[SWEDEN] Winter has arrived, and with a vengeance!

So much for the supposed warm winter!

Yesterday, I asked the hotel receptionist to call a cab for me, and she mentioned to me that it was snowing a bit and that, based on the weather report, it would be a lot colder this week than it has been in Lund so far. I step out of the hotel to get into the cab and indeed it is snowing lightly. Once I got to the office, it started to snow a whole lot more. It stopped by mid-afternoon, but by that time, the city had turned into a winter wonderland.

I have seen snow before, a couple of times in fact, and while it is thrilling for folks who come from tropical countries to see snow (it still is), the knowledge that it can actually get a bit dangerous was in my mind a lot more and I was ended up being a bit more cautious than excited.

On my way home, I actually had to hitch a ride home with one of my colleagues here because taxis were fully booked last night and it would take half an hour for a taxi to become available. On our way to his car, I got to feel just how cold it was. Once again, I didn't have my gloves, scarf, and hat with me, but I never bring those to the office because I normally take a taxi and it drives up all the way to the door to either drop me off or pick me up, and so I would normally have about 5 seconds of exposure to the weather. But since I was riding with my teammate, we had to walk all the way to his car in the parking lot. And of course, his car was now covered with snow so he spent a couple of minutes scraping the ice off of the windows and mirrors.

When we get into his car, he checks the temperature reading and apparently, it's -3 degrees. Damn! So that's why I felt so cold! -3 with the wind blowing and no hat, scarf, and gloves again. This is starting to become a pattern! And here I thought I had a decent learning curve and never made the same mistake twice... =)

So this morning, I made sure I had at least my gloves and hat with me (I just stuffed them into the pockets of my jacket). Not that I needed them today, though. It was still cold (-13 at around 8am I was told) and it snowed for a short period of time in the mid afternoon, but as is normally the case, I got door-to-door cab service. Thank God!

One other thing about this kind of weather: it becomes difficult to walk on the ice-covered sidewalk. I nearly slipped on several occasions last night on my way to dinner and back. I was chatting about it to my friend Chris and he said I need a good pair of boots. I should've thought of that before I left Manila. I mean, I can imagine how much boots cost here. Although actually, I DID think about it before I left Manila, but I was running out of money and approaching my credit card limit so I decided against buying them. Let's just hope it doesn't snow too much while I am here.

[SWEDEN] My new favorite hang-out

I decided to take some pics of Espresso House. It’s my official hangout outside the hotel, as I’ve been there quite a few times already. They do have great coffee and the ambience is cozy.

There’s quite a selection of pastries as well. The first one I tried wasn’t very good. But since then I’ve tried two other items on the menu. The chocolate brownie was good, but my vote goes to this small, unassuming Mocca Cup.

I tried it out the first time because I wanted something sweet to go with the coffee, but nothing too large or heavy. I figured it would just be like any ordinary cupcake. But no! After you take the first bite, you realize that inside it are layers of different flavors! I’m no experienced cook or baker so I can’t tell you what’s in it, but all I know is that this Mocca Cup is amazing!

If only I could share the taste with you through the internet. (I wonder when technology will be such that you can capture the taste of something and upload it online and share it with other people somehow…)

This is so funny!

My friend Brian sent me this link a long time ago, after the 2006 French Open. Even if you aren't a tennis fan and don't know any of the players in the video, I think you may still find it funny. It is just two minutes long anyway. =)



My favorite part: at # 10 - the guy in the back opening the door as Celine Dion sings 'once more, you opened the door...' Actually, the two guys dancing at the back made this a lot funnier. I don't know who came up with this video (maybe the French Open website?) but I do wish there are more videos like this that come up with top tennis players.

I left my heart in San Francisco

Okay, actually, no, I didn’t. =) I did, however, have a great time there recently.

(Yeah, another one of my very late posts. But hey, at least I'm starting to catch up! =) )

I had to go there to attend a particular training course that is not being given very often, and which isn’t being given anywhere near the Philippines (it was either I take the course in San Francisco or I take the next one in the UK in March. Clearly I couldn’t wait that long).

The training course was just three days – from Nov. 29 (Wed) to Dec. 1 (Fri). I arrived there on Tuesday, a day before the training, at around 8am. I got to my hotel at around 9am and it is located in Belmont, right next to the Oracle HQ (it’s a really nice HQ actually) and a mile away from the training center where I would be taking my course. Check-in time is supposed to be 2pm, but since my room was already free the receptionist (who happened to be a Filipino named Mike) told me I could check-in already and in fact I could still have the complimentary breakfast. Cool right?

Well the thing was, the hotel I was in wasn’t a really good one. It was more like a serviced apartment – there was no mini bar and no room service. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Except for the fact that my hotel was located in the middle of nowhere. I mean, there were no convenience stores or groceries anywhere within walking distance, and there weren’t any restaurants either!

What it did have was a selection of delivery numbers and menus. I guess this hotel really caters to people who are staying in that area for a fairly long time and who most likely have a rental car with that would allow them to drive to restaurants or C-stores. As I had no car, I really had no choice but to keep ordering food in! I kinda wished I had stayed in one of the company-preferred hotels in the Bay area. One of them was actually located right in front of Fisherman’s wharf and it would’ve been a fantastic place for me to be in. Unfortunately, it was several miles away from the training center and I would use up way too much of company money on taxi rides so I decided to look for a hotel in Belmont instead. And what a decision that turned out to be! I ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere! Haha! Okay, it wasn’t all that bad. The room was pretty spacious and I got a lot of TV channels, and the breakfast was decent.

I overestimated how cold it would be too. I checked the weather report and it said San Francisco would be 9 degrees Celsius. I couldn’t recall how 9 degrees felt like so I thought it would be really really cold and as such brought two sweaters and two thick jackets with me. Naturally, when I got there, I realized that I didn’t need all that (check out my pic below, I was just wearing a shirt). I could’ve saved a lot of space in my luggage if I didn’t bring all those ‘winter clothes’ with me.

Okay now I started off saying I had a fun time in San Francisco and all I’ve done so far is rant hahaha. So let me tell you the fun stuff:

HIGHLIGHTS

#1: I got to watch One Tree Hill on the new CW! [SPOILER ALERT!!!] And it was a really cool episode as well, probably my favorite episode ever. Mainly because after four seasons, the Ravens finally win the State Championships! Of course, there’s a lot more going on in the episode to make it quite interesting, but you weren’t really sure how the game would go and if they ended up losing like they did in the season 1 play-offs, it would have been quite a disappointing finish.

#2: I spoke to Weng on the phone for more than an hour! Earlier that week, I sent her a quick email saying I was in SFO and asking if she might by any chance be traveling to SFO (in which case we could meet up). I left her my hotel details and my room number and on Thursday night she calls me. There was quite a bit of catching up to do and it was great getting to talk to her again.

#3: I got a new digital camera for myself and for my mom. Why did I need to buy two cameras? Well, both batteries of my old Sony digicam were completely dead – they don’t charge anymore – and being an obsolete model, I couldn’t find the batteries anywhere. Also, the Canon that I got my mom in early 2005 stopped working – the service center said there was damage in the optical mechanism and that fixing it would cost - P15,000! Can you believe that? Anyway, since my mom and I won’t be able to share a camera this year, I figured I’d get one for each of us. I ended up getting the Sony W100, with a 2Gb memory stick for myself and 1 Gb one for my mom (I’m sure to take a truckload more pics than my mom and she won’t ever come near 1 Gb of pics).

#4: I had lunch with Ron. I met him a couple of years ago when I paid Mike a visit in Stanford. Recently, we started working on some project together (along with Mike and a few other people). He works in Oracle which as I mentioned is right next to my training center so I thought it would be cool to have lunch with him while I was there (oh and FYI, he actually thought I was 26 years old haha that is the youngest age anyone has ever guessed me to be it’s so cool. =))

#5: I met up with Ray and Joy. They were living there because Ray was studying at Stanford. On the weekend, they drove from Stanford to Belmont to pick me up at my hotel. We drove to the city where I had to get something from the Academy of Art University – my friend Tricia is taking a virtual course there and won a discount card from Borders so she asked me to pick up her card for her. Ray and Joy then took me to the Cliffhouse, a restaurant located right on a cliff. The ambience is great, mainly because you get a fantastic view of the bay while dining.

The food here though isn’t really very good – or at least the food we ordered. In fact, Joy was so disappointed with her Grilled marinated Breast of Chicken Sandwich that Ray was thinking of complaining about the food. We of course decided against it. We headed out the resto after lunch and took a few pictures with the bay in the background. (Funny moment: when we stepped out, I made a comment about the trees in that area being awesome. I was looking at the trees when I heard a woman’s voice in Joy’s general direction ask out loud “do you wanna head there?” and I blurt out “Not really.” Joy and Ray look at me with this weird trying-to-force-themselves-not-to-smile look which made me realize that it wasn’t them who asked if I wanted to go there hahaha I couldn’t stop laughing after that.)

 

We then went to the Legion of Honor museum but just to take pictures (it’s a really good museum and I need to make sure to go inside and spend time in it the next time I am in San Francisco).

After that, we get stuck in the most horrendous traffic jam I’ve ever experienced on our way to the Great Mall in Milipitas. Joy and Ray were planning to go to Beijing in December, and as it gets really cold there (a lot more than SFO), they needed to buy heavier-duty winter clothes. We split up while at the Great Mall and I end up buying myself a red-orange fleece jacket from Nautica (it was on sale and the price was a steal).

Factor in to all this the really good training course that I took then clearly the pluses outweigh the minuses by a whole lot. =)

[SWEDEN] Bike City

(I've decided to change the way I blog since some people may only be interested in reading about my experiences over here in Sweden and not all the other stuff. So if you wanna know what's going on with me here, look up the messages that begin with [SWEDEN]. Cheers!)

It's common in university cities, at least in Western cultures, to have lots of people riding bicycles, and Lund is no exception. Meandering through the city center's web of intricately woven streets, you will be hard-pressed not to spot someone on a bike. It is, after all, a healthier mode of transportation, and a lot more environmentally-friendly than a car. I've also been told that it's not that easy to park inside the centrum*, and when you add that to the fact that a bike costs a lot less than a car and is a lot easier to maintain, then it shouldn't surprise you that the bike is the transportation mode of choice here. I was toying with the idea of getting one myself until I saw someone biking in the rain last night. Then I thought, I'm not particularly sure I'm ready to increase the wind-chill factor I am already exposed to in this very windy city, and with it raining half the time, maybe a bike isn't the best thing for me to use here at the moment.

So I guess I'm sticking to walking, which is always a good way to get a better feel of whatever place you visit and soak in the culture. You definitely know that you are in Europe as you amble along Lund's cobble-stone roads that are walled in by charming buildings and medieval architecture. I always wish the Philippines was more like Europe in the sense that Europe has managed to strike an impressive balance between preserving and promoting its history and being on the forefront of modernization and technological advancement.

I've mentioned before that on average, things are cheaper in Lund than in other major European cities. For the most part, it's true. The one area where this statement just doesn't hold is with taxi fare. I take a taxi from my hotel to the office and back everyday because the train doesn't stop anywhere near the office, and that 5-10 minute trip costs more than 100 kronor** (which is about P700)! Can you believe that? Taxi fare in Brussels for a trip two to three times that distance would cost just a bit more than that amount. And let's not even compare that to the Philippines.

So far, I'm still on business expense so cab rides are still within budget. But when I finally move to my own place (hopefully in the next 2 weeks), they just won't be affordable anymore. Maybe then, I'll think about braving the weather and getting my own bike.

* another word for city center
* plural of krona

6 Golden Globes

That's the number of trophies that Meryl Streep has won in the Golden Globe awards, tying Jack Nicholson for most awards that an actor has won (although Streep won her six in different acting categories). Of course, it helps that in the Golden Globes, you have a best actress in drama and another best actress in a comedy or musical. She just won her sixth trophy during Monday night's Golden Globe awards for her amazing performance in 'The Devil wears Prada'. Prior to that, she won Best Actress in a Drama for 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' and 'Sophie's Choice', Best Supporting Actress for 'Kramer vs. Kramer' and 'Adaptation', and Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-series or Motion Picture made for Television for 'Angels in America'. All in all, Meryl has been nominated a whopping 21 times. Only Jack Lemmon has gotten more with 22). Congratulations, Meryl!

Shout-outs also go out to:

• Helen Mirren, for winning two acting awards, one for Best Actress Drama for 'The Queen', and one for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television for 'Elizabeth I' (and in fact she was competing with herself in this category as she was also nominated for her performance in 'Prime Suspect: The final Act')
• Forrest Whitaker, who won best actor for 'The Last King of Scotland' (anyone notice a royalty theme going on here?), beating out Leonardo DiCaprio "twice". Leo, like Helen, was competing against himself as well in the Best Actor, Drama category so I kinda felt bad that he didn't win - it actually is quite unfair because getting nominated twice in the same category means that people who want to vote for him will end up having to pick one of the other (I guess for Helen, one of her performances was much better than the other so all her voters ended up voting for her from the same movie)
• Jennifer Hudson for living up to all the buzz and taking the best supporting actress in a musical or comedy. She had huge shoes to fill (and I still think no one can play Effie White like Jennifer Holliday) but Hudson did manage to pull it off with flying colors.

Speaking of Dreamgirls, here's a HILARIOUS take by Jake Gyllenhaal on the Dreamgirls classic song 'And I'm telling you'

Now tell me that didn't crack you up? =)

[SWEDEN] The effects of Global Warming?

Coming to Europe in early January, I had a suitcase full of jackets, sweaters, scarves, hats, and gloves coz it was going to be the middle of winter and I was fully expecting temperatures of about 0 degrees or less. I was in Brussels during the winter of 2002-2003, it was a warm day there when the temperature hit 5 degrees, and Lund is closer to the North Pole than Brussels.

So imagine my surprise when I got here and realized that the temperatures were a 'moderate' 5-10 degrees. People at work have said that they've started to see spring flowers starting bloom. Looks like even the plant-life is confused!

Of course, the wind and occasional rain make things a bit more interesting (I was told that because Lund is quite close to the sea the wind here tends to be pretty strong at times). And considering my propensity for getting into "fun" circumstances, it shouldn't be news to anyone that I've gotten a first-hand account of how much colder it gets when you combine winter with wind and rain. (Not that I haven't experienced it before but I should've used my head a bit more.)

My "boss" Martin told me that on Friday nights, the Lund city center becomes a lot more lively as the the students get into a weekend-party mode deep into the night. As such, I thought that, while I wasn't into a social party-going mode especially since I don't really know anyone here yet, it would be nice to see how kids here kick back and unwind. So I head out the hotel with no hat, no gloves, no scarf. After all, I had walked around on the previous nights looking for places to eat and I never found it cold enough to warrant the hassle of putting on anything but a jacket and sweater. Once I step out the door, I see that it is raining, so I got back in to get an umbrella and nothing else. Yeah yeah I know, pretty stupid really.

So here I am, trying to soak in the atmosphere and culture of my 'hometown' for the next several months, when the rain starts getting heavier and wind starts blowing harder. So much harder in fact that on several occasions, I had to hang on to my umbrella with two hands to make sure I didn't lose it. I only noticed that I had to get some shelter when I realized my hands were starting to hurt. Despite that, I end up walking around for several more minutes because I realized I had ventured into an area of the city center where there weren't many restos (add to this the fact that I was craving pasta; maybe the weather was making me seek carbs and comfort food).

I finally managed to find a pasta place and when I got in, my face was quite wind-burned already (can you say 'rosy cheeks'? :-) ) and my fingertips felt like something heavy fell on them. There was a tiny candle at my table and I thought of using it to warm my hands. But then the flame was a bit too short and the only way for me to get any warmth from it was to put my hands really close to the flame. Which I thought was a stupid idea considering my hands were a bit numb and by placing them close to the flame I risked burning them without even realizing it. So I did the next best thing which was to just rub them together while waiting for my food to arrive.

After that experience, I always had with me my scarf, gloves, and hat, no matter how warm or cold it is. Better to look like an overdressed person not used to cold weather than risk getting sick. Of course I should've remembered to protect my feet as well when I walked around last Sunday in my running shoes that were designed to let air in (kinda like Adidas Climacool). Not really the best footwear to have on during the winter.

Ah well, you live, you learn.

Gearing up for the Australian Open

The Australian Open just started yesterday. It’s being shown on Eurosport but at 1am and there’s no way I’m staying up for that. At least not during a weekday.

Anyway, check out this video of the AO final between Steffi Graf and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario in 1994. Steffi completely dominated this match from start to finish, thumping ASV, 6-0 6-2, in something like 47 minutes. 47 minutes!!!



This was Steffi’s 4th and last Australian Open title. In 1995, she won the 4th of her 6 French open titles and the 4th of her 5 US Open titles. So this 94 AO was a great win for her, as it gave her the distinction of being the only player to have won all Grand Slam events at least 4 times (she has seven Wimbledon titles). She truly is the most versatile women’s player of all time, dominating on every surface. And when you look at all five players who won the calendar Grand Slam, Steffi is the only one to have won it when all four slams were played on different surfaces (Rebound Ace, red clay, grass, and Deco Turf). When Don Budge (38), Maureen Connolly (53), Rod Laver (62 and 69), and Margaret Court (70) won their Grand Slams, 3 of those 4 events were played on grass. That puts perspective on just how amazing Graf’s ability is on any and all surfaces.

Good luck to this year's players! I’m hoping that Clijsters and Roddick can both win the title. Strange. I always rooted for Kim but I never really cared much for Roddick. But I guess after all his struggles in form, it would be nice to see Andy regain some of his old confidence back and ace his way to a 2nd Slam title. He did beat Roger in an exhibition last week which is a good sign, but then in the first round yesterday he struggled past a very in-form wildcard by the name of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Anyway, Roddick winning is a bit of a long shot, but I won't really be displeased if Roger Federer wins his 10th Grand slam title in two weeks.

[SWEDEN] I'm in Lund!

So how is it being in Lund?

From a geographical standpoint, most people think Stockholm when they hear about Sweden. And if not Stockholm, then maybe Gothenburg. In fact, I myself didn’t know about Lund until I was told I would be going here. And with me being here just a few days so far, I don’t really know that much more about it than the average person. In any case, let me take a crack at trying to tell you what Lund is like.

Lund is a city in the Southern part of Sweden. It’s more than 200 km away from Gothenburg and more than 600 km away from Stockholm. So for my friends who have said “hey, I know this person in Stockholm” to me before, I’ll let you know when I am ready to take that 600+ km trip to Stockholm (which I surely plan to do at some point over the next few months). Lund is actually closer to Copenhagen in Denmark. That’s why I flew to Copenhagen on my way to Lund. It’s also right next to Malmo, Sweden’s 3rd largest city.

One nice thing about this city is that you will find Lund University here. This means that there are a lot of relatively inexpensive places to eat here. Last night, I had a decent pizza meal with softdrinks for 55 KR (Kroner, the currency in Sweden), which translates to about P385 or under $8 (or about €6). I say relatively inexpensive because when I was in Brussels, a meal like that would probably have cost me €10. The variety of food is pretty good as well. So far, aside from the pizza, I’ve had a chicken pesto wrap and lasagna (both of which were actually about twice as expensive as the pizza). I’ve also eaten in Burger King (twice) and Subway. What’s missing here is Starbucks (so far I haven’t seen any) but there’s seems to be a local version of it – Espresso House. I had coffee and cake there yesterday (not sure exactly what cake it was, I just pointed at it and said I wanted to order it hehehe). The cake was okay, but the coffee was excellent. The ambience is just a notch or so short of being artsy fartsy which makes it quite interesting and cozy.

The other thing about being a university town is that there are a lot of young people around, so the feel of the city is vibrant and young and energetic. That kind of atmosphere certainly does help when you are alone in a cold country where you get sunlight between 830am and 430pm only. (For my friends who thought that I will be in that part of Sweden where you don’t get daylight at all, well, that’s way up in the North so I don’t have to deal with that, thankfully.)

Another nice thing about being in Sweden is that English is spoken by practically everyone here. So far I haven’t had any difficulty going around. In fact, yesterday, I got a couple of people to help me figure out how to go to the Malmo central station (I had to go there to visit the office – I’m a consultant here in Lund so I’m located in a customer site). Anyway, I haven’t had the chance to learn any Swedish words yet, but I will try to pick up at least 'Thank you', 'Excuse me', and some other common phrases ust so that I get to feel more like I live here. I also get a lot of English shows and movies on TV (am still in a hotel so I don't know what my set up will be once I move to my own 'permanent' housing here) which is great for me since anyone who knows me knows how much I love my TV. :-)

There are a few things to see here as well, but since I haven’t seen them yet, I’ll hold off on blogging about them until I do (and I’ll post some pictures as well). In the meantime, let me log off and head off to Espresso house again for my late afternoon coffee and snack. (I should check if they have wireless internet there too!) And click here for a link to the wikipedia entry of Lund in case you wanna read more about it. (There's a map here as well for you to sort of see where I am).

Birthday Celebration part 5 and a bit of bowling

This is essentially the last installment of my birthday celebration series. =) I celebrated with my friends from my first job – Bett, Chari, Anna, Jette, Raych, and Ric (unfortunately Lany had to rest as she was pregnant with her and Ric’s 2nd child! Congrats!). The timing couldn’t have been more perfect as one of our gang, Raych, was in the Philippines for a few weeks (during which time she also managed to watch my band) and she would be able to join us.

Chari and Bett had both just celebrated their birthdays as well, and we agreed to celebrate our birthdays together. Since there were three of us, we decided to treat everyone else to Brazil, Brazil mainly because I haven’t eaten there yet (most of us hadn’t yet, actually) and considering that three of us would be splitting the bill, we could share the load the pricey bill. =) As you could’ve expected, we raised the noise level in Brazil, Brazil quite a bit. After all, it had a few months since we all saw each other, and this was the first time we got to hang out with Raych after a few years.

For those of you who haven’t tried Brazil, Brazil, the set-up is buffet style (I’m guessing they have an ala carte menu too but none of us tried it). There’s a buffet spread at the side of the resto where you can have salad or pasta or some other food (there’s a dessert spread as well). But the coup de grace is the buffet of meats on skewers that waiters keep bringing to your table (if you read my entry on my Brazil trip ages ago, the setup is similar to that). Each table has a yoyo on it with a red side and green side. If the green side is being displayed, that means you are giving the waiters a go-signal to keep bringing meats to your table. These meats vary from beef cuts to pork to chicken to even seafood. Then when you feel you’re plate is too full with all the meat they keep bringing, you can flip your yoyo over to the red side which will tell all the waiters to stop bringing food to your table.

The food was okay. I felt thought that some of the meat they brought us was a bit too tough (too well-done for my taste, I would’ve preferred them being more medium-well). Pound-for-pound, I’d recommend Dad’s (with its Angus beef and amazing variety of food) over Brazil, Brazil. But well it’s cool that we got try a new place.

After that, we all decide to visit my place where we could all have coffee and dessert/snacks (Bett’s Banana Cream Pie, or was it something else? And Chari’s spinach dip). As you could expect most of our time was spent chatting about showbiz updates and trying to get inside info (what with Jette working in a TV station hehehe).

We all called it a day in the late afternoon. Bett’s husband Pikes had come to pick her up and Raych needed to meet up with her husband Nick who spent the day shopping. =) I on the other hand met up with my mom, brothers, and nephews. The week before, my nephews got free bowling passes during their trick-or-treating, and we decided to use them immediately because my nephews were so excited about the idea of bowling.



Anyway, when we got there, we started off with me and my nephews playing. We had the bumper guards raised so that the kids wouldn’t end up with gutter balls most of the time. And it was a lot of fun! CJ immediately picked up on the proper form and he was even holding the ball properly (you know, using the middle and ring fingers – and not the pointer finger – as well as the thumb). Ciera on the other hand kept hitting the bumper guard in the middle of the lane which meant the ball was headed towards the head pin or close to it by the time the ball had traversed the entire lane. CJ scored more than 70 pin-falls while Ciera got 60+. The kids were so excited that they wanted to play another game. This time they wanted their dad to join in. This time, CJ and Ciera had gotten slightly more used to how to play. Both of them scored spares in their games. But what was so funny was that Ciera kept rolling his ball very very slowly, but it seemed to keep getting great pin action because he ended up scoring a 98! CJ managed to score 80-something.

They enjoyed bowling so much that the week after that, we played again. This time, Ciera got tired in the middle of the game so CJ started playing the rest of his game for him. What was quite impressive as well was that on quite a few occasions, CJ actually managed to throw the ball in the center of the lane i.e. it didn’t hit the bumper guards and bring down quite a few pins. He ended up getting a 96 in his own game and a 94 in the one that he picked up from Ciera. It was so cool! We haven’t gotten to play bowling since then but it’s great that we got the chance to play bowling because now there are more things that my nephews are interested in and more things that we can bring them to whenever we go out.

[SWEDEN] Back on the blogging trail!

Wow, has it really been a month since I last updated my blog? I guess when I think about it, I can't really be surprised. A whole lot has happened since the last time I updated my blog:

• It was the Christmas season that involved a number of parties and €get-togethers
• I co-hosted our office Christmas party
• I organized a pretty successful Bukas Sarili Caroling event in the PGH on Dec. 16
• 3 more Still Oz gigs in the last 3 Fridays of December
• I went to Macau and Hong Kong Disneyland with my family
• I co-hosted the wedding reception of Myra and Jun in Tagaytay

Oh, and have I mentioned that last Sunday, I packed up and left for Lund in Sweden, where I am supposed to stay for at least 6 months?

It wasn't really sudden, but somehow it felt like it. I knew way back in October that I was likely to work for several months in Sweden at the start of 07, but things only got finalized towards the end of November and with my project here starting in the 2nd week of January, I didn't really have a lot of time left in Manila. Which was also the main reason why I spent a lot of time with my family and friends in the last several weeks.

I'll be updating my blog with how things are in this part of the world along with all the cool, fun, and crazy experiences I expect to have here. But let me first tell you how my trip here turned out.

I spent the entire Saturday night packing and making sure all loose ends were tied up before I left. My airport transfer picked me up at 8am, and I slept for the entire car ride on the way to the airport. I had to sort out all my excess baggage first before I headed to the waiting area. I was then pleasantly surprised to run into Mike and Diane, who were flying to the US (Mike to Boston, Diane to Cincinnati) but ended up waiting in the airport for 4 extra hours because it was storming in Japan (their stop-over). As it turns out, Walter was also in my flight (he was heading to Geneva).

I got to sleep for about 4 of the 14 hours I was on the plane to Amsterdam. I was trying to sleep but for some reason I couldn't. So I decided to just watch movies on the plane instead. I caught 'Nacho Libre', 'Cars', and 'Ordinary People'. The plane arrived in Amsterdam at 630pm (130am Manila time), about half an hour ahead of schedule. Here I discovered that Walter wasn't my only colleague on the same flight - my boss Peter and another colleague Sheila were also there (both of them were headed for the UK). It was pretty good having some company while in Schipol airport, and here we decided to change some money already in case the forex booths were closed in our respective destinations.

I was heading to Stuttgart first and spending a couple of days with my German colleagues who provided me with a lot of technical overviews to get my ready for my assignment. My flight left Amsterdam at around 830 and I arrived in Stuttgart at 930. I was so tired that I fell asleep almost as soon as I arrived at the hotel.

I met up with my colleague Ingo on Monday for prep sessions, and in the evening he took me around Boeblingen which I was really pleased with since at least I got to see more of Germany than just the airport, the hotel, and the office. I had a couple of good German beers, Bratwurst, and some really good Sauerkraut. Too bad I forgot which beers I had. I should email Ingo and ask him which ones he ordered for me.

We had a couple more training sessions lined up on Tuesday before I packed up and got on another plane, this time to Copenhagen where I would meet another colleague, Martin (who is like my boss here). He was flying from Paris and arriving at around the same time and suggested to me that we meet in the Copenhagen airport so he could drive me to my hotel.

The last couple of days were then spent getting me ready for my project here. I met a lot of new people who I would be working with, got a few reading materials, attended a few business and system overviews, and got my 'consultant' laptop and badge. Of course, thing being just the first couple of days of me being here, I still have got a lot more overview sessions and meetings to attend.

Despite all that, I think I'm starting to settle in a bit. I'm still staying in a hotel right now, and I'm still in a bit of an "information-overload" mode, but I'm starting to figure out how to get things going and I'm getting all geared up. Wish me luck and as I said, keep an eye on my blog coz I'm gonna make sure it's updated with all the interesting things I'll be doing over here.

(P.S. I still plan on writing about some of the stuff that happened to me in the last 2-3 months i.e. the stuff I never got to write about coz I was too busy. I'll still be busy here of course, but with no friends, family, and non-work commitments here, I'll have more time to do my 'dear diary' stuff. :-) )

The Clan

That’s what my college barkada call ourselves. I still recall how our batch got called that. When we got into 3rd year in college, our 4th and 5th year org-mates called us clannish because they felt that we stuck to ourselves too much and didn’t mingle with the other people enough. That piece of feedback got to us somehow and so we started calling ourselves ‘the clan’. A dozen years after the fact, that ‘term of endearment’ stuck.

A dozen years. Amazing when you think about it. We’ve been hanging out for a dozen years. Well okay, some of us have been hanging out with some others for longer than that and we all knew each other since we were freshman, but for the most part it’s been a dozen years since ‘the clan’ has been together.

Over the last several years, we’ve managed to catch up as a group at least a few times each year. The coolest thing though is that we’ve found ourselves hanging out more often recently. This was triggered by the fact that Trixie came home recently along with her new daughter Ianne (short for Isabelle Anne). We set up a welcome dinner for Trixie shortly after she got here, and what was great was that there were a lot of folks who made it – Lala, Anna, Jay and Trina, Letlet and Gosh, Kermin, and myself (and of course Trixie). We had so much fun during dinner that despite it being a Wednesday, we decided to go have coffee after that and wind down until about midnight. It’s not very often that we ‘oldies’ who all have corporate jobs actually stay out ‘til midnight on a weekday.

It was during this get-together that we decided to have a baby shower for Trixie coz we didn’t get to throw her a party while she was pregnant in Canada. So a week and a half later, we all head to Marikina to the Lazo residence. Interestingly enough, it was the exact same group of people that showed up. The only difference being that this time, the clan kids were present too. It was potluck and we all ended up bringing way too much food for 9 clan members + their kids and their yaya – we had barbecue, liempo, spaghetti, lumpiang shanghai, salad, ice cream, and cake. We were initially thinking of having a videoke night like we had during our Christmas party last year but when we got there, we all got so engrossed in our fun conversation that we ended up foregoing the videoke machine. Instead, the Lazos put on some Disney CD that contained, for the most part, the ‘High School Musical’ soundtrack that kept looping the entire night, sending all the kids into a continued dancing frenzy the entire night. Suffice it to say I’m not a fan of the campy music of that show, but I managed to keep hearing it in the background and not go crazy. =)

We set the next clan gimmick, our annual Christmas Party, on the 16th of December before moving to the 23rd so that Val and Louie would have already arrived here from Boston (We've since decided to add another get together to celebrate Christmas with Lala right before her birthdday on the 19th coz she'll be in Quezon on the 23rd and it's rare that she gets to join us during Christmas parties and her bday). Then during the weekend, I get a text from Lala announcing that the December birthday celebrators (i.e. her and Trixie) would like to treat the rest of us to a birthday blowout in Dampa in the Ortigas Home Depot area. So for the third time in the last 4 weeks, we once again hung out over dinner and later on coffee – Trixie, Lala, Letlet and Gosh, Mitch, Jay, Kermin, Jed and me. We disbanded at around 1115, mainly coz Mocha Blends closes at 11pm.

When you take into account Jed’s birthday celebration on the 26th of October, that means we’ve actually gotten together 4 times in the last 6 weeks. All of this truly has to be a post-college graduation record. And all this 12 years after we all got together and decided to call ourselves ‘the clan’. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.

Leo's Leisure park

(Okay I should've blogged about this is 4 months ago but it's only until recently that I got the pictures from Marc. I was determined to blog about this though so here it is, 4 months late...)

Last July 22, I went to Leo’s Leisure Park with about half a dozen ex-colleagues. It is in not-too-far-away Angeles, Pampanga (about hmm 2 hours from Makati) and it in fact would’ve been a lot easier to find if it weren’t for the near-obscure kilometer signs on the road (we should’ve turned left after KM79 along Macarthur highway but none of us in the car saw the sign so we ended up taking a long detour).

Meann learned about this place from some TV show that she couldn’t recall. Leo’s Leisure Park was okay, but if you do decide to go here, make sure you have great company and you bring a lot of stuff to entertain yourselves with because at night, there’s really nothing to do except sing in the Karaoke bar (which unfortunately we didn’t do =)).

We got there around lunchtime and had a pretty good meal before heading out to the pool. We decided to play a couple of games with a kiddie beach ball that we “borrowed” from one of the families who were there with us. I say “borrowed” because it was just lying around the pool and no one really got it from us when we were using it. Initially, we split in two – the 30-and-up group consisting of me, Daniel, and Lucasz and the 20-somethings with Meann, Marc, Tin, and JB. The object of the first game was to keep the ball in your team for as long as you can (if the other team manages to get a hand on the ball, they gain possession).

The oldies dominated this game so we decided to change games and switch up teams. I was now teamed up with Daniel, Meann, and Tin while Lucasz, JB, and Marc were grouped together. The object of the new game was to get the ball to the goal (teams had goals on opposite sides of the pool) but there’s a catch: the person holding the ball cannot move from his or her place – they have to pass the ball to a teammate within 5 seconds of getting the ball. My team won decisively, but I have to say it was incredibly tiring! Still, it was loads of fun. We then ended up “winding down” by playing volleyball and trying to keep the ball in the air as long as we possibly could.

We decided to have dinner outside the premises. We spotted a Chinese restaurant along the road on our way to Leo’s, and I suggested that we could have our dinner there so we did. I can’t recall the name of the place, but the price was decent and the food was good. Suffice it to say, we all stuffed ourselves, which isn’t surprising considering all the energy we spent earlier that day.

After dinner, we walked over to the café right next to the resto. It was called Mom and Tina’s bakery café. It had a really nice warm country kitchen feel to it, from the selection of food to the décor. I had brewed coffee (2 cups actually) and a Mango walnut torte, which is essentially mango refrigerator cake (or mango icebox), and it was really good!
The food was so delicious and the ambience so inviting that we ended up having lunch there the next day (or breakfast – we got up close to noon and so it was our first meal of the ay). And everyone seemed pleased with the food they ordered. I ordered Shepherd’s pie (pictured below), and when Meann and Daniel had a taste of it, they liked it so much they decided to order one for themselves and share it. The bread that came with it was really good too. Meann asked them if they had another branch, and to my surprise they said they had a branch somewhere in Libis. So all I need to do is find it and then I can bring my friends there.

Anyway, going back to the Leisure Park experience, the night was spent playing Taboo and 1-2-3-pass. Seems that with this set of people, I am the Taboo king – during Richie’s despedida, I didn’t lose any game of Taboo and here I had the least number of losses of anyone (I lost just once; teams were constantly shuffled to make sure things were more or less even). 1-2-3-pass was a lot of fun too (as it always is).

All in all a great weekend. Would I recommend Leo’s Leisure Park? Probably not – I would suggest other places to go for the same price, unless I guess you want something different. However, they are still in the process of developing it so maybe a year or so from now it’ll be a much cooler place to hang out in.

I would, however, really recommend Mom and Tina’s bakery café. They really do have a wide selection of good food, and the ambience really makes you want to chill there. If I find out where it is in the Libis area, maybe I will blog about it again.

World Champions

Congratulations to Manny Pacquiao for successfully defending his WBC international super featherweight title against Erik Morales.

It was a decisive win – knockout in only the 3rd round which is a far cry from the last two battles these two boxing greats had (one going the full distance and the other ending in a 10th round TKO). I was actually worried that Pacquiao wouldn’t do that well. Mainly coz I thought that he was spending too much time working on his endorsements and heck even his album. So I was very pleased and relieved even that he won.

Of course, I’m still not a fan of boxing or any sport that requires one person to beat up someone else. I mean, losing in any sport sucks as it is. But it must suck a hell of a lot more when you lose because you’ve been hit so hard in the head so many times that you can’t even stand on your own two legs anymore. I actually felt bad for Morales. But not bad enough that I would want him to win of course.

It’s great that with Manny’s win, there is another positive headline about the Philippines (or someone from here).

On the other side of the world, massive props go out to Roger Federer as well. This guy won every single round robin match he played against stiff competition – Andy Roddick, David Nalbandian (who is one of a few people who have a winning head-to-head against Roger), and Ivan Ljubicic (although okay, Ivan has never beaten Roger ever). Then in the semifinals, he beat his nemesis Rafael Nadal (who is one of a few people who have a winning head-to-head against him) before absolutely crushing James Blake in the finals.

Federer is slowly racking up records left and right. He was the first player to break $7 million in career earnings in a single year, and then as if he wasn’t content with that, he goes on to win the Shanghai Masters and thus break the $8 million mark in single-year career earnings. He's won double-digit titles each year for three consecutive years. He is also the only male player to win 8 Grand Slam events in a three year span. And he’s also the only player to have won both Wimbledon and the US open three years in a row. I'm not gonna list down the rest of the horde of records he has now. You can look it up yourself in Federer's wikipedia entry.

This guy is only 25 years and has already won 9 Grand Slams, placing him in 6th place overall behind Pete Sampras (14), Roy Emerson (12), Rod Laver (11), Bjorn Borg (11), and Bill Tilden (10). If he remains fit and healthy I see him breaking Sampras’ record within 3 years.

What’s more, even if Roger doesn’t play between now and February, he is en route to take Jimmy Connors’ 25 year old record of male player with most number of consecutive weeks at #1 at 160 weeks (that’s a smidge more than 3 full years in a row). What’s more, if he continues to play as well as he has been playing, he will take the record for number of consecutive weeks at #1 male or female, a record currently held by Steffi Graf. I would personally not want him to take Graf’s record but I really wouldn’t mind. Steffi would still have the female record if ever. =)

The ups and downs of gigging

Well it’s been a pretty decent month and a half for gigging. An incredibly interesting twist for my band, really – 5 gigs in the first nine months of the year, 4 of them pro-bono, then all of a sudden 7 gigs in a row, with a few more in the pipeline.

Let me start off with a long-winded background for the gig we had five weeks ago. I had just come back from a work teambuilding event in Eagle’s Point which was held on Friday ‘til Saturday. We actually left Manila at 530am on Friday, which meant I was already awake at 430am. I had only two and a half hours of sleep before getting up, and I got to steal maybe another half an hour of shut-eye on the bus ride to Batangas. Thing was, it ended up being an incredibly jam-packed day filled with games and activities. And with a lot of partying at night, I ended up probably sleeping at past 3 (or maybe even past 4?) on Saturday early early morning. Unfortunately, I had way too much to drink while I was dehydrated so when I got up at 830am on Saturday I had the worst hangover in recent memory. The worst of it was, I was so tired and spent from the previous day’s activities that I lost my voice! The problematic trip we had back to Manila – people were late getting on the bus, bus 1 had some problems before running out of gas, we passed through Tagaytay instead of the Star Toll, thus lengthening travel time back to Manila from 3-3.5 hours to 6 hours!!! – made me even more tired. So when I was back in Manila, my voice was all but gone.

Now we’ve had gigs before where I had a sore throat. But I just knew that this wasn’t the average sore throat that can be cured last minute by some hot tea and Strepsils. It would be incredibly bad form for my band to back out at the very last minute though. So I said I’d just push through with it and see what happens. I warned my bandmates about my condition, and they kinda brushed it off, saying that I’ve had a sore throat during gig night in the past but always gotten through. It was a bit unfortunate as well that my mom had a free night and decided to watch. I told her that I had a horrible sore throat and that I wouldn’t be in my best form but she wanted to watch anyway (3rd time for to watch my gig). I was right of course – the moment we played our first song (Matchbox 20’s ‘3am’) it was clear my voice was nowhere near where it should’ve been. It was very hoarse! We performed ‘Lightning Crashes’ after that, and I guess 3am helped my open up my throat a bit because I managed to hit all the notes, albeit with a whole lotta effort. The rest of the set went pretty okay, but I did lose any and all ability to sing falsetto – during ‘#41’ I ended up mouthing all the falsetto parts and I could see that some people in the audience noticed. I was really tempted to sandbag and tell everyone in the audience that I have a bad case of laryngitis, but that would’ve been a bit too unprofessional, so I managed to be controlled enough not to mention it.

I actually kept quiet for virtually the entire break we had between sets to take care of whatever was left of my voice. Also, during this time, lots of people in the audience actually told me what a good job I was doing, which made me think that they seemed to pick up on my condition and were trying to express their appreciation for my efforts. But from a vocal standpoint, neither of those seemed to help because my voice was even hoarser in the 2nd set. Looking at the bright side, I was quite surprised that I was able to ‘force’ the high notes of ‘All I want is you’ (I really thought I would be horribly off-key but luckily I wasn’t), ‘Where the streets have no name’ (by the end of the song my voice actually cracked on one of the high notes), and ‘All along the watchtower’. I was also still able to hold high notes in ‘Grey Street’ and our version of ‘Selling the drama’. The coolest thing though happened during ‘Ants marching’ – at the point where the rest of the band drop and I sing ‘People in every direction’ a cappella, most of the folks in the audience sang along with me. That gave me an idea: I wouldn’t sing the next line and see if the audience would sing instead. That turned out to be a great idea because the audience did sing ‘No words exchanged, no time to exchange’! Amazing! I looked over at Bunky after that and he gave me a nod of approval (he doesn’t mind the audience singing for as long as I don’t actually prod them to sing).

By the time I headed home, my voice was, for all intents and purposes, gone. I would speak one sentence with maybe 6 words like ‘Sorry we couldn’t sing your request’ and my voice would crack five times! I don’t really understand how I managed to sing the rest of the second set like that then completely lose my voice the moment we were done. Adrenaline maybe? Mind over matter? Whatever it was, I am very thankful I got through it!

Anyway, for a couple of days, I could barely speak. I ended up trying Pei Pa Koa, this Chinese herbal extract which is supposed to be good in restoring one’s voice. I am not sure whether it was working because by the end of the week my voice was still a bit hoarse but at least I could sing better. I had another event on Friday night and it was so loud that you would end up shouting instead of talking to make sure other people could hear you. As such, I had another sore throat. But at least it was not as bad as my sore throat the week before.

I was still struggling quite a bit, and my falsetto not very good, but at least my voice was clearer. The main problem we had during the gig was that we were very unprofessional. We are supposed to start anywhere from 930-10 assuming there is a large enough crowd already, but this week we started at 1015. Which was the wrong week to start at that time because there already was a pretty sizable audience by then. During our sound check, I step off the stage to listen to our sound, and the manager actually tells me that we are killing him by not having started yet. The rest of the first set goes okay but after we had played 7 songs, Bunky’s string snaps. We play ‘Lightning crashes’, probably the 8th song of the set, when Bunky breaks another guitar string! We had to end that set prematurely after that song. The only good thing about that is that sets are normally about 7-9 songs long only, so at least we could act like we completed a set and not seem like we missed playing 4 more songs. Luckily, Ipe had spare strings. The bad thing was that at the start of the second set, we realized that Bunky’s guitar wasn’t tuned properly so after one song, we ended up with a lengthy lull while Bunky re-tuned his guitar. I caught a glimpse of the manager during this lull, and he really didn’t look pleased.

Anyway, we played a couple of songs – 'Big-eyed fish' and 'Bartender', both by Dave Matthews band – which we haven’t played in a while, and it was clear we were a bit off in them. We played one more song before the manager told us to take a short break to give way to the San Miguel Bar Tour. During this break, we had a quick band meeting. Oz was concerned about the sound, but Ipe said we couldn’t do anything about that so we needed to play our best despite that. He also asked the band to play with more conviction, whatever the song was. I was really pleased he said that, because now the words were coming from him and not me! =) Being the band “father-figure” kinda gets tired sometimes, and what you say loses impact at some point as well. Anyway, when we started the second set with out ‘All I want is you-Where the streets have no name’ pseudo-medley, it was clear that we were hell-bent on putting together a fantastic show. And the continuation of the 2nd set was amazing. With one small low point – right as I was about to sing Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’, someone in the audience approached us and asked if he could sing that song. I thought he was a friend of one of the folks in the band, but I found out later that everyone else thought he was MY friend. Anyway, he sang, er, well, hmm, not all that well to put it lightly. But it was at least an interesting experience. =) The rest of the set went very well. The highlight for me was our cover of Candlebox’s ‘Far behind’. That’s another song we haven’t played in a long time. But Ipe, who still wasn’t in the band when we played it the last time, knew all the lead guitar parts very well. Throughout the song, you could feel a vibe from the audience that told you they really loved it and the fact that we were playing it, and I also felt that they thought we did it justice. Even the waiters behind the bar were cheering! =)

In the show we put on three weeks ago, one of my dearest friends Raych (who now lives in Australia and was here for a few weeks) came to watch us. She got there in the second set which was good because if she arrived during the 1st set she wouldn’t have gotten a seat. This week, my voice was also crystal clear. I was on top of every single high note in Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” and I held the “Grey Street” long note pretty well. I also have to say, Candlebox’s “Far behind” has now officially become one of our “ace” songs. We played it again and with my voice in tip-top shape, I sang it better than I ever had before. I really wish we had taped it or caught it on video, coz I am not sure we (or I) can pull that song off that well again.

The gig we had two weeks ago was probably the most, er, “dramatic” I’ve ever been on stage. I always used to sing Third eye blinds “Jumper” a bit ‘bouncily’ shall we say until it hit me – this song is trying to tell someone not to jump off the ledge of a building so why am I being bouncy or angry when I sing it? (Maybe coz there’s a line that goes ‘The angry boy…’) So last week, I changed my delivery of that song, and acted more like I was trying to convince someone that it wasn’t worth it ending your life. With “Better man” I started singing some lines my own way and not singing the normal melody. And with “One” I was pouring my heart out. I guess the frequency of our gigs is making me very comfortable singing our songs again, and I’m starting to perform them with more heart as compared to the 5 gigs we had before that.

Now they say that there’s a first time for everything, and last Friday we had our second set cut prematurely for the first time ever, but this time it wasn’t our fault. We had played a solid first set. I was also feeling a lot more comfortable than I have been in the past interacting with the audience. So I was kinda ready to kick ass in the second set. We were in fact planning to play 17 songs that set, and since my voice felt clear and strong I was confident that my vocals would last the entire set. But midway through our third song, the sound system went haywire – it was like we had a horrible feedback sound coming out of the speakers and it lasted for the entire song. The sound technician was frantically trying to sort the issue out to no avail. We kept trying to isolate the problem i.e. which instrument was having the problem – first it seemed it was the violin, then it seemed to be my mic, then the lead guitar, then the rhythm guitar – but well it seemed that when we figured out the problem, the deafening feedback sound would come up again. Eventually the manager told us that the sound guys couldn’t fix the problem and we’d have to pack up. Awful! I was so ‘bitin’ especially since I felt so ready to play more than a dozen songs more that night.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed that we can throw in another good (great?) gig this week. And if we decide to do ‘Far behind’ again, I hope we do it really well once more. Just funny, I’m willing to bet all my friends who had never heard me sing alternative rock or seen me perform with my band would probably never think that I could pull this song off. Then again, prior to joining my band, neither did I. =)

Idol classic: Bo Bice performs "In a Dream"

Another classic performance from the best rocker (and arguably the best stage performer) Idol has seen so far. Bo Bice began season 4 under the radar as the camera spent most of the time focusing on the other rocker Constantine Maroulis. When he got to the top 24 though, he quickly gained ground with one awesome performance after another, turning himself immediately into one of the frontrunners. He faltered a bit in the middle of the season then proceeded to blaze his way forward again. During top three week, there was no question who deserved to make it to the finale. His renditions of 'Don't let the sun go down on me' and 'I can't get no satisfaction' were fantastic, but it was his a capella version of 'In a dream' by Badlands that made brought him legend status.

There's a slight bit of a snag in his last note, but his gutsiness at attempting to sing a capella in the penultimate round of Idol (something no one had ever done before or since, at least for an entire song), combined with the raw emotion and power in his voice made this performance one to remember.

Birthday celebration part 4

During the Ramadan holiday, I met up with my high school barkada for lunch. It was initially planned for dinner but then the government declared it a holiday so we decided to meet up for lunch instead so that it wouldn’t be too late. Again, because Mitch had to be in the Ortigas area so that she was close to her home, so we ended up having lunch in Fish & Co in Shangri-la mall. I thought that would be a cool place to celebrate my birthday as well mainly because neither Joyce nor Iona had eaten there yet.

We ended up not being very smart with our orders. Practically everyone ordered the best Fish and Chips in town or the New York Fish and chips. I ordered the Baked Salmon which I recall was very, very good the first time I had it, but that day the skin was a wee bit too ‘malansa’ for my taste and so I wasn’t as impressed with I as I was the first time. Iona thought that the New York Fish and Chips she had was ‘nakakaumay’. So I guess we ended up not all that pleased on average with our lunch choice. (I was thinking afterwards that maybe we could have simply opted for Gloria Maris which I haven’t been able to eat at since the first time I was there a few months ago). But well it was still their first time to eat there so it's not all that bad.

The highlight of the day which turned out to be a bit of a let-down in the end was that Vhong Navarro had lunch there at the same time. Joyce is a HUGE fan of Vhong and she became speechless and her jaw dropped the moment she caught a glimpse of him. Joyce was constantly in two minds as to whether she should approach Vhong. On the way out, I was telling her I’d help her ask for his autograph but she said no, and then when we were about 50 meters away she all of a sudden wanted to go back. It felt too weird for me to go back though so Joyce asked Iona to accompany her. Iona felt however that it was not very appropriate coz Vhong was having lunch (or enjoying post-lunch conversation with his companions) and she felt it be intrusive to butt in.

After that, Mitch ended up buying us all coffee and dessert in Goodies N Sweets (did I spell it right?) because she had just gotten promoted. We hung out until around 330 I think because Joyce needed to go to Katipunan coz she was going to tutor someone at 4pm.

Two more birthday celebrations to go (one of which has already been celebrated and one more is still waiting). Although now that I think about it, I probably owe one more set of my friends a birthday blow out as well. But I'm not saying who lest they hold me to it. :)

Idol classic: Fantasia singing Summertime

Arguably the best ever Idol performance ever. The song was not as technically difficult as a lot of other songs that have been performed in the history of Idol, but Fantasia reached out to the audience in a way that no one else did and she connected with a song on a deeper, more soulful level. People knew that something magical was happening while watching it. Fantasia sang this song a couple more times on Idol, but this first performance was by far the best, most chill-inducing of them all.

Trick or Treat!

Rockwell was the site for two Halloween celebrations last weekend. So my mom and I decided that we would take my nephews out to celebrate Halloween there.

Saturday was ‘Camelot’ day. This event was actually an event of Rockwell club, but it was opened even to non-members. It was held in the Multi-purpose court. It was a good idea to bring my nephews there because both of them are into dragons, so a Camelot setting would be perfect. CJ in fact came in a dragon costume, while Ciera was wearing a king’s crown and robes. We were actually quite late getting to the event mainly because traffic in Edsa was horrendous. So I’m not really sure what we missed when we got there at around 230pm. But there were quite a few activities there that kept both of my nephews interested the entire time. There was a large, er, "inflated dragon" where kids could actually go in and keep jumping and tumbling without getting hurt (argh! I can't remember what you call those things, ah well). CJ and Ciera actually got into it a couple of time. There was also a fishing area – the 'fish' were goody bags and each ‘fisherman’ had about a minute I think to try and snag as many goody bags as they can with a makeshift fishing rod. Again, CJ and Ciera tried this out twice. The first time, CJ actually managed to catch a goody bag by himself which was so cool. I helped Ciera get a goody bag for himself too. The second time they tried it, there were only two goody bags left so the facilitators actually just handed them to us, but my nephews wanted to “catch” them so they did. There was also face painting (CJ had a dinosaur painted on his face), a magic show, photo opportunities (there was a 'Sword in the stone' area), and prizes given out to the best costumes. The program in the multi-purpose court was capped off by a performance by the musical group 'Trumpets'. After which everyone headed out to the different Rockwell buildings for trick-or-treat. Unfortunately, there were waaay too many people and the trick-or-treat event was more difficult than enjoyable – there weren’t too many stops and it took forever just to get a couple of candies. So I told my mom that we should just leave – I still had some chocolates left over from the ones I bought for the trick-or-treat activity we had at work and we would still get to go trick or treating on Sunday. So we just ended up having dinner before heading home.

I told my mom that we needed to be early on Sunday because the ‘Superheroes Convention’ which would be held in the Rockwell tent (next to Powerplant mall) was just from 1 to 5. Ciera came as The Flash while CJ came in as Superman. Since this was a Powerplant event, it had more advertising and as such a whole lot more kids were there. When we arrived at 130pm, there was a large projector showing an episode of Justice League. Face-painting and glitter tattoo were available to all participants but the lines were too long so we decided to just line up for the Velcro Wall. The line was quite long, and each kid would get only 5 minutes in the Velcro Wall but there aren’t lots of opportunities to experience it, so we figured the wait would be worth it. As it turns out, one of the kids threw up in the entrance area right after Ciera and CJ got in. The facilitators took a while to figure out how to clean it up (eventually they just moved the Velcro Wall to cover the area where the kid threw up – the wall was inflatable so it could easily be pushed) so I reckon my nephews were probably there for twice as long as the other kids were.

Anyway, the tent was too crowded and to join the games you had to register (and it was too much of a hassle to try and register) so we opted to just head out to Powerplant and have something to eat while waiting for the trick or treat activity to begin (it was supposed to start at 5pm). On the way out, we had one stop to have a photo op with two men on stilts. Anyway, we headed to Dulcinea (Ciera had a lot of churros, while CJ read the menu and decided he wanted to have a tuna sandwich), and as it turns out, Dulcinea was one of the many trick-or-treat stops on the mall and they ended up giving us some stuff already even if it wasn’t 5pm yet. As luck would have it, lots of the places in the mall were already giving out goodies even if it wasn’t 5pm yet. There were ‘Heroes welome here’ signs in most of the trick-or-treat stops, but some other places didn’t have that sign, so we would just ask the people whether they were giving out treats or not. There were a lot of other families going around as well – I guess they all headed out of the tent earlier as well to escape the maddening crowd in the Convention. But it was good that we ended up getting an unintended head start. We actually just made the rounds of the 2nd and 3rd floor shops before CJ and Ciera’s baskets were filled to the brim with goodies. In fact, my mom and I ended up having to carry some of the other goodies they collected coz their 'pumpkins' had no more room. By the time we had gone through the 3rd floor shops, both my nephews were really tired. And since we already had a truckload of stuff, we decided to head home and skip the basement and 1st floor shops. I ended up seeing some of the shops on our way out of the mall, and the trick-or-treat lines were already really really long. So it was good we got there before most of the other kids.

All in all, a very fun Halloween. Very tiring but my nephews did a lot of stuff and got to enjoy quite a bit so it was all good. And their supply of goodies has still not run out. =)

All Saint's Day

My cousin Ana died last week.

It was maybe a few years ago when she was taken to the hospital because she had a tumor in her brain. I’m not really sure whether I have my facts straight anymore but I believe she had brain cancer. The entire family was very concerned during that time because we weren’t sure what was going to happen to her – the doctors said the tumor was quite big and it was in a bad location. She made it out of the hospital and I still got to see her for a couple of family reunions after that. In fact, one of the parties that my family had was set up as kind of a thanksgiving party that Ana had made it out of the hospital.

Anyway, last my week my brother texted me saying that Ana had passed away. I think I couldn’t really, hmm, connect to the fact that she was gone. That is, up until I went to her wake with my mom, my brother Clemence, and my nephews (who are Clemence’s sons) last Saturday after the Superheroes Convention (I’ll post about this later on). Tita Nelia and Tito Chito, her parents, seemed to be very tired (obviously). I looked into Ana’s casket – she looked very peaceful and beautiful – and at this point I think the whole reality struck me. She's a year younger than I am and now she's no longer with us! I felt a wave of sadness wash over me. But I kept things under control because I didn’t want to be the impetus for both Tita Nelia and Tito Chito to become more emotional. They needed strength from the people around them, after all.

She was cremated yesterday, on Halloween, at noon. There was a mass for her in the morning and the cremation would happen at 12nn. I had work to do in the morning so I decided to just take an extended lunch break. When I got there, I ran into my dad who, along with a few other people, was helping Tita Nelia get to the hospital. Apparently, she had collapsed and was now on a wheelchair. I saw her being helped out of Loyola Memorial and words can’t begin to describe the agony and exhaustion that were painted on her face.

There was one upside to this. I saw so many people in my extended family there. I had just missed my mom and Clemence who were there earlier in the morning but so many of my titos, titas, and cousins were there even if it was a workday. It felt great to see the support that my family gives to each other in times of need and difficulty. In fact, my other cousin Charisse was actually celebrating her birthday that day, and despite she was there, crying along with everyone else. By the time the pastor started talking about what was going to happen, I lost it. I think for the entire ceremony I had my handkerchief over my face. They opened the casket for one last viewing and then they proceeded to roll her down to where she would be cremated.

The pastor told us that only immediate family was allowed in the actual cremation area to see Ana before she was actually cremated. But Tita Nelia was in the hospital and that left only Tito Chito there (Ana’s siblings were in the US and both of them were unfortunately unable to come home). So as it turns out, the whole family joined Tito Chito. It must have been the saddest I have felt in a very long time.

This has been the hardest blog post for me to write. And I hope that I don’t have to write anything similar to this anytime soon.

We love you, Ana! And may the Lord bless your beautiful soul.