And I couldn’t be more excited! And panicked. Excited and panicked! Not the kind of busy one should buy a planner for (it’s 2011, that’s why smartphones exist), but definitely the kind one has to learn how to manage time for (something I’ve been struggling with for over two decades now).
Read More: Busy Days Up Ahead...Quick update as I am currently preparing for our office Christmas party while researching on pleasanton motorcycle accident attorney… stuff.
Hrhrhrhrhr. Brrrraaaaaains.
This year’s office Christmas party theme is obviously Plants vs Zombies. For some reason, the Big Kahuna made Ade Christmas committee chair and Madz, Liz, Gino, and I the organizers. Gino and I were put in decorations and look!: we turned the office into a kindergarten classroom:
Here’s Gino cutting out the fence last night:
A photo of Peashooter I was working on:
Ridiculous how this office doesn’t have a decent color printer but yay, arts and crafts!
What we originally wanted the place to look like (Claren worked on this):
Sadly, we ran out of time for Balloon Zombie so Football Zombie is all by his lonesome =(
I’m dressing up as Conehead Zombie tonight, photos to follow!
It’s been a week since my last update and for good reason: I re-joined the labor force last last Friday. I’m currently employed by dotPH, being a total ditz in their creatives department. I’m actually half-creatives, half-sales & marketing…it sounds awesome, I guess. I’m just happy and absolutely relieved that after wasting two years on being a stupid call center agent, four months of web design school, and a month of bumming around, I finally have a real job.
To make things more fun, I work with my friends, Mordo and Ade! Now that is awesome.
Now here are the boring details: my hours are noon to 9 in the evening. I work in Emerald Avenue in The OC (The Ortigas Center, anyone?). Coffee, beer, cheap food, KFC chicken, and cigarettes are all within walking distance. I only know of two sites that are blocked at work: youtube and meebo. I have access to Yahoo Messenger. I have a non-Avaya phone, I do not hate it and I am not chained to it. I smoke three to four cigarettes during my breaks. I spent the whole week last week working on a template in Photoshop. I realize that making cutouts is therapeutic— not that I need therapy for anything. I’ll probably spend this coming week modifying and coding, though I was told I’ll be doing cold calls this Monday. You’re welcome to stalk me.
Several nights since I started, I’d go for a couple of beers after getting off work. I called it my two-beer habit. It felt good and it felt normal. I am spent by the time I get home and I am conditioning myself to get used to functioning on six hours of sleep and copious amounts of weak office joe and nicotine. Just like college, really.
(There’s nothing I miss more than heading home with you, knowing it’s only a matter of minutes before we find ourselves in our bed, tangled up in each other and naked.)
It was a tiring week and there was no better way to end it than going to Coke’s Buhay Coke ng Bloggers party. Everyone got a free carton/case of Coke Zero (I didn’t claim mine because lugging it home would be a byatch) and the beer was free and free-flowing— just like how a party for bloggers should be. A picture (care of Fritz!) of me looking like a tranny hooker junkie mess who got too drunk to work her corner that night, I love it:
A job, the greatest boyfriend, fantastic friends— life is good. And normal.
Other blog posts:
An Apple a Day, Happiness = Coca-Cola
Jehzlau Concepts
Ka Edong
Azrael’s Merryland
Macuha.com
Love in the Time of Coca-Cola
Mistervader
Godiane
Galwin Fabian
Websaytko
Fritzified
Jester in Exile (in his new home)
BrownPinay.com
AWHoldings (Plurk’s Arbet Loggins)
Baratillo.net
Think of Me
Momblognetwork
Kape ni Lattex
Buhay Coke Ng Bloggers At SM Hypermart
Something Sweet & More
Pinoy Life at Large, Arpee Lazaro
Pinoylife
Melo Villareal
Xeemomma
Rockerfem
Brian Ong
Micamyx
Jason King Ong (the Banana Dancer)
Cigarette Girl
Photos:
An Apple a Day Photos
Superbong
Hrudu
Micamyx
Fritz the Paparazzi
Juned
Juned’s Flickr
My Flickr
Shirley of Hollywood has awesome lingerie.
It is unfortunate that I— a person who pees a lot— works for a company called Slave-Driving Bastards, Inc.; unfortunate, not only because they are slave-driving bastards who don’t give you the holidays off, but they also only allot their employees ten personal break minutes throughout a 9-hour shift. And don’t get me started on personal minutes being bad minutes because I have too much anger coursing through my veins right now. Blood drive, what? HOW ABOUT I FUCKING DONATE 20CC OF RED HOT ANGER YOUR WAY, ASSHOLE?
It is also unfortunate that there are only four washrooms per floor of our building, one for each sex on each wing. There are about 200-300 agents per wing. I’m sure that about half of that 200-300 are made up of humans with vaginas. So that’s maybe 100-150 vagina-bearing humans sharing Four. Fucking. Bathroom. Stalls.
Until last Monday, when they hung an Out of Order sign on one of the doors.
That’s maybe 100-150 vagina-bearing humans sharing Three. Fucking. Bathroom. Stalls. Since Monday.
It doesn’t really bother me. What bothers me is when I need to, like, REALLYFUCKINGGO (like OMG, can you see the crotch of my jeans darkening? YEAH, I NEED TO GO, LET ME IN RIGHT NOW) and I hit Aux-1 on this godforsaken Avaya phone and then dash to the washroom and—
Is there a party or a prayer meeting going on in the ladies’ washroom? Or did everybody decide to have their lunch here? What’s with all the people?
So I stand there with my butt resting on the sink, my feet going tap-tap-tap and my arms crossed while I wait for a free stall. Usually, there’s a line of about 3-4 vagina-bearing humans waiting for their turn. And because we’re human beings and we’re all supposed to be nice, common courtesy dictates that if you were the first person in the washroom to wait for a free stall, YOU GO FIRST. If you’re the second person, YOU GO SECOND. And so on. I don’t care if you’re the eighteenth person in there and you’re literally pissing your pants and crying, YOU GO EIGHTEENTH.
Unless someone takes pity on you, of course, and let’s you go ahead of them.
So I could really shank a bitch when someone messes the order of things and is rude enough to take my place in line. Like, I could shank that certain bitch. The one who messed up the order of things. Because you just don’t do that!
A few minutes ago, someone attempted to do exactly just that to me. Did she think I was, I don’t know, just hanging out in the washroom, staring at the putrid orange doors and NOT waiting in line to pee? The second I heard the door’s metal lock slide to (surprise!) unlock and the second I saw her make a step towards the stall, I fucking RAN. I tell ya. I RAN. I cut her off, RAN inside the stall, and slammed it shut.
More common courtesy that should be exhibited in the washroom: do not hog the sink. Especially when there are only two.
I do not proclaim myself to be a writer or a graphic designer or a web designer. Truth be told, and judging by how I’ve been spending the last twenty months of my life, you could sum up who I am in three very painful words: call center agent.
I doubt that growing up, any one dreamed of being a call center agent. Hell, this job description didn’t even come into Philippine existence ’til the early 00s. My grade school yearbook (by the way, I look like a total turd in it with my stupid headband and Madonna gap) says that I wanted to be scientist when I was 11. My high school yearbook tells a story of a swimming Hanson fan girl (and that’s it, thank goodness they left out that one incident back during our freshman year when I kicked Anton Dator in the nuts). My college yearbook (which has yet to be printed, I’m guessing) says that I will one day be relevant. I no longer want to be a scientist, I’m no longer a swimmer, I’ve managed to tone down my Hanson fanaticism, and I still want to and will be relevant.
But how can I, when I am merely an overworked, underpaid, and robotic call center agent, ya?
I am writing this all here because one day (hopefully, in the very near future. Like, early next year) I hope to look back to this entry and feel a sense of pride that I refused to be stuck in this blackhole. And that I actually took steps to get out of it, instead of silently and loudly bitching about how frustrated I am with my life.
No, I am not going back to finish my Thesis as I might just end up banging my head on the tiled Lanai floor of Miriam College. No, I am not going back to school, though I whole-heartedly wish I could go back in time, back to when I was 17 and filling up course application forms. Instead of deciding to take up some useless course like International Politics, I would’ve majored in Communication Arts or Business Administration, specializing in E-commerce. If I knew I’d end up flipping an Avaya phone the middle finger every time a beep would come through my headset less than a year after college, I would’ve rid myself of my “Eh ano ngayon kung di ako papakainin ng prinsipyo ko? Mayaman si Mama! O eto, International Studies, majoring in International Politics! Isang kurso na walang ka-demand demand sa Australia!” mentality.
My life has admittedly been made up of one bad decision after another, in the same way that my “love” life has been made up of one boyfriend after the other. I’d think it cool, if I probably were 14 with an uneven haircut and the tips of my hair dyed blonde and totally into the whole Myspace drama scene. But I’m freaking 22 years old. Ten years ago, I thought that by the time I hit my early 20s, I’d be a successful novelist churning out bestsellers, engaged to a certain blonde musician, and living in some hick suburb in Oklahoma. What a LOL, the reality that is Helga Weber now.
So. A big hopeful sigh here. The desire to resign from this job and quit this industry has never been stronger and the need to be somewhere and something else has never been more appealing. And surprise surprise, there’s actually progress!
And forgive me for turning sappy, but there are two people I’d like to thank for helping me come to this realization. Lover, who told me that I’m too pretty to be working in a call center (lol) and that I could be So. Much. More. My mom (who is dangerously close to finding this blog, and I’m totally crossing my fingers she sticks to Friendster) whom I disappointed by letting go of my academics just so I could be financially independent. She allowed me to be the stubborn person that I am, never tried to impose what she wanted for me, yet offered her help when I told her I’m getting out. And took me shopping, too! Her words when I informed her of my plans to leave my only source of income, take up these courses, and not move back home: tell me whatever you need so I can help you out.
I just wish I could ask her for rent money.
Now I go back to serious writing.
