Caroleen’s Treasures

I received my first payment from OHJ today. Makes me want to work 24 hours a day Ella’s first monthly exam was this morning and she said it was easy When kids say this, I don’t believe them until I saw their papers I hope she got high scores on both if not perfect. Last year was more difficult for us to study because of the tv. Yesterday when she arrived from school, she begged for us to study which is so strange. She never do that last year. So I told her I will cover her books first before we will study. It was her fist time to bring home her books. They just use it in school and aren’t brought home. Like last year in the city, books are left at school too because kids forgot to bring their books the following day.

I was called for back up at half past 11 in the morning when I only had 4 hours of sleep from my coding last night. After I logged out at past 3 in the afternoon, I napped until it was almost dark. Since I received my first earning and we are so lazy to cook, we dine at Resto in the market. The best in town. We tried dining at two barbeque places here but I am not satisfied. Maybe I am just used to barbeques and roasted chicken in my hometown which I am dying to have as well as Donald.

My bee sting is getting worst when I sit and stand. Does the gravity makes it even worst??? My elbow and the joint in my shoulder and upper arm hurts so much. Hope the tylenol can make it better. I just hate taking those big pills!!!! Plus the vitamins I am taking that as huge as Tylenol…I feel like throwing up with all the water I drank just to swallow those pills. Why can’t they make smaller pills anyway? Like those of the medicine I took when I had typhoid fever…those tiny, easy-swallow ones that doesn’t make me hate being sick. Oh well, maybe the bigger the better.

I hope I can have some sleep before I’d be called for OHJ tonight. Bye for now! See yah when I see yah!

Been more than 9 hours coding and as usual I was called for back up for graveyard shift. It is so cold last night and more so in the early morning hours. I feel so drowsy at 4 am but the other coders kept me awake by their funny jokes in the chat conference. We are required to join the chat conference for log in, log out, error and status reports but we are also allowed to chat with each other when the queue is not long. I enjoyed working and being there but I dreaded the part when I have to ask permission to log out. For days I can’t log out as quick as I wanted to be because there would be no one to take over my post. So what I did this morning was to ask permission an hour before my eyes will shut off by themselves. Gladly it worked well for me!

I logged out from OHJ at 6:35am, in time to wake up Ella. She went to school at 8am. Donald went back to get some more sleep after he walked Ella to school. He says he is not feeling well since last night. I also did get some sleep and we ended up sleeping past 10 in the morning. A gentle knock on the door awakened me, I knew it was Ella so I quickly jumped out of the bed and it was really our little debater smiling on the door.

I am making this post early so I can still get some sleep or even just a rest before coding. Donald has high fever and colds while I had menstrual cramps :-( Donald should be the one to go out this afternoon but since he is feeling dizzy, I went to the grocery store instead to get some things we needed and to get some medicine. I was too tired when I finally got home ‘cos I walked from here to the grocery store which is almost two miles away. I was planning to get only something for dinner but I ended up putting in the basket other things we needed. If only I knew I’d buy more stuff than I planned, I pushed a cart instead of picking a basket. That would made my food shopping easier.

Our plan on going to Davao was postponed again Maybe it will be on Thursday when the money from my paypal will appear on my bank account. It is better also that it was postponed because Donald and I are not feeling well. I hope they won’t be needing back up for tonight so I can get some rest that I really needed and to attend to my patient who is now on his socks and pyjamas hiding under the covers.

Today is Crislyn’s birthday and we are supposed to go to the city for a check up. It was suppose to be the wonderful time to be there because they will have a special dinner with crabs and shrimps!!! But since the money from my paypal hasn’t appeared on my bank account yet, we postponed it tomorrow. So we are crossing our fingers that there will be some left overs for us.

Here is a photo of Tita Crislyn and Ella last March 2008 at Agro Trade Fair show in Davao City. Ella was Tiat Crislyn’s favorite niece (’cos there is no other nieces and nephews except from cousins)

 To Tita Lyn-Lyn…HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!

There is not much going on here today. I just sat infront of my pc earlier than usual. I took Crislyn’s shift because she needs to go shopping for her party tonight. She actually asked me last night what time will we arrive there today ‘cos she will ask me to do the food shopping since she has a 10am to 4pm shift. I told her the case and suggested I’d take her shift so she can do the shopping and cooking They are expecting my cousin and her daughter to be there tonight. I am sure they will enjoy the food! 

NOTE: This was written last night and should be posted right away but due to my being such a moron, I just found ut tonight it wasn’t posted yet. So I am posting it anyway in case you still want to know what happened yesterday and the other day.

Our server was down last night. Just when I was about to make my daily post, on the screen was FORBIDDEN blah blah blah blah….Oh well, I just did a short blog hopping and at half past eight I was called for back up in OHJ. I was online for 11 hours!!! But it was worth it…the longer I stay, the more moolah!!!

Tatang and Inang are here most of the time yesterday. We are preparing for the Semi-Annual Fellowship on Saturday. Ella went to school in the morning and when she went home, she reported the class was being divided by Teacher Jane. The fast learners and the slower ones. I asked her where does she belong and gladly she told me she was on the fast group. The fast runners or fast learners?

After I logged out from OHJ at 7:44am, I checked mails first and chatted for a while with an online friend. Then I went about doing some sleeping Then Donald went back to fetch Ella at school and went to markter afterwards to buy something for lunch. Tatang and Inang joined us for lunch and Ella was so ecstatic about it.

After lunch, the whole family went for an afternoon siesta I had toothache after lunch and I feel terrible. my tooth has a very tiny hole that needs filling. I put on Alaxan gel and it did helped. I slept for more than a couple of hours! So as Ella and Donald who jumped out of the bed last. I decided I will sew the table cloth of the communion table at church and thankfully I did it. The sewing machine and serger has been sitting on the table for a couple of days waiting for me to use them. I’m sure they are both smiling when I finally plug them When I am done sewing, I went to the chapel to see if it fits because if not, I won’t redo it anymore

I am hoping I can post this before I’d be called again for back up on OHJ…I am doing it real quick. Bye for now!!!

NOW THIS TRANSPIRED TODAY AND I WILL MAKE SURE IT WILL BE PUBLISHED :grins:

As usual, my day started as early as 12:01am. I was coding from midnight towards 7 in teh morning and by the time I was about to log out from OHJ, Ella rose from bed and started to make Mommy and Daddy be on their wits end.

Ella can write very well but cannot read well yet. She can identify little two and three lettered words but cannot read a whole sentence let alone the whole paragraph. She knew there will be a parent’s meeting today. Donald handed me the letter yesterday and I already talked to him that he will be the one to attend. It was written there that there will still be a class right before the meeting. So we called her on the table to have a quick breakfast. She won’t move. She said they have no class because there will be a parent’s meeting. We tried to talk to her in a nice way that they still have a class but she won’t believe us. She says her friends has no class when there is a meeting in school. I told tried to explain to her that public schools are like that but not the private schools. She attends a private school and even last year when we are in Davao, there is always a class event he teacher calls for a meeting. She wouldn’t really believe us and this almost made me really angry. She insisted that they have no class while we insists on having a class. As I was about to stand up and show her I am the boss, she stomped to the living room and said “Where is the letter from Teacher jane? I will read it.” Now we had a very good laugh early in the morning. When she saw us laughing, she did too and that made her easy to coax on getting ready for school. Kids can really make us crazy, don’t they?

Today was a very busy day for all here. Tomorrow will be the Semi-Annual Fellowship and since last Monday we are preparing for this event. Although I can’t get myself to help them as much as I want because of my OHJ, I gave them all the moral support the needed. They slaughtered a poor pig this afternoon and Ella was begging them not to hur the pig. So I asked her to stay inside the house and not go there so she won’t see how they put her down. I know this can traumatize her so it is better not to expose her to such unpigginess (in humans-unhameness)

We had a nap in the afternoon and just when I opened my eyes, I received a message from Crisyln asking me to relieve her from her shift because she has menstrual cramps. So I sat again on my pc and did coding for 2 and a half hours. When I logged out at 6pm, I am starving and my head really aches. I, Donald and Ella went to the market to had an early dinner there. I can’t wait for dinner to be served and as my eyes are all white. On the way home we bought bread for the people who were here. I will still be coding tonight….they love calling me during graveyard shift huh. I can say I am enjoying the work by keeping my mind focused on the moolah.

Each day I do my daily post more and more early. The past months and weeks, I post just before midnight when the day is almost over and I can talk about what has transpired during the day. But since I started my training on OHJ last Friday until Sunday, I make it a point to post something early in case I will be called for back up.

Last night, as I am writing my post, Crislyn told me to do per piece (that is do coding and get paid by the number of captchas successfuly coded) so the Admin can see me always on the site and will give me a slot on Fusion (a project where a team of veteran coders and lucky newbies works and paid per hour). So I quickly finished my post and pmed Admin that I want to do per piece. I was asked if I am done with my three day trial and I said yes and told him I did fusion (was on Fusion13) the other night. He said, I can do fusion and Fusion13 is mine. Yay! I am an official coder now and I got my own Fusion account! But hey, doing per piece is more relaxing to me that Fusion ‘cos you only think of yourself while in fusion I get so tensed when I see the queue length…and see the Admin calling for back up coders. I started my graveyard shift at 9:47pm until 6:47am then I read emails and responded when they asked me if I still wanted to work so I ended up coding again for three more hours. Although I get more tensed at Fusion, it is a lot more fun there.

Today Ella did a random act of kindness…but if it’s up to you to decide if it is actually kindness or being just stupid :-) Her classmate asked her if she had water because he was so thirsty. Knowing that she has only orange juice on her lunch bag, he guided his classmate to the school canteen and told the lady, “Ate, ate…pakibigyan mo siya ng tubig.” (Please give her water) So the lady handed the child a 10 pesos bottled water. The lady thought Ella and the child are brothers and sisters and that Ella will pay for it. While Ella was thought it is for free :roll: When she was asked money for it, she gave her the one peso coin that they found on the playground earlier that day. But the lady said it was 9 pesos short and Ella can’t pay for it as we don’t give her money  and she carries her lunch bag each day. I don’t know what else happened in the canteen. Hopefully tomorrow I can write about the ending of the random act of kindness that Ella did. I have to ask Donald to talk to the lady…if the water has been paid by the mother of the boy. If not, Ella really needs to pay for it BUT we will have to sit down and talk about not doing it again ‘cos we can’t afford to pay for someone’s food or water.

It was such a tiring yet fulfilling day. After I have posted my entry last night, I got a message from Kuya Ace that I will be called for a back up coding. Most of the coders lost power due to the typhoon and there is a very huge amount of captchas to be dechipered. So I took the shift from 1am to 9:15am. I am getting more used to this job although there is still a long way for me to go. There are still a big room for improvement and that will surely be filled in time.

At 7am, Ella and Donald started preparing for school. Like yesterday, she wore  knee socks that goes with her jeans skirt and dainty top. She will wear knee socks for some time until her bites will completely heal. I am regularly putting cocoa butter on it so the the scars will fade quickly. I hope it will…soon.

I should have slept after logging out from the site but I missed blog hopping and chatting so I spent a couple of hours more infront of my pc. Just before lunch, I went to do the laundry that I soaked last night. I decided I have to finish it today even I needed sleep because Mr. Sun appeared today. He is always playing hide and seek with us and if he hides, it takes a couple of days before he decides to show up. Donald helped me as usual and we had a good lunch, chicken liver After lunch, we went back outside to finish the last batch of laundry then we took a nap afterwards. I didn’t feel well rested after hours of sleep (it is not actually a nap!) because I had some bad dreams. Made me more tired.

Oh I gotta go. Crislyn sent me a message to do coding tonight. Wish me luck!

Yes you read it right, I am $10 richer!!! As some of you knew about the raffle draw that Yen sponsored on her blog. Although the grand prize is $100, I am so happy that I won the 5th prize as I thought my luck has expired long ago For over a thousand entries, I sure had the luck still

I am done with my three day trial for OHJ and I am soooooo thankful I survived. But I am crossing my fingers and toes on this. Hope I get the job. I started at 6 pm last night and ended at 2:30 am. From the moment I logged in until 10 pm, I had some idle time where I can stand and stretch, get a glass of water and can still blog hop. But the moment of truth came when I was asked by the Admin to log off from my current project and do the Fusion. Yay! I feel proud somehow to do it as Fusion is for regular coders only. Maybe they lack manpower or they just want me to experience the most difficult captchas in the world so I can either go on or back out as early as possible. Oh boy coding is not an easy job at all. It is extremely boring and all the lizards can attest to that and very challenging too which the mosquitoes can tell it is not fun at all. But gladly I survived the 8 and a half hour with two breaks of 15 minutes each. Coding is very rewarding and I can tell that because my sister Crislyn has been receiving good amount of pay. I can’t wait to be one of the coders too and get plenty of moolah.

It is Sunday so we attended worship. Tatang was here so the young people had a class with Donald and I got the kids for Sunday school. I just can’t believe how Ella remembers and memorizes each story we had tackled in the past weeks. She just loves the bible story book! She would hold it each time she is in bed, then ask her Daddy or me to read to her. She will be better than me in bible story telling, that’s for sure.

Today she wore knee socks because of her insect bites, I think those are from fleas I told her not to play with other dogs around and Bogart too, unless we have treated him. It was so strange that she did managed not to complain about it. She hates wearing shoes very much especially with socks! You can hear her complain it being so hot in the feet even without socks. Now she looks as though she enjoyed every minute of it.

After the afternoon nap, I washed a dozen of stuffed toys. Donald left for a bible study so I made myself busy. I soaked the laundry for tomorrow and did the sweeping and pulling off the weeds on the front yard. I am hoping I can get all these done tomorrow so I can sew the table cloth for the communion table and clean the other two rooms again in preparation for the quarterly fellowship. There will be some brethren who will come the day before the fellowship and this is where they’d surely will sepnd the night.

Ella wanted to play outside since yesterday. She was begging the whole day. It is a big NO NO for her as she has still some bites that needs to heal. So I said she would rather play with Teddy instead. This girl drove me crazy again when she answered, “I cannot play with Teddy, he has colds.” She got that from me when I tell her she can’t play with a kids with colds and she too can’t play with them if she has it. Kid’s erally are kids!

My second day trial for OHJ went well, or so I thought. I started at exactly 12 midnight working on the same user ID like last night. It was more fast and the queue is longer, so I enjoyed it and I have managed to stay awake for the first hour. At 1:34am, I was redirected to a different user ID which was real hard! And mind you, there was no idle time. I have to call for a 15 minute break at 4am. I never knew Tatang was already here early in the morning as I had my headset on listening to my ever favorite Carpenters to keep me awake. I signed out at 8:38 am which is another 38 minutes labor of love

The trouble kid was here again early and I called her by the window and asked her where she was going. She said she is going to play with her younger sister in the chapel. For the nth time I told her the chapel is not a playground and I sent her home. Ella was already awake and asked for a cereal. After I have fixed her a bowl, I gave her instruction not to go outside because I will be sleeping and she needs to stay inside. She obeyed. After her breakfast, she sat on the floor and did some “art attack”. When I woke up, she gave me the picture she drew of me, her Daddy and her. She just loves drawing. I wish I can post it here.

I hope I can again survive my last trial tonight. I will start at 6pm and will end at 2am so I can get sleep before the Sunday worship. I will definitely buy coke tonight to help me up the whole time. Donald was kidding that what I need is a bottle of California wines so I’d knock myself to sleep and loose the opportunity to get the job.

I feel dizzy from my first day trial for OHJ. I started 12 midnight and ended 8:40am. That was the looooongest 8 hours and 40 minutes of my life. I was supposed to end at exactly 8 in the morning but there are still a long queue of captchas so I stayed for 40 more minutes as a labor of love.

An hour before I started, Ella was begging me to feed her. She finished a plate of rice and mushrooms during dinner and has eaten two packets of wafer sticks as her midnight snack yet she feels she is starving. I ignored her at first and continued on my blog hopping but she began on her long litany of “Why won’t you feed a hungry child? I am your daughter….My tummy is really sad now. Please, please feed me!” Who can resist such a cute child? Sides she is the cutest to me ‘cos she is mine So we went outside and I gave her a bowl of Koko Crunch with milk while I cooked instant pancit canton and made a cup of coffee to keep me awake the whole time. I was afraid I cannot make it through 8 hours of coding and doze off on my keyboard.

When Ella was done, I sent her back to the bedroom while I finished my pancit canton and coffee. Then I sat infront of my pc and waited for the clock to strike 12 midnight. I pmed admin that I am starting my training when it hits the 12. The first hour went well as well as the second one. But on the third hour, I started feeling sleepy. I was listening to the Carpenters and was rocking on my chair to keep me awake and I bet the lizards are laughing at me. I feel dizzy on the fourth until the final hour of my trial. I can feel my eyes are rolling involuntarily like I am having seizures I was grinning when at long last the clock struck 8. Glad I survived the longest 8 hours. Whew!

In the morning, Ella and Donald left for school while I was still coding, when Donald went back from there I was done and was dying to flatten my back in bed. I first checked and replied to emails and at 9:30 am, I decided I should be in bed. But guess what? I have not slept at all. The kids were outside the house playing, then Inang and Tatang came to do a little tending of the plants and shoveling dirt around the chapel. Donald gave them a hand but me? I am frozen in bed trying hard to sleep. But all I did was close my eyes and convince myself I can rest with the kid’s noise. 

After luch, I have dozed off with Donald and Ella in bed. I woke up feeling more tired and groggy. Went to shower at 5pm and sat in my pc doing my rounds of blog hopping. I am really hoping I can still make it through tonight until 8am again tomorrow. I think I made this post long again today (I told myself I’d make it short this time) :-) Bye for now! Got to find some good recipes that I can send to my online friend.

EDITED: Julie was asking if we are heading for winter here and Yen also asked if we were abroad now Nope, you are both wrong. We don’t have winter here Julie…we only have the dry season which is the summer and the rainy season. Here in Agusan, the weather makes me crazy Yen. I will be hiding on my blanket yet I wanted to grab another one. Brrrrr……The weather here are both extreme. There are days when the sun will shine and the heat is so intense in the morning until noontime…then it will rain hard in the afternoon. But yesterday, it rained whole day We are hit by the typhoon’s tail. Dunno what is the name of it, kasi ala kaming tv dito.

It is feezing cold today. I went to bed at 2 am and Ella, who usually doesn’t want to be covered with blanket, whispered to me “Mommy….pa-share ng kumot….” (Mommy, let me share with the blanket….) Poor Ella. I hate it so much when I’d be awaken by freezing cold and I could not move my hands to grab another blanket. It is raining early in the morning but Ella never complained about taking a bath in this weather because Donald heated up some water. She was in her long sleeves and jeans today to keep her warm in school.

In the afternoon, I had an informal online job interview for Online Home Jobs (OHJ) and was asked to complete a task. My eyes are rolling as if I am having seizures. I cannot keep my self awake so I dozed off for a few minutes. I’d be having a 3-day training graveyard shift beginning 12 midnight until 8 am. I hope I can stay awake the whole 8 hours I will be having cup after another cup of coffee just to keep me from dozing off.

We had mushrooms for dinner (again), Ella and Donald is going more crazy over it and I am happy with that as I like mushrooms so much too. We had company over dinner, Charlie is Ella’s friend who is turning 10. He was the one who helped Ella bury her chick. I like Charlie more than any other friends Ella have. Here’s their photo together taken during Ella’s birthday. Glad Tita Crislyn went over here for the party with her new SLR camera.

Hopefully I’ll have my camera back so I can start taking photos again. I missed it so much and I wanted to join the group of the camera crazy group I hope I can get some sleep before my training tonight but I think I will stay up blog hopping.