Cleanup Day 3

With the impending arrival of: #1 twins and Grant next week, and #2 Grandpa and Grandma from Canada in two weeks time, I set out to do a week long clean up project for the house. The objective is to clean up all unnecessary documents, trash and random items that are still hanging around our house.

It is day 3 of my week long project clean up project, and it’s been tiring so far.

As soon as I got home, I started to tackle my office / brother’s old room / my room. I cannot believe how much dust has gathered on one of these open cabinets that we have. I found meters and meters long of LAN cables too! I even found old playstation games, as well as VHS tapes. Can you believe it? I don’t think this part of the house has been touched for years!

Amongst the junk and the dust could potentially come some prized items. Unfortunately I didn’t find any today. I did find one yesterday when I was cleaning up my trolley cabinet. I actually found the few St. Christopher tokens that I bought a few years back when I was in Montreal. My mom quickly got one to give out to her friend.

After working on it for an hour or so, I looked back at my finished product and well, it doesn’t seem like there’s any change at all. But if you look at the box of junk that I was able to pull out of the room, you’d wonder how all these fitted this room for a long time.

I am targetting another corner of the house tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll have enough energy left to do so.

Lasik

If I remember correctly, I started wearing glasses when I was in grade school, probably around grade 3 or 4. I only had to wear them because I had astigmatism back then. I thought it was nice to have glasses to wear and so I was excited to wear them! But as I got older, I hated wearing them. By the time I was in high school my eye grade shot up to 200+ something. I was a teenager then so I wanted to get rid of the glasses, and put on contacts instead. And ever since then, I wore contact lenses. Eventually, by the time I was working, for some unknown reason, my astigmatism disappeared all of a sudden and I was left with around a stable eye grade playing around 275 to 325 on both eyes.

Although it may not be as bad compared to my mom, for example, who has 900 grade (that’s almost going blind), I was, for some time, already interested in getting a lasik surgery to bring the grade back down to 20/20. I always remembered my friend who had lasik right after college graduation. He said that why wait to have it later on, when you can have it now, and enjoy the benefits longer. And that did stuck to my mind. However, getting my eye sight back to 20/20 back then wasn’t a high priority. It was a nice to have and not something I really considered.

But that all changed when my dad decided to get one for himself during 2011. He actually had cataract too so I don’t know what the procedure was (I was in Canada that time). You know, when someone close to you finally does something like this, it gives you a better perspective on the whole procedure, that it was safe, fast, and generally, it wasn’t so bad after all.

And so last year, when my dad went to have another check up with the doctor, I went with him to get some initial check done too. Unfortunately, doctor said that she’d prefer if I didn’t wear my contacts for two weeks, before we do the preliminary checkup. So there, I was so used to wearing my contacts that I couldn’t go without it for two weeks. And thus, my pan to have my lasik surgery had to be postponed indefinitely.

Not until early this year, when I finally decided that it was about time. I keep having headaches already when I wear my contact lenses or my glasses. I began hating using either of them. And so after a few weeks of wearing glasses (with the exception of one day where I wore my contact lens – during my brother’s wedding, where I begged my doc to allow me to wear contacts), I finally had my lasik surgery!

The surgery itself was quick and painless. According to my dad, it was around 20 minutes, from the time I entered the room, to the time I excited.

It was an interesting experience. You’re wide awake during the whole procedure. They put in some anesthesia so that you don’t feel anything in your eyes the whole time. They start with one eye, then move on to the next.

First, they put some clamp or something to keep you eye open.  The whole time though, you should just focus on looking at this color flashing in front of you. And then there’s this one procedure wherein everything turns black. I don’t know exactly what they do that time. I wasn’t worried that much because the second doctor who was with us were updating me during each step that we’re going through. He tells me what to expect next so that I won’t be stressed about what’s happening. For the actual lasik surgery, that procedure only takes a few seconds. You can actually smell something burning during this process,  but you won’t feel anything at all.

After the procedure, your vision will be a bit hazy. It’s not 100% yet and you will have this sandy feeling in your eyes. I had to wear protective goggles so that I won’t accidentally scratch my eyes ( I still wear it now, but only when I sleep ). I also had to put in different drops for my eyes too. But in just after around 6 hours, the sandy feeling was gone, and my eye sight was getting clearer and clearer by the minute!

I went out to have Halo Halo that afternoon and I was soooo happy that I can read the plate numbers of the cars already! It was so exciting. And then the next day when I woke up, I didn’t have to grab my glasses anymore to see what time it was! Amazing.

So to whoever discovered this procedure, I salute you. This is a truly one of a kind scientific miracle on its own. Who would’ve though we could finally have our 20/20 vision back again!?

S&R

Back when I was in Canada, I always loved going to Costco. For those unfamiliar with Costco, it is a popular members only warehouse grocery chain that offers cheap and good stuff from groceries, to electronics. Costco offers items by bulk, which is probably why it’s a bit cheaper compared to other grocery chains. My officemates from Manila would usually go there to buy stuff to send for their families back home via balikbayan box. We call it the “relief goods”. I remember buying my pasalubongs from here too!

So apparently here in Manila, we have our very own version of Costco, which is S&R! I know S&R been around for years and years and unfortunately for me, it was only today that I got the chance to step inside this store and realize that we actually had our own version of Costco right here! And what surprised me was that everything was similar. The tire store inside, the food stands where they offer huge slices of pizza (and they’re good too!) and even Kirkland products and the various pastries and huge cupcakes ! They’re all the same! It brought me back to Costco!

So now my mom tells me that, next time, don’t bother buying my pasalubongs from Costco anymore. Just give her money as pasalubong. After all, she apparently, can buy the items I usually get from them here in Manila already. haha. That will actually save me luggage space now! Though, korny kasi when you get home and you don’t have much to take out from your luggage as pasalubong. So, I will still get them the usual chocolates I buy for them (I even saw the truffles there!).

It’s nice to know that S&R can offer different set of items you won’t usually find in other grocery stores. My mom finally signed up for membership, which was only 700 for the year. So, hopefully, I’ll be able to go to S&R more often from now on.