House Painting Turned Into A Hobby

The past days, I just had little free time to be in front of my laptop so I wasn’t able to catch the PayPerPost opportunities where I was qualified. Earlier today, I was out again but I brought my laptop, though I knew I won’t be able to connect to the internet because we’re going to the townhouse unit for some painting retouches. How I wish I am traveling across wireless cities so I can connect to the internet while inside the car!

If people will look at the things that I brought , an artist will say I’m going out to paint, because I brought some brushes and palette knives I use for canvas painting. But the artist will be wondering why I’m not bringing any tube paints and canvas. The artist will be partly right because I’m really going out to paint, but on the walls and stairs (just small portions to be retouched), and not on canvas.

It will probably be hard to believe that house painting has turned into a hobby for me. It is true, but that is because I got used to just one brand of paint which is odorless, lead free and has exciting computerized colors to choose from. I’m talking about ACE paints. This is not a sponsored post, all I want is to share the comforts I’ve experienced while doing a job some people hate to do. I heard there is a Filipino national artist who uses just one shade of ACE paint for the background of his paintings.

If ACE Hardware will hire me to blog about their paints, probably I can come up with endless number of posts. They gave their paint colors beautiful names such as “Cardiff by The Sea” which I used on the wall of our townhouse unit as shown on the first photo. Whenever I talk with the supervisor of the paint section, the people not used to ACE paints will be wondering what we’re talking about because we use the exact commercial name of the color in our discussions. Like two weeks ago, I told the supervisor, can you mix me a quart of “Brown Sugar”?

Unfortunately, I don’t think ACE Hardware will need a blogger for their products because their website is complete. You may check www.acehardware.com and experience a simulation using palettes of colors on a photo that you will select. Get started with the “Projects and Solutions”, go to “Paint Tips” then click on the “Paint Visualizer” which will bring you to “Discover Your Colors” screen that will give you choices for simulation.

By the way,I think I promised a Feng Shui tip for house renovations but this is applicable only during this Year of the Rat. It’s a no-no to renovate the North and South portions of your houses, but don’t worry because there’s a solution again. Start the renovation on the East side and finish your renovation on that side too.

I signed up for PPP!

Something came up! I signed up with PayPerPost (PPP) and my blog was approved, so from now on I can write about more topics, and I’m excited!

I encountered PPP a month ago while I was trying to look for jobs. During that time it has been almost a year of job hunting, but as I mentioned in my March post “Not Finding A Job But Finding More Friends”, it is very hard for a person my age (above 50) to get a job here in the Philippines. I wanted to give up, until I began noticing the “work at home” ads at the sidebar of my Emails. There were a lot of work-at-home jobs to choose from, but I just found that most are not really to my liking. Until I encountered the ad saying “get paid to blog about the things you love!”. I don’t think there’s a better offer than that.

I am jobless, I have a special child to support, so I’m taking this opportunity to earn while enjoying what I’m doing and also spending quality time with my special child. I was thankful that I’ve just started posting when I signed up with PPP because its policy of approving blogs have motivated me to publish quality posts which helped me make friends easily, especially with bloggers like me.

The opportunities offered for blogging whereby I can choose what to blog about and the word of mouth ethics of PayPerPost which protect the bloggers are two more reasons why I know I will enjoy this new endeavour of mine.

5 Basic Feng Shui Rules

Did you like my last post about the Feng Shui rule on house colors? As I write this, it’s exactly 5:27 in the morning and the real reason why I’m up and opened my laptop is I was inspired to start a post titled “House Painting Turned Into A Hobby”. However, I chanced to check “My Documents” and found this file about Feng Shui. This was one of my first speeches in Toastmasters Club, and though my audience were mostly Filipinos and I used props at that time, I am now thinking and hoping you will like this too because you will learn something.

This is about 5 basic Feng Shui rules that was followed by traditional Chinese for generations. It doesn’t matter if this is the first time you’ve heard about Feng Shui as long as you know what is positive and negative.

The first rule says “Never hang washing outside overnight”. Why? Darkness emits negative energies that will be absorbed by the clothes. Would you like to wear clothes full of negative energies? Of course not!

Second rule: Keep brooms and mops out of sight! Why? Simply because they are ugly sights! That’s what I think. But the reason according to the books is those brooms and mops sweep away the fortunes of the family.

The third rule says something positive about the broom. It says “leave an upturmed broom outside the office door after working hours”! Can you guess why? To drive the burglars away! Because they will think that there’s a janitor inside cleaning the office. Am I right?

Ahh, the fourth rule is interesting: Pointing a finger is bad Feng Shui because it directs bad energy toward a person. Remember that!




You will not like this fifth rule: Mirrors in the bedroom cause problems. Kinda weird, right? Lilian Too’s book further says that:

• Mirrors are often responsible for the entrance of third parties into an otherwise good relationship.
• If you must have a mirror in your bedroom, keep it closed or covered during sleep or place it in an area where it cannot be directly seen at night.
• No mirror on the ceiling please!




That last rule was scary, don’t you think so? But don't worry because there's always a solution to every problem like the mirror shown in the photo which can be rotated and turned into a bookshelf!

It’s nice to know about these Feng Shui rules since I think there are practical reasons behind most of them.

In my next post, I’ll include a Feng Shui tip about house renovation. Have a nice day!

Feng Shui Rule for House Colors

Yesterday and today, I was out of the house the whole day to work at our townhouse unit that was vacated by our last tenant. It is located in Taytay, a town beside Antipolo City, a popular city on the hills in Metro Manila here in the Philippines. Though not as popular as the mountainous Antipolo, Taytay is well known for its wood and clothes industry. At the far background of the second photo are the hills of Antipolo and some parts of Taytay, then the longest road in Taytay better known as "highway", and the Taytay branch of the most popular mall in the Philippines, or SM City Taytay mall, at the right. The mall has two buildings on each side of the highway and an enclosed bridge connects them (where I shot the photo). It is about two kilometers away from our townhouse unit.

We’re selling the townhouse unit now, so my husband and I started to work on some minor repairs that have to be done. I remember when we renovated the house two years ago, to make it easier to decide on the colors of the paints, I followed the rule of Feng Shui. It was not hard since I’ve done that to two other houses, ours and my in-laws’.

At first I just memorized the colors auspicious for every location of the house: green for the eastern part, blue for north, orange for south and yellow for west. Of course that doesn’t have to be strictly followed otherwise it will be hard to imagine how a small house will look like with all those colors.

If there are walls that will divide the locations, a different color after a wall will separate a room from the rest of the house thus making the house look bigger, contrary to what others thought that using just one color for the whole house will make it look bigger.

As an actual example, the photo shown is from our small townhouse unit. I can’t do much with the other structures of the unit, except for the arched doorway and window that I designed. You’ll notice that the walls of the small kitchen which is after the arched doorway is light green because it is at the eastern part of the house. The cupboard at the right before the arched window is light orange because that is where the south is. The color of the larger area now became light blue because it is the color for the north, which has the biggest wall area in the whole unit. I also applied what I learned from my Interior Design classes. Blue is the complimentary color of orange, which is the cupboard’s color, and the blue color also has a tinge of violet that matches with the other secondary colors orange and green. All colors were lightened with white (tints). The design rule for complimentary colors is to use either all tints or all shades (darkened with black), or matching tints with small amounts of bright or dark complimentary colors that serve as accent colors.

Going back to the rule of Feng Shui, I just acquired additional information that can associate the colors to the locations: green for wood, the element for the east; orange for fire, south’s element; blue for water, north’s element; and yellow for metal, the element for the west. How about that?

The Victory

I’d like to fulfill my promise to tell the story about the ancient city of Nikopolis or Victory City in Greece, but there is more to say about victory that can inspire today’s people, so let me see how I can put them together in one package.





Nikopolis (Victory City) was founded by the first emperor of the Roman Empire, Octavian, to commemorate his victory over Antony and Cleopatra during their sea-battle (Battle of Actium) in 31 BC. It was Antony’s defeat in this battle that caused him and Cleopatra to commit suicide. Nikopolis expanded as it welcomed the remaining inhabitants of Cassope the Ancient City, and other nearby villages that were earlier destroyed. Octavian was later named Augustus, meaning “sacred”, because his rule initiated an era of relative peace. Upon his death in AD 14, he was declared a god by the Senate, to be worshipped by the Romans, and the month of Sextilis was officially renamed August in his honour.
Seeing Nikopolis with my own eyes will always be a memorable experience reminding me of two victories: the victory of Augustus and the victory of the University of Asia and the Pacific Chorale. I almost forgot that it will also remind me of these Seven Determinants of Victory of John Maxwell which Augustus and the UA&P Chorale possessed to be victorious:

1. A victory begins with a VISION
A vision of winning - a vision of going “over the top”.

2. The next key to victory is INSTRUCTION
Any achievement must be preceded by careful planning. The better we understand the problems, the greater our chance of victory.

3. There is no success without proper CONDITIONING
Sometimes victory is not achieved by the one who first took the lead. The winner is the one who can work harder for longer periods without quitting.

4. Victory can be realized only if one has a TARGET
The thrill of victory comes only when a stated objective has been reached. No target, no thrill!

5. Victory can be secured only with the help of OTHERS
Victory doesn’t say, “Look what I did,” but “Look what we did”. It’s not my strength, but our strength, not my plans, but our plans; not my work, but our work. Therefore, it’s not my victory, but our victory!

6. Each person must fulfill his or her RESPONSIBILITIES
Every person is important. Failure occurs when a person feels that if he or she does not work, it won’t matter or won’t hurt the group.

7. The last and most important key to victory is YOU
Only you have the power to determine the sacrifice, energy, and time that you will supply to become a winner.

Remember: the seven determinants of VICTORY are Vision, Instruction, Conditioning, Target, Others, Responsibilities, and You!



According to Wikipedia, Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else unrelated. When I was with the UA&P Chorale in Greece to watch them compete in Preveza's international choir contest, I watched them rehearse but at the same time, I was holding a John Maxwell book and was trying to figure out how I will relate Maxwell's chapter on determinants of victory to a speech I was composing for an upcoming event of Toastmasters Club. It was strange because as I listened to the choir, I could hear and see the picture that I was trying to complete in my mind. I asked myself, "Why am I holding this book? Is it for my speech or for the choir?" But I was more surprised to know the awarding will be held in an ancient city named Victory City. I knew the UA&P Chorale will get awards, but more than what I expected, they got gold medals for all the categories they joined, and the grand prize! Maxwell’s Seven Determinants of Victory, awarding at Victory City, and UA&P Chorale’s victory. Was this just a coincidence of occurrences with redundant words or was there serendipity?

Transitions In Life

The past days, I and my only son, OC, have been busy testing several features of the upgraded network system at home since we finally got a router that will enable my laptop’s WIFI or wireless connection to the internet. The whole month of March, I monopolized the access to the internet since we didn’t have a router yet, allowing me to create this blog and to post several entries, but members of my family didn’t have the chance to read my entries.

OC will be 25 this year. That reminds me of the seminar about transitions in life that I’ve attended about 10 years ago. In that seminar I’ve learned that transitions in life will be encountered by a person during adolescence, mid-20s, midlife or 45-50 and 65-70. It is during this transition when a person is in crisis, and when questions to God are asked the most, like what happened to me in June 2001 when I was almost 48. I was very lucky that God gave me a very beautiful “I love you" answer intended to mankind, leaving me that mission to remind everyone about that. He already has proven His love through the birth of His Son, Jesus Christ, and He keeps on proving His love like what He did to me (Blogging post of this blog).

I am very grateful that OC lets me know the questions plaguing him nowadays, and maybe it is God’s will for him not to have read my blog, otherwise my answers to his questions will be pre-empted because they all came from this blog. In other words, my answers were rehearsed through this blog. (Photo shown is a self-portrait shot by OC).

When the prize of the Lotto reached more than 200 million pesos, both OC and I got 3 digits right, so I won 100 pesos for those 3 digits, while my son won 200 pesos because he had 2 tickets. One question in his mind was what to do with the money if he wins in the Lotto, but he said what is clear was a large percentage will go to charities. He really hasn’t read my blog because in my Dreams List in this blog, I had shared very specific plans what to do if I was the one who’ll win, but obviously, he doesn’t know anything about that plan.

My plans involving charities if I win the Lotto were very specific and maybe ambitious, but I also didn’t fail to consider what can happen if those plans were pushed through and I’m gone? In my mind I knew my children will be willing to take over but I don’t want to oblige them, so come what may. Anyway, God will not allow me to win for sure, if there’s nobody to take over my charitable project when I’m gone.