Gotta do better than this..

0-0 against Swansea. That's not good. Liverpool are currently 6th place in the Barclays Premier League table. While I'm still a fan (you'll never walk alone!), it's been tough to be a Liverpool supporter these last few years, when a top 4 finish has no longer been a given. I'm hoping they can find their form soon and start winning more matches - including their next big fixture against Chelsea on November 20.

Broccoli, Walnut, and Mushroom

Oh man, this is crude but it made me laugh. :)

photo from Pictures and Jokes

Kvitova wins the WTA year-end champioships

Petra Kvitova definitely has the makings of a future #1 and multiple slam winner. She showed her wares earlier this year when she took out Maria Sharapova in the Wimbledon final for her first Grand Slam title. And despite a lackluster performance during the American hardcourt season (which is surprising, because her power hitting is perfect for faster courts), she backed up that first Slam title by besting the rest of the top players and winning the WTA year-end championships. Way to go!

Kvitova is now ranked #2 and is only a few points behind Caroline Wozniacki. Both of them have won 6 tournaments this year but Kvitova did win Wimbledon and won the 5th biggest tournament of the year so has a claim to being this year's best female tennis player. A strong showing early in the year could give her the top spot. We know she has the goods. The only question is if she has the desire. I hope she does. And I hope she starts winning more titles and more slams and gets to #1.

Free Starbucks: 2 in a row

It's been a while since I got lucky one of those free tall-beverage lucky receipts that are randomly generated when you make a purchase in Starbucks. I think it's been about 2 years since my last free coffee.

Well, just this last week, I bought coffee in Starbucks - I must have been the last customer of the day since that Starbucks was about to close as I rushed in - and just as the cashier punched in my order, a really long receipt came out of the register. Free coffee on my next visit! Cool. :)

So what's cooler than free coffee? How about two of them? I claim my free coffee a few days later and the day after that, I get another coffee in Starbucks. Guess what? I get another free coffee receipt. Wow! So I don't get any free coffees in a couple of years then in a span of a week, I get two of them. Not bad!

(An attempt at) exercising at home

I work Europe shift most of the time, so by the time I'm done working, the gym I go to is already closed. I could in theory exercise before going to work, but I am often exhausted by the time I hit the sack so I normally wake up just in time to rush to my first meeting at work. Hence, no more trips to the gym for me. Not good!

So I've looked into youtube to give me a couple of quick workout options at home. For a high intensity full body work-out, check out the burpee:


video uploaded in youtube by charliejames1975

Given my current stress levels, I figured some basic yoga might also be helpful. Esther Ekhart has a series of yoga-for-beginners videos (I find her voice to be incredibly soothing). I've tried doing following her yoga-for-beginners parts 1 and 2 and you do break into a sweat even with the basic stuff. Here's her part 1 video:


video uploaded in youtube by user yogatic

Hopefully I can manage to go through either exercise on a regular basis.

Federer drops to #4

It has been more than 8 years - back in 2003 - since Roger Federer was not ranked in the top 2. However, the rise of Novak Djokovic this year shook things up in the tennis world, knocking both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal out of the top spot. With Rafa winning the French Open and getting to the finals of Wimbledon and the US Open, he has produced enough solid results to keep him at #2. Which means Roger dropped to #3.

What I didn't see coming was Andy Murray's own surge that took him to #3 in the rankings. He lost his way a bit early in the year after losing to Novak in the Australian Open. But he found his form quickly enough and managed to reach the semifinals in the remaining three slams (losing to Rafa in all of them). While he hasn't broken through in a slam just yet, Murray took advantage of the top 3 slowing down during the Asian swing and won 3 tournaments - in Thailand, Japan, and China. It was this last win in the Shanghai Masters that pushed him past Federer in the rankings and securing a #3 ranking. Roger Federer at #4? That's definitely not something we are used to seeing, but I guess it was bound to happen at some point.

Trying to make the world a better place, one tree at a time

It was only a couple of years ago when I attended my first tree-planting activity. Since then, I've co-organized two of them at work, the more recent one happening this October.

The one I co-organized last year had about 50 volunteers. This year, we were hoping to have 150 but almost half backed out so instead we ended up with close to 80 participants. While it isn't as good as what we initially set out to achieve, it's still a bigger activity than the one we had last year.

We partnered yet again with Haribon Foundation for this event. When we got to the venue, Haribon gave us a brief overview of their ROAD to 2020 program. Tanay, Rizal has become a prime tree planting spot ever since Ondoy because Tanay and its nearby areas were significantly impacted by the Ondoy floods. Of course, given how hilly Tanay is, it made for an interesting trek from our assembly point to the actual tree planting area.

Before we started, a guide gave us instructions on how we should plant the seedlings. This was a lot more physically challenging than last year's event because the heat in the days leading up to our activity left the soil very dry and hard so we needed to crumble them with our hands (or even pound the tough soil with rocks or our shoes) before putting them back into the holes in which we placed the seedlings. The degree of difficulty of course made this activity even more rewarding for the volunteers.

Thankfully, we didn't have to dig holes into the ground. Haribon had already ensured that the holes were prepared and the trees placed right next to each hole. Bamboo markers were placed right next to each hole to make it easy for us to spot them. We gently remove the plastic bag that the seedling had been placed in, put it into the hole, and add soil into the hole to make the ground more or less level and ensure that the tree is stable. Once this is done, the plastic bag from which we took the seedling will be stuck onto the bamboo marker. This will help Haribon identify which trees had been planted so they can take good care of them and ensure proper seedling maintenance and cleaning.

We were supposed to plant 2000 trees that day and we were more than halfway when we were told that we needed to pack it up because rain clouds were approaching. And true enough, a few minutes later, the rains fell. It wasn't heavy rain but it was enough to drench us moderately on our trek back to our buses. By the time we got back into our buses, the rains had abated but the trail was now too slippery. So our tree planting activity officially came to and end. We still managed to take a few more post-rain photos...

While we may not have successfully planted out goal of 2,000 seedlings because our work was rudely interrupted by rain, it was still a very successful event with the volunteers being pleased about the experience. And heck, 1,000+ trees is nothing to sneeze at! We are planning an even bigger activity next year so I can't wait for that. :)

Ethan and Jenna out

Nineteen seasons in and I'm still a fan of The Amazing Race. Possibly the most high profile team to join this year's contest is the tandem of Ethan and Jenna. Both of them won their respective seasons of Survivor (Ethan won Africa and Jenna won The Amazon) and have since become a couple. Ethan has been very open to the public about his battle with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a type of cancer and I was hoping that he and Jenna would do well in The Amazing Race.

Unfortunately, despite finishing 4th in the first leg (which turned out to be a non-elimination one), they ended up placing 10th out of 11 in the next leg. While that is normally a good thing, in this case, the bottom two teams were eliminated. So just like that, Ethan and Jenna's run comes to an end.

It would have been great for the two of them to stay in the show a lot longer and share the unique experience of traveling the world and being exposed to different cultures. In any case, I do hope that Ethan eventually wins his battle with cancer and that he and Jenna continue to have a wonderful post-Survivor (and now post-Amazing Race) life together.

Get well soon, Adele!

This is bad news. Adele is suffering from a vocal cord hemorrhage which has led her to cancel the rest of her 2011 tour dates. This will allow her to rest her vocal cords and hopefully get her voice back in shape.

Hope Adele gets better soon. It would be such a loss to the global music industry if we don't get to hear her sing soon.

Jenson Button wins the Japanese Grand Prix

Congratulations to Jenson Button for winning the Japanese Grand Prix! He didn't start in pole position but managed to take top honors, besting Fernardo Alonso and Sebastian Vettel. This was a tough race, with only 2 seconds separating the top 3 drivers.

After Button's banner year in 2009 when he drove for the now-defunct Brawn GP, I thought he would never really figure prominently in races again. And given that he is driving for McLaren with the very high profile Lewis Hamilton, I also figured he would end up playing second fiddle to the 2008 Formula One World Champion for the most part. However, after 2009, he was able to win two races last year and three more this year (he also won in Canada and Hungary). He's eclipsed Lewis in most races this year - despite the fact that Lewis has done a better job in qualifying - and he finished in the podium in 9 out of 15 races so far. That puts him in a solid position to end up in 2nd place this year (Sebastian Vettel has just been driving on a completely different plane from everyone else this year). Hopefully, JB can continue to drive well and win more races for the remainder of his career.

Kathy and John's wedding

Kathy is one of the most interesting people and unique individuals I know. So when she got married to John (actually, she got married to him in Holland earlier but they of course needed to have a Philippine leg of their wedding for the folks here who couldn't fly to Europe), it was no surprise that their wedding would be different and very memorable.

First off, Kathy's wedding dress wasn't your traditional white gown. It was a take on the traditional Filipino 'terno' complete with butterfly sleeves. Also, similar to her sister Ching's wedding (Ching is also a really good friend of mine), the UP Singing Ambassadors performed during the church ceremony as well as during dinner. Their performance in the small chapel overlooking the Taal lake was just otherworldly so we had to force ourselves not to clap since it was a church ceremony and not a concert. Yet.

The most unique bit though was when everyone was asked to step outside the chapel for the traditional group photos with the newlyweds. Instead of doing it at the altar, we had it next to a specially decorated jeepney! The couple even asked those of us who could to go on top of the jeepney. This was really one of the most unique moments ever in a wedding that I attended.

photo courtesy of Joel H. Garcia

We headed to the clubhouse for the reception. We were served drinks and cake as we waited for dinner to be served. Dessert before the meal? Only in Kathy's wedding. :) I have to say though that the cake was absolutely delicious! It was so good I was tempted to eat a lot more but I needed to make room for the main meal. :) The cake-cutting ceremony actually happened before the reception officially started. The wedding cake was in the shape of a ship out at sea, to commemorate the place where John and Kathy met for the first time. Before the took a slice out of it, they lit the sparkler attached to one end of the cake. Cool! Champagne was served as the wedding toast was done shortly after the cake was cut. We were then asked to head to our tables as the program commenced.

After a couple of very heartfelt speeches, we were asked to get food from the massive buffet. Every item in the buffet was amazing and I just truly wished I had three stomachs so I could eat a lot more food. And on top of the cake I had earlier, there now was a huge spread of other desserts. Given that John is Dutch, the buffet had a few European-themed items like Hungarian Goulash and Sacher Torte. My mouth is watering as I think back to those great items. Free-flowing wine was served to the guests and the waiters even left a bottle on each table.

The UP Singing Ambassadors performed for the crowd yet again, and this time we didn't hold back on the applause. A few people, including myself, even gave them a standing ovation once their performance was done. They sang a stirring rendition of Sunrise, Sunset (from Fiddler on the Roof) for the father-daughter dance and it was moving to see both Kathy and her dad very emotional. The choreographed first dance almost didn't happen as John ended up with a knee problem from all the kneeling he had to do in church but they managed to do it. Probably one of the most memorable moments during the wedding was the speech given by Kathy's yaya. I swear, Kathy's yaya gave one of the best speeches in a wedding I have heard. Part roast, part tribute, it had all the elements of a great speech. And it was delivered very naturally. (I actually started thinking about my own Mama Guading as I listened to Kathy's yaya speak...)

The reception ended at around 9pm (and I was so tempted to ask to take home leftovers haha). Some of the folks there were planning to head out for more drinks but it was a Sunday and I had work the next day so I had to beg off. Regardless, it really wasa truly memorable of two great people. Congratulations, Kathy and John!

Joint birthday dinners with friends

Three different sets of friends. Three different sets of joint birthday celebrations.

The first one was with my high school circle of friends (the one I've had for the longest time). Michele's birthday is four days ahead of mine so every year for several years, we've celebrated together. Michele said that Iona wanted to have a good steak so she suggested Mamou. However, I had three discount vouchers for Marciano's which I recently purchased for birthday celebration purposes and since Marciano's also had steaks, I suggested it instead. Michele said she had never eaten there before but had been wanting to so our venue was set. Given that Anna and Lia are both not Manila-based anymore, the rest of the gang and their families who are in the country were all present: Michele, Fergus, Aidan and Rory; Iona, JP, and Aya; and Joyce (she didn't bring Trigo with her). We ended up over-ordering since Aidan and Rory apparently had eaten a bit and Ferg didn't stay with us for most of dinner because he wanted to catch the Liverpool-Everton derby which was on that night (he ended up spending most of the evening in National Sports Grill). I took home all the leftovers but I do have to say the food and selection in Marciano's is pretty good, and the portion sizes can definitely fill you up.

A week later, I had a joint birthday celebration with Bett and Chari. Both of them have birthdays in October but since our circle of friends from the first company I worked for still meet up every few months, we ended up with the tradition of celebrating our birthdays together. Jette lives far up north and has difficulty going home so we usually have dinner somewhere in the QC area to make it easier for her to commute home even late in the evening. As such, we picked Romulo's in the Tomas Morato area as our celebration venue. Ric and Lany (and Bett's husband Pikes) joined us. I've blogged about Romulo's before and I really do enjoy the food here. Plus, the service and ambience are great. The only problem that night was that they ran out of a lot of dessert items, including their Lava Rock chocolate dessert. I ended up getting cheesecake instead while my friends got the crispy suman sa latik.

The next day, I celebrated my birthday with my co-Yaminoys Anj and Meg. Emmy suggested that we have dinner in Zao in Serendra and since Anj and Meg had no objections to this resto, we ended up celebrating there. It had been several months since I was out with my Yaminoy friends so it was great to see them. Joining Meg, Anj, and myself that night were Emmy, Marie, Lea, Beck, and Eliza. Unfortunately, Yam and Belle were out of the country and Fred was in Davao so they couldn't join us. Apart from catching up, our conversations that evening inevitably covered a lot of entertainment-related topics such as reality TV and TV shows in general, concerts, musicals, and artists and celebrities. And how could this be a Yaminoy without talking about Elliott Yamin? He released another album earlier this year - Gather 'Round - which is sold exclusively in Japan. I don't have that album, but I did get a copy of his previous (non-holiday) album Fight for Love. It contains what I think is his best song to date, "Know Better". Check it out!


uploaded in youtube by user Abliga8

X Factor USA: Stacy Francis sings 'Summertime'

Ten seasons of American Idol have past and I still believe that Fantasia's performance of Summertime back in season 3 is one of the best moments in AI history. However, this performance of Stacy Francis of the same song on X-Factor USA just blows my mind. What a voice!


video uploaded in youtube by user ArtistsOnline2

The range, the control, the power, and the emotion make this absolutely extraordinary. Factor in the back-story of how her father died the first day she arrived at X Factor bootcamp and you can see exactly why her performance was so emotionally charged. She was flat in a couple of those unbelievably high notes but really, it wasn't all that relevant. I hope Stacy Francis makes it far in the show.

Going through my Ipod part 2

In August of last year, I decided to start listening to every song in my ipod (read about part 1 here). There are currently 5212 songs in it. (I've purchased several CDs since then that I haven't added to my ipod yet.) More than a year later, I have yet to listen to everything at least once. While you'd think that I should already be done by now, I guess I don't get to listen to my ipod all that much now. My schedule over the last year has been peppered with meetings so not much chance to work while listening to music.

I'm currently on song # 4,506 which means I still have about 700 songs to go. By my count, that's about 35 hours of listening left. My upcoming trip to Korea should trim that down by at least 10 hours. I'm pretty sure that I should be able to go through my entire playlist before the end of the year. :)

Birthday gifts

Every year, my birthday wishlist consists of CDs or DVDs. This year, I wanted only one CD. Since a lot of my friends were asking for my wishlist but I didn't really have any, I ended up getting a bit of a mix of gifts. Some of the stuff I got:

• Power Hits 2011. It's the only CD I wanted to get and my best friend decided to get it for me because he feels I need to update my ipod with more recent music LOL. It includes 'Super Bass' by Nicki Minaj, 'Telling the world' by Taio Cruz, and 'Party Rock Anthem' by LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett and Goonrock. I've been listening to this CD over and over again.

• Torta Delos Reyes. One of my favorite desserts (you can get it from Aristocrat).
  

• Wine. I got three different bottles of red wine. Perfect because I sometimes tend to open a bottle at home and drink a glass or two before going to bed. I don't drink the whole bottle in one sitting so I keep the rest of the wine in my ref for a few days until I consume it all. I'm sure it doesn't taste as good and the quality is no longer preserved, but since I'm the only one who drinks it, I don't really care. :)

• The Spa Gift card. A few friends pooled their resources together to give me a gift card to The Spa. Definitely something I need right now given my stress level and crazy work hours.

• An Adidas Climacool sports shirt. It's one of those quick drying shirts that are perfect for sports or situations where you expect to sweat a lot, like outreach activities or out-of-town trips.

Pretty cool that a lot of the stuff I got are things I enjoy or will definitely use. This, even without having my traditional wishlist. Thanks to my family and friends!

An afternoon in John and Yoko

I have saved a lot on my birthday this year because of all those restaurant discounts that I purchased from online deal sites. I decided to celebrate with my family in John and Yoko in Greenbelt 5. I love this resto and got a few discount vouchers there. I was initially thinking this wouldn't be enjoy a meal with my family because my grandparents aren't really adventurous when it comes to food but I realized that John and Yoko has a very wide menu that features a lot of teppanyaki items which I am sure everyone would enjoy.

Since I was ordering for everyone, I decided to pick a few items that I had been wanting to try there, such as the Salmon Wasabi Cream Sauce (or in Sumo Sam; the two restos are owned by Marvin Agustin and they share almost the exact same menu with items priced the same. I think this is just Greenbelt's way of marketing their malls in a way that makes you think that restaurants there are not found anywhere else.) Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, including my grandparents who I was initially concerned about.

I was initially thinking of ordering dessert there but unfortunately they did not have any coffee. So I paid the bill and we headed to Cafe Breton where I got my coffee fix. We also shared a couple of crepes (my grandfather loves mango and he really enjoyed the La Pinay we ordered). We decided to hear mass in Greenbelt since we were already there. It was late afternoon when we headed back home.

It was a really good birthday spent with my family and I'm especially happy that I was able to bring them to a new place that they enjoyed.

The Avengers

I can't wait to see this in May 2012! I hope it lives up to the hype...


uploaded in youtube by user 16dylan2

Baby bottle brush

The plus side of using tumblers when purchasing coffee is that I reduce my use of paper cups. (And before you say that using reusable mugs actually saves trees but wastes water, it is important to note that to produce one paper cup, you actually need not just paper but energy and water as well, so you end up using about the same amount of water washing a tumbler as you do using a paper cup. Check out the sustainability is sexy site for more info on using reusable mugs. But I digress... :))

The flipside is that it's really difficult to wash a tumbler just because you can't get your entire hand in and your fingers are not long enough to reach the base. What I have been doing all this time is using a spoon to force my sponge into the base of the tumbler to clean it. But it's just such a cumbersome process.

I tried looking for a sponge with a handle that I could just slot into the tumbler to clean the base but I couldn't find one. Then, an idea. A baby bottle brush! LOL So I now have a baby bottle brush to clean my reusable tumblers with. Never thought I'd be purchasing baby products for personal use. :)

UP wins the 2011 UAAP Cheerdance competition!

Congratulations to the UP Pep Squad for winning the 2011 UAAP Cheerdance competition! UP has been a top contender in this competition for several years now, winning 7 times (second only to UST's 8 titles). But in all cheerdance performances I have seen over the years, this is truly the one has taken things up a few (several?) notches. Check it out!


video uploaded in youtube by user onnybengan

While a lot of other cheerdances in this year's tournament or even in the past display a similar level of athleticism, UP just leaves everyone behind with their speed which was just absolutely astounding. You haven't caught your breath yet from the awe of one stunt when suddenly the squad is showcasing another breathtaking stunt. It was one 'wow' moment after another. Add that to the uniqueness and difficulty of their routine, and you have a champion that is definitely head and shoulders above the rest of the field.

Congrats, UP! :)

Animal haven

For the last few year - or has it been several already? - we have been taking care of one cat at home. There used to be a lot more of them but we realized we couldn't take care of all of them well enough so my brother gave all but one to a friend of his. My nephews named our cat Petal, and for the most part, she has been our only family pet. Recently, however, my grandparents' dogs gave birth, and both my nephews wanted a puppy each. So now we have Petal the cat and our two dogs, named Cheetah and Wolf.

A couple of weeks ago, as I was parking my car, I saw Petal and was horrified to see that she had a deep, nasty wound in her neck. It was so bad that some of the skin was hanging from her neck. My brother knows a veterinarian so I told him to take our cat to the vet the next day. Unfortunately, it's impossible to keep a stray cat still and with Petal moving in and out of the house, my brother couldn't bring her to see a vet. A week later, Petal's wound was still deep and it didn't look like it was healing. I was deeply worried now that infection would set in and she would die, and while I know that pets do have to die at some point, I just didn't want her to die this way. I immediately drove to a nearby vet to ask them if they did home visits, but they said it would be better for me to bring our cat there since they would most likely have to administer antibiotic through a needle or something, and with our cat always moving in and out of the house, there was no guarantee she would be home if the vet did a house visit.

So I rush to the mall and looked desperately for a cage. I found one in Animal House that cost P1,400 but I couldn't find any other cage so I decided to get it. The next day, my brother texted me while I was at work to say that he was able to bring Petal to the vet. She was sedated and given an antibacterial bath, and the vet prescribed a pretty expensive ointment (the vet said it can also be used for people, actually). When I finally saw Petal a week after, her wound was almost fully healed. Thank God!

I later on found out that my cage helped save the life of one of our puppies and helped the other one get better. It was that same week when we took Petal to the vet that our dogs may have eaten something that caused them to be sick. Cheetah must have eaten more of it because he was a very active dog and one night, he just looked completely despondent, almost near-death. My brother was able to bring Cheetah to the vet as well using my cage and he was given three injections that got him back to full health. Wolf, on the other hand, just seemed to throw up a bit and was given just one injection.

A week or two later, someone dumped a kitten next to our house. As we didn't really have the capacity to take care of another animal (much less keep a newborn kitten away from two dogs that might rip it apart), we kept the kitten in the same cage for a night before my brother brought it to one of his friends.

So while that cage may have cost P1400, the fact that it was used to save the life of two or our pets, helped the other get better, and was used to bring another animal to a place where it would be taken care of, I am happy I bought it and it was well worth every cent.