Shiny

I missed last weeks' photo hunt for hair. I was supposed to post the different "hair styles" my daughter since she was a year old up to the present. But I was out of town last week. I'm supposed to be in a mini-vacation right now with my family in a hotel somewhere in the metropolis but I squeezed in a few minutes to post. :)

Here's my share for this week's theme on Shiny. My daughter's got a lovely, shiny hair. She got it from her father. My hair is so hard to maintain whereas my daughter's, it's a breeze. Normally, Filipinos have black hair but my daughter and her father has brown-black. Well, that saves her from hair highlights when she reaches the age when beauty salon beckons. :)

Lakbayan

My Lakbayan grade is C!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out atLakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.

Got this Lakbayan survey from various blogs. I took the survey four times, weeded out most "just passing through" answers. It's till A+. With Mr. Eugene's comment below, I checked and my booboo, I got them in reverse. Now I'm at ease with my score. Mostly I've been in Northern Luzon and the Visayas. A few places in the south and Bukidnon and Davao in Mindanao. I am in love with the Philippines. Why not? I may not love everything about this country but this is a beautiful place. There are lots of places to see and admire. My trips are both work-related and family vacations. If I may say, it's invigorating to get out of the metropolis once in a while and breathe a different air and see the greeneries.

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I was in the far north last week. It was my first time to try a grill house for lunch somewhere along the highway of Nueva Ecija. I always check out whatever local place we can try whether it's famous or not, both for dining and recreation. If my husband's main goal in going out of town is to rest, for me it's it's the excitement of discovering and exploring the places we go to.

My colleagues and I had lunch at Magellan's Grill before leaving N.E. and head to Isabela via the steep and zigzaggy road of Dalton Pass. The road here is referred to as "bituka ng manok" (chicken intestines) since it is shaped like that. That's how curved the pass is.

The eating place is simple, clean enough for our appreciation. The native motif looks nice too. The food is better than in fast foods. I like their pinaputok na plapla. Delicious. I don't know how to prepare this one. Think popcorn...that's how the plapla is served - inside a bloated aluminum foil placed in a sizzling plate. The novelty of it is in the opening of the foil using a knife. The smell of a well-cooked fish with onions, tomatoes, spices gets out of the foil which makes you salivate and devour the plapla at once.

Some pictures of the grill house. They can do away with the plastic cover which serves as table mats.

Happy Father's Day!

I haven't been blogging for a week. The only thing I did was to make a quick change on my template, more like copy and paste this generic blogger template. I have missed my photo hunt for the week. I was not able to go around the blogs I usually visit. Schedule is very tight now that school for my daughter started. I have been "juggling" my time with work and home chores and in-between these are other chores for the different hats I wear. I am not complaining. We just have to do what we have to do. Boy, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day are not enough. We all know that, don't we?

It's Father's Day today! Happy Dad's Day to my husband who is so patient and supportive of me and a very loving father to our daughter. He is the perfect guy for us, his girls. :) Happy Papa's Day too to my father who is one of my inspirations and role model (together with my mother) since I was a child. Whenever I start to feel down, I just remember all the things my Papa did (and still doing) for his family - providing us with love and care no matter what. I love these two great men in my life with all my heart and soul - my husband and my father. God bless the two of you everyday! And I thank God for letting me be a great part of your lives too. :)

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We watched Fantastic Four at the new mall, Trinoma, and had dinner afterwards. That's how we spent this day. This mall is like the new craze in Mega Manila. It's not even 100% filled up and yet, people just pour in like this is the first mall in this part of the country. We spent maybe fifteen minutes just looking for parking. We ended up at the rooftop. No choice. My husband normally don't want to park in an open space. Avoid the rain, avoid too much sun, those are one of his guidelines in giving our mode of transport TLC. :)

Today is their peakest I guess. All the restaurants are in "waiting" mode. We wanted to have dinner at Crustasia, one of our favorite restaurants. We waited for twenty minutes to have a seat, and another fifteen minutes for our food to think we already placed our order while we were waiting. In fairness, the food is delicious and the managers and crews are attentive and apologetic for the long waiting time. There's free iced tea too. "Small" things like these are appreciated specially when customers feel that the team is doing their best to make the service faster.

Vietnamese Seafood Paella
My daughter had her chicken wrapped in pandan leaves while me and my husband had our favorite Vietnamese Seafood Paella. This is the best so far. It's very creamy that even without the seafoods, the rice can stand on its own as a single order. I just wasn't able to get a good picture of it since the hubby wants to eat already. Enough of the picture taking while on the dining table. Haha. Okay, okay.

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I love reviewing films, whatever film I have watched. But have to postpone my own take for Fantastic Four. This woman need to sleep now. As always, I'm the last to sleep in this house. :)

Have a great week ahead!

Six Weird Things and an Interview

The first meme was a tag from Salen. Here are some "unique" things about me. :)

Six Weird Things About Me

1. I keep the DVD of Prison Break in my laptop's disc drive all the time. Anytime that I want to take a peek of any of the episodes (or should I say Wentworth Miller), I can. Anytime. I guess this is not weirdness but an obsession. Haha!

2. I love chocolate cake but I have to have something salty with it. Like potato chips or fries. Here's a proof. Had some snack at Chocolat. Since there are no chips sold at the said restaurant, I asked my husband if he can buy me some chips or fries from any of the stores nearby.



3. Listening to music is quite an extreme activity for me. There are times I don't finish a whole song. I go to the next song even before it's finished. I can't even stay put on a radio station. I keep on station surfing until I find a song that I like. And if there's nothing that I like, I play a cd but then I skip songs and listen only to the songs that I like, sometimes over and over. I guess my daughter Andz got this habit. :) This goes on usually in the car on the way to work. The hubby gave up asking me to stop this.

4. I love the smell of new books, notebooks and magazines. I go to my favorite bookstore to take time to browse on the pages of a particular book before I buy it. As I browse, I can't help but smell the pages also, well discreetly. Hehe.

5. I love watching horror movies but it gets into me. I can't sleep properly for a few days.

6. I text someone and right after sending it, I find myself calling the person to get a faster response. This is being impatient I guess. Guilty as charged.

I will be tagging some bloggers after checking if they haven't done this yet. :)

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The interview of one blogger to another has been going on in blogs. I wanted to join the fun so I asked Julie to send me questions. Here they are:

1. If you were to choose your fate, would you choose the life you have now or would have rather have a different life? Please explain.
I would still choose my life now mainly because I would like to have the same family. They're the best. My life too is generally good, great even throughout the years. With setbacks, yes, but nothing that God cannot handle for me. :) But to be realistic about it, I will edit the things that I should have not done in the first place especially when I was still a teenager and choose do the right and sensible things.

2. I know that you treasure your only daughter. What if one day she tells you that someone from school is bullying her, teasing and calling her names. What would you do?
*I will not go on a rampage but I will empathize with my daughter.
*I will get all the details so I can have a good reading of what is happening.
*I will also tell her bullying is not right but definitely, retaliation is out of the question.
*I will tell her I am going to do something about it. I believe it is important that a child knows you are listening to what he/she is telling and if there is something that needs to be done, he/she has to know one way or another. Like adults, I believe children also don't want to be kept in the dark. The assurance should always be there that whatever they are saying are important.
*Definitely I will inform the teacher so he/she will be extra observant of the students' behavior.
*I will teach or help my daughter how to "counter" bullying. I will tell her to seek help from her teacher or an adult when someone is bullying her.
*But the best "shield" I believe is to support my daughter's confidence level so she can face up with the bullying in school. This is not about hitting back or doing the same thing, definitely not. But having that confidence even as a child will definitely serve her as bully-proof. :)

Let me also say that when our child is bullied, we should also check why they are being bullied. Is it lack of social skills? Is it being poor academically? We just have to get to it further to correct them the soonest possible time.

3. If you were to choose a "perfect vacation" for your family, where and what would it be?
The U.S., either in California or Las Vegas. My whole family is there, my parents and my sister and brother. I just want us all to be together again. That would be a great vacation!

4. What charity or community or organization would you be willing to support? Why?
In my own little way, I have supported several organizations that take care of our old, our young, our single mothers. Participated even in Gawad Kalinga. But there are these organizations I have been looking at and wanting to be a part of actively but one at a time. What's the most doable for me is to get involved in Children's Hour (which is affiliated I believe with UNICEF).

5. If you were to put up your own restaurant, what kind of cuisine would you be serving? Why?
I used to be in the Food Industry. The most lucrative really is the fastfood - burgers, quick fix value meals, the like. But personally, I will go for Italian cuisine and a cake shop. I love pasta and I love baking! :)

Shoes

It's photo hunt time. I thought I wouldn't make it. Had a lot of errands to do today and the past days. But will I ever miss my weekly photo posting? Nope. :)

Shoes is the theme. I love shoes. I have so many shoes, and it follows that it's the same thing with my only daughter. I love buying her shoes, all kinds. And I am a pack rat kind of mom when it comes to my daughter's things. I kept almost everything she used when she was a baby.

Like this one...presenting the shoes she used on her first birthday, a yellow Sesame Street shoes featuring Big Bird. Her first stuffed toy was also Big Bird. :)




Not even the toes fit now. Of course, my daughter's going nine years old already this year. :)

Dona Nobis Pacem

A Tale For All Seasons
by Kurt Kauter

"Tell me the weight of a snowflake," a cola-mouse asked a wild dove.

"Nothing more than nothing," was the answer.

"In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story," the coal-mouse said.

"I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow-not heavily, not in a raging blizzard-no, just like a dream, without a sound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say-the branch broke off."

Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.

The dove, since Noah's time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to herself, "Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for peace to come to the world."

*****This is Mimi's site for Peace.

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Be the change you want to see in the world so goes my favorite quote. Tough, idealistic, eyebrow-raising...maybe. But have great faith and a great deal of conviction, it can be done. Little things that matter, little things that can help our house, our office, our school, our community become a better place to live in will surely inspire others to do the same things. What goes around, comes around. Let's take this positively too. :)

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I love this song, All You Need is Love. When love abounds, peace reigns.

It's 2AM

I'm halfway through my Life Book, a paper for my Leadership class. Since there is no format and this is about my life, it's not really hard to do. The thing is it will be hard to stop once you get started on a certain chapter.

It's 2am. I need something to keep me awake. I'm too lazy at this point to get me some coffee. Let me just run down here some random thoughts that excites me to keep me awake.

LE CHING!!!! There is Le Ching at Trinoma! I am so happy about this. I don't know if I have just been hiding under a rock all this time but there is only one Le Ching I know, the one in Greenhills. Why am I so happy about this? I live near the mall and Le Ching's beef brisket is one of the foods I sorely miss.

Must watch this, Transformer the Movie. I only watched Voltes V and Mazinger Z when I was a child. I did not fancy much of the other robot-filled cartoons so I am not sure if this Transformer is any good. My husband is raving about the trailer and he let me watch it. I'd say it looks pretty exciting. The trailer at the official site is a lot longer and better. 747, That's the date of the premiere showing.


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While waiting for hubby this afternoon, my daughter Andz and I had some snack at Figaro. As usual, I had a photo-op. My daughter is so used to me doing this camera-clicking wherever, whenever. Looking at her picture after I've downloaded it from my camera, I told myself, "My, my. She's not a baby anymore. She seems all grown up". Time flies so fast. My baby is a big, big girl now. At this moment, I just want to sleep beside my big little girl.

Art

Dos Palmas by night. This is such a wonderful place. It's as if you don't want to leave the place. Nature is God's work of art. And the talents He gave to the brilliant architects and engineers of this place are obviously put into good use.


Inside the island. They peppered the place with glaring lights. This is one of my unforgettable trips. I mentioned in my Water Photo Hunt entry that this is where I experienced our boat stopped in the middle of the deep blue sea for ten minutes. It felt like forever. But the island is just gorgeous. The island resort is located in Palawan, northwest of its capital, Puerto Princesa. It is one of the sixteen islands nestled in the waters of Honda Bay. If you are into diving, this place is great for you. One can do a lot of sporting activities here or just sit back and marvel at the place with its breathtaking view.

*I did not take this picture but a friend of mine did. I just asked for a copy because I couldn't resist the beautiful shots he did. Please click the pictures if you may for better appreciation. :)