parts rather than Barbie dolls. Maybe I got this trait from my dad because he was an electronics hobbyist and a gaming addict. My dad always spoils me every time he buys me a new console for my birthday. Mom just gets me the games. Haha. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not rich. Some of my gadgets are just given to me and some are bought cheap from surplus stores.

I still have my original NES, Sega Genesis, Sega Dreamcast, PS1, N64, and Game Cube. I’m not sure if they still work, but I keep them as my console collection. I even had an Atari (the great grandfather of consoles) once but my mom already threw it away.

Recent additions to my collection are my Wii and Xbox 360 (oh and DS lite and PSP). I’m planning to get a PS3 this summer to match with my new HDTV. A friend of mine is selling his for half the price. I’m not really into PS3 gaming but it’s a cheap blu-ray player. Anyhow, enough with the bragging for now.

I went to the mall yesterday to get my cellphone checked and fixed. Since last week, I get errors opening the emails in my inbox. What happens is the phone hangs up when I open the folder. The repair agent told me that my phone is okay but my memory stick needs to be replaced. He also told me that the data stored in it (my emails and stuff) had been corrupted and there’s no easy way to retrieve it. So I just bought a new genuine memory stick. Good thing I always synchronize my phone with my PC.

As it turned out, the memory stick included with the phone is not genuine. Fake memory sticks are common especially in Asia where I bought my phone. Memory card classified as “class A” are the fake ones, although they look pretty much the same as the original. Looks can really be deceiving. Brand labels, serial numbers, and even the packaging stickers look genuine.

The only way to be sure you are getting the original memory stick is to get it from an authorized reseller. Genuine memory sticks are a lot cheaper nowadays. They offer at least five years warranty on the memory and in case your data becomes corrupted, they’ll retrieve it for free.

After more than four years of working in the same company (It’s the first and only company I’ve been affiliated to since I graduated college.), our CEO finally partnered with a renowned HMO and gave all the employees a great medicard coverage.

Thank God. I’m actually VERY health conscious so I go to the doctor with the slightest symptom. Each visit to the doctor, as you know, costs a lot. This is why it’s a great relief to finally have that card in my grasp.

Now I no longer have to go over those cheap insurance companies just to avail of the medical benefits. To cap it off, the company’s paying for the entire medicard coverage! This means aside from the health-related peace of mind that I get, I can also use the rest of my money to just pay for my credit card bills. Hehehe…

After the network upgrade we had last week, the used cisco routers were donated to whoever is interested. And so I got one. I’m planning to review my networking skills at home just to refresh my memory. I used to work as a network admin but since I shifted career to SEO, I already forgot the IOS (it’s the router operating system).

I kinda miss being network admin. It was a lot more technical and hardware intensive than my current job as a manager. I remembered when some of my officemates got upset because my boss asked me to block some porn sites. They almost filed for a strike just to make those sites available again! Hahaha.

During those times, I got sick of doing routine work of checking servers, cleaning log data, managing connections, etc. which made me decide to shift career. In those times I thought that I want a more exciting job. But now that I’m no longer a network admin, I miss my old job. Not that I want to go back, I just miss the technical stuff. If only I could time leap to my old work just for a day or two. Sometimes we just can’t be contented with what we have, can we?