A Birthday Story (Happy Birthday to me!)

It's my birthday and I spent it while working. Hehe.  As much as I would like to take a bithday leave, I couldn't because I am coordinating a week long training at our office.  I still feel blessed because I got to spend it at our head office instead of spending it in an official business provincial trip (coz that would be sad, I wouldn't be able to be with my family). 

I started the day with a smile from my husband, greeting "Happy Birthday" to me.  But then, the first one who really greeted me a Happy Birthday was my brother, Bob, who texted me at 12 midnight (duh, he might be in a midnight shift in call center that's why he was still awake that time!).  Next who greeted me through text was my parents who are currently taking care of my daughter Rian at Laguna for a week (as much as I would like my daughter to be with me during my birthday, I still decided to bring her to her grandparents' house in Laguna to take a short vacation again because I would be extra busy in my work this week because of my training program). 

I was smiling when I got in the office so early in the morning because my husband drove me to the office (and that was about 6:00 am...my work starts a 8:00 am).  It was a very thoughful act, because my husband rarely drives me there! I passed by our building chapel to pray and thank God for giving me a new year.  After that, I slept on my desk for an hour and half.  And when I woke up, I brushed my teeth, put on my make up, and placed a big smile on my face, preparing for my day's task ahead.

Outside our office window.  It was 6 am but the sun alreaady shines so brightly, showering blessings on my birthday.  Thank you Lord for a wonderful special day.

Other greetings during the day came from my friends and mostly from FB friends (Facebook forwards me my wall messages.  Hey, the phone's still alerting until now! Gonna thank my friends later through my FB wall).  My officemates greeted me happily, some even visited me in the training room (which is at 11th floor of the office building.....  The Training Team's office is located at 7th floor, so just imagine, I was at 11th floor the whole day for the training!).  Of course, my participants also remembered my special day.  They were happy to have spaghetti for snack (I requested our caterer to serve it for our afternoon snack.  But don't get me wrong coz I didn't pay for it.  The training's snack is on the training budget!).  At lunchtime, I was surprised because I got these desserts---

The cake slice with cherry came from our new officemate, Grace.  The other cake slice came from the training's catering manager, Sir Zaldy.  The almond gelly came from another officemate, Sir Ariel.  Thank you guys for making this day a little more sweeter!

The best is yet to come.  My husband went home earlier than me and he started to cook pesto pasta (as he promised to me).  When I came home, dinner was served.  I celebrated the birthda dinner with the whole household (my husband with my in-laws).

The pesto pasta was my hubby's cooking product for the night!  The cake's not opened yet when I took this photo and the crispy pata's still on the stove and still sizzling!

A happy happy day for me, indeed even though my birthday week would be a busy training week for me!  29 years of existence...more to come bceause I'm sooo excited to live my life with my loved ones--- my husband, Jeff and my daughter, Rian.

FB Phishing Victim

Last weekend, I tried to open my Facebook account.  When I entered my username and password, the screen again asked for my account details.  So, of course, I entered them again.  Then Facebook suddenly prompt me that I had been a victim of phishing and I have to change my password as soon as possible to prevent the hacker to continue open my FB account.  I was so worried that time, I quickly changed my FB password, as well as my Yahoo Mail password (for more security reasons, since FB will send a verification message in my Yahoo mail.  Good thing Facebook quickly recognizes such hacking scams and informs us as soon as possible.

I don't know much about phishing, but according to my research, it is a kind of hacking wherein you enter your account details in a social website or email website which are actually fake (they look like the real thing on the screen but actually, they are fake sites so that the hacker could get your passwords and important details about you).  To minimize the risk of being a phishing victim, social and email websites suggest the following: check the URL of the website before entering your account details, refuse to open or reply unknown emails, especially those which requests for your important information, always log-out before after visiting your social or email websites (and any sites wherein you have to enter your username and password), and of course, limit your sharing of personal information to other people, especially in the internet world.  We may never stop the criminals behind phishing, but we can hinder their acts by safeguarding our own web accounts.