JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Dear Auntie Janey,

Late last year I saw how biased and narrow-minded he really is. A new batch of staff had just come in. The new staff and some of the tenured staff had a miscommunication. Instead of making things better, my boss sided with the new staff and made it appear like we were bullying them. He continues to give the newbies preferential treatment even if some of them are clearly incompetent and in need of training. Because of this I’ve had several meetings with our department head (the boss of my boss). He’s already taking a drastic course of action that is bound to shake some feathers in our department.
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You try to get some writing done but there’s a cat at your computer and she will not budge.

You can’t even sit at your work table because there’s a cat under the table biting your toes. Fine, you’ll take a nap.

There’s a cat on your bed, hogging the pillow. You’ll have to lie on the side and try not to fall off.

My domestic life.

Wake up!

You have deadlines to meet so you decide to stay at home and get work done. This is a bad idea.

Little work gets done at home. You will surf the internet aimlessly even as you wonder why you are surfing when you should be toiling. If you really want to accomplish something, go to a public place and work there.

Get to work!!

You have a pile of books to read and you really want to read them but somehow you manage not to. You have a stack of dvds you’re eager to watch and somehow you avoid them. Instead you sit doing nothing, inwardly kicking yourself for not reading or watching. Desire is overcome by torpor.

Another full day in our quest for world domination. Right, Duck Vader?

Eventually your annoyance boils over and you finish your assignments in a huff. Strangely, they read better than the stuff you write at leisure. So sloth turns out to be an efficient approach. But this is not the way to live.

There’s an article about Overseas Foreign Workers and the Philippine economy in the February 2011 issue of Monocle. Lots of pictures, and it presents the Filipino worker’s skills in a good light.

Since the 1970s, the Philippine government has offered training to Filipinos wanting to work on oil tankers belonging to Danes and Norwegians, construction sites in Osaka and in private homes stretching from Beirut to Bologna, actively encouraging them to look for jobs outside the country rather than join the ranks of the 2.7 million unemployed or the 22 per cent of the population who are living on just over $1 a day.

Today, one in nine Filipinos works abroad, where they can earn salaries five or six times higher than they can at home. During 2010 alone, 53,532 people left the Philippines while those nine million already settled across 80 countries sent €17bn home to their relatives. Only India, China and Mexico receive more remittances than the Philippines. At 12 per cent of GDP, it is a source of income the government is more than happy to see coming in.

Taken with the Cartoon setting of a Samsung Galaxy S phone camera.

Wednesday, 11 August. Having finished proofreading a book on Spanish colonial church architecture, I embark on the writing of a 100-page manuscript that requires a working knowledge of Japanese pornography. Zealots and perverts, the theme of the week. I love my job.

I’ve always wanted a baul (a big wooden trunk or pirate’s chest), I don’t know why. I’ve always wanted to travel the world with a steamer trunk, or one of those large trunks with compartments like a closet. Yeah try traveling with a steamer trunk today, the excess baggage charges will kill you. And that’s before you put anything in the trunk.

Rene told me that wooden baul are made in Ilocos and used for storing their abel iloko fabrics. So I asked him to find one for me, and today I had a look at my baul.

It’s perfect. Makes me want to say “Haarrrr” and wear a bandana. I’m going to store my favorite things in it, assuming my cats don’t declare it their territory and forbid its use outside of their war games.

The inside. Fabrics not included. For baul and abel iloko inquiries, email Rene at rene.guatlo@gmail.com.

Then I spotted this in Rene’s bodega and I had to have it. It’s an old Underwood manual typewriter, dusty and rusty but otherwise in good shape. Typewriters are great for when you’re writing something intense and forceful: you can pound the hell out of the keys. Your laptop wouldn’t like that.

Does anyone know a shop that can clean and repair this typewriter?