HOW TO GIVE GIFTS: A TECHNIQUE

Fortunately or unfortunately, Isabel is an exceptional gift giver. Even though I never actually know what gift I want, she still successfully gets me just the thing I wanted or needed. So when it’s my turn to get her gifts, I feel the pressure to give her something she’ll appreciate just as much. (It does not help that her birthday is in February, when I need to think real hard about our Valentine’s plans as well!)

It’s definitely a challenge to think of gifts for Isabel mainly because I want to give her what she deserves, and what she deserves is the best (at least, in my opinion). More practically, it’s because once she decides she wants something, she goes out and gets it herself! She’s beaten me to it on many occasions, snapping up shoes, clothes, and even a bar of soap for herself before I could. But she once shared her technique for choosing gifts with me – a technique I’ve since tried to employ: a good gift should sit in the intersection of at least two areas of the intended recipients’ interest: something they want, something they need, and/or something they like. Illustrated, choose A, B, C, or D (Fig 1). D would be the best in principle:

Fig. 1 – Isabel’s Gift Giving Venn Diagram

This year, my jump-off point for thinking of a gift was our future plans. I will be moving abroad in a few months, which means our relationship will be long distance. Since that would mean less time for us to be together physically, I thought of a gift that would give us different experiences to put in our memory bank. With some research, I came up with four activities to do on each Saturday of the month. I ensured that some were events she had mentioned before, even just in passing.

There was something about simply handing her the tickets that I found too straightforward and uneventful, so I ideated on how I could do a gift reveal she would appreciate. This is what I came up with:

Fig. 2 – Not bad for a non-artsy mathlete!

I created little fabric envelopes to house the tickets, and separated each with a foam tab. I also wrote a short stanza of Filipino poetry (tanaga) for each activity lined up. I made Isabel guess what each clue meant – and I’ll divulge each activity in the posts to follow.  For now, here are the four stanzas:

Nagliliparang lobo.

At katabing maganda.

Malay ko’y nalilito!

Sino bida sa mata?

---

Hindi maitatatwang,

Ito’y dati pa nais.

Ang pagliyab sa puwang,

Higante! ‘Di lang kwitis.

---

Ikatlong pasiklab ko

Kalikasan ‘di pook

Aabuting totoo

Ang taluktok ng bundok

---

Ang nakapapanabik

Na sayaw ang susunod.

Ang karanasang mithi’t

Sisne’y mapapanood.

---

Isabel : Spoiler! I cried and we had a great February.

Fighting Love Chub Together

The reality of dating is that it presupposes two people getting to know each other more over activities of shared interest. To this end, eating is perfect as it satisfies both human wants and needs. Overdone, however, and a couple (in this case, us) can find themselves the victims of the dreaded dating phenomenon known as Love Chub.

When Mico and I started going out, we both had lax attitudes towards eating and nutrition, dieting and/or exercising only when bouts of inspiration (or perhaps need) would hit. On the flipside, we liked eating… a lot. More specifically, I liked ordering a variety of dishes that were often too plenty only two, and Mico makes a habit of finishing everything before him. My fondness for desserts (I liked chocolatey, creamy fare; he, fruity desserts), and his newfound hobby of writing food reviews for Looloo allowed us gain a collective 56lbs over an odd year and a half, leaving us both at the heaviest we’d ever been!

Neither of us were terribly fat or heavy, but this was a problem for several different reasons. For me, my fondness for sugar was proving terrible for my polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and insulin resistance. He, on the other hand, was feeling sluggish and worried about his blood pressure and cholesterol. In early January, a scolding and a mandate from my OB-GYN had us sit down and had a good talk about it. We knew that if we were going to do this, it had to be sustainable. When we drafted this year’s goals, we targeted to lose a collective 50lbs and maintaining that number by simply eating better together.

No carbs for me, hence a lot of Korean food dates. Portion control for him, which meant new rules for ordering: one starter and one main to share per meal. We’ve also supplemented this with once-a-week badminton, though he works out far more than I do. So far, so good! We’ve happily eaten our way to a collective 42lbs deficit, and it’s only April! I’m looking forward to updating this with progress photos!

Goal Setting: A Primer

In 2014 (before I even met Isabel!), I began setting annual goals. These goals covered several aspects of my personal enrichment: Financial, Physical, Social, Spiritual, and Mental. I found that my annual goal setting, coupled with my strength in Focus (which I identified from a program called Clifton StrengthsFinder), was a great way to motivate and remind myself throughout the year to develop and accomplish objectives outside of work. Later on, it served as a great way to measure my performance year on year.

When Isabel came into my life two years ago, we considered that in addition to setting personal goals, setting annual couple goals could be an effective way to keep our relationship exciting. More than that, goal setting was a means for us to grow together in essential ways. However, in coming up with our maiden year goals, we got carried away, agreeing on a long list of activities and goals to accomplish within the year. Looking back, we spread ourselves too thin with an unreasonable number of specific things to do. For perspective, below are just some of the many goals we tracked in 2016. We had four times this number, and with Isabel’s move to a new company and my undertaking of a new challenging project, we ended the year achieving only 69% of the items on our list.

DIMENSION	GOAL
PHYSICAL	Have at least one active date a month
MENTAL	Read 2 books and discuss together
SPIRITUAL	Go on 1 pilgrimage (road trip)
FINANCIAL	Sponsor a child together
TRAVEL/LEISURE	Climb a mountain
FAMILY	Go on a planned trip with siblings

Although we weren’t able to achieve all our goals, we agreed that 2016 was a great year of growth and learning overall. Nevertheless, we knew that we could be more effective in 2017. In the spirit of continuous improvement and progression of goals, we decided to focus further by decreasing our number of shared goals this year. By reflecting and choosing measurable and attainable goals, we condensed our set of 2017 goals into a straightforward list of 8 goals.

Without further ado, I would like to present our 2017 goals:

	DIMENSION	GOAL	OK	Total	% Done
1	PHYSICAL	Lose cumulative 50 pounds together	36	50	72%
2	MENTAL	Try Something New (1x a month)	4	12	33%
3	SPIRITUAL	Attend 1 retreat each	0	2	0%
		Go on 1 pilgrimage (road trip)	0	1	0%
		Go to Confession 4x this year	0	4	0%
4	TRAVEL/ LEISURE	Go on a trip together (1x a quarter)	1	4	25%
5	FAMILY	Go on a planned trip with siblings	1	2	50%
		Attend one reunion per side	1	2	50%
			43	77	28.8%

We are currently at 28.8% achievement versus 18.9% time elapsed, which is not bad at all!

Our goals this year are more topline in nature, and are not only achievable but also challenging. Their flexibility also allows us to exercise more creativity in fitting our goals within the year, even if we should encounter sudden changes and challenges along the way.

I’m looking forward to completing our goals as the year progresses, and updating this blog with every new check mark!

Hi, From Two Weirdos

We’re Isabel and Miguel, a corporate couple from the Philippines. At the time of this writing we’ve been dating a year and five months, and so we’re now looking to share something new with one another: our thoughts and reflections, preserved in blog form.

For corporate warriors like us, each day is divided into hours of meetings and desk work. Well, life is set up in such a way that it’s easy to get caught up in the endless to-dos. It’s equally easy to forget that there are other things to be done outside work, or even outside the usual dinner-and-a-movie date. It’s easy to forget that we have goals that we can work on, if we put our minds to it. That we have ideas worth sharing, and worth preserving.

That’s why we’ve started this blog: to remember to appreciate the every day, and to actively work towards our goals together. While we’ve both tried (and perhaps failed at) blogging on our own, perhaps this time we can hold each other accountable.

Short and sweet, but for now, hello!