New Additions to My Collections

Here are the new additions to my growing collections.

SHOTGLASSES:

US State Shotglass: Arizona

US City Shotglass: Chicago

TOMY TOY TRUCKS:

#42: Caterpillar Track Type Tractor. Scale 1/139

#118: Terex 72-81 Loader. Scale 1/137

A New Home for My Babies

I have moved photos of my collections to Flickr. It's a work in progress, and photos of my shotglasses and Tomica trucks are already there. I'll work on my soda cans and other stuff later in the day. I will also post photos of my elephants, and perhaps my notebooks. Check it out here.

Christmas in Easter

With Ash Wednesday gone a day before Valentine's, Easter is just around the corner. Like the many Christian families in the Philippines, our family activity during this sacred holiday is centered around religious activities during the week-long Semana Santa, with the traditional Pabasa and the recommended fasting and abstinence for the adults. The week culminates to Easter Sunday, where we celebrate more than we do during Christmas for as our grandparents say, Easter Sunday is truly more than that because Christ has risen from the dead.

Easter Sunday for us starts early with the younger members of the family searching for the colorful Easter eggs strewn about and hidden in our front yard. Then we go attend the mass, followed by a big family breakfast where we exchange gifts like we do during Christmas mornings. For this year, I have already made my Easter gift list for family members, especially for the kids who love candies and sweets. I have a custom-made Easter basket where I place my gifts, but when I ran out of ideas, I have a special list with promo codes to consult. Two of my favorites are Target and Best Buy as both offer good deals in one-stop coupons and discounts. With my new list and with the help of several coupons, my Easter gifts won't be a problem anymore.

Losing Sleep

A few days back, Glo Gamat, a new friend of mine, wrote about the importance of sleep in one of her health blogs. According to her article, when we lose sleep, we become "bad-tempered, tearful, forgetful, depressed and clumsy". When I read her article, I just shrugged it off, thinking that I’m not one of those people whose moods and emotions go through a major shake-up the moment they lose on their precious zzz’s. Unknown to me, I was already in the midst of a critical shake-up at that time, due to, of course, lack of sleep. Surprisingly, this condition isn’t new to me. Remember my sleep debt? Looking back now, I've been continuously losing sleep for the past year already!

My sleep problems started in late 2006. While my need for sleep is not really confined to the 8-hour myth, I knew then that I was not getting the quality of sleep I needed. My sleep was either too short, or disturbed that I will wake up feeling groggy in the morning and drag myself to work. And like what Glo said, I am one of those people who try to find lame excuses for not sleeping right. I had deadlines, and I needed to work. I love to work late into the night, when it's quiet and I'm alone. I also read at night and watch late night TV programs, and there are a lot of other reasons why I cut my sleeping time.

And so two weeks ago, all of the sleep neglect I had been consciously doing took its toll on me. At first, I could not explain why I felt so depressed, irritable, and suddenly suicidal. I was hopeless, restless, and unable to focus. I was so distracted! And it all happened several days after the GS launch, when I didn't get enough sleep, enough rest, and my meals are mostly from fastfoods. All the stress, all the bad foods, and lack of rest made me one ill-tempered person. Sadly, the condition almost cost me my partner. But that's another story.

Well, I guess, sleep is something a lot of us forget to value. But then again, our bodies will demand us to get enough of it, in ways that we sometimes have very little control. Believe me, I've been there.

Batangas, June 2006

Di ako galit ha. Mahangin lang talaga.

Eagle Point Resort, Anilao, Batangas

June 2006

My Valentine Loot

I really didn't have the time to write about my Valentine loot, which actually are several items I bought from our recent trip to Makati on V-Day. Yup, our Valentine's Day was spent coordinating a seminar-workshop and a press conference at the Hotel Intercontinental in Makati. Well, for most of us, the Day was just another ordinary day, except that flowers are being sold everywhere we went. The day started early for us, since we still needed to travel to Makati from Los Baños, and all of us in the van were deep asleep because we only had two or three hours of z's the night before due to the GS launch. Hehehe. The seminar started late by almost an hour, and went overtime by two hours!!! The press con was over by four, and we were given two hours to roam the malls before our group dinner at six.

When we went to the mall, I went to Landmark's toy department and got these:

New fire trucks!!! These are Tomica Nos. 41 and 74.

There were other fire trucks in the store, but I wanted to get all the Tomicas first, before I move on to Cararama, Maisto, and Corgi.

After an hour at Landmark, my next stop was the Toy Kingdom at SM Makati. Sadly, the Tomicas there are all cars, no fire trucks. So I declined.

Next stop: National Bookstore. Guess what I got?

This is the Inoxcrom Vivaldi Fountain Pen I've been wanting to buy. And it came free with my name engraved on the plastic barrel. And it's blue.

Our group of 13 finally met at six, and by six-thirty, we were like a bunch of kindergartens walking in the sidestreets of Glorietta looking for a place that can accommodate all of us to dinner. By seven, we were seated at TGI Friday's waiting for our salads and steaks. Whoa. But before that, since Hardrock Café is just across TGIF, Popen and I made a dash inside HRC to buy a pair of Hard Rock Café Makati shooters. Here is mine:

See? Valentine's wasn't so bad after all. We were working, we got free ride to Makati, we shopped, we had free food. Not bad at all. (*wink*)

Dissonance

Have you experienced shoe-shopping and the pair you want to buy is suddenly out of stock? Or the store doesn't have your size? Hmmm... Or the store has the pair that you want, but it's the last pair on stock? Aaarrrggghhhhh!!!!! Kainis di ba? Especially when you saved a long time to buy that pair of shoes tapos when you were there to buy them, they're gone?

Frustrating nga.

Parang life, ano pa?

Hell Week's Over

Out of respect for all the people involved in last week's activity, I won't write anything that may put them in an uncompromising situation. But then again, I'm just so glad to say that Hell Week's over and we made it again! And it wasn't so bad, after all... *(winks and hugs, guys!!!)*

Another Compromise

Another toy fire truck arrived today. (Sigh.) This hobby has hooked me beyond my expectations. But then, it's truly a great buy, considering that it's a green Pumper Fire Truck. Hah. Drool...

As I sat holding the box, gazing into its precious content, ah, it's amazing! And it’s all worth it. But then again, I am thinking of all the unplanned expenses I had been making the past month, buying die cast and scale model toys. A friend suggested I sell some of my unused stuff, like old books, accessories, and unwanted clothes and shoes. A bright idea, isn't it? Maybe I would. Maybe I'll use a good, trusted shopping cart software. I can place a shopping cart somewhere here. It would also be good to have one when I start the t-shirt business I’ve long been planning to start.

Now, I'm getting resourceful. Hah. But I would. Because I'd like to buy as many toy fire trucks out there!

Compromise

I just got myself a new toy fire truck. It’s a Fire Eater from the Hot Wheels Silver Series.

My new hobby is really an eye opener for me. As I looked at my Tomicas in their boxes last weekend, I realized that this new hobby is literally keeping me from my capacity to save money. Unlike my other collectibles, which come free with other purchases, like soda cans and fast food toys, scale models and toy trucks can easily put a dent into my fast shrinking finances. Uh-oh.

Hmmm… But I want to buy those Tomicas! (Especially those at Robinson’s, because they’re previous models/editions of the regular 120 lines!)

The solutions I thought are possible:

• Stop going to any toy stores.
• Lessen toy purchases.
• Buy cheaper toys.

Now, I can’t possibly agree to any of the three solutions I came up with, so I thought of another idea, which I can now say is the only solution to this dilemma. A compromise.

I realized that careful budgeting is the only possible way for me to go through this difficulty. (Unless someone ultra-rich gives me enough money to buy all the toys that I want in this world.)

So Sunday evening, I carefully wrote my expected expenses during the week (food and fare money), and then all the other expenses for the month (rent, bills, medications, groceries, toiletries). After that, I assigned a certain fixed amount for food because I realized that aside from rent and bills, food is the next area where I spend a lot.

I took out an old purse, and placed seven mini pockets inside. These mini pockets will hold the money allotted for fare and food for each day of the week. I allow myself to spend the money inside a mini pocket for a given day. Whatever money is left on a mini pocket goes to ‘savings’ at the end of the week. But there’s a catch here. If I run out of money for a particular day, I will have to get from the next day’s money, and not from the previous day’s left-over money, which is already considered as savings. This way, I will learn how to carefully spend the amount allotted for the day and not overspend.

At the end of the week, I will check the amount of money left in the purse and consider it as savings. By then, I will have the option to spend it to buy something, or to simply keep it and save for a bigger item, toy or otherwise. But with this scheme, I still got another catch which is another compromise. If I spend the savings to buy a toy truck, then I cannot buy a book, or eat a Happy Meal (to get a toy).

This is it. No savings, no toy. No savings, no book. No savings, no Happy Meal. I know it's only a matter of time before I break away from this scheme, but for now it works just fine.

Along Came Tomy

I was in the middle of writing about my new-found hobby earlier last week when somebody interrupted my flow of thought. Oh, well.

So what’s new? Well, I am now into collecting toy trucks. Whoa. (grin) But yes, aside from my other collections, namely: journals, notebooks, pens, elephant figurines, soda cans, shot glasses, and fast food toys, I am now into toy trucks. It all started when one of my officemates came to work one morning and brought along his remote/radio-controlled toy car. Shucks. I knew I wanted one too, but the idea of a big RC toy car wasn’t very interesting to me. Toy cars aren’t my thing. What I want is a toy fire truck like this, complete with water spout, sirens, lights, ladders, and all the stuff that go with a real fire truck. But I don’t have the heart to shell out that much amount of money over a toy. At least not yet.

But one afternoon, while I was heartbroken over losing a James Patterson book to someone else at my favorite second-hand bookstore, I cheered myself up by going through Robinson's toy section. Hmmm… Among the limited toy selection I was looking at, the small cabinet of TOMY scale models caught my attention. And… surprise! Right in front of me are three TOMY firetrucks! At that time, I didn’t have any second thoughts of buying the toys. I bought the following TOMYs:

• #13, scaled at 1/159, it’s a Morita airport crash tender;
• #22, scaled at 1/120, it’s a Nissan diesel aerial ladder fire truck; and
• #108, which is a Hino aerial ladder fire truck, it is scaled at 1/139.

After my purchase, I realized the value (or importance) of TOMY or Tomica items in the toy industry. I was surprised to learn that TOMY has its own following, comparable to Matchbox, Hot Wheels, or Maisto. And so, me being me, I wasn’t content with the fire trucks yet. I got to have the other trucks (did I say I’m not into cars?)! Here, I got myself two new TOMY toys:

• #71, scaled at 1/110, it’s a wheel loader from the lot of several Hitachi construction machines; and
• #120, the last in the TOMY set, it’s a Komatsu articulated dump truck scaled at 1/144.

Next time I’ll get the Komatsu Motor Grader (#24) and the Off-Road Dump (#102). Or I can also get the Coca-Cola trucks (#s 35 and 105). That is, if I don't get to find the other TOMY fire trucks yet (#s 41, 68, 74, and 119).