I haven’t updated my blog since the new year and it kinda sucks, you know, because part of my resolution is to document my everyday life through blogs and photos. I think I am quite breaking my new year’s promises. But no, I shouldn’t give up this fast. If there is one thing in life that I learned, that is resilience.

My holiday can be tagged as the best holiday I have ever experienced. Well, that realization actually excludes my childhood years where at the end of Christmas Eve, I had a huge bag of goodies from relatives. However, all that changed when I got, ugh, older. Since I hit puberty, I started to believe Christmas is only for 12 and below. It’s time to move on, though, from the stereotypical Christmas-is-receiving towards Christmas-is-giving attitude. On December 24th, we were on the road back to Los Banos –my hometown I genuinely missed and I so loved the fact that I started out giving this year. 🙂

Honestly, I was taken aback by the silence of the roads. No dancing Christmas lights and vibrant displays of lanterns. It was like the regular trip from Manila to SLEX then back home. Even the gasoline station which is well-lit throughout the year was all gloomy and dark that night. I didn’t have a concrete picture of the disasters and tragedies that hit my country while I was away for seven months, so I wasn’t completely aware of the whole situation. All I had were online versions of news stories, Twitter for that matter and yes, TwitPic. This made me think that maybe my fellow Filipinos didn’t splurge on the holidays because of the overwhelming string of unfortunate events –who could blame them.

After welcoming the New Year, my get-togethers started pouring out. I went out to see my friends and my orgmates; photoshoots and cocktail drinks here and there and heart-to-heart talks with old and new friends –it was lovely. I never appreciated vacations this way. When I was a student, vacations for me only meant staying up late, watching reruns of my favorite TV shows then sleeping until noon and binging on sweets and ham. But this holiday taught me to make the most of the day because we’ll never know if we’ll ever have a chance to see our dear family and friends that tight again.

Although, of course, at times we have to succumb to illnesses and other circumstances beyond our control. I had my first asthma attack of the year. I was flying back to Vientiane in a few days so I had to rest my ass off or I will be subjected to quarantine once I step inside the airport and their sophisticated temperature monitor screams THIS PERSON HAS A FEVER, SHE MAY BE A CARRIER OF THE H1N1 VIRUS. Or so, okay, I’m exaggerating. But seriously, those airport people will never allow people with fever to board their respective flights. So, with a heavy heart and head, I had to cancel all my activities that day. The following day, I sprang back to life and stayed up late at a friend’s house with the rest of my good friends talking about, well, stuff.

And now, I am back in Laos, back to work. I noticed that I am more comfortable at work now as opposed to last year’s. Maybe it was because I’ve been working here for quite sometime and my job feels automatic now. It was like I graduated the workplace-jitters I constantly felt last year. Now, my heart doesn’t stop whenever I hear the phone ring and I am more confident in answering it. I feel more at home inside our building, although, my desk feels weird –like somebody used it for a while, hmm, tricky. Walking on the streets of the city doesn’t give me the same old foreigner feeling. Today, the weather here is quite chilly but it’s chilly-nice –kinda like the weather in RP whenever a storm is coming and when it’s over. Ordering food is also a breeze for me now, and I am happy about it. Maybe I already acclimatized myself, in my new working environment and their culture. I like it here, I can try to live here and start a career…

Only that, I really want to be in RP.