pryo olympics

Mall of Asia was just so crowded yesterday, with swarms of people hanging around the balcony area and the parking area to get a glimpse of the fireworks displays. I was one of those people ^^

Started the day by having breakfast with my mom at starbucks. Then spent the rest of the day hanging out with ernest at rockwell, where they had a mall-wide sale. I bought two books from Fully Booked. I mean, who can resist a bookstore sale? ('0^*) We ran into Mrs. Alberto too. I seem to run into her all the time.

Was supposed to meet Mic and company at a place near Toyota Manila Bay but decided to go to MoA instead. It was jampacked. Well, the fireworks were cool ^^ I liked the USA display, with ones that shot up and became like this giant dandelion, freezing momentarily before turning into "stardust" (or should i say pollution?). Then there were the ones that seemed like star showers, parachute-like and like giant chandeliers. The sparklers that shot up from the ground were cool too. Those were like floating colored bubbles, just twirling and swirling. They looked like candies ^^ From the second presentation (which i take was by Spain), i liked the big solid blobs of fireworks, which looked like molecular structures, that just stayed suspended in the air before making their slow descent. Overall, it was a feast for the eyes (and the ears i suppose).

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went to mv doulos in the late afternoon. There were lots of people. The line to get on the ship was uber long but the staff were friendly and accomodating. Most of the books were on religion and health so they didn't really strike my fancy. It was so stuffy inside the book fair place though because of all the people so it was tiring. We climbed off board after awhile, and it was refreshing to feel the cool sea breeze.

afterwards, we went to eat at this bayside restaurant - i forgot the name of the place （'゜０゜；/. it was a seafood smorgasbord but of course i only touched the greens. i liked their hot calamansi juice though - nothing special, just soothing to the throat. And at 8pm, we saw the fireworks! Today was Germany's display and it was better than yesterday's ^^ my favorite was the ferris wheel-like swirling fireworks which were enclosed in a bigger white firework. The inner wheel seemed to continue to spin around even when the white firework had dispersed into "star showers" already.

shoes shoes shoes

Went to The Block after school today with my mom, two sisters, and JR =)

Walked around. Had dinner at Banana Leaf ( I love their vegetable samosas ^^). Stared longingly at the Quickly stand (I miss milk tea) but didn't get any coz i was too full from dinner. Bought bibingcrepe (like the ones i ate at baguio!). Went shoe shopping.

I'm super picky when it comes to shoes and clothes and jeans. I tried so many pairs at the URS shop (I bought my first URS pair at singapore, and after that i came to love the brand) that i thought the saleslady would get irritated, which she probably would have if we hadn't bought anything. After trying on the pair i liked (they didn't have my size), a too-pointy beige high-heeled pair (my cousin said i could kill someone with the pointy toe heads. Haha), a couple of flats, and one more pair of high high felt black high heels, i decided to go with the pointy-toed black flats. I think my parents gave a sigh of relief after i finally picked a pair. Hehe =) I felt like Carrie Bradshaw, trying on shoe after shoe, except that it wasn't as dramatic. I didn't leave the place strewn with empty boxes and shoes in disarray.

Sigh. There's nothing more satisfying than buying a good, comfy pair of nice-looking shoes ^0^/

holiday break

Happy New Year! ^^ It's 2007!

Seems like i've gone on a hiatus which means i have stuff to cram into one entry. Time for bullet points again.

A few days after school let out last year, my dad drove me to makati to give goodie bags to the virlanie children. it was bonding time with my dad. we got stuck in horrendous traffic and it was fun navigating. It's rare that i get to spend whole days with my dad so it was memorable in a way.

On the 23rd, we went to stay at new world hotel (across greenbelt). it was fun living across a mall ^^ haha. anyways, i bought a couple of french workbooks (to brush up on vocab and verb conjugations) and a few novels (which i haven't gotten around to reading yet), plus cds at music one. Got my dad a pair of shoes which we had to exchange the next day coz they were a half size too big. i didn't know my dad's shoe size so i just traced one of the contours of his shoes on bond paper and asked the salesman to find the shoe size that fit the shape on the paper ^^ we also had dinner at the new italian restaurant at greenbelt 3 - the italian name eludes me although i do remember that it was italian for capricious. the food was pretty good and the servings were big too. ran into karyn whom i haven't seen in a long long time and saw lesley (my kinakapatid). after dinner, ni and i watched little miss sunshine which was quite enjoyable and funny. i loved the simple, dysfunctional storyline. Oh yeah, ni and i also got to see the fireworks. They were so colorful and loud. I would even say it was artistic~

christmas day, we had dinner at gloria maris greenhills with the clan (father side). I ran into mic and jic. What was memorable was that mother lily's husband was celebrating his birthday there as well - on the 2nd floor. So, there we were downstairs, eyes glued to the automatic sliding doors. Once in a while, my cousin would shout out, "Look! There's so and so..." It was funny =) Everyone was sharing celebrity gossip and trying to get a good luck at the stars. We saw Imelda, Imee (some were disappointed that Borgy didn't go), Ruffa and Yilmaz, Eddie and Annabelle, Tito Sotto and family, Rudy and Lorna, Susan Roces, and a few others.

From the 28th to the 30th, i was at Baguio with Mic, Jerome, and Charlene. It was the first time to Baguio for Char and I and Mic made sure we got a good tour of the Summer Capital. The weather was cool. We got to eat lots of good food. We got to play Cranium (tough game ^^). We got to shop. We got to take turns rowing a boat at Burnham Park (tiring work!). We got to talk and bond and share. Plus, we got to cook! Hehe. It was awesome~ I loved Camp John Hay with the mini golf course (I think i didn't suck too much for a beginner ^^) and the wonderful houses that were newly-built. Also, we drank hot chocolate from a shop nearby. Nothing beats hot chocolate on a cool day. On our way back to Manila, there was this thick fog so there was zero visibility. That was scary >< but kinda cool too.

After arriving home from Baguio, i went to my grandma's place to have lumpia. It's sort of tradition that my guama makes lumpia every holiday season. Haven't been able to eat it since i turned vegetarian though =( But i still go coz i have food (from Bodhi hehe) and my aunts and uncles and grandparents are a noisy, funny, sarcastic bunch ^^ conversations are never boring. Got to borrow Without a Trace Season 1 and 2 from my aunt. Haven't gotten around to watching it yet though. Have to finish Prison Break first, which i have to say is a cool show, plus Wentworth Miller is an added bonus.

Then, there was the new year's eve lunch at dikukong's (my great uncle) place and dinner at ama's place. Got to carry and play with Justin. He's starting to talk, or rather, babble. He can say Dada and tries to make out syllables. I love having nieces and nephews. They're so cute ^^

before classes started, went to rockwell to watch kasal, kasali, kasalo with nini and zel. i loved it ^^ it was hilarious and real. thinking about some scenes still makes me chuckle to myself =) Speaking of movies, i also watched love actually (which is one of my favorite movies) and little manhattan which was cute and endearing.

And so that was the holiday break ^^ I didn't really get any schoolwork done except for reading the chronicles of narnia books for philo class. of course, reading those books didn't seem like homework at all. Speaking of which, are they coming up with a Prince Caspian movie?

Right now, sorta going through a bout of self-preservation. Or maybe i shouldn't really term it as so. It's more of letting reality sink in. Chapter closed. Time to move on.

christmas list

as of 1130 this morning, it's officially christmas break ^^ yey!

all i want for christmas is (or ARE)
- world peace (honestly. of course, it's probably not gonna happen in my lifetime. but still~)
- to do something for the street children

On the materialistic side:
- anything from giordano (their jackets and shirts are nice but on the pricey side)
- new flats (the ones i bought from singapore are slowly wearing out. sadness)
- books! ^^

quiapo

today was the second to the last leg of data collection for our thesis. the last leg's tomorrow. tanya and i are going to interview the last few remaining people who haven't been interviewed yet.

today we completed our street-based children sample. we were aiming for 50 but we settled for less, given the circumstances. i didn't realize that street kids were very busy people. they had to help their parents and work, thus having almost no time for fun. the kids were friendly and sweet ^^ i loved emily and her family~ as well as norielyn's. oscar was just full of laughs. others were more shy and didn't talk as much, and there was one who just didn't want to cooperate.

after the interviews, i couldn't help but feel a bit sad. i wouldn't say that the future seemed bleak to them but their environment considerably hindered their potential to grow. Moreover, these kids have different value systems. To tell the truth, i sometimes find it hard to sympathize with them. Charity alone isn't enough. For them to develop and grow as persons, they also need a proper education and moral foundations. i don't know. seeing those kids just left me sad and well i've been asking myself all sorts of questions~ there must be something productive we can do.

on the lighter side of things, it was my first time to actually take a walk around quiapo. hehe ^^ my dad said he used to go there every day during his college days. i wonder how it was like then. saw an old-style camera, the one which looks like an accordion and which you have to cover yourself with a piece of cloth when taking the photo. coolness~

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yesterday was the OIP party where the foreign exchange students sang songs from home. i got to hear a tibetan song for the first time =) and i got to sing Petit Papa Noel with the french students too. Fr. Ben, Dr. Angeles, and Rudy Ang were there too. It was actually my first time to see Rudy Ang in person. I thought he was a masterals student doing a study in the philippines at first haha XD

After the OIP party, went to Carlo's despedida with the ASEC people. It was fun. Emil and his barkada made good use of the karaoke machine. Spent the night chatting with Teruha, Cess, and her cousin Theo (who's visiting from Australia).

save the polar bears

i watched al gore's documentary "an inconvenient truth" earlier today. it was interesting and quite enlightening. i don't know when it started but i seem to have developed a sense of concern for the environment, as well as an interest in sustainable development. i found the facts emphasized in the documentary to be alarming, like how the rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere skyrocketed in the past few years, how fast the ice is melting in the arctic and antarctica. if before, people's projections were that we'd be in danger in the next 100 years or so, the number of years has dwindled down to 50-70.

i liked his example of the frog. a frog who is put in boiling water will immediately jump out, but a frog who is placed in water which is then slowly heated won't realize the heat until it's probably too late. like as humans, because we can't feel the immediate effects of global warming, we think that it's still a future problem, that we don't need to deal with it yet. After all, what we can't see can't hurt us. This is of course perfectly natural. I, the eternal procrastinator, am guilty of this as well. I guess this is why it's so hard to get people to be pro-active.

Globalization is taking its toll on the environment. There are polar bears which have even been found to have drowned because they couldn't find a strip of ice to rest on, and thus were forced to keep on swimming. Imagine being stuck in the middle of an ocean and looking around you to just see endless water. What a scary thought. Even the natural cycle and habitat of animals have been affected. The effects of global warming were even more extensive than i thought.

The big question is what can i do in response to this problem? Sure, I'm aware of the facts. I realize the consequences and i'd like to take some sort of action but where to start? Do i cut back on power use? Do i start using more fuel-efficient cars? Can the environment i live in adapt with me as make this change? Is it possible for third world countries to cut back on power and illegal logging and all those other environment-harming activites when their economies are dependent on these very same things? To tackle the issue, a major revamp is needed - a change in the equipment and machines we use, as well as in our outlooks, perceptions, and ways of thinking. the environment deserves our attention.

http://www.climatecrisis.net

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after watching the documentary, micah and i went to have our fortunes told. the lady used tarot cards, signature analysis, and palm reading. most of the "predictions" revolved around career and love life. it was fun and pretty interesting. some even hit a chord or two. i'm not sure if i really believe in the fortune telling thing though~ ^^

tarukan

one word to describe my immersion experience : overwhelming. emotions, culture shock, realizations - everything was just overwhelming.

i went to capas armed with these doubts, insecurities, and preconceptions. for two and a half days, i got to mingle with the aeta mag-antsi, experience how they live. we climbed mountains. we cooked meals using firewood. we slept on tugon beds. we covered the leaky roofs with rags when it rained really hard saturday evening. we got the stuff for our meals by plucking papayas and vegetables from trees, by buying payless from the small sari-sari store up the hill. we bathed in the creek beside our simple tugon-made homes. we were amazed by the clear night sky - it was possible to see all the constellations. the sky was littered with stars. we gazed endlessly at the flittering fireflies which tatay wilson jokingly referred to as "christmas light sa bundok." we basked in the warm glow offered by the rising moon. we relished the fresh air and cool breeze. we were both embarassed and grateful for the warm hospitality and generosity showered upon us by the community. every day, we would be greeted by the big toothy smiles and shy grins of the children. we would just sit down idly and chat with our nanays, learn about the aeta culture, and jot down a few aeta words.

the immersion was truly enrichening. i got to learn and experience so much. of course, two days isn't really enough to understand how the aetas live but it was able to give us an inkling of what hardships they went through, of how they spent each day. as my groupmate mike aptly put, the aeta's life is simple yet hard. i can say that after this immersion, i've come to appreciate the filipino indigenous culture more.

immersion

off to tarukan, tarlac tomorrow for immersion with the indigenous people, specifically the Aeta community.

excited? you could say that. i feel like i'm going on an adventure of sorts. kinda like extra challenge. of course, ate dudj warned us not to think of it just as a "trip."
nervous? definitely. especially when i heard that there were no proper bathrooms @@
ready? totally. well technically, i have yet to pack but i've picked out which shirts i'm going to bring (^.^)V

be back on sunday evening~

P.S. Advanced Happy Birthday to Yuki-chan and Kristine who're celebrating their birthdays on the 9th of december.