New year, new pages

Last fall, I enrolled in Blogging Your Way, a blogging e-course by Holly Becker of Decor8 and Leslie Shewring of A Creative Mint. The four-week course was packed with information and inspiration; months later I'm still digesting everything! It sparked ideas for new projects, new directions and even a new blog (stay tuned!), but also made me think about this old blog in a new way.

When I started blogging seven years ago, the blogosphere was very different. A blog was an online journal, a diary. If you had a lot to rant about in real life, your blog would be full of rants. If you had nothing going on in your life, your blog would be full of meaningless blather. The average blogger didn't give much thought to presentation and promotion back then. It was always about what you had to say.

Things have changed. Today, blogs are carefully curated, prepared, promoted—ironically enough, whether or not you even create your own original content. There are simply things you need to do, that I hadn't been doing. Some things make perfect sense to me; other things, like reblogging and reposting, just... don't (yet).

So consider this a bit of housekeeping that's been long overdue. I've put some new things in place, first of which is the About page. Even if you've been reading my blog for a long time and feel you know me pretty well, read it anyway! You just might find out a few things you don't already know about me. Like what the heck a Currystrumpet is, for example.

It was hard to write an About page for myself! To describe myself as a "lifestyle" blog or a "travel" blog would have been very neat and handy, but I don't think I quite fit into either of those categories. Still, I've written something I'm happy with, and that I think sums up me and my blog pretty well. Holler if you agree!

It was fun choosing a picture. This was taken shortly after my 30th birthday, in Istanbul. Our host Suzan had this gorgeous traditional Maltese balcony with a leather wing chair that just screamed to be posed in.

The second new addition is the Welcome note on the right-hand column, essentially a shorter version of the About page. Below it, you'll now find links to my Twitter and Pinterest accounts. Follow away!

Finally, I've organized my Blogroll and moved it to a separate page. I've realized that I have a) so many fun and interesting friends who blog, and b) great blogs that I've discovered but kept to myself. So starting this January, I will feature one blog per month from my Blogroll as my "blog of the month." Just sharing the love, y'all.

Do you like the new About page and the "blog of the month" idea? What kind of things do you want to see more of on this blog in the New Year? Hit the comments and let me know.

Yearender

What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

LIVED IN EUROPE. (This is the big one!)
Traveled in Europe without having to apply for a visa.
Painted my own walls (in the bedroom and living room).

Picked up furniture off the sidewalk.
Celebrated Queen's Day in Amsterdam.
Used a bicycle to get around.

Learned Dutch. 

Found myself in Paris twice in one year.

Joined a running group and worked up to running for 20 minutes straight.
Grew my own herbs.
Had fresh flowers at home every week.



Wore a bathing suit at a park.

Drove a boat.

Started writing my very own blog column!
Volunteered for TEDxAmsterdam.
Went on a hot-air balloon ride!
Witnessed the changing of all four seasons. 



Sang at a wedding in the south of France.
Went swimming in a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.
Did my grocery shopping at a market (not a supermarket).

Learned how to sew (so far, a dress and cushion covers).

Learned how to knit (made a scarf).
Learned how to dance the salsa.
Learned how to bake (my favorite dessert: lemon tart!). 

Hosted a dinner party for 10.
Hosted five house guests, the most I've ever had at one time.
Bought serious rain gear (and wore rain boots).

Stepped inside a windmill.

Edited videos for money. 
*WHEW!*

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 

I don't make New Year's resolutions. But this year I set goals (something that always works for me when I remember to do it) and achieved many of them. That's something I will do again this year.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Susie and Tinus, our dearest friends from Singapore, became the parents of a gorgeous baby boy named Max, the day before we moved to Amsterdam. We were his first visitors at the hospital!



Later in the year, another Max was born—this time to my friend Leslie in Amsterdam.



Did anyone close to you die?

Tito Rolly Cailles, one of our wedding godfathers, succumbed to leukemia.

What countries did you visit?

Switzerland, Portugal, Norway, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, Turkey and the Philippines.

Patience, my pwet

Happy new year!

I normally do a year-end recap, but right now I am so focused on, so manically juiced about 2011 that I can barely recall what happened to me in 2010 except in single-word snatches: resigning, freelancing, Beijing, Sonoma, San Francisco, and dreaming about, going for, and finally getting Europe. (Hmm, I just realized that half of these words are action verbs and half of them are places I've never been before. That can only be a good thing.)

Anyway, Amsterdam is just 12 days away, but it feels like the longest 12 days ever!

I don't know how you felt about the first day of school, but when I was a kid, my excitement about the start of classes drove me bonkers every single year. Going to National Bookstore to buy all my school supplies, covering my books and notebooks with ads torn out of Vogue, Bazaar and Elle (Claudia Schiffer's classic Guess print ads were my favorites), then with plastic, choosing and polishing my new black school shoes--all of the preparations for the start of the new school year used to just whip me into a frenzy of anticipation, like doing each of these little little things somehow brought you that much closer to the day you were so inexplicably excited for. 

That's the closest way to describe how I feel right now.

Except sometimes, all the preparations, every little errand from picking up the visas to seeing friends for goodbye lunches and dinners, seem to be just ways of filling time until we get on that plane and get this shebang started.

Let's go, 2011!

Just the two of us

When I was a little brat, the only thing I hated about the holidays was the inevitable deluge of visitors. What seemed like an endless parade of vans would disgorge relations or family friends from out of town, who descended upon our family as their holiday treat.

I especially hated when this happened on Christmas Day because it meant we couldn't open the gifts until every last visitor went away. Seeing that giant pile of unopened gifts winking at you until five or six in the evening on Christmas Day was just pure torture. Then of course there was all the noise (which we Pinoys find necessary to make holidays "masaya") and fawning and pinching that comes with all those people. My mom still has pictures of little bratty me clinging to her and refusing to talk to people. One look at my squelched-up tampo face and you can practically hear me begging her to just send all these people away.

Eventually either I got used to it or the number of holiday crashers dwindled (Christmas visitors, of course, being directly proportional to size of house and family income), but soon enough I got old enough to not want quiet holidays so badly.

Twenty-odd years later I finally, surprisingly get my wish.

Marlon and I had been thinking of heading down to Marina Bay for the New Year's Eve countdown, the only place where fireworks are legal in this country. But I hadn't been feeling well and the thought of massive crowds, an epic trek home by bus, or squabbling with half of Singapore to get a taxi afterwards struck me dumb with fear. So I stayed at home and rested. Which was... really, really nice.

Marlon and I cooked dinner together, which is something that always relaxes me and cheers me up. Our first Media Noche was simple -- we broiled salmon steaks in wine and butter, then baked them with a glaze of mustard and brown sugar.

While the fish was in the oven, I slipped into a nice long dress that I normally don't wear out, and spritzed on some perfume. Marlon put on a red t-shirt with a Chinese character on it that he hoped meant something like good fortune.

With ten minutes till midnight, the part of me that is secretly waiting to transform into my mother kicked in. I went into a table-setting frenzy, faint parental admonitions about making everything clean and shiny and fancy to welcome the new year echoing in my subconscious.

We cleared the dining table of the junk it manages to accumulate every so often to make space for some cream-colored hybrid carnations that Marlon had bought for me the day before. I set out strawberries in a bowl, lit a handful of tealights from Ikea, and turned off all the lights except for the Christmas tree and a paper floor lamp. Et voila!

We filled our glasses with sparkling wine (do you know you can't call it champagne unless it's from Champagne, France?) and clinked them at midnight, toasting to more adventures in the coming year. We said grace before dinner, thanking God for our blessings and asking him to make the new year kinder to those burned and scarred by the year that was. We dug into our salmon steaks in the candlelight, marveling at the fact that we had never had a candlelit dinner at home before.

And I realized it was the first time that I was welcoming new year without my family -- and as much as I missed them, that it was okay. Because this is also my family now.

Just the two of us (oh alright -- and the cat)... until further notice.

Have a blessed and fulfilling New Year, everyone!