It is second Sunday of October, it was the second day I went to church to attend a service. The service didn’t start early today, I went to the store to buy some bubble gum when a cousin passing by saw me and invited me to go church with her, I was hesitated at first because it still early and the service proper is not starting yet but then I thought walking with her inside won’t not feel awkward than walking alone.

Anyway before the service proper there is announcement of church concerns, greetings to birthday celebrants that will celebrate their birthdays within a week and married couples that will be celebrating their anniversaries. When our Pastor asked if there is still someone who is celebrating  a birthday that he forgot to mention, my cousin pointed me and so I was greeted and our Pastor jokingly informed the congregation that I am mastering in veterinary majoring in cats hence my new family name is Catwill. The joke started when we arrived in town and our pastor was around and he saw me bringing a new kitten I picked from the street, I have been adopting abandon kittens for almost a year already.

The topic for this Sunday is about commitment to go, to give and pray.  Are we committed to go to church? Our Pastor set an example on how one person wanted to be visited at home and be invited before he can go to church. He said that we should’t not wait for us to be invited, we should go to church on our own because we are committed to go.  We are also should  be committed to return the blessings we received everyday so we are going to be bless even more, and be committed to pray because as God says “ask and it will be given to you”, “seek and you will find” and “knock and the door will be opened to you”. I felt blessed hearing those words from God and it add more hopes to my hopeless heart it feels like God is pushing me to keep going, I should continue asking and seeking Him because it will be given to me.

Commitment is a very strong word, being committed is being dedicated and loyal. If we are committed to someone we love we shouldn’t get tired and should not give up because that’s how commitment and love is.  We must have dedication, devotion, loyalty and faithfulness, we should be strong to overcome all the trials that comes along the way and just don’t give up easily, just how we are committed to love and serve the Lord.

The other day, I decided to tweak the theme of this blog. Making me busy is one way for me to stop thinking too much, because it is not getting healthy anymore. Nobody will help me but myself and if I keep feeding my depression I might end up being suicidal or crazy (almost). I decided to live the life day by day without looking forward on the future because if I do I am becoming depressed even more. I decided to wait and not to make thing fast because everything has a perfect timing according to my spirit animal.

I have noticed the old theme is somehow dull and lonely, no wonder my life turned upside down. I made the new theme vibrant and bold using the same vectors or images. I made the header a little smaller as well, so the readers will see more of the things I am posting rather than more of the image in my header. This blog was an expat blog but since I am already home I turned it as my personal space online and my diary, I also combined two more blogs in here when I decided not to renew them anymore, this blog was helpful because I have no one to talk too and nobody really can relate with my emotions. I really don’t talk much about my life to someone because it is not easy for me to trust and I am always scared being ridiculed.

With the new theme and the magical season coming, all I am hoping is for the best.  I hope the new theme will inspire me to write more, be optimistic and will help me to smile even in difficult times. In short, I hope it brings good luck to me!

Well, I made myself busy even more when I decided to create new theme. It was originally the theme for Odiongan Daily Travels but since I combined it over here I’d make use of it as well so if you click Travel and Places category you’ll see the yellow green theme above.

The other night I was feeling disturb again so I have asked my mother and sister if they want to eat “pancit”, they said yes so we drove to town so we could get one order of pancit. Along the way my sister exclaim that she seems saw a turtle in the road, I have told her to return so we could see it and she was right it was indeed an injured turtle maybe it was a victim of motorcycle hit and run. Since we are just about 600 meters away from home, we picked the turtle and bring it home first before heading to town again.  The turtle was injured, it has some scratches at the bottom. My father put in the large pail where I feed him, I am planning to release the turtle when it feels better.

Turtle is one of the spirit animal that comes out when I took random quiz online about finding my spirit animal. Since I have been finding myself these past few days, I am getting comfort from things that I think there is a relation/relevance to me, I put symbol and meaning to everything. I am not sure if I am going crazy or I am just so depressed that I am clasping to everything that comes along my way.

Looking online I have found at universeofsymbolism.com that the brilliant message from this little turtle totem is not to push myself  because I’ll end up making errors and miss opportunities. It was said that the turtle has the wisdom of knowing that all things come in perfect and divine timing, sharing the golden lesson of patience. I guessed the turtle that shows up along our way is an answered prayer telling me to slow down the pace of my life and being bigger, stronger, faster are not always the best ways to get what I want and control things in instant. It simply reminds me to take thing slowly and don’t rush things at the moment and I should learn the art of waiting…

According to spirit-animals.com too, if turtle is your totem you have exceptional navigation skills. You can always find your way through anything. You also have a tendency to withdraw into your shell if your find yourself in an uncomfortable or what you perceive as a threatening situation. Well, now I know why I can always find the way back when travelling and getting lost is not an option and why I am good in reasoning. Alternatively too, the turtle represents the need to be sheltered or protected from life’s problems which I am needing right now.

Here are some additional associations for turtle:

• Longevity
• Endurance
• Survival skills
• Patience
• Stimulates hearing on both the physical and spiritual levels
• Are you listening carefully to others?
• Let Turtle help you decide to take time to slow down or perhaps to pick up the pace a bit.

Owl is my primary spirit animal then bear and turtle but I guess seeing a turtle is easier than seeing an owl or bear around us. How about you what is your spirit animal?  You can take this quiz www.spiritanimal.info/spirit-animal-quiz to find to find it out.

It has been established that Philippines is one of the country with poor internet connection. I’ve been using pocket wifi for a year already, it was a great experience rather than going to town and went online through internet cafe’s but I need more other than being connected, I need fast internet so I can use laptop and do my freelance work online. The connection was great early in the morning but later on it changes and it came to the point where we can’t follow anymore the time where the connection speed up.  So most of the time my messages were send late because they were just stuck up in my outbox waiting for a decent connection, I also received messages late and there are times there is really no connection. In order not to waste the internet load, we always end up going to town and staying near the shore so we could use the remaining bandwidth, it was not a great experience because I can’t do anything online, I can’t update my blogs nor upload pictures.

When I was told that I can try using broadband connection with router I was given a hope. It was a gamble, it might not work or we are going to have a good connection. When I had the money for it, I reserved a slot and pay a down-payment for ₱3,000 ($66.67), and after few days the antenna that will be used enhance and boost the signal of the broadband was installed together with the Globe broadband box and router, it didn’t work out well on the first try so they returned the next day. It didn’t work out because I found out when I went upstairs one of the guy didn’t plugged the antenna in the broadband box, when we plugged it the internet speed is overwhelming.

When they returned the next day, they fixed our connection and tried which network provide fast internet speed, Globe or Smart, to try it we have to put load on both sim cards.  In the end, Globe provide good internet connection but the unfortunately the sim card we’ve been using with the pocket wifi doesn’t work so we’ve used Globe prepaid sim card. My laptop was directly hooked up in the Tenda router using a cable and the rest will be connected using WiFi, when everything was fixed I completely paid the remaining balance of ₱4,000 ($88.88) + ₱150 ($3.33) for the extra cable, to sum it I paid ₱7,650 ($170) for my broadband connection.

The connection was definitely good compare to the pocket wifi, I can connect to the internet during the day using my laptop unlike the pocket wifi I can only use my mobile phone.  With my new connection I was able to updates my blog, read news and stories online, I can also watched some YouTube videos but like the pocket wifi the internet connection was not also unlimited it has also a limit of bandwidth to use everyday, I guess it was also 800mb per day because were using the same network but the difference even we received a notification of exceeding the limit we can still surf online in slow connection using android phones.  We are told to use proxifier to avoid exceeding the limit and receiving messages from the network but I don’t think I can afford extra expenses in my situation right now and my debit card is near on expiring which I still don’t know if I can renew it. Anyway, we are told by the shop owner which is a distant relative will let us borrow his proxifier when it was returned to him and so far it was been weeks already we have no news about it yet.

The broadband connection is a good one, since we started using this we don’t need to go town anymore just to connect with fast internet or to look for strong network connection. We can now use the internet in the comfort of our own home and I can work online now without bringing laptop to town.  We are using prepaid load, it cost ₱50 ($1.11) per day we chooses this because  is quite slow if you are registered for three days  for ₱120 ($2.78).

Today we went to pick-up some LBC items in our town and while waiting to claim it a foreigner came, asking for the status of his items, he handed his ID but the lady didn’t find anything on his name so he went out and after few minutes the foreigner return handling his phone with the tracking number in it saying the box is coming from Russia and he was told to claim it in where he is. Since I am curious and the lady doesn’t know what to say because she is not familiar with the tracking code, I looked at the stranger’s phone and I ended up informing him that he should claim his box in the postal office and telling him how to reach it, yeah right it turns out he has to collect EMS items from Russia. I know to differentiate EMS tracking code since I used the service when I am still living in Korea. Jezz, I am not good in giving direction so I don’t know if he found the postal office, probably yes since I heard he drove a 4-wheel car and he can easily spot the water station where he needs to turn left, I knew he is driving a car after I was informed when I blurted out when he left that my sister should just drive the guy in the postal office.

As I am saying I am not that good in giving direction because I remember when I was in first year high school and my classmate tagged me along to his father’s workplace so she could get allowance, when we are returning to school a foreigner stopped her and she was scared so she called my attention when the foreigner started speaking, it turns out the stranger was asking for direction on how to reach the municipal station and since I am nervous too and my first time to talk to someone in English aside from our English teacher, I thought I blurted out “over there” while pointing the municipal station but my classmate says I only say “there” while pointing out.  LOL.

Going home after claiming the items my sister blurted out, she is “nosebleed” and she can’t understand anything because I speak faster and it sounds like with a slang but I think the foreigner understood what I am saying because it looks like he did and he didn’t asked me to repeat it. Well, I hope he did. Lol

Living in the island is not always a paradise. Most of the time it feels like living hell, hot temperature, scarce supply of water on summer, insufficient supply of electricity that cause excessive blackouts,  far from the main city and especially poor signal for mobile and data network especially when typhoon passed by.

My life is in the internet; my source of living is in the internet but with the poor internet in our island, I am losing everything, my blogs and my earnings not to mention the life I thought to be a happy one.

The other day I received a notification that the free upgrade of Windows 10 is ready, so I bought load for the Smartbro stick so I can used it in town. Using the stick is better than using a pocket wifi because the latter is only limited for 800mb per day, but to my dismay it was just a waste of money.  I cannot even surf the internet, pages can’t be opened and can’t even check emails.  Tried it twice in town but I both ended up just losing my patience and my battery charge. So disappointing!

We ended up going to neighbouring town the next day since we have noticed that internet is a bit faster in the said town compare to our town.  Since we have no place to hang-out with, we ended up in their park and it was ended a bit faster, but I still end up not able to finish my Windows upgrade because my internet load expired and my laptop battery was already drained.

Well, I have heard from other people it is possible for me to get a faster internet if I purchased a router and an antenna but the downside it cost a lot of money about $200 or more including the installation fee but excluded the wires and other installation materials. So we asked for details in town but we are told that we can try it but it is not guaranteed we will be able to connect or get a faster internet because we live outside the town. Very disappointing if you may ask me because if it didn’t work in our house my money will just be flushed in the drain, isn’t it? L