Christmas in Coron
Yes yes, it’s already June. But you should be used to my late posts by now.
(I already blogged about how our family spent last Christmas Eve. This entry will be about how we spent Christmas day.)
Last December, our family booked a 2-day tour around Coron. We arranged to have them on the 26th and the 27th, which meant that we had to leave LB on the 25th. We originally planned on leaving on the 26th so we wouldn’t have to spend Christmas day at the airport, but we discovered that we would be able to save P5000 per person if we book our flights a day ahead. There were 7 of us, this was a pretty considerable amount. My dad was against the idea at first and argued that Christmas is a time for family. My mom pointed out that we would still be with family anyway and that it would just be a waste of money to postpone our trip, so he agreed in the end.
All set to go to Coron!
We expected the airport to be empty since we thought that most people would want to spend Christmas day at home - we couldn’t have been more wrong!
It was super crowded!
We got to the airport early and had a few hours to kill before our flight so we decided to grab some food first, since some of us weren’t able to have a proper breakfast. (I ate breakfast before leaving the house but I found Shakeys at the airport and ended up buying a whole box of mojos anyway. Yummm~).
As usual, I took vain shots of myself to pass the time
Old Multiply blog entries – part 6
This will be my last Multiply post since the site is now truly gone. (It’s still there, but it’s not meant to be used as a personal site anymore.) I was planning on doing another one after this, but I wasn’t able to copy my old blog posts before they shut my page down, so I guess this is it. The only reason I’m able to post this is because I started writing this entry months ago, it’s just been sitting in my drafts folder.
Title: Have a Break …
Date: Aug 4, ’08 9:18 AM
Have a KitKat 
Especially if they come in a variety of flavors ^____^
Ezra gave these to me this morning. They were actually given to her by Kurt. He bought them for her in Japan, and she gave me some 
(Actually, he only bought the strawberry and watermelon flavored ones. The regular chocolate KitKat were from Robinsons XD)
My sister has been extra generous lately. I guess its one of the advantages of having Kurt around. She’s always happy, and is much nicer to everyone (even to Ckloy XD). Aside from these KitKats that she gave me this morning, she also gave me a piece yesterday. But it was more of a bribe so that I’d let her play with my PSP. I didn’t really mind, she managed to level up some of my FF8 characters and even got the needed items to complete Selphie’s and Quistis’s final weapons XD.
Before yesterday, I haven’t had a KitKat in so long. I used to eat them a lot in highschool. I was particularly fond of the orange flavored ones. Its sad that I don’t see them being sold here in the Philippines anymore. I used to buy them from a small shop near our school.
chocolates for breakfast anyone? ^___^
Title: Kupo?
Date: Aug 10, ’08 11:12 PM
I just wanted to share my “kupos” with you guys.
(My what???)
There has been a lot of confusion as to what a “kupo” is. Kupo (AKA Brinks) already posted an explanation on her blog, so I won’t be doing that here. I’ll just give you a link to the Final Fantasy Wiki for their explanation : CLICK HERE :D
Yes, “Kupo” came from the Final Fantasy series, but Brinks and I have another meaning for the word. When we say “Kupo”, it means we’re talking about each other. It has become our pet names for one another. We’ve been friends since our 4th year of highschool and we discovered that we had a lot of similar interest, video games being one of them. (Although I think I forced her to play FF8 … I can’t remember …. she ended up liking it, so no harm done naman diba Kup?)
We started calling each other “Kupo” after FF9. We thought the moogles were adorable. And the way they ended each sentence with “Kupo” was just priceless … so we adapted it for ourselves.
Anyway, for her birthday this year, I decided to give her a moogle plushie. I ordered two so that we can have one each. So here’s Kupo and me with our kupo plushies ^_____^
Title: Raffy saves the day again! (My afternoon scare)
Date: Aug 22, ’08 9:27 PM
My dear cousin has once again come to my rescue.
Last time it was when I foolishly loaded the wrong version of FF8 Disc 2 into my PSP. (Read about it here if you missed that episode XD). This time, he bravely kept me sane after an unfortunate event happened to me this afternoon. An event that gamers everywhere would fear … an event called: memory card crash (play scary background music: *dun dun dun*)
Yes, it happened *sob* I have no idea how or what I did to deserve this. One minute I was enjoying the fact that I made it to Disc 4. Then I paused the game, surfed the net a bit, and when I came back … nada! This was all that was left of me 4gb memory card:
Four lousy files! FOUR! And I have no idea what they are! (Well, except for that ICON0 thing … that was obviously my menu icon for FF8)
Christmas 2012
It’s almost summer so I should probably get this entry up. It’s been sitting in my drafts for over a month now.
Since we visited my aunts in California last year for Christmas, this year it was their turn to come to us. Just like in 2010, my mom organized a lunch party at our place and invited our relatives from both sides of the family.
Incomplete group shot before we ate (some people arrived later in the afternoon)
Lots of Filipino food and Mernel’s cake since my aunts missed it a lot
Noms!
Once everyone was stuffed and satisfied, we broke off into our little groups. The adults sat around and talked about adult stuff while we kids did what we do best : play video games!!! (I love how I’m turning 28 this year and I’m still considered a kid in these gatherings XD)
The first thing we did was update Viel’s Mii since it no longer looks like him. Ezra made it for him about 3 years ago, back when he still had his buzz cut, but his hair’s so much longer now.
(Deus pointed out that Viel’s Mii looks like Sheldon from TBBT, lol. I agree!)
Cousins waiting to play games
We played some Wii Sports Resort games for a while until the boys decided they’ve had enough and we switched to our usual Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Band Hero. Ezra and I bought a whole bunch of these games last Christmas and we’ve been dying to get our cousins over to play them with us.
I love how Lance plays the guitar on his lap like a keyboard, lol. The sign of a true PC gamer XD
INSTABITS : February 2013
Hello dear readers! (I’m trying to be optimistic by pretending that there are people out there who read my blog …) It’s the start of a new month! So you know what that means – INSTAGRAM PHOTO DUMP!
Spent the first day of February collating test papers for Physics 3′s first laboratory exam
Ckloy and I had our 86th monthsary this month (I had to use a calculator to figure that out since I lost count years ago). We couldn’t see each other on the actual day because he had other things to do, but we did go out the day after that. We had lunch at T.O.S.H. and watched Hansel and Gretel : Witch Hunters.
Random vain shot of myself. My skin started breaking out really badly this month. I think it was because of this face mask I tried. Or maybe it’s the new Human Nature shampoo I bought. I stopped using them both and my skin has been doing a lot better. Still, looking in the mirror has been kind of painful, so I like to make myself feel better by pretending I have clear skin using Photowonder’s ”better skin” and “anti acne” functions. I love this app.
Physics 3 students taking their first laboratory exam
Ever since I graduated and stopped going to UPD, my Lenovo netbook has been hibernating in my desk drawer. I took it out again a few months ago and found that the touchpad had stopped working, which was weird because I’m sure that it was working fine when I put it in storage. I didn’t really mind since I prefer using an external mouse anyway, but this month the keyboard decided to stop working as well! Sure, I can always use an external keyboard, but having to always carry one around kind of defeats the purpose of having a netbook. I reformatted it to see if that would help but the keyboard and touchpad were still unresponsive. Eventually I took it to a computer shop and they told me it would cost me at least 2500php to get the keyboard replaced! I wasn’t really willing to shell out that much for something I hardly use these days so I told them I would think about it first. I told Sir Nel about it when I got back to the office and he agreed to open it up to see what was wrong. Turns out the connections were just loose and dirty and he managed to get my keyboard working again within minutes, free of charge. Weeeee~ Thanks Sir!
I’m teaching Aphy 104 this semester, which is a bit of a challenge since it’s my first time handling the course. In fact, the last time I had anything to do with the subject was when I was the one taking it way back in 2005! But it was one of my favorite subjects in college and I’m actually enjoying reading about logic gates and Boolean algebra again. We’re doing VHDL now and I’ve been practicing since my programming skills have gotten a little rusty over the years. What you see up there is a picture of a waveform simulation of a 4-bit serial in – parallel out shift register.
Kung Hei Fat Choi! Chinese New Year celebration with the family
My Valentine’s Day greeting for my Instagram friends
Ckloy and I couldn’t see each other till the weekend so as usual I had Valentines Day dinner at home with the family. Pizza, mozzarella sticks, spaghetti and ice cream cake. Yummmm~
Honeydew Yakult BonAppetea and red velvet cupcakes from Ezra. I don’t normally drink tea or coffee or anything with caffeine (since I get hyperacidity when I do) so my body isn’t used to it. I drank this tea in the afternoon and it kept me up ALL NIGHT! I managed to fall asleep at around 3am and had to wake up 2 hours later for my 7am class. I expected to turn into a zombie by noon but surprisingly I still had enough energy to get me through the day. Whoa~
Boodle Fight!
Last year our family celebrated the holidays in California with my aunts, so this year it was their turn to come to us. They arrived around mid-December, but we didn’t see each other until the 23rd because of their busy schedules. To give them a proper Filipino welcome, we took them out for lunch at Isdaan for a fun boodle-fight experience
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, here’s what Urban Dictionary has to say about it:
Boodle fight is a military style of eating where long tables are prepared and food are on top of the banana leaves. Viands and rice ready to eat using your bare hands, jugs of water are prepared on the side to wash hands before the “eating combat”. With the signal to start the boodle fight, everyone aims for his/her position
It didn’t turn out to be as agressive as the definition suggested, but it was definitely a fun way to dine with friends and family. (I wouldn’t suggest doing it with people you barely know though, since it might lead to a few awkward situations…)
Anyway, here are some pictures we took that day:
Isdaan entrance
With some statues while waiting to be seated. What are those things anyway? Mermaids? Naga?
The huge gorilla/ape thing
Ckloy arrived from Manila to join us for lunch
Happy girlfriend <3
Quick group shots with the food and table setup before we attacked:
Christmas in UPLB
(I can’t believe it’s already February! And here I am still writing about Christmas trees…)
One thing that many UPLB students look forward to during the holidays is the Christmas decorations they put up around campus. We have them every year, but it seems to me like they just keep getting better. I’m not sure if I just have a terrible memory but I don’t remember UPLB campus looking this festive back when I was a student. I’m pretty sure we had a Christmas tree and a belen back then, but over the years we’ve acquired some flying reindeer, Santa and his house, a couple of Nutcrackers and this light sculpture/Christmas tree-like thing in front of the Humanities building. Ezra and I dropped by the campus one afternoon last December to take some pictures with the Christmas tree.
One of my favorite things about my wide-angle lens is how easy it is for me to take pictures of myself XD
Old Multiply blog entries – part 5
I think I only have about 2 more of these entries left. Three at most. I’m down to the last 2 pages in my old Multiply blog.
Title: My Canon Rebel
Date : May 5, ’08 7:22 AM
Meet my new baby: my Canon Digital Rebel XTi ^_____^
I haven’t given him/her a name (or a gender) yet. I like calling him/her my Canon Rebel because it sounds cool XD I think in Asia this is equivalent to the Canon EOS 400D.
Anyway I was in Fry’s the other day (the largest electronics shop I’ve been to) and was deciding whether I should get a laptop (the pink Vaio), a new digicam (pink of course) or an SLR camera (my dream for so long). Then I figured I don’t really need a new laptop since the one I use is just a bit over 2 years old. It may have some problems, but I was still fine with it. So it was down to the two cameras ….
After more thinking I decided on a digicam since it was much more affordable. I know that my Casio Exilim isn’t even a year old yet, but I hate how it fails in low light conditions. So I thought of getting either the pink Canon or the pink Sony Cybershot with smile shutter which was on sale for $200.
But then my mom comes up to me and tells me that if I have the money, I should just buy the SLR. She knew I’ve wanted one since forever and that was my chance to buy it. It turned out to be a good decision because they happened to have a sale on SLR cameras that day … a sale which would end the next day! So I seized the opportunity and bought my new baby. (I couldn’t afford the Canon 40D … plus I don’t think I’m ready for that yet XD)
I’m still a beginner, and know very little about photography. It was lucky that we met up with my cousin and her husband, who just happened to be a professional photographer, the next day. So I got a free lesson from him ^_____^ We’re going to see each other again next Friday in Vegas, so hopefully I’ll be able to pick up a few more tips from him.
So far I love everything about my Canon Rebel. I feel like I definitely got my money’s worth And I realized that it is slightly smaller in size compared to most SLR cameras, which is perfect for my tiny hands.
Baks! Photoshoot tayo! Mwahahahaha~
(Photo above was taken by my Casio Exilim … which explains the slight blurring XD)
Present notes: I never did give my camera a name, I just called him “Rebel” I’m so glad my mom convinced me to get the DSLR.
Title : I made the right choice ^____^
Date : May 10, ’08 1:23 PM
Another techie baby?
In my previous blog entry I talked about how I emptied my savings to buy the Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I mentioned that I had a choice between the SLR, a digicam and a laptop. I eliminated the laptop first since I was happy with my Wanya at home. I chose the SLR over the digicam since I had my Casio. I was happy with my decision, so you can’t imagine how much my happiness was magnified when my dad announced that he would get me the pink Sony Vaio as an early birthday and xmas present! ^______^
I was really shocked when he offered. I didn’t even have to ask for it. He asked me if I was going to buy a laptop here in the states since it’s much cheaper compared to the Philippines. I told him that I already spent more than I can afford and that I was okay with my current laptop. Then while Ezra, Kurt and I were at Universal Studios, he went out and bought me my new baby! I guess he saw how much I loved it at the store.
There’s a scary story behind this laptop …
Like I said, while Ezra, Kurt and I enjoyed ourselves at Universal Studios, my parents and Tita Melda went to Fry’s Electronics to buy my laptop. After they bought it, they decided they want tilapia for lunch, so they stopped by the Filipino store nearby. They parked right in front of the entrance, so they decided it was safe to leave the laptop in the trunk. They were in the shop for about 15 minutes, and my dad stayed by the entrance most of the time to watch over the car. So imagine the shock they received when they got back to the car and discovered the window smashed to bits!!
Of course their first instinct was “OMG! Check the trunk!” (Well … I guess it was different from Tita Melda since it was her car. I suppose her first reaction was “MY CAR!!!”) It turned out that the laptop was still safe in the trunk … for some reason, all the thief stole were Tita Melda’s prescription glasses … I mean its not like he/she’s going to use it.
And the weird thing was, that same day, Ezra, Kurt and I met up with Kurt’s dad at City Walk (which was just outside Universal Studios). He treated us to dinner and told us how someone smashed his car window to try and steal his iPod a few days ago! Luckily (or was it unluckily?) it was only his iPod casing that was in the car, so the thief didn’t really get anything… But still! Imagine the trauma of having your car window broken just because of something as small as an iPod!
Looking back on 2012
It’s a bit late, but HAPPY 2013 everyone! I meant to do this earlier but I’ve been trying to savor the last few days of my vacation. Classes resume in two days so I figured I should finish this now or risk not doing it at all.
I mentioned in my 2011 recap that that was one of my most challenging and difficult years, so I’m happy to report that 2012 was the exact opposite. The past year has been wonderful to me! Everything I’ve worked for and all the challenges I faced in 2011 were worth it because they all helped make 2012 amazing.
Anyway, here are some of the moments that made 2012 so memorable for me:
JANUARY
- Welcomed 2012 with our relatives in California
- Went tubing at Big Bear Snow Play
- Started Skype-ing daily with Ckloy
- Celebrated Chinese New Year with my family
- Cut my hair because it was so damaged
- Attended the “Hopes in the Sky” flying lanterns event for Typhoon Sendong victims
FEBRUARY
- Attended the February Fair with Ezra and my mom
- Agreed to let Ezra cut my bangs. (There’s actually a more meaningful reason behind this besides vanity, but I’m not quite ready to share it with the rest of the world just yet …)
- Baked Valentine cookies with Ezra for the first time
- Found an owl in our backyard
- Attended Kat’s thesis proposal defense in UPD
MARCH
- Submitted my final thesis manuscript to UPD! :D
- Ckloy gave me my iPod touch (which I love so much)
- Attended Ezra’s thesis defense
- Learned how to download ebooks on my iPod and started loving reading again
- Watched The Hunger Games with Ckloy
- Ezra passed her compre exam
- Parents bought me my early graduation present : my Samsung Galaxy SII
APRIL
- Amie and I graduated from UP Diliman with our MS degrees in Material Science and Engineering!!!! Weeeee~
- Ezra graduated from UPLB with her MS degree in Education Management
- My obsession with Vampire Academy (and Richelle Mead) began
- Ezra and I had lots of graduation events like getting our grad picts taken and having our graduation party
- Bonding time with Deus and Raffy as we watched the Marvel movies together in anticipation of the Avengers movie
- Went biking around UPLB with Deus and Raffy
- Celebrated Aprille’s birthday at LBDH
- Re-applied for a teaching job at the university
Tagaytay – Christmas Village, Picnic Grove, etc
Part two of our Tagaytay weekend getaway last October. (You can read about part one HERE.)
On our second day in Tagaytay, this was what we we woke up to:
FOG! Lots and lots of fog! It rained early that morning and this was the result.
We planned on grabbing breakfast around 8:30 and going sight seeing afterwards, but we had to push our plans back by about an hour because of the fog. It started clearing up around 9:30 am so we were able to make our way over to the hotel’s restaurant to grab some breakfast.
We had eggs, waffles, sausages, soup, etc. Yummy breakfast food perfect for a rainy/cold day.
My mom though this large pine cone at the restaurant was cute
By the time we were done eating, the fog had cleared up so we walked around the compound a bit before heading back up to our rooms to get ready for sightseeing:
Our plans that day included eating lunch at Josephine’s, dropping by Picnic Grove, and visiting the Lady of Manaoag at Tierra de Maria. Before doing all that, we dropped by the Christmas Village inside the resort compound first.
It was only October but they had a lot of cute decorations up already
Tagaytay : Crosswinds Swiss Luxury Resort
For my mom’s birthday this year, our family booked one weekend at the Crosswinds Resort in Tagaytay. My mom found the place online and she decided she wanted to celebrate her birthday there. We left our house around noon because check in time was at 2pm.
The entrance to the resort
Pine trees! I felt like I was in Baguio
Check out those cottages. Aren’t they so adorably quaint?
It was super windy that day
We stopped by the lobby first to check in before exploring the place
My parents making the arrangements
The lobby had a large mirror on one of the walls
My parents booked a one bedroom suite on the 5th floor. Their plan was to just get two extra beds for Ezra and me. They had the hotel staff set them up in the living room.
Here are some pictures of the room:
Old Multiply blog entries – part 4
More of my old posts from my Multiply blog. I think the site will be removing our posts soon, so I’m rushing to transfer these. Luckily I cross-posted a lot of them on my dA account years ago so at least I don’t have to move those entries. But here are more of the ones I want to keep (even though some of them are horribly written …).
Title : The White Rabbit
Date : September 3, 2007
And no, I don’t mean the candy …
Yesterday was a different kind of day for so many different reasons. But I suppose what made it stand out is the white rabbit … but this is no fairy tale.
My story starts out like this … (nyak! Di daw fairy tale noh?!) … just kidding.
Anyway, after months of not seeing each other, I was able to meet up with my two good friends, Ena and Dyason. They came straight to our house after the Alumni Homecoming. I picked them up at our kanto at 6:30 am and headed straight to McDo to buy breakfast, where we also met up with Ckloy. We took our food and headed back home.
This is where it gets strange (okay … maybe not *that* strange…).
While we were in my car waiting for the Bangie to open the gate I saw a white furry thing crawling along the mini-garden in front of our house. I thought it was a cat at first (I have really bad eyesight), but then I noticed that its ears seem to be longer than normal. So I asked Ckloy “Ano yun? Rabbit?” Then he got all excited and started saying “Kuneho! Kuneho!” and jumped out of the car to go to the mysterious creature. (Deadma lang si Ena at Dyason dahil nakatulog na sila sa backseat.)
Anyway, it turned out that the rabbit belonged to our neighbor and it managed to escape from its cage (and their house) earlier that day. We found out after we rabbit-napped it and brought it back to our house. Bangie noticed that our neighbors seem to be looking for something, so she took the rabbit over there to bring it back. T_T Sad … I wanted to keep it. Whatever happened to “Finder’s Keepers, Loser’s Weepers?” … just kidding! ^_^
Title : Attack of the Chibis
Date : September 18, 2007
So I’m still enjoying myself on DeviantArt. But I got bored with photomanipulations, I’m doing fanarts now. My first few pieces were .. umm … let’s just say you can tell that I’m new at this. But hopefully I’m showing some improvement. I keep changing my style every time, but I discovered that I really like drawing chibis. Probably because you can’t really mess up with them, they’re pretty much deformed in their own way already, so it’s fine if they end up looking weird ^_^ And of course, they’re really so cute. I think I’ll be sticking to this style for a while.
I’ve reached 200 pageviews on my account. I’m really happy because the 200th view was made exactly 1 month after I joined DA. Astig noh? To celebrate, I made my first deviantID! Chibi-style of course ^_^
If you want to check out my page and gallery, here’s the link again:
http://ilovestrawberries.deviantart.com/
Present notes: Eventually I did give up drawing and shifted back to photomanipulations and photography (as you all may know) XD
Title : Featured
Date : Sept 22 2007
I’ve been featured!
Well … actually my art has been featured ^_^ On someones journal in Deviant Art.
Two days ago a stock artist left me a message on my dA account. She said that she liked my photo manipulations and asked if I would be willing to use her stock. Since this was the first time someone asked me a favor on dA, I was more than happy to do so. Although at the time I was feeling a bit lazy (it was around 11pm already) and was not in the mood do to a photomanip (I’m still in my chibi-obsessed phase), so I wanted to finish her request ASAP. I took two images from her gallery and a random background from another stock artist, put them together and submitted the finished product. It took me about an hour to finish, probably the shortest time I ever spent on a piece.
But apparently I did a good job because just a few minutes after posting my photomanip, I already had a few views and a couple of comments from other deviants. And now, my favorite brush artist left me a note to tell me that she featured my work in her journal because I used her brushes. This was new to me because I’ve used her brushes for practically every photomanip I did, but it turned out she liked my last piece enough to feature it in her journal, along with 6 other artworks. Ang saya!
So anyway, if you guys want to see the piece that was featured, here’s the link:
http://ilovestrawberries.deviantart.com/art/The-Child-That-Never-Was-65207139
Present notes : One glance at my old piece and I can already point out several things wrong with it, lol. But I should be happy because that shows that my photomanip (and photography) skills have improved a little throughout the years. Since then I’ve gotten many features (on other works), and even a Daily Deviation :D (It’s also a sign of how sweet the dA community is for always leaving me with nice comments that encourage me to get better. ILY DA!) Unfortunately the journal entry I’m talking about in this entry no longer exists so I can’t link you guys to that. But I’d like to mention that the brush artist who featured me (it was my very first feature on dA) is still my favorite brush artist up to this day. In fact, I link back to her all the time on my 52-week project posts, so you might be familiar with her already. She goes by “redheadstock” on deviantArt, but her official website is ObsidianDawn.com
Title : Wednesday’s Wall of Wows
Date : Oct 4, 2007
Yes, I know, today’s a Thursday – my most hectic day of the week, and this one just wasn’t any better than the past Thursdays I’ve had. Thursdays blesses me with three laboratory classes, which means I start my work day at 7am and end it at 7pm. The only break I get is between 1 to 4pm. But not today because I had a 1-3pm meeting. This meant I only had one hour free the entire day, and it wasn’t even a break … I used that one hour to finish making my exam for my 4pm class. Not my idea of fun …
La Virginia Resort
My aunt dropped by the Philippines for a quick visit last July, so naturally we crammed as many activities as we could during her short stay here to make the most of it. One of the places we went to was the La Virginia Resort in Lipa. My parents found it online and they liked it so they booked us a cottage for one weekend.
We left our house at around 8am and arrived at the resort a little past 10am. We checked in at the entrance and headed off to find our cottage. We had to do quite a bit of walking from the parking lot to get there, but there were so many interesting things to see along the way that we didn’t really mind. (Although I can’t really speak for Ezra – she looked as though she was about to pass out by the time we reached our cottage XD)
But she still managed to smile for this photo
The resort placed us at the Lalen House. (I kinda covered up the sign … whoops. All you can see is “EN”)
There were 5 bunk beds inside, so there was enough room for 10 people. The “kids” got to stay on the top bunk while the adults slept at the bottom – mainly because they didn’t have the energy to climb up and down the ladders. It was nice and cozy inside. The only downside is that there was only one bathroom O_o
Since it was the weekend, Ckloy was able to join us, yay~
By 11am, we were mostly settled in so we decided to have lunch.
There were no tables inside the cottage so we had our meals at this little picnic area at the back
Since we all woke up early that morning and it was still too hot to go sight seeing, we all decided to take a quick nap after lunch in our nice airconditioned room. We woke up at around 3pm to walk around and explore the resort.
The place was HUGE!!!
I don’t know how many pools they had but I’m pretty sure they had at least 5 big ones and a bunch of tiny ones for kids.
Hmm … very clever Ezra
Looks like Raffy adopted Ckloy’s tradition of posing next to trash bins XD
We found this pool with these cute jumping dolphins so we decided to do some jump shots with them in the background:
Raffy impersonating the dolphins
I pulled a muscle after this shot T__T It was PAINFUL! And the sad news is that the shot didn’t even turn out that great, hmph~
Ckloy pulled a muscle too, but at least his jump shot is worth it. (I think we probably should have stretched a bit first before all that jumping.. We’re getting old baby T__T)
But we recovered quickly and took a few more shots:
‘
Ezra tries to attack Raffy
But he’s got some moves of his own
This shot reminds me of old arcade fighting games (Because of the background I suppose. Fighting games always have the most interesting backgrounds XD)
I must go! My people need me!
The resort offered zipline rides so we were pretty excited about that. We headed over there to see if they were open.
INSTABITS : October 2012
When October arrived I started to panic because we only had a few weeks left till the end of classes and I still had a bunch of things I needed to do. It got even worse during the end of the month because there were exams to check, grades to be submitted and presentations to prepare for…
Anyway, here’s my Instagram photo dump for October:
We celebrated Teacher’s Day last October 5. When I was younger I always thought teaching would be easy, but it’s actually pretty challenging. But I love my students, so all the hard work is worth it. Imagine how happy I was when I got this small token from my student on Teacher’s Day. Thanks Gina!
One of the things I enjoy most about my job is the fact that we don’t have uniforms. I love having the freedom of choosing what I want to wear to work every morning (Although I think I need to start updating my wardrobe. A few of my students have pointed out that I’m always wearing black.)
I noticed that my bangs were getting a little long, so I decided to give them a little trim. UnfortunatelyI ended up cutting them too short. My mom’s student actually mistook me for a 12 year old kid T_T
Ezra and I normally have lunch together at my office on weekdays. But we wanted to try something new so we decided to eat at Bene one Friday with Tring and April. I’ve never been there before and I appreciated the change in scenery. I love my office but sometimes we need to shake things up a bit
My mom handled her first large class this semester after the Professor who was meant to teach the class fell ill. She’s not used to having so many students so she asked me to help her proctor one of their exams. It was interesting because I learned that I had some students who were enrolled in her class too. This is the first time this happened
Something really exciting that happened recently was Vesma giving birth to a baby girl! Our first barkada baby! The girls and I were so excited to hear about it. She wasn’t supposed to give birth until around mid October, but baby Feven decided to show up earlier than expected. Brinks and I decided to drop by one Saturday to visit Vesma and Jay’s little bundle of joy. The original plan was that Moy would come with us, but something came up so I ended up having to drive all they way to Vesma’s and Jay’s house in Batangas City! The farthest I’ve gone before this was Alabang, so this was a HUGE accomplishment for me. And once again, Brinks and I made it there with only our phone’s GPS to guide us (I stole this from Brinks’ Instagram account… hope you don’t mind Kup! XD)
With Baby Feven. She’s so adorable~ She’s like a miniature, female version of Jay
I ordered another phone case off eBay and it arrived sometime in the first week of October. I absolutely love it! And it was only around $4 I think
Ezra and I went to SM Calamba one weekend to watch Hotel Transylvania with Ckloy. It was Ezra’s first time driving in Calamba, she did pretty well. Congrats!
We had lunch at Joey Pepperoni. We loved their chicken
Random haul. I bought two eyeglass frames because my old ones have began to deform and I felt it was time for a change. These were just cheap frames I got at the department store. I originally planned on having prescription lenses put in them, but I changed my mind after a few days. Now they’re just sitting around my room.
Lunch with Amie, Hahriz and Ckloy at Bene. Ckloy came with me to work to help me proctor my Phys 3 exam Thanks baby!
My students taking the Physics 3 third exam I miss them already~
We had the annual Loyalty Day parade last October 10.
Had lunch with Ezra at Bene *AGAIN* that week. I’m starting to develop an addiction to their meatball spag and peach iced tea.
My outfit when we went to see The Phantom of the Opera earlier this month.
Bohol Day 3 : Glass bottom boating and Alona beach
This will be my last entry about our Bohol trip. It’s about time too, it’s been almost six months since our trip! It’s the holidays here in the Philippines so I’ve been trying to catch up on blogging and my 52-week project. I have a bunch of entries lined up that I need to finish.
Anyway, back to our Bohol trip… We didn’t really have any activities planned for our third day, so we figured we’d just take this time to relax and enjoy our last day there. Our hotel booking came with a free glass-bottom boat ride, so we decided to avail of that after breakfast.
We took the golf cart again to the restaurant from the hotel
Since this was a weekday, they didn’t have breakfast buffet, so we ordered from the menu. (But at least they still had unlimited hot chocolate XD)
After eating we headed over to the beach for our glass-bottom boat ride.
While waiting for the resort staff to retrieve the boat, Ezra found this little rhinoceros beetle:
We played with it for a while before returning it to where we found it
Here comes the boat:
They had to be really careful when approaching the shore because the glass bottom might get caught on the rocks and crack
All set!
Hmm … nothing much to see yet…
Excited for our first glass-bottom boat ride
The view of our resort as we pulled away from shore
I’m not sure when the boat was last used, but the bottom was extremely cloudy and dirty to the point that we couldn’t see anything
Not to worry though, one of the staff jumped in the water to clean it up
Look how gross the rag became after he wiped the bottom a couple of times
Ta-dah! Finally we could see him
We mostly saw corals and starfish at first:
But then we reached this place where the ground suddenly dropped into nothingness (is this what you call the edge of the continental shelf?) and we started to see lots of colorful fish:
And a few of these HUGE colorful fish who waved at us as we passed by:
Oh wait ….
Those don’t look like fish to me…
Our Phantom of the Opera experience :)
This year our family decided to celebrate my mom’s birthday by watching the Phantom of the Opera. I’ve never seen a musical before, so I was pretty excited. We bought our tickets sometime in September, so I looked forward to this for weeks!
(We weren’t allowed to bring cameras inside so all the pictures below were taken using our phones, which explains why they’re grainy and a bit blurry.)
Ezra and I didn’t know what to wear since we’ve never gone to see a musical before, but my mom told us to just look pretty. Of course, “pretty” can be interpreted in many different ways. She probably had something else in mind, but Ezra and I decided to go for the “horror twin-sisters” effect:
It was all Ezra’s doing (obviously). The night before the musical we still couldn’t decide what to wear. Nothing in my closet appealed to me while Ezra had a hard time choosing between two dresses. In the end she decided that the best solution would be to just make me wear one of her dresses. (I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here on my blog before, but my sister sees me as an extension of herself. She enjoys dressing me up in her clothes and styling my hair to look like hers because it makes her feel like she has a back up of herself.) Everything I’m wearing is hers, including the stockings and shoes.
With my baby. So pogi <3
We bought tickets for the 3pm show so we left our house at around 12:30 in case we run into some traffic. But the roads were clear that day and we made it to the theater by 1:30, giving us about an hour to look around and take pictures.
Look how empty the place was when we arrived. We were one of the first ones there
Somehow our entire family ended up wearing black that day.
Guests weren’t allowed inside the theater until 2:30pm, but during one of our quests to find a restroom, we somehow found ourselves inside the theater’s orchestra level! I have no idea how we managed to get in there without anyone spotting us and telling us off, but naturally we took the chance to snap a few pictures before anyone could tell us to leave XD
With the famous chandelier
Bohol Day 2 : Chocolate Hills, Bee Farm, Tarsiers, etc
We reserved this day of our tour for sightseeing and visiting famous landmarks in the area, needless to say we were disappointed to wake up and find it raining heavily that morning. We arranged to have our tour guide pick us up around 9:30 at the resort, so when the rain didn’t show signs of stopping by 9am, we were a bit worried. Luckily it started to let up around 9:30 and we were able to leave the resort by around 10am.
Vanity shot in the car Excited to see Bohol!
Our first stop was the Blood Compact shrine
From what I was told, this was where Miguel Legazpi (a Spanish explorer) and the Bohol datu performed the famous blood compact ritual to seal their friendship back in historical times.
There was a line to take pictures at the actual shrine, so Ezra and I walked around the viewing deck while we waited for some people to leave:
(For some reason I can’t find our family picture at the shrine. I know we took a couple of them on my dad’s camera, and we even bought one from one of the dudes there who took our photo and had it printed out on the spot …)
After this we headed over to the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Baclayon, one of the oldest churches in the Philippines:
My parents visited this church for the first time years ago and my mom told me that the first time she walked inside, she was immediately taken back to the Spanish colonial period. She actually had a vision of people from that era walking out of the church as if they had just finished attending mass.
It was a bit small inside, but very beautiful
Ezra and I had to put on these sarong things before they could let us in since we were wearing shorts.
We found this old wishing well outside the church
After this we headed over to the Tarsier Sanctuary to see the famous little primates. I’ve always wanted to go to Bohol to see a tarsier. They’re just so adorable with their huge eyes and batty ears My friend Kat is from Bohol, and whenever she visits home I ask her to bring me back a tarsier, but of course that’s not possible. They’re endangered species and are naturally being kept safe in these sanctuaries. Also, Kat tells me that tarsiers get suicidal when they are placed in stressful situations, so even if she did manage to smuggle one out of Bohol, it would probably die in a few days
When my parents went to Bohol a few years ago, their guide took them to a place where you get actually get close to a tarsier. (My mom even managed to pet one for a few seconds before being reprimanded by the staff since you weren’t allowed to touch them XD) Naturally, we expected our experience this time to be something similar. But apparently, constant exposure to tourists (as well as being poked and prodded) counts as a stressful situation for tarsiers, so places like those are now being banned.
When we got to the sanctuary and saw all the trees, I joked that we would probably have to search for the tarsiers ourselves and find them in the branches. After all, they can’t possibly expect us to find a primate the size of my fist among all those trees, right? Right??? WRONG! It turns out that that was exactly what we had to do!
Fortunately we didn’t have to look for them all by ourselves, the sanctuary provided us with a guide who more or less knew the tarsiers’ favorite hangouts. Thanks to our guide, we were able to find 4 out of the 10 tarsiers in the sanctuary. That guy must have amazing vision to be able to spot these little guys in the trees, because even with him pointing them out to us, we had a hard time seeing them. Most of the time they were really high up and I had to use the zoom function on my dad’s video camera to see them clearly.
It wasn’t what we expected, but I actually had fun walking around in the sanctuary and looking for the little guys. It was definitely a challenge though, we probably wouldn’t have found one without our guide. They should invite shows like Amazing Race here to the Philippines and have them do something like this – without the guides of course. I imagine the contestants would get extremely frustrated XD
Ezra the Explorer – all set for her quest to find tiny primates
There’s one, can you see it? It was way up in the tree and I had to zoom my camera to even see it.
Here’s another one that was a bit closer to the ground. It was sleeping when we found it but it opened its eyes for about a minute when we arrived.
Gotcha! (It went back to sleep after this photo.)
I wish I had more shots to show you guys, but that’s all a managed to take before another group of tourists arrived and we had to leave.
Back at the reception area, we looked around some of the exhibits they had on display
This board gave some physical facts about tarsiers
This one gave a bit of info about their lifestyle (what they liked to eat, etc.)
Yoda-tarsier
Some stuff that the tarsier considers food
Dead baby tarsier
We had to leave after this, but first I took a photo with the sign near the entrance
After this was the place I was most excited to go … CHOCOLATE HILLS! After all, who goes to Bohol without dropping by to see the Chocolate Hills right?
We had to climb up this small hill to get a good view
So pretty~ And this was when we were only halfway up
Ezra was in charge of video taping the whole thing
Finally we made it to the top:
We wanted to take some jump shots but they told us not to in case we fall off the hill, so we just took a regular group shots and some pictures of the landscape. But on our way back down, we found this huge tarp of the hills where we could pose and pretend we did jump shots at the actual location (for a small fee of course XD). Technically they charge you per shot but the guy there was nice and he let us take some additional pictures using our own camera for free after we paid for the ones he took of us. He even let us use his props and gave us soft copies of some of the pictures he took
INSTABITS : September 2012
Instagram dump for September. It’s been a busy month filled with lab reports and quizzes, so I didn’t post that much
Started the month off by going on a little adventure with Brinky-doodle. She taught me how to use my phone’s GPS and map application. I didn’t think GPS would work here in the Philippines (since our roads don’t seem to have any sort of organization whatsoever) but apparently it works pretty well. I got so excited that we ended up going to Nuvali just to take pictures and look around.
We shopped around for a bit and grabbed some dinner at Yellowcab. I loved their baked potatoes and Dear Darla pizza~ *drools*
The IMSP Socials Committee (which I am part of ) held an Acquaintance Party on September 3. We went with a masquerade theme to make it a bit more interesting. We provided people with masks and asked them to decorate them for the party. Some people got by with minimum effort (me included), but some went all out. I didn’t even start decorating my mask until around 10am that day, and the party was at 3pm. The only art material I had available was glitter glue so I used nail polish to paint my mask. It looked pretty but the smell of chemicals was so overwhelming it made me a bit dizzy. Luckily it went away after a few hours.
IMSP Socials Committee after the party
Also, as you probably know, I celebrated my birthday this month. It wasn’t that great since I had to teach from 7am to 6pm that day, but I cheered up when I saw the birthday cake that the Physics Division people prepared for me. Thanks guys!
My birthday nail art Like I said, I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate my birthday after spending 11 hours at the office, so our family just had some cake and spaghetti at home. I invited Amie to join us and we did our nails while waiting for dinner to be ready. She remembered that I had crackle nail polish and she suggested that we use that.
April and I had to teach Math 11 at the Math Building on my birthday. On our way back to the Physics Division, she found P500 on the floor! We asked the people in the area if it belonged to them, but none of them claimed it so we kept it. April used it to buy me some Butterscotch from Mernel’s the next day. Thanks April! (The paper I’m holding up is a little birthday greeting card that the NASC3 cluster prepared for me. They had their cooking challenge that week so all week long students kept bringing in food to our office for judging. Ma’am Rose called it my week-long birthday celebration handaan XD)
My first eBay purchase arrived a day after my birthday. (Well, technically I’ve ordered stuff off of eBay before, but I used Kurt’s account and had it delivered to his house. This was my first purchase using my own account). I was worried it would get lost in the mail, so I was so excited when I received a text from my dad telling me that a package arrived for me. I ordered 2 light tippers for me and Ckloy since I hate how using the built-in flash makes my photos look so harsh. I love how this bounces the light and makes it softer and more natural.
Old Multiply blog entries – part 2
More of my old ramblings from my Multiply blog.
(Part 1 can be found HERE)
Title : Katamary Damacy
Date : June 7, 2007
I was introduced to this game by Kurt and Ezra. They played it last year at our house during Kurt’s visit. I found it cute and asked Kurt to bring it with him for his trip this year so that I could get a chance to play. I didn’t know it was going to be so addicting!
First of all … what is Katamari Damacy? It’s a game created by Namco for PS2. To put it simply, in this game, you are given a ball called a “katamari” which you have to roll around. As you roll your katamari around, things begin to stick to it. It gets bigger and bigger and you can pick up larger objects as you play the game.
The game is really fun and realistic (for a computer game anyway). When you pick up objects, your katamari will roll differently based on how that object is shaped. And when you hit a larger object, your katamari becomes smaller because some of the stuff that you’ve collected earlier falls off due to the impact.
Last night I stayed up trying to get past the level where I had to make my katamari 12m in diameter. It was the first stage in the game where I was able to pick up much larger objects such as trees, cows and cars. I never made it past 8m last night. But this morning I played it again and managed to hit the 12m mark with 1second to spare!
I can’t wait to get home and get back to my katamari ^_^
Present notes : I still love this game after all these years. I spent quite a bit of time playing it again on Kurt’s PS2 last December
Title : First Semester na ulit!
Date : June 21, 2007
Start na naman ng bagong semester.
I can’t believe I survived 1 year as a teacher … As a child, I remember telling myself that the last two things that I want to become is either a teacher or a doctor. And now, it’s been a year since the University has hired me to become a Physics instructor. I must say, I’m not in a hurry to leave my job. I never realized how much fun it could be. Especially if you have such wonderful students. I love the feeling I get when my student ranks first in departmental exams. I feel like I’m doing something important with my life.
Anyway I’m looking really looking forward to this semester! I hope that my students are prepared to do some serious studying~
Let the fun begin!
<<evil grin>>
Title : Tribute to Tidus
Date : June 24, 2007
Last Friday (June 22, 2007), my dog died. It was a sad day for the entire family. Everyone loved Tidus and how he used to make us all laugh. He had this power of making people like him instantly.
Tidus was born on September 1, 2002. He was the very first White German Sheperd we had. There were three of them in the batch, but we only kept him. Even at a week old we already loved him. We thought it was funny that with his eyes still shut, he had very little patience with Mang Doneng, my dad’s friend who helps us breed and register our dogs. As soon as he sensed Mang Doneng near him, he would start barking (with his high-pitched little voice) like crazy. Perhaps it was because it was Mang Doneng who gave him his very first shot. Even as an adult, he never did forgive Mang Doneng.
Through the years, Tidus provided us with a lot of wonderful memories. I will never forget how he would always like to steal any kind of basahan from us. And he’s very clever about it too. Turn your back for a second and off he goes with it.
He loved to annoy Lola while she sewed in the garden. Up until now, I still can’t believe that he managed to take a friendly bite from her kilikili.
Old Multiply blog entries – part 1
As most of you probably know, Multiply is shutting down all personal accounts and turning into some sort of online marketplace. I don’t really have a problem with that since it’s been years since I uploaded anything there, but I do remember a time when I used to check it everyday and visit all my friends’ sites. I mainly used my site to upload photos, but I did post a few things on my blog there and I decided I’d like to keep them, so I thought I’d dump some of them here for preservation:
Title: NEWBIE
Date: April 20, 2007
Haller people! (person?)
Wow, my first blog entry here. Well sa ngayon si Moya lang naman makakabasa nito kasi sya ang nagiisang contact ko, wahehehe I don’t intend to share my videos, pictures or blogs with anyone that is not a contact of mine. So poor Moya will have to be the sole witness of this entry for now.
I just finished uploading a video of me trying to climb a wall and some pictures for my profile. Again, these are kept private and for now, are for Moya’s eyes only
I hope to make more friends here on Multiply, but I’ll only accept invitations from people I know. Right now I’m still trying to learn how to get around the website.
Until my next entry people! (person?)
Title: Updates
Date: April 26, 2007
Hello friends!
If you happen to be a very observant person you will notice that I’ve changed the appearance of my page I love summer!
I’ve also uploaded two new albums. One is just for random pictures I take when I get bored, and the other is for pictures taken during our last family vacation in Boracay. Enjoy enjoy
For those wondering what the hell “Booyaka” means, I must tell you, I’m not really sure of the meaning myself It was a word that Selphie Tilmitt from FF8 loved to say whenever she became excited. I’m actually not even sure how it should be said, but I found it cute and that’s why it made its way onto my page.
Anyway, I’ve added a couple more contacts here since my last update. (Last entry ko si Moya palang kasama ko dito e, wahehehe…) Right now I’m still discovering the wonders of this website.
Good news for me… I’m going to Puerto Galera with my friends! Hahaha … muntik lang naman ako katayin ni Aprille dahil super last minute na ko nagpumilit sumama, but I’m still alive, nothing a day out on the beach wouldn’t fix. I’m really excited!
Till my next update!
Title : Puerto Galera
Date: April 30, 2007
I just spent a weekend in White Beach, Puerto Galera. It was two firsts for me. My first trip to Puerto Galera, and my first beach outing with my barkada. Hooray for me!!! The eight of us (Camille, Brinks, Jean, Coy, Moya, Migs , Aprille and me) began our fun this Saturday. After a bus ride, boat ride and a lot of waiting we made it to our destination and it was time to have some fun.
Puerto Galera is a great place to hang out with your friends. Obviously, it is no comparison to Boracay. Having just come from Bora two weeks ago, comparing the beaches comes naturally. But it’s no contest, Boracay wins hands down. However this doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy myself in Puerto.
We went banana boating, got henna tattoos, pigged out, put up AGHAM posters, ate scramble, shopped, sunbathed, swam and played in the sand. True, Boracay sand is much finer and much whiter than that of Puerto Galera, and its waters are much clearer, and has much more food choices and water sports to offer … but when you’re having fun with your friends, you just don’t notice these things. My friends and I filled up those two days with memories that I will treasure forever.
This trip with the barkada made me appreciate them even more. Its just too bad that we weren’t complete. Lou and Vesma, sana next time we can all go together. It truly is wonderful to have great friends you can share these moments with. Lab u mga baks!!!
Title : Static or Kinetic
Date : May 4, 2007
If you have taken up Physics at some point, you would know that these are two types of friction that we can encounter. Obviously, static friction is experienced by an object while it is at rest up to the point when it begins to move. Once it is moving, it experiences kinetic friction.
But this entry isn’t a summary of my lecture the other day for my Physics3 laboratory class.
It is now that I begin to realize (and appreciate) how lucky I am to be able to drive myself to my destination (as long as it is within Los Banos ^_^) instead of being “static” here at our house. A few weeks ago, I’ve begun to teach my younger sister how to drive. Seeing her panic whenever she sees a person walking on the road (not on the sidewalk) or while she’s being overtaken by motorcycles brought back memories when I started driving about 4 years ago.
A happy birthday indeed :)
As I’ve mentioned in my last blog entry, my birthday was last week. Unfortunately I had classes from 7am to 6pm that day, so by the time I was done with work I wasn’t really in the mood to go out. Also, my mom was out of the country then, so I decided to just have a quiet dinner at home with Ezra, my dad, Gilbert and Amie, and save the celebration for when my mom returned. But before she left, she and my dad made sure that my birthday present was taken care of. So meet my new baby:
Canon EOS 60D! (He doesn’t have a name yet, and I’m not sure if he’ll ever get one. I had my old Rebel XTi for 4 years and I never gave him a name – I just called him “Rebel”. Maybe I’ll ask Ezra to help me think of a name for this guy, she’s good at that.)
Anyway, you’ve probably already seen him in my previous blog entry, but here are some more shots of him:
It has an LCD panel which shows the current settings you are using. You can also adjust the drive, AF, ISO and metering modes here by just pressing the respective button and using the dial. I haven’t really gotten used to this yet since I normally have to look at the monitor with my old camera and make the changes there, but I suppose this is helpful for quick adjustments.
I went with the 18-135mm kit lens since my dad bought a new 18-55mm to replace my old broken one.
Hello Bohol!
(Once again, a super late blog post. I have a bunch of entries and pictures lined up, but no time to write them This trip actually happened 4 months ago, but I couldn’t find the time to finish blogging about it. I’d open it, write a few lines, and close it again because I’d remember that there was something I had to do for work. But at least it’s done now.)
Last May, my parents had their 28th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, they decided to take the entire family out to explore Bohol. They’ve been there several times before (it was even part of their honeymoon tour), but Ezra and I have never had the chance to go with them, so they figured that this was the perfect excuse to take us.
Our flight was at 10am so we left the house around 6am in case we run into some traffic. Ezra and I took forever to get ready (as always) so we ended up having to skip breakfast. We were starving by the time we arrived at the airport! Luckily we found a stall selling hot arroz caldo.
Yumm~
(Amie’s always amazed at how I can camwhore using my DSLR. I tell her it’s all for the sake of vanity.)
See? (I love this shot because of Ezra’s expression in the corner. She was showing me this new manga that she started reading, but I was too busy being vain to notice her XD)
Garcia girls and some random lady at the background looking shocked
We had about an hour to kill before our flight. Ezra and I spent it reading manga and ebooks while my mom graded papers. (She’s a bit of a workaholic. This is supposed to be their anniversary celebration but she brought so much work along with her!)
Ezra finally got my attention by showing me this bishounen
The airport had wifi so I passed the time browsing Facebook and Instagram
Finally, we’re on the plane!
Our flight was about an hour and a half long. I spent most of it fast asleep. I woke up a few minutes before we landed and started taking pictures of the view outside my window.
CLOUDS~ I love clouds
We’re almost there!
Look how green everything is! So pretty~
We arrived at the Tagbilaran Airport a little after 11am
The airport in Bohol was smaller than I expected
It’s not everyday you see a plane parked next to cars XD (Well, not for me anyway … )
We had to wait a while before we were able to get our bags because they were stuck at the bottom of the pile. We were one of the last ones who left.
Since we don’t have any relatives in Bohol, we arranged to have one of the resort staff pick us up at the airport.
We stayed at the Blue Water Beach Resort in Panglao. It was beautiful there, and the staff were all really nice and accommodating.
Check out the pool:
Makes you feel like jumping right in there, huh?
The rooms at the resort had sliding glass doors. Ezra and I made sure that the curtains were completely closed every night because we have this fear of people watching us while we sleep. (Blame it on all the horror/thriller movies we watched as kids.)
Inside the room:
I love how the bed looks like it’s floating (I actually posted a picture of it in a previous Instabits entry back in July)
It looks more “magical” here
The work/vanity table
The bathroom
I love the motif
The bathroom was huge and lovely but it made me super paranoid. About 1/3 of the ceiling was made of glass! When I lie in the bathtub I can look up and actually see the sky!! I suppose it’s meant to be relaxing for the guests, but it kinda stressed me out because I kept looking up to make sure no one was watching.
INSTABITS : July 2012
Instagram photo dump for July. This was another extremely busy month so I only managed to upload a handful of photos.
Started off the month by buying a new pair of jelly shoes. I love the dainty flower details and the fact that it’s made of some kind of rubber/plastic, which means I can wear them when it’s raining and not worry about getting them dirty and wet.
In fact, I love it so much that I bought another pair in black I wore the hell out of these shoes this month, I just adore them! I normally prefer sneakers or flats but these are so comfy that I have no problem wearing them everyday.
The first time I wore the nude shoes I paired it with this dress I got at the bazaar (which I also wore for the first time XD). Our family went to church and had dinner later with Ninang, Raffy and Kurt’s family at Isdaan.
One of my favorite outfits this month was this dress. It was a gift from Ezra. I wore it for our APhy Freshman orientation – I was the emcee.
July was a hectic month for Brinks as well so she took a few days off to relax. Unfortunately I couldn’t relax with her because of all the things I had to do at the office, but we did manage to meet up for a quick lunch at Black Brew. (Brinks is glowing from being so happy to be back in LB XD)
Random shot of Ckloy and me before he cut his hair
Took this while I prepared my powerpoint for my Phys 3 class. Am I vain for using my own photos in my lecture slides? XD
My favorite nail art this month – pink and black crackle nails
Painted my office keys (I made a blog post about this which you can see by clicking HERE.)
The Math Division at our Institute is short on teachers again so a few of us Physics people were asked to handle some Math 11 recitation sections. Most of the time we just have to give short lectures and conduct exercises, but we are also asked to give full lectures occasionally. A one-hour lecture at Math Building leaves me (and most teachers) dehydrated, so April and I picked up some Moonleaf on our way back to PhySci one afternoon before we dove into the pile of quizzes we needed to check.
Despite my busy schedule I managed to squeeze in a quick hair spa because my hair badly needed some TLC. Unfortunately Ate Cecil is off on Thursdays (which is my free day) so Metrohair assigned me to someone else.
The result of my hair spa I love it~ Ezra came with me and kept me company while I got my hair done. Afterwards we dropped by the bi-monthly bazaar and picked up some Korean ice cream on the way home.
Photoshoot : Kurt and Ezra
More pictures from my impromptu shoot with Ezra and Kurt, as promised
Kurt was in Thailand last month for his final school project so he decided to swing by the Philippines for a week to say hello to Ezra and his relatives before heading over to Japan to visit his mom. He’s a film student and he was required to shoot and produce a short indie film with some of his classmates. I don’t know anyone who studies film so it was cool to hear about all the things that goes on behind the scenes. He showed us a few of their story boards and the some of the actors/actresses the casting director chose for their movie. Anyway, after filming was over he was able to fly over here for a quick visit. He didn’t have a lot of time but we managed to squeeze a quick shoot in despite our busy schedules.
I already posted one shot I took that day for Ezra’s 25th self portrait this year, but here are the rest of the pictures:
Toycon 2012
Late upload – Raffy’s been bugging me for weeks about these photos now. Finally got the chance to resize and upload them.
Ezra, Ckloy and I attended our 6th Toycon this year, and we brought the boys (AKA our cousins) along. They all attended their first Toycon last year (except for Raffy who’s been going with us for years) and they had so much fun that they’ve been looking forward to this one for months now.
Quick shot of my outfit before leaving to meet up with our cousins. A couple of people asked me who my character was, which was weird because I thought I looked pretty normal (except maybe for the boots?). I had to tell them that I wasn’t cosplaying anyone.
We left the house at around 10am and arrived at the event around 11.
Toycon ticket
Our stamps. I wish they used arm bracelets instead because this rubbed off as soon as we washed our hands for lunch and had to get them re-stamped.
With my excited cousins (minus Gilbert who was off talking to the Samsung person about the new Galaxy SIII – and Raffy who hadn’t arrived yet)
We found this cool Stormtrooper cosplayer with his own working R2-D2. I’m not sure how it worked (I’m guessing remote control or there was a tiny human inside XD) but it was awesome!
We spent what’s left of the morning going around the venue and admiring the displays before the crowd started arriving
I want these cute Toy Story collectibles!
Gilbert found love at the Maxi Collector booth XD
The boys had fun looking at the action figures but I was more interested in the shopping. I lingered around the booths that had stuff for sale and somehow ended up getting separated from the rest of the group. I tried to look for them but there were too many people. In the end I decided that this was the best excuse to shop around by myself without having to worry about the boys getting bored XD
I bought my Hello Kitty glasses at the Chikara Hats booth:
They also sold other kinds of glasses there
I stopped by this booth to ask if they had any of the Vampire Academy graphic novels – unfortunately the didn’t I guess I’ll have to get it through Ebay.
Found lots of booths selling cute earrings and other accessories:
And a couple of booths selling Nyx cosmetics:
(Check out my Toycon haul HERE)
Of course I also had to stop by the Johnny’s/K-pop booth:
I just browsed around here – even though I was sorely tempted to get those uchiwas
Hunger Games pins!
This was the booth where Ezra bought her red hair extensions
After a while I got a text from Gilbert telling me to meet up with them at the Philippine Dogtags booth where they were all having personalized dogtags made
Gilbert showing off his new tag
At around 12:30 we got a call from Raffy to tell us that he arrived at the mall. We decided to meet up with him at Sbarro so we can grab lunch together. While waiting for our food, I made the boys try on my new Hello Kitty glasses:
AZN Wapi
Deus is not amused
