INSTABITS : December 2012

Last INSTABITS post for 2012 🙂  There was a lot of fun things to do this month so this entry’s a bit longer than usual.

Started the month off by going to SM Calamba with Ezra.  We met Ckloy there to watch part 2 of the Breaking Dawn movie.  Ezra treated us because it was our anniversary the next day.

Ckloy and I spent our 7th anniversary attending the 3rd session of FPPF”s Advanced Photography workshop.  We had a field trip that day because our topic was Travel Photography 🙂  Happy 7 years baby~  I love you!

It’s become tradition that we start decorating our house for Christmas on December 1.  We were a bit late this year because we had to get a bunch of our Christmas lights fixed.

But the wait was worth it.  I especially love our house this time of the year 🙂

Since I’m part of the Socials Committee (and I’m a “new” faculty member – again, sorta …) I was asked to take part in this year’s Faculty Follies.  The last time I joined was back in 2006, when I first started teaching at the Physics Division.  Back then I was the only Physics representative so I felt a bit lonely during the practices we had, but this time I had Kat, Hahriz and April with me so I had a lot of fun.  (Amie was supposed to be part of the group too, but she injured her foot and had to drop out T__T)  Here’s a group shot of team IMSP/UPRHS during our dress rehearsal.

More pictures taken during dress rehearsal

Physics people playing around with the giant iPad/iPhone props during practice.  We didn’t win, but I had a lot of fun.  (The champions were actually the College of Economics and Management, so congratulations to my mom and her group ^__^)

Random shirt I bought at Festival Mall.  It has eyelashes 🙂

INSTABITS : November 2012

I can’t believe it’s December already!  (There are snowflakes on my blog again, aren’t they pretty?)  2012 went by so fast!  There are only 25 days left in the year, so let’s make the most of them 😀

Anyway, here’s my Instagram dump for November

 Ezra and I found this adorable soap dispenser at Daiso.  It’s not really something I need, but it was too cute to resist.

Blurry screencap of a scene from Bokura Ga Ita.  Ezra and I were able to get a copy and watch it earlier this month.  This was one of my favorite animes so I was really happy that they made a live action for it.  (And I couldn’t be happier about who they chose to play Yano and Nana XD). Watching this movie made me realize how much I’ve missed J-doramas.  For the past two years I’ve only been watching K-dramas, but I think it’s time for me to revisit some of my old J-drama favorites.

Anime version of Yano and Nana (which I found online).  They’re so cute~  Thinking of reading the manga again.

Amie was really stressed out at the beginning of the month (since she’s part of our institute’s registration committee), so she suggested that we bake some cookies to relax her.  We invited April along and we made sugar cookies and rum balls.  Ezra and I have made sugar cookies many times before, but this was our first time to make rum balls.  They turned out to be really yummy (and super easy to make) so we ended up making another batch a week after this 🙂

Brinks posted a picture of taho earlier this month and I’ve been craving it since then.  Luckily, one weekend I woke up just in time to catch the taho guy passing in front of our house 😀  (Btw, have you tried flavored taho before?  Aside from strawberry taho in Baguio, I never knew they came in different flavors.  Ezra and I found a stall in the mall selling all sorts of flavors last week and we got so excited. She tried the almond and I had the coffee flavored taho.  Yummm~)

Camille came over one weekend.  She was at a party nearby and she asked me to pick her up so we can hang out.  We spent the afternoon watching youtube videos and the first season of Suburgatory

Ckloy and me ❤

Moonleaf~  I love milk tea, but unfortunately I can’t drink a lot because caffeine makes me stomach behave weirdly 😦

Chaos at the Physics Division!  We decided to have a faculty lounge where we can entertain guests and store reading materials, which meant that we had to do some office shuffling to clear out a room.  I didn’t have that much trouble moving since I only have a handful of things at the office, but some of our senior faculty had to temporarily store their belongings in one of the empty classrooms while we organized ourselves.  I’m going to miss my old room, but I love that I’m back in the same office I had back in 2006-2009.

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.

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.

INSTABITS : August 2012

I started out last month’s Instabits entry with pictures of my new jelly wedges.  Coincidentally, my first post for August is another shot of shoes – my old sneakers this time.  And no, I didn’t plan this.

I bought these back around 2004, in Bangkok.  They used to be my favorite pair.  I think the last time I wore these sneakers was in college

Speaking of Bangkok, my mom bought me this skirt during one of her visits there years ago.  Its been hibernating in my closet since I didn’t know what to pair it with.  I finally wore it for the first time this month.  (Ezra calls this my elementary school teacher outfit XD)

My Physics 3 students took their first lecture exam last August 2. I gave bonus points to those who wore animal ears.  Aren’t they cute?  I loved seeing how resourceful my students are 🙂

I used this answer key and a green highlighter to check the multiple choice part of their exam.  It looked gross by the time I finished checking all 148 exam papers.  Based on the damage I can say that a lot of students got #13, 14, 17, 21 & 30 wrong.

An exciting event for the Physics Division people this month was Alex’s and Kuya Darwin’s wedding last August 4 (blog entry to follow … I hope).  Here’s a shot of the newlyweds sharing their first dance as a married couple 🙂

What I wore to the wedding.  Thanks to my sister for letting me borrow her sash and shoes 😀  (Hmm … I hate how Photo Grid makes my pictures pixelated …)

Here’s a clearer shot I took with my DSLR and transferred to my iPod.  I managed to take a few vain shots of myself in the car while waiting for Kat to finish getting ready so we could go to the wedding together.

Photobooth pictures from the wedding.  That reminds me, I promised the Physics people I would get these scanned.  Oops.

 

A random picture of my screen while I edited my self portrait

Took this one morning while I was trying to decide if I should keep my eyeliner on. I had some sort of stye/eye allergy and I was worried makeup will just make it worse… (but my inner kikay cringed at the thought of facing 150+ students without make up so I ended up keeping it on.  Thankfully my eye turned out okay.)

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.

INSTABITS : June 2012

Another month down.  We’re officially in the 2nd half of 2012.  Here’s my Instagram photo dump for June 😀

Started the month off by dropping by the office to report for my first day of work. They didn’t have anything yet for me to do since classes haven’t started yet, so they told me to come back next week, lol.

My Peter Pan inspired outfit which I wore when Ezra, Ckloy and I watched Snow White and the Huntsman at SM Calamba

Ezra and I had merienda at Slice N Dice while waiting for Ckloy to arrive from Manila

Ckloy arrived later than expected because the bus he was on broke down and he had to wait for the next one

The next day we went to Trinoma for Raffy’s celebration lunch at T.G.I.Fridays.  Congratulations Raffy for bagging the Programmer of the Year award! 😀

Trinoma haul. Finally got my hands on the Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque. I broke out earlier this month and I read online that this might help.  My skin has improved but I can’t say for sure if it’s because of the mask.

Because I’ve been away from teaching for three years, the university required me to attend the week-long seminar on college teaching which they hold every year.  This is a haggard me after the first day of the seminar.  I met up with Amie at Freedom Park afterwards to unwind.

INSTABITS : May 2012

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here on my blog yet, but my parents got me a new phone when I graduated last April.  (Well, my graduation was in April, but they bought me the phone towards the end of March.)  My old phone was over 5 years old, so I was pretty excited 😀  I was torn between the iPhone 4s and the Samsung Galaxy S2, but in the end I went for the S2 since I already have my iPod and I can get most of the iPhone apps on there anyway.

My new baby, complete with fingerprint smudges XD

I loaded it up with games and all sorts of apps but mostly I use it as a camera and as an alarm clock.  I downloaded an ebook reader for it too (Aldiko) but I still prefer to use my iPod to read books.

Anyway, about two months ago, Instagram was finally made available to Android users 😀  Because of this, I decided to start this little thing here on my blog called Instabits where I will post all (or most of) my Instagram uploads for the month.  (I know, the title is so unoriginal but I think it’s cute.  I was initially thinking of calling it Insta-life, but Instabits reminds me of cereal, and I love cereal XD).  This is my very fist Instabits post, and hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up 🙂

This entry is meant for May, but I decided to include a couple of my uploads from late April too.  I’ll try to keep the captions as they are, except when I feel like I need to elaborate on something since most of my captions are pretty short.

(Also, if you’re expecting some kind of flow or story, you’re most likely going to end up disappointed.  These entries are meant to be photo dumps of pictures taken by my phone.  Think of them as tiny fragments of my life.)

All dressed up to attend Ezra’s graduation 🙂

Congrats dear sis!

Ezra and me with our cousins at her hooding/recognition ceremony 🙂

Kupos! Brinks and me at Ezra’s and my graduation party (April 29)

*love*love* (also taken during our grad party)

Amie and me after my teaching demo and IMSP interview last May 2.