Tiara-Ra

It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.

Culled from the Life of Pi, p. 360.

A business without good advertising isn’t exactly doomed but it can seriously cause a dent in your capital, after all advertising attracts people. More people equals more sales equals profit, which in the end is the name of the whole game, right?

Nowadays businesses are keen on using various mediums to advertise their products, from blogs, media events to print and television. But from a novice’s standpoint, all these can be a little overwhelming and can end up losing capital instead.

An option business owners can look into is hiring a public relations firm to do the marketing for them. They can look into the best new public relations firm in town, get a quote, and talk to their people for ideas and a glimpse of what they can do for you and your company.

These firms might cost you a few bucks but if you’re with the right firm then it’s worth it.

Warning: Excessive ranting ahead.

It doesn’t take a lot to piss me off. I have my own pet peeves like men who don’t understand the word no, people who touch my laptop, people who don’t know how to take care of the items I let them borrow, and people who are insensitive to the tension building around them.

Another pet peeve is arrogance, especially from jackals posing as men who think they’re god’s gift to the world.

Now why am I acting like a rabid dog, with saliva foaming on it’s mouth? Because, surprise, surprise, an office mate managed to piss me off.

I have a pretty much indifferent outlook to the people I work with at the office. As long as they don’t tread on my toes then I’m fine (read: encroach on my personal life). If they diss me off because of my performance I’ll take that as it is. If I screwed up then I screwed up, end of story. I’m not going to go around blaming somebody.

But earlier today 2 guys I don’t really know managed to fulfill three of my pet peeves. A team meeting is a team meeting. If you have complaints, think about it first, once, twice and thrice on how you phrase it.  This is not you having a cozy chit chat with friends where you can diss, rant, and brag all you want.

You have to respect your supervisor or whoever called for the meeting. They get to call the meeting because, newsflash: they’re on a higher rung on the ladder than the rest of us. I’d understand the scorn if they were yanking the chain without a good enough reason. But they do yank your chain for a reason  so might as well be a big boy, take the lumps and deal with it like a man.

It almost looked as if they didn’t care that the sup. wasn’t pleased with their outburst and monkey acts. This guy  even had the gall to start spouting off on why he wouldn’t want to be moved to the hosting team, arrogantly pointing at the metrics that we have.

Oh yeah? I have no problem with the metrics. I’ve never minded it because, to tell you the truth, looking at numbers and excel sheets make me dizzy. What’s so wrong with the metrics anyway?  It looks pretty much the same to me no matter what department you belong to.

After that dig at our metrics he went on and on about the recent volume of calls being routed to them, alluding to himself as “aliping sagigilid”.  Alipin? Slave? Bullshit. I reminded him he was being paid a hefty sum to do his job, that doesn’t look like slavery to me.

He had no answer to that and steered the conversation back to the number of calls they’re getting instead.  They were complaining bitterly that the newbies are just laughing around, doing nothing. They shouldn’t be doing nothing, the newbies are supposed to brush up on client specs. So I told them to call the newbies out on what they’re doing, remind them they should be reading max.

He responded with a sarcastic, yeah right. As if they’d listen to me.

Ha! A pig with a defeatist attitude.  He haven’t tried and yet here he was, telling me it wouldn’t work. I don’t like people like him. They tend to undermine the authority of whoever is in charge and can drag a team down with their defeatist attitude. I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with him all the time.

I’ve handled a team before, during my stint in the school paper and though my team was far from perfect I never had to deal with somebody with this big of an attitude. And to think we weren’t being paid a single centavo for our jobs.

Tsk. Tsk. Okay, I’m done ranting. Back to regular programming folks.

I’ve never been in love. Oh I fancied myself in love for a time or two but never really felt that strong emotion you usually read or hear about in talk shows.

Cynical and independent to a point, I’ve always steered away from strong and emotionally wracking relationships. My friend, however, seems to revel in the whirlwind route of falling in and out of love. It was as if she could not define herself without a beau by her side, so when she called me to say she was heart broken, I wasn’t surprised.

I responded with the usual yes, I know, I understand, almost as if I was talking to one of our clients at work. But when I heard a very familiar name I backtracked and started listening to her ramblings. After hearing the whole story out I wanted to strangle her skinny neck.

She broke up with her ex because she made up with another ex who’s nothing but an asshole who could never make up his mind if he wanted her or not. I let out a scathing, ‘Haven’t you learned your lesson at all? He broke your heart when we were younger,  what made you think he wouldn’t do it again?” But she broke down in tears, out of regret for the perfectly okay relationship she left to be with another guy or for losing the guy she broke things for, I don’t really know.

What a mess and boy am I glad I’m not in the middle of it. She asked me what I would do if I was in her shoes, and I gave an evasive answer. How could I? I’ve never been good at having relationships, okay, let me correct that, long term relationships.

I’m so good at running away that I hardly noticed the whole scenario has been a recurrent cycle in my life. When kakay pointed out the pattern I was stumped. I was doing that all along? Oh my.

Then again I rarely get embroiled in drama which at present suits me just fine. Her life is like a rollercoaster and I’m pretty sure I don’t have the time for the stomach clenching, heart clutching experience we call love. (add the fact that I’m not a big fan of roller coasters)

But I did give her an advice, a shitty one: stay away from boys we knew back in school.