The hero pin by Marcel Wanders

This is a fabulous idea. If you had a hero pin, whom would you give it to? :)

TC 1: Cinco Picos

So much for trying to sleep today. With the new stricter IT policies at the office, it has become such a hassle to do any personal business during office hours. While I'm all for "not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing" (or simply not getting the personal mix in with the professional), with the horrendous amount of time we spend in the office, it's become insane that our private matters are taken into scrutiny.

But oh well, rules are rules. So all blogging will now therefore be restricted to home use. :)
And that's one perfectly good reason why this blog has been lacking in activity as of late.
There's one good thing I'd like to chronicle though, and that's the recent climb (my third this year!) in a mountain range in the Zambales province called Cinco Picos.

At the start of each traning period for the AMCI Mountaineering Club, trainees and members alike come in droves to participate in the 1st Training Climb. The reason for this is TC1 is the easiest climb of the four mountains that are laid out for the training period. So for those of us who like to keep one foot in the murky waters of the mountaineering world (without exactly sacrificing limb and sanity), TC1 is the only way to go.

This year, it did not disappoint. The climb was almost perfect: gradual ascents punctuated with a wide expanse of rolling mountains, clear weather washed by a bit of downpour, hilarious company that broke the monotony of walking, and enough challenging slopes and rivers to make it seem hardcore. Haha.

When we reached the campsite, we were blessed with more rain than we could handle. :P The rain simply did not stop - it drizzled while we pitched our tents, set up the kitchen, cooked dinner, surprised Kuya Mar and Mardel with cupcakes and balloons for their birtday, and even while we were devouring the lechon (taken in WHOLE, mind you) during dinner. The downpour stopped slightly to let us watch the trainees in their various renditions of the Filipinia theme. (No pictures were taken at this point because no one wanted to risk damaging their digital SLRs)

All in, it was one of those events where everything was worth it... laborius as it was, we all had a great time! I even had a chance to use my new orange umbrella. Hihihi.

What does it take to be happy nowadays?

Really, it's not all about the money.

In an article from Reuters, young people in developing nations are at least twice as likely to feel happy about their lives than their richer counterparts, a survey says.

That's saying something. Another finding in this survey is that: The happier young people of the developing world are also the most religious.