::. TOO OH OH EIGHT! .::

2008 -- OH WHAT A YEAR INDEED! I never really expected this much to come out of this year coz, although I didn't really believe in horoscopes and stuff, this was supposed to be a bad, bad year for the Horses. Thus, I did not really hold my breath for anything spectacular to happen.

But hey, I think by far, 2008 has been the year wherein I got to travel a lot: I was lucky enough to travel outside the country around the time I just turned 30. We had a conference at Bintan Lagoon Resort in Indonesia (April) so I grabbed the opportunity to go on vacation at Singapore (April/May). Singapore was such a safe non-scary place so I was brave enough to go around the city mostly by myself after my officemates have long gone home to Manila. I was thrilled at the thought of being in another country by myself and it was such a great adventure to me. I loved Singapore! The cabs and food were damn expensive but I splurged on Charles & Keith shoes anyway. I went to Vigan (May) and Boracay (Aug) with my dear high school friends and I've been with my family in Morong, Bataan (June), Laiya, Batangas (June) and Bohol (Nov/Dec).

But the most defining title of 2008 would of course be (hands down, duh!) the year God blessed me with a boyfriend. Not MU chenezes like the Canossa school syndrome ones. My boyfriend CJ. Really. Thirty friggin years, and technically, my first boyfriend! It's about time, God! And so I happily let go of the NBSB title :-) I met him while I was vacationing with friends in Vigan last May -- a trip that was supposed to be in Feb but was postponed to May. WhoWouldveThunk! Blessing in disguise indeedy...

The most controversial personal happening of the year was probably the Twinklekaka Scandal. The pathetic Multiply gal who plagiarized my blog post about my Camiguin vacation last 2007. I hope she has learned how to blog her own thoughts by now :p

I noticed that I have ceased to blog much in my Blogspot this year. I have been too lazy to hypertype vacations and various musings in detail. I've lost that blogging feeling, I guess. Or maybe it's coz I'm not such a big drama queen anymore than I was in the previous years. And maybe I'm too busy with real world stuff that I don't have the energy and enough focus to weave kickass words. Hmm. I am actually deliberating if I'll just concentrate on my Multiply and let my Blogspot die a natural death. I have pretty much settled into posting photos in my Multiply lately anyway. Plus, Abbie has introduced me to Twitter this year so whenever I itched to share something, I just chirped away 140 characters that encapsulated my very thought at that very moment. I love Twitter! It keeps me in touch with what's going on with my friends, even the most mundane things they do get some tweet press! I have long abandoned MySpace and I seldom log into my Friendster. My virtual world basically revolves around Twitter and Multiply. And yes, I gave in to Facebook. It's still a bit too cluttered for my taste but I'm beginning to get the hang of it. I'm still bugged about the deluge of Facebook app requests though (stop sending me Lil Green Patch whathaveyous!!! hahaha!). I so wanna iggy everything!

The pop icons that would probably best represent 2008 are David Cook and Edward Cullen -- or Jacob Black, fine, for the Team Jacobs out there! The PPG was so obsessed about American Idol season 7, such that we lived and breathed Cookie all the time we spent in Vigan! And I scavenged the net for everything Cookie I could ever find like his pre-Idol band recordings. And yey to Forces gals too, they influenced me to jump into the Twilight bandwagon. I have discovered the awesomeness of listening to an audiobook in my iPod and have in fact listened, not read, the first 3 books of the Twilight saga. To date, I have just started with an hour of Breaking Dawn.

I just realized that I haven't bought any audio CD this year. Yet, I have 3,799 songs according to my iTunes that could last me 10.7 days. Yey to free music :p I have shifted back to more R&B and a bit of alternative rock this year, thanks to CJ who's so into R&B, hiphop and those non-mainstream R&B jewels that Wave 89.1 plays.

Alright. I guess that pretty much sums up my 2008! I don't wanna dwell on the shake ups that happened on the latter part of my year (oh hey, I caught Dengue early this December and it was my first time ever to be confined in a hospital! Bummer.) but I hope and pray that those won't happen again. I am praying for a rosier and happier 2009. May we be blessed with wonderful love, good health, prosperity, peace, understanding, trust, acceptance and open-heartedness this coming year and thereon... With God on my side and with hard work, I'm sure things will fall into place... the divine place it should be ;-) Thank you 2008 for the lessons, realizations, the significant other, steady friendships, better relationships, improved character, stronger faith... I am happy and I have found what I have been looking for ;-)

::. I'VE FALLEN FOR EDWARD CULLEN .::

Hmm. So I have been remiss with blogging for more than a month... What better way to make a comeback than blog about Edward Cullen? :p

So I admit: I was so blah and indifferent at first when Abbie, Charo, Tin and Mitzi have been talking and raving about the Twilight saga these past few months. It never really piqued my interest until I started "researching" quotes from the books for my little online business. I admit, after reading one quote after the other, I have fallen in love with Edward Cullen.

But I didn't buy nor asked around to borrow the Twilight book. I was too lazy to read and I just tend to fall asleep while doing so. Having heard that there was an audiobook available, I decided to try it out. It was quite a pain in the butt to download all the freakin' rar files, unzip them, consolidate the numerous mp3s and convert it to an iPod audiobook format. (Thanks to Mitzi for the conversion tips!) But after all that tedious process, it was heaven to listen to an audiobook. It was my first audiobook experience and I loved it :-) It was so convenient! I listened to my iPod while I was falling in line at the terminal, while travelling to & from the office and even before dozing off to sleep... although I refrained as much as possible to listen to the audiobook when I know I'm already sleepy coz it was kinda hard to trace where I left off one time that I fell asleep and left my iPod playing :p

I have just finished the Twilight audiobook this afternoon and I absolutely loved it! I am way too excited now to start listening to New Moon but as of this writing, I still have 32 minutes to go until I finish the entire download. Argh.

I read somewhere online that in New Moon, one will fall in love with Jacob Black. Hmmm. I'm not sure how one can like Jacob more than Edward... Can't wait to find out why there are Team Jacob girls out there!




I'm also anticipating the release of the Twilight movie come November. Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait!!! Although Edward Cullen could have been played by a more handsome actor but hey, I found that Cedric guy cute when I saw him in Harry Potter. Oh well. Anyway, the first time I saw the trailer on youtube, I think I gushed & sighed at Edward's "You are my life now" line. I loooove that line. I am a sucker for poetic mushy romantic quotes and Stephanie Meyer is sooo good in churning out *triple sigh* lines for her Edward Cullen character.

I'm very curious about Midnight Sun though. I would have wanted to "read" it after Twilight rather than proceed with New Moon... Too bad Meyer isn't done with it yet :-(

::. WHERE WAS I LAST 08-08-08? .::

I spent the once in a lifetime 888 date with my friends Abbie, Charo, Tin and Jako at the sunny side of the Philippine Islands... in Boracay! Thanks to Cebu Pacific's low rates (and Abbie's purchasing power!), we managed to book a roundtrip ticket to Caticlan for a little bit under Php2K. Thanks to Tin's connections, we managed to enjoy a nice room for a steal at Serendipity which is conveniently located beside the D'Mall. Thanks to the coosome-twosome Jako and Charo's Holga for the nice lomo shots and the ever-reliable tripod of Jako that enabled us to jump to our heart's content (22 freakin' frames of chaotic jumping against the Bora sunset) and switch around four different digicams for the same group shot and angle hehe :p

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words... or maybe I'm just too lazy lately to blog and spew out nice profound flowery words hehe :p Just check out this slideshow ;-)

::. WANTED Kicks Ass! .::

I'm not much into testosteroney action flicks and top of mind, I think the only favorite man-flick that's on my list is Fight Club.

My sister and I watched WANTED last night. We missed like 10minutes of the movie's beginning so we decided to stay on and check out what we've missed. The movie's so good though that we decided to finish it the second time around.

Angelina Jolie kicks major ass and I *heart* James McAvoy. I hope he does more action flicks... he reminds me of Ed Norton... you know, the man-boy appeal, kiddie looking and doesn't look like a big action star at all. This is only the 2nd movie of James McAvoy that I've seen. The first one being Narnia wherein I mistook him for Shia LaBeouf whom I also have a crush on eversince I first watched him in Transformers. I think I'm gonna hunt now for a copy of Atonement to see James McAvoy's award-winning performance...

Anyway, the movie is pretty bloody and violent. I cringed both the first and the second time when I heard the sickening thud of Wesley Gibson's body as he hit the concrete train tunnel. His comic lines makes him adorable in this movie. My favorite kick-ass scene is when Wesley Gibson shoots this dude from his limo's sun roof. Super astig action scenes... love love this movie. Don't watch it on pirated DVD, watch it on the big screen for maximum impact =)

And coz I like spotting nice songs in movie soundtracks, here's one that I loved from the movie:
http://lilacstardust.multiply.com/music/item/531/Because_WANTED_kicked_so_much_ass...

::. I'M A (SHAMELESS) LITTLE TWIT STAR .::

Abbie gave me the heads up on this one last night... Apparently, one of my twits has been immortalized in The Bivings Report article about American Idol: Using Tweets and ImpactWatch Tools to Predict American Idol.

It's quite funny though how Abbie discovered it... She was reading The Twitter Hall of Shame: 50 Tweets That Will Echo in History. Under the "Pop Culture" heading, this article pointed to the Bivings Report, with a premise: "These tweets focus on shameful pop-culture conversations."

Haha, yes, indeedy, I have participated in "shameful pop culture conversations" :p All for the love of American Idol Season 7!

Are you on Twitter? Follow me there.

::. JUNE FAMILY OUTINGS .::

It's a stormy day today due to typhoon Frank. Boy, I am sure glad that we had a chance to go to the beach in the last coupla weeks!

Spent the last two consecutive weekends with my daddyo & mommyo -- first was at White Corals, Morong, Bataan wherein my most fave part was when we visited the Pawikan Conservation Center (so hard to find since there weren't really any signs pointing to where it was!). The beach at White Corals wasn't exactly that inviting so I opted to float around at their salt water pool instead. It's the same beach feeling minus the pesky sand getting trapped inside your swimsuit :-) Their room was okay -- with aircon and tv -- though hooks/rails to hang your wet clothes or bath towel are lacking. The food was so-so and there were a LOT of pesky flies competing with you as you eat. That was my major peeve about the place.

Coming from the Pawikan Conservation Center, we had a yummy lunch of pesto pasta and pizza at Xtremely Xpresso, Subic. We passed by Duty Free and then stopped over at the Lighthouse hotel to take its photos.


A week after, we went to La Luz, Laiya, Batangas. I liked the beach at La Luz :-) There weren't much sand coz it was practically tiny beach stones/corals everywhere... what's great about it is that you won't find any sand trapped inside your board shorts hehe :p The water was pretty deep even if you're just a few feet from the shoreline. The waves were a bit strong. It's high tide in the morning and low tide in the afternoon. When it's high tide, the water swallows most of the huge rock by the right-most (far) end of the beach. I went to that part of the beach to snorkel during the early morning (before 9am) and it was awesome! I saw lotsa fishes going about their own business, not minding me at all. They swam through the deep crevices of the stones -- black & white striped cichlids, yellow and black striped ones, deep blue ones with yellow and green streaks, tiny dilis looking ones.... gaah, i don't know what kind of fishes they were but anyway, they're all so wonderful to watch =) In the afternoon when it was low tide, we climbed the same huge rock and snapped away with our digicams. No sunset though at that part of Batangas :( We woke up early for the sunrise but it's not entirely visible as we would have wanted... we still managed to get some good sunrise shots though =)

I liked our room at La Luz, I think ours was one of the premier rooms. What's great about it is that it had separated the toilet, sink and shower so it's ideal for sharing with roomies. There's aircon and a ceiling fan; the only bummer was there was no tv. Good thing my dad brought his portable dvd player and I had my trusty iPod nano :-) Guests aren't allowed to bring in food and it is compulsary to pay for the Php950 buffet meals which include lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and breakfast the next day. Food was fine but I think my mom's cooking is way more delicious than that! ;-)




more bataan (and subic) photos at my multiply...




I enjoyed Photoshop'ing some of the artsy fartsy photos I took...

more la luz photos at my multiply...

::. I LEFT MY LONGGANISA IN VIGAN: THE JOURNEY .::

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I say, I am just too lazy to churn out words to narrate my Vigan experience last May with my friends Abbie, Tin, Charo & Jako.

We left Manila via the 11:30PM Partas bus trip last May 15. Arrived at Vigan 9 hours after on May 16 and immediately checked in at the oh-so-vintage Grandpa's Inn. Went to Chavit's Baluarte, ate the overrated bagnet at Cafe Leona, rode the charming calesa to the famous Bantay Bell Tower (which we climbed) at St. Augustine Church, dropped by Villa Angela, checked out Hidden Garden, ate dinner at Cafe Uno (yummy chicharon dipped in dinuguan!), had a night stroll through Calle Crisologo, chilled out at Sitio Bar, ate Vigan longganisa for breakfast at Grandpa's Inn, went to the Syquia Mansion (I'll never forget you lolo tarush!), ate Vigan empanada at the town plaza, shopped for souvenirs at Calle Crisologo, visited the Vigan Cathedral, bought Vigan longganisa at the palengke, tripped out on this el cheapo jukebox at the carinderia beside Partas bus station. Took the 9pm Partas bus out of Vigan on May 17. Got stranded somewhere in uhh I don't know where (pangasinan? tarlac? who knows where the hell we were?! it was pitch black outside... no electricity!) due to the terrible typhoon Cosme. Got to Manila around 2:30pm of May 18 after 17 freaking hours of stop and go travel. Ate a super late lunch at Yoshinoya Park Square Makati. Rode yet another bus (at that point, we HATED being inside buses) to San Pedro. Got home around 5ish pm.

Such a swell time. Long live the PPG! I love you gang! That was quite an adventure for the books! The forces of nature jinx is still alive hehe :p

Here are the visuals to tell the story of our trip...