~* IT'S THE NEW YEAR! STOP THE POLLUTION! *~

Ok, I am typing this amidst the New Year's Eve noise of firecrackers that pollute MY air and render me coughing to the point of quasi asthma attack. Lech. This is what I hate about the new year... the air pollution. Gaah. Anyway, I am currently trying to drown out the sound of "Pinoy, ikaw ay Pinoy... Ipakita sa mundo..." from our crazy videoke-worshipping neighbors with "S-s-sound the alarm... what we have built is gone... Mayday! Mayday!" from my Urbandub Embrace CD {thanks for the gift, Sis!}. I am successful in doing that -- except during the 4-sec. song gaps.

Anyway, I just have to sneak in this story first. I swear, I just have to share this:

So there we were on the dining table, watching the news over dinner (yesterday).
I think it was TV Patrol. There was this news about the cops in Bulacan
confiscating those illegal firecrackers like pla-pla and stuff. To my horror,
the footage showed these dimwit cops dumping the confiscated firecrackers in
*horror of horrors* a nearby creek/river or whatever body of water that was. I
mean, wow. There's EXHIBIT A. OF UTTER STUPIDITY! Sure, let's get rid of the
illegal firecrackers by throwing them on the river! Wow! What a bright idea!
Let's do our humble contribution in water pollution! Yey. I swear, what the hell
were they thinking?!?! Oh. Wait. That's it! Apparently, they were NOT thinking.
Oh dear.

Anyway, late last night, I met up with my friends Abbie, Charo and Tin for our little New Year get-together. We hung out at Starbucks Shell SLEX. We arrived there a bit before 10pm and whoa, Shell was packed! The parking area was almost full and the people of all ages were milling about the area like it was some kind of a mall. Wow. Apparently, the gas station was the "in" place to be! We were there til past 1am, I think. And then we transferred to Starbucks Petron on the south-bound SLEX {Shell was on the north-bound side}. I know. Crazy isn't it? We have such an affinity for Starbucks in gas stations. Haha! Nah. Actually, we went to Starbucks Petron coz the Shell branch ran out of those ultra super-duper special 2006 Planners that Abbie and Charo wanted to claim coz they already completed that sticker thingie they had. After that, we went to Abbie's house for some picture-taking. I think I got home a bit before 4am.


the happy campers with their ultra super-duper special starbucks planners


of course, what's abbie's house w/o the adorable cats?!errm, there were supposed to be two kittensbut the other one ran off before i could take a proper picture



after a coupla tries on positioning the digicam for self-timed snapping, here's our best pre-new year snapshot :)