Sayona-lah

bye folks, i'm off to visit marlon in lah lah land (read: singapore) next week. it's my first vacation leave since i started working (to think some people save up their years and years' worth of leaves -- gross!) so i'm pretty excited. i've lined up a whole gamut of thrill-a-minute things to do, like

- wake up at 2pm every day
- play final fantasy x and whatever new japanese horror games marlon has for his PS2
- window shop
- do some actual shopping
- swim and bake at the award-winning trellis tower poolside
- pick up marlon from work

you get the drift. i figure i need the sloth after all the harrowing things i did to get a flight AND get my passport renewed. the latter experience made me glad that you only have to renew your passport once every five years.

so, wish me luck in completing the last leg of my pre-departure preparations -- packing, picking up my new passport, and actually making it to the flight on time.

have a great week!

The adventures of Snorkelstrumpet

no underwater pictures, sorry (my beloved k700i has its limitations). just a few quick takes of a perfect day -- baby jellyfish notwithstanding :-)

guess who was really happy that the lifevest made him look broad-chested and manly? snorkelstrumpet plays the kilig accessory, complete with hand on swelling chest.

an interesting experience: makiangkas sa bangka (for a fifty bucks per head).

Viva Italia!

a little slice of italy on the beach. i gave marlon major grief about hunting for this pizzeria, which is owned by the father (bald guy in blue) of the former arco baleno proprietor. the first bite of this sumptuous, thin-crunchy-and-flour-dusted pizza certainly justified the hunt.

i wonder if these guys are in hiding from the mafia or something.

Foam party

this flood of pictures is from two minibreaks. yes, two weekends in a row -- i'm such a beach glutton. nakakabitin, eh.

the second weekend actually had pretty bad weather. cloud cover was extremely thick, and it rained for most of the second day. (i'm not even going to talk about the boat ride back to the mainland.) being a hard-core sun worshipper, i was crushed.

fortunately, the universe has a way of making up for these things. thus this series of pictures, and these beautiful memories:

... the sea in a soft, sparkling shade of turquoise that i'd never seen before (me, beach glutton since the age of three)
... three to four foot-high waves that positively thundered
... meters and meters of white sea foam kissing my toes
... sitting at the shoreline just to get pummeled by wave after wave (now i know from experience what 'the pounding surf' really means). not just pummeled, but log-rolled, tossed, and that onomatopoeic tagalog word: semplang
... swimming out past the breakers and letting the giant waves gently carry me back to shore

me: god, look at that clear turquoise swell. it's like a curl of glass.

marlon: eeeeaaaghhh!

he thoroughly enjoyed this. trust me.

look at that ocean. LOOK AT IT!!!!!!!

whenever i see sea foam, by the way, i think of the original little mermaid story. she dies and turns into sea foam. sad no? during this weekend, though, the sea foam was more like the unicorns in the last unicorn. they were really galloping. whoever thought of showing the trapped unicorns as cresting waves was absolutely brilliant.

i have to show one flattering picture of me to make up for this next one.

the expression on my face should tell you all you need to know about the waves that day.

bubble bath, anyone?

ok fine. i may be a lazy beach slug, but i have to admit: i really enjoyed this.

my new suit is care of the enterprising beach bums at gypsy swimwear. it has to be the most flattering suit i've ever owned. it was sold to me in less than ten minutes flat. get thee to the mall! quick!

Camwhorage on the high seas

desperate sun worshipper + instant golden-browner
bookworm/beach slug + hyper aquasport buff
chip nibbler and pizza hunter + coke-and-inihaw fan
deepa + marlon

Hello there, little boys and girls

wonder what they find so fascinating down there

hagis boys at the pier

oriental mindoro's very own prepubescent 'mean girls'

"but i don't WANT to go home, mommy!" (i hear ya, kid. i hear ya.)

Tequila sunsets -- drink up!

my favorite shot is the one with the young dad and his baby girl (alam mo naman, ganyan talaga kaming mga fatherless). i will never tire of taking photos of glorious philippine sunsets. when i look at these, i feel so blessed to live in this country. this is way out in the province, so there's very little pollution around to give these sunsets that 'angry' red color you see in manila.

brownie points if you can guess which one was taken on a different day. :-)

Bara-bara couple gets just rewards

the only freaking time marlon and i got up early for any sort of tourist activity (like i said, we are the couple who was late to the night safari), the fates stamp down their collective foot. "thou shalt not be early!"

naturally, the bus breaks down. it didn't get that we were supposed to succumb to the delicious summer heat, not it.

this is the face of someone who gets up at 4am to be at the beach by nine, and is sorely disappointed by the all-too-human limitations of a totally not human object. irate beachgoers waiting for the next bus to happen along (which it did in about ten minute, thank goodness. otherwise it would have been a perfectly sunny, cloudless sky gone to potty). then, of course, the boat that we're supposed to get on breaks down before we even hop in. right. absolutely late to a good time through no more fault of our own, eyebags growing and sprits dangerously close to singing, what else were we to do? nothing but play photographer and generally be bangag. the "hagis" kids at the port. they dive for coins, food, and anything of value tossed to them by passengers on the pier. marlon and i tossed them our pack of skyflakes, because they definitely needed it more than we did.

Minibreak: a sneak peek

enough long weekends spent in front of the tv.

not when there's minibreak paradise on the cheap!

more pics coming up! :-)

Whatnot

sir jojo, this post is for you. pagalitan ba naman ako dahil wala akong bagong blog.

can i just say i hate having to use mozilla firefox. but i know that's because i'm an HTML idiot.

--

valentweek. three things i loved about my first valentine's day celebration (which became, like my "birthweek", almost a week-long affair). one: marlon. naturally. two: the fact that he and i had a superfun celebration without killing ourselves to do something bongga. and three: a surplus of love, conversation, companionship, laughter and (unfortunately) food. as always.

peekaboo

valentine's weekend getaway: reminded me uncannily of gutsy's house, with a hint of guano haha

found these on my bed upon my return from my valentine getaway. ipanemas from my sister :-)

valentine bombers. the nasty f*cks lived and stored their explosives on my street. one was arrested in my friendly neighborhood 7-11. so tell me: who are the people in your neighborhood?

constantine. in modern-day los angeles, an immigrant girl is possessed by an evil demon. the immigrant is filipino. of course. the demon speaks tagalog. naturally.

demon: (writhing/projecting terror) patayin natin ssssilaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh
audience: ahhh. ok.

on the whole, i didn't think constantine was as bad as i heard it was. despite some roll-your-eyes moments, i thought it was better than some comic-book movies i've seen recently. some people thought it was just way too matrix, but i found that it smacked more of sandman than anything else (e.g. balthazar=mazikeen).

rachel weisz is almost as pretty as keanu (egad! he's forty! the icons of my youth are aging!). gabriel (played by emma thompson err cate blanchett este tilda swinton) is hip and more than a bit maudlin. and if anything, the movie at least gave me and marlon some discussion fodder.

in lust. i am currently hatching an evil plot to never return our june cover sample, the elio photojukebox from taiwan's tatung inc. it's a few steps short of an ipod, but it's a snazzy little thing nevertheless. it's not really the sound quality that has converted me. it's more the thought of how this thing is such a far cry from the only portable audio device i ever owned and religiously used (a clunky old walkman).

tatung was nice enough to send us a functioning player, complete with earphones, battery, charger, jpegs of zany taiwanese highschoolers and entire playlists of guns n' roses and shakira (go figure). so i spent a good part of one afternoon with the elio tucked in my jacket pocket, reliving my grade school days with said guns n' roses playlist.

yes, i was an 90's hair band kind of kid--aerosmith, guns n'roses, bon jovi, nelson, the works. one of the biggest arguments between me and my sister was when she actively prevented me from buying aerosmith's get a grip album in fourth or fifth grade just because it was "heavy metal". hah.

anyway. i have now listened to music on a 20GB, hard disk-based portable media player. and my little un-techy world will never be the same again.

birth control. my male dog seriously needs to be neutered. he's gotten our female dog pregnant AGAIN. our little three-bedroom houselet is about to become a kennel. i for one do not care to go through the whole rigmarole of walking my mom through a puppy goodbye. i did this with one puppy (roan, now batangas-based basti) and it was honestly one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. my mom staunchly believes that

1) it is impossibly cruel to separate a litter as this causes the dog irreparable emotional trauma,
2) we must simply bear with the mounting bedlam of five fast-growing puppies and two KSP adult dogs until we become bajillionaires, at which point all space considerations will simply melt away (uh, kailan kaya yon ano?), and that
3) outside of my family, all dog owners are stingy/careless/cruel/sadistic.

ang saya saya ano?

Musicians wrestle everywhere (especially at BOF)

"musicians wrestle everywhere" (words by emily dickinson) is a piece that we first learned for the tolosa repertoire under sir jojo. at first, being the stupid kidlets that we were back then, we hated it. finally sir jojo was like "ang chachaka niyo! kaya lang kayo napapangitan kasi hindi niyo siya maintindihan at ayaw niyo siyang aralin!" which shamed us all into silence. when i listened to the tolosa recordings (of which i was not part) i realized that he was right. it was a really great piece.

i also realized that musicians really do wrestle. everywhere. and pretty much all the time. i once made a collage about my stage fright and named it after that piece. i'm naming this post after that piece too, because nowhere am i more aware of our musical "wrestling" than during bamboo organ festival. seriously.

for one, it is such a physical struggle just to get there. the heat, the traffic, and for us corporate slaves, the stress (and guilt) of shirking work, which suddenly seems to grow steel tentacles in the days leading up to the festival. it's a mental struggle just to fend off these things and keep them from affecting the music. and sometimes (as our second performance of the ives piece proved), it's just one tremendous struggle to get to the end of even just one song.

thankfully, this year's big wrestle is over. and i've got the pictures to prove it. too bad i couldn't take pictures of the brilliant oboe solo during rossini. ibang klase, hindi siya tao.

i love taking pictures of this instrument. pansin ko lang. last time i took a shot of this, its owner was off on his break.

the bamboo morgan himself

scare-latti in performance

the diva herself. i swear i am archiving this for when rina becomes famous. by then, this may just get me a new car or something that i want very badly . or it could get me a tell-all book deal. hehe.

doña scolds maida. "ilang beses ko uulitin, 'day? huwag isama ang puti sa dekolor!"

performing schubert *yawn*

bamboo whoregan >:-)

in other news: double congratulate me--i am "recommitted" and have celebrated my first valentines' day with a boyfriend! pics and post coming soon.

What I learned from the EBU editors' conference

*how a washing machine works (optical sensors and buffer memory!)
*that you can buy extremely good LV fakes in shenzhen for below Php1,000--so good, in fact, that you can bring them to an LV store for repair and the staff won't know the difference
*that in a technical discussion about chips/wafers/soldering/physics, all the women will make snide comments and/or tune out. and only two or three guys will really be left talking.
*that i have big eagle eyes (so what's new?)
*that diets melt in the face of warm bread-and-butter pudding
*that the reason i kept oohing and aaahing over the lunch buffet ("winner! ang daming veggies!") was because i was the one who chose the menu pala.
*that the department secretaries may very well be bordering on piratable as copy eds.
*that i really, really like editing. or professional pang-ookray. same thing.
*that any excuse to be out of the office is good.
*that free food, for that matter, is also good.

More pics!

the presidential table (with flunkies)

editor queen at extreme right trying to restrain herself from intervening

editor queen gives in to her urge

master showman bal: journ 101

EBU editorial feeding program (especially tailored for rech hehe)

erg. double chin=resounding success of EBU editorial feeding program

zuma's daughters

zee fabulous turquoise mango jacket! isn't it loverly?

Special guests

sleeping beauty

sadako

sadako's next victim

the very promising next project for the fab five