- race day -

jeni's cousin - danny - is here for a scooter olympics ... the first set of games are being held in A13 parking lot near 101 ... that is just a stone's throw away from where we live .. so, we decided to pay him a visit ... but before we got there, being the weird people that we are, we just have to goof around a little ...

it was the first time that chireh and i saw a racer in full gear ... so we just can't pass up the opportunity to have a picture taken ... and just like doting fans ... chireh and i felt giddy - really giddy ... down to our toes ... you know, the "hihihi" reaction ... like blushing teen fans seeing a popstar ...

and here's danny in all his glory ...

so after all that excitement, since the weather is fine and it's turning out to be a great night, we decided to indulge on starbucks ... i know, not much indicative of starbucks in these pictures ... just our fab faces : )

our night didn't end just yet .... we still went to tonghua night market, walked around the 101 area and leisurely ended our day at the sun-yat set memorial hall (http://www.yatsen.gov.tw/english/)

ooppsss, before i forget - our hangtime near the world trade center ... the idea was to twist in the air ... see below how we did : )

- and my bertdi celebration continues -

at around 6am this morning, i heard some distant pounding coming from somewhere ... jeni checked it out so i decided to ignore it already ... a few minutes later, farfetch came inside the room and said to me - "nde ka pinapaaral para gumising ng tanghali!" :D ... that is not verbatim but that's the idea ...

i got another surprise from them!!! we celebrated my bertdi bwekpas together ... pinoy bwekpas ... fried rice, tuyo, salted egg with tomato, hotdog and tocino!

- tuyo (stinky fish to some people but just delicious fish to pinoys)

in the evening, chireh, jeni and i decided to have a barbecue and wine at our rooftop ...

one of the best bertdi celebrations ever!!!

hapi bertdi to me, hapi bertdi to me

hapi bertdi, hapi bertdiiiii

hapi bertdi to me!
yey!!!!

- hapi bertdi to me -

fact, i love balloons ... when i first celebrated my 24th birthday, jeni surprised me with 24 white balloons at home *awwww :P* ....

imagine my surprise and my sheer joy when my fab friends - chireh and farfetch - together with jeni gave me a bunch of balloons ... i got them at around 12mn, nov 21 : ) ... we were still in the office at that time ... paglabas namin, nagpalipad ako ng lobo after making a wish ... ang saya!!!!!!

- me and jeni goofing around with my balloons -

some more goofing around here -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/santos1978/sets/72157594384534264/

- my bertdi celebration, november 18 -

since my 24th bertdi is a week day, i decided to celebrate with my friends earlier ... i invited chireh, farfetch, papa d, may, chris, lily *new found acquaintance through chris and may* and of course, jeni to have dinner at this thai-japanese restaurant near chunghsiao fushing ... the resto's name is lacuz (http://www.lacuz.com.tw/ginanfirst.html) ... all you can eat thai resto ... they have 2 options - 38-dish menu or 65-dish menu ... they also have barbecue ... we opted for the 38-dish menu ... and it was soooooooo filling ... and the food was fine, too! ... we got shrimp cake, papaya salad, beef salad, coconut chicken, beef curry, shrimp roll and the list goes on and on and on ...

tonie gave me my cake and i got my gifts and i got my friends' wishes for me! *which almost made me cry :P*
some pictures from the celebration ...

-blowing my cake, oil painted -

- eating my cake, through chireh's fisheye camera -

- hmmmm -

- pekyu!!!, november 19 -

we learned from tita jan that manny pacquiao will have a match with erik morales today ... we tried finding a coverage via our cable but to no avail ... sooo, we decided to haul our arses to the pinoy store near yuanshan station ... in the bing-go store, there's a not-so-big tv showing the live coverage and where other pinoys were waiting for the pacquiao - morales match to start ... we stood in front of the store for like 2 hours but it was worth it!... pacquiao won in just 3 rounds! ... and it was so much fun watching the fight with other pinoys ... specially when the crowd has the same reaction when pacquiao was pounding morales - "uh, uh, uhm, uhm!" ...

well, part of me was wishing that the fight would reach the 12th round para naman matagal-tagal ang laban ... pero pede na din ... as long as pacquiao won!

more pictures from chireh's flickr page - http://www.flickr.com/photos/santos1978/sets/72157594388119001/

- hapi bertdi ate mean, november 20 -

- sukob (the wedding curse) -

thanks to jeni (who is here for my bertdi celebration, yey!!!!!), chireh and i got to watch sukob (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0757933/) ... no matter what other people are saying about it, taas pa din ang kamay ko kay chito rono ... he wants to create a scary flick and in my opinion, he was uber-successful ...

chireh, jeni and i watched this over lunch of inihaw na tenga, chicharon, sukang pinakurat *which tastes very good, by the way* and dinuguan ... in between eating and watching were shrieks and curses and shrieks from being shocked and scared ...

background muna ... the idea behind "sukob" is that it's bad luck for a wedding if it takes place in the same year as (a) the death of someone in the family or (b) the wedding of a sibling.

the storyline is about sandy (played by kris aquino who imho, still needs to improve her acting skills), an only child who just got married to phil ... right after their wedding, shitty things started happening to her friends, her mom and phil ... they died basically but the weird thing is that their bodies cannot be found ... there's no reason to suspect it was the sukob thingy because nobody in their families died before the wedding and sandy was an only child ... and then they thought that their neighbor, helen - whose marriage was also cursed because of reason (a) - was haunting sandy ...

now in one of the barrios in the philippines, the same thing is happening to this character whose name i can't remember but was played by claudine barretto (as always, her acting was stellar) ... her husband, mom and sister died and their bodies can't be found as well ...

as it turned out, sandy's father has another family in the barrios whom he abandoned years before ... need i explain more?????

so, what did i like about this movie ... the twist was new and original ... first time that the concept of sukob (as far as i know) was used for a horror flick ... chito rono did use the cheesy "uber-white" ghosts - which seems to be the rave in current horror films especially the asian ones - but he capitalized on the element of surprise ... so his ghosts became scary ... and even if the ring is so much scarier - sukob still made me want to stay in my room huddled in one corner ...

- hoodwinked hard candy -

i watched two movies recently ... the first one is hard candy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424136/) ... 2 words for this one ... gripping and disturbing ... in a nutshell, it's about a kid who tortured a pedophile ... hmmm, i think that sums up the main idea of the film ... sounds simple and boring but brian nelson (film's writer) did a very, very awesome job in making it extraordinary ... i was at the edge of my seat until the end of the flim! ... at taas ang kamay ko kay ellen page who played the kid ... she was cute and scary - at the same time ... exactly how she did that? better watch the film ...

next is hoodwinked (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443536/) ... an animation about stolen recipes in the forest and the search for whoever was stealing them ... the suspects were red riding hood, her granny, the big bad wolf and a woodsman ... they gave their versions of the story ... that part i really liked - it was funny ... but after that, i kinda lost interest in the movie ... i started watching it with my one eye closed ... anyway, as it turned out, the recipe bandit wasn't any of the four ... it was this bunny and his posse ... is it just me or is my description making the movie sound boring???? ... in fairness, it's not ... it has its funny moments - pramises ... the trivia here is that the animation was made by filipinos! ... ok, it was subpar compared to what pixar and disney are making ... just look at the hair of the characters specially red ... but i find the animation cute in a semi clay-like manner ... hoodwinked is not something that i will watch over and over again like shrek or spirited away ... pero worth it namang panoorin ng isang beses : )

- flying cow ranch -
(a long overdue entry)

papa d and farfetches are part of an asian studies group sponsored by papa d's school ... last november 4, the group went on a trip to a place they call flying cow ranch (http://www.flyingcow.com.tw/en/fcr_en.html) ... chireh and i were invited ... buti na lang!!!!

why flying cow? chireh read somewhere that the flying is related to the butterflies that are in the ranch while somebody from the asian studies group said that it was just a translation error ... well, whatever the motivation is for the name "flying cow" doesn't really matter ... all i can say is that the place is very, very beautiful ... post-card perfect ...

- making my mama proud -

did i ever mention that when i was younger *i personally think i'm still young :P*, time and again, my mom would ask me to dance to this arabian song? i didn't really know how to do it ... but my mom loved it!... i can still remember the beat ... i can still remember the cover of the disc ... etong disc na 'to e yun pang pagkalaki-laki na kulay itim ha ...

and now, i'm back to studying belly dancing ... even if it's a little different, i think my mom would still love it ... i sure hope she's watching ...

- on losing my mom -

jeni and i were chatting when she asked me if i looked like my mom ... i thought for a moment and i said something like this - "nde ata ... kamuka ko ata ang mama at papa ko ... ay ewan ko" .... and then i started describing my mom - "maputi kasi si mama e ... tas ang ilong nun, maliit ... tas kulot ang buhok ... baket nga ba nde ko nakuha ang kulay ng mama ko?" ... and then i started crying ...

utterly weird and surreal ...

my mom died almost 7 years ago ... 10 days shy of my ate mean's birthday ... 11 days shy of mine ... it was so sudden ...

i was in my first month in US ... doing tek supot ... while i was there, i call home almost every week ... i do it every friday - some time after i wrap-up my last call for the week ... for some reason, i felt calling on a wednesdi ... and for the first time, i wasn't able to reach anyone from my family ... i started to worry ... i asked my boypren at that time to help me reach my sister, my brother, my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law .. anybody ... i later learned from him that they were all asked to go to our province ... no explanation given ... i started crying ... i don't know why but i just felt like crying ...

that night, i received a call from my bespren grace ... she gave me a number to call for my family ... no explanation given ... i just realized now, how come i didn't even suspect anything???

i woke up at around 5am tarsdi, US time ... i called the number ...

i need to digress a little .. at that time, nagpapa-kyut ako dito sa isang guy sa opis and a few weeks back, i sent an e-mail to my ate mean telling her all about it ...

going back, so i called ... ate mean answered ... she didn't talk much ... which was weird ... my ate mean and i ... we can talk about anything and we can talk for hours ... so that - was weird but silly me *or stupid me???* ... i still didn't have a clue! *what was up with that* ... she passed the phone to my dad who started scolding me about this guy from the office .. i thought, "pinatawag ako para pagalitan *kamot ulo*" ... and then he moved on to the next topic of our conversation ... tinanong ako ni papa, "anak kung ako ba o si mama ay mamamatay, uuwi ka?" ... i don't know if was so naive at that time or i was just a plain idiot - wala pa din akong idea ... nothing - absolutely nothing ... i thought for a while and i said, "pedeng nde ... may trabaho e" ... so si papa, he was making sounds na parang nag-a-agree telling me na "ok yan .. praktikal ka anak ... and then he said this line that i will never, ever forget - "kasi anak, ang mama mo, patay na" ... being the weird person that i am, i answered: "nde nga?" *ang tono ko nyan para akong nagsabi ng "talaga???" na parang nang-uurat lang yung kausap ko at gusto kong mag-confirm* ... i don't remember anymore what other things my dad told me ... what i do remember was i was talking and bawling and talking and bawling ... though not at the same time ... yup, i am weird ...

i still worked that day ... i fielded support calls to take my mind off things ... but every once in a while, i had to go offline to either cry silently while sitting there at my cube or to go to the restroom to pour my heart out ... i didn't want to depress the people around me ... that night, i went back to PH to see my mama one last time ...

looking back, i remember only bits and pieces ... about my trip back ... about the funeral ... i think the first thing that i did when i arrived at my aunt's house kung san nakaburol si mama was pumasok ako sa kuwarto, umupo ako sa floor at umiyak ... nilapitan ako ng ate ko tas ngumawa lang kami ... tas pumasok si papa sa kuwarto tas sabi nya sa akin," tignan mo si mama mo" ... something like that i think ...

i was telling jeni, it's funny how things like that happen ... it has been a while since i last thought of my mom that way ... i do think of her ... lalo na when i was having a lot of issues in my life ... iniisip ko - "sana andito ang mama ko" ... but today was different ... i actually looked back and thought of her ... yung muka nya ... yung mga duster na suot nya .. yung itsura nya habang nakaupo sha sa lamesa nya sa bahay, pag kumakain kami, pag nag-go-grocery kami ... lahat ...

i guess i just miss her ...