The month that was

It's only the second month into the year but February has been hectic. But in a really good way.

First, I spent a lot of quality time with my family. Just this weekend, we celebrated my brother's birthday. Me, my mom, two nephews, grandparents, and brother of course headed to Shang mall to have a late afternoon snack (and coffee) in Figaro. My lola wanted to watch 'Miss you like crazy' so my lolo and my brother accompanied her while the rest of us heard mass. My mom then went off to buy groceries while I took my nephews to Quantum, the arcade. We spent a lot of time in bowling game but it was in this other game - you drop a ball to a rotating disc and you win tickets based on the hole where it goes into - where my nephews were really lucky. They won more than 200 tickets in this game!

A couple of weeks before that (Valentine's day and Chinese New Year, actually), we went to Intramuros because my lola has apparently never been there before. We heard mass in Manila Cathedral - the first time I heard mass there that wasn't a wedding - before having dinner in La Cocina de Tita Moning. This was a really great day, and I figure I should dedicate a full blog post to this (maybe in a couple of days...)

I also spent a lot of quality time with my friends. Anna came home from SG for about a week and a half - she started her new job last week so we decided to have dinner with Joyce, Iona, JP and Aya (too bad Mitch was out of the country, I may have to organize another dinner get-together in the next few weeks). Just a few days before that, Joyce, Anna and I met up in Old Swiss Inn with Francis, who I haven't seen in almost a decade so it was great catching up. And a couple of days before that, Joyce, Anna, and I also met up in Powerplant to watch 'Valentine's Day'. I watched 'Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief' with Walter and Tim in The Block in SM North Edsa because Tim had free movie tickets in SM cinemas. And finally, Raffa and Che had an advanced birthday celebration in Eat Well in Net Quad, along with Joh, Hannah, Peegee, Randee, and Chris (Me-Ann made a special guest appearance since she had an event that same night with her big bosses).

Feb also proved to be a very musical month. Aside from a couple of trips to Music Match with my videoke-addict friends lol, our band org at work had a harana event on Feb 12 (as a pre-Valentine's day gimmick). I sang a few different songs: "Forever" by Chris Brown in the style of Boyce Avenue, "Collide" by Howie Day, "Can't fight this feeling" by REO Speedwagon in the style of the Glee Cast, "Someone to love you" by Ruff Endz, "Let's stay together" by Al Green, and "Fly me to the moon". (This was really cool because I sang all but Collide and Fly me to the moon for the first time).

And to wrap things up, there was a lot of partying and clubbing. A couple of trips to Pier One and Encore (formerly known as Embassy), plus a visit to Distillery, Tiananmen, and Hai Bar made sure I had more than my fair share of alcohol lol.

If March is anything like Feb, then I can't wait. :)