PiaPiaPia

SLEEP!

Good morning!
This is a test.

IT'S A NEW DAY
(Will I Am)

I went to sleep last night
Tired from the fight
I've been fighting for tomorrow
All my life
Yea I woke up this morning
Feeling brand new
'Cause the dreams that I've been dreaming
Has finally came true

It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day

It's been a long time coming
Up the mountain kept runnin'
Songs of freedom kept hummin'
Channeling Harriet Tubman

Kennedy, Lincoln, and King
We gotta manifest that dream
It feels like I'm swimming upstream
It feels like I'm stuck in between
A rock and a hard place
We've been through the heartaches
And lived through the darkest days

If you and I made it this far
Well then hey, we can make it all the way
And they said no we can't
And we said yes we can
Remember it's you and me together

I woke up this morning
Feeling alright
I've been fightin' for tomorrow
All my life
Yea, I woke up this morning
Feeling brand new
Cause the dreams that I've been dreaming
Has finally came true

It's a new day
(it's a new day)
It's a new day
(it's a new day)
It's a new day
It's a new day

It's been a long time waitin'
Waiting for this moment
Been a long time praying
Praying for this moment

We hope for this moment
And now that we own it
For life I'ma hold it
And I won't let it go

It's for fathers, our brothers
Our friends who fought for freedom
Our sisters, our mothers
Who died for us to be in this moment

Stop and cherish this moment
Stop and cherish this time

It's time for unity
For us and we
That's you and me together

I woke up this morning
Feeling brand new
Cause the dreams that I've been dreaming
Have finally came true
Yea, I woke up this morning
Feeling alright

'Cause we weren't fighting for nothing
And the soldiers weren't fighting for nothing
No, Martin was dreaming for nothing
And Lincoln didn't change it for nothing
And children weren't crying for nothing

It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day
A new day
It's a new day
It's a new day
It's a new day

"Handbag Planet is almost here. To celebrate the October 15, 2008 launch, we are giving away a free handbag every hour for 24 hours on the day of the launch. Our high fashion, trendy handbags are inspired by popular designer brands and priced between $30 and $80.

"After signing-up in one easy step below, you can select the handbag you would like to win. There's absolutely no catch - this means no shipping/handling fees or credit card required. Yes, it's really that simple!"

Yep, folks! That's what it says on the site. Just go to www.handbagplanet.com and follow the easy steps.

The launch was held Wednesday night, Sept 26 at the Rockwell tent. Read my original post at http://piamagalona.multiply.com/photos/album/89/SUPER_Tim


That's me and Saab waiting at the lifts in their condo building. (The guitar is being loaned out to Elmo, which is why she has it. It's actually FM's MTV Legends Award!)
Tim and FM doing "Mga Kababayan"... what more patriotic song is there?!

The girls pose with Tim:

(This is a follow-up on my original entry at http://piamagalona.multiply.com/journal/item/34)

Last Friday, Jun 15, I received a text message at 10:56AM...

"Hi, Ms Pia Magalona. This is rommel Ong, operations manager of McDonald's. I just would like to know if I can call you and apologize regarding your bad experience on our delivery. Looking forward to your reply. Thank you." [sic]

Well, I returned Mr Ong's call but couldn't get through at first. An hour later, he called me. Mr Ong is a very jovial man, and is easy to get along with. He was very apologetic about my experience and I took the opportunity to repeat myself: I am only after the best quality of service your store can provide. I explained to him that from the customer's point of view, what good is spending so much on advertising when the best form of promotion for the store would be their patrons'  satisfaction and loyalty.

In fact, I said, my three youngest kids and I had just "driven thru" their Marcos Hi-way (Marikina) branch just then for lunch, and true enough, I realized as I exited the drivethru, the Happy Meal™ toys were NOT in the bag. Hmph! So I had to back-up again to get into the parking area and since there wasn't any parking available, I had to ask the "parking attendant" to please claim the toys for me. (No, there wasn't a security guard that I could see.)

Ok, just to make myself clear again, I am not a whiner, I don't "look for the bad" and I am what is called a HALF-FULL type of person. I see the good in everything, but then again, I am also an assertive person, so I cannot live with mediocrity. Besides, it's my money, right?

In the end, we agreed that they ought to concentrate on the TRAINING of their personnel, and that I would update my blog/s.

So, whether or not their service improves is all up to them. He is well aware, based on the comments to that posting of mine, that I am not the only one complaining. Mr Ong said he was grateful for our feedback, and I told him I, too, appreciated his call. He also asked me to save his number for future reference.

I received this in my Inbox. First thing I did was check its validity on snopes.com and it checked out so I'm passing it on...

----- Original Message -----
From: Sue Pattinson
To: "Undisclosed-Recipient:;"
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 11:03 PM
Subject: Help find Madelaine McCann

Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 1:53 PM

Subject: FW: Help find Madelaine McCann

Please read this message and pass it on!


As you are aware my niece is still missing and I am asking everyone I
know to send this as a chain letter i.e. you send it to everyone you
know and ask them to do the same, as the story is only being covered
in Britain, Eire and Portugal. We don't believe that she is in
Portugal anymore and need to get her picture and the story across
Europe as quickly as possible. Suggestions are? welcome.

Phil McCann

End of letter. I did more research and found the official website Bring Madeleine Home where I found the official poster as seen above.

I'm posting this on all my blogs as well.

Question

Which hand should a lady wear her watch on?

Also, should the face of the watch be on the inside i.e on the same side as her palm or facing outwards?

I'm right-handed and I wear my watch on my right hand. In fact we all do, in our family. My father--a civil engineer--taught us to do this with the logic that one should wear it on whichever hand (ok, wrist--if you insist) one naturally uses just because it's more convenient. For instance, if you needed to check the time whilst you were writing, you could do so with just the flick of a wrist! Ta-dah!

I register (and subscribe, too!) for any site on the web I find interesting. One of these sites is Yahoo! Answers (www.answers.yahoo.com) and above is my latest answer to a question posted by another user.

I myself have asked ONE question, so far. I needed to know "does rum cake contain rum?" so I asked. I was satisfied with the several answers I got, so I guess this is one of those instances I know that the internet is informative AND it's also a way to meet interesting people as well.

Which brings me to another question i posted an answer to:

What pic will go with this brand!?

I have decided to use scatter as a brand name!
SCATTER

but what kind of picture can i use to go with the brand like a logo or something? balloons? what you think! i want it to look mature though!

Answerer 4 (me!)

Hi! I like your idea of using "Scatter" for a brand. I found a pic of something called a scatter stat at this site http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movab... and I think it would look great as a logo (just the particles though) Also, scatter doesn't mean a mess, on the contrary it means "to throw in various random directions," which could apply to STYLE, as well. You know, like "to each his own," or to do things in different ways.

On the downside, some people will tell you that Scatter brand sounds too much like scatter-brained! But that's kinda farfetched :) Best of luck to you!

Well, after a couple of days, I opened my YM and was surprised to get a message from the guy who posted the above question! He thanked me for my answer and said how much he appreciated it. How nice :)

Here's the transcript of that message:

9:10:50 AM scatterinc: hello am the guy that ask you the questuion you seem very nice can i get to know yah!
9:11:09 AM scatterinc: i am herms- that actually muy right name am from jamaica!
8:36:24 PM pia_prada: hey! glad to meet you :)

Waddya know! I hope he makes it BIG worldwide, and he doesn't forget me on his way up! Azteeg!

For starters, let's get it clear that THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FOOD which we all LOVE (For the benefit of the Chubakerz reading this) so please don't be asking why we still will continue to patronize them.

I'm ranting about my latest experience with them regarding SERVICE. Delivery service this time.

You see, some of our kids live on Katipunan so they always have food delivered to their unit from different restaurants.

I happened to sleep over at the unit Wednesday-Thursday so I have personal knowledge of this incident.

We dialled for dinner and one of the items was a double-cheeseburger with one of my daughters giving them the direction to please make it PLAIN, meaning no garnish, which is what she always orders from them. So sue her, she doesn't like onions.

An ADDITIONAL order of another double cheeseburger was added within minutes of ending the first call, but that would have to have totally no bearing on the first order which was previously closed and included nuggets, one-piece chicken, two-piece chicken, etc.

When the order came, neither of the two double-cheeseburgers was plain. So my daughter who ordered it breathed a heavy sigh because we have this running gag that NEVER--as in NEVER--in our entire history of drive-thrus at their Katipunan branch have we ever driven away with a perfect takeout bag. Which--of course--you usually found out too many meters too late. This apparently applies to their delivery service as well. But I digress.

I asked my daughter to either eat the darned thing already, or call them back and ask for a replacement with the correct order. She said it would take too long to wait for it to arrive because they'd already experienced this before. I said, hey, either way it's your right to get what you paid for.

To make a long story (long, because of the wait on the phone), the person on the other end argued with her for the longest time on why she shouldn't replace the sandwich.

In conclusion, I only have this to say: please use your common sense. We are regular patrons of all these fastfood chains and we are grateful they exist. But WHY OH WHY, would we--out of the blue--decide to make something up for what? A free burger? OMG. That is so low.

Our bill for that dinner was over 700bucks--which is no joke--plus we also had our breakfast delivered that morning--another 600bucks--so in all, they'd already gotten that amount from us in just one day.

Couldn't they just SERVICE the CUSTOMER? That's my money you're getting, for heaven's sake. That's all I'm saying.

In the end, I asked the woman on the other end of the line: "So, what you are saying is that your crew is PERFECT, can never make a mistake, and I--the customer--am LYING just to get a free sandwich? Ok. So you would rather put the name of your multi-national company on the line instead of just giving me customer satisfaction and getting good feedback. Fine," I said, "I'll just hang up now and blog about it then."

Maybe that's why I have several blogs, and I'm going to post this on each one.

Which is what I'm doing now. Heck. After I hung up (that's al I said to the woman, remember my daughter was the one arguing with her previously) with her, I figured: hey! We shouldda just called and said there was a sandwich missing! Because the delivery man just dumped everything on the table anyway, without checking each item. Next time this happens, that's what you do, ok? I told my kids.

That's a laugh. Here I am, bringing up my children on the honesty-is-the-best-policy routine and I have become so desperate just to get something that is rightfully mine. I was just trying to use the situation to teach my daughter to stand up for her rights and get the meal she actually ordered, but I guess the Filipino way of "the customer is NEVER right" has failed me. Again. C'mon, this isn't the first time this has happened. It makes you think: so does it REALLY pay to be honest?

Ok. I'm not even going to start talking about the country's leaders.

In the final, final end. I'm just not MAD anymore. Just jaded about the whole thing. E, ganun talaga sa atin, eh. I'm not into the whole maki-baka thing, so I'm not really raising an uproar about this. In true Pinoy fashion: "Just wanted to share. La lang."

Pa-pa-ra-pa-pa... 

I haven't posted here for soooo long that I realized I had only a total of ten entries to date. I also saw that one of the first couple of entries were pics of my two youngest kids, Arkin and Clara. Well, I hope to keep this journal as active as I can (why do I insist on maintaining SEVERAL blogs!), so I'm posting a fairly recent pic of my THREE youngest ones. In addition to those already mentioned, the photo also includes Elmo--now 12--PLUS Zoie, my eldest daughter Unna's 5 month-old daughter!

Yesterday--March 28, 2007--New York Post's 'Page Six' reported that 20-year old Versace heiress, Allegra Versace Beck, had been admitted to a Los Angeles hospital for treatment of anorexia. Soon after, many other media outlets took the story and ran with it.

Allegra's parents, Donatella Versace and Paul Beck, quickly released a statement via Versace in-house publicists, stating that they "wish to make it clear that their daughter, Allegra, is not at the present time a patient in a hospital of any type, but is residing at her private address and her state of health is stable."

Allegra Versace-Beck image ©2007 WireImage, licensed to About.com

I am lucky to have been born with the ability not to worry needlessly about things. So, when I stumbled upon this article, I thought I'd share it with people who DO worry a lot :)

Undoing the Worrying Habit

Once acquired, the habit of worrying seems hard to stop. We're raised to worry and aren't considered "grown up" until we perfect the art. Teenagers are told: "you'd better start worrying about your future". If your worries aren't at least as frequent as your bowel movements, you're seen as irresponsible, childish, aimless. That's a "responsible adult" game rule.

To the extent that worrying is learned/conditioned behaviour, it can be undone. There are psychological gimmicks for undoing the worry habit. There are also obstacles.

Obstacle 1: Happiness Negation

Centuries-old cultural conditioning has given us a nasty neurosis: the belief that happiness must be "earned". It can be "earned" only by enduring unpleasantness (eg work, pain, misery). But how do you know if you've endured enough unpleasantness to deserve happiness? Another unspoken game rule: "responsible adults" can never endure enough unpleasantness to truly deserve happiness.

Laid on top of the first neurosis is the idea that spending money will make you happy. This is toffee coating on a bad puritan apple. If you spend enough money to give you the (advertised) conditions for happiness, the neurosis emerges in the form of apparently random worries, guilt, "feeling shitty", etc. Worrying is the easiest and most popular way to negate happiness. (See sidebar interlude).

So: we never stop working, we never stop spending money, we're never really happy – ideal conditions, coincidentally, for a certain type of slave economy.

Obstacle 2: The Idea that Worrying Serves a "Purpose"

You won't stop worrying if you think it serves you. So it's a good idea to distinguish the fight-or-flight response (a healthy bodily reaction to immediate danger) from worry (a psychological problem). By making this distinction, you're less likely to overrate the value of worrying.

The fight-or-flight response (FOF) is useful on rare occasions of real danger. In animals, the FOF responds to "external" stimuli; in humans it responds also to worries about imagined dangers, and to socially-conditioned psychological stimuli: "what will people think about me?", etc.

Worrying is never useful. It handicaps and diminishes us. The more it triggers the FOF with imagined threats, the more it prevents clear thinking (which is probably our greatest survival asset).

Rearranging the mental furniture

There's a useful gimmick to help stop worrying (we've already mentioned it briefly in How to Avoid Responsibilities, but it's worth looking at in detail). You simply cultivate the habit of postponing worrying. Your mind becomes (re-)conditioned to not dwell on worries in the present.

The trick is that whenever you feel plagued by a worrying thought, note it down on a "worry sheet" (a piece of paper set aside for the purpose) – you can then forget about it, knowing that you plan to worry later.

This deceptively simple technique is effective because it bypasses the psychological obstacles mentioned above. Your mind is "fooled" into thinking that you haven't given up worrying. Meanwhile, you lose the habit of worrying in the present moment.

You can plan to revisit noted worries at a time when you're worry-free. Or you can postpone worries indefinitely. That might sound bizarre, but then so is the notion that you must experience endless unhappiness (eg worrying) before you're allowed to be happy.

More likely is that when using this technique you will simply forget your original worries – they will never have bothered you.

Accelerator-Brake analogy

What follows is slightly more esoteric than above. Feel free to ignore...

Strange as it may seem, you want what you worry about. Or at least that's what you inadvertently tell your brain when you worry. On one level, your brain can't process "negatives". If you tell it: "don't think about crashing the car", it can't help being "attracted" to the thought/image of crashing.

Consciously, worrying is about preventing/resisting/avoiding X. Subconsciously, it's a reinforcement of wanting X (at least to the extent of wanting the experience of X in your mind). Consciously, you're pressing on the brake; subconsciously you're pressing on the accelerator.

The difficulty is that your "feet" (to continue with the analogy) are tied together. So, to stop accelerating, you must also lift your foot from the brake. But you refuse to do this (which might be sensible in a car; but your brain isn't a car).

You somehow have to persuade (or con) your brain into thinking it's safe to lift both feet from the worry pedals. For serious anxiety disorders, phobias, etc, many people go into therapy. The end result, if successful, is equivalent to learning to lift both feet (ie to "let go" of the worry/fear).

For relatively "minor" worry problems, you can use psychological gimmicks to "con" your brain into letting go of the worry – eg the worry postponement and "focused punishment" techniques described above (both have the effect of getting you to "lift both feet" from the accelerator-brake).

Fight-or-Flight (FOF): Normal & Pathological

i) "Normal": Present or imminent danger triggers FOF, which leaves body in a state conducive to anxiety & worry (temporary) until body returns to non-adrenaline state. For example, your car skids on an icy surface.

ii) "Pathological": Works in the opposite direction. Starts with worry (about imagined or non-imminent danger), which triggers FOF, which leaves body in state conducive to more worrying (a vicious circle/spiral).

It is possible to worry without noticeably triggering FOF. Minor worries thus seem harmless. But the effect is cumulative, known as "stress". Worrying is never useful. Worrying only appears useful because problems are often solved after a period of worrying. Perhaps we make a (false) connection between the worrying and the problem's solution.

Source

Reality Show:

Rock Star: Supernova

When to Watch:
Summer 2006, CBS, Tuesdays (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) and Wednesdays (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT). Special premiere date -- Wednesday, July 5, (8:00-9:30 PM, ET/PT).

Premise:
15 performers compete to become the lead singer of Supernova, a superband formed by Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee.

Prize Details:
The winner will record an original album with Supernova. The winner will also go on a world tour as the lead singer of Supernova.

Contestants:
Zayra Alvarez, Dana Andrews, Magni Asgeirsson, Jenny Galt, Jill Gioia, Matt Hoffer, Storm Large, Josh Logan, Chris Pierson, Patrice Pike, Toby Rant, Phil Ritchie, Dilana Robichaux, Lukas Rossi and Ryan Star.

Elimination Process:
The contestants perform each week for America and the judges. The judges are band members Jason Newsted, Gilby Clark, and Tommy Lee. Celebrity rockers may also be invited to the show to offer their two cents on the performances. One performer is eliminated each week by the judges.

Hosts:

Rock Star: Supernova is hosted by Brooke Burke and Dave Navarro.

Creator:
Rock Star: Supernova and 2005's Rock Star: INXS were created by Survivor and The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett. Mark Burnett was quoted as saying "millions dream of becoming a rock star...our show actually makes that happen."

Quotes From the Band:
Gilby Clarke : "Rock n' Roll is so alive and I'm so excited to be a part of CBS's ROCK STAR. This is television history."
Jason Newsted: "We're going to break new ground musically and on television."

Tommy Lee: "Starting a new band with old friends on worldwide television is going to be a blast, and we're going to pull out all the stops to find the most charismatic and musically talented lead singer to front Supernova."

*The above was entirely taken from an article written by Latoya West for "Your Guide to Reality TV" on about.com

... Well, I guess only because of the fact that it's not really "pretty." I dunno... it just SITS THERE. Or maybe I just don't know how to utilize it to its best potential. Oh well, I'm not really much into posting anyway. Yeah... d-uh? This is only ONE of my 4 or 5 weblogs. I'm ADD that way :)  Look at the date of THIS entry and the date of the LAST entry. Plus, I'm OC pa! I dunno, I'm just so madaldal, my typing can't catch up with my thoughts. There's a strange noise coming from outside the window and it's really bugging me. It's being redundant and going whee-oo, whee-oo.
Ok... say it... I'm jsut taking up S P A C E in the LJ cyberworld. I'm a squatter. But wait... I gotta go have lunch. Maybe I'll get inspired...

Good golly miss molly... I'm once again going to try to be faithful to this poor innocent victim of a live journal here. I keep making these promises, which I totally don't adhere to in the first place. Why is this? Because I'm a procrastinator of the highest order, that's why. Well, thanks to a certain lady called Hannah Matronic (I came across her livejournal via one of my fave reads, bryanboy.com) and I remembered I had one of these. Well, whaddya know.. I was able to get back into my account!

... and this is Arkin my love whose pic I promised to post before I call it a night ;)

This is my pumpkin Clara! She loves Barbie!