23

i figured it would be a shame to let my birthday sneak by without saying anything about it on this blog. so in keeping with my true nature as a compulsive list-maker, here are 23 things (in random order) that made my 23rd birthday a happy one.

1. lots of greetings. which is always nice. funny--people started greeting me as far back as one month ago (joseph, marlon's bro, greeted me on september 17 or thereabouts. "you sure it isn't your birthday today?"). lots of people texted and messaged me at friendster. one of the sweetest greetings came from mickey, who i didn't think would remember. man i miss college.

2. the fact that it's still sort of my birthday. i'm still getting friendster messages (miguel: "i'm here for the late birthday greetings. do i just go to the end of the line?") today. plus i celebrated with my family and at the office just yesterday, since i took ...

3. a half-day off from work! to have...

4. a foot spa! a nail spa opened at paseo center, just a couple of doors down from my building. it has a great view of the ugarte park (formerly the ayalas' private landing strip! grabe!), is very quiet, and uses this fantastic thick, creamy peppermint scrub. my feet and calves stayed tingly for hours. only Php 380 with a pedicure! more valuable than the pretty feet though was that it gave me...

5. some very good "me" time. which, again, is always nice.

6. post-foot spa nap. see, it takes very little to pamper me. just put me to bed after administering a dose of kikay-ness.

7. dressing up. hot pink t-shirt + white circle skirt embroidered with gold flowers and candy-colored beads + gold ballet shoes and apple green thai silk scarf. saya! bading na bading ako! i just looove dressing up. all in preparation for...

8. social climbing/gatecrashing. emper got us free tickets to the ayala corp. 170th anniversary event at greenbelt, which was a rep revue with cocktails. i lured marlon with free food. ("let's go sit up front where everyone can see us and realize that they've never seen us before!") his discomfiture with not knowing a single soul disappeared at the sight of all-you-can-eat roast lamb. naturally.

9. sangria and red wine.

10. chocolate fondue. as in, literally a FOUNTAIN of chocolate. yummmm.

11. pretending that the whole shebang was really MY party. "so glad you could make it! i really wanted breadfruit and pomegranates for the fondue, but they just couldn't be flown here in time!" hee hee.

12. JAZA! JAZA! JAZA! that's MISTER jaime augusto zobel de ayala to you, buster. gawd i was sooo starstruck (as always) when i saw him. also felt the mad urge to strangle his gorgeous, skinny, fashionable colombian wife.

13. broadway. i have not seen a rep show in ages, but knowing my current musical tastes and the gravity of rep diaspora (the greats are all inactive or abroad in various musicals), i warned marlon that the show had immense potential to annoy me. in fairness, it didn't. liesl batucan did. the woman has been doing that simpering sweetness act for nearly ten years. it's soo not cute anymore. besides, her voice is vastly irritating.

anyway, that said, the better part of the show reminded me of old dreams: how much i loved broadway shows, how much fun they are to sing along to, and how early i developed a love of performing. i remember the last rep musical i watched--jesus christ superstar--right before the cast of miss saigon netherlands left. i remember being so pleasantly amazed: angelo had such a wonderful voice that i never fully appreciated. sigh. i miss the old rep.

14. menchu launchengco-yulo's performance of "the meadow lark" from the baker's wife. ringing with clarity and passion. what a great way to be introduced to a song you've never met before.

15. elver esquivel and michael williams. elver has always been known for being rooted in solid classical technique. while michael apparently lived in london for a coupla years doing more plays, including the king and i, and now he has this very nice, light and warm broadway voice.

16. caffe puccini at the fort. new discovery away from the "madding crowd" (hi leow! hehe) of greenbelt. bintan-esque pizzas, candlelight and coffee in front of a nice open square. and it's right in front of pier one, so anytime you're sick of the expat atmosphere you can just cross the square, grab a bottle of negra and play billiards.

17. marlon. like, duh. spending this week with him has been the best birthday gift of all ("happy birthweek!" indeed, as he keeps on saying). i couldn't have thought of anything better than to have him home for ten whole days! a few things threatened to get me very depressed during the day, but he has this wonderful calming presence. it also helps that he knows how to make me laugh like a maniac and gives great big bear hugs. okay, i'll stop before i get overmushy. but really, i can't believe that i've been lucky enough to celebrate a second birthday with him.

18. marlon's present: a cd/vcd player! he said it wasn't right that someone who loves music so much (and hoards so many cds) doesn't have a cd player. so he got me one. i truly appreciated this when i listened to my scarlatti piano concertos before bed last night: it drowns out the annoying loud neighbors. oh and classical music sounds way better on it than on a cd-rom drive and bundled speakers. :-)

19. crepes with my family last night. at cafe breton, of course. my diabetic mother got a nutella crepe, of course. if anything made me realize how old we all are now, it was seeing my mom and sister sharing yosi.

20. birthday cake care of my boss. tuesday morning, surajit swung by my desk to greet me happy birthday.

SURAJIT: where's my cake?
ME: i don't know. i don't even know where mine is.
SURAJIT: what? you have no cake? that's so impossible.

then he picked up the phone to ask acy to buy me a cake. she actually bought me two--my classic red ribbon faves, chocolate mousse and chocolate crunch!

SURAJIT: how old are you?
ME: 23.
SURAJIT: you are ANCIENT!
ME: i know! doesn't it make you feel positively jurassic?
SURAJIT: of course not. don't be fooled by my big stomach [and kids, when he says big stomach, he ain't kidding. this is bigger than andrei's was in his prime]. i'm only 15.
ME: of course not. i wasn't fooled at all. that's just baby fat.
SURAJIT: very good. you're learning. you have a very bright future in this company.

go figure. it's astounding how nonsensical conversations with surajit can be, considering he's the big boss around here.

21. going to bed at night feeling tired but happy to have had a full day.

22. my future. marlon and i have been talking about the future a lot lately. not so much "our' future as a couple but our individual ambitions, which both involve further education and a major career shift (he wants to be a professional geek, i want to be a professional KSP).

i am a lot more optimistic about the future now then i was a year or even half a year ago. there were times when i couldn't talk to marlon about what i wanted without crying because i felt like there was no way it was going to happen and because i felt so guilty for even just wanting it. there were also times when he'd bring up planning for our futures and i'd feel cornered and pressured.

but now i'm much more focused and a lot less paralyzed by fear. i'll always remember something marlon told me: "there enough obstacles to your ambitions without the ones that you're creating for yourself in your head." if i didn't have marlon i might have given up a couple of months ago. but dreaming, strategizing and just talking about my dreams with him has done wonders for my attitude.

i still have some hang-ups, but overall i've stopped making excuses for myself and gotten off my ass to put together my action plan. i've been scouring around for schools, and talking to robert buckland from kammerchor stuttgart about career paths. chris pong and i teamed up recently to gather information on music programs as well. oh and there's more... but anyway briefly put: there is still so much to prepare for, learn, discover and do.

i am scared and humbled by the future, but excited, challenged, resolute and hopeful as well. a good combination of things to be upon turning a year older.

23. you actually got to #23? good for you. i never made it to the end of the list.

Eggs

pleeeeease, if reading my blog influences you to do one thing today, let it be this:

to listen to this song about eggs.

warning: if you are in a space with other people and want to preserve your dignity in their eyes, do yourself a favor and plug in your earphones first.

the videoke-style lyrics at the bottom subtly invites fellow egg lovers to play this over and over and actually sing along. there is something rather disturbing about having such a rabid love of eggs.

i personally dislike eggs, but since i've been on this silly diet i've had to eat more of them. thankfully, i've found that making an omelet using spanish-style tuna makes them infinitely more tolerable.

i used to hate it whenever i'd come down to breakfast before school and my mom would have a sunny-side up egg sandwich ready for me to eat. you can't get mad, because of course it's your mother and she got up early to make breakfast for you. so down goes the egg sandwich in one big gulp. after 22 years you'd think she'd be able to tell which of her two daughters detests eggs with a passion, but nooo.

joseph/giuseppe used to make fantastic spanish omelettes (omelets?) back in seventh grade. it was always really nice how he'd bring them to school himself at lunchtime so they would still be hot and yummy. they'd be practically vacuum-packed in this tiny tupperware, which would just explode once opened. *POOF!* and a hot, fluffy, golden spanish omelette big enough for an entire class would leap out at you. i have yet to taste a spanish omelette of similar quality. take that, casa armas.

it's rather surprising how many egg memories i have. my mom used to organize these incredibly OC easter egg hunts for two (me and ate, duh). once when i was around five, she color-coded all the eggs to correspond to prizes, like a box of munchkins or a hundred bucks or a t-shirt (still have the shirt). of course there had to be two of each otherwise me or my sister would totally freak out.

as we got older, the egg hunts started involving other kids, like chiara, anna and angel (and all our yayas haha). we set aside a separate day for decorating our egg baskets (you know, where you put the eggs you find) and painting the eggs themselves. we had pink eggs, blue eggs, bronze, gold and silver eggs. i distinctly remember that one of us tried to make a johnny depp egg by gluing on cutouts from teenybopper magazines (circa 21 jumpstreet). i think my mom vetoed the idea.

*Hangs head in shame*

jim paredes has a blog! (fyi he was my teacher for a fun comm elective in sophomore year, where i think i did some of my best and not-as-trying-hard writing.) this is just as surprising as finding a teacher over the age of 30 with a friendster account (thus tony lambino and mdj are not counted).

anyway, what's so disturbing about his having a blog that it's so much hipper than mine! and so much more indian too! damn. inspired tuloy akong pagandahin ito. paano kaya?

hazel and arch, techie couple! (or si hazel lang ba ang techie? haha!) help meeee!

Am I...

...an ACADEMIC GIRL who can kick your ass in Scrabble... in Latin?

...an ATHLETIC GIRL who trains for a triathlon... for fun?

...a CAREER GIRL who reads the WSJ on her PDA while tracking her IPO on the NYSE?

...a GIRL NEXT DOOR who makes gingham, college sweatshirts and needlepoint sexy?

...a GOURMET GIRL who knows her ciabatta from her cioppino?

...a GRANOLA GIRL who has solar panels on her roof, Birkenstocks on her feet, and a Green Party sticker on her bumper?

...an INDIE GIRL who collects Japanese candy wrappers and lawn gnomes?

...a PARTY GIRL who has never lost a game of quarters... or bar golf... or strip poker?

...a PROGRESSIVE GIRL who wants an SUV, but feels really bad about it?

...an UPTOWN GIRL who wishes that everything came in a little blue box from Tiffany's?

I am Progressive Girl Click on the picture below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Are You?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com

hmmm. got this from jeline. does this quiz have this particular effect on all who take it? jeline doesn't really seem to think she's an indie girl (although i can see the fit), and i have a bit of a hard time swallowing that i'm a few grains short of granola.

dagnabbit. i knew i should have chosen "oysters and filet mignon served on a yacht in st. tropez" over "dinner with the locals on a caribbean island after a day of exploring out-of-the-way beaches" as my dream date. i was quite stumped there. perhaps i would have edged closer to uptown. haha.

Beach bunny

no, it's not an early vacation (HA! i wish!). beach as in SOUTH BEACH, as in majorly hyped up diet du jour. yes i bought the hype. yes i'm on it (it's my second week). and yes it's working. people whom i only see once a week will back me up on this. (bawal sumagot ate ko! hahaha!) chrissie ongie told me yesterday that there has been a noticeable effect on my face. and of course aui, my diet partner and food supplier noticed too. (i found myself looking up salad recipes on the internet and wondered briefly if i was turning into a slightly tech-savvier aui.) better than that though, i now fit into clothes that i used to wear before i started dating marlon (before the weekly crab dinners, for-no-occasion-at-all gifts of dark chocolate, pugon pandesal, fraps, di rigeur dessert, yadda yadda yadda. you get the picture). the weight lost so far should be about 6 pounds--i don't know, i don't weigh myself everyday like some anorexic ninny. marlon's on the diet too, and we plan to shock each other when he comes home for my birthday. then we'll go and pig out on some sinfully chocolatey birthday cake. mwehehe. i won't bore you with the finer details of the 3-phase diet, but suffice it to say that: 1. i am never hungry. 2. this is more fun than i expected. although i had a slight identity crisis while carefully considering the merits of kraft part-skim mozzarella vs. bega super-light slices. "is this really me?" 3. if i can afford to do groceries like i do them now, i could seriously consider eating like this forever. of course you're supposed to gradually reintroduce fat/sugar into your diet after 2 weeks, so my eating habits won't be as strict as they are now. 4. eating out on the diet is surprisingly easy. i went to bizu, of the truffles and to-die-for mini chocolate cakes and sublime desserts, with jonathan and bea saturday night. i ordered A SALAD. AND I LIKED IT. i am cured! (bizu does make a really good hot mushroom salad by the way, with yummy giant portabella mushrooms. try it if you can tear yourself away from the desserts.) 5. i actually like salads. i had one today with tuna, olives, feta cheese, iceberg and green coral lettuce with italian pesto dressing. yum yum.

ok

so that is that. don't want to turn into a diet bore. you'll just hear about this again when i am sufficiently ecstatic about my weight.

in other news, there is a total hottie young lawyer in our building (eep! sorry marlon!). he looks suspiciously atenean (i.e. familiar), but i can't place him. he goes to the siguion reyna, ongsiako and montecillo law office on the 4th to 6th floors. (funny, whenever i see that name flash on the elevator LCD, i keep thinking of lots of irate armida siguion reynas in power suits. scaryyyy.) his cuteness may very well be due to the bango factor of lawyers' white linen polo barongs.

anyway, i've been in the elevator with him a couple times, and i seem to be powerless to do anything else except let more of my feet peek out from under my jeans. ganyan nga siguro kapag may boyfriend ka.

wonder how he liked my gold ballet flats from ukay-ukay.

I give this week an...

when i was in high school, i used to keep meticulous track of my life in my trusty filofax (gyaah! retro!). i would write down everything that happened to me each day in minute print (or shorthand, if it was top secret), attack each scaled-down entry with highlighters and metallic gel pens (blue, pink and purple--gawd i am such a girl), and fill it with hearts, smileys or sad faces, depending on the events of the day.

the very last thing i would do before snapping my filo shut was jot down a letter grade to sum up the day. the worst it usually got was a C (after all, how bad can high school possibly have been? i only started running into D and F days in college). the best was an A followed by x number of pluses--usually 3 or 4, and mostly reserved for my budding lovelife.

i dropped the letter grade system when i got too busy to really sit down and ponder my life on a daily basis. i also started running into some bad times early in college, and it's been a habit of mine since childhood to totally clam up and not write about things that made me really sad, or angry, or hurt me deeply.

this week, in retrospect, has been a pretty good week. good enough to temporarily revive my high school letter grade system. good enough, in fact, to get an A, and these are some reasons why.

splurges. i actually salted away quite a bit of my paycheck this month, which makes me feel good. i treated myself to a number of things, which i wouldn't have been able to do if i was still forking over money to that overpriced gym.

~~shades at i2i. i am the hardest person to buy shades for. the last pair i bought was way back before the 2001 tour. i2i makes quite a few cheap (P150-250) but very cool pairs, and i picked me up a nice black cat's eye set with tortoiseshell frames for that old hollywood glam feel.

~~way overdue pedicure. slightly overpriced at piandre in greenbelt (tips and toes was majorly booked), but my poor feet deserved it. come to think of it, my last pedicure was also before the 2001 tour! *hangs head in shame*

~~the art of travel by alain de botton. i've been lusting over this book since doc garcia quoted it in philo 101, also in 2001. geez. do i win the marshmallow test, or what?

~~ritter sport nugat, my europe bus stop chocolate bar of choice. sus. i wonder what other desires i've been suppressing since the 2001 tour.

~~lunch out with rose at pancake house.

~~thai cookbook as a welcome home present for marlon.

~~the october issue of preview. nice and thick with a free sample of something that promises to zap stretch marks. promising.

~~a few more cabs than absolutely necessary. hayaan mo, next week balik-tipid ulit ako.

nice, normal workload. although next week promises to be hellish, my workload this week was sane and doable. farming out subbing to freelancers made everything quite easy, until the freelancers started dropping like flies. still, i got to go home early most nights, with plenty of time to make above splurges.

pretty feet. did i mention that i got a pedicure? hihi.

---just realized that luxury for me seems to mean unparalleled ditziness. this is bad. may lead to bank-breaking designer shoe purchases in later life.---

a sweet, yummy bite of mooncake just now from emper, who got it from lou, who brought it as pasalubong from hong kong. this has a sweet lemony taste, unlike the local overpriced-hopia-mongo-masquerading-as-mooncake.

early morning cab ride. if you're wondering about how something tagged with the words "early morning" could possibly make me, the queen of snooze and tardiness, happy, well, so am i. acs was invited to this morning's episode of breakfast at studio 23 (which actually films at abs-cbn's studio 17, har har) to promote tomorrow's concert. though i got up at 430am, i ended up leaving the house by 520am for our 530am call time at abs-cbn--approximating TV-worthiness was quite a challenge.

after being driven insane by the workday morning rush for almost a year now, it was wonderfully soothing to see the city at daybreak. not just the city, but three cities, actually--my gem of a cabbie knew all the back routes from mandaluyong to get to quezon city through manila (and was nice and quiet throughout the drive, too).

as a result, we whizzed comfortably through the streets of old sta. mesa, passing its sleepy, decrepit houses and peeling, shuttered storefronts, to arrive at the studio in less than 20 minutes. it was also drizzling, which is always nice if you're tucked away in some dry, airconditioned spot.

breakfast was fun. the hosts (juddha paolo, patty laurel and angelo's erstwhile best friend wacky valdez) are disturbingly young, considering the show used to be hosted by yuppie-age celebs ryan agoncillo, bam aquino (ateneo '99 valedictorian, nephew/doppelganger of ninoy and unfortunate cousin of kris) and pia guanio. only marieton pacheco is a genuine yuppie; being a reporter is her post-college day job. (she's also rather a big girl for a TV personality, so i now semi-love her.)

juddha and marieton interviewed mimi and sir jojo for our segment, and we sang aba ginoong maria arranged by gp. not the most early morning peppy song, but it sounded decent. the hosts have this happy, light banter thing going, which is perfect for an early morning show. in fact, juddha and marieton were pretty good, except for the fact that marieton asked us if we were all "alumnis" of the ateneo--earning her dagger cheekbones from chris ong. taga la salle nga siya. (serves her right, mock-rubbing la salle's UAAP championship in our atenean faces. ha ha.)

oh, and they had the german ambassador on, too, this very german sounding, power-dressed middle-aged man who chatted with sir jojo in deutsch.

while the german ambassador was talking on the set, we were watching and having a little discussion of our own off cam.

lorna: sino siya?

loi: ambassador ng germany.

we watched as a rumpled teutonic woman in jeans and chuck taylors, from out of nowhere, joined the ambassador on the set.

me: kita ang bra mo, day.

chris: eh sino naman siya?

pensive silence.

loi: ambassador ng gerwomany?

snicker snicker.

that's pretty much it for an A week. babaw ko no? nothing spectacular, pretty quiet actually, and just good enough to get an A.

besides, i'm reserving my A++++ for the weekend. :-)