Of Perfumes and Emotions

I have always been obsessed with scents for as long as I can remember. When I was growing up, my dad would always bring home perfumes which my mom and I would wear. I remember being in love with Cool Water by Davidoff, Dune by Christian Dior, Anais Anais by Cacharel and No. 5 by Chanel. Of course, I'd...

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Farewell, Stephen...

Stephen Gately 17 March 1976 - 10 October 2009 I grew up during the era of the boy bands. Take That, Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Ultra, Caught in the Act... there was a ton of them. But I only had one favorite--Boyzone. We all know teenage girls have their obsessions. Mine was Boyzone. I literally...

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Life in the Big City

It's my fifth day in Manila and although it's not home, I can say I'm getting used to it. Our training starts at 8:30 in the morning and ends at 5:30 in the afternoon. Every day, I wake up at around 6:30, take a shower, leave the hotel at around 7:30 and take the 15-minute walk to the Starbucks branch...

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ADIS Adventure

As I write this entry, I'm sitting at the basement of the SMART Tower in Ayala Avenue in Makati, using a computer that virtually has all entertainment and networking sites blocked. The fact that I can't access Facebook, or even Yahoo! OMG, is somewhat annoying, but I'd like to look at it as a blessing...

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Apo Island

The Philippine Society of Information Technology Educators (PSITE) held its annual convention for Region 7 last week at Foundation University in Dumaguete. The event was attended by IT administrators and teachers from Cebu, Bohol and Negros Oriental (no participant attended from the 4th province in...

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Summer Heat

When it's summer time, there's no other great thing to do but hit the pool or beach! Last week, I went with my parents and cousins to a resort named Bahura. They have the biggest pool area in my province and an over-all great ambience, so I had fun! Bahura is located in Dauin, Negros...

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Lost and Found

We had visitors for lunch today, so this morning, my mom went to a shop to buy roasted chicken, or lechon manok, as we Filipinos like to call it. Because she did not check her bag, little did she know that she left her wallet at the place! Imagine her shock at around 6pm tonight, when someone called...

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Awesome BBC Documentary

I saw this awesome video on the web today about a recently discovered colony of flying penguins. It's amazing! Watch it.  And since you watched that video, you need to watch the second one as well: Brilliant, eh? Happy April Foo...

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I Want My Brown Rice

Asians love rice! As you can probably imagine, China consumes the most rice per year. But lo, and behold! The Philippines is not far behind. Even being a teeny-weeny country, it was number 8 in the world from statistics I found for 2003-2004, after China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand,...

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BPInoy in Dumaguete

My parents got invited to an event  in Dumaguete hosted by the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) for clients receiving remittances from expatriates overseas, as part of their BPInoy program. Since my dad is not yet here, I accompanied my mom to the event which was held last Friday at the Spanish...

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Online (In)Security

Facebook. Twitter. MySpace. Blogger. Plurk. Friendster. Wordpress. Et cetera, et cetera. All over the web, and on our cellphones, Blackberries and iPhones, sharing is in. We share pictures, videos, all types of files, and we tell people--strangers--about minute details in our daily lives. I, personally,...

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A Beginning

Whoopee! I gave the last of the final exams to my students today. That only means one thing. The semester is finally over! School will officially end tomorrow and the graduating students will don their togas and march to Pomp and Circumstance on Sunday. It gives a bittersweet feeling, the end of...

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Fated to Love You

I thought I'd never ever get hooked on Taiwanese dramas. I was wrong. I was following Fated to Love You on GMA 7, a local network. However, I got impatient and decided to watch the entire series online over the weekend. And by God, I loved it! Fated to Love You is a romantic comedy that tells the...

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Lipsticks, Black Cats, and Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th has never been a big deal to me and I never paid any attention to it until moments ago, when I saw this post at ShimmerMeBlue, with a spooky image of a black cat included. Then I realized that while having dinner at a restaurant earlier tonight, I had seen a fat and cuddly black...

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The Personification of the Sea

The title above is the Greek meaning of Thalatta, the name of the resort I visited today together with my mom and a couple of family friends for lunch. The quaint city where I am located in the Philippines, Dumaguete, is surrounded by a number of beach resorts within its 30-minute vicinity. Thalatta...

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The Vagina Monologues

The other night, I watched a staging of The Vagina Monologues at the Luce Auditorium in Silliman University. It was my third time to watch the show. I first saw it a few years ago when I was in college and was required by one of my teachers to do so. I did not know anything about the show at that time,...

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Pathetic

My friend, Lyn, and I ate dinner at Coco Amigos tonight. This is one of the restaurants by the boulevard in Dumaguete that is frequented by foreigners. It also happened that across the street, in the area known locally as the tempurahan (where vendors sell different kinds of street food), a group of...

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Under the Weather

I'm still sick. It's been 4 days already. It's technically just colds, but I have a hard time coping up with it. I feel tired, I can't smell anything, and my nose is clogged up all the time. At night I even feel chills. I'm not sure if this is what everyone feels if they have colds, or if it's just...

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The Art of Ukiyo-e

The other day, someone finally said they liked the appearance of my blog. That comes as a huge relief to me because I literally spent days--like 2 or 3--looking for a blog theme that I liked. I self-hosted my own WordPress blog for the purpose of being able to fully customize its appearance, but when...

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Top 10 Places to Visit

I love traveling. I love to dream about it, I would recommend it to anyone, and I consider traveled people really lucky. We all know, of course, that traveling needs a lot of time and resources. But imagine having all the money and time in the world, allowing you to travel anywhere you wanted. Where...

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It Pays To Check The Label

Nestle Philippines is obsessed with a line right now: "Make it a habit, it pays to check the label!" They have it on most of their commercials and keep on repeating it at the end of each. And boy, is it rubbing off on me! (See plurk, haha.) But you know what, they are absolutely right.Very few Filipinos...

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Ang Babaeng Hinugot Sa Aking Tadyang

The last soap I followed was Encantadia in 2005. Ever since then, I have not paid much attention to my television except to sporadically watch episodes of CSI, Oprah, or whatever I found interesting on the Hallmark Channel. Two weeks ago, however, instead of pounding away on my laptop keyboard, I sat...

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Love According to the Bible

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always...

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The Truth About My Japanese Adventure

My dearest friend while I was an exchange student in Japan, Annie, is back in the Land of the Rising Sun. She made a post about her new experiences that made me ponder on things. I've always been somewhat indifferent, if not negative, about some of my experiences during my stay there. Japan,...

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NDCF Goes Live

Huzzah! The first-ever website I have created for a client is now available on the web! Norwegian Disabled Care Foundation is a non-profit Norwegian organization helping to fund projects in the Philippines for disabled children. They can now be found on the web at http://www.ndcfoundation.org....

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Dumaguete, Battered

What I thought as harmless rain last Saturday was apparently not very harmless after all. For the first time ever, my hometown had a major flood. It was not only felt in some of the areas of the city, but in surrounding towns as well. According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, five people died in...

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Rain, Rain Go Away

We had crazy rain the whole day today! I've never seen so much rain in my life. I also saw the biggest puddle of water ever, right in my front yard! Fortunately, our house is elevated so we didn't have any problems. But I'm sure the downtown area of Dumaguete got flooded, because it's covered with...

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