It is already the end of the month and looking back, I cannot say if it was really eventful. Before I went to college, I only think of May as last leg of a summer vacation, the month of Santacruzan and the nearing school day. By the time I got to college, May was the last month for a summer term. It was something like an unsettling period. Of course, it remains an unsettling period to me. I have heard from anime about the May blue but I am not sure if it is applicable to us, Filipinos, or to me in particular.

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When I was a kid, I helped out my mother look after our dry goods store in a market stall. Business was not booming. I think it was already to the point of closing down either due to my mother's lack of time or lack of interest in continuing the business. I cannot recall well but I think it was more on the former than the latter since she was also taking care of all the chores in the house. My sister and I were -- and sadly remain as -- useless daughters in our house. Anyway, I was tasked to watch over the store while we were trying to sell off the rest of the goods and be done with the business. At that time, I had fun being responsible for a money bag full of coins. Not because I could sell stuff. It was because I could buy palamig and kakanin from the food stalls. Oh, yes! I was already very much of a glutton when I was a kid. I somewhat remember my mother oftenly asked me if I bought food again and if ever there was a sale after I close the store in the evening.

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Having no car to drive in Manila is a curse and a blessing.

A curse because a car enables a person to easily move around the metropolitan using the most direct route through highways, major roads and shortcuts.

A blessing because I do not have to worry about a car maintenance, gas sustenance and the bloody traffic. Of course, seeing it in a positive way denotes my lack of money but who cares anyway.

While there is a substantial number of buses, jeepneys and taxi cabs crawling all over Metro Manila, nothing beats MRT when it comes to convenience of public commuting.

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After several days of pork, pork and pork (mainly spare ribs) which were cooked in several ways (fried, baked, stewed and braised) using various blend of ingredients (potato, carrots, pineapple chunks, canned salted beans, sprite, bay leaves, thyme, salt, ground pepper, red wine, soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar and salabat powder) I could come up with, I decided it's time to move on to pasta.

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Satchi (my Empire Black MSI Wind U100) had a stock hard disk storage capacity of 80GB. Yes, that's 80GB. And if you're one of those people who knows how voracious I can be when it comes to downloads and filekeeping, then you know badly enough how lacking 80GB can be. What simply made me bear with that is the fact that I can upgrade it. So, when I got Satch last year, I settled for a free 1GB upgrade and planned to replace the hard disk once the warranty expires. And just last month, I changed my mind. I got my dad to buy me a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB (WD5000BEVT) from DosPara Japan for 9,250 yen. (Ka-ching! I love that store.)

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