Acceptance before understanding

So I said to a friend with conviction, but not with finality, in the attempt to wrap up our birthday date with an aphorism we could both use. Here is another step towards getting there.

Today I shall begin wearing my heart on my sleeve, until the emotions are nothing but words. Why, who says I cannot wear it on my wrist, too?

Think Before You Jump

It's so conveniently fashionable to go green these days. And green can mean anything that is friendlier to the environment: from organic to energy-efficient to less resource intensive to zero-waste. While these alternatives are readily accessible, we, consumers, still need to carefully evaluate our options if they are really helping or we are just buying some marketing strategy that has GREEN all over it.

In grad school I learned about life cycle analysis (LCA) and how, depending on the system boundaries you set, a ceramic mug can be a lot less environment-friendly than a styro cup. I will not delve into the details of how we computed this but let me just list down some common choices people (even companies) haphazardly make without making an actual cost-benefit analysis to establish if they did not make matters worse or realize other associated risks.

1. Styro or plate?

I've heard of a fastfood chain that, in the excitement to go green, switched from serving food in styrofoam containers to plating them in washable wares. The solid waste generated was greatly reduced, however, trade-offs were not realized. The chain now used more water and greater amount of cleaning chemicals (more resource intensive). The biological oxygen demand (BOD) and surfactants in their wastewater also increased.

2. Switching to energy-efficient lighting

We rarely see incandescent bulbs anymore as they are known to consume more electricity but most of it is converted to heat, instead of light. The government through the Department of Energy encourages switching to energy efficient lighting (EEL) systems such as fluorescent lamps (with ballast) and CFLs. However, the general public should be informed that fluorescent lamps and even some CFLs have mercury inside. As such, should one decide to switch to EELs, one should be careful not to break new or busted lamps or even mix them into other types of domestic solid wastes.

For more information on lamp waste management, you can check out this Guideline. The establishment of a mercury recovery facility in the country is still underway. In the meantime, proper waste segregation can help. I remember being asked to do this very amateur poster in Powerpoint in my early days in consulting, and was happy to see it hanging on the wall of an Ayala underpass I was traversing some time ago:

3. Paper towel, hand towel, or hand dryer?

I got disappointed the last time I was in this newly renovated hotel along Roxas Boulevard. And it was not because of bad service or bad food. It was that they provide rolled hand towels for guests going to the washroom. One uses them to dry his hands ONCE and then throws them conveniently into the nice wooden baskets. Again, washing these would mean using more water, more detergent and fabcon in the waste stream, plus the electricity consumption would jack up if they use dryers. Why not use paper towels, instead? At least most of them come from recycled materials. Another option is the hand dryer, which would only have implications on energy use. But I personally recommend the wisik-wisik technique, or the use of the excess water to tame your stubborn hair frizz. A good friend would even use her blouse to dry her hands!

Really, it doesn't hurt to read more or ask around before going green. OR before joining a pageant like Miss Earth Philippines and babbling your way into the Final Round.


xoxo
Earthling

Hearts Will Hold

Hold your own

know your name

go your own way

and everything will be fine.

(Details in the Fabric, Jason Mraz)

Today I felt healed. I guess there's really magic when we embrace all the good things that happen to us and accept the things that we cannot change. While we're young and able, let's all shout "What the heck?" and live the day as if it were the last. Try...

starting and growing relationships;  

planting your first tree;

conquering heights (while singing Rolling in the Deep);

writing your dreams on the sand far enough from the waves;

watching the sun dive gracefully;

sharing sweetness and color with your best friend;

and crying over a heartfelt, hopeful song.

Thank you, Dear Universe, for reminding us time and again that hearts will hold. Surprise me when I wake up. I'm ready.

I Choose to Live It

I am playing Captain Planet today because I'm wearing this shirt that says "Save the Planet, Ride a bike."

This also serves as a thank you note to my cycling friends who do Mama Earth a favor when they choose to cycle (notice the LiveStrong baller on my wrist?).

I am not a fan of radical environmentalism even if I devoted 5 years of my existence studying the biogeochemical cycle and almost 5 years making a living out of it. Instead, I value making small, informed choices that, when replicated by people I know and the people they know, would somehow make a difference.

Here is a mini list of our everyday choices that secretly make the Earth smile. :)

1. By the bulk
Every year in the International Coastal Cleanup Day, we realize the downside of a retail economy as we haul sacks of waste packaging materials. I began purchasing common household items in bigger containers. I get a bottle of shampoo instead of a dozen sachets. We buy 250 mL bottles of dishwashing liquid and just grab the refills for succeeding purchases.  Not only are they cheaper in the long run, we throw less into the waste stream. Bigger containers are also usually recyclable/reusable so chances of material recovery are high.

2. House water, please
Remember Katherine Heigl in The Ugly Truth, lecturing about how water from the tap is essentially the same as bottled water? I read a blog by Jason Mraz that argued along the same lines and added insights on the extra waste created by patronizing bottled water. By choosing to drink house water in a restaurant (filtered naman eh) one conserves materials used in packaging, avoids non-recyclable solid waste, and saves energy from product transport.

3. I think before I print
Imagine how many ATMs there are in the whole country. Imagine also, that several transactions happen in each of those machines. How many rolls of paper or liters of ink are then consumed in a day, month, year? When the machine asks if you want a printed receipt, you can politely decline and press "No" and it will totally, totally understand. If you're still the type who would inquire balance, print receipt, withdraw, and print receipt AGAIN, that would be an overkill insult to your ability to do elementary subtraction. Print your receipt only when you need it. :)

It seems impossible for one person to hug the Earth given its 40075.16 km circumference, much less save it. But if its ~7 billion inhabitants would join hands, our awesome planet would surely find the huddle 174 times cozier and warmer (oh no, I hope not too much to cause global warming).

xoxo

Lombardia's Gingerlove in a Cup

There is a strange connection between Belgium, tea, and me. I was more of a coffee drinker before my Belgian roommate, Virginie, introduced me to the blissful experience of drinking thee (Dutch for tea) in our tiny apartment in Amstelveen. We even had thee time after breakfast, in the afternoon while studying, and after dinner while watching Gossip Girl. Incidentally, because of a magical map I picked up in a hostel in Antwerp, I got into trying one heavenly cup of ginger tea in Belgium's quirkiest organic food joint: Lombardia.

The interior was far from Antwerp's general 16th-17th century ambience.

I sat on an empty spot near the window and scanned the menu for the drink that made this store famous worldwide.

But actually, I didn't have to since the store posters screamed their bestseller!

My warm ginger tea arrived a few minutes after I placed my order. It was a mug of frothy, bright yellow tea that was a divine surprise. It had the tangy ginger-citrus taste that felt really good on the throat, but it also had the right, almost milky, kind of sweetness. It was served with a fresh slice of ginger at the end of a stick.

Story goes that a journalist from Wall Street Journal had tried GingerLove when he visited Antwerp and listed it as among the "Must Do's in Belgium" that even international stars like Sting and Moby came and tried the drink. GingerLove's recipe remains secret but the magical experience of drinking it sure has been heard in many places.

If we can make our local salabat as heavenly as this, I would drink it everyday and twice on a Sunday! Then again, who's to say we don't have our own fine herbal concoctions to rave about? I've tried Bistro Remedios' lemongrass iced tea (only I asked it to be served warm) and Travel Cafe's hot basil and calamansi tea. They did taste great and were therapeutic, too! And as I write this I am already thinking I can feature local herbal teas here one day! I saw Travel Cafe's menu had Ginger Iced Tea on it; that would be one to try. Aaaah... Good things happen when you spread the --

Check out www.gingerlove.be for the latest updates, such as this:

"GingerLove is now within the reach of all, the GingerLove machines are no longer required to prepare a delightful cup GingerLove. You can now drink GingerLove any time and any place: at home, at work, while travelling, during sports. The only thing you need is a sachet of GingerLove,  to which you add ice-cold or boiling water. Stir or shake, and your own GingerLove is ready to drink!"

The Ghost of 211

You enter the room. You press the doorknob button and your door is locked. You put down your backpack, take off your shoes, and rest a bit. You turn on the AC. You go to the bathroom and wash your face to freshen up. You change into a comfy shirt, get your keys, and slip your flipflops on. And then you walk towards the door and turn the knob. Door wouldn't open. You try to pull again. Nothing. You realize that the door has been bolted, so you try to slide the old bolt with a bit of effort.

This is the part where you realize it was the first time you have noticed the bolt, or the fact that there is a bolt. The questions start pouring:

1. If you'd known (or noticed) that there was a bolt, why would you keep pulling the door when you turned the knob? (Conscience says: Maybe you had not noticed the bolt!)

2. If Conscience was right, how could you firmly slide the bolt if you had not noticed it was there when you entered? (Conscience says: Maybe you just couldn't remember!)

3. If Conscience was right, how could you not remember something you have just done? (Conscience says: Then maybe you didn't do it!)

4. If Conscience was right, and I was alone in the room the whole time, then who could have touched the bolt? (Conscience says: Sleep tight, my friend, but with the lights and TV on.) 

(Photo courtesy of es.wikipedia.org)

How To Make Mr. Frown Smile

In all of the farewell speeches for our dear Jap boss, he was remembered as someone who wouldn't smile. This is from all of us who believed it was possible. Sayonara!

(Can I just say, YouTube is kinda psychic. It chose the frame that had me in it for the thumbnail. Heehee!)

Adobe Lightroom and Botox

I was happily twirling my pasta with a fork when my bestfriend's barkada talked me into getting Botox... FOR FREE!

Foine, foine, I volunteered to be a guinea pig once they need demo patients for their new Botox treatments. I have a condition called hyperhidrosis, which makes my hands and feet sweat like mad. Yes, they do have a term for that, like those 25-Everyday-Things-You-Never-Knew-Had-Names (thanks, @juneeeee).  And hyperhidrosis can be limiting: can't get past the office biometrics terminal, too shy to hold hands during the Ama Namin portion of Sunday service, can't be in high heels in non-air conditioned places for too long. I learned that Botox treatment would keep me dry for about a year. But it would also cost about 60 frigginthousand when I have to pay for it. Let's wait another 5 years, maybe rates will go down.

Speaking of Botox, I read a funny tweet from @slothee a while ago:

Editing pics is equivalent to Botox in today's virtual world.

Incidentally, my sister recently taught me how to perform an instant Botox in Adobe Lightroom using adjustments in Clarity and Luminescence. These are perfect actions for quick fixes, especially if you want fine lines to be barely there. Let's test them on the guinea pig, shall we?

Obviously they don't do any magic to one's poorly groomed brows. Toink. Anyhow, I love how my sister patiently teaches me how to do all these post-processing tricks. And THANK YOU (x1,000) for making such a cute header image for Turning Choosedays. You are the best!

XOXO

Time and EQ, or how to build a Lego watch

I decided to get CJ a Lego watch  for his 26th birthday from Khaye of eshopping.com.ph. When she e-mailed me the design selection, the watches I wanted looked like these:

 

The one on the left is a Classic Bouncing Brick black watch CJ already imagined on his wrist, while the colorful one is the black version of their Chronograph, which is my personal pick. When they arrived 2 weeks ago my face went blank because I didn't imagine they would come in these:

I'm not really the tinkering type and I seriously worried for my EQ. Plus these are choking hazards! My resolution: assemble with a boy. It would be fun to do this together. And if I get happy enough, maybe I can give up the chrono. :) While I wait for our Lego time (and it's taking longer than I expected), I sit and stare at the boxes while listening to KT Tunstall's angsty album, Tiger Suit.

Does it look like I was overly elated when I said that? Try again.

I got a signed KT Tunstall CD from Japan!!! Super thanks to my really good friend, Mark, for remembering. Recently he's watched Sara Bareilles and KT Tunstall perform live in Tokyo. Ikaw na. But then, he said he couldn't give me the signed Sara Bareilles album because he was keeping it for himself. Haha.

So far, I'm diggin' Track 4-Difficulty and Track 11-The Entertainer. Yay for new music to get by! On that note, I want to share these beautiful lines from The Entertainer:

Time

Folds out on itself

Like a never-ending mystery

And I wonder will there ever be enough

Time.

XOXO

I Choose to Smile

Remember that little AVP gimmick I was working on when I wrote my first post? Well, I managed to execute a lot of scenes already using my Sony Cybershot. And surprisingly, a lot of colleagues bought the concept and gladly helped me stage the scenes!

While in Pagbilao, I showed some of my favorite clips to my boss and immediately he said, "Ako rin gusto ko rin ng ganyan!" He was sooo excited about it that he even suggested his mini-movie. When I was freeing up some space in my memory stick, I accidentally adjusted the screen size to the smaller bit, so we had to redo the entire thing. Ahhh! Sayang, ganda pa naman ng take. Since I can't use this anymore, I'll just post it for all the world to see. Everyone, this is my uber cool boss and his fire boys (turn off the audio please):

I smile every time I watch the videos I gathered from people. It was so much fun shooting and the smiley is just contagious.

While walking along the jetty, my good friend, Bong asked how I manage to smile even if this whole taking-time-off-from-a-relationship has been shattering me to smithereens for quite some time now. I told him bad vibes (BV in cyberworld) are not worth spreading. I'm using this quiet time to catch up with a lot of people and make certain unexpected career moves. If I get this one, I've got a bottle of Red Horse to thank. ;-)

So this officially begins my weekend, then? Pass on the smiley!

9lovelysummernights: On finding love or being found by it

9lovelysummernights: On finding love or being found by it:
When we start to step out
When it all goes 'round
When all the lines are defined though they don't intersect
When blurry things...(Read more!)

I Choose to Create

My former Journalism teacher shaved when we got our school papers out. My best friend, Katja, got diving lessons after we graduated. High school batchmate Johann changed how his name was pronounced when he got a new job. People get giddy when they get to certain turning points in their lives and do drastic things to mark these events.

Today is a Tuesday that needs to be marked. And I choose to create.

I'm soft-launching this blog after some digital footprint cleanup drive. In short, I am blackmailing myself to write more proper pieces (like >120 characters, if you know what I mean).

I'm also attempting a very amateur AVP for our Japanese boss' send-off event, featuring this happy placard:

I imagined this with Keane's Everybody's Changing from lightbulb moment on. Storyboard, check. Pre-prod meeting schedule, check. Camera sucks, but check. Video editing software, check. Skills to use it, no check. :( But OK, willingness to learn, CHECK!

In the meantime, I shall continue to stalk my good, good friends through their blogs. They are actually my inspiration to create. They are empowered women:

Rosee_bikebar
alwaysthewinna
PaperAviator

(This isn't blackmail. But I trust you girls can change the world.)

***

"What is so special about Tuesdays?" asked Mark (@butikinglaot) when I bugged him to brainstorm with me on the title. My cyberbug sister (@iamjhoysi) asked the same question.

I smiled. Basta.

Today I learned:
1) that some people trust my abilities more than I do;
2) the tipping point in an organization can really rock the house;
3) that one can never know the battle he has not fought;
4) that one can choose to be beautifully broken; and
5) that it's time to take a bow.