Morning walk

for the past two weeks, i've been working as a freelance writer for bda, a company i interviewed at way back in february or march -- a job that pleases me immensely, considering the, uh, rather bumpy history i've racked up with bda since then. 

i used to cab it from the somerset mrt station to bda's office on kim yam road, but taking a page out of french women don't get fat, i decided to start walking to and from the office daily -- a good fifteen- to twenty-minute walk, twice a day.

i seem to have made a good call. for one thing, my ass is getting smaller and i lost two inches off my waistline after two weeks. 

plus, there is so much to see on my way to work -- and i love all of it. the first time i walked to the office, i loved being surprised by all these little things. now i love that they have become familiar to me, fitting neatly into a regular routine that i've established for myself.

first is the skate park beside the somerset mrt station...

followed by a real park.

across the street is killiney road, with its strip of little restaurants and shops. my favorite is freshly baked by le bijoux (ang haba ng pangalan, diba), where i grab a hot-out-of-the-oven muffin (chocolate banana is my favorite) on my way to work if i've had to skip breakfast at home. they also make great focaccia, which i've only caught on my way home once -- they're usually closed by the time i get out work by seven.

i thought this sign was horrifically painted until i saw the lovely stencil graffiti underneath it. 

the area my office is in is called river valley, so named for the major thoroughfare which is river valley road. it is probably one of the most expat-infested areas in downtown singapore, and is just about fifteen minutes away from orchard road, which means bleeding expensive prime real estate. 

the condos whisper "my company pays for this" in a cornucopia of foreign languages and accents as i stroll by. my walk to work in the morning involves a large number of white mommies, yayas with prams containing white babies, and some really nice landscaping. these pretty flowers are from the urbana condo at the corner of river valley close and killiney road.

turning right into kim yam road brings me into what seems to be singapore heritage country. aside from a few apartment buildings, most of the real estate on this road is in the form of restored or preserved colonial shophouses, which i love. most of them are rented by small companies for whom funky office space is a must (like bda) or galleries. one of the galleries i pass daily has this menagerie standing guard at the door.

then there's the temple. all i know of it is that there is a giant gold buddha at least two storeys high, it smells of incense at certain times of the day, and that bda brings its paper waste there for recycling.

oh, and that it has very traditional chinese carvings on the perimeter wall.

after the temple comes a construction site whose middle-aged indian guard gives me a huge smile and a hearty "good morning" every time i pass.  then i reach the home stretch of my morning walk, which i daresay is the prettiest part of the whole exercise.

seeing this every day for two weeks has always gotten my day off to a great start. 

i consider myself extremely lucky -- because this is going to be my morning walk to work for as long as i'm in singapore. 

because this week, i'm officially on board as bda's new full-time writer.

Ang sagot... na hindi

tanong: ako ang trabahong inalok kay deepa. ano ako?

sagot: ako ang trabahong inoohan niya na tinanggihan rin niya pagkatapos ng isang linggo para tumanggap ng ibang trabahong biglaang inalok sa kanya.

bwahahahahaha!

kaloka!

Palaisipan

ako ang trabahong iniaalok kay deepa. 

ako ay may kinalaman sa isa sa mga naging trabaho niya.

ang kontrata ko ay may mga clause ukol sa pagraket, pagharap sa publiko, pagmomodelo, at pagtanggap ng pera o regalo. 

ano ako?

Cabanatuan City

kasalukuyan akong nagtatrabaho sa isang kumpanyang matagal na matagal ko nang gustong pasukan. may kinalaman ang trabaho ko sa dati kong ginagawa sa pinas, kaya masayang-masaya ako; pero tatlong linggo lang ang kontrata ko dito. bagamat maikli pa lamang ang pinagsamahan namin -- nakilala lamang nila ako noong pebrero -- ay naging masalimuot na ang aming kasaysayan nitong kumpanyang ito.

kaya walang kasing kapal ang aking mukha nung kausapin ko ang bossing dito nung miyerkules. nalaman ko kasi na ang tangi nilang manunulat ay lumipat na sa ibang kumpanya. kaya't tinanong ko ang mayordoma (lol) kung maaari ba akong magtrabaho dito bilang kapalit ng manunulat na umalis.

hindi niya ako masagot nang diretsahan. pag-uusapan daw nila ng creative director. (sorry, hindi ko talaga maisalin sa wikang pilipino iyon.) marami pa siyang sinabi na labis kong ipinagdamdam (ng saglit lang naman).

at kaya tayo napunta sa cabanatuan city ay... nag-a-ay-em sila ngayon. naririnig ko. at ako ang pinag-uusapan.

paano ko alam? tahimik ang opisina. kaming tatlo na lang ang nandito. malakas ang tunog tuwing may sumusulpot ng mensahe. nagpabalik-balik kami ng mensahi ni mayordoma. hinihingi niya ang dibidi ng mga gawa ko sa dating trabaho. pagkatapos naman ay sunod-sunod ang pagsulpot ng mensahe dito kay creative director.

ano kaya ang sinasabi nila tungkol sa akin?

abangan ang susunod na cabanatuan... este, kabanata.

yun lang.

Dessert, durian and danger

yesterday, marlon's colombian colleague paula hosted a dessert party at her flat in clementi. it was a smallish affair, just marlon's teammates from work, but very united colors of benetton: at the table were an indian, korean, colombian, japanese, colombian-canadian (paula's adorable 18 month-old son, daniel) and of course us pinoys. 

we decided to make something very pinoy and not too difficult: turon! actually, my mom taught me how to make leche flan like the day before i left for singapore, but i can barely remember what to do. besides, i haven't been able to find those oval aluminum dishes that we use for leche flan back home. 

so after lunch, marlon and i set up a two-man turon production line in front of the tv, and wrapped up those bananas while watching a couple of episodes of ranma.

first, i scored the lumpia wrapper down the middle to make two turons with one sheet.

then some brown sugar...

... and cinnamon sugar. would have used plain cinnamon, but cinnamon sugar was all we had. besides, you don't really expect anyone to complain about too much sugar at a dessert party.

then half a slice of ordinary yellow banana. haven't been able to find saba bananas here, which are best for cooking. for ordinary fried bananas, i found that green ones hold up better than yellow ones.

after a couple of test folds and test fries, the perfect pillow shape emerged. my years of gift-wrapping skills certainly helped; the ones marlon did turned out to be a bit messy. 

and this is what we carted over to paula's place. it's the first time i've actually made a filipino dish since moving here.

the spread included quite a few japanese desserts care of mayu, marlon's boss. there were rice crackers and japanese pancakes with red bean, plus this dessert that looked like fishballs --  except that they were sticky rice balls coated with a thick soy-sauce-and-sugar mixture that practically glued my jaws together. 

paula revealed the full extent of her foodie-ness with cheese fondue, a couple of wines, sweet guava pastries, and the real star of the show: empanada made by her mom. it seems colombian empanada is just like our own, except that the shell is thinner and is deep fried -- close to ilocos empanada, but without the orange colour and consumed with a hit of lemon juice, not vinegar. paula's mom also made rebajo, or beer sweetened with soda pop. really, really good stuff. lastly, paula served her favorite colombian caramels, tiny thumb-height cups of caramel so milky and rich that three of us couldn't even finish one cup. 

we had to walk off all that sugar, so after the gathering broke up, marlon and i joined paula, her mother and her son for a quick stroll around the bukit batok nature reserve. formerly a stone quarry, it had been turned into a nice little nature park with a hiking trail, small lake, some wildlife, and the apparent danger of a smelly, smelly death.

"there are even cliffs around here!" enthused paula. "singapore has cliffs?" i said disbelievingly. "okay, there is a cliff," she amended.

whereupon we saw it. presenting: the cliff of singapore!

as triumph the insult dog would say, i kid! i kid! it's actually kind of pretty. see?

little daniel was getting restless, so paula released him from his stroller and off he went with a delighted "wheeee!". here he is in full frolic mode.

happy babies are cute babies!

this is what marlon calls an "are you sure we're in singapore?" shot.

but when i stopped to think about it, we were strolling in a pocket jungle carefully slotted into a neighborhood of high-rises. where else could we be but singapore?

First official kitchen disaster

i decided to bake some cookies yesterday while watching little women at home. it must have been the preciousness of my chosen movie. feeling all meg-and-marmeeish, i sent marlon a syrupy text message, promising to welcome him home from the office with freshly baked walnut chocolate chip cookies. 

it's a good thing i didn't promise him a specific number of cookies, because all i had for him was a plate of four cookies. which we would have to share. 

because this is what happened to the rest of the batch.

the first half-dozen fell victim to a mis-conversion from fahrenheit (the package instructions) to centigrade (our oven). the second batch turned out perfectly -- they were the lucky four that ended up on the plate i presented to marlon. i left the third batch in the oven for a tad too long after the timer went off (you think it's easy to tear yourself away from christian bale??) and they just continued baking until... (see above).

marlon took it pretty well.

he just laughed and insisted on documenting the whole thing, saying he felt strangely relieved to finally have had a kitchen disaster. then it hit me -- a newbie cook like me, going six full months without ever having had a culinary catastrophe until this? i must be doing something right! 

Friends and strangers

spotted midweek at the mac store in cathay cineleisure on orchard: leo!

how i wish. but this random dude was a shockingly close doppelganger, down to that green t-shirt leo always wears. he even had a starbucks kwofi in hand! 

this happens to me often -- i've seen a spitting image of maggie crossing the road, a demi-pia in a magazine (wearing capri pants and a giant fuschia pink bag no less), a jett from behind (down to the shuffling walk, big jeans, and ponytail! marlon quipped: "well, it couldn't have been jett if she was awake"), a female jonel, even a male rina.

friends showing up in strangers, and the foreign almost always turning into a reflection of the familiar. i guess i must be missing home.

On the job front

things are getting really exciting. i don't know where to start! something new just happens everyday, and i find myself in a few situations that i've never been in before. these include:

• being offered a position and salary higher than what i applied for
  
• ... and seeing that there's more to choosing a job than that
• making human resources wait for my decision (four days and counting)
  
• ... and being nothing but completely honest to get that much-needed time
  
• working for a company that i told myself at the start of the year i would work for (this on  monday as i begin a three-week full-time contract with BDA)
  
• really making a choice based on long-term career plans (a true first!)
  
• considering things like love, ownership, responsibility, opportunity, work-life balance
• being made to feel that my being a foreigner was not a disadvantage
• hearing my three key buzzwords (fun, passion, inspiring) used to describe a job
• knowing that i have time and i can choose

i see now that the past six months of just keeping at it has not just netted me an offer (or two...), but all of these. and you know what? it's worth it.

So not Robinson's

seoul's designer mecca is the galleria in apgujeong. it's prim, pretty and pearlescent by day...

but is cutesy crazy by night!

i think this is an excellent strategy -- the japanese will naturally gravitate towards this ultra-kawaii display, leading them to blow wads of cash there, which they do.

i didn't buy anything and went for purely research purposes, as you can probably guess. the closest thing i could afford was my $2 lunch at new york hotdog across the street.

i wondered what a woman with a whopper of a goyard was doing at the hotdog stand. maybe she blew all her money on her bag and is now reduced to buying cheap meals. or maybe not.

the galleria has its fair share of head-to-toe-designer, impeccably dressed women hovering around. then there are women like this one, who are of the olsen school of fashion, which means basically ok lang magmukhang busabos basta nakakagalit ang presyo ng bag mo. you've got to hand it to them, it takes an odd form of guts to do that.

i mean, even the traffic aides around the galleria are dressed better. 

pero sa bagay, wala naman silang goyard.

Someday I'll fly away

... is the official product name of the passport jacket marlon and i bought from mmmg, a korean design firm. even funnier than the official name is the "benvenuti a bagdad" copy on the front cover. only US$ 12 and it's recycled leather to boot!

i was possessed by an uncontrollable urge to buy everything when i stepped into their store in ssamziegil market in insa-dong... especially this notepad. "copy girl" is the story of my life. well, my professional life at least.

they have an online shop, so click away if you're the online shopping type. if not, click over anyway for a healthy dose of cuteness.

jeline, you have to go there when you visit seoul!

--

photos from mmmg.

Geddurnit!

now that my prospective employers have been alerted to the existence of my blog, this means i'm really, really going to have to keep my interview outfit top-secret! lol.

i wonder why i'm not dying of embarrassment yet. maybe there's nothing to be embarrassed about? after all, i survived the andrew wolff situation, which is like the pinnacle of embarrassment, right? who would have known that beefcake could be so integral to character-building?

i'm preparing a seoul roundup, by the way, since i realized that it's been officially a week since i got back and at the rate i'm back-blogging, i will be writing about seoul for the next six weeks. the scanner is on the fritz so i can't scan the paper goodies i got from artbox and mmmg, so pictures will have to do.

In love again

i can't wipe the smile off my face.

after trolling the job sites for weeks and applying to either purely editorial roles or advertising positions, i found a job posting that just grabbed me. a job for a company that bridges multiple creative disciplines and fosters creative collaboration. a job that requires me to love design (which i do) without having to actually design anything (which i don't!), but just immerse myself in it and write well (which i do). a job that is just so me, and combines the worlds of ideas, design and writing, which i grew to love in gma. 

aaaieeee! i cannot bear it! **throws self at TPTB's* feet, writhing with lust**

i took a hatchet to my resume last night in order to produce the perfect lure for this tempting creature called designTAXI. i threw my old resume format down the garbage chute and finally solved one of the niggling flaws of my resume -- how to present my extensive, overlapping freelance experience without confusing would-be employers. i finally confronted the fact that it was a flaw after the third job interview where i had been asked to mark up my resume for better reading. eep.

and... it worked! in record time no less! a mere two hours after i sent in my application, i got an email from the designTAXI editor inviting me to an interview! my heart started pounding, and a foppish smile -- the same smile that's still plastered on my face to this very minute -- sprouted and took root.

you know how you read way too much into every little detail at the beginning of a grand infatuation? well it happens with jobs, too -- especially if you've been looking for just the right one for quite some time.

when i asked the editor (i still can't figure out if it's a he or a she -- s/he has the most perplexing name!) what i should bring, this was the reply i got.

Yes, please bring along your resume and writing samples, 

plus a big smile would be nice. See you then.

swoon. don't we all love a sense of humor -- especially when we least expect one, like in an email from a prospective employer? i couldn't resist; i replied:

Will commence working on my smile. 

Thanks and looking forward to meeting you!

i'm in love with a job! help me!

---

*TPTB - the powers that be

The baby obi and other tales

i went to deoksugung palace on a rainy, rainy day (thus the debut of the super cute umbrella). chaka, i waited till the sun was shining before leaving the hotel. when i stepped out of the metro at city hall, it looked like this.

to grab lunch and escape the rain, i ducked into dunkin donuts, which is not the sad fluorescent-lit 2.5 sqm store that it is back home. in korea they're like starbucks in size and product offerings, and just about as ubiquitous. 

as i was having my sugar-filled lunch (see above), i spotted a woman across the street trying to hail a cab. at first i thought it was odd that she was wearing an obi with house clothes.

until she turned around and revealed a baby tied to her back!

i've heard of baby slings and baby harnesses, but hindi ko kinaya ang baby obi! there are no buckles or straps or anything! it's just fabric tied around her waist. the baby just looked so cute and clueless with its bare feet dangling a few feet off the ground.

deoksugung looked kinda like gyeongbokgung. 

except smaller and with this mini white house-esque building.

so for me, not really worth slogging through the rain for. before i left, i did manage to squeeze in a couple of shots that i liked, such as the wooden screens on the windows...

this pine-lined and puddle-pocked path (i love alliteration, don't you?)...

and my favorite, raindrops dripping off the pine needles.

Ella ella ella ey

it's cloudy and drizzling today, so i'm going to get to use the new umbrella i got in myeong-dong last week. i initially balked at the $15 price tag from a street vendor, but it opens with some nice push-button action... and it's got kitties!

plus, so far it looks to be the sturdiest umbrella i've ever owned. i actually had to use muscle power just to get it closed. perhaps the days of umbrellas embarrassingly blown inside out are finally over. 

it got the marlon seal of approval for being black and white -- it's not too girly and he admitted he wouldn't be ashamed be caught with it if he had to grab an umbrella and run off to work.

Score one for Itaewon

i set out on tuesday determined to find at least one store worth writing about for my article. after the beautiful dud that was the beautiful store, i had started to worry about getting lost all day and finding nothing good to write about in six days.  doomsday scenarios for a girl writing a shopping guide!

luckily, seoul delivered! my first find was a cute little boutique in itaewon, a shopping district known for its international community (which i would discover much later) and bargain shopping. with colorful, funky displays and salsa music blaring out the front door, it wrested my attention away from the other shops in itaewon, many of which were the "wanna louis vuitton? genuine imitation, you see..." variety.

one thing i really like about writing on assignment: being "forced" to engage with people. so very different from writing for corporate or blog purposes. sometimes the story isn't in a place, but with people. after buying a really cute dress for 49,000 won (about US$49 -- a nice easy conversion there, just drop three zeroes), i unleashed my chika powers on the store's funky manager, jina, and her assistant ayumi. jina's atrocious english made for a rocky start, but once i had gotten it into her head that me = overseas publicity, she and ayumi instantly loved me! 

 
then i discovered a few shops that sold itaewon's best-known secret -- designer clothes made in korea but for some reason or other do not pass muster with quality control, identifiable only by their slashed tags and whatever fashion stock knowledge you have.

i was tempted to buy a dress that i saw hanging in an itaewon shop (i now realize it was a short version of the evening gown worn by riyo mori, miss universe 2007! and it's gucci!) but didn't. a week later, i see oprah wearing it on perez hilton.

i think it's safe to assume that she didn't get it at itaewon. 

i discovered to my shock, horror and rage that i had run out of cash -- and that marlon's atm card didn't work at any of the half-dozen atms i tried! i returned to the hotel on the warpath with the universe. i found it ironic that a girl writing a shopping guide would have so many thwarted attempts at shopping -- first the dud that was the beautiful store, now the atm! 

in hindsight, the universe may just have been trying to stop me from succumbing to this temptation at victory town.  

i know, i know. i live in singapore, what the heck would i do with a silver leather jacket?

before i left itaewon, though, i spotted... a first-world kariton! when the street vendors want to pack up and go, they literally close shop and tug it all the way home.

dinner was at a restaurant behind the hotel in the business district of gangnam. 

we would be joining marlon's multifunctional team, adding pinoys to a table with an indian, thai, brit, pole (as in person from poland vs piece of infrastructure), and several japanese. it was the second time i would be sitting down with a gaggle of p&g'ers (including members of the leadership team) for dinner. the first time was a year ago in mumbai, during which someone at the table called me "incredibly brave" for coming to dinner.

then, i was the only girlfriend to come along for dinner; this time, i was the only wife. but who cares when there is... korean barbecue!!!

and lots of soju (korean sake) which i didn't like. marlon drank my share, but the brunt of the soju-drinking fell to young umeki from japan, who ate like a horse and giggled, red-faced, through the tail end of the meal. 

i wondered if this electric fan was for exhaust purposes or if it had had too much soju.

at 10:30 pm, kaisy was still raring to shop, so we hit doosan tower (doota) in dongdaemun. jon, i think this is one of the 24-hour malls you were talking about! i asked one of the stall owners (who spoke decent english) what time they closed and he just twirled his finger around in a circle.

doota was great -- the ubiquitous kukur was augmented by lovely handmade shoes and clothes from young korean designers. 

wouldn't you know it. fifteen minutes into my shopping paradise, i discovered that i was wallet-less! after putting some cash into my wallet, marlon had left it in the hotel room l instead of returning it to my bag. 

as you can guess, we had an awful fight about it... after i bought a pair of lovely gold-brown leather shoes on sale. but we made up quickly enough. who can stand to be mad when there's too much fun to be had, an article to complete... and more shopping to be done?