Marriage Lessons – How to deal with male chauvinists

Here are some tips on how to deal with male chauvinists. The first and fourth were shared to me by friends from the women’s movement, while the second and third were jokes shared during golf games.  Enjoy them.

Marriage – Part I

Typical macho man marries typical good-looking woman and after the wedding, he laid down the following rules:

“I’ll be home when I want, if I want and at what time I want and I don’t expect any hassle from you.

I expect a great dinner to be on table unless I tell you that I won’t be home for dinner.

I’ll go hunting, fishing, boozing and card-playing when I want with my old buddies and don’t you give me a hard time about it.

Those are my rules!  Any comments?”

His new bride says, “No, that’s fine with me. Just understand that there will be sex here at seven o’clock every night  whether you’re here or not.”

************ ********* ********* ******

 

Marriage (Part II)

Husband and wife have a bitter quarrel on the day of their 40th wedding anniversary!

The husband yells, “When you die,  I’m getting you a headstone that reads:

“Here Lies My Wife – Cold As Ever ”

“Yeah?” she replies. “When you die,  I’m getting you a headstone that reads:

“Here Lies My Husband Stiff At Last”

 ************ ********* *********

Marriage (Part III)

Husband (a doctor) and his wife are having a fight at the breakfast table.

Husband gets up in a rage and says, “You’re no good in bed either!” and storms out of the house.   After sometime, he realizes he was nasty and decides to make amends and rings her up.

She comes to the phone after many rings, and the irritated husband says,  “What took you so long to answer the phone?”

She says, “I was in bed.”

“In bed this early, doing what?”

She says, “Getting a second opinion!”

************ ********* ********* ********* ***

Marriage (Part IV)

A man has six children and is very proud  of his achievements. He is so proud of himself,

that he starts calling his wife, “Mother of Six” in spite of her objections.

One night, they go to a party. The man decides that it’s time to go home

and wants to find out  if his wife is ready to leave as well.

He shouts at the top of his voice, “Shall we go home ‘Mother of Six?’

His wife, irritated by her husband’s lack of discretion, shouts right back,

“Anytime you’re ready, Father of Four.”

************ ********* ********* ********

 

How to Maximize the Philippine Holidays in 2012

The Long Weekends for 2012

Proclamation No. 295  signed last November 24, 2011 provided a list of Official Philippine Holidays and Special Non-Working Days. To the public and private employees as well as the students, this provides an opportunity to plan ahead for possible vacations, out-of-town trips, or for simply having longer quality time with family.
There are  six opportunities for those working in the Philippines to have an extended weekends:
  1. 3 day weekend from January 21(Saturday) to January 23(Monday), the day of the Chinese New Year celebration which has been declared a holiday.
  2. 5 day break from April 5 (Maundy Thursday) to April 9 (Araw ng Kagitingan). In fact, this could be an opportunity to take a very long break starting on the31st of  March and only file for a 3-day leave of absence(from April 2 to 4).
  3. 4 day weekend from Thursday November 1 (All Saints Day) to Sunday Nov 4
  4. 3 day weekend from Saturday August 25 to Monday August 27 (National Heroes Day)
  5. 3 day weekend from Friday November 30 (Bonifacio Day) to Sunday December 2.
  6. 3 day weekend from December 29 to New Year’s Day of January 2013.
In addition, there are also holidays that sandwiches weekends, so that taking one day off may also mean longer relaxation times:
  1. May 1 falls on a Tuesday, so one can take Monday April 30 off and get a 4 day extended weekend from April 28 (Saturday) to May1 (MOnday)
  2. One can take a day off on the Monday, June 11 and get a 4 day extended weekend: June 9 (Sat) to June 12 (Tuesday), a holiday
  3. Christmas day is on a Tuesday, so why not take take a break also on December 24, a Monday so you can get a full 4 days off from Dec 22 to Dec 25?
To recap, here is the full list of regular holidays and special non-working holidays for 2012:
Regular Holidays:
New Year’s Day                                                      January 1 (Sunday)
Maundy Thursday                                                    April 5
Good Friday                                                             April 6
Araw ng Kagitingan                                                  April 9 (Monday)
Labor Day                                                                May 1 (Tuesday)
Independence Day                                                    June 12 (Tuesday)
National Heroes Day                                                August 27 (Last Monday of August)
Bonifacio Day                                                           November 30 (Friday)
Christmas Day                                                          December 25 (Tuesday)
Rizal Day                                                                  December 30 (Sunday)
Special (Non-Working) Days
Chinese New Year                                                   January 23 (Monday)
Ninoy Aquino Day                                                  August 21 (Tuesday)
All Saints Day                                                          November 1 (Thursday)
Additional special (non-working) day                       November 2 (Friday)
Last Day of the Year                                                December 31 (Monday)
Plan you breaks. Enjoy your vacation leaves. You deserved it!

How to Win Customers

I had this in my notebook for a long time. I am not sure whether I got  it from a book I was reading or from an article in a website. What  I am sure though, is that this set of quotations captures what every brand man has to do to win customers.

Tell me what you think.

 

Don’t sell me clothes,
Sell me sharp appearance, style and attractiveness.

Don’t sell me insurance.
Sell me peace of mind and a great future for my family.

Don’t sell me a house.
Sell me comfort, contentment, investment and pride of ownership.

Don’t sell me books.
Sell me pleasant hours and profits of knowledge.

Don’t sell me toys.
Sell my children happy moments.

Sell good feelings, self-respect, happiness and solutions to my life’s problems.

– Michael LeBoeuf  in “How to win customers and Keep Them for Life”

 

Do you agree? Why?

 

 

PASTA WITH TUNA AND CAPERS by Myra Portillo

PASTA WITH TUNA AND CAPERS

Cooking time: 15 mins
Servings: 3-4

Pasta with Tuna and Capers

Ingredients:

  • 250 grams pasta, cooked al dente
  • ¼ cup virgin olive oil
  • 2 tbsps. Butter
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tbsps. Anchovy fillets
  • 4 medium tomatoes, quartered
  • 2 cans tuna in brine or vegetable oil, drained
  • 3 tbsps. Capers plus 2 tbsps. Caper juice
  • Small handful of fresh Italian parsley, roughly chopped
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • Few slices of lemons

 

Over medium heat, sauté garlic and anchovies together in the oil and butter. Let anchovies melt into the oil but do not allow garlic to brown. Add chopped tomatoes and capers and cook for 2 minutes. Next add your tuna and juice of capers and allow to cook for about 2-3 minutes more. Toss in your pasta and mix together. Should the mixture look too dry, you may sprinkle some water from your cooked pasta. Season with ground black pepper and lastly sprinkle with parsley. Transfer to serving plate and garnish with lemon slices.

 

 

About Myra Portillo:

Myra was a top-notch key accounts specialist at ABS-CBN Integrated Sales and Marketing until her early retirement in 2001. During our days at ABS-CBN, we look forward to lunches and small parties where we get to taste some of her recipes.  After her retirement, she re-“discovered” her love for paintings and the crafts. Her watercolor artworks are so nice that a lot of her friends have encouraged her to put a one-woman exhibit. But to date, we haven’t been able to convince her. In fact, when I encouraged her to contribute to this blogsite, I mentioned her paintings, but instead she opted to share with us one of her cooking secrets — her yummy pasta with tuna and capers.

 

 

 

Limpya Bota Series 1: How to Shine Shoes

How to Shine Shoes

Limpya Bota is how we call the chore of shining shoes in our dialect.  It is a tedious job, and you get your hands dirty while doing it. If you are not lucky, you may even have to endure the nasty smell of any or all the following: the customer’s shoes, his socks, or his feet.

I am an expert at shining shoes. After all, I spent four years of my life doing this for a living, albeit only during weekends, school breaks and on holidays.

The first step is to remove accumulated dirt and grime from the shoes. More often, you do this with a brush. But for dirtier jobs, you first use a toothbrush and water to remove the accumulated mud, soil or whatever dirt is stuck in the leather, the soles or any other part of the shoe. You use your cotton rug to wipe the shoe dry. But if it is still wet,  you set it out under the sun to dry.

The second step is to apply “dyobos” on the shoes. Dyobos is a mixture of a shoe dye and water. It brings back the color of the shoes.  You have to apply the right color of the dye to the shoes. And with only two colors available in the market – black and red, one has to get the proper combination of black and red to get to the correct shade of brown needed for a particular shoe.

When the shoe is already dry, you brush it again, after which you start applying the show polish. We either use our fingers or the soft cotton cloth to put on the polish.  You apply polish to the shoe in a small circular movement. The key is not to put too much polish on the shoe–but to build the polish and shine up in thin layers.  You also have to make sure that polish reaches the inside of the creases on the shoe if they have any.

Next let the polish “go off” on the shoe (preferably in the sun, or somewhere warm for 2 to 3 minutes. This will help the leather absorb the polish and help thin layer of polish melt across the shoe.  Then we polish the shoe dry with the same bristle brush, or another one if you prefer.

The customer has two choices on the type of shoe shine finish he wants: pagakpak or charol.

Pagakpak is the most popular type of shine. One applies  the shoe polish as many times as you want (once or twice depending on how much the customer pays) brushing if off and then, finishing the run by rubbing a cotton cloth on the shoes. But there is an art to doing this. You fold the cotton cloth into a rectangle of approximately 24 inches by 4 inches. After that you place it on top of the shoes and move your hands from side to side. As you do this you make sure that you produce a certain sound that goes like this: tsak–tsalak-tsak–tsalak-tsak.   Once you are through, you tap your shoeshine box with your brush as a signal to the customer that job is done.

Charol is what we call the shine that results in a mirror like finish for the shoes. We wrap the cotton cloth on our forefinger and middle finger. Then, we add a bit of dyobos to the cotton cloth, put polish and spread it to the shoes. We repeat the process until we have coated all the leather parts with the shoe polish. Then we begin the process of gently massaging the shoe with the damp cloth fixed in our two fingers, doing it in a circular manner. We do this evenly and repeat the process until we shall get a mirror like shine of the shoes.  Be sure to be gentle and patient, otherwise, you will never get the polish that deserves to be called a charol.

How to encourage a young child to do well in school

The Bike Story

The boy was six years old and the following day would be his first day in school.  He was watching his father clean the bike — the bike his father rides when he goes to work.  He imagined the places he can go if he will learn how to ride one.  He will go to the barrio and race with his cousins; to the sea to swim and to watch the ships and the boats pass by;  to the market to see what new goods the vendors from the city are selling.  The bike will bring him to so many places.

He asked his father, “When can we buy another bike?”

The father looked at him and said ” Not immediately. Probably after we shall have paid for the sewing machine your mama got on installment ”

That was not the answer the boy wanted to hear. So, he went straight to the point , ” Is there a way I could own a bike?”

To which his father immediately retorted: “Oh yes, there is. But that is something you will have to work on.”

The boy got excited, looked at his father and asked: ” How?

And this was  the father’s answer:

“Tomorrow is your first day in school. All you have to do is to study well, listen to your teachers, and do your homework. If you are able to do this, then you will most likely be the top student in your class.  And you know what? Every year that you will get the first honors ribbon you will earn as prize a certain part of the bike.

For  grade 1, you will earn  the complete  frame including all its components: the top tube, the down tube, the seat tube, the seat stay and the chain stay;

For grade 2, you will get the saddle area comprising the saddle and the saddle posts;

For grade 3, you will get the front set –which includes the handle bar grip, the head tube and the fork;

For grade 4 , you will get the pedal, the crank arm, the chain and the chain rings;

For grade 5, you will get the front wheel — spokes, hub, rim, tire and valve;

And by grade 6: you will get the back wheel — spokes, hub, rim, tire and valve.

So, if you will be first honors from grade 1 to grade 6, you will have earned all the parts needed  to assemble a  bike! “

Every year, the boy reminded his father about the bike parts he has earned. And every year,  the father  told him how many more parts he  has to earn to complete the bike. There are days when they passed by a bike store or watched other people’s bike and talked about how better the boy’s bike will be, when fully assembled.

Every year from grade 1 to grade 6  the boy got  the first honors of his class.   He graduated valedictorian from elementary. But he never got the bike he wanted. His father met an accident and was bedridden for the next 3 years. In fact, he had to work after school hours to help earn money for the family.

But by this time, the boy had already learned the proper study habits.  The bike was no longer his motivation for topping his class. Rather, it was to maintain an academic scholarship  in order to finish his  studies. He graduated valedictorian in high school.  He got a full college scholarship with board and lodging allowance and eventually, graduated valedictorian in college.

He got a good job and could have bought for himself  the best bike his money can buy. But he did not.  Instead, he bought his father a good bike, and a pick-up.