Villa, Villa Bo Villa...

A recent e-mail update from a good friend from Dubai was a little stressful.  You ask how does it affect me and I can give you more than one reason to be stressed.

Villa 16, Room #1

I chose to stay in a villa when I was in Dubai because I feel like there is a sense of home, although I know all the risks it entails.  Until our villas were inspected and our electricity was cut.  It was illegal to stay in a shared villa.  But people is still choose to do so for other reasons than what I have.  The most popular reason would be the financial side of it.  I know there is so much more.

When our villa was raided and our electricity was cut off, we were informed that we have three days to move before they finally lock the villa.  This means that we lose all our things that we left behind.  So, I have all reasons to be stressed about this news here, Shared Villas Lose Power.  

It's been almost a year since that day, and I can still vividly remember what happened starting from that phone call to inform me about the raid.  I was stressed from that moment until the day the dust settled in the flat where I moved into.  I spent half a day looking for a place and another half packing my things.  I would have spent more than that if not for my friend who referred me to some people.  Our mover came at about 7:30 p.m. and we finished unloading a few minutes before midnight.

The decision to move into a flat was out of the fact that villas are starting to be the flavor-of-the-month of the 'baladiyas' (immigrations people).  For those who live or have lived in villas in Dubai, I know you can relate.  But for those who haven't, it was a happy-sad-rewarding-stressful-relaxed-practical-relaxed-downtoearth-humbling and much, much more.

I stayed in two villas over the span of two years.  But I wouldn't have traded everything that I experienced.

I Just Solved a Problem

How to increase/decrease font sizes in websites

Have you ever visited a website that you just can't stand to read because the fonts are so small?

Well, you won't have that problem anymore.

I have had the same problem the other day when I went into a site and found the fonts too small (as in too small) for me to read. Naturally, I think you'll do exactly what I did…. Leave the site immediately.


The next day, I, again, visited the site, hoping they would have done some changes. The page stayed the same, so I switched to another blog entry, this time showing a page with the regular font. I read on until the comments section. Surprisingly, someone made a comment that goes something like this: 'it's a good thing this site's font is ok now. At least I didn't have to do Ctrl+ to enlarge the font and Ctrl- to get it back to normal.'

So, I tried doing Ctrl+ and alas, the fonts were enlarged.

But of course I didn't right away say, 'Wow!' I wanted to try it on other sites to make sure it is a general rule. After a few websites, it still holds true.

Just don't forget to Ctrl- to get it back to the normal font.

Please leave a comment if you tried so yourself and if it worked.

How to (Toilet)Train Your Cats

Remember our neighbor's cat that I mentioned in this post?

She's been coming to our home almost everyday. I dunno, maybe just to play and be cuddled, I presume. Just like any pets that you want to keep or take care of, they just need three basic things: water, food and shelter. But, wait, I think cats also need some TLC. A friend of mine who's also a cat lover and owns maybe seven or eight cats (used to be about 15) just told us that cats are really very sensitive animals. We also found out that (hypertensive people, this is for you!) these felines are therapeutic. Just the stroke of their furs can calm us down and helps regulate our blood pressure.

So, I thought of telling you our secret in toilet-training cats. We used to hate cats because they just pee and poop everywhere in the house and that's just about the biggest problem we face in having them inside our house. Well, at least this was how we trained our two cats (it used to be four but two went missing about a year ago) and how my Lola trained their cats.

Although this is tradition and I have no idea if there was anything scientifically proven, it worked for our four cats. They go out every time they have to pee or poop.

For those who want to take care of cats, I recommend owning them at a very young age. Just the age that they could be separated from their parents. Otherwise, their immune system will drastically fall down and might cause death, not unless you can bring them to the vet to have some immunization boosters injected to them.

As for the toilet training, start at day one. The day you welcome them home. Carry them the way a mother cat carries her kitten (pinching them at the back of their neck, this usually immobilizes them, too) and bring them to the spot outside the house where you want them to pee and poop, and draw their noses three times to the ground at the same time saying, "Dito ka wiwiwi and dito ka pupupu (this is where you will pee, this is where you will poop)." And.... that should do it! They will never do it inside your house again.

As for our neighbor's cat, whom we named 'Basiang' (yeah, after the storm), she was just here this afternoon and played with our carpet. She was so cute and funny.

The Day After Basyang

Yesterday, the day started cloudy and I found out there was a typhoon... a tropical depression that leveled up and was named Basiang.

I had to meet deadlines that's why I was half-aware.  But when night time came, we did some preparations for the night.  We stored some drinking water enough for a day and filled the buckets with clean water for washing.  We strategically placed flashlights where we can find them and put a candle and a match right in the middle of the dinner table if in case the light goes out.

It was nine o'clock at night when the winds started.  But we never expected what came upon that night.

It was 9:30pm when power started to fluctuate and it finally went out at 10:00pm.  It was not so much of a task since we all have gotten ready to go to bed.

The winds became harder at 10:00pm and got harder and harder as night falls.  My sister and I remained vigilant because we couldn't sleep at all.  We got all our pets inside including our dog who doesn't want to stay inside the house.  He stayed on that same spot with a door mat near the door all night long.  We could see that even our pets couldn't relax and get some sleep because of the very strong winds outside.  It wasn't long before we heard pieces of roofing materials flying outside our place.  This went on until 12 midnight.  But it didn't stop yet.

The winds slowed down and the rain got harder.  There was a leak in our kitchen.  Under our front door, small amounts of water started to come in from the bottom and water sprays in through our window that we had to close all the front windows.

This went on until about 3:00 in the morning.  The rain started to slow down as well as the winds, and we finally relaxed and prepared to sleep.

About 5:30 in the morning, I was awaken by our dog, leaking my face to wake me up.  I am thinking he wanted to go out of the house so badly and he thinks it was okay because the rains and the wind has stopped and it was already morning.

And these pictures were what we saw early this morning after Basiang struck last night.

Finally, Outlook for my Mails... Using GMail

On my post here, I talked about how I went through calling PLDT's customer service to assist me on how I could get my Yahoo! and Gmail mails right on MicroSoft Outlook.  My first call led me to believe that I could, but my succeeding calls proved that I just couldn't.  All because PLDT only gives this as a privilege to higher-end accounts, meaning higher monthly fees.

I gave up.  I also said on that same blog that I had an idea but never really tried it because I just thought, "What's the use?"  I didn't want to spend at least Php 20 just to find it out.

Yesterday, I thought of cleaning up both my e-mail accounts since I have been using them a lot for my freelance writing job.  I was with Gmail and stumbled upon one of their features which was sitting there all along.  I just discovered that I could get my Gmail using Outlook.  I'll try to walk you through with a few steps, but really, it's all there to guide you once you see it.

1. Open your gmail account
2. Click on Settings
3. Click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP
4. Follow the IMAP instructions to configure your Gmail to your Outlook

Well, some of you may have been using this for long, but for those late bloomers like me, this is how you can get your web-based Gmail account right in your Outlook.  

You might want to know what's in it when you have your mails at your Outlook.  For one, you can customize the way your messages look like.  You have more options when it comes to the fonts of your messages as well as your signatures.  Also, you get notified for an incoming mail even if your Outlook is closed, and there's much more to it, really.  Especially if you are one of those who can't do without MicroSoft Office OneNote.  They go hand in hand.

Now, you might have received an e-mail from me changing from my Yahoo e-mail to GMail.  But for those who haven't, just change it to @gmail.com and that's it.