Offline

I've been wanting to write this post since Holy Week when I was forced to go offline for a few days because my lines just went dead. It took awhile to get fixed because the telco re-connected it to my old address and eversince my internet connection has been on and off. And it's been detrimental to my blogging muse.

Anyway, goes to show how much my time is spent online. I've been really grouchy all week because my daily flow has been badly disrupted, so both work and other personal online activities have been going haywire. It wasn't so bad during Holy Week since I didn't have to work for a few days and I just focused on stuff that needed to be fixed at home.

And here are some things that made me really happy to be offline during Holy Week:

1. Gardening

I've been trying my hand at gardening for about a year now. I didn't like it at first, but I just feel so accomplished when a seed I planted sprouts. You should see my collection of mustasa in my garden. Now I can prepare my favorite mustasa beef dish whenever I like, served with fresh mustasa! It's so far the only thing I've been successful at. I'm awful with flowers. The white rose plant my Mom got for me hasn't been giving any blooms since February and the other flowering plants I have... well they're gone, save for the angel plants Mom gave last year.

My tree plants -- 3 orchid trees and 2 fire trees -- are so far growing steadily. The herbs I got from Tagaytay, half of them died already hehehe, but I'm working on keeping the others alive. I planted a couple of veggies during Black Saturday and I'm now seeing some sprout to life! Hooray!

I've been trying to blog about my gardening hobby at Gardening for Noobs. Hopefully someone can tutor me, haha.

2. Summer House Cleaning

I think a lot of my neighbors did this during the Holy Week break because the garbage truck was overflowing with trash when it passed by after the weekend. We doubled our trash too over the weekend after cleaning out some rooms. It was a great thing to do since it allows you to do an inventory of what you have and have in excess. One thing I'd like to learn is how to be like my Dad. He only bought things that he needed. I dread moving houses again because of all the things we have already. Uh-oh!

3. Cooking

I'm happy to report that I have surpassed my "learn one dish a month quota". I've lost count of the recipes that I've used in the past 17 months. I'm far from inventing any dish, but I can say that I'm very much comfortable now cooking for my boys. This is one adventure I'm glad I didn't get to do before I married because I managed to learn how to cook on my own.

My friend, Denz, the other night said, "Diba di ka naman marunong magluto bago ka kinasal? So natuto ka for survival?" Haha! He knows me well and he just recently got married too -- in the same boat that Sweetie and I were 17 months ago. I told him I learned just by watching Youtube videos (an important tip I actually learned from Dominic Ochoa, yes the artista!).

My cooking adventures are at Mabuhay ang Bagong Kasal.

4. Crafts

I was planning to make a couple of home-made frames during Holy Week. What I ended up doing though was the lay-out of three photo books -- our wedding album, my Mom and Dad's wedding album and our first year album. I was supposed to do just one, but ended up doing three! It's addicting! Anyway, hopefully I'll find some time to make frames in June.

So, as part of my sacrifice when our lines got fixed, I decided to do and finish a long-awaited project for my community - our Parish website. I was called to do it last year, but my Dad got sick and I put all other projects on hold to be able to spend time with him. I finished the site minutes just before Easter Sunday. I was really happy that I managed to finish (well continuously being edited) the project on the deadline I set with Him.

Quite surprising how productive I was over the Holy Week break. I think it means I should spend more time offline so I can do more :)

Here's a happy note though about having your life online:

The Online Life and a Dream

I've been online for more than ten years now. I guess I was lucky that DLSU took a progressive stance in adapting the use of the internet. I remember using ICQ and pinging my school friends through their ID numbers. It was really cool.

Things have gone a long way since Wordstar 4.0, dot matrix printers and huge floppies! I owe a lot to my brother who exposed me to the wonderful computer world - enrolling me for logo programming at the age of 10 (I definitely don't remember anything anymore) and giving me my first PC. Now the applications that bumped off the typewriter from the horizon are even more progressive, Google Docs & Spreadsheets allows you to edit a document in real-time with colleagues who are in another continent.

I barely read the paper. I get my news fix online through Inquirer.net and Philstar.com and sometimes through Manila Bulletin (who I hope would archive their articles properly). I read a lot of blogs, pay my bills online, write online through my blogs. Well, basically I can't imagine my life without the internet anymore (and that's why I'm so scared to go home to Bicol).

One of the things that I've been thinking about though is putting up an online business. I just haven't figured out what I'm going to sell. My friend Ottie has been bugging me about it for more than a year already. I told her though that it would be really interesting to put up an e-commerce business. I've been checking out websites that sell stuff online and studying how they've so far been successful. Most of them started really small with a defined niche and look at them now - big in their own niche, successful and their markets don't have borders!

Aside from determining the product, the market, I guess I have to study profusely on the Philippine Internet Payment Gateway Accepting Credit Cards Guide to learn how to go about doing business online.

Well, I hope I get this plan out of the oven before Miguel goes off to college. Now where's that personal mission list of mine...