> This is for all you girls 30 years and over... And> for those who are turning 30, and for those who are
> scared of moving into their 30's AND for guys who
> are scared of girls over 30!!!!... This was a 
> monologue by Andy Rooney from the CBS show, 60
> Minutes.
>
> Andy Rooney said:
>
> As I grow in age, I value women who are over 30 most
> of all. Here are just a few reasons why: 
> A woman over 30 will never wake you in the middle of
> the night to ask, What are you thinking? She doesn't
> care what you think. If a woman over 30 doesn't want
> to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining 
> about it. She does something she wants to do. And,
> it's usually something more interesting.
>
> A woman over 30 knows herself well enough to be
> assured in whom she is, what she is, what she wants 
> and from whom. Few women past the age of 30 give a
> hoot what you might think about her or what she's
> doing .
>
> Women over 30 are dignified. They seldom have a
> screaming match with you at the opera or in the 
> middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you
> deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you, if
> they think they can get away with it. Older women
> are generous with praise, often undeserved. They 
> know what it's like to be unappreciated.
>
> A woman over 30 has the self-assurance to introduce
> you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man
> will often ignore even her best friend because she 
> doesn't trust the guy with other women. Women over
> 30 couldn't care less if you're attracted to her
> friends because she knows her friends won't betray
> her. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman 
> over 30 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.
> Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell
> you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting
> like one! You don't ever have to wonder where you 
> stand with her.
>
> Yes, we praise women over 30 for a multitude of
> reasons Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For
> every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of
> 30+, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants 
> making a fool of himself with some 22-year-old
> waitress. Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who
> say, Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for
> free. Here's an update for you. Nowadays 80% of 
> women are against marriage, why?
>
> Because women realize it's not worth buying an
> entire pig, just to get a little sausage.

The following is from a British journalist stationed in the Philippines. His observations are so hilarious!!!! This was written in 1999.
Matter of Taste 
By Matthew Sutherland

I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key step on the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that's to eat BALUT.

The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and ask them to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there will be no turning back. BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like English fish and chips, by street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can't see how gross it is. 

It's meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can't imagine anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers, beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer 
just to drink the so-called 'soup', the vile, pungent liquid that surrounds the aforementioned feathery fetus...excuse me; I have to go and throw up now. I'll be back in a minute.

Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat. They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, merienda ceyna,
dinner, bedtime snacks and no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn't-count.

The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You're never far from food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you're driving home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without seeing food and I don't mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man 
walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it's less than one minute.

Here are some other things I've noticed about food in the Philippines:

Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice - even breakfast. In the UK, I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it's impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn't the same 
without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from their house without baon (food in small container) and a container of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave home without his pants on. And lastly, where I come from, you eat with a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife. 

One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always ask you to SHARE their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their “baon“, they will always go, "Sir! KAIN TAYO!" ("Let's eat!"). This confused me, until I realized that they didn't actually expect me to sit down and start
munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is something like, "No thanks, I just ate." But the principle is sound -if you have food on your plate, you are expected to share it, however 
hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think that's great! 

In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further. Many Filipinos use "Have you eaten yet?" ("KUMAIN KA NA?") as a general greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.

Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like Bicol Express (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked with coconut milk; anything KINILAW; and anything ADOBO. And it's hard to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterolic frenzy of a good old-fashioned LECHON de leche (roast pig) feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, 
add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm... you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive mouthful. 

I also share one key Pinoy trait ---a sweet tooth. I am thus the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his pizza. Try it! 

It's the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to avoid in the Philippines include pig's blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull's testicle soup, the strangely-named "SOUP NUMBER FIVE" (I dread to think what numbers one through four are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it's equally stinky sister, PATIS. Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and the USA, which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than 100 paces. 

Then there's the small matter of the purple ice cream. I have never been able to get my brain around eating purple food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold. 

And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that KALDERETANG KAMBING (goat) could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)... 

The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of food. Here's a typical Pinoy food joke: "I'm on a seafood diet. "What's a seafood diet?" "When I see food, I eat it!"

Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals --- the feet, the head, the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given witty names, like "ADIDAS" (chicken's feet); "KURBATA" (either just chicken's neck, or "neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie"); "WALKMAN" (pigs ears); "PAL" (chicken wings); 
"HELMET" (chicken head); "IUD" (chicken intestines), and BETAMAX" (video-cassette-like blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum. Bon appetit. 

"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches"-- (Proverbs 22:1) 

WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since. The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.

The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech. Here, however, no one bats an eyelid. 

Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call "door-bell names". These are nicknames that sound like -well, doorbells. There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as 
Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even a Senator here has a doorbell name Ping. None of these doorbell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear.

Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied, "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from "dong" is a slang word for well; perhaps "talong" is the best Tagalog equivalent.

Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the "squared" symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.

Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy. 

More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are-best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).

Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across your trunk if you're a cab driver. 

That's another thing I'd never seen before coming to Manila -- taxis with the driver's kids' names on the trunk.

Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the phenomenon of the "composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, believe it or not). That's a bit like me being called something like "Engscowani" (for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Between you and me, I'm glad I'm not. 

And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly inserted letter 'h'. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?

How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith. How wonderful to come to a country where imagination and exoticism rule the world of names. 

Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan
(ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the world could that really be true? 

Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin? 

Where else but the Philippines!

......again!!

my oh my! ;)

i wonder when the party's gonna be.....

ONE ...Don't go for looks, it can deceive; don't go for wealth, even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because only a smile makes a dark day seem bright. Hope you find that person.
TWO... There are moments in life when you really miss someone that you want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real! Hope you dream of that someone.

THREE... Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want in life.

FOUR... May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trails to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.

FIVE... When one door of happiness closes, another opens but often we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us.


SIX... The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch, swing with, never saying a word, and then walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you've had.

SEVEN...It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.

EIGHT...Always put yourself in other's shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably does hurt the person, too.

NINE...A careless word may kindle strife; a cruel word may wreck a life; a timely word may level stress; a loving word may heal and bless.

TEN...The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them with our own image - otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

ELEVEN...The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

TWELVE... Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched and those who have tried. For only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.

THIRTEEN... Love is when you take away the feeling, the passion, the romance - and you find out you still care for that person.

FOURTEEN...A sad thing about life is that when you meet someone who means a lot to you only to find out in the end that it was never bound to be and you just have to let go.

FIFTEEN... Love comes to those who still hope even though they've been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they've been betrayed, need to love those who still love even though they've been hurt before.

SIXTEEN... It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, but what is most painful is to love someone and never finding the courage to let the person know how you feel.

SEVENTEEN...The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

EIGHTEEN...Never say goodbye when you still want to try – never give up when you still feel you can take it - never say you don't love that person anymore when you can't let go.

NINETEEN... Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back! Don't expect love in return, just wait for It to grow in their hearts but if it doesn't, be content it grew in Yours.

TWENTY...There are things you love to hear but you would never hear it from the person whom you would like to hear it from, but don't be deaf to hear it from the person who says it with his heart.

TWENTY-ONE... When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling - live your life so that when you die, you're smiling and everyone around you is crying.

New Company Policies

Effective immediately

Dress Code

It is advised that you come to work dressed
according to your salary. If we see you wearing
Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we assume
you are doing well financially and therefore do not
need a raise.

If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage
your money better, so that you may buy nicer
clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise.

If you dress just right, you are right where you need
to be and therefore you do not need a raise.


Sick Days

We will no longer accept a doctor's statement as
proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the
doctor, you are able to come to work.


Personal Days

Each employee will receive 52 personal days a
year. They are called Sundays.


Bereavement Leave

This is no excuse for missing work. There is
nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-
workers. Every effort should be made to have non-
employees attend to the arrangements. In rare
cases where employee
involvement is necessary, the funeral should be
scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to
allow you to work through your lunch hour and
subsequently leave one hour early.


Toilet Use

Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet.
There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the
stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will
sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the stall door
will open, and a picture will be taken.

After your second offense, your picture will be
posted on the company bulletin board under
the "Chronic Offenders category". Anyone caught
smiling in the picture will be sanctioned under the
company's mental health policy.


Lunch Break


Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they
need to eat more, so that they can look healthy.
Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get
a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.
Chubby people get 5 minutes for lunch, because
that's all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.






Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are
here to provide a positive employment experience.
Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns,
complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations,
insinuations, allegations, accusations,
contemplations, consternation and input should be
directed elsewhere.


Happy New Year,
The Management