Coupon Princess

This is what has been keeping me up all night.  Let me tell you a short story.

A high school friend in Ohio called me up and tells me about her day.  Then she asked me if I use coupons.  I say I do sometimes, but only when I have them.  She then tells me about her many shopping escapades where she walks out of CVS, several bags on hand, and paid a little less than a dollar!  She said, she's into coupons.  She said she saves a lot of money and has a stockpile of all sorts of toiletries.  She recommended that I read through slickdeals where I can find coupons I can print online.  Cool!

I told my sister about this.  She got hooked more than I did!  She scoured the internet and printed coupons like crazy!  We read though weekly ads of Walgreens and CVS, and we started to enjoy the fruits of our labor.  All it takes is being aware of the weekly discounts of these drugstores, finding coupons to match them up, and most of the time, we get the item for a few cents -- if not free!

I must say it takes time.  It takes time to clip coupons every week (Sunday paper).  It takes a lot of time to sort them and arrange them alphabetically.  (That's how my sister did it, and in three categories so far:  Food, Non-Food, Restaurants).  I takes time to read through weekly deals, read blogs, print coupons online, and match them up.  But hey, I feel like a Princess when I walk out the store and pay so little of the total cost of the items I got!  What's to complain about?

I donated my miles for a greener environment

I earned some 27,500 miles from Cathay Pacific on my business trip to Canada in 2005. Earlier this month, I got an email stating that my miles are expiring at the end of the month. I was very busy so I almost forgot to redeem my miles!

I tried to redeem my miles by buying my mom a plane ticket to LA but it was not enough. Also, it's not transferable! I have no plans of traveling for pleasure just yet so I looked around their website and I discovered that I can donate my miles for a greener environment! The thought of helping the environment by donating something I hardly lifted a finger for sounded encouraging... and it makes me feel good despite the troubles I am facing right now.

Looking at this screen shot made my day.

Chicken Feet or Paws?

We spent the holidays in New York, specifically in Manhasset, Long Island. One day, we went to lunch at a dimsum place in Flushing, Queens. The place feels like another Chinatown outside Manhattan.

At the dimsum place called Ocean Jewels Seafood Restaurant, carts were pushed around with little plates of dimsum in them. We were asked what we wanted and just said yes to whatever they point to us. It was quite irritating though that they continue to speak with us in Chinese. We keep on saying we speak English but they never seem to bother understand us.



At my cousins' surprise, we ordered some Chicken Feet. My sister and I dared my cousins to try them but they just cannot. Well, my sister and I happily nibbled on them.

And then I recall how this delicacy should be properly called here in the US. We call them Chicken Feet but, apparently, they prefer to call it Chicken Paws. Sounds more sosyal, if you know what I mean.

Why Have Another Blog?

This is one reason I keep a separate blog other than my food blog.



Some weird personal encounters amuse me... like this one above. We went to New York Supermaket along Elmhurst and saw these frogs piled on top of each other. They are for sale as food! Did you read that? AS FOOD! They do not look appetizing at all. It make take a good chef to make good use of these critters as food.



Imagine if I post this in my food blog, Pinay Lost in Grocery Lane 33. Wouldn't that be unappetizing, more so appalling? Above are either snakes or eels. Honestly, I do not know. But I pity them for some reason. I stood atleast 2 feet away from them, though. I can imagine them thrusting out of the water in a split second!

Ahhh, New York is such a great place for all things exotic without leaving America!

Corny Joke of the Day

My family and I were talking on webcam last night.

Fam: So how's work?
Me: Ayun, busy kasi bukas na yung build for QA. Tapos non, busy ulit dahil sa bugs.
Fam: Bugs? Ahh! I-spray-an mo sila (ng Bygone)!

Corny noh? Pero I think it's cute. That was a tiny piece of home for me.

Happy Friday!!!

You need to commit

Whew, my QA gal almost filed a defect.

It was about a database change that does not get reflected to the running application. She showed me the sequence of steps she took and I observed that she did not run the "commit" command. I pointed that out then, she said, "Oh! That's why! I did not run commit".

In my attempt to help her remember to use that command, I blurted out, "In a relationship, you need to commit."

She laughed out loud. I giggled. We both had a breather.

Manila, Manila...

It's been very, very, very cold lately. We went to church yesterday when it was -4F. That's -20 degrees Celsius! The Filipino habit of taking a bath in the morning hasn't quite changed so my hair froze during my commute. I walked just a quarter of a block from my apartment to the train station and I felt my long hair make a slight crunch as I touched it.

I miss the pleasant temperature in Manila. No heavy jackets, no bonnets, no gloves, and no chunky boots to wear everyday. So as I got back to my apartment, I went online. I go to weather.com most of the time. I searched for Manila.. and I found 3 Manilas. One in my homeland, the Philippines, and the 2 others are here in the US. Surprise! Surprise!

Dramatic Philippine Tarsier

Here is a link forwarded through email. Dramatic Tarsier -- found only in the Philippines!

I am 10:02 a.m.

You are breakfasty, like a pile of pancakes on a Sunday morning that have just the right amount of syrup, so every bite is sweet perfection and not a soppy mess. You are a glass of orange juice that's cool, refreshing, and not overly pulpy. You are the time of day that's just right for turning the pages of a newspaper, flipping through channels, or clicking around online to get a sense of how the world changed during the night. You don't want to stumble sleepily through life, so you make a real effort to wake your brain up and get it thinking. You feel inspired to accomplish things (whether it's checking something off your to-do list or changing the world), but there's plenty of time for making things happen later in the day. First, pancakes.

Okay... the personality quiz was somehow right. I can be a bit of a perfectionist with some "routine". Ngyaha! But I can be sloppy when I want to (or when I can't help it). I don't literally read newspapers in the mornings but I truly feel inspired to accomplish things on a daily basis. And yes, I wake up for breakfast! Haha!

How To Fix a NullPointerException?

Here's one of those memonts when my lips and my mind say/think differently.

QA Guy runs web application and hollers: Hey, Ann! There's a NullPointerException.

Gaaah! I hate it when people call me Ann*. But now that I'm a small fish (tropical, that is) in a big pond of US Citizens and immigrants, I have given in. Why? I guess I just got tired and lazy to exacerbate the triviality of this annoyance. And oh, since he had to shout out loud "NullPointerException"... I might as well call the ambulance! Boohoo!

ME: Okay... In which screen? Have you logged it as a Defect?

We have a cool tool you know. You sign in, open a few screens, describe your findings, and I'll get back to you with a solution. That's HOW it works, ya know!

QA Guy: No. Looook.

Fine. Now he wants me to walk over and read the logfile. Okay. He might make sense this time, who knows? He might be a wonderful professional afterall.

ME: What did you do to find that error?

QA Guy: I don't know. You think you can fix it?

Sure. I can fix anything. I've been involved in this project for barely a week. Sure. I can fix anything. And yes, a NullPointerException explains EVERYTHING. A NullPointerException can be caused by an OCEAN of possibilities! I need specific details, phhleeeazzzzz! I don't have to explain that to you. You must have been in the IT industry when I was still watching Sesame Street or Ghostbusters!

ME: I can try.


Fast forward one month. He got moved to another floor. Yippiyayey!!! Here's a bonus, my Project Manager wanted me back to join my former team. Goodbye lazy, pretentious QA Guy! You're a shame to the real QA people I know (back home) who know what they do and are good at it.

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* Ann sounds too girly for me. Too common. And, guess what I prefer to be called with? Marie. Hahaha! Someone once reacted, "And you think "Marie" isn't common? Duh!" Yeah. I'm wonderfully weird sometimes. Thank God for friends who can say such things in my face. Really.