A happy 26th

aiieeeeeeeee!!!!! dingdong dantes just called me to greet me a happy birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the story:

i had to reformat my phone a couple weeks ago and lost all my numbers. so a few minutes ago, this unknown number calls my phone. i put on my suplada voice, which i use for calls from unknown numbers (just in case they turn out to be annoying p.a.s or people selling me stuff).

"hello? hello! who's this?"

"e($)*&^(&-ong."

"who?"

"dong."

"i'm sorry, i can't hear you, who???"

"dingdong."

i immediately had an apoplexy caused by embarrassment and kilig. i fell all over myself apologizing about not having his number on my phone, and thanked him for calling.

"omigod! thank you. thank you! how'd you find out?"

"basta, i have ways. may nasagap lang akong info today." (i bet toni's h put him up to it. but still!!!!!)

"wow. hey, congrats nga pala. ang galing n'yo." (he's only the hottest leading man on the country's top rating show.)

"thanks. maganda kasi ang simula natin." (natin!!!)

"wow, thanks ha. okay! bye!"

*dies of kilig*

One year old

wow.

time has gone by so fast. the two people who got engaged one year ago today seem so different from who we are today. in a good way, of course.

wow. ang lapit na. or, in the language of a couple who's had too many tearful farewells at airports, "just two more goodbyes!"

while sorting through photos of ourselves for the wedding slideshows, i came upon marlon's picture of our paris trip, which i had totally forgotten that he'd taken. reminiscing through the photos was a beautiful way to celebrate the one-year anniversary of our engagement, and i'd like to share some of my favorite shots with you.

(yes that's a gargoyle on the left. marlon took this from the notre dame church tower.)

Happy house

during the glee club’s tour of Europe in 2000, seventeen of us were thrown together into a multi-room nunnery in koeln, germany, left to fend for ourselves with no host parents – just a bunch of groceries, a kitchenette, the erratic and befuddled but well-meaning protection of a filipina we soon nicknamed tita lost (you can guess why), and each other.

maybe it was because we felt we had to compensate for our kawawa-ness (“ang saya-saya namin kahit wala kaming hosts!”) or because we really did have fun, but we soon came to call ourselves the happy house.

since then, the term “happy house” has been passed down in glee club/acs tour tradition as a house, typically small, crammed full with too many self-reliant, noisy, happy ateneans.

i don’t know why i chose this title for this post. it’s funny that my idea of a happy house is one that’s stuffed full of friends. because pretty soon, i’m going to start making a happy house of my own, with just two people rattling around in it – marlon and myself.

setting up our own home is one of the things i’m really looking forward to about moving to lah-lah land. apartment-hunting is scheduled for month's end, when marlon and i hope to find a two-bedroom place that won't make us wish we had just eloped and run away with our savings intact. marlon will move in in december, and will carry me over the threshold (he better start pumping some serious iron) in the second week of january.

(yes, my one-way ticket has been booked. eeek!)

i’ve been hoarding house magazines (real living mostly – just tried out a new mag called homestyle and i don’t think i'll be buying it again anytime soon) and make daily pilgrimages to my favorite house sites: domino, apartment therapy, design sponge’s sneak peeks. at the bookstore, i make a beeline for the house and interiors books: the relaxed home, nest for two, and jeline’s fab flea market style book are all on my wish list.

for the meantime, i’m stocking up all this information and just waiting for a chance to unleash it. since we’re just renting, though, and are on a pitiful newlyweds’ pittance (good luck recovering from the wedding), i don’t know how much of my knowledge i’ll actually get to let loose upon our poor unsuspecting apartment. and a lot of the places i want to shop at – evangelista street in bangkal, cubao x, landmark – will be lost to me once i step upon singaporean soil. still, it’s fun to dream

i realized how house-happy i’ve become when the first thing i thought of buying on our honeymoon was block-printed indian bedlinen and table cloths, the handcrafting of which rajasthan is famous for. and i was thinking in exclamation marks: can you imagine?!!! our bed made with block-printed indian cotton sheets!!! block-printed by hand!!!

not to mention how i gushed for a full month, maybe more, to anyone who would listen, about the gorgeous, 100-year old, pure silk carpet that ambushed my heart in mumbai:

i swear, marlon and i sketched out living room layouts in june with this in mind. except he's stopped, and well, i haven't.

and i'm already eyeing my bookshelf and calculating how i'm going to arrange them into something like this (from the domino site) when marlon and i combine our sh*tload of books. di baleng marami, basta cute.

and after living with so many dogs for so many years, it's my chance to finally have a cat! then again, a cat toilet-training (can cats even be toilet-trained?) on 100-year old silk carpet from mumbai might not a happy house make.

Mommy in KL

my mom's visiting my sister in kl for two weeks. i chatted with my sister on gmail this evening.

me: como estas tu visita?
me: ay mas tama pala ito: como estas la visita tuya? (okay that's my quota of spanish practice for the week) or better yet, como estas mommy?
Sheila: muy bien. ella esta muy happy
Sheila: whats happy anyway?
me: FELIZ! (talagang showing off the free spanish lessons)
Sheila: she hasnt left the house in 2 days
me: hahaha
Sheila: pag iniiwan ko sya dito nanonood lang sya ng tv at naglilista ng mga kulang ko. at natutulog
me: hahaha
Sheila: the life of a bum! last night she cooked sinigang for me and my pinoy barkada. tonight we had dinner with my ofcmates
me: wow! nanay na nanay!
Sheila: now she's taking pics of my apartment. hahahah
me: hahaha. i'm sure papa-develop niya yan sa akin when she gets home

Simple pleasures

two people telling me yesterday that i lost so much weight. guess last week's mysterious spotty illness thing was good for something after all.

gids last night at dinner: "i'm having deepa withdrawal!" (awww. i'll miss you too gids.)

two lovely compliments from arvy last night, also at dinner. "you have beautiful eyes!" (thank you, north park lighting!) and "i just discovered tonight that i love your sense of humor!" thank you, thank you!

alternately making aljor chortle and giving him the heebie-jeebies with over things the boyf and i say to each other when we get on it and fight.

the boyf's facebook photo.

(shameless confession: i'm so glad he's finally on facebook so i can go on the web and look at this picture at random times during the workday. isn't he hot? *all a-flutter*)

alicia keys' new single on the radio while driving to work. she's the shiznit.

the quick, easy and relatively traffic-free drive to the office, plus the perfect parking spot on samar street. wow, now there's so much incentive to actually be on time to work.

a whiff of newly mown grass walking from my parking street to the jamboree gate. i looooove newly mown grass. i used to stick my head out the window when the field was being mown back in high school. plus i used to have gap's grass scent. sana they start making it again.

(it's a) happy thursday, everyone :-)