Blogging to Escape

To productively write and blog I need to have the perfect mood. I could write with a mood of serenity or calm or with intense passion or expressive displeasure. I also need a perfect setting somewhere that wouldn't inconvenience me in any way. The chairs should be comfortable. The place should be quaint and a bit private. Lastly, the ambiance or temperature should be working with me and not against. All of these with the boiling idea and concept would enable me to achieve a post that could be my best to date. Blogging is my way to get in touch with my ideas and share it with the world. Here I am extroverted.

Right now, I've transformed my desk into a perfect blogging spot. As much as I would want to travel and change my identity, this is the cheapest way of escape for now. I could be here for hours and I wouldn't know what's going on.

My next short and attainable projects:

1. Buy noise canceling headphones like the one I got for my brother.
2. Re-catalog and re-organize my library
3. Download songs in I-tunes and upload in my IPOD Nano. (Eeew, never thought I'd say this)


Now, back to Blogging.

The Powerbooks Fan Page Contest

Look what I've got in my Multiply mail:

Congratulations to the winners of our Powerbooks Fan Page contest! We enjoyed the posts so much that we decided to add 2 more winners to the list.

Kaye Layson
Don Eleazar Balboa
Noria P. Adam-Lim
Srbaj Dinong
Minette Ilagan-Ame

Powerbooks Marketing will send you a message via your Facebook account on how you can claim your prizes.

Thank you to everyone who posted in our Fan Page thread. We had a great time reading the posts you all made. Your unique experiences and heartwarming tales have indeed sparked all sorts of emotions--from excitement and anticipation to relaxation and relief. We hope you'll continue joining Powerbooks' promos and contests! Watch out for the next one!

Gosh I felt like I won a major lotto draw! I don't usually join contests and whenever I do I hardly win at all so you could just imagine my delight. Seriously, I feel ecstatic at this moment. My whole family thought that I won something monetary the way I jumped up and down, but I told them it's way better than that. I called up Mitch and texted some friends as well. I'm such in a mood to boast. I won from one of the stores that nurtured me as a person! Powerbooks and I will always have THAT connection! I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but hell, I won!

Secretly, I hope the prize would be a continuous supply of books for at least one year, but who am I kidding, right? Just the mere fact that I won is really a prize in itself! Consider me a very happy kid!

Unexpected Girl Bonding

I am still recuperating from a lot of things last night. Aside from a bruised credit card, I'm recovering from an intense dinner and a coffee session. I honestly feel that whatever I gobbled last night aren't fully digested until now. I'm going to skip breakfast and depending on my bloated feeling, I might also skip lunch. It's that bad.



Nevertheless, I had a surprisingly good time with my sister and my cousin Den who will be staying with us indefinitely. Yahoo! So a generous spirit possessed me to treat them with some shoes and dinner at Fort. Thanks to Fridays, we got ourselves some free coffee and dessert at Coffee Bean.

We discussed memories and praised how OK we turned out to be. No one's mentally damaged, psychologically impossible or anything worse than that. They both agreed early on that they have already adjusted to my sometimes alarming-weirdness, until now I still take the reign.





We were supposed to be good girls watching over our diet, but we broke all the diet rules. Hence, the recuperation from the guilt trip. While Danielle has an innate ability to burn fat effortlessly, Karla and I will just expand to being humanoid planets. Ugh. Carry on.

A Party that Ended Well

This afternoon is all about the recounts of the wonderful party that happened last night in lieu of Mitch's birthday. All I can say is the party was great! It's exactly what I had imagined and hoped for. The service and place were fantastic and efficient. The crowd was steady. The company provided by the DT Photographers and Sun Valley Peeps was excellent. The food was plentiful and the drinks were just right.



I never believed I could pull this off actually. This may be the first time I'm hosting a simple birthday party. I had to stretch out my budget and exhaust my options. I had to pull a few strings, do some random computations and research in between work. I wanted everything to be organized and perfect to the detail, most especially I would want people to enjoy.

It also helped to know that I like parties, especially birthday ones, since I really don't get to experience that. My birthday falls on the very eve of Jesus' Birthday, which overwhelms everything. I had no qualms in that, that's why I invest all my energy to other people's celebrations. There's something special about birthday parties. You may either look at it in a more morbid perspective when you're a year older to your death, or you may look at it as a celebration of thanks that, despite what you have been doing or exposed to, you lasted this long. Sometimes we might inject the thought that birthday parties commemorate how important the person is to us. Thanking them that they have been born to this world. All of that mixed with a childlike sentimentality in a cauldron of ideas, this party eventually came to life.

I may like parties, but I've never been put to the helm of organizing it. It was stressful. You have to think of the food and get into a series of consultations with the people in terms of schedules and preferences. You have to consider everything including the parking and the coolness of the venue. It was a challenge and a project worth undertaking though. The best part of it, aside from giving Mitch a party, was actually enjoying myself and pulling it off. It's a different level of experience and learning.

But there are lots of people to thank for. I thank the impromptu photographers, the place, the servers and the guests. Almost everyone I invited came, except for AJ, who was sick at that time. I'd like to think they had fun, and I'm sure they did as long as there's good company, food and drinks. I guess in any party planning, those are the real things that you MUST consider, and everything else will simply fall into place. Just experienced it first hand.

Happy, Over and Done with

I was ranting about the challenges I faced yesterday, but I think God somehow made it all worth it spending it with my dear friends, with my family and a loved one. I will never forget last night's affair. Aside from the stellar fact that my beautiful and stunning best friend wed the love of her life, I joined the celebration with my dear parents, my esteemed colleagues, dear friends and my loved one...all in one venue. Although the friends part weren't that complete, but the endless laughters, stories and integration of all parties, who are important in my life, just made it phenomenal.

I was happy that Je got her dream wedding and everything turned out very well.

I was happy to see colleagues, met new friends and fulfilled my duties (somehow).

I was happy to spend time with my amiable parents as they chatted with my high school friends and Mitch. It made me feel that some things have definitely changed for the better, yet some still remain the same.



*After the program, with the stunning and beautiful bride. Taken by Mitch...not with his SLR though..with my ancient cybershot. Hehe...just clarifying.


We were all in Cloud 9. It was a grand celebration of sorts.



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And can I just add how the Groom sculpted this masterpiece, one of his gifts to his bride? Simply amazing!

Ingko has always been good with his hands. He is a brilliant engineer and a remarkable artist. Can all grooms do this for their brides? I doubt. I even remember that one time when he gave Je a mini wooden sculpture for a birthday present.

At this rate, I shouldn't be surprised anymore, but he never fails to generate amazement from us. This one was a show stealer.

Great job, Ingko! Cheers!

Hobbies and Age

If "resting" means not having an agenda to do anything, well I think I've accomplished that for this weekend. I stayed at home and had people coming over for a visit as if I'm sick. It made me have a quick peek of a slothful life, not that I recommend it.

Thinking about the future, about your specific strategic moves and constantly playing scenes in your head are not entirely healthy mental activities you could do for the whole weekend. Looking for a diversion and a need to get me into new clothes, my friend-neighbor Nikkon called me up at 10:30 am while I'm reading a suspense-action packed novel by Dean Koontz. (To Keep my mind flared up for possible activity) He asked if I'm doing anything, which meant that he wants to invite me and practice his culinary knowledge for lunch. It was a no-brainer. I accepted.

He went over at my house as soon as I've change into something appropriate. Tossed my overused pj's and got ingredients at our kitchen to bring to the chef's abode. Wow, this would be my first actual activity for the weekend. I kind of felt recharged with the thought of a yummy lunch.

While cooking, Mitch followed and decided to join us before his photo shoot in Paco Church. Nikkon, a special marketing student in CSB, talked about his impending quarter life celebration and his plans on studying culinary arts. He has a penchant for cooking, as I have a penchant for eating, therefore we compliment each other. I urged him to take up special culinary courses that can be accomplished in less than 6 months, and this means free lunches and food critiques for me.

It actually made me think that now we're getting older, our certain hobbies have also reached a more serious level. Nikkon, a frustrated chef, wanted to take his interest into formal schooling and in event try to produce his own concoctions for grills and bars. Mitch, who is technically artistic at heart, profits from his investment in photography. Whereas I, who would love to research and write, maximizes the therapy of blogging, which has become seriously fun. I cannot begin to enumerate some friends who have bought certain expensive gadgets to satiate their hobbies that they've been nursing ever since. Hobbies I guess grow with people, as people grow into mature thinking with increase resources. It's impressive and very comforting to know that interests are given various opportunities to thrive and ripen at a perfect time. Who knows, we have all the time in the world to be professionals about it. Wait till you hear a chef, a photographer, a writer, a dj, a zipper and an entrepreneur conquering the limelight. At this point we felt we could do anything.



*Presenting the future Chef Extraordinare, The Photographer, The Writer-Blogger


Gosh, we really are getting older, might as well enjoy the process!


And enjoyed we did. *Nikkon's famous impromptu Cable Rice with Tocino, Egg and Pepper

A Promising Weekend Starts now

Yesterday I sprinted off from work on the dot, went to Mitch's office and went home to Sun Valley to prepare for a reunion of sorts. At home I made my infamous venetian ala Kaye sandwich, which is a sandwich with same salient ingredients but with more improvisation than sticking to the rules. It hasn't let me down yet based on a couple of tries.

Last night my best friend Je de la Cruz MD and my soon to be MD good friend Tin Lucero, all from high school, went to my house to hang out. Gosh, we rarely...rarely and I mean..RARELY get to do this. We're practically neighbors in the south yet it's as if we live planets apart! It's a good cause for a reunion though. Since Je is getting married this August, we felt the need to somehow relive the bonding moments we've had when we're younger and so much time in hands. With all the work, the practice, the pressures and respective love lives, we have put our "moments" together on the shelf. But yesterday it's as if we just graduated highschool.





I can still vividly remember snatching Je from her bus service and asking her to ride home with me. Weekends and especially summers were spent in either my house or hers. We'd eat, take a nap, fumble with the guitar and talk about the future like it's been laid in our hands. With Tin, I'd always remember going to United Paranaque trudging my badminton gear to exercise. Yet after the exercise, we'd go to her house and make specialized cookies following her mom's cookbook. Wala rin ang effort! Sometimes the three of us would hang out in my place. Tin, being the homey and best cook, will make things work and come up with something great while Je and I just get mesmerized as if we have just seen a Discovery Channel Breakthrough. But now, I've learned a few things about cooking, I can say Tin will be proud of that. Je in the meantime has the best cook for a future husband anyways! Everything turned out well in that regard.

Anyways, last night we decided to go out and to have a chill, legitimate fun. It's too quiet at home and felt adventurous, since the three of us are really not what you would consider "party people." We are more of "dinner-coffee people." I got the remaining leftover sandwiches, dropped by Mitch's house to give him his favorite, while Je tries to schedule a meeting with him regarding the prenup. After all's been set, the three of us headed towards Central and had the rarest funnest time of our lives.

Everything was discussed, raw and straight to the point. There were times wherein I just have to realign my planets to accept that we're talking about censored, difficult "adult" stuff that we squirmed about when we were in high school! I believe we've become more mature about stuff and when we tend to look back, we only envision sweet memories. We've changed, most definitely. But I know, we have changed for the better, that's for sure.

As we cheered on to various people and various incidents in our lives it really hit us that we missed each other! We intend to do a better and longer version of that night! And I'm hearing a SPA-RTY!