The big day for my daughter, Rika Antoinette, will be this Saturday when she is christened to the Christian World. Her mother and I have been busy preparing for the event and believe me, it's quite difficult to juggle work and the preparations.We've invited a rather big number of friends and family -- 110 to be exact -- and my sister, Rochelle, remarked that we had invited the entire baranggay. Sheesh, we didn't know we had that many friends :P
Problem was quite a few of Ikai's godparents will be unable to attend the christening. So, an additional burden was to try and find proxies for the ninongs and ninangs on Saturday. But I'm sure everything will turn out right when the time comes.
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Last Sunday was fun. Thanks to the internet and modern technology, my sisters and I were able to communicate simultaneously via Yahoo Messenger. And with the addition of a web camera, we were able to see each other's faces, especially Rochelle who I have not seen in almost 3 years already. Rochelle has been in the States and has not yet been back to the P.I. since then.
Rochelle also got to see her pamangkin live in action. Elvie and I had to take turns focusing the camera on our little Ikai who we placed in the crib. And Rochelle was delighted to see her neice do her little antics while inside the crib.
Wheng on the other hand was surprised to see how big Ikai has grown. She last saw her neice back in December when she came back for a vacation from work in Dubai. She remarked that Ikai had grown rounder.
Adding to the thrill was the fact that the internet allows voice enhancements and Rochelle had the fun of hearing Ikai laugh, gurgle, and giggle. Unfortunately for Wheng, she did not have a mic on so she missed out on hearing Ikai's pikat laugh. Later on, Rochelle and I would proceed to talking over the 'net and we chatted for something like a couple of hours as she was wont to end our conversation.
I also placed the headset on Ikai so that Rochelle had the chance to "speak" to her neice, much to the wonder of Ikai who kept turning her head to try and find out where the voice was coming from.
All in all, it was a great "reunion" of sorts for us Ragandan siblings who, because of fate and fortune, are miles and countries away.
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It has been somehow frustrating in the office. After the DDOS attack and the hard drive failure, it took the IT guys about 4-5 days to retrieve all files and profiles from the back-up tapes.
And when they finished, much to everyone's thanks, and mucher to everyone's dismay, it was revealed that not all files and documents on the profile/directory server were recovered. Even I was surprised to find out that my reports were outdated. And some files I created over the past couple of weeks were missing.
Accounting Department later on found out that the back-up tapes only contained data -- files, profiles, documents -- until March 2. The rest of the days thereafter, data was effectively lost.
Darn ....
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On a trip to Divisoria over the weekend I managed to get hold of the 24 Seasons 1-5 (DVD). I was looking for Star Trek: Enterprise Seasons 1-4 but it seems that all the retailers of DVDs in 168 Mall didn't carry a copy.I'm not much of a Trekkie but I do enjoy my share of Star Treks. While I am familiar with the original William
Shatner-Leonard Nimoy series which aired way back, I grew up watching the Next Generation Series which featured memorable characters like Captain Jean-Luc Picard, William Riker, Geordi LaForge, Worf, Counsellor "Ohlala" Deanna Troi, and of course, Data. I wasn't able to watch Deep Space 9 that much and Voyager was but a blimp in my Star Trek databanks but Enterprise caught my attention.That's because I knew it's main star, Scott Bakula, who I also enjoyed watching years earlier in the sci-fi series Quantum Leap. Plus, Enterprise promised a look back at the pioneering space days of Earth when the first NCC-Enterprise with Bakula as captain made its maiden voyage. Yes, I like historical fiction -- that is history of a fictional world such as Star Trek.
