Argumentum ad Baculum

Dear OM [Name of Operations Manager]:

Greetings!

With my attachment to my family in Butuan City who is longing for my presence during this Yuletide Season – a 58-year old mother who’ll be turning a year older this December 20, a 78-year old grandmother, together with my little nephews and niece, one of which will be celebrating his first birthday days before Christmas, and whom their parents are not around – are highly anticipating for my presence this Christmas. For the whole year round, it is only this time that I can be with them. It would therefore be devastating for me to be doing the countdown during eves of Christmas and New Year alone, and, at the same time, thinking the unhappiness I cause my family because of my absence.

As a Filipino, we have the culture to value much our family. I am fervently asking the honorable management to grant a request for a vacation from 18 December 2008 to 7 January 2009. Moreover, during my stay in the province, I also have to resolve those legal problems with the family properties which must be decided with urgency.

Furthermore, as a surprise Christmas present, my roundtrip plane ticket for the said days was already purchased by my sister who can’t be with her children because she is currently working abroad. Her earnest desire to have me sent back home in a few weeks, and, at the same time, get the cheapest rates, left her unaware that the inclusive dates are way too long, long enough for my left SIL credits.

Please find the above situations meritorious and let your decision be tempered with mercy, to that, I utmostly implore with all my heart, as I respectfully remain,

Very respectfully,

Eduardo R. Catayoc III

Unfortunately, our manager is good in logic and she found this letter as a fallacy of appealing to pity. She didn't approve my request for prolonged leave of absence. Waaa! She talked to me last week about it and explained the reason of her non-approval. I sincerely, deeply and very well understood her point. Fairness is something that a good leader must possess. If she'll give me this favor, then she'll be obliged to give the same favor to all other agents as well.

I'm still hopeful that my application for leave will be plotted. Else, I'll be absent for three weeks, come back to work with a suspension waiting, and perhaps, resulting to my resignation. But then again, there's the law of attraction so I have to stay positive that my leave will be plotted. But nobody could really stop me from going home. So there.

Good luck to me and Merry Christmas!

Life is a Mono

I'm stuck in this hour-long 32 bit hardware diagnostics with a nice customer. And it's a chance for me to blog this.

I've been pondering about it since I was a kid and after reading another blog about this matter, an imaginable large force struck my head that kept me thinking until now.

Why do people have to cheat with their partner?

I still have a young mind. I live in principles, in idealism, in perfection. But putting all those impossibilities and improbabilities aside, I still can't understand why infidelity exists and why some people love to be the other man/woman.

Why can't everybody just be a Penelope and be monogamous? The idea of "trying other kinds of food just because I am fed up with this dish for so long" is nothing but the reason of a sick and psychologically incapacitated person.

I shouldn't be commenting about this. My Kaballah says that in my 30's, I am destined to be an unfaithful husband, not once, but twice. I have been praying to God that it wouldn't happen. I would be a big shame to my father and grandfathers if that would happen. Never did I remember that my parents fought because of a third party and I grew up hating people who don't have to balls to stick to one partner.

Proximity is my weakness. The more time I spend with a girl, and the more time I look deeply into her eyes, the more my heart is drawn towards her. And if there's just physical attraction that I would feel towards her, which we call lust, and there she is standing naked infront of me, I don't have St. Benedict's resistance to roll into the thorny bushes to distract my attention. I'm not that strong.

I don't know what lies ahead of my life. The drama "Oedipus Rex" teaches us that one can't get rid of his fate. The only thing that he could do is battle all the tides and do all those twists in order to end up with that fate.

I don't know. I shouldn't be believing in predicting one's destiny but it still leads me to the hypothetical question that what if it would happen to me someday? Shall I curse myself to my last breath? I might not grant forgiveness for myself then. So help me God.