Crossing Over

My doctors are right, stress really wears down my body and I really got a bad beating the past two years. I've been on break for a month now and I'm happy to say that I think my body finally had a much needed rest. I'm still fragile (I sprained my thumb just moving empty boxes!), but I've been able to do my back exercises everyday. I hope I can ramp up a bit with my exercise regime so I can be stronger. 

Writing has also helped me calm down a bit. My brain was mush last week. When I was a child my Mom gave me a hardbound notebook. She said I should write in my diary whenever I was happy, sad or angry. The activity always calmed me down and I figured towards the end of 2019 that I needed to write again. It's been ten days and it's working like magic. Yay!

Still have a lot of things to sort out, I hope and pray that things will improve more soon. 

Finding Dad, Finding Me

I've been starting my day with my back exercises and it's been better for me to keep moving around than just sitting all day. I'll probably conk out in a bit since I did quite a lot of laundry and chores today. In between though I've been watching "The Witcher" with Miguel and transferring loads of photos and old writings from super old CDs. I found three (yes THREE) boxes of CDs at home and Sweetie's homework for me is to transfer them to an external HD.

I came across some videos from 2004. I found videos of eating at Wendy's with my Mom and Dad. My Dad was still so healthy and was his usual jolly self. I was interviewing them about how they found the food. I don't even remember I took those videos and luckily I took the pains to save them on a CD (the proper term is "burned them on a CD"). The videos are very grainy, but to see my Dad moving, smiling and talking made me miss him so much more.

I opened only a few random video files. The video with Dad was the second one I clicked. I guess it's his way of reassuring me that things will be okay. My Mom said that since Dad passed away he never let himself felt. For me he usually pops in whenever I need him. I guess my friend Juned nudged my Dad because he's been popping in all over the place since November. I always thought it was because he wanted me to check on something, but I only realized the other day when his business card just popped out of nowhere that he's probably telling me that things would be okay. He used to do that a lot for me. 

Last year I made myself so busy to bury the pain of losing a good friend. I realize now I never gave myself time to grieve the loss of Juned. I've always been a warrior. I cope with pain by being productive. I was trained to be that way growing up. Finding Dad in an ocean of data reminded me that he brought me up to be a strong person. Not the wimpy, morose person that I've been the last few months. I know there's still a lot of struggles along the way, but I will hold on to this reminder while I rest and rebuild myself.

Love you Daddy.

Why It's Important to Check Your Name Online

It was already past midnight last night when I went to bed. Bagets tucked me in and turned off the lights already. I usually take one last look on stuff before I turn off my phone's wifi connection (yup I do this every night). Since I blogged I wanted to check if the format of my latest post was okay on my phone. I got lazy to type by blog URL and just typed "aileenapolo" on the search box. As I was scrolling down on the search results one result caught my attention since it seemed to have my contact numbers on it.

It did.

The website rocketreach.co listed my contact info posted without my permission. I immediately searched for a way to remove my profile since they had some really personal information on it. I managed to remove my profile, but it will take time before the search result will be removed. A friend told me that this unscrupulous website mines online data and even emails to get the information. This is just really wrong.

It's been a long time since I last checked my name on Google Search. I realized that I should do it more often to protect my privacy and security. I used to do this often but I didn't give it much thought anymore since I haven't really been active online. Sweetie said to also check https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to know which sites I've been using that have had security breaches. This also means you must change your passwords often.

So lesson learned, always check your name online and make sure you don't put any of your contact info out there. Afaik I don't have any of my contact info published publicly so this website (and other bad websites) have been finding ways to mine private data. Do check your info too.

To also learn how to protect yourself online, do check out Google's "Be Internet Awesome". It has a lot of content on how you can protect yourself online, starting with how to create proper passwords. This content is very useful for families .

Update: Last night when I checked my profile was already removed, but when I clicked on the "Claim Your Profile" link again the website had my name and work title on it again. So I removed it again. Grrrrrr.

PS A few friends have reached out to me and asked how I removed my profile on rocketsearch.co. Here's how:
1. Go to your profile and claim it.
2. You will receive an email, verify it.
3. Click on "remove profile".
*Better to check again 24 hours after since they had put back my name and work title when I re-checked. 

Travel Diary: Bohol Bee Farm

After Christmas we headed to Bohol to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. One of the places we missed visiting the last time we were in Bohol in 2010 was the Bohol Bee Farm. We were always curious about it and set it as a must visit place.

We headed to the Chocolate Hills first in the morning and had a hefty lunch at Too Nice to Slice in Tagbilaran. We were still so full when we got to the Bohol Bee Farm, but we arrived too late for the last tour so we just walked around.

We discovered that you can do so many things at the Bohol Bee Farm. You can stay there since they have rooms for rent, eat at the cafe, buy goodies at the store, have a massage at the spa and so many other things. Check out the video above for our most memorable experience :)

My Plan for a Spectacular 2020

Now that the holidays are over I'm now more relaxed and have had a chance to think about how I'm going to make 2020 a spectacular year. Last year was not a good year for me. I was in and out of the hospital for check-ups almost every week and that was the reason why I decided to take an extended leave to allow my body to rest fully. I've been away for a month now, but I'm still far from being my normal self. I decided to blog and resurrect my vlog again because historically it's been the best way to stabilize me (read my blog description above to understand).

I wrote a blog post the other day about what I'd like to focus on this year. Thought it would be a good idea to write specific goals and activities for the year.

Health - ramp up on back exercises (meaning exceed what my PT has pegged for me to do on my own while I'm not in SG), swim 3x a week, lose weight, reduce dependency on meds, eat better, sleep earlier to complete at least 8 hours of sleep, fix work set-up

Home Management - get more help from the boys in managing the household, reduce clutter by removing things that don't bring me joy

Work on Financial Freedom - my Kuya clarified with me that being financially free means you have income coming in monthly that can cover all your regular expenses. Right now I only have 5% of what I need to be financially free so I have a long way to go! (Suggestions are very much welcome).

Reading and Writing - I have so far been consistently writing everyday this month, I've yet to start reading a book. I should set-up a daily schedule so I can discipline myself more.

Breaks - work out break schedule with Sweetie. I'd very much like to make sure I'm always home for the holidays.

Travel - given that I need to limit my travel, especially long travel because of my health condition I still want to see the world more. I want to explore Japan more and I haven't been to France yet. I belatedly realized that I should have signed up for that La Sallian retreat in France I saw a few months ago. Hopefully another one comes up, but I'm looking at this other retreat to attend later this year.

Learn - learning something new is top of mind. I'm still choosing between cooking classes or sewing classes.

Hobbies - I want to create so many things, but time is limited so I'll limit my hobby to quilting for now.

Play - I need to remind myself that I don't need to be productive all the time. I promise to use my Switch without feeling guilty! And I have a couple of Lego projects I haven't started on yet.

Special Projects - there's two special projects I want to do. When I met up with my cousins the other day they said that they missed my Dad's special potato and beef casserole. I realized that we have to find a way to preserve our family recipes. I've started to take videos of regular dishes I cook and will soon post it as a vlog project. There's another project I have in mind, but I'm still figuring out how to make it work.

I've listed everything I want to do, but of course family is the priority. Things will adjust as needed. I need though to discipline myself from distractions and make sure I'm in good health. So far I'm proud to say that I was able to fight off a cold I caught while in Baguio and my body held up against catching Sweetie's flu (sorry Sweetie but this is truly an achievement for me). I had a sore throat for a few days, but I worked hard to make sure it didn't develop into something more serious. Whew!

For my dear friends who have been wanting to meet-up, sorry I haven't been participative in planning and showing up. I just need this time to rest and recover. Introverted me got a really bad beating in 2019 and I need more time to recuperate.

What about you? What are your plan to make 2020 an awesome year?

Best Buffet Experience Ever!

We finally had a chance to get together with family yesterday and decided to try out a new buffet place we heard about from some YouTubers. Eating at a buffet place solves the issue of individual food preferences and dietary restrictions so we thought it was a good idea to try it out for our family get together.

Arrived bright and early at The Alley by Vikings in BGC and we all just took a tour of the place first to check out what kind of dishes they had available. It was honestly so hard to choose since there were so many options. Sweetie and I started with some Japanese food. The salmon and tuna sushi were really fresh and a good starting point.

It was a struggle to choose what to eat, but I was magnetized by the sisig with mayonnaise (this is how they usually prepare it in Visayas and Mindanao) and I wanted to try out the bagnet. My mistake was pairing it with adobo rice and soon enough I was full! The bagnet was perfect and I can't stop thinking about it until now (haha). I managed to try the pizza and pasta and would've loved to eat more if I wasn't full already from the sisig and bagnet. I skipped the Chinese and Thai dishes since that's always available in Singapore.

Video round-up of the yummy food at The Alley by Vikings

When I get a chance to eat there again I already have a list of what I'll try out - the salads, salisbury steak sizzling plate, quesadilla and I'll probably try some of the Chinese dishes too. For dessert I focused on the puto bungbong since I've been craving for it for some time now, but I'd like to try the cheesecakes and pastries. And yeah the coffee was good too. 

My Yoda Toy Collection

I've had this thing for aliens since I was a child. I was a young child when I watched Star Wars, ET and Star Trek. Later on I was also enamored by Alf! My Mom absolutely abhored my fascination for aliens and banned me from re-watching ET when I was pregnant with Miguel. 

Growing up I collected a lot of stuff, but most of it went under water during Typhoon Ondoy. After that it took me years before I started collected anything again. It was a colleague, Hadi, who actually started me on collected Yoda stuff. We had this contest at work where we had to decorate our team work spaces. We decided on Star Wars and I just came in one day and my desk was decorated based on the character of Yoda.

After that day I thought about it and realized I was ready to start collecting again. I decided on Yoda because he's my hero, I find him cute and I thought that it would be pretty limited compared to the other Star Wars characters. My collection was supposed to be limited to small Yoda figures, but it has expanded to other things because of family and friends who have been indulging my love for Yoda (thank you so much!).

I've been intending to make a catalogue of what I have, but I haven't had time to do it. Here's a short video of my collection which is in my home in Singapore (will find time to turn it into a Youtube video). It's been hard to make a new video since my shrine is quite cramped now and I have to find a way to expand the space. Some of my Yoda items are also in Manila.

Now about the Mandalorian baby Yoda... I'm still thinking whether I would collect that or stick to old Yoda hehe. What do you think?