Book Review : Hunger Games trilogy
My boyfriend and I bought these books the other weekend because a lot of people have been recommending them. I let them sit on the shelf for about two days before deciding to read the first book, but with just a few pages in, I knew that there was no way I was putting it down. I spent the past four days locked up in my room trying to finish the entire trilogy. I wasn’t really planning on writing a lengthy review, but I just couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself, so I decided to make a quick entry.
WARNING: There will be plenty of spoilers in this review so if you haven’t read the books, you might want to close this page now.
THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE BOOKS
The whole idea of the Capitol, the Districts, the Hunger Games, the resistance, etc. is so brilliant, and Suzanne Collins did a magnificent job of painting a clear image inside people’s minds of what it’s like to live in that world. I could clearly imagine the pain and suffering that many of the people go through due to their lack of freedom. These books are obviously not something you’d pick up for some light and feel-good reading. The situations that the characters are in are so serious and horrible that I just couldn’t put the book down because I needed to see that they would turn out alright. The idea of two helpless kids being thrown into an arena for a fight to the death while their family watches every year is so horrible that I had to keep reading because I had to know that after all the fighting and the deaths, something good would come out of it. And the same goes for the resistance and the rebels – I had to finish the books because I needed to see that all that effort and all those deaths were worth it. Which brings me to my next topic …
Week 8/52 : Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending
Self portrait this week.
As most of you already probably know, I let Ezra give me bangs last week. I know I just got a haircut a month ago, but change is good right? It’s been a few days and I think I’m adjusting well. I still think they’re too short, but hopefully they’ll grow out quickly 
(Quote in the title by Maria Robinson)
An owl has come to deliver my Hogwarts letter!
This morning when I woke up Joy told me that she found a weird bird in our garden. She was about to feed the dogs when something on my mom’s gumamela plant caught her eye. From afar she thought it was a large rat so she freaked out (Joy’s terrified of mice) and called Donna to kill it for her. But upon closer inspection, they found that it was actually a large brown bird. It looked very weak and didn’t move when they approached it, so they decided to capture it and place it in our bird cage for safekeeping before any of our dogs get to it.
At first I found it strange that Joy could mistake a bird for a rat, but when she showed it to me, I instantly understood why:
It does look like a large rodent from afar, doesn’t it?
I let my sister cut my hair!
Ezra has been itching to give me full bangs for years now, but I never let her because I didn’t think it would look good on me. Yes, we are often mistaken for twins so you would think that what suits her would suit me as well, but if you look closely, the bone structures of our face are actually very different. She has a longer and slimmer face while mine is more square and angular. So while full bangs look good on her, I think it would look horrible on me. I normally refuse when she offers to cut my hair, but at the same time I’ve always been curious to see if I could pull it off. Last week she managed to convince me that this was the perfect time for me to try out bangs because I hardly leave the house these days. So if it ends up looking horrendous, not that many people would see it anyway and I could just let it grow back out. Her argument made sense, and so I finally agreed.
We had to wait till the weekend before I let her cut my hair because I needed to get Ckloy’s permission first. He’s never really been a fan of full bangs so I had to convince him that I wouldn’t look that different with it. He was definitely against it at first, but with a bit of whining and lots of lambing, he agreed. In fact, he even helped me document the process by taking these pictures.
(Ezra is no professional, but she has been cutting her own bangs for almost 5 years now, so I knew I was in capable hands.)
Ezra measuring how much hair needed to be cut
Snip snip snip
Keep calm and love your friends
Aprille surprised me today by dropping by for a quick visit with Jay. She knows I’ve been feeling a bit down lately so she brought me these:
I just love these Meiji strawberry chocolates. I’ve already finished half a box.
I stuck the cards on my dresser mirror (along with some stickers) so I can see them everyday and remember what a wonderful friend I have
Thanks so much Aps! Sobrang natouch ako ^__^ Mwaaaaaaaaaaah!
“Friends are like walls. Sometimes you lean on them, and sometimes it’s just enough to know they’re there”
Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon and Stratosphere Tower
This entry has been sitting my drafts folder for over a month now. It’s long overdue, but here’s day two of our 3-day tour to Vegas and Arizona 
(Read about our Day 1 in Vegas HERE)
The second day of our tour started really early. We woke up around 3:30am because our guide informed us that we needed to be on the road by 5:30 at the latest. (Some people need only a couple of minutes to get ready in the morning but my mom, sister and I are a bit more high maintenance so we need at least two hours.)
Our first stop that day was the Hoover Dam. Our tour guide gave us a bit of background information about the dam on the way here, but I fell asleep as soon as I got on the bus and didn’t hear most of it. Thankfully we have the internet:
Hoover Dam, once known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. The dam was controversially named in honor of President Herbert Hoover.
-Wikipedia
(“Deaths”? “Controversially named”? Hmmm…)
Anyway these days the Hoover Dam is mainly used to generate electricity and it’s also a popular tourist attraction.
Paparazzi shot that my dad took of Ezra and me while I was fumbling with the zipper on my jacket. It was *really* cold that morning. It took me a couple of tries before I was finally able to get the zipper up because my fingers were frozen. Some of tourists even decided to stay on the bus because they didn’t want to face the cold or wake up from their naps. (It was still dark when we got there and most of us were still half asleep, but I really don’t see the point of joining a tour if you’re going not even going to get off the bus.)
Hello Hoover Dam! (The sun began to rise while we were there.)
Brrr~
To be perfectly honest, I was too bangag to fully appreciate the dam’s beauty back then, but I was still very impressed by how large and majestic it was.
We took a few pictures, admired the dam then headed back on the bus and prepared ourselves for the 4-hour ride to the Grand Canyon. Again, I fell asleep as soon as I found my seat and only woke up when Ezra excitedly shook me awake and told me to look out the window. What did I see? This:
SNOW! Lots and lots of snow~ It was the first time we saw snow again after two years
Our tour guide told us the night before to bundle up because it would be very cold up in the Grand Canyon, but we didn’t really expect to see snow on the side of the road.
Before heading up the canyon, we made a stop at this National Geographic IMAX theater for lunch:
There was a small cafeteria inside where we had our lunch. Our tour guide also encouraged us to watch a short film about the Grand Canyon while we were there. It was only about 20 minutes long but it was very well made and it made me feel like I went on a helicopter ride around the Grand Canyon and went white water rafting on the Colorado River.
After the show we headed outside to take some pictures with the snow:
It was very windy that morning~
Oh Christmas tree~
Care for a snowball?
Valentine’s day nail art tutorial : Hearts and Dots
This was my nail art for Valentine’s Day. All it took was two nail polish shades (red and light pink) and a bobby pin.
First I painted my nails with the light pink shade:
Then I drew some hearts using the tip of a bobby pin:
(EZRA) 7/52 : Love on a plate
Ezra’s Valentine portrait She wanted to show off the heart-shaped sugar cookies that we made last week. They’re just too cute! I made them for Ckloy and Ezra helped me out even though she’s sad that she won’t be able to spend the day of love with Kurt. In all their years as a couple, they’ve only celebrated Valentines Day together once. Long distance relationships are hard, tsk tsk. But hopefully they’ll be able to spend many V-days together in the future
Week 7/52 : The heart has its reasons which reason knows not
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
Couldn’t think of a fancy concept for this week’s SP so I just stuck a heart sticker on my face, grabbed a red shirt and snapped away XD
Ckloy has to work today so we won’t be seeing each other later, but we made plans to meet this coming weekend. I’ll be spending this evening with my family. We have a little dinner party planned just for the four of us
Anyway, whether you celebrate Valentine’s Day or not, may your day be filled with lots of love!
Outtake:
I like this one too but I chose the other one because I figured I should look happy on the day of love
(Title came from a quote by Blaise Pascal)
Baking adventures
I’ve always been jealous of girls who know how to bake. My mom used to bake a lot when I was younger and I would always watch her, but for some reason I never learned to make anything. I think it was because I was more interested in licking the batter off the spatula after she was done rather than actually learning how to bake at the time.
Most of my friends know how to bake and I’ve been begging them to teach me for ages. We finally got our chance last August when we did Jay and Vesma’s photoshoot. It was a quick shoot which finished around noon so it left us with plenty of time in the afternoon for a baking lesson.
All set to bake!
We decided to make chocolate cupcakes because Aprille has made them before and she told us that it was pretty simple.
The baking team (minus Ezra who took the photo)
Aprille knew the recipe best so she supervised and gave us instructions. Ezra and Camille did most of the mixing. Brinks ate some (expired?) chocolates while getting some ingredients ready, and I took pictures (and occasionally helped) XD
Bunny Camille getting the butter ready
Aprille supervising me while I poured the batter in the cupcake molds
Week 6/52 : Hold me close to you as we brace for flight
It’s been a while since I did a photomanipulation for myself. Most of my recent photomanipulations were for Ezra’s 52-week project. I figured it was about time I did one for my own project again.
This took me several hours to edit. I thought it wouldn’t take that long since I already had an idea of what I wanted the final image to look like, but I kept changing my mind along the way. Originally I planned on birds carrying me away, but Ezra saw it and suggested that balloons would probably look better, so I changed it. I still wanted birds to appear in the final image so I placed some in the upper left corner. Also, when I planned the shot I imagined the background to be a field or a meadow of some sort, but when I started editing it I decided that a cliff seems better. And it took me forever to get the lighting the way I want it. I know it’s still not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it.
The only thing I’m not happy about this shot is how awkward my body looks. I think it would have been better if I looked up towards the balloons instead of looking down at the ground.
Stocks used:
Title came from Ike Yoshihiro’s song, Cool Whispers.
Thanks Ezra for helping me with this shot!
(EZRA) 6/52 : Sometimes the very thing you’re looking for is the one thing you can’t see
Elementary my dear Watson
Ezra’s portrait this week was inspired by the Sherlock Holmes 2 movie that we watched a few weeks ago. Ckloy and I had our monthsary on the 2nd of this month and we decided to celebrate by going to the movies. Ezra tagged along with me to the mall because she had some stuff she needed to buy. When it was time for us to watch the movie, she decided to watch it with us because she didn’t want to go wandering around the mall by herself, lol. Although she didn’t see the first Sherlock Holmes movie, she still ended up enjoying this one.
- Title came from Vanessa William’s song “Save the Best for Last.
- Texture came from HERE.
Behind the Scenes : Photoshoot for Jay and Vesma
Last August my friends and I had a little photoshoot for Vesma, who was to be married that December. I’ve already posted some of the pictures I took here on my blog, but I decided to share some of the behind-the-scenes shots as well. I can’t believe it’s been half a year already since these pictures were taken!
Since Vesma and Jay had to leave in the afternoon, we scheduled our shoot in the morning. Ezra and I picked Brinks up as soon as we finished breakfast and we headed off to Aprille’s house, where we found her doing the bride’s hair and makeup.
Vesma trying not to laugh as Aps applied lip gloss on her
While waiting for them to finish, Camille and Brinks played around with Vesma’s hair extensions and accessories
Looking pretty there kup~
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Camille with hair this long
The girls with their long hair
Camille brought Sheldon with her (upon Ezra’s request) so we let him try on some of the props we brought along as well:
Ish a bunny Sheldon
Like a sir!
Aprille’s dog, Gucci, wanted to look pretty too (according to Brinks) so she tried to get him to wear the bunny ears as well.
Hmm … Gucci doesn’t look too happy
Once Vesma was ready, we headed over to Carabao Park to start our shoot.
(I stole this shot from Aprille’s camera XD Thanks Aps!) Brinks and I look so excited.
We left Gucci at Aprille’s house but we brought Sheldon with us to keep Ezra company during our shoot.
Curious Sheldon wants to sniff everything in sight
Aprille not only did Vesma’s hair and makeup, but she also made some headdresses for her to wear that day. Here’s a bokehlicious picture of me trying on one of them:
I feel like such a fairy~
(EZRA) 5/52 : Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life
Ezra’s Ipadception XD
This is the Ipad2 that my parents got her for Christmas. It was originally supposed to be a graduation gift (since she plans to finish her Masters degree this semester) but she managed to convince them to give it to her for Christmas instead. She uses it mostly to chat with Kurt (on Skype). She sometimes goes around the house carrying it with her while they’re video-chatting. It’s a bit creepy because it looks like she’s wandering around holding Kurt’s talking head in her hands, lol.
(Title from a quote by Soren Kierkegaard.)
Week 5/52 : You can’t wrap love in a box, but you can wrap a person in a hug.
I love hugs~ Getting hugged by someone I love always make me feel so safe and happy
The elephant plushie was a gift from Ckloy. Isn’t it adorable? I’ve always been fond of elephants because my mom tells me that they bring good luck. If you visit our house you’ll probably find over 50 elephant figurines scattered all over. We have ones big enough for me to sit on and ones that are just as small as my thumb Also, according to Burmese culture, my zodiac animal is the elephant because I was born on a Wednesday.
Anyway, I decided to name my plushie Mongji, which is Song Ji Hyo’s nickname in Running Man. I just love that show and Ji Hyo’s one of my favorite members They’ve visited a few Asian countries for their show and I’m hoping that they will get a chance to visit the Philippines too and shoot an episode here
Christmas loot (AKA California haul)
I know this is extremely late, seeing as it’s already February, but I promised my friend Tring that I would make an entry about the stuff I got for Christmas, so here it is I also decided to include some of my vacation haul in this entry because I’m too lazy to make a separate post about it.
I’ll start off with my Christmas haul, which consists of stuff that I didn’t pay for. These are some of the things I managed to take a picture of. (Some of the items were still in balikbayan boxes when I took most these, and by the time we finished unpacking I wasn’t in the mood to take pictures anymore.)
A new laptop from my parents I’ve already talked about this in a previous entry, so I won’t go into much detail about it here.
A Bath and Body Works gift set from Mama Darling
A clutch bag from Ate Zsa Zsa and a wallet from Tita Melda
Victoria’s Secret gift set (in Sheer Love) from Ate Zsa Zsa and her family
