Nap Time Rocks!

Traffic

Imagine yourself driving home from work tired, hungry, and quite irritable. Your legs are aching from the traffic jam along Buendia which started right from the time you exited the carpark until you reached The Fort. It’s about 8pm already and the last meal you had was lunch, so you decide to drive through the nearest possible fast food, which happened to be Jollibee at The Fort.

The line of vehicles had reached the main street but thinking it would be fast since it was, after all a drive-thru, you quickly signal to the right and queued up.

5 minutes later, the car in front hasn’t moved and the stop light ahead had already let through 2 batches of traffic. Your tummy complains and you see if the car ordering at the window is getting anywhere anytime soon. It wasn’t. You wait for two more minutes.

3 minutes pass and finally you inch forward. Yey, one down, 3 more vehicles to go.

You did not realize that the 3 vehicles ahead of you would take another 15 minutes but you were sandwiched in the line. It was too late to get out now. And besides you had set your mind on Yum Burger with cheese and crispy fries. What the hell, you thought. You’ve waited 20 minutes, what’s another 5?

Whatthfff—? 10 minutes na, wala pa rin! (It’s been 10 minutes already, and still nothing!) This was even worse than EDSA traffic.

Finally, after 10 long years, the cashier waves at you and greets you a pleasant evening. You wanted to give her the steeliest of stares and demand a free meal for wasting your time. But you hold your tongue and realize that wasn’t going to get the burger any faster. You gave your order and paid for it in 3 minutes flat. You scratch your head what took the others ahead of you so long.,

You rub your hands in anticipation for the hand that will reach out of the proverbial window to give you eternal (well at least for the moment until you get home) bliss: your Jollibee burger meal.

But what’s this? You had put your gear on first and you nearly crash into the back of a white Toyota SUV. Everything was at a stop — again!

Somehow the universe, bent on conspiring against letting you have a peaceful and hunger-free journey home, has managed to cause traffic inside the drive-thru. It was unbelievable.

When finally (after another 5 minutes) you drove out of the twilight zone (where all time stops), you swear never to buy from that Jollibee branch again.

Voglio mangiare ala Cucina Tegola

During my recent trip to Cagayan de Oro (just for work unfortunately), my officemates and I made sure we sampled the best of CDO. We were not to let go of a great opportunity to try out the food there, of course. Hay, Filipinos talaga and their love of food.

One of the best is a cozy little Italian bistro along Hayes street in the CDO town proper called, La Tegola Cucina Italiana. More »

10 years ago…

What was I doing 10 years ago?

I had just celebrated my sweet sixteen birthday, and I was in the height of high school ‘bliss’, busy being a teenager and a bad one at that.

What are 5 things on my to-do list today?

Harass some people, brief some push girls, schedule my blog posts so that I don’t run out of new entries when I’m out for the next 2 weeks, catch up on my blog friends’ posts, eat cheetos!

Snacks I enjoy:

Cheetos

Places I’ve lived:

QC for most of my life, Cavite (for about 4 months only)

Things I’d do if I were a billionaire:

• Give 10% to the church
• Put away some for Mia’s schooling
• Put away some for my parents’ retirement
• Some for both my grandmas
• Pay off my land loan and build my dream vacation house
• Buy a car for my parents, and my 2 brothers
• But that means we need to get a bigger garage, so we need a bigger house. hehe

People I want to know more about:

Barack Obama?

Thanks for the tag, ate Pao

Ayoko maging ganito [lp]

Pag tumanda ako, ayoko magmistulang natutuyo, nalalagas, o nanghihina. Ewan ko kung bakit, basta ayaw ko lang. Sino ba may gustong maging ganon pagtanda diba? Hehe.

Happy LP sa lahat! Tingnan niyo kung anu-ano pa ang ayaw ng mga LPers.

—

Kuha gamit ang aking manual Minolta SLR, b/w film, sa UP Diliman grounds para sa plate theme noon na ‘nature’.

How to shop for shoes

It’s true what they say, having a girl for a daughter is like having your own Barbie doll to dress up — only cuter. I never fully understood my girl friends’ excitement over my growing tummy when I was carrying Mia (and we knew that it was a girl). They kept gushing about how fun it would be to shop for clothes and all that.

Well, I was never a shoppaholic to begin with so I thought, what’s the big deal?

Oh yeah, and then I ate my own words. Found these months ago when I was in not-really-but-was-planning-to- anyway-so- what-the-heck shopping mode for Mia’s new shoes. Rustans Florsheim Kids made a sale from me, but I learned quite a few stuff too when it came to shopping for toddler shoes.

• Make sure that the soles are made of rubber and not some slippery plastic material or cheap stuff that easily wears away. The rubber soles and the pretty stars were the sale clincher for me.

• Pick either pink or a neutral color. If your baby is a girl, most probably her closet is entirely pink. Or if you’re the atypical parent who prefers a rainbow of colors for your kid, it’s easier to mix and match with neutral colored shoes.

• Make sure it’s easy to wear. Try going to the mall with a fussy toddler and sample all the shoes you want. Whatever snaps on in 4 seconds flat is the winner. Velcro is the name of the game, baby.

• Comfort is still number one especially for toddlers who are just learning to have fun running around. I’ve found some shoes that look so nice but are actually 5-pound weights in expensive leather disguise.

• And lastly, I learned that shoes can be a bit on the pricey side, but there’s nothing like scoring all 4 things above in one pair of shoes and still made of good stuff — sugar and spice, and everything nice.

I love my Caramel Machiatto

It’s the highlight of my day. And especially if you get it for free!

Starbucks had a survey promo where you get a free tall drink of your choice just by filling out an online questionnaire. When you buy at Starbucks, they give you a printed out code on the receipt which you use to log on a site. After completing the survey, you get a code which you write on your receipt and show to any Starbucks branch. Then you get your free drink, that’s it.

Anyway I’m not sure if it’s still ongoing. But what I like really about getting coffee from Starbucks than the office pantry, is that the staff is really great. They remember my name and my drink, which is pretty cool.

This is not a sponsored post. I just feel like I need to make up for not having a Litratong Pinoy entry this week because of my workload. And writing about happy thoughts is the only thing that gets me through. I guess this is right for this weeks “Wish” theme anyway.

I wish I was in Oz.

Waiting in vain

What’s it like to wait for someone, or something, not knowing if it will ever come?

It’s a killer. You exhaust your list of things to do, hoping that in the middle of watching a rerun of FRIENDS your phone might ring.

But it doesn’t. You’ve finished a bag of 500-calorie chips and nobody’s still knocking at your door.

Your heart melts into an unrecognizable pulp because you’ve waited for far too long.

Until it’s too late.

The one you’ve been waiting for finally gets there and you’re already gone.

—

Scanned my old Film 110 plates taken in college for a photo story-themed project. I don’t remember if I ever got a 1.0 on this one, but I remember having fun. Camera: Minolta, Film: Fuji black and white.

Exotic

I am not an avid fan of animals, but I wouldn’t say that they don’t hit a soft spot somewhere inside me. I am also a casual paparazzi of the Tiendesitas collection of animals so when I saw a new tenant there, I was quite surprised. They only used to have dogs, cats, rabbits, and hamsters sold there. But now turtles, snakes, and spiders line up a long glass window in one of the stalls.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the animals that are being marketed as exotic pets. It’s really nasty, having to keep them in small aquariums (and sold in small plastic microwavable containers) all for people to ogle at. They belong in the wild, not in some rich kid’s airconditioned room. Call me a party pooper, I don’t care.

Who’s regulating these businesses anyway? It’s really just wrong.

Toys for the boys… and the girls too

It’s one of those lazy weekends again, after one long, crazy work week. And crazy is such an understatement. So I just didn’t have the heart to bring out my laptop on a nice Saturday morning and borrowed my brothers’ Sony PSP instead.

Since I couldn’t win over this German girl on a clay court (even if I was Sharapova) on Virtual Tennis 3, and the other games were too violent for me, I discovered that I could still surf the net with the PSP. Grabe, junkie talaga. I just had to configure the thing to browse the Internet.

So this replaces my Asus laptop, which by the way has been adopted by my youngest brother, on my computer table. It looks kinda lonely…

How was your weekend?

I need to get a life.

This is my movie bucket list.

Please don’t condemn me if I haven’t seen The Dark Knight. Yep, you read that right. I haven’t.

• Body of Lies – Just saw the trailer on 2nd Avenue (L. Dicaprio / R. Crowe / Riddley Scott)
• Hancock
• Wall-E – doesn’t he remind you of that robot movie back in the 90s, what was his name??
• Batman: The Dark Knight – I told myself I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Too bad.
• Across the Universe
• Mamma Mia!
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor – heard it got the sequel flop disease.
• Kung Fu Panda
• The Incredible Hulk – of course the Edward Norton version
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – Shia LeBouf all grown up and growing a beard… how interesting.
• What Happens in Vegas – hey, i need a no-brainer too.
• Journey to the Center of the Earth

Galâ [lp]

Ako at bestfriend ko, Sa isa sa mga lakwatsa namin noon.

Dati, anything goes pag gumagala, nagbabakasyon, o naglalakwatsa. Wala akong ibang iniisip kundi sarili ko lang.

UP Los Banos, June 2008

Ngayon, shempre may kasama na sa mga galaan, kaya mas wholesome na tayo. Kung saan enjoy si Mia, shempre doon ako! Agree mga mommies?

Archuleta

Is it just me, or is David Archuleta in his debut song “Crush” really sounded like he was Katherine McPhee loaded with testosterone?

But I could be wrong.

He could be Elliot Yamin minus the testosterone.

Sing! [ws]

I’m veering away a little bit from the ’snapshot’ theme, and sharing a video of one of our usual weekends.

Mommy’s just a bit of a stage mom isn’t she?

Goodnight…

…world!

For the first time in 4 months, nakaramdam din ako ng pagod.

Hope this isn’t leading to burn-out. Tsk. I’m leaving for Davao (Pearl Farm on the side, ahem) and I’m supposed to be excited right?

If only some people would actually do their jobs right! *hay*

So, goodnight.

Ako ‘to [lp]

Ako, mga 2 years na ang nakakalipas. May henna tattoo galing sa UP Fair, may hikaw na silver na nawala sa kotse nung sumunod na taon. Sniff.

Kilalanin ang ibang mga Litratistang Pinoy!