Too busy to breath..

Does it sound melodramatic,  he he.. It is the busyness at work, sucked in everything about me and I am not even an executive making life changing decisions. Aargh, but when tasks keep piling after each other nothing that I can do but get glued in front of my puter. Even my office chair is showing signs of fatigue.

What would a home based job take from you, you would ask. The pain of receiving resumes for positions that don’t even quality or the fact that they don’t understand what remote working is all about. They think having a computer with internet connection would hack it, forget about the fact that the company is an American company. Boy, the confidence that they exude when writing those cover letters, saying that they can confidently do the job for a position that we don’t even require. Yet during the video interview, they must recent watched the movie, “Frozen”. As they fidget and no words come out at the question of self description.

Or spending time and resources on-boarding them and not show up or the skills that they say they possess is just not there. I keep saying during interviews and orientation that ego, id, self is better kept hidden, the need to be a team player is stronger because of lack of face time interaction. But the self is persistent, painfully so that it causes them to fail. Or someone who claims to be a senior executive and accepted a low level position and has very little technical know how.

I did gain a lot of knowledge in all these, changed the way I do things having a back  up is necessary.

What a joy though when we find the right combination

Christmas dinner, successful despite failed recipes..

First the updates, I am working again, for a company in NY with operations in LA and  NY, that keeps me pretty busy. The different time zones, had me working on Christmas day.

I am was also the Treasurer for our Homeowners Association, end of the year and first quarter are the busiest with folks making their payments and all. “Was” because I left recently, differences in opinion, priorities and  logic behind things. I miss the interaction with the Homeowners, though, finding solution to their issues, despite being yelled at. Being yelled at happened once or twice, but they left without anger in their hearts. The take away here is learning without an open mind is like talking to a brick wall, ha ha.. 

Going back to my original subject matter, unlike the US, where Christmas dinner is usually held on Christmas eve, we hold ours on the day of Christmas.

When we were young, there is the ante bisperas, the bisperas, and the actual Christmas day. All celebrated for visiting relatives. As kids, we get the shiny coins from Banco Filipino. That was also the time, when we caught our mom with the goodies she was hiding to put in our Christmas stockings. Mind you, our stockings were not the fancy ones that have today. Old socks of dad, did the trick for us. Times have changed indeed, we’re lucky to have everybody on Christmas diner.

Anyway, I digress, Christmas dinner is when the whole family gathers together, for this dinner, I decided let’s have turkey, and such. My wanting to make it feast, I ended with this menu:

Roasted Turkey: Turkey is not a staple in the Philippines, so I ordered  the butter ball, which was out of stock, ended up with the organic, tiny turkey from the  Green Grocer they deliver.

Ham: From Excellente  on Palanca Street. I thought it tasted like Iberico but no, it is more marca pina, sweet, still good.

Sweet potato:  The sweet potato yam didn’t sell very well with the fam, just because it is camote no matter what you say.

Turkey dressing: The turkey dressing is more of a side dish, I used an old recipe, but it didn’t pan out well. Called for a lot of stock to prepare but only used a small amount, it ended up soggy. So I had to do an immediate repair, drained the stock and toasted it in the over to maintain the desired consistency.

Cold cuts: There were ham, prosciutto, sausages, olives, etc. the first to go, too late that to notice that the white wine turned flat for being in the rack for a long time and the red just didn’t  last long he he ..glad that there is 7-11  in the corner.

Of course, I had a variety of cheeses, some failed make it to the table.

Milk bread: Even the milk bread didn’t cooperate, I doubled the recipe but the result was not the creamy bread that I am used to.

Green beans: What can go wrong this recipe right, have been emailing the recipes to my assistants, but they didn’t read the whole thing before starting to do the cooking, too much butter and way too salty. Otherwise, still good.

Waldorf salad: This salad was a request by a cousin who didn’t show up, grrr, but it was okay, it was our only contribution to semi healthy eating he he.

Creamed corn: Too salty and too pepery

“house” chocolate cake: Never fails, always good.

Almond crescents: It was my first time despite the difficulty in shaping it to the desired crescents, otherwise good.

I was suppose to distribute mini bags of Christmas cookies, it all got consumed. I also had a small lemon bar.One of the brothers brought beef stew for the rice eaters.

Does it look like I went crazy, just because I had 2 folks helping me, all in all it was a good event. All in all mudra is happy, not because there’s so much food but because all her kids are all in one place.