Nail art : Glittery mint + plum tips
My nails from about a month ago. The glitter, mint and white nail polish are both from Etude House and the plum is from Chic. I used scotch tape to help me get those nice straight lines.
Congratulations + Happy Birthday Doctor Camille!
(Meant to post this last week, but hey~ Better late than never right?)
One of my dearest friends is now a doctor! A full-pledged doctor! She took her licensure exam about two weeks ago and the results were released a few days later. She made it! Booyakah! I’m so proud of her 
I was actually with her when she received the news. Waiting for the results made her a bit antsy, so I invited her to the mall where we can try to relax. I had just submitted the first draft of my thesis earlier that day to my adviser, so I wanted to unwind as well. Right before we left, I checked online if the results had been posted, but I only found the list of passers from the previous year. (I sort of panicked for a while because I thought I was looking at the results already and I couldn’t find Camille’s name. It took me a few seconds before I noticed that the list I was looking at was a year old.)
Sentosa
More pictures from our Singapore trip 
The 2nd day of our vacation was spent exploring Sentosa, a small island south of Singapore. It’s also one of the country’s largest tourist attraction. There are beaches, cable cars, shows, animal encounters, etc. This was actually my 3rd visit to Sentosa so I wasn’t super excited, but I still looked forward to it. (My first time was with Amie, Hahriz and my mom after we escaped from the conference we were supposed to be attending, and my 2nd visit was with my parents and Ezra, during a family vacation.)
There are many ways to get to Sentosa from our hotel. We decided to go by taking a train to Vivo City and walking the rest of the way.
Entering Dhoby Ghaut station
Group shot inside
I love their ticket machines
We found Marymount on the map, LOL
Bobble head shot XD
This should give you an idea of how tall I am
Week 28/52 : Dementor’s kiss
I know it looks very Twilight-inspired, but I was actually thinking of the dementors in Harry Potter when I edited this. I wanted to wear a cloak, but unfortunately I don’t have one, so I just chose a loose black top.
I liked how this turned out. I didn’t mean for it to look this dark when I shot it, but I wanted to try something different from my usual portraits. Besides, dementors are supposed to be really gloomy and horrible creatures, so I suppose it fits.
Many people will probably still think of Twilight when they see this picture, so I made a more vampire-y version (just for fun) by adding a little blood:
Whatdya think?
(EZRA) 28/52 : Butterflies
Ezra and I are so behind on our 52-week projects! Our family went on a week-long vacation around mid July, then when we came back I had to go out of town again for my thesis. We haven’t had time to shoot properly. Busy busy busy~
Anyway, this was shot around the 2nd week of July, but I didn’t get to edit it until much later.
Hair and glitter brushes are from redheadstock.deviantart.com
Butterflies are from shoofly-stock.deviantart.com
(Ezra’s complaining that I put a moth in her hair. I didn’t realize it was a moth until she pointed it out, I thought they were all butterflies, LOL)
Ezra’s description:
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I’ve always wanted to do an SP shot with lots of butterflies so I’m glad I finally did it.
I had a hard time in this shoot because my hair is really long and heavy. It was so difficult to get it to flow the way I wanted, even with a fan in front of my face. Eventually my sister decided to just use photoshop brushes.
I got the title from a quote by Drew Barrymore and I really like it because I can completely relate to it.
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Week 27/52 : A place where love and feeling good don’t ever cost a thing
My SP the week I moved out of my apartment in Katipunan. I enjoyed staying there for 2 years, but as with most things in life, good things must eventually come to an end.
Thanks Ezra for the idea for this photo~
The title came from the lyrics of the song “Home” by Daughtry.
(EZRA) 27/52 : Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make people happy”
-Siegbert Tarrasch
Ezra’s description:
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I used to play chess a lot when I was a kid even though I wasn’t good at it. I actually joined the chess club back in middle school, but I never really excelled at it. However playing chess always made me feel happy, even when I lost.
My dad bought us this carved chess set for us about 10 years ago. These days, I normally just play video games, but I saw this the other day and realized that I missed playing chess, so I took it out.
Thanks a lot to my sister for taking my picture and editing it!
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Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked
(I totally stole that quote from some guy named Jeff Pesis, whoever he is.)
The past two days have been a nightmare, technology-wise.
First, my laptop froze about 5 times while I was trying to write my thesis manuscript (translation: browsing facebook and youtube) … then, my tablet decided that it’s had enough after 4 1/2 years of abuse, so it started going bonkers … AND THEN, as if those two problems weren’t enough, the techie deities realized that horrible things must always come in threes, so our router suddenly stopped working as well.
ARGH!
Okay, I know I have bigger things to worry about (such as my impending thesis deadline), and the problems were easily resolved within a few hours, but did they really have to happen one after the other? Tch~
Hello Singapore + Dinner with Emiko
Last month, my aunt asked my parents for suggestions on where she can spend an affordable yet enjoyable vacation. She’s already been to most of the tourist destinations here in the Philippines and decided that it was time for her to start exploring other Asian countries as well. Our family’s been to Singapore a couple of times before and we’ve always loved it there, so we figured that was a good place to start.
My parents felt that they needed a break from work as well, so they decided they might as well make it a family vacation, hurray~
I was really excited about this trip for two reasons. The first is that it’s been a while since I went on vacation with Ninang and Raffy. Our last trip together happened over 10 years ago, when they visited us in Myanmar and we went to Thailand together for some sightseeing. The second (and more exciting) reason is that this is the first vacation that Ckloy and I will spend together, booyakah! We’ve been a couple for almost 6 years, but we’ve never really had the chance to go on a trip together. We’re normally quite content with just spending our time at home, watching movies, playing games, etc. This was a great chance for us to do something different and enjoy ourselves.
Our flight was around 2 in the afternoon, so we left the house at around 9am. Tito Mar drove us to the airport.
Ezra and me in the car. Ckloy sat in the back next to our luggages since we didn’t have that much space XD
At the airport with our bags. We bought Lety’s buko pie on the way to the airport to give to Ate She and Tito Raffy (not to be confused with my cousin Raffy. The Garcia family likes to recycle names for some reason. We have 3 Esperanzas in the family – Ezra’s one of them – and I have a distant aunt with the same name as me as well.)
Garcia girls
Bobble head shot XD
Ckloy with my mom’s and his luggage, heading over to the check in counter
Filling out my departure card. I look so serious. Ezra’s trying to bribe me to fill hers out as well.
Ckloy looks pleased with his card
Ninang and Raffy arrived a while later, so we waited for them at the sides while they checked in.
Filling out their forms
We took pictures to pass the time:
Looking innocent as we tried to shove each other out of the picture
Nail art : Midnight sky (gradient)
My first attempt at gradient nails
I just realized that my last nail art post was over 3 months ago. I haven’t really had time to do anything fancy with my nails the past few months since I’ve been really busy with school stuff. Besides, I didn’t want to waste my time making beautiful nail art, only to ruin them a few days later while doing experiments for my thesis.
Anyway, I’ve had a bit more free time the past few weeks, so I’ve been able to play around with some of my nail stuff again.
This was my nail art a few weeks ago, around mid-July.
I love how they turned out. I wanted to use black and blue for this, but my black nail polish has dried up, so I used Ezra’s deep plum one. It’s really dark though, it looks black in the picture, doesn’t it? It can pass for black in person too if you don’t look too closely, especially if you apply more layers. I applied that one first, then added the blue nail polish on top, focusing on the tips. Then I used silver glitter nail polish on top of that to make it more sparkly.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to take pictures after each step. This was my first attempt at gradient nails and I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. I’ll be doing something similar to my nails again soon, I’ll make sure to take pictures of the process this time
Hair update: straight once again
(This entry is about a month late, but I’ve been so busy the past few weeks that I haven’t had time to write a proper blog entry.)
It’s been really hot and humid here in the Philippines the past couple of months, not really the perfect condition for maintaining long hair. The heat dries out my hair and the humidity causes it to frizz terribly. It’s been annoying me lately, so I decided to do something about it.
