great in 08!

I didn't do this in 2007, so I thought I would do one for 2008 to make up :) I am currently sick [why why why] and it's snowing outside! Oh man. Hope you all had a great year and let's get ready for 2009! Woots!

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? I went to Arizona! :)
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't think I made any real New Year's Resolutions. Maybe just to study harder? Eh, don't really know if that panned out well, hah
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Nope, but 2 of my cousins got knocked up and are due next year!
4. Did anyone close to you die? Yes, sadly. R.I.P. to Raoul and Eric Viernes. :(
5. What countries did you visit? No countries, just Arizona. lol
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? More energy and a stronger immune system!
7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? The days I went to Arizona?
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Moving on to 5th year! Chyeah WHATWHATWHAT
9. What was your biggest failure? ID therapeutics? LOL
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? 2 infections in December! UGH - pharyngitis and the cold!
11. What was the best thing you bought? A pair of boots, gel pens, highlighters, my new laptop case from TJMAXX, american apparel clothes! you know, the basics :) OH! a juicy couture charm bracelet! :)
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Charles and Gillian because they graduated from college!
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Get back to me on this one..
14. Where did most of your money go? buying food and paying off my credit cards hahaha
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? going to Arizona and seeing Ne-Yo which ended up to be FEYO!
16. what song will always remind you of 2008? has to be:
- Closer by Ne-Yo
- Single Ladies by Beyonce
- and Hanna Montana songs!
17. Compared to this time last year, are you: happier or sadder? I'm the same, just sicker hahaha
18. What do you wish you'd done more of? going out, because I definitely didn't do much of that at all!
19. What do you wish you'd done less of? I wish I did less being-tired-ness. and of course, less stressing out.
20. How will you be spending Christmas? I spent it at Charles house and at Mary's house.
21. How will you be spending New Years? Ninang Fely's house! I hear this might be the last Ninang-Fely shindig ever!
22. Did you fall in love in 2008? I'm always in love!
23. How many one-night stands? none!
24. What was your favorite TV program? How I Met Your Mother, and of course, Law and Order
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? I hate our governor for cutting our school's funding and raising toll prices!
26. What was the best book you read? Facebook? Just Kidding! I would have to say Lexi-Comp!
27. What was your greatest musical discovery? the music from the Charlie Brown specials
28. What did you want and got? Juicy Couture Charms as well as an American Apparel gift card! and a Wintuk hat!
[what happen to question 29?]
30. What was your favorite film of this year? IRON MAN HANDS DOWN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 22, had snowman shaped ice cream cake, shed a few tears, played cranium!
32. What one thing that would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? maybe more money, definitely more time!
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? very clean-cut lines and simple shapes, also navy blue and purple were the colors of choice! Plus I should mention I basically reused a lot of clothes that I already have lol
34. What kept you sane? My Pharm friends, my other friends, mary, my mom [sometimes], and of course Charles!
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? James Franco and Martha and Beyonce!
36. What political issue stirred you the most? The election of 2008 with Barack Obie! Who couldn't get riled up? lol
37. Who did you miss? My non-pharm friends because I never get to see them! and Gillian who is in London right now!
38. Who was the best new person you met? Actually that would be just getting to know more of my Pharm Classmates
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008: Never take life for granted. Work hard.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. If you like it then you should have put a ring on it!

santa claus won't make me happy with a toy on xmas day

Well it is officially the end of Christmas soon to be in about 2 hours and i guess in some ways this christmas is another sign of times changing in my life. Not only am I getting super old, but as an adult [almost hah] the presents don't flow like they used to, the kids multiply like rabbits around this time, and I continue to grow in debt. LOL, no worries, my friends, because this is the season of giving -- therefore, I give. :) In some ways this Christmas felt kind of special -- like when Abby [one of my currently 4 ina-anaks] came up to me and told me she loved her present, a Hanna Montana bead set that I got for her. It made me really happy because I really tried to get her something nice that she already didn't have .. she's at that age where she is starting to appreciate gifts. As I transition from receiving to giving presents, it feels really awkward -- I guess mainly because I don't have a full-time job yet and my cousins are out having plenty of babies to give presents to. My Ate found out recently that she's going to have twins! she then went on to tell me that I better be making a lot of money. Oh, man .. haha. This in addition to Jenn's baby due in April. :-O I know, right? lol. and NO NO NO, my uterus will not be inhabited by any growing fertilized egg anytime soon. No thanks, ladies and gentlemen!

For some reason as the kids were opening up the presents I kind of was already planning for next year .. sure, it's really advanced but I know with rotations and all I'll have to set up a definite budget and make a list of all the kids that I have to get gifts for.. as well as to remember the important people that deserve gifts as well. My mom was commenting on how "we must be in a recession" due to the lack of presents for older kids.  I think it's partially that as well as a sign of the times. So many different people come in and out of your life that it's hard to keep track of who should get what presents. Maybe that's why Santa has a "naughty" and "nice" list. Maybe regular people just keep a "nice" list. Sometimes I think of how I want to give everyone I know a present because I feel sad when I see people who don't get any presents. When I was in church the priest said in his homily that people tend to overlook what they need and focus only on what they want.. and forget to be thankful of what they received. I think that rings true, especially with the materialism rampant in Christmas. Maybe Gillian was right when she asked everyone not to get her anything.. so we could just focus on how great it is just to be together as friends. 

When I was in church, I realized that the best part of Christmas for me wasn't the presents. It was being in church, with my mom and dad, and hearing the priest say his homily. It was signing O Holy Night at Midnight Mass. It was taking pictures with Charles in front of his Christmas tree. It was seeing the look on the kid's faces when they play. It's everything but the presents. haha.

To be honest, sometimes I do get disappointed when I don't get what I wanted for Christmas. I never make it apparent, because I am grateful that I even got a present, but I think everyone can admit that there was a present they received that they didn't like or need. But all that disappointment goes away when I give the presents that I give. Because as cliche as it sounds, seeing the happiness in people's faces is a present enough for me at Christmas. 

<3 to my best friend, Jackie, and Ren for leaving me some love in my blog. :)

don't treat me to these things of the world

uh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ..

Wow, Ang, way to turn 22 on Sunday! haha. I know, it's pretty ridiculous, I'm going to be 22! That's insane. I'm trying to wrap my head around that fact and it's still hard to understand. I remember being younger and imagining myself at 22, yeah, I thought I would be more "mature" and this and that. Whatever, it's okay! I am pretty excited - relieved that my semester is finally over. P3/5th year is hard! I am not kidding! I do not want to sugar coat it for all of the underclassmen but Pharmacy School sucks. I am glad that my grades coming back haven't been so bad - B's! woot! Well except Onco -- but that's another story ..

Today I baked another Oreo cheesecake that I'm either going to bring to Charles' house tomorrow for Lisa's birthday party [actually it is also my birthday too! But let's not get into semantics haha] or I am going to save it for Christmas or my birthday. I haven't decided yet. It looks pretty good and I'm proud of myself that I'm getting better at making cheesecake. Hopefully one day I'll experiment with New York style .. it looks too complicated though for now.

It snowed today, so sadly Charles and I couldn't go to the city and see the Christmas tree like we planned. It's okay, I think we might go see it before Christmas hopefully.. I love New York City! I'm always like a tourist when I go there. Maybe that's why I love it so much, I don't have to go through the hassles of work or the excessively high cost of living in that tiny island. I really want to go to the Candy Store there that I love so much and maybe down to SoHo where I haven't been in a while and try and find some Asics. I love Asics! And of course, I'd like to have some pizza or something. Yum.

Tomorrow I have work, le sigh. I hope it goes by fast!

Well catch you all later. Sorry if my entry is kind of boring. Time for bed!

dim all the lights, sweet darlin

so so so, it's time for finals week and reading days and the end of the fall semester and i'm doing what i do best -- absolute procrastination! ha! and i thought it would be a good time to blog right now about everything i am feeling and to see how long of an entry i can write. tomorrow is reading day and i should effectively be using that day to study morning to night, for my 4 finals coming up. oh man, i am just so tired of all the studying. the crappy weather we've been having doesn't make it any better -- it just dropped 20 degrees today here in the jerz and it's going to be "periods of heavy rain" tomorrow. man. i have recently been feeling the residual complication of life and all i can do is just stand back and let it all swallow me up like a giant whale of some sort. 

i was reading my friend renee's blog about her life, and her questions about career choices, and of course if you're a frequent reader i always have questions about my career choice because it's the long stretch and it's getting just annoying and as sam puts it bluntly, "i want out." after all, it's not like we have a choice anymore. i've got 1.5 years left! that's it! 

plus renee was talking about some stuff about her love life and i started to think about my love life too. it's pretty crazy because sam and i always reminisce about how crappy everything was when we were in 3rd year [P1] and i was just sad all the time because i couldn't handle the fact that charles and i were fighting all the time. and i mean all the time. it was getting to the point that sam suggested that charles and i break up for the sake of my mental well being. for some reason i thought it was a good idea to stick it out, and now we're like happy like roses. well ..

today i called charles after work [because sometimes i just have an incessant desire to call him as if he is crack and i'm a crack head] assuming he was home, but then he text back to me saying he was in new york for some seminar. say what? since when? exactly. that is what i was thinking. but he insisted that he told me, which clearly he did not, i tend to remember large details like you know, where charles is going to be. and then i got a little mad inside because he didn't tell me. and then i had an epiphany. sam asked me today how did everything magically turn around from the brink of the end of the relationship to happy roses. and i remembered. because all the times i would get mad charles would think that they are petty which of course would make me even more mad. therefore ..

ang is mad ==> charles makes ang feel petty ==> ang gets more mad ==> charles still does not understand and gets more mad ==> fighting ensues ==> ang cries ==> ang tries to make charles cry to no avail ==> ang feels guilty and cries some more

 .. and that was a summary of my 3rd year in pharmacy school.. ha. but my epiphany was that we both came to a mutual understanding ..

ang gets mad ==> ang tries to get over it ==> charles asks what is wrong  

and either:

ang cries  ==> charles apologizes  

or 

ang says forget about it [usually this one] ==> charles tries to be nicer

issue suppressed/resolved, life moves on

and so the whole fighting thing gets avoided. 

of course i still have my moments when the forget about it thing doesn't work [like now] and i get upset and i blog about it. [3rd option.] obviously, there are always issues that tend to bother me that i don't really mention online -- hey, you never know who reads this stuff -- that recur but have to be suppressed for the sake of, well, saving the world. just kidding. well, saving my world. my imaginary world. sometimes i think relationships are too complicated, but it would be silly to give up on one that is humming along.. after all, would you throw away a dependable car, or a fixed plate from the plate store, or your favorite american apparel track jacket? of course not.

of course maybe this is all a result of the fact that i have time on my hands that i am gleefully wasting away by writing in my blog. hahaha. 

never gonna give you up

NO NO NO NO NO!

i got sick! SADNESS! dammit, i don't know what happened but suddenly i got strep throat yesterday and now i'm on antibiotics! LE SIGH ..

so much for my big plan for going to the city to see the pretty tree on friday! i think i will have to take a rain check on that and go see it on another day. :( it has been a long time since i have gotten sick with a true infection needing a prescription that i thought i would be okay! but no! i had to get strep throat .. damn you infectious airborne bacteria! :shakes fist: exams are coming and i totally wasted a day sleeping yesterday and my hospital final is tomorrow. i am still trying to get through everything but it is way way boring like to the nth degree even though i plan on maybe going into the hospital pharmacy sector later on. [tell me why the people at my local chain retail pharmacy of which i will not call out on out of decency for my profession was totally bogus and didn't process my insurance right when i so had been going there for like 5 years now. hello! like for serious, that's dumb!] i thought that i could just fight the sore throat because i thought it was just a cold and you know us pharmacy students, they always teaching us about resistance to antibiotics and the overmedication of the population -- i was like, hell no i don't want a prescription! i just need halls! halls halls halls. well halls not working anymore and it was getting increasingly harder to swallow! oh man. so yes, i gave in and went to the doctor. yay medicine!

anywhos, maybe i might go to the city after finals or maybe during reading day like charles and i did last time. hopefully i'll be better by then and i won't relapse from this infection! le sigh .. there was a sample sale at triple 5 soul too! dag .. but who has money to shop! i spent all my money already LOL .. dags. this is just OD! christmas shopping is beat and i kind of want to do it online so i don't have to leave the comforts of my bed. oh wells ..

okay maybe i should get back to studying like usual .. til next time!