The Construct

Gifts and good times

Alex @ September 21, 2008 | | Personal |

Being a web worker, nurturing a social life beyond Plurk is a challenge. Some interpersonal interaction is surely welcome. Past week has been torture as always though it was a pleasant surprise that my week had some really bright spots too. A rarity in my case. Thursday, I spent the whole afternoon with the (future) missus and Friday night, I got to have dinner with a couple of college friends.

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I am not used to receiving gifts. Even as a kid (with the demented childhood I had), I either save up for something I want or get it as a reward (for topping the class for the year). I was supposed to get an MP3 player on the cheap from CDR King last Thursday but Risha would not have any of that. She wanted to get me a media player with a decent brand as a gift.

Since I also had that hard-assed personality of rejecting such offers, it took me a great deal of lambing for me to relent. And make lambing she did and not even a sorry bastard like will those puppy-dog eyes. Since an iPod and large-capacity media players were out of the question, we settled for this Creative Zen Stone Plus set. Came with a set of TravelSound speakers (which amazingly had a lot of oomph for its size) and an arm strap.

I can finally listen to my Spanish tutorials, Queen and David Bowie tracks on the go. You got to loooove the girlfriend.

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Watched Righteous Kill with the Dearest as well and boy did it suck big time. I never expected that having De Niro and Pacino together in one movie would result in one big stinking pile of Hollywood poop. The storyline was a cheap take on the whodunnit genre and the premise made it look like The Departed with old fart actors. Well, it’s possible that Godfather II and Heat had my expectation exosphere high but I think it was a waste of a good Php 300. Bright spot? Well at least that’s another 2 hours spent with Rish.

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Rounded up the week with a dinner with Francis and Jen, two of my undergraduate batchmates in English Studies: Language. We had some really long catching-up stories and the inevitable rants about working life. Francis is working as a call center agent and Jen’s a project director for a non-government agency. Common thing among us is that we’re all working through our Master’s degrees. Francis and I are still under the English Studies program while Jen decided to go to the college of education instead.

Funny how we all have our fair share of frustrations of being out of college into the workforce though I can’t believe Jen’s still isn’t satisfied with her work. I think aside from one other batchmate she’s the one making the most dough. I guess it’s not all about the money in some cases. A few juicy conclusions - call center agents are horny, big corporate execs are even hornier, and saving up for married life is possibly the greatest challenge a 20-something year old can face.

While it was basically a rant fest over dinner, getting to vent a lot of frustrations helped. At least I didn’t feel so miserable over the weekend.

Tags: Creative Zen Stone, Gadgets, Music, Personal