INSTABITS : December 2015

Warning : Photo heavy post ahead

As usual, I was pretty active on Instagram (and Facebook) over the holidays, which meant that I spammed my friends with photos. You have been warned. Here’s my last photo-dump for 2015 😀

My first post for the month was this photo of Dustin, Sir Marvs, Sir Taps and me at the UPLB Christmas tree during the last day of classes. Thanks to my super sipag SA, Jeri, for the photo 😀

We also took photos by the Christmas houses nearby

Dustin and I had lunch at Seoul Kitchen and I decided to order something else other than my regular cheese rappoki. I tried their donkas and Dustin ordered the bulsilog

Dustin bought a new camera last month and we went out a couple of times after work to play around with it. We invited Jeri along so she could take photos of us. This was taken the same afternoon as my week 43 portrait for 2015

Photo taken by Dustin. Texting at the office XD

Peeked into Sir Taps’s cubicle and caught him in rage mode. Poor Paul 😦 Just kidding! Sir Taps likes to ham it up for the camera.

I ordered this carrot toy for Mochi on eBay but she doesn’t pay attention to it. She still prefers to chew on things she’s not supposed to – like my shoes, shelves, slippers, books, bags and electrical cords.

Look what she did to my laptop cord 😦 I try to keep all the wires in my room hidden or elevated so she wouldn’t reach them, but I keep forgetting that she can jump over obstacles and stand on her hind legs to reach high places.

She knows she can get away with it because she’s too adorable for me to stay mad at her. Look at her sleeping, lol.  Sometimes I wake her up just to make sure she’s not dead

Chops visited LB one afternoon and we ended up having an impromptu Photoshop and Lightroom tutorial

Last month our office held a Physics workshop for PSHS teachers and I helped out during one of the sessions

Caution: Physicists crossing. I love this photo. Credits to Jason for the shot 😀

INSTABITS : November 2015

Hello everyone! This will be my last Instabits entry for 2015 (because it will already by 2016 by the time I post my December entry). Let’s do this!

Brinks discovered (using Timehop) that over the past years I get extra clingy around November 1. I wonder why… She has this theory that I’m scared of ghosts so I look for someone to spend the day with XD

Bought this dress in Thailand for 99 Baht. But it’s a bit too big for me so I’ve only worn it once

Gilbert brought it to my attention that apparently this game exists in the Play Store. (I really hope they resolve the whole Laglag Bala issue at NAIA soon.)

I went to SM Calamba with my parents to get our printer fixed and saw that they put up their Christmas decorations already. I love the huge Christmas trees and the cute reindeer (though you can’t really see them in this picture.)

One of my students brought her puppy to class this month. So adorbs! Of course I had to borrow him/her for a picture

INSTABITS : October 2015

Hello hello! It’s time for my October Instagram dump.  It’s a little late, but I’ve been feeling a little down these past few days so I haven’t been in the mood to blog or do pretty much anything. I’m feeling much better now so here goes.

Started the month off by satisfying my week-long craving for pizza at Cocina. Their All Meat pizza is pretty good 😀

I’ve been having terrible breakouts lately (I think I’ve grown immune to my old acne medication) so Dustin suggested that I try Flawless’s Anti Acne line. I’ve been using it for about a month now and so far I’ve been pretty happy with the results. I still have a few pimples, but I can definitely see an improvement.

I’m still having a lot of fun with my adult coloring book. I’ve been playing around with different coloring styles and I love the results.

Dustin and Amie came over one evening for some bonding time. We ate pizza and learned a little about the history of UPLB from my parents XD

Posted this for Throwback Thursday. 6 years have passed and we’re still taking pictures at the “pond” in Carabao Park. I love these girls.

Refreshments with Instagrammables at the University Cafe. They love the cucumber lemonade there.

Calligraphy lessons. Sir Taps taught me how to write “friend” in Kanji, yay! He tried to teach me how to write other characters but they were too complicated for me.

My mom celebrated her birthday this month. She’s the ultimate Lee Min Ho fangirl so I posted this on her special day. She loved it.

To celebrate my mom’s birthday, our family booked a villa at Cintai Corito’s Garden in Batangas. The place was Bali-inspired and very beautiful.

We especially loved all the wood carvings and murals around the area. I took a bunch of self portraits for my 52-week project while we were there 😀

The colorful walls were so pretty

INSTABITS : September 2015

October is here, which means it’s time for my monthly Instagram dump. This is my first Instabits entry after Instagram started allowing non-square photos to be uploaded. I was wondering how they would show up here on my blog. I thought they would just keep the original dimensions but it turned out all Instagram did was add a white border around it to make it square. I suppose it saves me the extra step of having to do it myself in Photogrid, though I usually prefer black borders instead of white. It’s a good thing I use a white background on my blog now, so you can’t really tell, except it looks like there’s a lot of unnecessary spaces between some of the photos.

First post of the month was a selfie I took after I had my hair trimmed. The last time I got a haircut was July last year, which was a long time ago.

For my birthday, Dustin gave me a carnation and Sir Marvs gave me these “homemade” cookies. He said he stayed up all night baking them for me, lol.

For my birthday lunch, Amie, Dustin, Ma’am Chrys and I went to Dalcielo where I ate way too much. I could barely move by the time we were done

I passed by the Physika tambayan on my way back to the office and saw that they made this sweet greeting for me. Thanks brods and sisses!

For my birthday dinner, my family and I ate with some friends at 88 Resort.

The manager is a friend of ours and she gave me this huge complimentary halo halo for dessert.

To wrap up my birthday celebration, Brinks, Camille and I had a quick shoot around campus that weekend.(You can read more about my birthday thoughts and celebration HERE)

INSTABITS : August 2015

I just realized that we’re almost halfway through September and I haven’t gotten around to posting last month’s Instabits entry yet. My schedule’s been a little packed lately so I forgot all about it. Whoops.

During our last week in California, Ate Maryann and Ate Xenia took us out to have lunch at Gen’s Korean BBQ. I checked to see if they had free wifi for customers and I came across some interesting names.

Candid shot of my parents at the airport while we were waiting for our flight back to the Philippines. They were so immersed in their own shows but they refuse to let go of each other’s hands. I hope to have a relationship like theirs someday.

Last month I finally decided to get contacts after about 15 years of being too scared to touch my eyeballs. (I wrote about the experience HERE if you’re interested.)

Dustin presented me with this lovely rose on my first day back at the office. Thanks Dustin!

My eyes turned red when I wore my contacts for the first time (you can sort of tell in the previous photo – the one of me holding a rose). It took two days for my eyes to return to normal. But it was smooth sailing after that.

Lola Ettie requested that I post a picture of their dog Chestnut since she knew I took some photos of her during our family reunion in Vegas. Isn’t she adorable?

Dustin celebrated his birthday last month, so Amie and I took him out to have lunch at Dalcielo.

Random selfies I took while I was stuck in traffic

INSTABITS : July 2015

Hello August! July flew by so quickly, probably because there were so many things happening – family reunions, dinners, weddings, etc. This year’s US trip was much more low-key compared to the past years, but there were still plenty of activities to keep us busy.

We started the month by staying at the Welk Resort in San Diego with my cousins and cutie pamangkins. They taught us how to play Uno cards and some kendama tricks.

Kurt got Ezra and me 4-day passes for this year’s Anime Expo. He attends a lot of cosplay events to shoot videos (check out his YouTube here) and this is the first time I got to see him in action. Ezra and I only went for two days though, because we were in San Diego the first day and Ezra wasn’t feeling well on the third day.

Check out the crowd at Anime Expo. And I thought our ToyCon was crowded. Thankfully the venue was HUGE (I probably only saw half of the place), so it wasn’t like the cosplay events here in the Philippines where you barely have room to breathe.

This year’s Anime Expo bag featured Summoners War, yay! They were promoting the game at the event so there were lots of huge banners and even a Com2Us booth.

Quick selfie with Ezra before we left my aunt’s house on the 4th day of the event.

INSTABITS : June 2015

This month’s Instabits entry is almost 2 weeks late because I didn’t realize that it was already July until a few days ago.  This happens a lot when I go on vacation.

My first post for June were these two selfies I took using Amie’s phone.  (I like stealing my friends’s phones and spamming them with pictures of my face.)  You might notice that my hair looks a little lighter here compared to how it did the previous month.  That’s because I dyed it brown a few days earlier.  Unfortunately, because I dyed my hair black last year, the brown dye only showed up on the fresh hair near my scalp.  (I didn’t know black dye was so hard to get rid of.)  I ended up with some sort of reverse ombre style, which I didn’t like at all.  I tried to make the best of it, but I couldn’t stand how I looked so I switched back to black again two weeks later.

Since Ezra didn’t have anything to do at home and she wanted to escape the heat, she would usually tag along with me to the office.  Sometimes I would ask her to help me out with some tasks – such as shredding my old documents (which she enjoyed a lot)

When Ezra gets bored, I let her play with my hair (which I enjoy because it’s like getting a head massage).  She came up with a bunch of interesting hairstyles for me that week.

She likes putting these Pucca buns on me.  Normally I wouldn’t let her because I’d be worried that my students might walk in and think I’m crazy, but since finals week was over there weren’t a lot of students left on campus.

But a student did walk in to ask about her grade while I looked like this, eek

Some of my officemates came over last month for a quick baking session to help us unwind after the deadline of submission of grades.

This is my new favorite drink.  I asked the girl at the counter to recommend something without caffeine and this is what she suggested. I’m glad I listened to her.

INSTABITS : May 2015

May was an extremely busy and eventful month for me.  Besides having loads of things to do at work because of the end of the semester, I also struggled through some very personal issues.  This month made me realize how important it is to have people who will be there for you to support you and believe in you.

During the past years, May would be the time when we would go on vacation because of the summer break, but due to the shift in academic calendar, classes and exams are still ongoing.  However, we didn’t let that stop us from going out occasionally and enjoying the sun.

I kicked the month off with a trip to Laiya with Ma’am Chrys, Sir Marvs and Dustin. (Blog entry HERE, and you can watch the video I made HERE.)

We didn’t have resort reservations so we hopped around until we found one that could accommodate us.  We ended up at the Virgin Beach Resort (which was also where my friends and I went to back in 2013)

Needless to say we took lots of pictures during our outing

We learned that overnight guests can use the resort’s kayaks for free, yay!

Back at the office, Sir Taps, Dustin and I somehow found ourselves all wearing blue on the same day

This month my mom received an award for being an Outstanding San Pableño.  Yay!  We’re proud of you Mama!

The Physics Fair was also held this month.  Here’s a class picture with my C5L and EF6L students during the event.  It was extremely hot that day, but our students seemed to enjoy the games.

My EF6L class rented this pedicab for their game

(Grabbed this from Dustin’s IG.) After the students were briefed and the field was set up, I spent the rest of the time hiding in the shade with Dustin and Sir Taps.

Here’s an old photo of my mom and me which I posted for Mother’s Day.

My parents celebrated their 31st wedding anniversary this month, so I shared this old photo of them in their first apartment.

An LBC delivery man walked in my office one day with this huge box from Proctor and Gamble. It contained a flat iron, an epilator, an ionic brush and about a year’s supply of razors and razor heads.  I haven’t talked about it here on my blog, but earlier this year I was informed that someone stole a photo I took and entered it into a contest. The person who submitted it ended up winning first place with an amazing prize of a vacation worth 5000 Euros. I alerted the organizers (Gillette Venus UK) of the fraud and they eventually sorted it out. They sent me this for my troubles. (You can see the Facebook thread HERE)

To celebrate my parents’ 31st wedding anniversary, our family went on a cruise around Japan and Korea.  We arrived in Japan two days before our cruise started because we wanted time to explore Tokyo by ourselves.

We took a train from our hotel to Akihabara, where I found Summoners War, yay! (Since I wasn’t sure if I would have internet in Japan, I asked Raffy to babysit my account for me while I was gone XD  Thanks Wapeh!)

We also stopped by Shibuya to say hello to Hachiko 🙂

INSTABITS : April 2015

Another month gone, another Instabits entry.

Started the month off with a date with Ckloy at Bonitos (and Palaisdaan the next day)

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Cocina recently started offering ramen on their menu so my officemates and I had some one afternoon.  (grabbed from @dustinlab)

I got my first 5-star summon from a mystic scroll in Summoners War this month – a Wind Death Knight. Technically Death Knights are natural 4-stars but he came awakened. He’s not too bad I suppose (the Fire Death Knights are better). I’m still hoping for a natural 5-star summon though. (I also evolved my first 6-star monster this month, but forgot to post about it. Yay Ramagos!)

Camille had some free time this month so she would occasionally drop by the office to visit me.  She’s never tried Seoul Kitchen before so I took her there for dinner during one of her visits.

Aprille turned 30 last month, and she an amazing garden party to celebrate it.  I had a lot of fun (despite the fact that I took a nasty fall as soon as I got out of the car and Ezra, Camille and I had to spend the first 15 minutes of the party cleaning up my bloody knee in the bathroom).

We had fun taking pictures with the blue and white canopy at Aprille’s garden.  I even used it as a backdrop for my 14th self portrait this year.

Camille and I baked some peanut butter oatmeal cookie bars last month, and I brought some with me to share the office.  Dustin and Sir Marvs loved them so much that they requested we bake another batch as soon as they were gone.  They’ve been asking me to teach them how to bake for some time now, so I’m glad we were able to have this impromptu baking session 🙂

I posted this old photo of Ezra and me on Facebook for her birthday.  This is one of my parent’s favorite photos of us for some reason.

To celebrate her birthday, Ezra requested that we go to Festival Mall so we could go shopping and have lunch at the Superbowl of China.  We also bought her favorite Tous Les Jour’s Strawberry Inspiration cake (which I used as a prop in my 15th self portrait this year).

INSTABITS : March 2015

The first quarter of 2015 is over. For some reason I feel like New Years eve was just a few nights ago.

Kicked the month off by watching the K-drama Marriage, Not Dating.  I loved it.  The story was light and funny, and the characters were charming and adorable 🙂

Ckloy visited me at the office this month.  I think the last time he dropped by my office was back in 2012.

We finally got to try the dim sum at Tim Ho Wan last month.  There’s always a long line for this place and we heard that its because the food is really good, so we decided to go see for ourselves.  We loved their sweet pork buns 🙂

I forced Ckloy to take selfies with me while waiting for our order to arrive XD

Had lunch one friday at Seoul Kitchen with Amie, Arvin and Dustin

Ezra went through my planner and started making a scene when she saw that I had Amie’s birthday marked but not hers, so she went and did this. (Her birthday and Kurt’s are one day apart.)

This was taken on Amie’s birthday. Sir Marvs, Sir Taps, Dustin and I prepared gifts for her but unfortunately they’re a little NSFW so I can’t show you guys.

I gave my bangs a little trim since they were getting too long.  Ezra told me  that I should trim them every two weeks, but I get lazy.  I didn’t cut them as short as she did before, but I made them short enough that I can wear them down if I wanted.