It has been one heck of a 2008 and I must say, I have been very blessed this year. Two highlights of my year had me move from IBM (where I spent 4 years) to Hewlett-Packard where I am very happy and finally not all stressed out And I was engaged to the love of my life and will be getting married on January 25, 2009 Here’s to an even better 2009 to all of us! Happy New Year!

I finally got my brand new Honda CRV exactly last week, November 1, and I’ve been driving it for a full week now It’s a wedding gift from my fiancee’s parents but we got it way ahead of schedule, which is great, and we both decided to take turns by having the car with us for a week each. I must say, the experience of having my OWN car plus the fact that it drives great compared to any of the other cars I’ve been driving for half my life had me totally obsess over it, tsk tsk. And now that I’ve got my old car back for a full week, I think I’m already experiencing some separation anxiety, ha ha!

I exchanged cars with Kris (my fiancee) yesterday and had to drive my old worn out Toyota Exsior back home in horrid Friday night traffic. Not that it’s a bad car, it’s just so FAR from how easy and light it was to drive the CRV, not to mention how amazing an alabaster gray color looked on a full front dark tint. Mmmm. To tell you honestly I knew NOTHING about cars until this new CRV came along, so yeah, obsessed is definitely the word for it. To give you an example, since I started driving it, I’ve logged how many km’s it takes for me to get from one place to another, on every drive I took, as well as how much time it took in terms of minutes for each trip. He he. How sad! But that’s part of my learning process, so let the happy person be! That’s it! Just wanted to rave

In the latest extravagant spending spree in the Middle East, and again in Dubai, yet another wonder has been built in the Gulf. In very close proximity to the 7-star Burj Al Arab hotel, which is the most expensive hotel in the Middle East, comes Atlantis. An £800million resort that will cost you £13,000 for a night’s stay. To put that into perspective in terms of our local currency, that is 66,362,968,405 (66 BILLION 362 million 968 thousand 405 pesos) they used to build the resort and for you to stay in their best suite for ONE night, you only need to pay a modest 1,078,389 (1 MILLION 78 thousand 389 pesos). My God.

This 113-acre resort was built on an artificial island off the Persian Gulf and officially opened for business on September 24, 2008. They say that one of the main drives they had in building such an epic structure was the move towards how tourism can help sustain their economy once regional oil profits stop flowing. So Dubai is pegging its hopes on people who are filthy rich to invest and spend their money there… wisely. He he.

But seriously, this place is a wonder in itself. The mega-resort boasts of 1,539 rooms with 17 restaurants to choose from. They also have what are called the Lost Chambers suites, where the bedrooms all have picture windows that look out through the resort’s 11m-liter lagoon filled with 65,000 specimens of marine life!

On the outside the guests have free access to Atlantis’s 42-acre Aquaventure waterpark. It is a one and a half mile river you can float in with fantastic rides topped off by the Leap of Faith, an almost straight down 90 feet vertical slide that zips you through a shark-filled lagoon in break-neck speed. The first time I saw this kind of thing was when I was back in my old company and they showed us this vertical slide in the first Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. It was going to be a perk you would get if you hit way past your sales quota. I was in awe at the first sight of it and wanted to go there SO BAD. Now I want to go here! Can I afford £230 a night though to stay in the standard suite? Yes I can, but I won’t do it!

It’s funny how I started writing this blog with three words in my head… Paradise on Earth. It would have been if it weren’t so darn expensive. It also got me thinking on whether I would actually go and pay £13,000 a night to stay in that unbelievable Lost Chambers suite that they have if I was filthy rich, but my answer would still be a NO. I’d rather spend that much on something else than throw it all away on one night staying in a room, no matter how amazing that room is. But of course, that’s just me. I would still keep hoping though, that some time in the not so distant future, my company would send me here! Ha ha. Until then, I will dream along with the pictures of this place called Atlantis for now, just like all of you will too

A really crappy thing happened to me on the way home from work today. While driving my usual route to the house, my car suddenly went DEAD in the middle of EDSA at around 6:15PM in the evening. I managed to swerve to the left side before everything in my car stopped working, so whew! That included the wipers, the horn, the windows, and the brakes! Considering this was the first time this has ever happened to me, I called my dad to help me out. Then I was supposed to call the car battery service company to bring a spare battery to me, but this guy suddenly pulls up in front of me and asks me if I needed help. He offered to tow my car from where I was straight to my house, which was almost an hour away! I was surprised and kept asking myself why some stranger would actually offer to tow me from a highway to my house. My friends kept telling me to be careful because he might kidnap me, ha ha! But he really did keep his word and I got to my house safe and sound, after around 45 minutes. I was very grateful and so was my dad, so we asked him to grab a quick dinner here and gave him some money for his trouble. He didn’t want to take it and said he wasn’t asking for anything and that it was also way too much… but we thought otherwise.

So, wow, there really ARE still good people out there. When I look back at what happened earlier, I still can’t believe it. When I tell my friends the story, they keep saying how WEIRD it was, and how that NEVER happens to anyone. So I guess I’m just really lucky or I probably have a guardian angel watching over me. And the fact that the world has NOT run out of good people who would help you out without asking for anything in return is always a welcome thought. So a big THANK YOU to Mr. Felix Bihag, plate number CMN 458 (unfortunately I don’t know what car this is as I know nothing about cars), for proving that there are still good people out there, and the world isn’t as bad as we think it is.

This is going to be a very short post I brought my fiancee home to her place which is the total opposite direction of where I live. It takes around 45 minutes to get home without traffic and pass around 12 stoplights. It’s kind of deja vu, but this happened to me just one time since I started driving, which is around 15 years ago.

I was going at a constant 100 km/h in an old Corolla, and for some reason, all the stoplights I passed were either already green or all turned green just when I was about to hit them. So I never hit the brakes, and it took me just 30 minutes to get home! I know it’s a weird thing to notice, but those of you who have driven half your lives know that this is a most wishful driving scenario! That’s all I wanted to share, hehe. Goodnight!

Oh what a week it was. It all started off last Thursday with a trip to El Nido, one of the most beautiful and serene honeymoon destinations in the world. Situated in Palawan, it has the most unbelievable sights and a pleasure to just sit back and enjoy nature at its best. Unfortunately, nature wouldn’t cooperate and I ended up being part of the worst flights EVER. Imagine riding on a 19-seater chartered plane (see below) with what seems like smoke but is actually air conditioning coming from the bottom of the plane. Then part of that joyous 1 hour and 45 minutes are 6 very considerable drops on air pockets in that flimsy plane. When I got down, I was stone cold and could barely move. And that’s considering I rarely ever get dizzy, and it was only drizzling!

Then Monday came, and I actually had an audition to join Wheel of Fortune. My fiancee had recently joined this and won around 160k Php, and I was lucky enough to have been called to try. So I was there at around 830am lined up along with a hundred plus other hopefuls. While I was minding my own business reading my book, some girl came up to me and asked me to come with her to the studio. Apparently, she wanted me to be part of a morning show, so I said why not right? I ended up in the front row, doing really insane exercise routines to the tune of the “Locomotion.” That was just really embarrassing and it didn’t help that some friends saw the show live and started texting me about it. Pffft.

Good news was that, I passed the written test (which was actually pretty hard) and the oral test, so I will be back next Monday for the trial game to determine if I will be part of the actual screening for the real show
And lastly, I got a really great job offer from a very well known IT company in the country. It’s been driving me nuts because I love what I’m doing now, but I’m being driven to take the offer because it would be idiotic for me to say no. Still confused and have absolutely no idea what to do.

And that rounds up a very trying, happy, fortunate, embarrassing, wet, confusing, and thankful week for me. Can’t wait to see what the week ahead brings