Addressing Chinese invites

Anyone of you ever seen a Fil-Chi type of wedding invitation?

When I was preparing for my wedding, I had some difficulty with the Chinese address labels. I was using the computer rather than doing calligraphy, since I can't do decent, nice looking Chinese writing anyway and I was too cheap to hire somebody else to do it for me. It was so much more difficult than I thought. The Chinese characters have to be from top to bottom so I had to adjust my word template so that it would orient that way. Then the words for Mr and Mrs are written at the bottom, with a prescribed spacing each half a character length, Mr to the left and Mrs to the write. And if you're inviting the whole family, the characters signifying "and family" should be written in the below Mr and Mrs, a straight line from the name of the head of the family.

It's pretty difficult to describe. I'll search for a picture so that I can post it here.

Anyway, needless to say, I had a lot of revisions because my mom wouldn't accept compromises about the wording or the spacing. I wish there was a program that would make addressing invites, the Chinese style, easier. Wait, I believe that there are programs available, but I do not think it's available here in the Philippines. Hmmm, maybe in Taiwan?

Thoughts on mooncake festival

Today is the mooncake festival but we're celebrating it with the family tomorrow.

We are supposed to be as complete as possible as a family -- eating dinner and playing the dice game. Every family is supposed to contribute some dish (so some of us may search for weight loss pills that work afterwards). My mom is gonna contribute barbecue and a fish dish. I'm guessing there would be paella.

This is an occasion that the kids usually look forward to because there are actually prizes at stake, not just mooncakes. Since my Ama is now 90 years old, every celebration becomes even more important for us.

Which makes me realize even more that the previous generation is actually the glue that brings the family together. Ama (and Angkong, when he was still alive) is the main reason we come together in such occasions like Chinese New Year, mooncake festival and New Year's Eve. While I believe that my cousins are I are still fairly close, I could not really say the same thing about my second and third degree cousins. I mean, I see them in big family functions such as Ama's big birthday bash, but not for the smaller affairs like what we're having for mooncake. So by the time my children get older, I do not know if they will still know the kids of my cousins the way I know my cousins.

I guess each generation, which expanding the base of the family tree, also makes the branches grow further and further apart. Sigh.

Busy bee

September turned out to be another busy, busy month for me. With my school obligations, my clinic skeds, my mommy obligations, cooking for the household, 24 hours in a day does not seem enough at all. You can bet that when it comes to bedtime, I do not need any natural sleep aid at all, because I'm usually so exhausted that I just nod off to sleep.

What I need right now is a little break. But I'm afraid I won't be getting that anytime soon. Oh well, I'd have to keep in mind that being busy is actually good. Better than doing nothing at all.

Not a pretty doctora

Unlike most of my peers, I got acne in my twenties rather than in my teens. The stress of medical school manifested itself in my skin condition, I guess. That was a double whammy for me. Not only did I have bad skin, I also didn't have the time to care for it! Well, since I was in UST, I go to the dermatologist when I have the time -- which is not that often! I also lacked sleep and developed some sort of hormone imbalance. Sometimes, if only for the fact that I felt uglier after, medical school seems to be so not worth it. But I guess it did pay off in the end, because I do love my career, even if it is oftentimes frustrating and not as profitable as we thought.

On the lighter side, I wish I had the beauty and the skin of Maricar Reyes, who's both a doctor and an actress. I guess better adult acne treatments came along, or maybe she was really born with skin better than mine which didn't break out when faced with stress.

Not my fault after all

A couple of months ago, I was in a minor car accident. I really couldn't understand how I hit the other car, but I took the blame since the evidence seems to be against me. And I figured that since I had insurance anyway (not really a cheap auto insurance or the mandatory third party liability but one with a well known company).

It was weeks later, after repeatedly mulling over the incident and going over it in my head that I realized that I've been had. I was not the one at fault. It was the other car's fault.

Lesson learned: It's NOT always my fault when something goes wrong. Don't let other people bully me into thinking it is.