I just finished watching the delayed telecast of the Morales vs. Pacquiao game and because I am a cheesy person , I got affected by the post game interview with the Pacman, hehehehe. Those idealistic/nationalistic cries of the interviewer, “Ngayon walang reli-relihiyon, lahat tayo isang bayan na sumusuporta kay Manny Pacquiao…”. I feel stupid but hey, I like those kinds of stuff.

It makes you feel that somehow a sense of nationality, a sense of oneness is still present even with all clashes arising from different cultures, different beliefs, and different people in the country. Yes, there is still unity among the Filipinos—and it only comes when Pacquiao has a boxing match! Hahahahahah! Kakaiba talaga ang Pilipinas noh?

Okay enough of my cheesiness. I owe whoever still reads my blog around two months worth of posts! Of course, now, it’s all condensed! Tadaa…

Two Months in a Flash

FEB 1: CHOCOLATE MAKING DEMO

It was only this year that I found out that Powerbooks gives free cooking demos! I attended their Chocolate Making Demo in preparation for Valentine’s Day—not that I have anyone to give the chocolate to on that day, anyway! (haha, bitter :p)

“So that’s what the oven and kitchen looking countertop is for!”—that was one of the first things that came to my mind when I got to the class held at Powerbooks Greenbelt 4. I thought the kitchen-looking setup of the cooking section was just a creative way of thematizing the bookstore! Apparently, it’s functional, too!

Anyway, it was French Kiss who gave the demo and well, it was okay. Not really anything spectacular and the demonstration was a bit disorganized but overall, I guess I’d give it an 8 out of 10 for presentation. I also noticed that the recipes were awfully whipped cream-heavy, I’m semi-allergic to whipped cream unfortunately—my chest tightens and I have trouble breathing when I take whipped cream-- so maybe that’s one reason why I wasn’t able to appreciate the class that much.

Here’s the list of recipes, they call it “Real Easy Romantic Valentine’s Day Recipes”

Orange Hot Chocolate, Rocket Sundae, Extra Rich Hot Chocolate, Warm Chocolate Sauce, Easy, Chocolate Pudding, Chocolate Pudding Trifle. What’s nice was that they had free samples for everything, although not for everyone, hehehe. I think I tasted the Extra Rich Hot Chocolate and Chocolate Pudding Trifle. After the demo, I headed straight to the gym to burn off what I ate!


FEB 6: LUNCH @ LESLIE’S TAGAYTAY

I can say that I enjoyed having lunch with my family. I wasn’t worrying about what time it was already, or if there’s a signal on my phone, or if I’d feel my phone vibrate or beep when someone calls or sends me a message. I had no worries, zilch! I simply enjoyed being there, eating the delicious food, and basking in the beautiful view of Taal lake. Hey, I just realized that I’m actually less tense and stressed nowadays in the personal life department! Ah, the joys of being single, heheheh.


FEB 12: LONG GONE ANYBODY

Read this book if you want to be disturbed. Well, i was very much disturbed just halfway through the book. Maybe because I could relate my life at times to what the character is feeling—wandering aimlessly, searching, running away, hiding? Nonetheless, the ending is nice, that’s why I recommend it! Here’s a short write-up:

Long Gone Anybody by Susannah Waters

'This humane novel of a teenager desperately seeking her runaway mother has an edge and a sexiness that keeps you turning the pages'
Suzannah Dunn

Where do people go when they disappear?

The boy you went to school with, the girl who shared your university room for a term, the neighbour you glimpsed through the curtains - where did they go when they left?

A nineteen-year-old runs away from her life and keeps on running. Haunted by the unexplained departure of her mother four years earlier, she is looking and not looking. Adopting one identity after another - female escort, apple-picker, cashier, canvas girl in a travelling circus - she is afraid to slow down for fear of what, or who, may catch up with her. When anonymous postcards start to arrive at every place she goes, she is finally forced to confront the fate of her long-gone mother. Can this runaway-girl escape the same end?

In a compulsive and moving novel riddled with family secrets, a predictably happy ending is never a guarantee. But one thing becomes certain; people can only ever save themselves.

'A diverting, characterful voice.'
Daily Mail

FEB 14: VALENTINE’S DAY

After 5 years of having someone special to share the day of hearts with, i found myself single on Valentine's Day. Of course, reminiscing simply can't be helped...The dinner dates, the concerts, the presents, the memories....
This year's valentines day was really different not only because i was single but because of the things that happened. Yes, the explosion of the RRCG bus right under the Ayala MRT was one of them! On a more personal note, i was feeling kinda sad when i went to work coz of some foiled plans but eventually went home quite happy! =)

Wine Tasting 101
My officemates and I planned to take one of the company-sponsored self-improvement classes: WINE TASTING 101. I was sooo excited! I was the one who told my officemates to sign up on Feb 14 since we didn’t have dates anyway, so why not enjoy the night with friends, right? Well, it turned out that every single one of my friends were enrolled into the class except moi! Why? Well, for the simple reason that I already took the class before! I didn’t know you couldn’t take a class twice!! Hahaha! It really never passed my mind when I was so busy and excited gathering people to sign up for the class. Grabe, sobrang sama talaga ng loob ko nun!

I guess the policy is to give chance to others. The class I attended was the pilot class for wine tasting. I think I took it mid-December with Aldrich. We tasted 3 white wines first followed by 3 red wines. There were soda crackers in between to either keep us sober longer or to wash away the taste of the previous wine tasted. Going to that Wine Tasting class was an absolute adventure! The class was slated to start at 7:00pm and if we were late after the grace period of 30 minutes, we had to pay the actual course fee!! That’s P1200 off our already tax and miscellaneous deduction-laden paychecks!

Anyway, Aldrich and I planned to leave the office (GT Tower, end of Ayala Ave) an hour before the class in 6750 building (beside Glorietta). However, due to unforeseen events, we weren’t able to stick to our time. I think we left the office at 6:30pm and that was rush hour already! The initial plan was to ride the shuttle (a.k.a. colorum FX) but then the line was too long. So the next option was to ride a taxi, but there were no vacant taxi’s! We rode the bus instead, but the traffic was so heavy that the bus was moving at a rate of a feet per five minutes! That’s when we decided to get off the bus and brisk walk, but the bus conductor wouldn’t let us off! At a rate of one feet per 5 minutes, the bus was able to inch away from the Loading/Unloading zone! We had to wait until we got to the next Unloading terminal till we could get off! Argh! After another five minutes of waiting, we hopped off the bus and walked our way to 6750. Aldrich didn’t have much of a problem but I was wearing heels! Kitty heels but they’re still heels! We even jaywalked crossing the wide, wide stretch of Ayala Ave. and Makati Ave.! We had to run so the MMDAs won’t apprehend us, hahahah! We finally got to the class tired and out of breath, and the coordinator even took a picture of us! We got there just in time by the way, around 2 minutes to spare before we got fined with a thousand plus pesos, whew!

Valentine Kringle
Aldrich, the ever scheming jokester at work, initiated this exchanging of gifts during Valentines. Guys were supposed to give the girls flowers while the girls would give the guys chocolates. I don’t know why I suddenly backed out. I think a wave of grumpiness came over me and I acted out of impulse. So there, on the big day, I was expecting to go home without anything at all while most of the girls would get bouquets of flowers, awwww….

But hey, I was wrong!

The first memorable thing that marked my Valentine’s Day this year was that around 11 am at work, the messenger came up to me with a delivery of flowers! Wow! Of course I was flattered, and excited to know who gave it. So I scrambled to open the card…but there was no signature!! It just said: “Grace, Happy Valentine’s Day!” Gosh! I was given 3 beautiful tulips wrapped in nice green cloth-paper, with some leaves around and a ribbon to tie them all together. They were in the most beautiful color of orange that I’ve seen—the mixture of deep orange and a tinge of yellow just like the sky when the sun starts to set.

My Sunset-Orange Tulips

I’m not an expert on flowers since I usually just receive roses. So when I first got the flowers, I was like, “Hmm, what flower is this and why is it orange?” Hahahah, but after some researching and some gushing from office mates (“Wow, tulips! Mahal yan ah!”) I was like, “Ohhhh” And they are pretty! I even asked one of my officemates who had a digicam handy to take a picture of them for posterity. Whoever gave those flowers to me, I just hope he knows how much I appreciate the flowers and how it turned my day around! Thank you!


Free Concert
Sometime in December, Ayala Corporation along with Starbucks sponsored a free concert at Philippine Stock Exchange in Makati. This time around, it was Freestyle who played during Valentine’s Day! Of course, I wouldn’t miss it for the world! I went with a bunch of my friends at work..We walked from GT Tower to PSE and luckily got there a few minutes before the concert started =) It’s just kind of weird though, the people watching were kinda stiff. I mean they weren’t swaying to the music or anything. They just sat down there watching, listening! Hmm, I think The Company was able to loosen up the public more than Freestyle? Or could it be coz when it’s Christmas, everyone seems nicer, but during Valentine’s….some are bitter? Hahahaha. Anyway, I still enjoyed the concert! It just hit me that most of their songs that I like are the sad ones: Before I Let You Go, Bakit Ngayon Ka lang. I also like So Slow. The songs actually reminded me of someone…heheheh. After all, the first concent I went to was Freestyle’s Valentine’s Conert at the Araneta Colisem in 2001.


FEB 18: Overnight Team Building Activity

This was absolutely fun!!! I bought a 2 piece swimsuit and board shorts for this event! The actual team building activity was dinner at Gerry’s Grill in Glorietta then afterwards, around 23 of us went to May Lani’s place at Cainta. I think they owned the clubhouse! I spent around 70% of the time soaking in the pool, walking and wading around…coz I don’t know how to swim! Richard tried to teach me how to float but I couldn’t coordinate my movements to do it right, clumsy ol’ me! They also had a karaoke machine there so we crooned our hearts out but it was more like shouted our lungs out coz the neighbors called up around three or four times to ask us to tone down a bit, hahahahah!





FEB 22: Dinner @ the Tavern

In case I didn’t write about our office Christmas Party, there was a kind of a Pera or Bayong game there and I won a dinner date for 2 at Tavern on the Square in Greenbelt! I took Richard with me there, he’s my closest friend at work, after all J It was Nyoy Volante and the Mannos playing that night and Richard bought 3 of Nyoy’s CDs to have them signed. We got there a bit early so we decided to have dinner before the band arrived. The budget given to us was P1500 and here’s what we ordered:
Gindara Teriyaki with buttered veggies& rice and Mango Barbecue Chicken with buttered veggies & rice for our main course, two glasses of Cranberry juice to wash it down, Chocolate Chip Cheesecake for dessert, then Calamares for pica-pica while the band was playing and Mineral water and Iced tea! I went home really full!

Nyoy Volante and the Mannos

At the Tavern with Richard


I like the music the band played. Of course, there were signature Nyoy Volante songs but most of the other songs were requests from the audience. There was even this Japanese guy who jammed with them at the drums. We only stayed for the first set coz it was a work day the next day. When the band took a break, I went up to Nyoy and asked him to sign Richard’s CDs. Use my charms daw, sabi niya, haha. The thing is, I didn’t tell Nyoy that the CD’s weren’t mine, so when he came back from the dressing room to change his shirt, he gave me back the CDs with his short message and signature on the CD jackets…”Thanks for the support!, Love, Nyoy” “God Bless, Love, Nyoy” Hahahahahaha! It might as well have been written: To Richard, Love Nyoy! Hahahaaha! I am writing this incident down for posterity!


FEB 26: Perm Wave

I got my perm wave at Bench Fix for P1250! I think the procedure took about 3 hours, here are shots of the before, during, and the after. It’s good that Richard was there to take pictures of my Medusa look.

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

Oh and why was I not surprised that the stylist recommended maintenance products and even an extra hot oil treatment to me? I didn’t fall for the hot oil but gave in to the products. I know after all that my hair needs extra maintenance after a perm

PhP2100 worth of hair goop!

Here’s what I bought (from left to right): L’Oreal Perm Energy Shampoo (smells like Avocado with a hint of Lemon), Kerastase Masquintense (smells nice and creamy), and the most expensive of all—even more expensive than the perm wave procedure itself—Kerastase Oleo Relax No Rinse Anti-Frizz Hair Gloss @ 1290!


MAR 6: Baby Shower

My sister-in-law, wife of my second brother had a baby shower! It’s my first time to go to one! We didn’t do anything much but eat and take pictures and I really like the souvenir, heheh, that’s why im writing about this event!

Baby Minnie trying to be a Bunny!

MAR 8: Women’s Day Cooking Demo

I never knew there was a Women’s Day or Women’s Month until this year! Is this a newly appointed celebration or something? Or was I simply hiding in my shell for the past how many years? Anyway, I signed up Richard and me for the cooking demo, I even made sure that guys could come since well, it’s Women’s Day, hehehehe. The demo was at Powerbooks Greenbelt again, but this time, the place was jam-packed. We ended up standing while watching the demo. This time’s class was a lot more professional, educational and entertaining compared to the last one I attended--probably because it’s The Maya Kitchen who did the demonstration.

The theme was more on the healthy side so the recipes were Fresh Fruit Plate with Cottage Cheese, Tofu Dip, Pork and Lettuce Rolls and Low Fat Brownies. They used pureed prunes as substitute for butter in the brownies and well for a low-fat dessert, it came out pretty tasty--sweet fruitish tasting brownies! Ah and the reason why I said that this demo was more organized because they prepared ready made small servings of all the stuff they demonstrated for the audience to taste! What made me chuckle was after putting the brownies in the oven, they took another one out that was all done—just like those cooking shows on TV! :p


MAR 10: EGA SAI

Ega Sai 2005, that’s the free Japanese Filmfest that’s held every year in celebration of the Philippines-Japan Festival. Again, it’s the first time that I’ve learned about this. I chanced upon an article about Kurosawa, a well-known Japanese director , whose films are featured in this year’s filmfest and I remembered that Richard likes watching foreign films so I mentioned this to him. It turns out that Kurosawa is really really famous and Nands, my office cubemate even said that Kurosawa is like the Lino Broka of Japan! It’s just too bad that it was already the last week of the filmfest and on a weekday, so there was only one film that could fit both our schedules.

Here’s some stuff about Kurosawa..

Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was the first Japanese director “discovered” abroad.
He achieved worldwide prominence when Rashomon (1950) won the grand price at the1951 Venice International Film Festival, thereby opening the way for the
appreciation of the Japanese cinema beyond the border of Japan.
Because he was quickly accepted in foreign countries, the Japanese often considered
Kurosawa as the “least Japanese” director. No matter how problematic this
assertion is, Kurosawa’s works represent a break in the tradition of the
Japanese film This break, however, does not discredit him as one of the greatest
filmmakers in the history of Japanese cinema. As Kurosawa himself said, “If a
work can’t have meaning to Japanese audiences, I , as a Japanese artist, am
simply not interested.”

EGA SAI 2005 AKIRA KUROSAWA

We ended up watching Stray Dog (Norainu) by Akira Kurosawa at the Equitable Tower in Makati. It’s about this police officer who rides a really, really jam packed bus in the middle of a scorching hot summer day and loses his gun in the process. The whole film is about his effort to try to get back his gun, but before he gets it back, a number of people get killed with his gun and this makes him extremely guilt-striken. He has to work with a senior officer (who has a semblance to our current driver, hehe) to hunt down the killer. Oh and I noticed that during the latter part of the movie, it was raining extremely hard…maybe the weather is a mood-setter for the scenes. A lot of parts in the film also made me laugh or chuckle but I’m not really sure if this was the intention of the director, hehehehe. I would’ve wanted to watch Seven Samurais and Rashomon, two of the more popular films of the director, but there’s always next year, anyway :)


MAR 18: PHONE GETS STOLEN

BOOHOOO! See the previous post for this. It’s back to my trusty ol’ Nokia 8250 again.

There, 2 months in a flash, all done!