Right After The Storm

Today is a Tuesday and Willie and myself are both off from our respective work. By the afternoon, Willie dropped by in our house and we watched a few dvd movies. Around 7PM we already felt the hunger pangs and we pondered as to where to go for dinner. We decided to go to an authentic Chinese restaurant located in Chinatown here in Las Vegas. It maybe because both of us were very hungry or most likely the food were good that we finished everything that we ordered.
I have attached a picture that I took right after the storm had passed on our table. I should also have taken a picture of the food that we ordered before we started devouring them but the picture posted here is a testimony how hungry we both were.

Just Another Week Had Passed

Just another week had passed and so far everything ran smoothly as it should be. There were no major issues at work that I wasnt able to handle and I thanked God for that. My workweek started and ended with ease although as the week progress, I was actually looking forward toward my days off. By then I could chat my heart out.

I was able to visit a family friend in the hospital after he had a major surgery to take out some cancerous mass from his pancreas. So far he's been doing well while he's currently confined in the ICU (intensive care unit)for the next 3 to 4 days.

Talking about chatting, again I met another chatmate and so far we both enjoy everytime we are online together. There was never a dull moment and I actually enjoyed sharing ideas, life's issues and other things with him. Although I have never broken my own chat record, like the last time where I spent chatting for almost 9 hours, everytime we talk or chat for that matter, it seems like we already know each other for a long time. I hope to establish a good friendship with him and I see it to be very possible.

I had a quick dinner with my best friend, Willie this evening. We originally planned to go to a better restaurant if he was able to leave from work earlier but it seems that they were busy enough for him to stay longer until 9pm. I was already feeling hungry while waiting for his call so I went out and went to In 'n Out Burger. As i got my order and started eating, Willie called informing me that he already left from work. We agreed to meet at Seafood City and ended up at Chow King. I had wanton & beef noodle soup while he got the chicken conjee. By the food alone you can tell that the night is feezingly cold due to a heavy downpour that lasted the whole day. Even if its cold we still ordered our favorite halo-halo for desert.

We called it a day and I'm looking forward to tomorrow, still on my day off.

High Time For Regular Maintenance

Just like any machinery, a human body with its complicated and intricate structure of muscles, bones and veins needs its regular maintainance.
I recently visited my doctor to subject myself for a thorough physical check-up. I didnt feel any discomfort and nothing is bothering me at all except my erratic blood pressure. My last doctor's visit was 2004 so I decided (with the strong convincing power of a friend)that its high time for me to have my check-up again.
I had EKG (electrocardiogram), a test to measure the electrical activity of my heartbeat. With each beat, an electrical impulse (or “wave”) travels through the heart. This wave causes the muscle to squeeze and pump blood from the heart. An EKG gives two major kinds of information. First, by measuring time intervals on the EKG, a doctor can determine how long the electrical wave takes to pass through the heart. Finding out how long a wave takes to travel from one part of the heart to the next shows if the electrical activity is normal or slow, fast or irregular. Second, by measuring the amount of electrical activity passing through the heart muscle, a pediatric cardiologist may be able to find out if parts of the heart are too large or are overworked.
The next phase is to have my complete blood work and urine test performed which equires me to fast 8 to 10 hours without food or water prior to testing.
Right now, its still a wait and see situation. Waiting for the results to have a complete findings and status of my overall health as well as draw out corrective actions if there are major problems found.
I'll post for an update soon. Just visit this blog again.

Dimsum Food

This is one that I also missed in the Philippines. When I was still in Cebu where I worked, whenever I go out on weekends and went malling either alone or with friends, I always end up eating dimsum. Whether its the authentic Chinese way of eating or not, I just love the different kinds of dumplings. In the Philippines we have the pork, chicken or beef over steamed rice. I loved them all.
Here in the US and Las Vegas in particular, there is Chinese Restaurant called Orchid Garden that offers dimsum favorites at lunch time. I went there several times already and the latest I went there was last Wednesday. Unfortunately they dont have the steamed rice toppings that I loved when I was still in Cebu but they offer chicken feet, also my favorite.
Here is a picture(above) that I took when I went dining at Orchid Garden.

Sinulog 2008

Having actually participated twice in the Sinulog Grand Parade in Cebu City, I still long to be in Cebu and witness the pageantry and immerse myself in the rhythm and the beating of the drums that comes with sinulog dancing. Its been 7 years since I last witnessed the Sinulog festival. This is always one of the most awaited event in Cebu and in the Philippines as a whole. During the festival, people from all walks of life and from every part of the world come to Cebu City and witness the "mother of all festivals" unfold before their very eyes. How I wish I can be there again soon.



The festival is a week-long celebration and will culminate on every 3rd weekend of January. This year's celebration will be this Jan 19 to Jan 20. January 19, a Saturday will have the fluvial parade on the harbor of Cebu City and in the afternoon will be the procession of the image of Sr. Sto Nino, the Patron Saint of the city. On the following day which is a Sunday, the Mardi Gras and Grand Parade will start.

I'm Back!!!

At last after 2 weeks of painfully waiting for my laptop to be fixed, I was able to pick it up yesterday on my to work. It was frustrating as the hard drive was being replaced so I have to reinstall the programs that I've been using. Fortunately enough, they were able to backup all the files I had in my computer and I was able to put them back to their proper places and folders.

As of this writing, I'm still in the process of installing some of my accessories, like the printer and scanner, my external hard drive and the rest of the software that I used. I still have to install my Microsoft Office programs like Excel, Words and Power Point. This will take several minutes and I'm quite sleepy now. I'll work tomorrow morning and probably by the time I'm back here then i could start working with my computer again to install the rest of my programs.

So far the computer works fine although I wasn't able to start the Bluetooth program. Maybe I still have to search my computer's hard drive for the correct program to enable the software. I love my computer because of some of its features really fit to my needs, just like Bluetooth connectivity as well as its multiple memory card slots/readers.

To be honest with you, I'm not really satisfied with the work being done with my computer by the Geek Squad. I was not happy about their service. I will tell you about the details on my experence with Geek Squad in my next post. Meanwhile I really have to close down and go to bed as my eyes are already half closed and I'm pretty sure that there are words in this particular entry that were misspelled because I dont have time to review it before publishing.

Till next posting.

The Best Way To Start The New Year

Before anything else, I would like to apologize that I'm a little bit slow on updates for The Daily Grind. There were a lot of things happening towards the end of 2007. First and foremost is my laptop computer. It was running wierd and I guess it caught some virus. Although I ran the anti-virus programs to clean it up, I decided to have it checked professionally. I dropped it off at Geek Squad located at Best Buy stores and I guess I have to wait for 10 days from Dec 29, the day I dropped it off, for them to complete the task. I asked the techicians or I would say the geeks to backup all my files, I mean all of them even if it seems not important. They may delete some programs that I had installed on top of the preinstalled programs when I bought my computer. Although I've been using my old and cranky desktop, its kind of slow and it could consume my patience to the limit. Nevertheless, I still used my desktop to update this blog now. Aside from my computer's problems, I really dont have that much happenings to talk about.

I started back to work last Jan 2 and what a great way to start the new year than work, work and more work. When I reported for work on that evening, the Robot-Rx that I've been working on had some problems on its envelope system. The envelope system is actually responsible to hold and store medications in an indiviual envelope assigned to each admitted patient in the hospital. This is the final step in the cart-fill process. I will explain more about the process on my next blog update, but for now just bear with me. Fortunately that night I was able to finish the cart-fill using the Robot-Rx with sporadic downtime of the EDS or envelope delivery system throught my shift. In the morning of Jan 3, the system itself bogged down. I contacted our field technician from Pheonix, AZ and asked him to come over to fix the problem. If this will not be resolved we will have to resort to manually pick all medications for each patient and we're talking about 2000+ doses of medicines, and indeed we had manual cart-fill that night. Fortunately the EDS was fixed by the morning of Jan 4 after shipping in a new motor that controls the conveyor belt. I stayed at work very late that morning to ensure that the inventory are maintained before the Robot starts full operations. This is also another reason why I wasnt able to update this blog for the past three days.

Right now, I'm waiting for the word from Geek Squad as to when I could pick up my laptop. Also since tonight will be my last night of work for the week, I can give a sigh of relief and will try to enjoy my short break of three days off.

A New Year's Surprise

I had quite a surprise last Dec 31 from a long lost friend. I have a Japanese chatmate for quite awhile now. His name is Ken. We were chatting almost everyday to update us on everyday life's happenings. He particularly liked to be my friend so that he could practice his conversational English. He is a Japanese by the way and went to school to study English. My latest news from him is that he was planning to get married with his long-time girlfriend. Almost 2 years now that we were not communicating although I did not forget his birthday so every year I would greet him through email. We had such a good friendship online.
He gave me a surprise this New Year's eve by sending me some greetings via email plus a picture of himself, his wife and their puppy. Here I am attaching their picture.