Grow Old Gracefully?

I’m 33 frackin’ years old and already I feel like 53.  I met up with a few of my old buds recently and I realized something: I’m getting too old for this crap.

I used to have a nightlife.  I used to have a decadent lifestyle.  The spirit is willing, man.  But my chunky ass is definitely not in a mood to paint the town red anymore.  I did try to party one time, dance the night away, drown myself in booze- but I was just not the market anymore.  I found myself wanting to sneak off to someplace more quiet and laid-back, share a quiet drink or two over some good conversation.

In the morning, my knees frackin’ hurt.  Whether it was the dancing, or the activities the night before, I had no frackin’ idea.  I used to just worry about having a hang-over, but now it’s knees, man!

Thus, this blog.  It’s really all about putting things back in order.  Lose some weight, get 8 hours of sleep, get some work done, make a lot more money, etc etc.

The Big Step Forward

It seems that life, for me, began at 33. I’ve never had this kind of clarity ever before. I’ve decided to take a major step forward in my life, and yeah, it’s just awesome.

It would really be great to do nothing but sit around at home all day, playing games and watching DVDs- but after 2 months of that- it got incredibly boring!

Which made me think, really. What did I really want to do? I definitely want to make cash, but none of the responsibilities (at least as little as I could possibly have). So that’s goal #1: Finding a fairly laid-back, but just as financially and mentally rewarding day job. Why laid-back? Because I also wanted to do other things OUTSIDE work: I’d like to hit the gym, I’d like to learn me some new skills, like SEO, internet marketing, etc, I’d like to have my own businesses. And more importantly, I’d like to spend time with the important things in life- my family and friends.

Yes, it can be done. And all this- this blog- is all about my new life. I love it that I have been in radio for the past 12 years, that I’ve run a floor with as much as 120 agents at any given time, and that I’ve been directly involved in making business better for the last radio station I worked for.

This is a time for making new friends and allies. A time for discovery and a time for learning. This blog, ambitious as it may be, is for everyone who has taken a brave big step forward- scary, yes, but terribly fulfilling in the end.

Good luck to us all! Cheers!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to my humble blog! This web journal is entirely dedicated to keeping track of the efforts I do to live life a little healthier and a lot more stress-free. I’m not getting any younger, and seriously, I feel the excesses of my decadent life slowly catching up with me.

Join me as I try to fight back the extra poundage, hop from one spa to another, make a low-carb (but very tasty!) meal, and pretty much whatever else is needed to rebuild my body into a better, stronger, faster me.

Re-education for the Masses!

I live in the Philippines, and for a small little country, I’d like to think we have a rather diverse set of radio stations. We have NU107 for rock n’roll. CHR/pop from stations like Magic 89.9, Jam 88.3, Monster Radio, Max FM and Hit FM. A variety of easy-listening from Mellow 94.7, 105.1 Crossover, Wave 89.1 and 92.3 XFm.
While we do have a lot of ground covered in terms of music, I think we need a venue for music-maniacs like myself to learn new stuff. I was already into music early on in my life, collecting some 45s, even bought an LP of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, then went on to cassette tapes (ha! I think some of my first buys were Heart, The Bangles, Rick Astley and Debbie Gibson!). Haha now that I think of it, I was such a pop-boy. My education in cool didn’t come ’til much later.
I think it was in 2nd or 3rd year high school when I was introduced to 99.5 RT, new wave (via NU107 and Crossover), A to Z records (in Anonas), XB102, the local punk scene, N.W.A. and Eazy E, and other stuff. I would study (study?! who studies?!?) at 2 or 3 AM and it was then I discovered the music of 99.5 RT. It was pop/top 40 stuff, but not entirely the kind of stuff played on other radio stations back then. And for some reason, I liked it: “Walking On Ice” from Devonsquare, Paul Carrack, 38 Special, Expose, Tracy Chapman, some Lita Ford, even classics from China Crisis, The Pretenders and The Little River Band. (looking back, that was some pretty diverse adult contemporary stuff!)
Anyway, I thought I knew a lot about music til I actually JOINED 99.5 RT as a lowly DJ in 1994. It was cool playing all the music you enjoyed so much, but what I also enjoyed was hanging out with all the other DJs, and they’d even go far as saying, “Hey man, you should play this stuff next week,” and hand me over an album of Roxy Music (Avalon- which contained “More Than This” and, well, “Avalon”). Also, hanging out at RT’s massive music library was such a treat- and there would always be somebody around who’d tell you a little something about any song you were curious about.
These days, you don’t HAVE to join a radio station to have a kick-ass education on music and music appreciation. You have the internet, you have music video channels, you have wikipedia, and countless other sites online that offer all kinds of information on all kinds of artists from all over the world.
My current favorite? Yahoo Launchcast. You can pick just about any kind of genre there is, and immerse yourself in some new and familiar tunes from your favorite kind of music. Lately, I’ve been immersing myself into lots of 80′ rock and alternative, 90’s big hits, today’s big hits and lite office music. Great stuff, really.

Has THIS ever happened to you?

It was just a little bit past midnight. I was settling in for the day, just about to squeeze as much sleep as I possibly could before my 4:30 AM alarm goes off. It almost always happens- random thoughts play around in your head as you try to doze off.

What-if’s and why-not’s and how-come’s and what-the’s.

And then it happens. A Eureka! moment.

Hey, that’s a really good idea, I thought to myself. I’ll dwell on it more tomorrow when I hit the crapper. I toss around a little bit, ready to get that much-needed sleep.

No, you gotta hear this one out, says a fragment of my personality. This one’s really good! Gotta write it down before you lose it.

OK. I reach out for my phone and type away at the keypad, trying desperately to form the idea into words, so I can get back to it some other time- like when I’ve already had some sleep!

No, not good enough, man, persists yet another voice in my skull. Get up. Do some research. Make plans. Now.

I half-stumble in the dark and fire up the PC, apparently whipped into action by some unusual sense of urgency. I go online, do a little bit of research, look up some facts, and after a few minutes- settle down with the kind of satisfaction that said, “Nice. This idea can really work out.”

The various personalities inside my head congratulate each other. Now, we have vision. A clarity of purpose.

And hopefully, we get to see this baby materialize in a few weeks. =)

The Sorry State of Contact Centers

Sign o’ the times, indeed.

I feel real bad that all these contact centers are forced to hire borderline English-deficient agents just to fill their quota of warm bodies to get their operations going on.

Back in 2001, I was already running campaigns (for Easycall and E-performax), and to be honest- as a radio dude- I could only consider a few to be really effective communicators; people who had the proper skillsets and mindset for the job. Fast forward to today, 6 years later- the quality of agents seems to have really gone down.

I suppose it can’t be helped- 1) More call centers than ever before, 2) Your talent pool hasn’t exactly grown to meet that need, so all these companies are forced to hire more people with just the bare set of English skills to get the job done, 3) The ones WITH decent English choose to do other things, as they feel getting into a contact center is beneath their skills, or simply not worth the time, money or effort.

Can’t deny it though: The BPO industry still commands a sizeable chunk of money to be made (by anyone- enterprising individuals, foreign investors, the lowly CSR, etc.), and there are still so many opportunities for growth and development. But don’t expect me to run your operations for chump change. I know these companies can afford to cough up a little extra cash if they really think they have to.

Right now, I’m just happy what I’m doing at the moment- doing something I really like (writing), for better-than-average pay (it pays the bills, plus you have some extra left over), with almost no responsibility whatsoever (no teams to manage, etc), and just the right amount of time to do other things outside work (work out, do some business, etc).

So who do I feel sorry for? This bunch of CSRs chattering in Tagalog next to my workspace, right next to a sign that says “English-only Zone”. Instead of honing their craft with a genuine desire to be better at their jobs, they waste their time griping about how someone hung up on them (no surprise there), and how they can jump to another call center two buildings away offering (what they think is) a better package for them. I feel sorry for them because, in two years, they will wonder why their contemporaries have moved on to better companies and better positions, while they will still be complaining incessantly about their lot in corporate life.

And with that, I fire up my player and drown myself to the sounds of The Fray, following up some leads my editor just sent me. I’m just not being paid enough to care about these CSRs. And in a way, I’m really happy I don’t have to.

I suppose we should be getting on with our lives now?

Gotta thank TV for coming out with a lot of great stuff this past season.

Heroes from NBC was probably the most noteworthy of them all. Great character development, excellent story and plot twists, giving you just enough of your fix this week so that you end up at the edge of your seats by the end of the episode, anxiously waiting for the next week’s show. Well done, Tim Kring, well done.

Then you have Grey’s Anatomy (season 3), Scrubs (season 6), My Name is Earl (season 2), Veronica Mars (season 3) and, of course, Lost (season 3). All these shows I’ve religiously downloaded each and every week, thanking the gods of broadband how life has been made so much better with file-sharing from fellow file-sharers.

So now that its all done, what next?

While waiting for the networks to build and hype their line-up of shows for the fall season, it might be prudent to actually get off your ass and re-discover the world you’ve so thoughtlessly left behind.

In my case, it’s work. Apparently, I’ve been too busy recreating these past several months, that I’ve actually put a very important task- making money- completely on hold. Gotta keep making money to do the things you like to do, you know.

And so I decided to get into some writing. Serious writing. In fact, the kind of writing that gets paid (like copywriting and doing SEO for a bunch of Australian websites), with a number of blogs going on to help hone my craft.