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.

Read More →

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.

Read More →

The great thing about blogger meet-ups is the fact that I am usually the oldest in the group.
bloggersmeet.jpg
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…

Read More →

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.

Read More →

butch shopping
Yesterday I talked about my gadget shopping spree where I dragged my husband who apparently got bored and tired after walking around for four hours. All that geek-talk made him dizzy. When it was his turn to get his own shopping fix, he brought me to Ikea (Singapore). But my shopping spirt appears to have gone on a nosedive. I wasn’t interested. For the past year, I postponed gadget shopping in lieu of home improvements for our new home. I thought it was a waste of money to buy stuff in Ikea since a huge chunk of our savings went into furnishing our new home. We have all we need, anyway. How could I stop him from oogling over the low-priced goodies? Butch loves home furnishings, buying for the kitchen and grocery shopping. I am into tech stuff and making house repairs. Funny, how we have diverse interests!

Read More →

dollarsNormally, I just let my dollar earnings sit in the bank because I am lazy to visit the bank and have them converted to pesos. Banks also have silly rules on dollar withdrawals. Anyway, the good side on all this is I am able to save for a rainy day. However, the strong peso got me thinking. I started to convert my dollars on “what could have been” at the old exchange rate and the current rates. I refuse to think of “what could have beens” because I should be grateful that I am still liquid. After reading Abe Olandres’ Weakening Dollar hurts Probloggers, I started to think that maybe I need to spend a little more.

That’s a net loss of Php13.13 for every dollar that I have in the bank. That loss closely amounts to a brand new car or a down payment for a house and lot.

Ugh, I did lose a lot on the conversion.

So what did I do? Oh yeah, I went on a mad shopping spree for Christmas presents.

Read More →

web-awardsMy blog , this blog, Touched by an Angel… Winning last year’s Best website award for Blogs Category in the 9th Philippine Web Awards was enough recognition. Tonight, I told my husband that I was attending the [tag]10th Philippine Web Awards[/tag] to give support to my friends who were in the Finalists. I told him to stay home because I wasn’t winning it this year.
Read More →

cartoons.jpgAre you curious about the lifestyle of 7 to 14 year old Filipino children? Sure, we know they have the inherent ability to assimilate new technology and adapt to change at such phenomenal rates but how much? Today, I attended the presentation of Cartoon Networks’ New Generations Philippines results of the first fully-localized study dedicated to Filipino kids with previous studies done in 2003 and 2005. Cartoon Network believes that such study is an integral part of its on-going quest to learn about kids, their lifestyle , opinions and behavior. The approach in conducting the study was based on face-to-face interviews with 1,000 child and parent pairs, surveying Filipino kids aged 7-14 years and their parents from socio-economics classes A to D in three metropolitan areas of Cebu, Davao and Manila in September and October 2007. Synovate Philippines was commissioned to conduct the survey.

media_consumption.jpg
The results are quite disappointing. TV is the number one choice for kids among various forms of media consumption.

  • 46% are internet users of which three quarters have their own homepage.
  • More than 75% go to malls with their parents at least once a month.
  • They’ve got PHP 37 billion to spend annually.

Read More →

doctor fishThe walking and the shopping took a toll on our poor tired feet. My husband gave up on the Funan Digital Mall while I gave up walking through history lane at the National Museum. I thought of calling it a day but… my thoughtful sister-in-law suggested we visit Dr. Fish. Uh-oh, the first time I saw Dr. Fish was at an Ugly Betty episode chomping Betty’s feet. Dr. Fish eating away my feet seemed such a squeamish idea at first. Then again, pampering our feet at the latest spa place in Singapore called the Kampong Fish Therapy piqued my curiousity more than my feelings of ickiness. If you haven’t met Dr. Fish, it’s a fun, natural, painless skin exfoliating treatment. How?

Read More →

hubby and meI just realized that it’s the first time Butch and I are travelling without the kids. The last time we were by ourselves was our honeymoon twenty-two years ago. Since then, our children have always been the number 1 priority in our lives next to us. We have been planning for a family vacation for some time now but our schedules never match. Either one kid is busy with school activities or the other has work obligations. Butch and I just decided to travel on our own without them. He didn’t want the kids to be home alone even when I assure him that my aunt is just a block away for emergency. After all security precautions, we took the weekend off to burn our devalued dollars for Christmas shopping in Singapore. The plane fare alone will be paid from the savings of the gadgets we intend to buy for the two girls. Of course, the most important thing of all is Butch and I will have a lot of romantic moments together getting lost in Singapore.

Read More →