Earth Hour 2010

Looking for something to do for Earth Hour? Check out this link of Top Ways to Spend Earth Hour 2010.

The Story of Bottled Water

For me, there are two simple ways to be eco-friendly in our daily lives: refuse plastic (bottles and bags) and bringing your own reusable water container and ecobags.

Usually, when Nards and I go grocery shopping we accumulate minimum of twenty plastic bags in assorted sizes (think of the little plastic bags they put butter in, and another one for soaps, then the ones for meats and poultry - it all adds up!).  Since 2007, we've made it a habit to bring ecobags (minimum of three, maximum of ten) with us wherever we go, and I feel that we've at least reduced the amount of plastic in landfills even by a very very small percent.

If we can, we also avoid buying drinks in plastic bottles.  I hope you can do the same.

Incidentally, Nards found this interesting short film.  I hope it helps in lessening our bottled water and plastic consumption.

Missing Siopao Sauce

My Mom called me late this afternoon.  They're popping in for a brief visit because they have siopao to share.  I thought they came from Ma Mon Luk, but no.  My parents were part of the round table discussion with Sen. Pimentel on the RH Bill.  It was held at Emerald Garden (the Chinese restaurant of my youth), hence the overflowing supply of siopao, moon bread and taro cake.  Nards and  I were delighted because we were feeling a bit peckish and their visit and pasalubong came at a very opportune time.

After they left, Nards worked a bit on his new project (the old rusty bike we got last Sunday), while I chatted with Phanie and Beng over some concerns we have on our clothing line.  Then we attacked the overflowing box of goodies.

Mom forgot to leave the sauce, and that's fine for me because EG's siopao can stand on its own.  But Nards needed it.  So guess what he put on his?

He loves ketchup.  Every time we buy groceries, I'd make sure to buy two to three bottles of Jufran (it was the brand we both agreed on).  Nards consumes them all by the time we make another trip to buy groceries.  Then he discovered the Heinz ketchup in a giant squeeze bottle and that's now a staple on our list.  He doesn't put it on EVERYTHING.  But when we sit down for a meal, he always keeps it within reach.

Fully Booked

This morning, Beng and I met with Ms. O to get updates on the production of the clothing line.  Phanie flew to China this morning so she wasn't able to join us.  Thank goodness there's YM and Google chat.  We planned to go home after the meeting, but we passed by Fully Booked on our way to the valet station.  And they were on sale.  Minimum discount was 20%, and we went absolutely APE.

 A nice Fully Booked staff computing the cost of all the books in our cart before we brought them to the counter.

 I love their baskets.  It comes with wheels and a long handle.  (Parang stroller.)  Way better than the plastic baskets other bookstores have.

Have you been to Fully Booked lately?  This branch had an interesting floor.  The boards were covered with the actual text of Machiavelli's Prince.

We spent a lot of money today.  But it was all worth it.  Mostly, we bought art and design books for our project and these:

Nards and I have to find ways to amuse ourselves between seasons of Dexter.  We can't get enough of our favorite serial killer.

Deepa says it's a must read.

Last copy in the store.  Must.  Have.  It.  (Besides, have to return Beng's paperback copy so I need my own)

We spent a long time choosing what other Neil Gaiman book to take home.  Beng decided on this.

The most expensive design book we got.  So expensive, I wasn't able to buy the next book.

I will get this next time. :)

After we spent all our cash in the store, Beng dropped me off and went home.  Nards and I went to hear mass early in the evening.  Then we picked up his new bike.  (See, it's not just me who went splurging today!  Haha!)    After a nice dinner out, we went home.

How was your Sunday?

Why Hello Again Blogspot!

For the longest time, I've been blogging on Blogspot up until November 2008.  Google had just introduced the import and export blog tool and for reasons that are too tedious to explain, I managed to export and back up the contents of my blog and DELETE it.  I tried to do immediate damage control (to my state of mind) by creating a new blog and importing the file I just exported.  It worked but it couldn't load my entries from way back in 2003 (when I made the move from livejournal to blogger) to July 2006.   Also, blogger was all iffy with the new tool and wouldn't let me post a new blog entry.

So I hastily put up this post, and shopped around for a new blogging platform.  A friend suggested wordpress and I was relieved that  it worked fine.  From that day on, I've kept "rebuilding my blogspot blog" a permanent item on my to-do list.  I would have probably abandoned that idea completely, until I saw the new format blogger offers and the new array of templates plus marvelous ways of tweaking them.  That certainly propelled me to rebuild this blog.  For the better part of today, all I did was piece together what entries I had left from that unfortunate accident.   I also added a handful of entries that I didn't post in my wordpress blog.

And here we are now.  Blogspot rebuilt, but still missing a couple of years of blog entries, and with a very red template (it's still a work in progress, aka I will try out the other templates soon). 

Thanks for bearing with me. :)

Improved YouTube

Are you like me?  Sometimes when I'm watching a clip on youtube, I type in something on the search field and hit enter, and forget that this would cut the clip and remove the page I'm on to load the results of the search.  It's happened frequently, and I find it frustrating.  This would mean I'd have to click the back button, reload the clip (which sometimes takes forever), open a new tab and a fresh page of youtube, and type in my search once more.

Thanks to Google, who bought youtube, and their continuous work on innovating their search tools, this is now a thing of the past.  I was delighted to discover the improved search mechanism of youtube.

While I was watching this clip, I typed in something in the search field.  I forgot that it's going to replace this page with the search results.

But this is what happened after I hit enter.

It continued to play the clip on one side of the page, and loaded the search results on the right side of the page.  Then I can drag the clip I like to the queue box below the video so that it loads it after the first clip ends.

Isn't that cool?    Ang babaw ng kaligayahan ko. :P

Hungover from Avenue Q

Last night, Beng, Paolo and Deepa joined Nards and I at RCBC Plaza to watch Avenue Q.  It was the first time for Paolo and Deepa, and the second time for Nards, Beng and I.  We love Avenue Q; we can't stop raving about it.

Quick review: The cast is pretty much the same except for Calvin Millado who replaced Rycharde Everley for the role of Brian.  All the actors are as good as I remembered.  Nards and I think that Aiza was even better than before.  We were all impressed with Rachel Alejandro.  She was fantastic!  I think she truly belongs on stage. I also liked Joel Trinidad who portrayed three different characters: Trekkie, Nicky and the Bad Idea Bear.

Even though we all knew the punchlines, we still found it hilarious.  And we sang along when they sang our favorite songs.

One thing Nards and I were bothered with (and we didn't realized we were both bothered by it, until he mentioned it as I am writing this blog entry) Felix Rivera was holding his puppets hand whenever he gestures instead of the pole that is attached to his puppets hand.  It's trivial and doesn't reduce our pleasure over the play but we were both uncomfortable watching him hold his puppets. :P

I'm glad that Paolo and Deepa loved it as much as we did.  (Deepa loved it so much, she was channeling Lucy the Slut as we drove her home.)

---

I'm always delighted to see friends whom I haven't seen in a long time.  It was such a bonus last night that  Deepa and I ran into our old college friend whom we haven't seen since junior year.  Nards also ran into friends from UPM.


Beng saw the Legally Blonde The Musical poster which will be running middle of this year.  (Mental Note: Must reserve tickets for that as soon as possible.)  I'll have to remember to borrow her CD of the Broadway cast recording.


We all went home, and Beng and Paolo crashed in our living room.  Paolo mentioned that he would take off first thing tomorrow, and I was surprised to see him and Beng contemplating on where to order breakfast when I got down.  It's always fun spending time with my siblings, and we just lazed around the house today,  watching movies, and napping.  All of us were clearly hungover from the play.  I start singing "If you were gay...." and they all join in "that'll be okay... "  Mga adik talaga.


(This blog entry's title was inspired by my sister's FB status.)

Green Thumb

Obsessing, might be too strong a word to use, but this is certainly what Nards and I somewhat feel about our first plant/tree.  Last week, as we were leaving our parent's place, and loading the car with pabaon (i.e. ulam, freshly picked fruits, linens, etc), my Dad picked up a Neem tree from the garden and handed it to Nards.  They (in-laws included) are all afraid I'm going to contract Dengue again, and are doing everything possible to keep mosquitoes away from me. 

We now officially have our first plant/tree. 


Unfortunately, the 45 minute drive from my parents' to our place, and the 15 minute wait it had to endure as we went up and down the elevators unloading everything, the poor Neem tree was traumatized from the ends of its roots to the tips of its delicate leaves.  For the first two days, we watched all the stems, sprouting from the main branch, droop and the leaves curl up and wilt.  I watered it moderately once a day per instructions of my Dad, hummed to it, gave it words of encouragement and still it continued to droop.

Until today, when we saw a few sprigs of fresh green leaves.

There is hope! Haha!

Nards and I went to the Manila Seedling Bank a couple of days ago to buy potting mix to make our first tree more comfy in our balcony.  On a whim, I bought three small Lavender plants.   I figured our little tree could use a little company. 

Our balcony, though tiny, looks nice with the Neem tree in one corner and the three little pots of Lavender lined up against the wall.  Early in the morning and late in the afternoon, their wonderful scents waft inside the house.   It's just lovely.  Sometimes, I'd pinch off half a leaf, and give it to Nards.  He loves the smell of Lavender.

Nards and I plan to put up a rack there and get more fragrant herbs.  We'll see what we can get from my Mother-In-Law's garden and from another trip to the seedling bank.  I'll definitely get basil and oregano.  Because I like making my own pesto, and cooking pasta dishes. Nards wants aloe vera. 

I wonder if there's a way for us to expand our balcony...  Either that or get a bigger house. :P

There is Good News Here

Today was my first time to visit the Manila Bulletin offices.  Nards and I drove there today to visit Deepa and hopefully Marbee to give them our long over due holiday presents - sets of personalized note cards that we ordered from Femme Fafel.  Deepa was tickled at the shag art version of herself.  Sadly, Marbee was out on a shoot in Tagaytay, so we left hers with her colleague.

Deepa said we should get the latest version of WE.

Wedding Essentials January to June 2010

 So we got a copy, read it and saw this:

 

Thanks Jessie, Deepa and Marbee! :)

Blame it on Twitter. And Plurk.

Thanks to these two platforms, I've completely lost my ability to blog.  They make it so darn easy to let me post stuff (text, photos and videos) online both from my computer and my phone.  They are the most reliable chat platforms on my mobile.   And it's connected to FB, so commenting, liking and disliking posts is easy whether I'm at home, stuck in traffic, at a shoot or any place where my phone gets a signal.  It's annoyingly addictive and convenient.

After Nards and I watched Julie and Julia, I realized I missed blogging.  I have always been a journal-writing-girl.  I started writing in journals when I was nine and moved it to documents saved on floppies (a la Doogie Howser - I even got the same blue screen and white text format) when my parents gave me a desktop computer in high school. When I was teaching in UP, I moved to blogging when I got invited to livejournal.   I was delighted that my cousins and friends abroad are updated with just this one medium.  It sure saved me from writing the same news over and over in letters for a handful of people.  (Claire was a testament to this!  We used to write each other every three days!)   I do enjoy writing and posting, and it's easy to exchange news with family and friends. 

I want to go back to blogging regularly.  Nards encourages me to do so.  (He noticed the folder in my hard drive that has a load of photos that I was planning to blog about.)  This means I have to re-learn to write down my thoughts beyond the 140 character limit that I'm used to.   And to organize the photos in my blog folder.  Good luck to me. :P