Travel: MERALCO Christmas Lights

If you're looking for a nice place to visit in the holidays that's absolutely free then you've come to the right place. The holidays are over but it's still nice to keep in mind this one place for future plans.

The headquarters of MERALCO in Ortigas opens its doors to all visitors during the holiday weeks. The electric giant has been doing this for several years now. There are numerous attractions in the area to bedazzle the whole family, the largest one being the light show that plays over the facade of the main building. This plays every 30 mins starting at 6:00 PM and ends at 11:00 PM, I believe.

Apart from this, there's also this giant sculpture of Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and baby Jesus made out of copper wires. This attraction is always on display every time MERALCO lets visitors in.

There's also a small train that annually chugs along a small railway, but when we visited it this year it was broken so I didn't take any photos of that.

Another attraction that's great to have a selfie with is the Tunnel of Light. I believe this attraction is new.

And there are a plethora of other attractions and light spectacles.

I wasn't able to take any pictures of the food stalls but they also have a small Bancheto-like area in the vicinity so if you want some snacks during your leisurely stroll with your loved ones you can go right ahead and get some.

I wouldn't say MERALCO's headquarters is the best place ever to spend your holidays in, but it's free and nothing beats the low low price of $0. Touring the entire place takes more or less an hour. I recommend making the MERALCO headquarters one of many Christmas light displays to check out in Metro Manila during the holidays when other buildings and offices are also showing off beautiful light shows like the Ayala Triangle.

What other places nearby do you know are also letting in tourists for free during the holidays? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments below :) Thanks for reading!

Reflection: 2020 New Year Essay

Almost everyone has been posting their end-of-the-year essays on social media so I thought I'd write my own even if it's a couple of days late. If you're one of the people who wrote about their experiences with 2019 then chances are I've seen your essay on my news feed. I've noticed that depending on who you ask, 2019 was either a good year or a bad year. It was a good year for those who were able to achieve great things within the year, and it was a bad year for others because they lost loved ones. My condolences goes out to those who lost their loved ones in the last year.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, 2019 for me was a year that was full of ups and downs. So much so that the ups and downs balance each other out. That's not entirely true. What I said was a very broad generalization that doesn't even begin to cover what I've witnessed in 2019.

I've experienced hurt, joy, depression, anxiety, love, stability, instability, freedom and a dreadful feeling of oppression in 2019. Not necessarily in that order. The highlight of my year happened around August, ironically when I was sent to the psych ward. While others would call that a bad event in my life, I actually think that it was a blessing. Not only was I able to curb my awful behaviors stemming out from my deteriorated mental health after I got out of the psych ward, but I was also able to meet people just like me who showed me I'm not alone during my time in it.

My lowest point in the year happened prior to my incarceration in the psych ward. I blame my troubled mental health for causing such misery on my part despite being fortunate enough to be financially stable. I was seeing everything through dark-tinted lenses; it was so difficult for me to look at the bright side of things because I couldn't see any bright sides at all.

If I was to graph my experience with this year, I would say that the months of January-May are tumultuous but generally reaching very high and very low points, while the days from June-July is my lowest point, and then the days from July-August are the highest point. The rest of the year sort of plateaus in the middle.

Despite all this, I can fortunately say that 2019 has been a year to remember happily for me. The more I think about it objectively, the more I look at the year in hindsight through the pictures and videos stored in my Google Photos account, the more I see that there are far more good things that happened that outweigh the bad. I'm thankful for all the great things that happened and I hope that more great things will come in 2020!

A Happy New Year smile from me, my mother, and my sister! :)

Food: Buttery Coffee Recipe

I hope everyone has a Happy New Year this 2020! :) It's the start of a new year. And also the start of a new decade. Everyone has their own experiences regarding 2019. Some people didn't have a great 2019 while others fortunately fared better. For me, it was a year that was full of ups and downs that kind of balances out each other. For this blog post, I'm going to share with you a delicious new drink that I learned about in 2019.

I've always been a huge coffee fan for as long as I can remember. I normally like my coffee with lots of milk, making my favorite cup a flat white. That doesn't mean I'm the kind of person to shy away from trying out unusual concoctions. Inspired by the Keto-friendly Bulletproof Coffee recipe, I've devised my own coffee mixture dubbed Buttery Coffee.

Now, butter coffee isn't new. There are dozens of different recipes online but what makes my recipe different is it's more delicious than the rest because the recipe below contains sugar as a sweetener, which butter coffee traditionally doesn't have. Some say that defeats the purpose of butter coffee, which is meant to be a healthy alternative that avoids carbs and sugar, but I'm creating butter coffee not for health's sake, but more for the taste buds' sake.

Without further ado, here are the things you'll need for a delicious cup of butter coffee:

1 cup of hot brewed coffee
1 spoonful of Ghee or 1 spoonful of Butter
1 spoonful of Coconut oil
2 teaspoons of brown sugar
1 large spill-proof thermos

All you need to do is to combine all the ingredients into the thermos, and then shake violently for a couple of minutes. Once done, pour out the contents of the thermos into a cup and it should look like this:

Notice the small layer of foam on top of the cup. That means the ingredients mixed well together.

I really like making butter coffee because it has such a unique taste and texture to it that hits the spot unlike all other coffee concoctions I've tried thus far. The brown sugar added to the average butter coffee recipe really makes it such a sweet treat, kind of like a liquid cupcake in a, well... cup.

I hope to one day make Butter Coffee for you, dear reader. Sometimes I picture myself owning a lemonade stand, but instead of lemonade, I'm pouring out Butter Coffee for customers.

For those of you that have tried Butter Coffee, what do you think of the drink? Are there other unconventional coffee mixtures you've tried that are just as good? As always please feel free to leave a comment below :) Thank you for reading my blog post and once again, have a Happy New Year!

Food: Cooking and eating a couple of Hot Pockets

My sisters and I ate a couple of hot pockets. We found some boxes of the stuff in S&R while we accompanied our uncle who was shopping for festive hams for gift giving. I'm writing about this because a hot pocket is not what one would consider a typical snack in the Philippines.

A hot pocket is basically an American burrito; a serving of meat and cheese wrapped in thin breading. One big difference between a burrito and a hot pocket is that a hot pocket is designed so it can't be unwrapped. Another difference between the two is that a burrito is considered a meal, while a hot pocket is merely a snack. Hence a hot pocket is clearly smaller than a burrito.

One box of the stuff costs 200Php and there are two hot pockets per box

To prepare the hot pockets for merienda, we had to take them out of the box along with a couple of "crisp sleeves" -- things you slide the hot pockets into so you can hold them -- that had the instructions written down on... them. We thought the instructions on the sleeves weren't clear, but we basically got the gist which is to microwave the hot pockets and let them rest for 2 minutes.

At first we tried to put it in the oven against what the instructions said because we didn't want to turn our hot pockets into lava pockets, which is what microwaves tend to do. But the hot pockets were still pretty cold after we got them out of the oven, so we proceeded with microwaving them afterwards.

Before we ate the hot pockets, we cut them open in the middle to let the heat out so we won't burn our tongues. Fortunately, the hot pockets weren't too hot when they got out of the microwave.

The hot pockets taste so-so. They're alright so long as you aren't expecting anything grandiose from taking your first bite. Otherwise you'd just end up disappointing yourself. Like I did. the thin bread wrapping texture isn't anything special, and the meaty and cheesy ingredients inside aren't all that fresh either. It's immensely mediocre, in my opinion. Jollibee's Peach Mango Pie and Tuna Pie taste much better and they're much cheaper.

That's about it for my hot pocket review. I'm a Filipino trying out this western snack and I give it a 5/10. What are your thoughts on Hot Pockets? Feel free to leave a message below :)

The finished product.

Reflection: The Pros and Cons of being Funemployed in the Philippines

I've been free from work (aka Funemployed) for about a couple of months now. It was my decision to resign from work so I never had any regrets for the first month of being free. However, slowly but surely as the second month of my unemployment comes to a close, I've become more and more anxious about my status.

I planned to go to the United States for a vacation during my freedom from work but sadly my relatives that are supposed to welcome me with open arms have their hands tied at the moment.

I'm pretty sure being unemployed isn't very different abroad, but I'll go ahead and list down the pros and cons of having a lot of free time.

Pros:

• You have all the time in the world

Let's start with the obvious one. Being unemployed is different from finally retiring, but both statuses mean a person has near-limitless time to do whatever the hell they want to do. I usually use my free time to workout, play video games, and do chores around the house.

• Working out regularly is possible

Before I resigned, my whole clock revolved around my shift at work. That meant I have to compromise other time-consuming activities. Sacrificing my workout time to sit in a cubicle at work is neither fun nor healthy. Being funemployed lets us use our bodies as it was meant to be used.

• Biking for fun is possible

Biking is something I've always wanted to do but never found the time thanks to my busy schedule. Now I can bike around the city where I live in and no one's there to stop me from wandering around. It may be silly, but I like to pretend I'm like a cowboy when I'm on the bike. The bike is my trusty steed and I ride off into the sunset.

• Play video games all day every day

During the rainy seasons when it's too wet outside to head to the gym or to bike around, it's best to play video games in the comforts of my own home. Just recently I played the heck out of Red Dead Redemption II with no discernible regrets in sight.

• Meet up with other friends who are free

Chances are there are other people out there who are also unemployed. Maybe some of your friends are unemployed too. Bar hopping is usually done by employees after their shift on Fridays, but we don't have to wait for the weekends to bar hop. Good times and good memories can only be made in this time of uncertainty and freedom that is Funemployment.

Cons:

• Too much time for you to handle

When does "so much" become "too much"? Too much of anything imposes detrimental effects on you. In the case of having too much time, you're faced with an attack on your psyche. Although we don't intend to overthink, neither do we intend to spiral into an existential crisis, that's most likely what'll happen. The pressure isn't there directly in front of your face. Instead it's an underlying sort of pressure that constantly reminds you that you're not being as productive as you should be, or it reminds you that all your other friends your age have jobs already but you don't. These are tough thoughts to struggle with.

• Your family becomes envious of you

Given the current traffic and weather situation in the Philippines, it becomes hard for your other family members braving the outside world to not be jealous of you because you have the choice whenever you want to go out of the house or not. Your family members don't have that choice. 

• Job hunting is hard

I was employed for about 2 years in my previous company. Just because I got a job once doesn't mean that other job offers will come in so easily. When I resigned, I didn't have another company already lined up. Objectively looking at it, it's most likely I'd get a job soon. But in reality, it's hard to look at things at such a logical perspective. Uncertainties of ever finding a job start creeping up, and who's to say the job I would find would be one that I enjoy? Will I even last six months in the new job that the future holds for me?

• Dwindling savings

If you're like me, you're living off the savings that you've accumulated from your previous job. I was wise enough to save a large chunk of what I earned, but until I start making money again, I'm eventually going to start eating away at a large portion of my savings. 

Technology: Different softwares used in different companies

I'm someone who's worked in many different places. I've stayed in one large company for a long time but I've earned my keep in a bunch of other smaller companies as well. While there are clearly objective differences between my longest stint and my shorter stints, there are some things that I've noticed that people tend to not bring up when they move around different jobs. Here are some of the few things I've noticed when it comes to the tools.

1. Outlook vs Gmail

The large company I stayed at lived and breathed Microsoft's Outlook. Smaller companies on the other hand used Gmail to work. Outlook is arguably more outdated but it's more systematized. Gmail is more at the forefront but that doesn't mean the company itself is ahead of the game, especially if everyone is just using their personal gmail accounts instead of the business package that Google offers.

2. Internet Explorer vs Google Chrome

My old large company made us work on Internet Explorer, despite all the comments and jokes about it being so slow online. It's the default browser we use to access web applications even though Google Chrome does a better job at it. I reckon it's because IE is less hassle on the digital infrastructure of the company.

3. Emails vs Workhub Apps

My old huge company didn't have any Workhub Apps. All the work was discussed through email. Younger and smaller companies opt to use workhub sort of apps like Podio to communicate and get work done. Podio wasn't the only workhub I used mind you. Transcription companies have their very own specialized WorkHub apps that deal with audio files.


That's about all that I can mention right now. Why did I bring this up? Because I worked at my old job for nearly 2 years now. I can't help but notice how much I miss using those "outdated" tools like IE and Outlook. Maybe they weren't so bad regardless of all the complaints online. Sure I'd agree with those memes if I tried to work on my laptop, but the IT team at my old company found a way to optimize the performance of all computers in the office so that they all work well in unison.

I guess I'm writing this short blog post just to say I took them for granted. Moral of the story is never take things for granted. Thank you for reading.

Fitness: Surprisingly Specific Analysis from Anytime Fitness' Free Consultation. Here's What I Learned

Just around July 26 -- that was a Friday -- Anytime Fitness representatives paid a visit to my old company's building as part of the company's Overall Health & Safety (OHS) campaign. Anytime Fitness offered free wellness consultations that I signed up for. The whole consultation doesn't take more than 20 minutes but there's a great deal to be learned in such a short time.

The InBody 270 isn't your average weighing scale.

The fast consultation is all thanks to Anytime Fitness' unique weighing scale that measures height, weight, blood pressure, and posture at the same time. It even prints your results for you. Once you've signed up at the booth, the representatives will put you on the scale and they'll tell you to follow the instructions on the screen. You'll be holding handle bars in both of your hands and you'll be raising them upwards, sideways, and below your waists. This whole process only takes 5 minutes. The rest of the consultation is the representative breaking down the results for you so that you understand the charts and graphs that the machine printed out. You can ask as many questions as you like.

Some of the special terms the representative will point out to you will be visceral fat and subcutaneous fat:

Visceral fat is the kind of fat that wraps around our internal organs.

Subcutaneous fat is the kind of fat that resides just underneath our skin.

Since Anytime Fitness is more concerned with improving our wellness instead of our sexiness, they'll tell us that it's important to reduce our visceral fat as much as possible. Because that's the kind of fat that contributes to most fitness-related illnesses like strokes and hypertension.

My results.

During my consultation, I was told that I had normal levels of fat and muscle all around my body. I'm doing a good job with my health goals. But I was also told I have the potential to put on more muscle. I was given a score of 78/100 which is already great apparently. Super muscular people can get scores above 100.

My girlfriend's results.

My girlfriend had different readings. While mine said I had normal levels of fat throughout my entire body, my girlfriend has a higher level of fat around her tummy area. It's okay I still love her anyways. She was also told that she has the potential to gain more muscle AND lose more body fat. She was given a score of 70/100

As long as you don't mind getting spammed by Anytime Fitness -- they'll inevitably do that once you sign up -- then I recommend getting one of Anytime Fitness' free consultations if ever they drop by your company grounds.