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December 2007

Holiday Rush in Divisoria

christmas shoppingChristmas shopping is never complete without a visit to Divisoria to buy wholesale prices on Christmas wrappers, ribbons, and christmas decors. The sights and sounds are quite an experience. I also love the bargains on gift items especially bought on wholessale prices. This time around, my husband wasn’t too comfortable with me shopping alone after that earring robbery in Divisoria. I still went anyway. I left Lauren at 168 Mall to choose some trendy tops because bringing her along with me will just add to the maddening crowd.

Draping a messenger bag on my body, cellphone in my pants’ pocket, and a camera positioned on my cheek, I traversed the streets of Divisoria.

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The Family That Cooks and Blogs Together

My dad often told me to look at the silver lining when the going gets rough. An old quote says that “THE OPTIMIST sees the doughnut; the pessimist sees the hole.” Two wonderful opportunities came out of the family’s financial challenges in 2004: (1) More Family Meals at home and (2) Butch learning to cook.
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I learned to bake before I tried my hand at cooking because I grew up in a bake shop that mom started when I was nine years old. By the time I was 21, I lived off-campus with my dorm mates which forced me to learn how to cook. Even the sauteeing and frying scared the hell out of me. I learned from watching. Soon, I got tired living in apartments that I built a house with my dad’s funds by the time I was 23 years old. Having my own home paved the way for me to experiment on cooking fancy dishes. I relied on my mom’s dishes and experimented or innovated on existing recipes. Having a degree in BS Food Technology helped me to be more creative with recipes. Through the years, I’ve accumulated these perfected recipes in a black notebook.

Baking hit the peak of my life when the girls were very little. I baked and iced their birthday cakes because the commercial cakes tasted dry and ordinary. How my girls marvelled at my Barbie or Disney themed cakes. Not only did they look magical, my cake tasted special. These days, I bake simple pies or desserts. Recently, I purchased a convection oven which ensures even temperature throughout the baking. Friends often wished I start a bake shop but I believed the bake shop’ stress caused mom to die early from breast cancer. I vowed never to venture into a large scale bake shop operation like mom did. Maybe one day, I will open a small coffee shop with baked goodies.

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The Candle Lighting

At 7:00 PM, The Compassionate Friends held the 11th Worldwide Candle Lighting event at the Ateneo Loyola Schools.

meandbutchcandle.jpgOur Candle Lighting Service is done with love,
A tribute to our children who have gone on above.
We light our candles so others will know,
We remember our children and we still love them so.

We will continue to cherish our children so dear,
Through this service of remembrance we have every year.
We validate the high place of honor our children still claim,
As with acclamations of pride we honor their names.

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11th Worldwide Candle Lighting Event

candlelight A candle signifies life and light and so the burning of a candle brings light and life to the memory and to the hearts of the bereaved. It is not that a candle has any magical or mystical powers as it is not the candle itself that heals. The lighting of a small candle in the darkness somehow helps you to draw aside from the blaring distractions. It brings an err of calm and helps you focus on what is important at that time. Something very special happens when a large group lights candles. A feeling of unity and oneness occurs.

While candles burn in one time zone, they will be lit in the next as thousands of families around the world participate in a vigil tomorrow, on December 9 to honor their children and siblings. The annual Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting starts at 7 p.m.

New Zealand goes first.

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The Internet Hoax and Suicide

meganI first read Megan Meier’s suicide from my husband’s entry Online Hoax Leads to Suicide of Teenage Girl. The sad story starts with an online friend, Josh Evans who Megan never met in real life. Josh became mean to Megan and told her ““The world would be a better place without you.”. Sobbing, Megan ran into her bedroom closet. Her mother found her there, just 15 minutes later, hanging from a belt, another fatal teen statistic.

Six weeks after Megan’s death, her parents learned that Josh Evans never existed. He was an online character created by Lori Drew, the 47-year old mother of Megan’s former best friend, who lived four houses down the street from the Meiers. Mrs. Drew created the character ““Josh Evans”, according to a neighbor, because she ““going to mess with Megan” for apparently breaking up the once-close friendship with her daughter. Lori Drew did more than that. She drove Megan Meir to kill herself.

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Batanes (and Batanes, the movie)

When it comes to local showbiz scenes and Who’s Who?, I am totally clueless. Local Filipino movies just don’t interest me at all…unless I get invited by a friend or I know the people involved in the production. There is the movie The White Lady which we watched only because the director was Butch’s classmate in Law School. Then the last movie I watched was I’ve Fallen For You directed by Lino Cayetano because he is a family friend. This afternoon was a bit different. Together with some bloggers, I attended a grand press conference for Batanes, a love story co-directed by Dave Hukon and internationally acclaimed young indie-director Adolf Alix Jr. Written by Arah Badayos, the film is a love story between a Filipina and a Taiwanese and circles around how the waters of Batanes test their love and individualities.

batanes_movie.jpgThe film stars Ken Zhu of the Taiwanese boy band F-4 fame and Iza Calzado. At the press conference, I felt really out of place amidst the showbiz reporters. Haha, I was laughing at myself as I embarked on this latest adventure as it is so out of character. But wait, I attended the Press Conference as my way of helping promote Batanes Islands. The fastest route to Batanes is through Asian Spirit which is the only airline that flies to Batanes and other remote islands in the Philippines. [tag]Asian Spirit[/tag] is also the major sponsor of Batanes which is really nice gesture on their part to support an indie film.

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Meet-Up with Bloggers and the Asus Eee Pc

The great thing about blogger meet-ups is the fact that I am usually the oldest in the group.
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Mingling with young bloggers means that I get to babble endlessly about techie topics which I can never really discuss with my husband or non-blogger friends. Oh I talk with my daughters but I seem to know more about computer gadgets and other tech topics than they do. Last night, Shai Coggins, co-founder of B5 Media took time off from her vacation to the Philippines for a meet and greet in Kape Isla at Serendra. Shai was one of the first bloggers that I often visited when I launched this blog. In fact, I lovingly stole her Tell Me About You idea which paved the way for me to explore other blog topics other than grief education. Meeting Shai and other blogger friends in the cozy cafe covered a lot of activities like ranting about Google’s Page Rank Penalty, the Trillanes Revolt , the curfew, Monetizing Blogs, raving over the B5 media Schwags, Shai’s personalized prints and Sasha’s fashion loot. But aside from the company of Shai Coggins and the bloggers, the other limelight of the party was this cute little thing…

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Photo Hunt: Red

filipina
What a timely theme for this week’s Photo Hunt, RED. It’s my favorite color of the Holiday Season. That’s Lauren, my daughter showing off her RED wordpress t-shirt. I am raffling off three red shirts for those who have FilipinaImages.com linked entries. Your old Filipina themed entries will do as long as you link them to FilipinaImages.com. I am giving away three shirts and the deadline is December 5. If you haven’t joined yet, sign up here.

For some of you who feel left out of the red wordpress shirt, here’s another red photo of Lady, my daughter’s pet cat.

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a mom blogger who advocates constructive engagement in issues on family & society.
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