Coredump

Way too long for a road trip back to Manila. The national highway in Bulacan is flooded so the bus had to take the route through Tarlac, and Pampanga.

We emerged from the San Simon exit to the North Luzon express way just a while back. Thank goodness for 3G.

• Work: Gone Unix-hardcore. Our team currently leads Unix training for other infra teams. Shell/Perl scripting occupies a large part of the, er, curriculum. I’m “re-learning” Perl. I’m also amazed as to how open source is being leveraged here. I lurve open source.
• Family: Prior to a change of shift sked, I go on an extended off-shift period of four days. Like, wow! What better way to start that four-day weekend than to slooowly fry in my own oil (not a nice imagery there) here at the airport. Hooray. Love the company, though, as always.
• Others: I still haven’t gotten around to reading Good Omens. Haven’t watched Harry Potter, too. (Why bother? I heard it’s not as good as the book, anyway.) And, I haven’t been online in a while. Smart 3G’s a big bummer. Been getting lots of connection errors lately. Hope it stabilise soon.

I get a feeling that work is taking over part of my life. Sort of.

I got invited to be a godfather to a friend’s daughter. Too bad I couldn’t make it because my work sked required me to be at the office this Sunday. Bummer. My sked’s not as flexible as I thought: a regular eight-hour shift (no breaks), five days a week, for a total of 80 productive hours weekly. It’s not so bad, once you get used to it. Well, I haven’t — not just yet.

It has its perks, though. For one, I get to go home to the province during weekdays. Last Friday, I brought Gab to school — my first time there. He showed me around, and gave me a tour of the place. Since his class is for three hours, I walked around the nearby mall and ran a few errands in between. After school, off to a fastfood store we went. QT with my eldest son:

For another, I can now spend more time with the little one. I brought home infant cereals and a dish set. Julian just turned five months, so maybe it’s a little bit too early for him to try those. Hey, I’m an excited tatay here. Here’s his routine: he wakes up at around five AM, and plays around in his crib. In our subconscious, semi-sleepy state, Peng and I can hear the tinkle of his toys and him crawling around in the bassinet.

By six, he gets a bit more insistent and demands for attention — it’s time for his milk, and a change of nappies. We usually do not make him wear diapers during the day, so he goes commando most often. I then carry him and go outside for some little bit of sunshine. He particularly loves the garden with lots of green all around. It’s time for his nap at seven — the first of several for the day. At nine AM, he wakes up:

It’s time for a bath by 10 PM:

He plays a bit with his kuya, while we prepare for school. Gab goes to school by 12 noon, so we don’t get to see Julian until around four in the afternoon. By then, he’s back to sleep and usually wakes up at six, when his Mom gets home from work.

Life is so good. If only I could get more of it, instead of just two days in a week.

‘Nuff said.

Happy Fathers’ Day!

(I’m using The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Ortigas Park branch free WiFi, courtesy of GlobeQuest. The signal’s weak (at -73 dBM, according to my Dell WLAN Card Utility) so I’m getting lots of timeout, even for the more resilient Google Talk connection.)

I just got back from the province. Our four-month-old son, Julian, got out of the hospital last Monday after being rushed there last week for high fever. He had a urinary tract infection that resulted in a 40-degree fever that almost caused him to go into convulsions. Thankfully, he got out of it pretty fast. Additional tests showed that there were no other ailments — his kidneys and bladder were fine.

It’s always very stressful when someone in the family gets sick, specially the young ones. I still vividly remember when the eldest, Gabriel, was also admitted to the hospital for bronchitis when he was still two months old. We had to leave him in the pediatric ICU overnight for observation. It was painful seeing our child through the glass window — we wanted to hold him, but we couldn’t.

Fortunately, for Julian, we got to stay together in the room. He was restless the whole time, and he frequently cried. I had to carry him out of the room a few times, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, just so he’ll stop crying.

We’re glad this is all over. He’s doing just great now, and he’s back to his usual routine: getting up early, cooing and moving around in his crib, shouting when no one attends to him, waving his hands when he wants to be carried. Too bad I have to leave for work. I would’ve have wanted to stay home longer. Peng is such a great partner, and she fills up the role of tatay and mom pretty well, when I’m not around. I’m very thankful, and I feel blessed, for that.