This is it

the past two weeks have been something else. sometimes a crazy looping roller coaster, sometimes an easy coast, sometimes a slow trudge, sometimes a frenzied skitter, sometimes a happy and joyful dance.

yet i know tomorrow will be nothing like the past two weeks. it will be nothing like the past, period.

so what will tomorrow be?

a smooth glide, a light step, and a leap into a future that was totally not going to happen.

wish me luck.

Send to all

Subject: Goodbye and thanks :-)

Dear all,

Today is my last day at GMA. As many of you already know, I will be married next Saturday, December 29. Post-wedding, I will begin my new life as a married woman (eeek!) in Singapore, where my husband-to-be Marlon has been based for the past four years.

While I'm excited and raring to go, it's difficult for me to leave the network. There are really no words for everything that I've come to love and appreciate about working with all of you.

Thank you for the unique contribution each and every one of you has been to my life. I haven't found a job in Singapore yet, but I can only hope to find one that I can love as much as this. This will be my benchmark for a workplace to have fun and grow in, be passionate about and be inspired by.

Please keep in touch and look me up if you do plan to go to Singapore. Mahal ang accommodations doon ha, sa amin na lang kayo tumira para mas marami kayong pang-shopping ;-)

Deepa

The end and the beginning

last week, marlon and i ended our four-and-a-half year long-distance relationship. well, the long-distance part, at least. and there are no words to describe what it is to finally know that it's over, and that we made it.

when i welcomed home for the very last time one week ago, marlon said only two things. "i'm home for good," and "you waited."

me? i was unable to speak. a small voice in my head whispered, "we'll never be apart again." i know that the only time we'll ever have to be apart again for long is if one of us goes first. literally, from here on in, it's till death do us part.

i just held my husband-to-be in my arms, smiled and cried, as i considered the magnitude of experiences that made up my world for the past four years, and that would now be part of our past.

early-morning taxi rides to the airport. tearful evenings before somber farewells. joyfully frantic races for flights and visas. the familiar bone-deep longing that could only be expressed by white-knuckle grips on the phone receiver and low, intense voices. tight, crushing hugs spaced months apart, or just weeks apart if we were lucky or rash enough. friday nights spent home but not alone, sort of. and so much more.

oddly enough, i will miss all of this, in a way. simply because for a very long time, that was who we were.

yet nothing can eclipse the joy of the future we're living into -- one that waits to be filled with a thousand new ways for us to be.

All botched up

so after weeks of looking at/re-editing/sending/following up/choosing pantone chips for/double-checking invites that looked like this, in (reddish-purple) plum and (teal-ish) turquoise...

my printer sends me these horrid chocolate brown and grass-green invites. one hundred fricking twenty of them.

at first i am stunned. then i flashback to the meticulous process (see above) i went through just to idiot-proof the design. then i whine about it to all the art directors at work, who, while deploring the color job, say it's a kick-ass piece of work. this is why i love working in an office full of kick-ass creatives -- my seatmate cecil did the layout for me for free. "maganda naman siya eh," volunteers jl. "itapon mo na lang yung original file."

then i get online and, with almost eerie calm, proceed to inform the owner of the print shop of the matter. after checking the damn things, he promptly offers me a free reprint, which is just as well. dahil kung hindi, aba pucha, one email to the phalanx of bridezillas in my egroup can potentially derail his business for at least a few months. you have no idea how seriously brides take supplier reviews. really.

since he vows to personally take responsibility for the outcome of the reprints, i am placated. really, if not for the service given me by the owner, i would be bashing this place to kingdom come. which is a shame, actually, because i was pretty happy with them until all this happened.

the reprints are done in a week, which is still too long a delay for me but what can you do. the print shop's peace offering arrives -- the colors are still not true to the original file. at this point, i am still not happy, but not willing to put off delivering the invites for another week. so i simply choose not to feel bad about anything i'm going to give my nearest and dearest, and accept the prints. i tell the owner as much. he feels bad about the whole thing and offers me free thank-you cards -- a very gracious offer, which i am gracious (and penny-pinched) enough to consider.

now most of the invites are out, the guests are informed -- and on the whole, pleased and wowed by them (except for one major drama). and that is that.

Quote of the day

"It's really hard to idiot-proof wedding preps."

-- Jolly Picache
Marlon's high school friend
husband of Shar
and Weddings@Work egroup-mate

next up: the story of the wedding invitations that were delivered thirty minutes ago, were opened, and gave me a heart attack.

i'm still stunned, actually.

Mirror mirror

presenting, the first-ever piece of furniture that we bought for our new life together!

ta-daaah!


you like? i like. i was surprised that marlon liked it, though. he used to be mr. zen/clean lines, but i guess four and a half years in a relationship with me finally wore him down.

it was a tough choice between silver and gold, though.



to date, the inventory of new stuff bought especially for the new place includes (in the order of purchase):

1. steel sunburst mirror (made in tondo, bought from a roadside stall in tagaytay)
2. custom-made acacia daybed (in the works)
3. 32-inch samsung lcd tv (guess who almost peed his pants buying this. really, what is with guys and big tvs????)
4. lillberg two-seater couch from ikea, spray-painted white with black cushions (for the tv room)
5. ludde sheepskin from ikea (for the tv room couch)
6. ironing board from ikea

eek! ikea invasion. okay, testigo kayong lahat: i vow not to live in an ikea showcase!

Burning questions

should we get a cat?

one of the things i'm looking forward to most about the move is leaving five dogs behind. don't get me wrong, they're great, but i really just want to have a cat after all these years of dogdom.

i love cats. i'm a cat person through and through. i talk to them on the street in the special cuddly voice i reserve for shoes, dark chocolate and marlon. the stray cat in our compound just gave birth to kittens and i positively melt every morning as i pass them on my way out of the house.

this is what i did in the alhambra -- take pictures of all the cats

marlon is surprisingly (adorably) game. he's a dog person, but he says knows i'd be happier with a cat than he would be with a dog that has to be small enough for condo living. (personally, i think he's waiting for us to get a bigger space so he can get his dream st. bernard.) he even interrogated an officemate who has two cats of her own in singapore to see how we could work it out.

so what's stopping me is: can the perpetually out and about, workaholic, wanderlusting couple that we are really take tender loving care of a living creature at this point in time? can we risk the damage to our landlord's immaculate, newly laid wood parquet floors? are we ready to resign the fate of one of our first articles of furniture (a custom-made acacia daybed) to that of a scratching post?

does my impending cohabitation with marlon necessitate cuter pambahay?

i've seen marlon in his pambahay, but he hasn't seen me in mine. mostly it's really big t-shirts with no shorts (i live in a house full of women so this is okay). somehow i can't picture me being young wife-ish, chopping onions in the kitchen or whatever, in this getup.

so i'm thinking shorts and tank tops, or tank tops and pajamas, or smallish t-shirts and shorts... articles of clothing that are in short supply in my closet. (my glee club friends had to give me my first pair of adult-sized pajamas after one too many sleepovers where my giant t-shirts rode up in my sleep and revealed my underwear to them.)

it's strange, but i actually want to be presentable at home. is that weird?

when will trillanes grow up?

he's a senator now, for chrissake. he can't run around doing things like this anymore. what a creep.

Getting trippy at the Taj

i told myself i'd only blog if it was about condo-hunting in singapore. but when i came across these unbelievably trippy pictures of my parents, i couldn't resist sharing them with all of you.

these totally groovy hand-tinted photos were taken by "taj photo studio" at the taj mahal in agra in 1977. note that the colors of their clothes are different in both pictures. quipped my art director officemates: "inaantok na siguro yung artist."

and aren't my mom's wide-legged, high-waisted pants back in style?



truly kitschy classic. yeah baby!

Distract me

Name:
Deepa

Age:
26

Religion:
Roman Catholic

What are you passionate about:
Life

Favorite movie this year:
I really liked Stardust, although I'm saving the favorite spot for The Golden Compass

Most played songs on iPod:
Not on the bandwagon, sorry

Hero:
Nathan Petrelli!

Best quality about me:
I can kick ass.

The worst:
When I'm in a real snit, I avoid doing things and avoid people.

Do you have direction?
More than I used to.

Last semi-sensible purchase:
Wow. I really had to stop and think about this one. It seems I make very few sensible purchases. Okay, a prepaid MRT card.

If you could buy one thing right now it would be:
The four-poster wrought-iron bed Marlon and I saw in Rustan's

Beach or mountains:
Beach

Sport:
Boxing

Movie that makes me cry:
Dancer in the Dark

Apart from what you're doing now, what would be your dream job:
Promo writer or travel show host for Discovery

Temptation you have successfully avoided thus far:
Drugs and cigs. Nobody ever offered me any. Boo.

Temptation you have succumbed to recently:
To put off boxing.

The one thing you can never be:
Waifish.

The one thing you strive to be:
Loving.

The one thing you struggle with the most:
Myself.

The most beautiful woman you've ever seen:
Iza Calzado. Grabe.

The best thing your mom taught you:
If you really love him, panindigan mo.

The best thing your dad taught you:
Not himself, but via my mom and his side of the family: What you do for love makes a difference in people's lives forever.

The thing you surprisingly enjoy doing:
Sucking on ketchup sachets from McDo.

Last time you kissed someone:
Marlon, goodbye in the wee hours of the morning on Monday.

What turns you on:
Massive men

What turns you off:
Men without a passion

Most pointless thing a girl can buy:
An ill-fitting bra.

Best thing a girl can buy:
A fabulous pair of shoes that perks up any outfit. (Best to wear on "fat" days.)

Favorite sound:
Marlon saying "hi" in his cute and cuddly tone when I pick up the phone. (You're welcome to gag.)

Worst sound:
Joyce Jimenez's voice.

Favorite swear word:
Shet. The colegiala version.

When no one's looking I like to:
Rub my eyes.

What would the movie of your life be called:
Hmmm. I have no idea.

What is the most ironic thing about yourself:
I constantly think I can't do things, yet I am Superwoman.

What do you like most about yourself:
I have a passion for life, the world, and humanity

What do you hate most about yourself:
I'm lazy

Issue most important to you:
Now, gearing up for an adventure. In general, bringing people ways to express themselves in the world.

What is the bravest thing you've done:
Did something I believed in and NOT be liked

What is the one brave thing you've still yet to do:
Stop believing that I need approval

What's food for your soul?
Physical affection, discovery, travel, music, art and design, communion with God

If you were to enter heaven, what would you like to hear at the pearly gates:
"It's about freaking time!"

Move it

gasp.

the cost estimate from the professional movers just gave me a heart attack.

now, on to the unprofessional movers, i say.

A flurry of firsts

aaaah! ang daming nangyayari!

life is hurtling forward at an amazing speed these days, and i'm dying to blog about it all. i've been thoroughly tempted to take a leave from work just to blog. but then the only thing stopping me is that my internet connection at work is so much better. mwehehehe.

i just want to call in the following firsts, really quickly. in the past five days alone:

marlon and i have made a deposit on our very first house, purchased our first piece of furniture (that we still don't physically have with us, yet), and bought our first piece of furniture that we actually carted home.

and i bought my very first painting, fulfilling a promise i made to myself to start collecting art this year. hurray!

i have no time to blog (or at least, in the detailed manner i love to blog in) and i'm totally exhausted right now. but it doesn't mean i can't love my life! love it love it love it!

Something new

first, jenny raved about the class.

second, she told me about the schedule.

then, she showed me this video of the teacher. (excuse the cheesy filter/color effects, i have no idea why they shot it this way.)



i actually didn't want to tell marlon about it. "why not?" he asked.

"baka kasi umasa ka, eh," i replied.

but what the hell. last wednesday, just about two hours after a particularly grueling session at the boxing gym, i went to try it for the very first time.

poledancing.

yes. me.

and...

it was fun!

i mean, never mind that all of the girls in the class are what i am not... which is extremely skinny and able to shimmy all the way up/dangle upside down from/use nothing but thigh power to hang horizontally from a 10-foot metal pole. i'm definitely coming back for more.

as i grunted and sweated to lift my legs off the floor from a bridge position, pole between my legs ("diyos ko! pinagpapawisan na ito!" murmured ed as he held up my butt), i really got how my utterly unworkable physique was the result of so many broken promises to myself. you know, those promises to exercise so many hours per week, to stay off sweets, to eat brown rice, to not attack buffet tables? i swear! they couldn't have been more real if they were in the form of lead weights attached to my ass.

strangely (and happily), i wasn't discouraged. i may have almost burst a major artery lifting myself up half a foot off the floor, but it doesn't mean it can't be done! so i promised jenny (who's quite the star of her class, i must say!) i would come back for at least two more sessions before i would even consider giving it up completely. i'm actually already looking at where to get the money for 10 sessions.

from tugging my shorty shorts down at the beginning of the class, to actually hitching them up by the end of it and prancing around in heels by the end of it, it actually felt great to just do something i had never done, and really push myself to do it. plus, after all the rough and tumble of boxing, it felt great to do something so unabashedly feminine.

and it's not all batting eyelashes and slapping butt, either -- two days later and i can barely move my arms without groaning.

but no matter. looks like i'm going to have a regular appointment with something long, hard and that makes me sweat.

jejeje.

A happy 26th

aiieeeeeeeee!!!!! dingdong dantes just called me to greet me a happy birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the story:

i had to reformat my phone a couple weeks ago and lost all my numbers. so a few minutes ago, this unknown number calls my phone. i put on my suplada voice, which i use for calls from unknown numbers (just in case they turn out to be annoying p.a.s or people selling me stuff).

"hello? hello! who's this?"

"e($)*&^(&-ong."

"who?"

"dong."

"i'm sorry, i can't hear you, who???"

"dingdong."

i immediately had an apoplexy caused by embarrassment and kilig. i fell all over myself apologizing about not having his number on my phone, and thanked him for calling.

"omigod! thank you. thank you! how'd you find out?"

"basta, i have ways. may nasagap lang akong info today." (i bet toni's h put him up to it. but still!!!!!)

"wow. hey, congrats nga pala. ang galing n'yo." (he's only the hottest leading man on the country's top rating show.)

"thanks. maganda kasi ang simula natin." (natin!!!)

"wow, thanks ha. okay! bye!"

*dies of kilig*

One year old

wow.

time has gone by so fast. the two people who got engaged one year ago today seem so different from who we are today. in a good way, of course.

wow. ang lapit na. or, in the language of a couple who's had too many tearful farewells at airports, "just two more goodbyes!"

while sorting through photos of ourselves for the wedding slideshows, i came upon marlon's picture of our paris trip, which i had totally forgotten that he'd taken. reminiscing through the photos was a beautiful way to celebrate the one-year anniversary of our engagement, and i'd like to share some of my favorite shots with you.

(yes that's a gargoyle on the left. marlon took this from the notre dame church tower.)

Happy house

during the glee club’s tour of Europe in 2000, seventeen of us were thrown together into a multi-room nunnery in koeln, germany, left to fend for ourselves with no host parents – just a bunch of groceries, a kitchenette, the erratic and befuddled but well-meaning protection of a filipina we soon nicknamed tita lost (you can guess why), and each other.

maybe it was because we felt we had to compensate for our kawawa-ness (“ang saya-saya namin kahit wala kaming hosts!”) or because we really did have fun, but we soon came to call ourselves the happy house.

since then, the term “happy house” has been passed down in glee club/acs tour tradition as a house, typically small, crammed full with too many self-reliant, noisy, happy ateneans.

i don’t know why i chose this title for this post. it’s funny that my idea of a happy house is one that’s stuffed full of friends. because pretty soon, i’m going to start making a happy house of my own, with just two people rattling around in it – marlon and myself.

setting up our own home is one of the things i’m really looking forward to about moving to lah-lah land. apartment-hunting is scheduled for month's end, when marlon and i hope to find a two-bedroom place that won't make us wish we had just eloped and run away with our savings intact. marlon will move in in december, and will carry me over the threshold (he better start pumping some serious iron) in the second week of january.

(yes, my one-way ticket has been booked. eeek!)

i’ve been hoarding house magazines (real living mostly – just tried out a new mag called homestyle and i don’t think i'll be buying it again anytime soon) and make daily pilgrimages to my favorite house sites: domino, apartment therapy, design sponge’s sneak peeks. at the bookstore, i make a beeline for the house and interiors books: the relaxed home, nest for two, and jeline’s fab flea market style book are all on my wish list.

for the meantime, i’m stocking up all this information and just waiting for a chance to unleash it. since we’re just renting, though, and are on a pitiful newlyweds’ pittance (good luck recovering from the wedding), i don’t know how much of my knowledge i’ll actually get to let loose upon our poor unsuspecting apartment. and a lot of the places i want to shop at – evangelista street in bangkal, cubao x, landmark – will be lost to me once i step upon singaporean soil. still, it’s fun to dream

i realized how house-happy i’ve become when the first thing i thought of buying on our honeymoon was block-printed indian bedlinen and table cloths, the handcrafting of which rajasthan is famous for. and i was thinking in exclamation marks: can you imagine?!!! our bed made with block-printed indian cotton sheets!!! block-printed by hand!!!

not to mention how i gushed for a full month, maybe more, to anyone who would listen, about the gorgeous, 100-year old, pure silk carpet that ambushed my heart in mumbai:

i swear, marlon and i sketched out living room layouts in june with this in mind. except he's stopped, and well, i haven't.

and i'm already eyeing my bookshelf and calculating how i'm going to arrange them into something like this (from the domino site) when marlon and i combine our sh*tload of books. di baleng marami, basta cute.

and after living with so many dogs for so many years, it's my chance to finally have a cat! then again, a cat toilet-training (can cats even be toilet-trained?) on 100-year old silk carpet from mumbai might not a happy house make.

Mommy in KL

my mom's visiting my sister in kl for two weeks. i chatted with my sister on gmail this evening.

me: como estas tu visita?
me: ay mas tama pala ito: como estas la visita tuya? (okay that's my quota of spanish practice for the week) or better yet, como estas mommy?
Sheila: muy bien. ella esta muy happy
Sheila: whats happy anyway?
me: FELIZ! (talagang showing off the free spanish lessons)
Sheila: she hasnt left the house in 2 days
me: hahaha
Sheila: pag iniiwan ko sya dito nanonood lang sya ng tv at naglilista ng mga kulang ko. at natutulog
me: hahaha
Sheila: the life of a bum! last night she cooked sinigang for me and my pinoy barkada. tonight we had dinner with my ofcmates
me: wow! nanay na nanay!
Sheila: now she's taking pics of my apartment. hahahah
me: hahaha. i'm sure papa-develop niya yan sa akin when she gets home

Simple pleasures

two people telling me yesterday that i lost so much weight. guess last week's mysterious spotty illness thing was good for something after all.

gids last night at dinner: "i'm having deepa withdrawal!" (awww. i'll miss you too gids.)

two lovely compliments from arvy last night, also at dinner. "you have beautiful eyes!" (thank you, north park lighting!) and "i just discovered tonight that i love your sense of humor!" thank you, thank you!

alternately making aljor chortle and giving him the heebie-jeebies with over things the boyf and i say to each other when we get on it and fight.

the boyf's facebook photo.

(shameless confession: i'm so glad he's finally on facebook so i can go on the web and look at this picture at random times during the workday. isn't he hot? *all a-flutter*)

alicia keys' new single on the radio while driving to work. she's the shiznit.

the quick, easy and relatively traffic-free drive to the office, plus the perfect parking spot on samar street. wow, now there's so much incentive to actually be on time to work.

a whiff of newly mown grass walking from my parking street to the jamboree gate. i looooove newly mown grass. i used to stick my head out the window when the field was being mown back in high school. plus i used to have gap's grass scent. sana they start making it again.

(it's a) happy thursday, everyone :-)

All tressed out

a freebie hair treatment from the kerastase institute last friday = an article that came out in the philippine star's ystyle section today.

--

All tressed out
By Deepa Paul
Friday, September 28, 2007

It isn’t easy being curly.

Born into your curls? You are a rarity among the infuriatingly swingy- and sleek-haired heads of the typical Pinay — and prey to the caprices of stylists who seek to torture the curl out of your hair by all available means. That is, if you don’t already do that yourself.

I grew up with big fat sausage curls that distended into long, loose and oddly uncontrollable waves, so I get you loud and clear. I once had a hairstylist refuse to cut my hair until I had it relaxed, whereupon I marched out of the salon — and started learning how to use Mom’s blow dryer. It was an inauspicious start to a lifetime of manual and chemical struggle with my curls. Fast forward to the present day: my hair is alarmingly poofy when left alone and requires an armada of styling products and tools to sort it into an appreciable shape. I’ve grown to like my hair, sort of, but after all it’s been through, I don’t think it likes me very much anymore.

Or let’s say your strands are of the stick-straight variety in the age of the digital perm. You thought your hair was boring; you zapped some curl into it. People liked it; you did it again. And again. And again. Now you’re left with repeatedly processed hair, an amorphous form of curl, a ton of new hair products, a bone-crushing understanding of why your curly-topped friends used to stroke your pin-straight strands with such longing, and maybe the occasional itch on your scalp.

Congratulations, your hair is now not just curly — you might just have blow-dried, relaxed, rebonded, permed and possibly even colored it into dryness, too. Faced with stressed-out curls, what’s a curly Sue to do?

Rx for stressed-out curls

Stop experimenting with a new product every other week, give the ceramic iron a rest, and head to the Kerastase Institute, where science is about to become your hair’s new best friend.

Using the Kerastase Professional Diagnosis System, a trained consultant takes a camera to your crowning glory to decree, once and for all, the truth about your hair and scalp. Your days of frowning over the staggering array of shampoos and conditioners at the grocery and decoding which of the cleverly-cooked-up-by-marketing labels describes your hair (Spongy and puffy? Damaged or dry? Rebonded then permed? Colored but not highlighted?) are at their merciful end.

Seeing your scalp magnified up to 500 times can be quite disconcerting. I personally thought it was nice to have a scalp so blinding white — until I was shown a picture of a perfectly healthy and normal scalp, which was as smooth and pink as a baby’s bottom. Whiteness meant I had a scalp like the Sahara. Eeep. Thankfully, my hair itself had some hope. Despite the occasional crack in the hair shaft, dryness hadn’t penetrated past the outer strands. My poor, colored, curly hair simply needed plumping up with a little nutrient TLC — and that was just a few minutes away.

Choosing your cocktail

After diagnosis, a Kerastase expert prescribes the right hair or scalp ritual for your particular situation. This is selected from over a dozen treatments for hair types ranging from normal to moderately dry hair (Aqua-Oleum, which uses nano-nutrition technology to zap instant shine and softness into locks) to the driest and most damaged strands (the heat-activated Kerathermie).

Got shiny strands, but a scalp like the Sahara? The experts at Kerastase may prescribe a Nutriose scalp ritual to soothe and cuddle your poor scalp back to life. Pumped full of lipids, proteins and glucose, one of the fab bonuses of this treatment — and a scalp that’s back in the pink — is lush, healthy hair growth.

For frizzy hair, the Masque Oleo-Relax softens and nourishes hair while keeping it frizz-free — despite infuriatingly off-the-charts Philippine humidity levels. Addicted to rebonding or relaxing? This treatment is also a perfect breather to the chronic grip those chemicals have on your hair.

For starters, I was prescribed the Concentre Vita-Ciment ritual. Engineered for chemically-treated hair, this potent potion promised to fortify the cracks in my hair shafts, rebuilding them by as much as 56 percent. Plus, it would prep my hair to receive the full benefits of my Masque Oleo-Curl, whose curl cocktail of softening oils promised perfectly defined curls (or waves, too) and anti-deformation protection. Sounds good, I thought, but it was just about to get a whole lot better.

Reveling in the ritual

The Kerastase Institute uses the word “ritual” instead of treatment, and it was just as well. After all the torture your hair has survived, it certainly deserves to be given the royal treatment, nay, practically adored back to life. (And maybe you do, too.) This is where the fluffy robes, satisfying hair bath, mind-numbing, eyes-rolling-back-into-the-head scalp massage and sigh-inducing back rubs of the Kerastase Institute do their best work.

After your chosen product is slathered on, your hair is popped under the Kerastase Micro-Mist Machine to be softened like no other salon steaming machine can. A blast of cool air from the machine ends the ritual, fixing the product from within. An expert blowout from the adjoining Salon ESA reveals the results of the ritual — gorgeously defined curls and vibrant shine, as promised. And if you have any doubts about the efficacy of the treatment (or are just innately suspicious, as I am), you can always have your hair re-diagnosed just to check.

Baby’s bottom my scalp is not (yet), but it definitely isn’t the Sahara anymore. And now I know to make a beeline for the shampoos labeled dry (not damaged) when the time comes to buy a new bottle of shampoo. Less time at the grocery, and hair that bounces at my beck and call once more? Love it.

* * *

The Kerastase Institute is located at Salon ESA, 6750 Ayala Ave., Makati City. Call 819-1040 or 819-0886 for an appointment.

Home sick, still

it's day two of being red and spotty. the spots have now spread all over my body, although my mom and i are definitely sure it's not measles. (my mom double-checked with my pedia, who said that i completed my measles vaccination in 1982.) i think i actually look worse than i feel, and i'm really starving for a good book now.

i don't know why i'm thinking about my birthday, which is a month away. i guess it's because i'm bored. here's my birthday wish list. (talagang walang effort na mag-segue.)

• calligraphy pen with purple or turquoise ink (to address invitations with)
  
• lomo or holga
• rajaton's new album, maa, out october 10th
• something from kate's new store at greenbelt 5, opening this october
• anything by orhan pamuk. i'm not quite sure i really got my name is red, but i'm willing to give him another try
• anything on my sidebar wish list, hee hee -- the books about house decorating would especially bowl me over
  

bored bored bored. i don't think i've been this whiny about being bored since i was eleven.

14 hours in Sevilla

i discovered that i've been keeping this as a draft since march. march!!! since i'm feeling oddly sentimental about europe now, i thought it would be nice to finally finish this and post it.

--

after a four- or five-hour bus ride from granada, i arrived in sevilla with pia and jeline at about eight in the evening. i left at ten in the morning the very next day, staying a grand total of fourteen hours.

it was enough. enough at least to do the following:

• get lost in a square full of shops that sold flamenco shoes and wedding gowns
• somehow find our way to our totally unmarked, anonymous hostel
• lug thirty kilos of luggage up a narrow, steep flight of stairs
• meet the world's cutest, most harrassed and spaced-out all-around swiss-french muchacho (the guy at the front desk at oasis)
• be shocked that we were checking into mixed-gender dorm rooms
• join a free tapas tour with least a dozen other travelers
• snap pictures in front of the catedral
• get a minor crush on one of my tapas tour-mates
• stuff my face with sodium-packed tapas and sangria
• laugh uproariously and take photos upon seeing that the tapas bar was on a street called calle gago
• walk downtown to a bar called la carboneria for a free flamenco performance
• put away my camera as requested
• wonder why polka dots seem to be an integral part of a flamenco dancer's wardrobe
• watch flamenco
• fall in love
• marvel at the passion and intensity of flamenco all the way back to our hostel
• be not-so-secretly pleased that we were sharing our mixed-gender hostel room with my minor crush
• go online
• sleep
• wake up and get ready to go
• misplace my room key and pay a 5-euro fine
• have sardines and toast for breakfast while looking at la giralda in the distance
• walk briskly with my minor crush to take photos of the catedral and la giralda in the excellent morning sun
• part ways (he had to catch a bus to portugal, i had to catch a flight to barcelona)
• get totally lost on the way back to the hostel
• acquire a pair of leopard-print flats in the process
• decided "ah f*ck i'll miss my flight, f*ck the money, i'm taking a cab"
• have a twenty-minute conversation with the cabbie in atrocious but oddly serviceable spanish
• turn down a free cab ride to cordoba
• make a friend (if i ever need a cab in sevilla, i know who to call)

incidentally, i bought a taschen book on moorish architecture in andalusia, and i found out (among other fascinating things) that granada used to be called elvira. la lang.

i am soooo going back there someday.

Home sick

after feeling feverish and achey most of yesterday, i woke up today with little red spots all over my face, chest and back. (charlie's unsympathetic-but-well-meaning text: "magiging ganap ka nang pinya!") thank goodness it's not measles, but i've been doctor-advised to stay in bed for the next couple of days... and withhold my cilium intake. (but... but... ang traje de boda!)

guilty confession: i kind of like the thought of staying home for the next few days. my only misgiving is that i have nothing new to read.

i have an odd book craving: v.c. andrews' flowers in the attic, which i've never read or watched. charlie was working on a couple of title card studies for a new show yesterday, and they reminded me of all those creepy v.c. andrews' covers with the under-shadowed faces and inbred families. so i dug up all the v.c. andrews' book covers on the net (charlie was not impressed), and read the dollangager series' plot summaries on wikipedia.

This was NEVER gonna happen

zambales. august. midnight till about two-thirty, three in the a.m. a couple of beers, a bottle of ginebra, and two bottles of a mountain dew-alike called sparkle. one glass, shared in turns. (ika nga ng mga tao sa opisina, parang naka-lips to lips ko na siya. at guilt-free pa!) peanuts, i think, and some leftover chicken wings. porch steps. the ocean to my left. the most unexpected, amazing, fun, surreal conversation ever. ("magkaka-despedida ka ba? imbitahan mo naman ako.") a goodbye that someone in the office, when i told them about it, described as "lingering."

a new friend -- one who would pass by me the next day and stop me for no reason at all except point to both our shirts, and point out: "terno tayo!" one who would pull up a chair opposite me during a lull in the workday, and share a bar of dark chocolate with me.

my all-time work crush for two years (!!!) and me.

definitely a first, and maybe-hopefully-not an only.

i love my job!

In the background

i was writing this over at the wedding blog. but then i realized it really didn't have any place there. so i'm bringing it over here.

i wanted to post the sketch of my wedding dress today, but i didn't feel like it. and i felt bad that something could happen that would rob the joy of sharing my wedding dress -- my beautiful, beautiful dress -- with all of you.

see, marlon and i are sad about something. it's there in the background, and we can't simply wish it away.

i remember a conversation we had with gerwin late last year, right after his wedding to charlie. he said something like, expect that everything that can happen, will happen this year. all the conflicts, arguments, and everything our good friend murphy can come up with, will come up.

wala lang. i just remembered that.

this is strange and mysterious; i'm finding out just how much i love -- want to love -- someone. and it isn't marlon. i hope someday she finds out too.

it's times like these that i remind myself that our commitment isn't to being sad and wishing things were different or better. it's to a whole and joyful family, to love, to aliveness, and to our special day being a day where all these are present -- not just for marlon and i, but for everyone. and we're committed to finding love, aliveness and joy each step of the way.

even in the little things. like my wedding dress. if it's up on the other blog, then you'll know i've picked myself up and not let the sadness rule me.

so even if i don't feel like blogging about the wedding right now, i will keep blogging -- and sharing. and even if we just feel like rolling over and giving up, we just won't.

You had me at "verbal barrage"

with me in charge (more or less) of the wedding, the boyf has been tasked with planning the honeymoon. it took us the greater part of a year to decide, but we finally set our sights on a couple of days in boracay, a short visit to the family in kolkata, and a week-plus roaming the wonders of rajasthan and agra. (palace of the winds! taj mahal! amber fort! gorgeousness!)

yesterday, marlon forwarded me a lengthy missive from a mr. tapas banerjee of trinetra tours in delhi. and by lengthy, i mean three pages when cut-and-pasted into a word document! within seconds i knew this was going to be interesting.

'Namaste' & Greetings Mr. Plazo !!Good Morning !!Many thanks for your mail. We take this opportunity to confirm our best intentions and knowledge to the cause of your trip. It is a pleasure to welcome you & your traveling partner to our country.

Before I serve my verbal barrage on to you, I just wish to inform you that I would be delighted to offer you references from All Over The World including Singapore too.

kapow! you've got me mr. banerjee! something about the self-deprecating, candid and enthusiastic tone just got me. and so i read on.

more choice excerpts:

For your entire journey, we are upgrading your transport to a fine Toyota MUV (Innova). This car will substantially add to your traveling comfort, especially on some bumpy roads where the top quality suspension would not let you feel any discomfort. However, the biggest and the single most achievement of this car is its Air-conditioning, [natawa talaga ako dito! omigosh! this is so true! especially in india!] which ensures that you are cool and fresh even if you are traveling under the mid day sun in warm country.

Besides the car, your driver would be special. He would be your 'Man Friday'. You would of course have local guides conducting your city tours in each city, but, besides that, your driver would be your most invaluable friend. He would not only be knowledgeable about places of interest in between journeys as also in cities, but, he would be a very nice human being with a pleasing personality for whom nothing would be trouble.

pero dito talaga nahulog yung loob ko sa kanya:

I apologise for my unending chin wagging, Mr. Plazo. I love the business and the gossip opportunities that come with it. Actually, the home dinner that I am proposing is in my house. Both me and my wife, Krishna love meeting people and making friends. I got into the business primarily because I could travel with tour groups making friends and sharing experiences. However, with the business expanding in the last 7-8 years, I am more or less now confined to my office ensuring standards that we are so paranoid about. Hence, whenever possible, I invite clients to our home for a meal with myself and my wife, Krishna. Home dinners are my major personal interaction with clients and I look forward to this eagerly. Little do the visitors realise that they would be subjected to my verbal diarrhea!!

ang sweet diba? anyway, i checked out a couple of the hotels and sites on his itinerary. and. oh. my. gawd.

behold rohet garh, a gorgeous 17th century home-turned-heritage hotel in jodhpur. swoon.

i may have died and gone into a taschen book.

and check out the luxe desert camping digs in manvar.

and one of the client references describes their driver as "a prince among drivers."

i do believe we have a winner.

Say it like you mean it

you know how job objectives in resumes are always so hard to write?

you have to use the "right" phrases ("career" instead of "job", "contribute" instead of "work"), include "buzzwords", create a "hook", use it as more space to sell your skills but somehow try to get in a word about what you want to do (taking care to veer toward "hirable" and away from "demanding"), sound stable and levelheaded but not boring, and just go ahead and invoke "travel opportunities" because you never know.

well, screw all of that. the nebulous, post-college quivers about writing job objectives are over.

• To live my passion for writing daily in my work, as part of an inspiring and powerful creative team that confronts challenges head-on and makes creative miracles happen
• To contribute my ability to create, plan, execute and deliver effective communication solutions to a broadcast network or advertising organization as a copywriter
• To see my ideas come to life in a multicultural work environment that promotes creativity, vitality and dynamism.
  

this is what i want in a job. and i mean it.

absolutely no brain cells were harmed in the writing of this job objective. who knew it could be so easy?

and if the person reading it doesn't like it, then by all means, on to the next! who says only employers get to do the weeding out? ;-)

Spanish Saturday, subtitle Sunday

firefox shut down on me unexpectedly and i just lost a long, happy, impassioned post i wrote about starting spanish lessons yesterday and subtitling my portfolio today.

syet. feel na feel ko pa naman siya.

i'll recreate it when i'm not so bummed anymore. besides gotta get back to work. (work on extracurricular projects, not work work, so don't worry.) in the meantime i'll post something i wrote today that's not so long, but packs quite a punch.

toodles.

Barcelona bench

inspiration for a new painting i'm working on:

it's from a mosaic bench at parc guell, barcelona. haay i miss barcelona... and the rest of spain. buti na lang spanish lessons at pia's house are starting this saturday! for free! yay!

i have a 3x4 unlined notebook from paperchase that i use as a visual journal. been picking it up more often to draw recently. tried drawing on a big sketchpad but it seems like i've gotten used to hunching over and drawing things in miniature.

la lang.

Apology to a casualty

warning: dancing with reckless abandon can be hazardous... to others.

i must have laughed for a full five minutes when i found this blog entry on womad through google blogsearch.

note the dutiful, sincere apologies from me and marlon in the comments section. in furnez, nakakatawa magsulat itong afam (afas?) na natalsikan ng pawis.

Womadness

some glimpses from my first time at womad singapore, one of marlon's yearly musts.

as someone whose itunes player at work is permanently set to "stuff in a strange language", i went mad over womad. not only were the acts spectacular and well-chosen (all of them with a noticeable crossover/mainstream appeal), but it was great to just dance barefoot on the grass with such reckless abandon.

that said, i had the overwhelming impression that attendance for the caucasian expat community was being checked at the gates. kung gusto mo mamingwit ng poreyner, ay nako day, doon ka. (what am i saying? in singapore, i'm a foreigner too!)

posers not welcome

there was sort of a uniform: pretty ethnic-print dresses, chunky exotic-looking accessories and various skin-baring tops for the women, and cargo shorts and tsinelas for the men. once in a while we would spot pretentious valiant souls who defied the mold.

"look, sweetie, a poser lost in the crowd!" i pointed out to marlon, as one girl tottered around the muddy, blanket-strewn field on four-inch, pointy-toed stilettos, tugging at her painted-on miniskirt to keep from being boso-ed by everyone who was sitting at thigh level, ironed hair frizzing and sticking to her neck, clutching a teeny evening bag, and wiping at her quickly melting rampa face. a curly-haired, middle aged indian lady beside us whipped her head around to look at me, then let out a hearty laugh. "you said it, honey!" she chortled gleefully.

personal picks

we didn't get to catch all the featured musicians, but i personally loved the mahotella queens, legendary singers from south africa with full, powerful voices. like the sixty-something grannies they were, they would dispense advice between songs: "get up at five o'clock in the morning to make tea for your husband. that's love!" loved them live (i swear, these grannies can shake better booty than me!), but rather not enough to hunt down a cd.

classically-trained david d'or from israel has a gorgeous tenor that would make any filipino chorister weep -- not to mention a stunning resemblance to matthew perry. (he's got a fabulous backup band too. loved the violinist.) he asked everyone to link hands and dance in a circle, shouting "a jewish dance!" the 101 attempts and individual interpretations of "jewish dance" that ensued all over the field were hilarious. (how would you dance jewishly?)

and daara j! they made me i realize just what a huge fan of hip-hop i am, have been and will probably always be. marlon and i were eating indian dinner off paper plates when they started performing. midway into their first number, i was possesed by the urge to dance -- so i scarfed down a few bites, chucked what was left of dinner into a garbage bin and sprinted to the front of the stage, yelling "let's go! let's go!"

not only did they make me (and a couple hundred people) dance like loons for the greater part of two hours (picture an entire field going "two steps to the left! two steps to the right!"), but they made me an instant fan. and their stand is truly inspiring: that hip-hop ("born in africa, raised in the u.s.") is education, not gangsta rap. awesome. now all i have to do is make a friend or two from senegal, so i can buy their cds.

ending with a bang

the finale was brilliant -- in the succinct filipino turn of phrase, nag-jamming sila. sinong sila? one musician from just about every group that performed that weekend. another tagalog term that fits perfectly: labo-labo. at one point i counted musicians from seven different countries onstage, playing at the same time, all making it up as they went along.

some permutations: a scottish fiddler and a tuareg percussionist. a dhol drummer from the uk, a senegalese dj and an israeli pop divo. a south african granny with lungs of steel and an iranian... er, man playing some instrument i can't even name (clad in nothing but a knee-length sarong, no less). it was mind-blowing. and it sure looked like sh*tloads of fun for the musicians.

ironically, the only cd i bought was of an act that i didn't catch -- the dhol foundation. their founder, johnny kalsi, directed the finale -- when he stepped onto the stage with his giant drum, brit accent and fancy duds, i knew we were going to see a great finale. and there was one part when it was just the fiddler from shooglenifty, and johnny kalsi punched right in with his drumming -- the music suddenly became so alive, so electrified at that moment, that i knew i had to get a dhol foundation cd before the night was over. (i did. i love it by the way.)

other acts we caught: youssou n'dour (senegal), shooglenifty (scotland), clube do balanco (brazil).

Sige na nga

as someone who's chosen to work in creatives and television, looking over the singapore media directory got my heart beating. (wonder if intimidation and excitement can burn calories.)

i love that cd shop. (that's really what it's called.)

womad every year.

i see outfits on the street that actually inspire me to dress better/with more effort/more adventurously.

this kitschy little shop called blossomz (so high school) in cathay cineleisure, where i found a manufacturer of high heels that not only look great and are easy to run around in, but feel like they're molded to my feet.

walking, walking everywhere.

the delicious and actually tipid possibility of clothes shopping bangkok on weekends.

it's taken me a long time to say this, but: i'm ready to live a life i love over there.

Melissa mania

okay, a lot of fun stuff happened over the weekend in singapore, but seeing as shoes are what float your boat... guess which style melissas i got?

none of the above below!

i went to two of the three stores in singapore that carry melissas (such purposeful shoe-shopping! haven't done that in a while!), and none of them had any of the styles i posted previously. BUT they have a whole bunch of really cute styles that aren't up on the melissa philippines site. plus a whole bunch of really old styles that are on sale.

i saw a bunch of cute heels from the love robot collection, but my size was out of stock. so i got these instead: the green indie heels with detachable straps. very cute. my trusty green peep-toe heels had just died the week before, so it was perfect.

they look gorgeous (my shoe idol fellow shoe freak, christine, went gaga at the sight of them yesterday) tho' breaking them in is a royal bitch. it's like wearing person-sized barbie shoes. and since i'm kind of in-between sizes and the plastic is slippery, i keep leaving them behind as i walk.

ah well. 'tis only the beginning... literally. i am now officially on the mailing list of novo, which is the singaporean store that carries these babies -- perfect for when i move there next year! by the way, i downloaded the above pic from the melissa australia site, and my eyes nearly popped out at all the styles available! and there's a karim rashid shoe! delikado 'to.

j, the scarfun wasn't as cute in person. it was rather too chunky for my taste. medyo suma-spice girls na yung level. (and while we know the eighties are back, the early nineties just give me the heebie-jeebies.) also they had it just in peach, and i'm not really a peach kind of girl.

ate, go to the novo stores in suntec and great world city! ngeps yung mga styles in ngee ann city/takashimaya.

in related news, i think i'll start wearing heels more often. kaya ko naman pala eh.

Waiting and beginning

i have a singapore trip coming up this weekend, and i'm looking forward to it. come to think of it, i always look forward to my singapore trips. and i always, always have a great time when i'm there. (must be the company.)

so, remind me again why i was dreading moving there? ;-) i look back on the magnitude of my dread, and say to myself, gawd that was so absurd.

==

fun stuff planned for this weekend:

womad. how can you not have fun at one of the biggest world music festivals in asia? i love, love, love world music. (my itunes player in the office is permanently set to "odd stuff in another language".) after three successive years of rapturous stories from marlon, i finally get to see/hear/dance on the grass/be rapturous myself. must bring lots of pocket money for cds.

my first pair of melissas. shoes? cute? rain-proof? durable? sold in singapore for half the price that they are here? count me in! now help, which two should i get?

the gray neon?

the purple ultragirl?

the white scarfun? (also comes in beige, peach, mint and black --- ahh hell knowing me i'll get a pair in black. black shoes are my weakness) or the red lace glam? decisions decisions!

wakeboarding. marlon wants to take me wakeboarding in this man-made lake. ohhh...kayyyy. pwede rin. this activity promises much entertainment as i attempt to stay upright. may burn calories as well.

apartment-hunting. yes, i'm about to become a grown-up very soon. marlon and i hope to check out at least two likely prospects. the criteria: must be within budget, with two bedrooms (one for us and one for my shoes our art materials junk guests) and near an mrt stop.

and ...

okay the real criteria: must have a fantabulous pool (to inspire exercise) and big windows. non-tiled living room and owner willing to let us paint the walls a huge plus.

boyf time. all of the above! yay! oh plus we're doing wedding stuff too, like deciding on the wording of our invitations and the flow of the reception program.

==

this weekend promises to be fun, like all the others i've spent in singapore. but something will be different this weekend too.

because aside from my little red wheelie bag (oo, yung galing global sources), i will be carrying with me little pieces of my life: a box of scrapbooks, sketch pads, albums and books. these i will leave in a corner of marlon's apartment until january, when they -- and i -- will settle into a corner that is truly ours, in our new home.

A welcome back meme

you have no idea how many other things i should be doing instead of this.

===

THREE NAMES THAT FRIENDS CALL YOU
1. deepa
2. deeps
3. deepsydoodle (only if you're my mom or chris ong)

THREE MOST IMPORTANT DATES IN YOUR LIFE
*well not THE most important... can they just be really really important?*
1. june 11, 2003 - the date marlon and i picked to be our anniversary (we don't actually remember the date we said our i love yous)
2. october 21, 2006 - the date we got engaged!
3. december 29, 2007 - the day i marry my best friend :-)

THREE THINGS YOU'VE DONE IN THE LAST 33 MINUTES
1. rub my eyes (bad habit, i know)
2. add new albums to my facebook account (all hail the new facebook addict)
3. drop off my stock disposition forms at the finance department (zzzz)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS
1. hmmm
2. hmmm
3. o sige na nga the corrs!

THREE WAYS TO BE HAPPY
1. canoodle with boyf
2. curl up with dark chocolate/ritter sport praline and a good book
3. open your eyes and see that there's so much to be happy about

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS AT PRESENT
1. tiempo de solea, ojos de brujo
2. katosimme kauneuteen, rajaton
3. gosh what's that song by timbaland? where he says he doesn't have a red american express? basta yun, i keep hearing it on the radio and it brings me back to my hip-hoppy high school self

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE IN THE OPPOSITE SEX
1. smile
2. shoulders
3. hands

THREE PERSONS YOU MISS FROM YOUR PAST
1. euniche
2. the jungs from lindenholzhausen (papa alfred, mama anita, dietmar and frank)
3. one of the legions of college crushes i had hahaha

THREE GIFTS YOU WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE
1. a honeymoon in boracay
2. books by orhan pamuk, alain de botton and/or nick bantock
3. a lomo or holga

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES
1. reading
2. surfing the web
3. doing wedding stuff

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO FOR HOLIDAY
1. rajasthan, india
2. greece
3. florence, italy
+visit my sister in kuala lumpur, malaysia!

THREE FAVORITE CARTOON CHARACTERS
1. she-ra
2. shampoo from ranma
3. catra (loved the black hair and green eyes combo)

THREE GIRL'S/BOY'S NAMES
1. tala
2. amaya
3. alon

THREE MALLS YOU USUALLY GO TO
1. greenbelt
2. rockwell
3. shang

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE FASTFOODS
1. kfc (zinger + brownie)
2. mcdo (cheeseburger meal + chicken mcnuggets)
3. yellow cab pizza (four cheese or pepperoni)

THREE FAVORITE DRINKS
1. sarsi
2. calamansi juice
3. water

THREE THINGS FOUND IN YOUR BAG
1. car keys (the spare set) on a pink pig keychain maggie gave me
2. navy blue quilted patent wallet from mango (the doppelganger of the one i lost)
3. nivea careline lipgloss

THREE PERFUMES/COLOGNES
1. this citrus and cinnamon cologne i bought in bilbao, love it but forgot what it's called
2. burberry weekend
3. basil, olive and ginger scents from fresca in the sunday legaspi market

THREE FAVORITE COLORS
1. black
2. gold
3. blue

THREE EVENTS YOU'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO
1. our wedding :-)
2. moving to singapore and finally being able to have a cat (yay! yay! yay!)
3. completing and sending out my copywriting portfolio

Oh, and...

... the wedding blog's up!

Ang pagbabalik

puñeta! sa wakas! naka-unblock na ang blogger sa opisina! tatapusin ko na 'yang bwakanang mumbai cliffhanger na 'yan! tapos bubuhos ako ng sangkatutak na pictures ng boracay 'tsaka donsol! tapos iba-blog ko na nagkainuman kami ni dingdong! tapos ... tapos...

zzzzZZZZzzzz.

Hello Bolly!

i'm in bollywood! *smiling, color-coordinated dancers jazz-walk into frame*

the city formerly known as bombay has been my temporary home for three days running. while marlon is off doing various business-y things, i've found myself -- hmm, ano nga ba? alone but not lonely. each day has its highs and lows, but oddly even the lows occur to me as highlights.

day 1, tuesday

we land in mumbai after a four-hour flight from india. ever had waves heat pound at glass windows to get to you? walk from plane to immigration at the mumbai airport and you will. stepped outside and had the novel experience of having my jeans "shwup", a sensation akin to vacuum-packing, to my lower legs. verified that the "twenty-nine degrees centigrade" temperature announced by the captain upon touchdown was off by about, oh, just ten degrees.

fell in love (with a resounding ka-blag) with our hotel, the itc maratha sheraton. oh god, this hotel. i want to take everything in our room home with me. there are beautiful indian dupion silk drapes (in my wedding motif colors! let me at 'em!) and delicious aromatherapy toiletries in apple, apricot, basil, parsley and sandalwood. (naka-shook na ako ng isang buong set for my mom.) there's a pillow menu (!) and 100Mbps Internet.

and when you step out of your room, it's just beautiful. it's a light-filled white atrium, with latticed windows that remind me of the alhambra, stretching all the way to the ceiling.

our first lunch in this hotel convinced me that i will have to be rolled back to my family. i love indian food to bits (now making up for all the years that i fiercely resisted it as a child), and this hotel reportedly has some of the best restaurants in mumbai. god help me. ang traje de boda!

bits and bites

marlon and i spent the rest of the day immersed in work, albeit separately -- him at the office, me at the hotel. nawili ako masyado sa bilis ng internet at sa ganda ng kuwarto -- i did not set foot outside the room for the next six hours. pathetic, i know.

after welcoming home my sweaty, dusty, mumbai-encrusted fiance, we set off for a group dinner with the twenty or so p&g global folk who'd flown in for the week. it had all the makings of a great dinner -- first was the superb food that seemed to never stop getting plunked down on my plate.

then there was ridiculously excellent service -- one waiter dashed to my side after i took a bite of fish, murmuring "madam, you have ordered the vegetarian meal. but i just saw you take a bite of the fish. i am sorry for not informing you that it indeed was fish that i put on your plate. are you alright?" my gawd! i bit back the urge to tell him that i was just a vegetarian poseur.

there were extremely interesting people, of which my favorite was dr. colin, scientist-turned-beauty p.r. director. forget chi-chi fakeness and empty smiles -- this guy is a genius on so many levels, without that "i-know-more-than-you" aura, and so much fun to talk to! feeling ko parang tumalino ako pagkatapos ko siyang nakausap. haay idol ko na siya.

discovery channel

what i loved most about dinner was stepping into marlon's world. at one point in the evening, i just stopped and took in everything around me -- being in mumbai, the gorgeous surroundings, the intelligent conversation -- and realized, marlon's part of this. i just sat with that for a while, letting a whole new world open up: a world of him. suddenly, the man who cuddles with me at movies, loves corned beef and comics, and who i regularly "save" when he blanks out on people's names took on a whole new dimension. at that dinner table, on that night, i discovered marlon all over again. that alone was worth coming here for.

back in the room that night, talking to marlon about what i had done for the day and what i had planned for the next, i uncovered something rather prickly about myself.

why i hadn't stepped out at all was not because of the amount of work i had or the comfort of the room.

and why i wasn't at all excited about flinging myself out into mumbai was not, in fact, because of anything about mumbai.

(to be continued)

This is cute

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

The Blogger ban

hello, my friends. the good news is, i'm alive and happy. i'm in lah-lah land with marlon celebrating our fourth, and our last, anniversary as boyfriend and girlfriend. tomorrow, the two of us will be flying to mumbai -- marlon on a business trip, and i as official palamuti.

the bad news is, blogger, and consequently all blogs, have been banned from the office.

haay.

i'm not giving up my blog just yet, but as the office is where i do 90% of my blogging, the frequency of my updates will be seriously affected (as you've gathered from my month of internet hibernation). i miss reading my friends' blogs (that's YOU! or those of you who are on blogger anyway), and especially miss the inspiration and eye candy on one of my favorites, design*sponge.

i'm not too happy about the prospect of migrating to wordpress or livejournal though -- i have a wordpress version of this blog that i gave up after a couple of days of working on it. plus there's just way too much on this blog to give up!

must admit i am stuck at the moment. stuck but still writing :-)

Welcome to Boracay

after an hour-long flight in an aircon-less, stewardess-less aircraft that i will always cherish in my memory as the "coaster na may pakpak", i barely remember my first glimpse of the fabled white sands of boracay. i think i might have been a little underwhelmed -- the sun was hiding behind thick gray clouds, dulling the colors of everything.

what i do remember vividly, is almost weeping upon seeing the room that would me mine (mine, all mine! moooahahahaha) for the next two days. ah, how the centavo-scrabbling writer of "paradise at a steal" had moved up in the world! first i wanted to twirl around and fall into bed a la julia roberts. then i started really missing marlon. *insert crude thought here*

welcome sight # 1: my room at the boracay beach resort.

home sweet home

the people from fila (i swear! grace under pressure ang mga ito!) treated me and paolo, the photog, to lunch. i believe the frozen lemonade i had at the regency set the tone for the rest of my boracay trips -- i went on this two-week long citrus frenzy which included countless calamansi/lemon/mango-lemon shakes, calamansi muffins at real coffee, and the aforementioned lemon cheesecake at lemon cafe.

then we went to work. or rather, paolo went to work.

while i pretty much watched, chatted, looked over some of the clothes, and ogled various boys pointed out to me by a woman more than twice my age and in better shape than me. i played photographer, too.

welcome sight # 2: teams practicing for the dragonboat races that weekend.

score one for the hype.

this is when boracay really started wowing me. i'd never seen the ocean that soft, pearlescent almost-white shade of turquoise before. and the sand was just absolute talc.

my first pair of havaianas. i totally get the addiction now -- which is not to say that i actually have an addiction of my own

and presenting the finest welcome of them all: the obliging male-models-for-a-day of the bugsay boracay dragonboat team.

welcome sight # 3: care ko sa girls?

work it! work it!

aside from daniel and sebastian here with their prepare-for-glowy midsections, there were also various groups of men around me at this point flexing muscles, lifting heavy weaponry (isn't the dragonboat a war vessel or something) and going "harrumph harrumph!" (or "awoo awoo!" as jeline would say). it was all very 300.

i remember marveling at all these extremely fit and tanned specimens (in fairness, pati ang mga girls) and wondering briefly whether this was what God had intended human beings to be. i felt almost sure that beer bellies and thunder thighs were not part of the divine plan.

then it was five thirty, "work" was done, and i was left to enjoy my first boracay happy hour -- and my first boracay sunset.

My life in weekends

last weekend, i watched one of my dearest high school friends marry the love of her life in a beautiful, intimate, all-white sunset wedding in one of boracay's most exclusive resorts. the night before, i'd gone night swimming in the ocean (totally piss drunk) for the very first time. i spent zero on accommodations, and even less on food. my biggest splurge was a lemon cheesecake at lemon cafe.

the weekend before that, i flew to boracay for the very first time in my life on an all-expense paid writing job for the star. my travel time to boracay -- about 2.5 hours back and forth -- was probably longer than the time i spent actually working, if you call chit-chatting, watching a photographer and ogling buff dragonboat rowers working. i stayed three days.

and this weekend, i am flying with the love of my life, and a handful of my fabulous officemates, to spend the weekend swimming with the world's biggest living species of fish -- the whale sharks of donsol, sorsogon.

i am darker than i've ever been. ever! well maybe since grade school when we went to the beach practically every weekend, and we had a pool in the backyard. this is the first summer in a long, long, looong time that i've actually had a tan.

so in short, life is good.

---

there were times these past few weeks that i just stopped and said to myself -- wow. i have a life that allows wonderful things like these to happen. this is my life.

i never thought it could be this good. i have a life that allows wonderful things like these to happen. i would have said even the in-betweens -- but i just realized there are none.

and instead of waiting for the proverbial anvil to drop out of nowhere, i'm looking up and seeing nothing -- absolutely nothing -- overhead. just a brilliantly blue summer sky.

it's my life, all of it -- and i'm loving every minute.

oh. and i promise to blog about and post pictures of these weekends. they were just too good not to share in detail. :-)