the previous weekend, i hied off to caleruega for the wedding of benjie and guada. it was a no frills, non fuzzy wedding which did away with many of the usual customs new couples think they ought to do for their union to be blessed, or for the occasion to be more memorable. it went rather smoothly, i think, and the officiating priest was a little ( Read more... )

traveling more than 20 hours in the space of just over a day is something i would suggest to people i don’t really like. i left for isabela again last sunday just before midnight, arrived after 9am, tried to sleep as calls and SMS came in rapid succession till 12nn, had lunch with the PENRO, then left for my 2pm hearing only to find out that it won ( Read more... )

i don’t really know what possessed SMTD to send a team to agusan del norte to look into the PICOP situation, particularly why he thought that having lawyers there would do the investigation/inspection any good, and i confirmed this when i found myself an utter waste of government money, providing no more than youth and exuberance to the otherwise ( Read more... )

i am scheduled to leave for butuan city tomorrow morning, and although the department is paying for my way, work is farthest from my mind. right now, i’m deeply concerned with how best i can take advantage of the opportunity, and i’ve already thought of visiting camiguin. was just at national bookstore early this evening, and i got myself a copy of ( Read more... )

so i work for the second most corrupt government in asia, based on a survey of close to a thousand expats around the region, and one of my disappointments is that i haven’t really enjoyed much of the spoils of corruption. i cannot say for certain whether there is anything here which will enrich me by any appreciable degree, and if i decide to serve ( Read more... )

it is a little uncharacteristic of me to be failing to report the events that have taken place in my life for a string of days when i have neither been away nor disconnected. during my last entry, i said that i have, of late, been rather sluggish, for no particular reason which should merit any further explanation. i just recall returning home from ( Read more... )

last friday, my boss asked me if he could call me during the weekend, and i said sure. and then he asked another question, which had a rather predictable conclusion: that they’d ultimately be asking me to come to the office to do more unpaid overtime work, and i quite bluntly said: “sorry sir, but i’ll be out of town.” and all he could say was, “ah ( Read more... )

i had my first taste of unpaid government overtime today when the jamby-mike face-off in the senate had the big boss rushing to legal for help in addressing the lusterless senator’s grandstanding queries. i was asked to provide legal justification for one of the department’s contracts, and i’ve taken the assignment with me even after i’ve gone home ( Read more... )

my trip to the north had so exhausted me that i spent the entire weekend at home. i was caged, in a way, inside my room, which my mom and the household help cleaned while i was away (i told her that should anything be discovered missing, i’d turn it so upside down, that it would seem nothing had been done to bestow a semblance of order... after ( Read more... )

i left for tuguegarao monday evening to conduct the ocular inspection of a disputed piece of land. one guy says that he purchased this parcel from its previous owner, while a handful of other families have opposed his claim, saying that they’ve been in actual, physical, and continuous possession of the public and alienable land, for a period of 30 ( Read more... )