USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
In the company I work for, x3 nito yung language premium palang, di pa kasama yung base pay at benefits. And if you are highly skilled, you get to be relocated pa with your whole family in Japan as an expat - all expense paid. 😅🇯🇵🇵🇭
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The most terrifying age is 40.
Not because you’re getting old or have some grey hair, but because your perception of time completely changes.
At 40, life is f*cking serious. If you have kids and don’t work hard, they starve and end up getting a bad education. You also see the difference between those who f*cked around and figured it out and those that settled for mediocre.
The stark difference will rip your face off.
A person who could have done a lot and didn’t by 40 has wasted the best years of their life. It’s sad to see.
By 40, the lifestyle you chose becomes obvious. Your hair turns grey or falls out if you abuse your body. You end up with a pot belly if you eat like sh*t. If you don’t go to the gym you have no energy. Something else happens.
Your parents either die or have multiple near-misses. You start to realise they will be dead one day and you’re in charge of your bloodline. This responsibility weighs on you.
Even cooler, the knob heads in high school who made fun of you or thought they were cool are not modern day losers. They work dead end jobs and watch sports with a beer to numb their pain. They don’t dare f*ck with your aura anymore.
Pessimism can often set in to. You start to obsess over news and politics. You think the government will save you or that billionaires are evil for doing what you refused to do.
Jealousy gets ugly. It becomes a realise valve.
The best place to deploy it is on social media. You rage post comments calling stuff scams and trying to discredit people. But it doesn’t work. People ignore you because they know you’re a little b*tch.
For many people, 40 becomes a moment of either radical transformation or a slow decline.
The crazy part isn’t turning 40.
It’s realizing how much time you wasted being trapped by fear.
@The_Vic_Vaporub@BTSwithOT7@Ticketmaster@Rogers_Stadium Inquire with venue directly, not with ticketmaster. Most ADA seats they can provide you a foldable chair if you dont need the wheelchair space. Not all physical disabilities are using wheelchair.
Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.
$30 per seat per month.
$1.4 million annually.
I called it "digital transformation."
The board loved that phrase.
They approved it in eleven minutes.
No one asked what it would actually do.
Including me.
I told everyone it would "10x productivity."
That's not a real number.
But it sounds like one.
HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.
I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."
They stopped asking.
Three months later I checked the usage reports.
47 people had opened it.
12 had used it more than once.
One of them was me.
I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.
It took 45 seconds.
Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.
But I called it a "pilot success."
Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.
The CFO asked about ROI.
I showed him a graph.
The graph went up and to the right.
It measured "AI enablement."
I made that metric up.
He nodded approvingly.
We're "AI-enabled" now.
I don't know what that means.
But it's in our investor deck.
A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.
I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."
He asked what that meant.
I said "compliance."
He asked which compliance.
I said "all of them."
He looked skeptical.
I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."
He stopped asking questions.
Microsoft sent a case study team.
They wanted to feature us as a success story.
I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."
I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.
They didn't verify it.
They never do.
Now we're on Microsoft's website.
"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."
The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.
He got 3,000 likes.
He's never used Copilot.
None of the executives have.
We have an exemption.
"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."
I wrote that policy.
The licenses renew next month.
I'm requesting an expansion.
5,000 more seats.
We haven't used the first 4,000.
But this time we'll "drive adoption."
Adoption means mandatory training.
Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.
But completion will be tracked.
Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I'll be SVP by Q3.
I still don't know what Copilot does.
But I know what it's for.
It's for showing we're "investing in AI."
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we're serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.
Wow! I’ve never seen anything like this 😱
This CCTV footage captures the powerful M7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar in March. You can clearly see the dramatic shift in the ground.
Absolutely surreal.