Mum, what's for dinner?

this is my first post after a long hibernation. yes, my little corner has been patiently waiting for me to filled it up with my daily ramblings and mumblings....

it is a taxing task to think of something to cook for dinner. i don't know about you, i don't like complicated food. i want it fast, simple and yet tasty.

it is always a challenged for me to prepare something which both my hubby and ysabelle will eat with gusto. the little one's a seasonal veggie eater, a term i made up, as she eats vegetables on a period of time. she likes cabbage this week and who know's what she will like next week.

tonight, i wanted to prepare something that doesn't requires my presence in the kitchen. i got the household chores done this morning, i need a break. who am i kidding? i need to go on line to check on friends...

....and here i give you, last nights dinner, steam savoy cabbage and beans ( ysabelle's fav veggies this week) and baked chicken on egg noodles!

freedom

today, we lost an icon of democracy in the person of corazon c. aquino. ..a former president of the philippines, a mother, a wife, a woman who knew and bear the loss in order to gain, to seek to be able to find, to give selflessly so as to received in abundance. she lost a husband, a hero of my era, to restore democracy in a land where apathy and indifference reigned from years of tyranny that drive this once proud nation to a pitiful sight. she dedicated her life,after the death of ninoy, to preserving the inherent right of every filipino, to be free.

i joined the nation in mourning as the philippines suffered another loss of a great person. once again, cory aquino, united filipinos in realization that when we move as one body and one soul to a great cause we can do the impossible. she immortalized what we, as a filipino, must all stand for...freedom!

may she rest in peace!

this appeared in my other blog. i thought it was befitting the occasion to have it post again.it takes me back to those days where all these started!

I was 18 when EDSA revolution took placed. I, with an aunt, went to EDSA after a call to once and for all end Marcos' regime and to barricade Camp Crame.I have never been so proud to be called a Filipino. The feeling of being a Filipino amidst the throng - rich and poor , young and old with one destiny -is undescribable. You need to be there to understand the feeling!

Freedom

Ahhhh!!...it is a breath of fresh air..refreshing, innovating, invigorating.

It gives us courage to face our mortal fear, dreams to build our hopes, ability to express our inmost thoughts. It is the light at the end of a tunnel; a glance of what is beyond the horizon; a promise of brighter days ahead. It convinces the most stubborn of will, softens the hardest of hearts; rebuild shattered hopes and broken dreams.

Freedom is about changes. It entails taking considerable amount of risks. It involves facing life changing challenges. It is a vision of men and women who shares a common goal, stands by the principles of their conviction and acts on it.

Freedom emancipates us from what it is that enslaves us. It breaks the shackle of injustice that impedes our growth and stuns our enthusiasm for life. A rousing moment of triumph over iniquity and subjugation. It is the voice of reason, the beacon of hope, the pillar of democracy.

To many it is worth fighting for. To the very few, it is to die for....

by eng
3 june 1998

truths in life...

i’m getting bored….my little one is in school and my husband is pre-occupied with the band JOURNEY at the moment.so, i have ample time to contemplate on my life.

sheer knowledge of one’s self is a cornerstone of how we appreciate and perceive life and whatever it brings us.it is where true power comes,an inelienable freedom begins and unquenchable noesis relies.

character isn’t made in the ease and repose of life nor the stillness and quietness of time.it is build in extreme adversity,in the moving ridge of tribulation.it will come forth triumphant,victorious and undefeated in the face of massive asperity.

we should see life on how we would like to live it…paint it as how you envisioned it painted;add your own colours into it.sing a melody you wanted to bring into harmony with life and in turn it will sing that melody back to you.move gracefully and in rhythm with life,don’t be too hard on yourself.in time, you will find the beat flowing easily. whenever you find yourself hitting bottom rock, know that the only way is going up. smile, even if it doesn't changed your circumstances it uplifts the spirit. who knows, it may change your outlook in life.

in life, nothing is ever written in stone.marvel on it day by day, savour it moment by moment.
breath as if it is your last, laugh as much as you can, love as deeply as you live,derive pleasure from it as if there’s no tomorrow.

in tranquility and prosperity - be thankful; in rigor and sternness - be prepared. when the wheels of life turns, you’ll never know we’re you’re gonna end…

image courtesy of joy of simple life. this article first appeared in my old blog, simply me.

melissa's birthday gift away!

melissa,the founder of blogging for fun group, will be celebrating her 40th birthday on the 8th of august. as customary, friends and love ones should be racking their brains to find a perfect gift for her.well, this year she will turn the table on us, she decided to give a gift instead to someone. she will be giving one hot pink tourmaline with white topaz ring ( a sterling silver, 61/2 band ring with each stone measures 10mm, 10 points each with a total of 1/3 of a carat) to a friend or stranger alike.



you might ask, what shall i do to get my hands on it? simply check her site -melissa's jewelry and gem - sign up as follower,take a poll, post a blog about it and send her an e-mail at melissaruede@yahoo.com. oh! how simple can that be! come and give it a go..it's fun and you can be the lucky one to get her birthday gift away!!

oh! one more thing and the most important of all...you must be living in usa, canada, great britain, the philippines and australia to take part! so, if you are, don't miss the chance to own this fabulous gift!

advance happy birthday, melissa!!

i've been tagged...

leomar, a fellow blogger and a member of blogging for fun, tagged me. i like being tagged, i think its fun. so, after i read his message i went to see his site and check the rules of the game.

now, here are the rules:

1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random and/or revealing things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your post entry is up on your site.

ahh! six things about me. where do i start, lemme see?

1.) i can't swim. i know there's no excuse for it but, i realized the older you get the more frightening it is to let the water level go above your chin without having a panic attack! note of warning!!!i cannot guarantee one's safety if i was pushed or thrown into the deep and live to tell the tale....ha!ha!ha!

2.) it is my sexual fantasy to make love on a deserted beach in broad daylight. what's keeping me to make it a reality? first, i need to have my own private beach which i don't think i can ever afford in this lifetime. second, like most fantasy once it happens it isn't as wonderful as you expected it to be.for all i know it could be very uncomfortable. so, i decided to keep it as such...fantasy.

3.) i am a nurse, an operating room nurse. i never dreamed to be otherwise. i was in grade school then when i decided i wanted to wear white when i grow up. well i don't know about growing up( stopped growing after 4'11") but hey, i fulfilled wearing white, didn't i?

4.) i read most of hardy boys and nancy drew paperbacks when i was in highschool. that's what started my love for espionage/ mystery books the likes of robert ludlum and tom clancy.oh! when lara croft's tomb raider hit the market eons ago, i need to have one. that's how crazy i was or still am to mysteries and the likes!

5.) th first poem i learned to recite was the "owl and the pussycat". i heard a neighbor memorizing it and did the same. it could be the catalyst for my poetic (?) inclination...ha!ha!ha!

6.) it took us 10 long years before i was able to conceived. i was 35 when i had my first and only child, ysabelle. i resigned myself then that i will never be a mother. hey! miracles do happen and ysabelle is the living proof of it!!!

well, that's all folks! now, let us hear your's...........

http://femmepower
http://cookit-up.blogspot.com
http:/thelettersinnovember.blogspot.com
http://....anonymouslyyourslove.blogspot.com
http://simplycherrific.blogspot.com
http://mommyscchoo.blogspot.com

Baguio...Summer Capital of the Philippines

I had been to Baguio a couple of times in the past. It is one of the greenest, cleanest and safest city i ever visited. The climate is perfect in summertime. There's a lot of place to visit and no time to do so....

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Located in northern Luzon, Baguio City was established by the Americans in 1909, It is sited about 1,500 meters above sea level, high in the Cordillera mountain range giving the city an almost temperate climate.

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Kennon Road road is the fastest route to Baguio but is the most dangerous with frequent landslides during the rainy season.

It usually takes an experienced commuter an average of 45 minutes by car to negotiate the steep and winding climb up to Baguio. There is a need to be extra cautious when driving through Kennon Road since you will encounter sharp hairpin turns and blind curves. There are no guardrails on some portion of the road and most of these guardrails are not strong enough to stop a wayward vehicle from falling into a deep ravine just beside it

curved roads of kennon at the very edge of the mountain

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Baguio Botanical Garden - also known as the Igorot Village contains many Igorot houses amidst various flora and fauna that grows in the cool climate of the city. Tourists can usually take pictures with the Igorot tribesmen dressed in their traditional costume.

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the garden on the way to the mansion, here is a favorite for picture taking and sightseeing.

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from top right: the mansion, burnham park, the bell church, the lourdes groto

Ornate iron gates open to the Mansion House, the official summer residence of Philippine presidents.

Burnham Park is located in the heart of the city, the park's features include a man-made lagoon ideal for boat rides.

Bell church may sound Christian and may even conjure up images of a Catholic church and its bell tower. But it’s actually a Buddhist Temple with a Chinese pagoda, arches, and buildings with lots of intricate designs like dragons and Chinese characters and symbols.

Aside from the statue of Mary in the famous grotto atop the Lourdes Grotto Hill, this famous spot is popularly associated with its 252 steps up the spot that overlooks the city proper

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from left: the philippine military academy, a cave in botanical garden, mines view park

PMA is among the country’s premier military schools where future military, police, and naval officers come from. Built in 1950 on a 373-hectare land of lush forest and rugged terrain

The mouth of a cave in botanical garden. where it will lead you, i cannot tell..

The panoramic view, from Mines View Park , of the Benguet mountain range is a welcome treat.

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tagaytay..home to taal lake and volcano

Tagaytay lies on top of Tagaytay Ridge which, at 640 m (2,100 ft)above sea level, is the highest point in Cavite. The city is located in the Province of Cavite, on the island of Luzon, approximately 56 km (35 mi) south of Manila.

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Taal Lake is home to a venomous black and white "sea snake" (Hydrophis semperi). This species is one of only a few snakes of its type that breeds in freshwater. Taal Lake is also habitat of world's only freshwater sardine, Sardinella tawilis. The fresh water lake is located within a complex volcanic caldera, one of the great volcano-tectonic depressions of the world

Hydrophis semperi

Sardinella tawilis

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Taal Volcano, which is reputed to be the world's smallest and yet most active. It stands on its own island amid a landscape of ash and cinder. Taal Volcano itself has a lake of its own inside its crater called "Crater Lake". One can even swim inside the Crater Lake but the lake's water is a very diluted form of sulfuric acid with high concentration of boron, magnesium, aluminum and sodium in salt form. Its mean depth measures 20 m. In its dark water no life of fish is possible.

what's in a name?

i always wonder what it is in a name? do we have name simply to identify us from the next person? does a name say something about us, our personality, our character? i have no answer to these questions. but, i can tell you what's in my name...

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

----Shakespear's "Romeo and Juliet" , II,ii, 1-2

rowena, it is of old german origin meaning fame and happiness. it is also an old english name meaning slender and fair. i read it somewhere it also means gray hair. i do not know about fame but i am happy. yes, i am slender but more of brown-ish than fair in complexion. definitely, the grey hairs are becoming evident to show off wisdom (ha!ha!ha!) than my advancing age...i love to think.

most of the research i did can be summarized what my name says about me.




you are energetic and courageous. you stand up for your beliefs and for what you desire. you are independent, strong willed and fiercely competitive when needed although your ambition is tempered with patience. you maintain a positive attitude and with a more organised or practical approach to life material success is very likely. your immensely loving and generous nature brings joy into peoples lives and ensures your happiness.

you are very charming... dangerously so. you have the potential to break a lot of hearts. you know how what you want, how to get it, and that you will get it. you have the power to rule the world. let's hope you're a benevolent dictator!

you are very intuitive and wise. you understand the world better than most people. you also have a very active imagination. you often get carried away with your thoughts. you are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. you sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals. you are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. you are confident, authoritative, and aggressive.

are these discription true, one might ask. in all honesty i don't know. if you know me, please tell me so. if you don't, then i'm afraid you have to know me at your own risk........

a cuppa to cool off

it isn't every place i come to work that i find someone whom i can emulate. someone whom can be my superior and friend at the same time.someone whom i can be battling head to head or neck to neck with issues at work and somehow managed to end up liking and respecting each other more.

i found such person in hilda lott. my mentor, my sister, my friend.

for her, i am willing to break a stand i set myself about not mixing friendship and work. we begun our working relationship on good note. she, an excellent mentor and i, an eager protegee. she's articulate, eloquent and to me, the best nurse i ever work with. she's up front, honest and just. she can't stand idle and unmotivated people. it drives her mad to know that colleagues, figuratively speaking, can do murder and get away with it. she drives herself to her upmost limit and beyond. for her, it's her best or nothing at all, money and prestige will come later. i don't know about the financial equivalent but, she wears the crest of prestige-that i can vauch.

there were few occasions she and i doesn't see eye to eye on some issue. i lost track of most of them. so long as our difference of opinions is work related and nothing personal we shall weather the storm together, so we both strongly believed. she is a determined person and i am stubborn. there may be instances that i may have overstepped the boundary of being her subordinate and i thank GOD she makes allowances for my failure. she sees potential in every one and try to let you be aware of it. she sees something in me that given time can be a great asset, i am not even aware it existed whatever it is. i always said to her....." you don't need an enemy, you have me".... which sort of give you an idea of how how brutally frank to each we can be or at least i can be. honest and know's meaning well. there are few occasions that we thought we almost lost it, the friendship. whenever such situation arises, we always go out for a cup of coffee and straighten things out. there's nothing a good-honest- to goodness talk won't solve and a cuppa wont remedy...thank goodness for coffeehouses, i believe we tried everyone of them within 5 miles radius...ha!ha!ha!

this is my favorite quote about friendship which solidly applies to the two of us. i told her so...

"I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

i hate the thought that one day we will part ways, it is inevitable. her home is south africa and mine will always be the philippines. she have other dreams to fulfill and so do i . i don't want to see her go and yet i want her to fulfill her dreams, big dreams. for now, let me enjoy her company and pay her homage by immortalizing her in words.

to hilda.....here's for friendship and for being a sister...not just at work but beyond.

about work and friendship

this was lifted from my other blog, i am a newbie in blogger and i am busy at configuring this blog( which is too technical and time consuming for someone like me). an old one, nonetheless whatever is written still stand today......


it’s late. just finished reading a couple of friend’s blog. here i am, debating whether i should drop a few lines about a topic that i actually longed to write for ages and yet couldn’t come upon the perfect moment …until now.

so, what brought this on? earlier, a colleague came to me and said”you are my favourite nurse” and that is from someone i have few scruples about. i was dumbfounded. i managed to say ”thank you” ,while trying to re-attached my mandible to my temporo-mandibular joint, as a result of that jaw dropping comment, and moved on.

i do not want to make friends in the workplace---my credendum when it comes to work. it sounds harsh and insensitive of me to say those words but, i do have my reasons and those justifiable grounds generates from years of experience.

i realized, as i rise in stature and has grown a little wiser in the passing of time,to be able to carry out my responsibilities objectively i have to keep a certain distance to people i work with. i am friendly but not necessarily be a friend. to pass down a decision solely depends on unbiased and non-partisan judgement, i need to free myself of any attachment rather than being a colleague.

in the course of my career, owing to being green as grass, there were instances that i had compromised my work etiquette and standard in favor of friendship. working with friends somehow sidetracked me from doing the job i intended to do. the sagacity of my decision were primarily based on what is detrimental to friendship rather than the profit the workplace will reap from it. i turned a blind eye, looked the other way, even swallowed work related virtue i hold dear...so as not to rock the boat,in a manner of speaking. it was liked treading on a very unstable ground, trying hard not to hurt sensitive feelings, attempting not to violate codes of friendship. to put it mildly, i lost track on what is crucial for someone in my position....OBJECTIVITY.

i write it all down to experience...the best teacher of all.

now, i made it crystal clear to everyone that i am not anybody's friend, i am everyone's colleagues as far as work is concern. when i put on my scrub suit i meant business. we can joke, we can laugh, we can play...only after we are done with the work at hand. inside the four walls of operating theatre, i am responsible for my patient's life. there are members of my team accountable to me and someone i am answerable to. within these walls there are rules i want people around me to abide by and run the workplace like a well orchestrated symphony. i cannot please everybody and stopped pleasing anybody at all. i am here to do a job and a job well done it shall be.

i may not be averybody's idea of ms. congeniality but, believed me, when it all boils down to it...even my worst enemy will opt to work with me.

a pledge?...an oath?

for weeks,i tried to contained the disgust and disappointment i felt that has somehow eroded my belief in common decency.every fiber of my being was crying out for justice.my energy was totally consumed trying to stop myself voicing an opinion(and a very personal one)on an issue that is very close to my heart.the infamous…V. SOTTO MEMORIAL HOSPITAL INCIDENT…to say i was appalled was an understatement.

i am a nurse.it is not by chance,it is by choice.i believed in what it represent and i knew that i can make a difference.i did just that,i raised the level of excellence of my humble profession by working, behaving and speaking in a manner expected of me as a professional member of a community.i acknowledged the fact that any endeavour i had to undertake will reflect not only to the kind of person i am and a class of a nurse i aspire to be BUT i also represent the country where i came from.i ,solemnly, made a pledge…….”i will abstain from whatever deleterious and mischievous…and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to mykeeping……..”and it is something ingrained in me as a prudent nurse and what any decent practicing nurse should abide by. i do not expect anything less.

as for all those medical practitioner who willingly and intentionally breached their nursing pledge and hippocratic oath…”whatever in connection with my professional practice or not in
connection with it I may see or hear in the lives of my patients which ought not be spoken
abroad, I will not divulge, reckoning that all such should be kept secret”….should all be ashamed of themselves.they dishonor the profession they uphold to elevate in particular and they are a glaring disgraced to the country in general.people like YOU gives nurses and doctors a bad,very bad name…….

people like those and incident like these leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and will defenitely have a repercussion in the image of nurses and doctors back home.a grim perspective.there was an outraged on that DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES comment both locally and in the U.S.i was expecting a mayhem that didn’t materialized on this one.

if this is the kind of treatment one received from your own people, in your own country, can you blamed other countries to think and believed the worst in us….????