The Root of Happiness (And How I Found It Around Halloween)

December 7, 2021December 9, 20211 Comment

I’ve been listening to Rob Dial’s podcasts. He’s a mindset mentor and one of the things he discussed was about happiness and the root of it or the key to achieving it. He based it on what Will Smith said before that it’s not the material things nor money that will bring you happiness (I think many of us know this already), but it’s peace. Peace is actually what I have been experiencing just recently, around Halloween time. It’s not because Halloween is my most favorite time of the year and this year’s celebration has been the happiest Halloween I’ve had so far (I thought last year’s Halloween celebration was the bomb! Didn’t think we’d top that off this year!), but it’s more than that.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it here before or in some other diary of mine, but living here in Oslob, for as long as I can remember, wasn’t really a good idea for me because I know and I feel that there are people here who don’t like me… they don’t like me because I’m with Mahal… because I used to be married to someone else… and maybe because I am just the kind of person they couldn’t believe achieved so much in life without much help from others. The way people think here is that you can either only be successful if you work abroad or if you’re married to a foreigner. I’m neither, so, maybe that boggles them. Honestly, I don’t really know why they don’t like me. The reasons I mentioned above are just my assumptions.

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5 Things You Can Do Instead of Social Media (Facebook Disabled My Account and I’m Thankful!)

November 29, 2021December 2, 20211 Comment

Oh my goodness!

It’s going to be Christmas soon, then New Year, and I still haven’t blogged about the things I’ve always wanted to blog about (like the happiest Halloween we’ve ever had)! As usual, so many joyful and exciting things have happened and continue to happen in my life for which I am very much thankful! I’m living my dream beach life and each and every day I try my best to spend it as if it were my last but without sacrificing my health too much this time around (hence, I’m not forcing myself to stay awake and do more than what my 16 waking hours would permit) coz health is one thing that we really treasure the most these days plus, at this day and age, it could really be our last with Covid around and this endless pandemic!

Anyway, it’s a blessing in disguise that Facebook disabled my account last Friday night just because I was posting photos of Mahal and Tuz in a five-star resort bathtub! They weren’t fully naked and I didn’t know bathtub photos were not allowed so I immediately deleted the post only to be disabled afterward. I can’t post, I can’t comment, I can’t react… and it’s going to be for a week! Argh! Has this happened to you before? What did you do?

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3 Simple Ways to Reduce Stress During These Hard Times

September 30, 2021September 30, 20212 Comments

How are you? We are on the 18th month of this pandemic and so many things have already happened… deaths left and right… Covid getting closer and closer to home (if it hasn’t hit yours already… it surely did mine. 5 of our family members caught Covid and thankfully survived it despite not getting vaccinated)… businesses shutting down… people suffering…. freedom getting suppressed in many places around the world…. and all this is starting to get on my nerves. Do you feel the same? Am I alone in feeling this way? If you’re on the same boat as I am, don’t fret. There are ways we can do to try to ride these waves. And we must. I just read an article on Bloomberg that this pandemic can last for a really long time. We can’t just give up, can we?

So what can we do to help reduce our stress during these hard times? Let me share with you some ways we try to do at home to help cope with this depressing worldwide situation:

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Sudden Death of a Great Man Weeks After Getting Vaccinated — My Grandfather, Almost a Centenarian

June 7, 2021June 7, 20214 Comments

I’m still in shock about the sudden death of my Lolo, Atty. Domingo L. Martinez. I didn’t think this would be my post here after a long hiatus on blogging. I have several vlogs lined up, so many exciting things have happened since we moved here in Oslob, Cebu but the news about my grandfather passing away really came as a shock to me.

It is our family’s theory that it’s all because he got vaccinated with Sinovac recently… Though official WHO (World Health Organization) findings reported that various Covid-19 vaccines pose as no threat to human health, and that the benefits of taking the doses far outweigh the risks, there is still news circulating about some people experiencing complications from getting vaccinated, one of which is dying. I’ve been seeing real-life accounts of both people I know and don’t know saying how the vaccines caused them grave illnesses with some eventually dying like my Lolo when they were otherwise in good health prior to getting those jabs. Getting that vaccine for my Lolo was the only thing he did differently in his routine in the last few weeks. And suddenly, he couldn’t breathe… He died of pneumonia according to my step-grandma. He was still very much alive and well just a few days prior to this.

To cut it short, please refer to screenshots of my Facebook posts below before heading to my current writing…

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My Little New Year’s Eve Diary

December 30, 2020December 30, 20202 Comments

When I think about what 2020 has been for us, I have nothing but prayer of thanks.

Though this pandemic did affect some aspects of our business, we were able to pivot, adjust, and not only survive but thrive. Truth is, in the 3 years that we’ve lived in Cagayan de Oro, 2020 has been our most successful year. And for that, THANK YOU, GOD!

A huge part is because living and working from home is not new to us. We’ve always been the introverted type and my work has always been online, so it didn’t really change our routine much. And because most of the world turned online, business has never been better. It also helped that we got out of our tiny pad. Since travel was restricted, our original plan of living somewhere half the time and living in the tiny pad the other half of the time was no longer possible. I needed space to breathe and just be and I’m so happy we got to experience living in a cozy house here in Cagayan de Oro City. Before the year approached its end, we even got to host online and overnight parties.

But don’t get me wrong… There were dark days, yes. Days when I felt like the world was going to end as if we’re entering the era of zombie apocalypse…

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MomTraNeur Featured at Wiki.Ezvid.Com and Connected Women

May 24, 2020June 12, 20201 Comment

OMG! OMG! OMG!!!

The month of May has been nothing but awesome for me and I’ll tell you 2 reasons why. I still have so many things to celebrate about this month which I’ll tell you before this month ends, but for now, here are two things that really got my heart racing! (I may be a little vain but hey, this doesn’t happen every day to everyone, so God, thank you for this honor!!!)

Here they are…

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The World Of the Married (Korean Drama) – An Annulled Woman’s Take On It (Me)

April 28, 2020April 28, 20203 Comments

The World of the Married is the second Korean drama that I tried to watch. The first was CLOY (Crash Landing On You) which everyone on my Facebook seemed to be raving about last month. I only got to finish until episode 4 then I stopped. For some reason, it didn’t seem as interesting for me, as compared to say, Money Heist, which I was also watching around the same time I was watching CLOY. I finished Money Heist in 24 hours! And then I got affected by it that I got a little depressed after. Lol!

Anyway, last week, I started seeing posts of a Facebook friend about The World of the Married. I kept reading how it could induce high blood or hypertension that my interest got piqued by it! Considering that my marriage got annulled last year, all the more that I wanted to watch it! Continue reading →

Ten Basic Creative Principles We Can All Use Especially In This Time of Pandemic

April 16, 2020May 9, 2020Leave a comment

On my previous post, I was talking a bit about how we need to be a little creative when marketing and selling in this time of pandemic. After all, we need all the help we can get to make sure we can still financially survive this crisis despite all odds. On this blog post, I’d like to delve into the topic of creativity a little bit more by mentioning the ten basic principles I learned before from a 12-week course I took on the Artist’s Way (a course in discovering and recovering your creative self created by Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan). These ten creative principles are: Continue reading →

Dengue Fever Suspicion This New Year, What To Do, and Other Updates

January 7, 2020January 7, 20207 Comments

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It’s a week into the new year and boy oh boy what a crazy schedule it has been!

I’m actually under the weather right now, not because I’ve not been taking care of myself. On the contrary, this time around, I’ve been sleeping 8-12 hours a day since the new year (except the other night when I only had 5 hours of sleep because Tuz won’t let me sleep…) It is because I am suspecting myself to have contracted Dengue because I caught a mosquito with black and white stripes as I was brushing my teeth last night! Prior to that, in the afternoon, I started feeling joint pains and aches. I thought it was because of the chicken I ate (I avoid chicken and other meat as much as I can but Mahal brought home some so I ate.. it has high uric acid content that’s why the doctor advised me before not eat meat anymore, tsk, tsk.) Then I had a mild fever. I thought that maybe I was just feeling sick because Tuz also has cough and colds and his temperature the other day was higher than usual (about 88-95 degrees Fahrenheit which is not considered fever yet but his skin was just a little bit hot to touch). I was just feeling so tired and achy all over so I tried to rest. But when I caught that black and white mosquito last night, my suspicion grew so we immediately decided to go to the hospital so I can have myself tested. That was 9:30 PM. We were supposed to come back after 3 hours but the moment I hit the bed after our little hospital trip, I felt so tired again that I woke up in the morning. I still couldn’t do my usual tasks except for a couple of social media posts and rested until this afternoon. I plan to get the blood test results this evening so as to avoid the crowd and I can head to the emergency doctor instead of lining up to go see one of the regular doctors in one of the clinics. At least I can rest some more at home and do some social media tasks for work, and yes, blog, lol.

I paid P2,178 to have the following lab tests last night: Continue reading →

How To Make A Relationship Last [3 Major Tips for Those Living Together]

August 14, 2019April 16, 20204 Comments

We’re home now from our very long road trip starting from Cagayan de Oro to Oslob, then Dumaguete, Bacolod, Iloilo, Gigantes, Boracay, back to Iloilo, Bacolod, Oslob, Cebu City, Dapitan, and now back in Cagayan de Oro. Whew! What a blast it has been! We are so tired from our trip but so rejuvenated as well.

We came home just in time for a few things:

my grandfather’s 95th birthday celebration
an event I am attending later for Solane as a blogger
a package that arrived from Blue Bee which I will be using and reviewing before I join their affiliate program
and most especially, just in time for our 5th anniversary as committed life partners ❤

Wow! So many blessings! Thank you, God, for all these love and opportunities in my life right now. I really feel blessed despite the fact that I am oh so tired (which is why I am now taking Thiocell to give me more energy, aside from my usual multivitamins and organic supplements — perhaps, I’ll blog about them next time).

Anyway, that long trip of ours really tested our faith, our patience, and ultimately our love for one another. We are used to traveling together, but it’s not always that we travel with a group, more so, our extended family. I must admit that on a few occasions, it did make me feel like I wanted to give up on us because of the little stresses that came along the way (you can read about it here: How to Avoid Travel Burnout When Traveling With a Group) but as always, after every storm, a rainbow always comes and I’m glad that we always get out of it stronger than ever.

So how do we keep managing to strengthen our love and commitment for each other (as if we’re falling in love for the first time all over again) despite our imperfections? How do we make our relationship last year after year after year and hopefully until death do we part? How do you make your relationship last longer… until marriage… how do you make a marriage last a lifetime?

Below are the major 3 things I learned along the way (which I learned the hard way by the way) and which I want to share with you in case you’re in a relationship too, whether a new one or a seasoned one, and you want to make your relationship stronger too. As I continue to embark in this amazing relationship with my best friend, my life partner, my soulmate, my Mahal, here are the 3 major tips I can give you based on our own experiences: Continue reading →

Manny Pacquiao vs Keith Thurman: Life Lessons to Learn from this Fight

July 21, 2019July 22, 20192 Comments

Hey, everyone! We just got here in Oslob after a 16-hour road trip all the way from Cagayan de Oro. I rested for a bit when I got here because I was already so zombified the past few days from everything that’s been happening (work, Mahal’s DTI graduation, packing for this trip and the road trip itself). I mentioned before that we’ll be doing a Mindanao-Visayas tour this month together with Mahal’s sister, his sister’s boyfriend and her daughter who came all the way from Belgium and now we’re here!

READ RELATED POST: HOW TO GET TO OSLOB FROM CAGAYAN DE ORO VIA CAR AND BOAT RIDES

I’m actually super tired from the trip. I only had a few hours of sleep on the boat as I tried drafting the Part 3 of my Boracay blog post series last night. Since that would entail a huge amount of time and energy for me, which right now, I don’t have, I decided to rest instead. I do, however, still want to update you here on my blog and all I can think about was that boxing fight our very own 40-year old Manny Pacquiao had against 30-year old Keith Thurman. We were watching it yesterday while we were packing for our trip and boy oh boy, wasn’t that a really good fight! Even veterans watching from the ringside described it as Pacquiao’s best one since his magnificent win over Antonio Margarito back in 2010.

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