California here we come

Since Ckloy is on a plane right now headed to the U.S. of A. and I can’t go with him, the best I can do is finish this entry which has been sitting in my drafts folder for so long.  At least I can pretend that I’m headed off to the states too while I’m writing this.

These photos were taken last May when our family visited our relatives in California for the summer.  (Although most of these were taken at airports on our way there, the actual pictures from our California trip will come soon … I hope.)

Our flight was at around 1pm , so we left our house at 8am to get to the airport 3 hours before boarding.  We expected a lot of traffic since that’s normal during the summer, but surprisingly the roads were clear and we were at the airport by 9:20.  The check in counter was still closed when we got there, but there was already a long line of passengers.  I guess it’s good we arrived early and that we managed to grab a spot in the line early on.

Good morning to us!  So excited to get our vacation started

Waiting in line with all our luggage.  (Yeah, we obviously don’t pack light XD)

Oh hi there.  Just sitting down here, waiting for the line to get moving

Ezra and I passed the time texting Kurt (since Ckloy was still asleep).  He couldn’t wait to see Ezra so we sent him pictures of us at the airport to to make him even more excited.  He decided that the best way to burn off all his excited energy was by defiling them T__T

I feel so violated T__T  Just kidding! XD  He must have sent us over a dozen, but I lost most of them when my phone crashed a few months ago.

Since we skipped breakfast to leave early that morning, Ezra asked if we had any food with us.  I found a pack of crackers in my bag, so I gave them to her

Look at her so happy to get some food

As it turned out, those crackers had been in my bag for quite a while and they were quite stale.  It was my travelling bag and the last time I used it was back in December when our family went to Coron.   I guess I packed those crackers to eat on the plane and forgot about them.  Whoops~

Ezra doesn’t look too happy with the fact that I tried to feed her stale crackers

Naturally she threw them away because she didn’t want to risk getting sick on the plane.  Thankfully the counters opened up and we were able to check in and make our way inside.  And since we had plenty of time till our flight, we headed over to the PAGSS lounge to pass the time.

They had comfy couches, free wifi and, most importantly, free food~  Yaaaay!

Getting some arroz caldo for breakfast

Drinks and dessert table

Ezra is happy to finally have some non-stale food

My breakfast consisted of arroz caldo, siomai and siopao.  I also had some tiny sandwiches and cookies after this

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that we also hung out at this lounge back in December of 2011 (which was our last visit to California before this one).  In fact, we sat in this very corner back then as well.

Soon it was time for us to go to the pre-departure area for our flight.  During check in, we couldn’t get 4 seats together, so we decided to sit in pairs.  When we got to our gate, we realized that we were placed in two different zones (areas of the plane).  I think two of the seats were in Zone 2, and the other two were in Zone 3 (or 4, I can’t really remember).  They started loading the plane with Zone 1 passengers first.  Since Zone 2 would be boarding next, and my parents wanted to make sure Ezra and I got on the plane safely, they gave us those tickets even though it had their names on them, and they took the Zone 3 (or 4) ones.  When we got on the plane, we found out that the Zone 2 tickets were for business class seats!  Ezra and I both thought “wait, this can’t be right…”, but according to our tickets (umm, our parents’ tickets) that’s where we were supposed to sit.  We waited a while for our parents to board the plane but we couldn’t see them in the business class area with us.  After a while, they closed the plane doors, but our parents were still nowhere to be found.  As it turned out, Zone 4 was in coach, so that’s where they ended up sitting, lol.  So while we enjoyed our spacious seats and foot rests, our parents were stuck at the back of the plane.  We have no idea why two of our tickets got bumped up to business class since we bought 4 economy class tickets, but who are we to say no to good fortune?

Lucky girls XD

(If you’re wondering how we were able to enter the airport lounge with economy tickets, it’s all thanks to BPI.  I guess it’s a perk that the bank offers to some of their investors.)

Since we took EVA Air (again), we had a stopover in Taipei.  It takes around 2 hours to get there, and Ezra and I spent most of this time asleep. But we did wake up when the stewardess served us lunch.

Ezra looking utterly perplexed by the straw that came with her apple juice.  It was a short straw which you can elongate.  I’m not sure how to describe it because I’ve never seen these kinds of straws in the Philippines.  It’s like two short straws, one tucked inside the other.  You have to pull one down to make the straw longer.  But the problem is there’s a tiny gap between the two straws, which means that every time she sipped on her drink, she got a big mouthful of air to go along with it, lol.  (I had the same straw but mine worked fine for some reason.)

INSTABITS : May 2013

Posting this a bit late again.  I’ve been trying to savor the last few days of my summer break, so I’ve been avoiding anything that requires me to think (or move … or get out of bed …).  But it’s back to the grind for me tomorrow, so I should probably get this done before all the craziness starts.

Started the month off by going on a summer outing with my officemates.  We went to Canyon Cove beach resort in Nasugbu, Batangas.

Presenting the Physics faculty XD

Posted this for Throwback Thursday.  This was taken during Moy’s birthday party 5 (or was it 4) years ago.  Aprille, Brinks and I took forever to get ready and ended up being 2 hours late for her party. Oops…

On May 3 our family headed off to Los Angeles to visit our relatives there.  This is a shot of us at the airport lounge in NAIA.  We didn’t have breakfast so we pigged out on the free snacks there.

We had a 3-hour stop over at Taiwan, where we were reunited with Hello Kitty 🙂

Ezra and I had fun playing around with the funny mirrors at the Hello Kitty terminal

On our first day in LA, Kurt took us to see Iron Man 3.  (I actually saw it with Ckloy the week before this, but I had no problem seeing it again.)

I was still pretty jetlagged and only got 3 hours of sleep on our first night there.  Woke up with horrendous bags under my eyes.  Thank goodness for huge shades 😀

On our 2nd day there, we asked Kurt to take us to Little Tokyo for some mochi ice cream.

We also dropped by Walmart and Walgreens.  I’m trying to cut back on buying cosmetics, but most of these were on sale so I couldn’t resist

Kurt took us to visit his school (California State University Northridge) where we had fun feeding squirrels, ducks, and turtles.

After feeding the animals, we went to Westfield mall to feed ourselves.  Itadakimasu! 🙂

Hearst Castle : “La Cuesta Encantada”

Day two of our quick sightseeing trip with my aunt and cousins.  (You can read about Day 1 HERE).

We woke up early that morning because we had 9:30am tickets for the Hearst Castle tour.  I didn’t really know much about Hearst or his castle until my aunt arranged this trip for us, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  She told us that the place once belonged to Sir William Randolph Hearst.  After he died his children decided to donate part of his property to the state of California, and since then it has attracted many visitors.  It was a well known fact that Mr. Hearst only invited aristocrats and elites into his home back when he was alive (some of his favorite guests included Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable and Winston Churchill) so I suppose a lot of people simply wanted to see the place that these famous people once visited.

Ate Maryann dropped us off at the Hearst Castle Visitor’s Center at around 9am.  (She couldn’t join us for the tour because she had to work.)

It was a beautiful sunny day.  Just look at that lovely sky~

In case you were wondering, this isn’t the castle yet.  It’s just where visitors go to get their tickets and wait for the tour guides to pick them up.

We looked around inside and explored a bit while Kuya Wibet went to the counter to get our wristbands.

Mama Darling headed straight for the gift shop XD

Tour packages available for visitors.  We got the Grand Rooms Tour.

Map of Hearst Castle

Our tour bracelets:

My mom helping me put mine on

Ta-dah!  All set for our tour.

We had about 10 minutes before our shuttle arrived so we just did more exploring and took a few more pictures at the visitor’s center

Poor Kurt woke up with a heavy migraine that morning and could barely stand.  But he didn’t want to miss out on the tour so Ezra volunteered to be his crutch for the day, lol.   It must have been hard on him seeing as she’s so much shorter, but at least he was able to walk around (really slowly) through her help.

He still managed to smile for cameras too.  (He said it was because he didn’t want to look back on the pictures and videos in the future and see himself in pain, lol).  But he got better throughout the day and even managed to take pictures during our tour.  (Some of the shots I will be posting in this entry were actually stolen from his camera XD – Thanks Kurt for the copies!)

Soon our bus arrived to take us up to the castle.  As we drove up, our bus driver gave us a bit of info about Mr. Hearst and this place.  He told us that all the land we saw around us belonged to Mr. Hearst.  He used to call this place La Cuesta Encantada (“The Enchanted Hill”).  Mr. Hearst loved animals so he filled this place up with them.  We saw a couple of black cows, deer, rabbits, squirrels and some zebras on the way up.  Supposedly Mr. Hearst even kept polar bears around back when he was still alive (but he made sure they were locked up of course).  

All of this belonged to Sir William Randolph Hearst.  I can’t even imagine what I would do if I owned this much land!  Probably build my own amusement park.

It took us about 10 minutes to get up to the castle, where our tour guide was waiting for us.

Our first glimpse of the famous Hearst Castle.  It’s beautiful, but not what I expected.  I sorta envisioned a modern Hogwarts when my aunt told me we would be visiting a castle, lol.  This seemed more like a church or a cathedral to me – which was actually what it was modeled after (according to our guide).  Oh well, it may not have been Hogwarts, but it was still gorgeous.

Speaking of our guide, here’s a quick shot I took of him.  Doesn’t he sort of look like Jack Nicholson?  I kept telling my mom that and she didn’t believe me, but my dad and aunt agreed with me XD

Anyway, Mr. Nicholson-lookalike (I can’t remember his name, sorry) gave us some background information about Sir William Randolph Hearst and his famous castle.  Supposedly he had a lot of strange quirks and was quite eccentric, but no can could deny how brilliant he was.  He was a perfectionist and he loved art.  As for the castle, something that many people may find interesting was that it was designed by a woman named Julia Morgan.  While this may seem trivial to some, our guide reminded us that the castle was built in the early 1900’s and female architects weren’t as common back then.  According to him, Ms. Morgan was a brilliant architect and she utilized a lot of modern technology (well, modern for their times) which allowed the castle to withstand a lot of earthquakes and survive up to this day.  (He did admit that the castle has undergone many restoration projects but there wouldn’t be anything to restore if it wasn’t for the castle’s strong foundation.)

After his brief introduction of William Hearst and his castle, we were finally allowed to go inside.  We had to go through the side entrance though because the main entrance lead to a hallway which had intricate mosaic tile floors.  In the past, visitors were allowed to enter through there, but eventually the tiles became damaged and the people running the place had to pay to have it restored, which took years!  The guy who fixed it told them that they better not let anyone walk on those tiles again, because there was no way he would agree to repair it a second time.

One thing we all noticed going in the castle was how tall and narrow the doors were.  Only one person could fit at a time, so we had to queue up to enter the building.  Some people even had to walk sideways.  It makes me wonder if weight loss didn’t present as much of a problem back then as it does today.

Inside we were taken in to see the assembly room.  It was huge and reminded me of a fancy hotel lobby.

It looked so cozy and inviting.  I would have loved to have curled up on one of those armchairs with a good book.  But we weren’t allowed to touch anything, let alone sit on the chairs.  In fact, visitors were only allowed to step on the areas marked with a black/gray carpet to prevent any sort of damage to the room.  Flash photography wasn’t allowed either because they wanted to avoid light damage, so forgive me if some of the following pictures turn out a bit blurry.

Look at the details on that ceiling!

There were two of these huge Christmas trees inside.  (Uh yeah … it was the holidays when we went there.  I guess I should probably mention again that I’m  pretty lazy when it comes to blogging, which is why this entry is 5 months delayed ….)

Took some selca shots while our guide explained more about the room

Solvang and Pismo Beach

(Finally had time to finish writing this entry after Ezra’s nonstop complaints of how I take forever to post pictures, lol.  Can’t really blame her though seeing as it’s already April.)

After Christmas, my aunt and cousins had a bit of free time so they decided to take us to take us sight seeing.  First on our list was Solvang, a Danish village in Santa Barbara county.  We left my aunt’s place early that morning and arrived at Solvang after about 3 hours.  I didn’t really know what to expect when they told us we would be going to a Danish community, so when we first got there and I saw all the buildings I was so amazed.  I felt like I left America and traveled all the way to Europe.  The place was so beautiful!  It was like something straight out of a children’s story book.  I mean look at this:

Aren’t those buildings just super gorgeous?  And to top it off, it was wonderfully warm and sunny that day.  I didn’t even bother bringing my coat down from the car because the sun felt so good. Also, may I just mention how incredibly amazed I am with how clear and blue the sky was.  We never get such clear skies here in the Philippines.  Even when it’s sunny there’s always a handful of clouds up in the sky.  You won’t find a single cloud in the pictures above 😀  (And no, its not because I photoshopped them out or anything – these pictures are pretty much SOOC except for resizing and watermarking.)

Anyway we spent our morning just walking around the village and taking pictures of all the pretty buildings.  Kuya Wibet kept teasing us because we stopped in front of practically every structure we saw to take group photos, lol.  (Forgive us and our tourist ways~  But seriously, can you blame us?  This place is so lovely!)

(Kurt became more interested in the cars than the buildings)

 

Horsies!  I had to snap this really quickly because cars kept passing by and blocking the view of the carriage

After about an hour of walking, we passed by this Subway restaurant and decided it was time for us to have our lunch anyway, so we went inside to grab a bite and rest for a bit.

Subway : Danish style 😀

Two hungry girls waiting for their food XD

After eating we walked around the village again and stopped at some gift shops to look for souvenirs:

We came across this shoe store

And took pictures in front of the famous giant red clog:

Little Tokyo (Japanese Village Plaza)

My thesis revisions have been keeping me busy these past few weeks, but I finally have some free time now to blog and sort through vacation pictures again.  These were taken a while ago (three months to be exact), but better late than never right? XD

My last vacation-related entry was about the last day of our little Vegas-Arizona tour.  It was fun but quite tiring, so after that my parents just wanted to spend the next couple of days resting at my aunt’s house.  It’s a good thing that Kurt had his last final exam the same day that we got back, and he decided to temporarily move in to my aunt’s house while we were there as well, which meant that Ezra and I had someone who was willing to drive us around.  We gave him a couple of days to relax and get some energy back from all the studying and deadlines he had to face during his Hell Week before we started requesting places that we wanted to visit.  First on our list was Little Tokyo (AKA J-Town) in Los Angeles.  Our relatives have taken us there a couple of times before during our past visits, and they introduced us to the the yummiest mochi ice cream, which is something that Ezra and I miss terribly back home.

We’re here!

The trees were so pretty, all decked out in Christmas lights

We didn’t want to buy the ice cream immediately because it would melt, so we looked around first before dropping by the grocery store.  We passed our time looking at the shops, eating snacks and peeking inside the restaurants (in a non-creepy way) to see the different foods they serve.

Wishing tree~

Oh Christmas Tree~

As you probably know (since I’ve mentioned it a bazillion times here on my blog already), our family spent last Christmas in California with our relatives.  My aunt/Ninang was kind enough to let us stay at her place the whole time that we were there.  She lives alone so I think she welcomed the company.  The last time we spent Christmas there, my aunt didn’t bother to decorate her house because she was too busy, but this year she decided to go all out.  She bought lights, took out decorations she had in storage, borrowed some Christmas stuff from my cousin and even bought a tree!  A real live tree!

Ninang told us that she’s always wanted a real tree for Christmas, but she never had the chance to go out and get one, mostly because she knew it would take a lot of time and effort to set up, which is something she wasn’t willing to go through since there was no one but her to appreciate it anyway.  But this year, since we decided to have our Christmas party at her place, she told us that she would finally go out and get one.

I guess buying a Christmas tree becomes boring after a while to people who do it every year, but since it was a first time for all of us, we were all really excited.  I imagined walking into a place filled with pine trees and inspecting every single one until we find the “perfect” tree.  For many tree farms, I suppose that that’s the case, but my aunt decided to get her tree at Costco, so it didn’t happen like that.  (She didn’t actually plan on buying her tree there, we were just shopping for some essentials when we saw a sign near the entrance which said that they had live trees for sale at the parking lot so we decided to check it out.)   They only had one tree set up, and the rest were tied up to facilitate faster sales I suppose.  My aunt bought the tree there because it was much cheaper compared to some other places she looked at.  She paid about $40 for an 8 and 1/2 ft tree, which is a such a bargain, but little did we know that we would soon be wishing that she picked a smaller tree instead.

Me with the one tree on display that was not tied up

Trees for sale.  That’s my Ninang in the red jacket on the right.

Customers picking out trees.

My aunt wanted a big tree, so she chose this one.  Some friendly advice : if you plan on buying a tree for the first time, I have to tell you that seeing them tied up like that was very deceiving of its actual size.  We thought that what we had in front of us was a good estimate of what the final tree would look like once we set it up, but we forgot that it will need a base to stand, and that it will double in diameter once we untie it!

Christmas 2011

Once again our family was able to spend Christmas here in California with our relatives.  We’ve only done so once before (back in 2009) and I’m very thankful we could do it again this year.  We don’t see much of our relatives when we’re in the Philippines, so every moment spent with them is precious to us 🙂

My Christmas celebration this year started on Christmas Eve day when Ezra, Kurt and I went to Palm Springs to have lunch with Kurt’s family.  We planned on leaving Pico Rivera at around 10am, but Kurt stayed up late chatting with his mom and sister (they live in Japan) so he was pretty groggy that morning.   We decided to leave a little later to give him a little more snooze time.

I was already dressed and made up by 9:30am, so I decided to camwhore a bit while waiting to leave.

Ohayou~

I like how I did my eyes that day

Gold snowflake ornament which I grabbed from my aunt’s Christmas tree (it was right next to me)

Hmm

Then I noticed that I liked how sparkly and pretty my nails looked so I decided to show them off:

Did I mention that I liked my make up that day?

(Yeah, I’m pretty vain XD  But you probably already know that if you read my blog.)

Anyway, we ended up leaving at around 11am and arrived at Palm Springs around 1pm.  We met up with Kurt’s family at their house and they took us to have lunch at the Spa Resort Casino.  Afterwards we headed back to Kurt’s house again to take some pictures and so Kurt can grab a quick nap before he drives us back to Pico Rivera.  (I passed the time by playing Katamari Damacy :D)

Group photo with Kurt’s family – stolen from Kurt”s camera XD

We left Palm Springs at around 6pm and made it back to my aunt’s house around 8pm.  When we left that morning, there was only my  dad at the house, but we returned to find a whole lot more people who have arrived to join in on the Christmas celebration:

Ate Zsa Zsa and her family arrived from Las Vegas, Kuya Wibet flew in the night before from San Francisco, Ate Maryann arrived from Chatsworth and Mama Darling arrived from San Jose.

Ezra and I were especially happy to see our niece and nephew, McKayla and CJ, again.  They’ve grown so much since we last saw them.  Especially McKayla!  When I last saw her 2 years ago, she was this tiny:

And now look at her:

Isn’t she precious?  She was adorable as a baby, but she’s gotten so much prettier.

Off to Los Angeles : Hello Kitty and funny mirrors

If you’ve read the last few entries on my blog, you can probably tell that I’m on vacation right now.  I’m actually in California at the moment, visiting relatives for the holidays.  The last time we were here was in 2009 (which was also when this blog was created – I took a lot of pictures of our activities and my shopping hauls back then that I wanted to share with friends so I made this blog XD)  Anyway, we had so much fun spending Christmas with our relatives here that we decided to do it again.

We left the Philippines on December 10.   We arrived at the airport early to avoid problems during check in, which meant that we had a lot of time to kill while waiting for our flight.  Ezra and I passed the time watching Running Man while munching on the free snacks offered at the airport lounge.

Ezra and me

We sat near the buffet table so we can grab food more easily XD  I only had crackers for breakfast so I pigged out on the mini sandwiches and siomai

Setting up Ezra’s laptop so we can watch Running Man

They had free wifi there too, so I checked my FB while waiting.  (I had to use my PSP because I didn’t bring my laptop with me.)

Running Man!  Ji Hyo’s so cute ^___^

After about an hour, we decided to head over to our gate and wait for our plane to board.  Our flight was supposed to leave at around 2pm, but it was delayed by about 20 minutes.

Camwhoring on the plane XD

A VERY LATE “New” Year’s entry

Yes, I know, it’s already the end of March, but I’ve been too lazy to sort holiday photos until now.  I’ve only just finished posting our family’s Christmas photos on FB and Multiply.  I decided to get started on the ones we took on New Year’s eve also.  I figured I might as well make a quick entry about it too, since I failed to do that when 2010 started XD

December 31, 2009 was a double celebration for our family since it was also Bam’s 26th (27th?) birthday.  He took us all to Zen Buffet where we stuffed ourselves with yummy Chinese and Japanese food.

My plate (first round).  Those cheese wantons were yummy!!

Group photo

Thanks Bam! *mwah mwah*

FILM!

It should be pretty obvious by now how muchI love photography.  My dad gave me my first camera when I was 10 years old.  I can’t remember what model it was, I just know he got it in Hong Kong and I loved it.  I used it for 3 years I think.  After that I upgraded to an Olympus (still can’t remember the model) that I had a lot of fun with since it came with a remote control.  After my two film cameras, I switched to digital, which I enjoyed a lot more, especially after discovering Photoshop.  I tell people I’m more of a “photoshopper”  than a photographer.  I don’t have the studio or the equipment that other photographers have, so I mostly rely on Photoshop to enhance my photos.  I admire good photographers who work with film and get amazing results because, personally, I know I can’t live without Photoshop.

I’ve always wanted to take a photography course and see how photos are developed in a darkroom.  In the past, although I used a film camera, all I had to do was take my roll of film to the shop and it’ll be ready in a few days.  Nowadays its even easier, I just plug my memory card in my laptop and voila!  My pictures are ready. I’ve always been curious to see the magic that happens during photo development.

Luckily, Kurt took a photography subject last semester so he had access to his school’s photo lab.  On our visit to California last December, he took Ezra and me to his school and showed us how the entire process works, from loading the film to cutting the pictures.  Of course I documented the whole thing 😀

First step was to take your film and load it in your camera (duh).  Kurt uses a Nikon something that he got on eBay just for this one subject of his.

Smile for the camera~

We went out and took some photos around Kurt’s school.  I also had Rebel with me so I was able to get some shots (see some of them here).

By lunchtime, we’ve used up all of the film and it was ready to be developed, so we headed off to the photo lab.

Weeee~  I was so excited at this point.

Kurt borrowed some materials he needed to get the film ready to be developed.

stuff he needed

Showing us the proper way to roll the film in the metal thingy.  Kurt told us it would be too dark inside the loading room for us to actually see what he’s doing, so he gave us a demo before we went inside.

Film loading room

Inside, with the lights still on.

Getting all the stuff ready and within reach.  It was pitch black in there, so its best if you memorized where everything was before turning the lights off.