Happy weekend guys.

Just thought a good food porn post would liven up the dreary environment.

Gotta love a slice (or two, or three) of banoffee pie from Banapple.

*Find a Jollibee to hug.*
Hey, lemme tell you today, that you are lovely. Just the way you are. You don’t need to lose five pounds. Someone, somewhere, you might not know it,(or if you’re really lucky, you do) someone is in love with that sideways smile, or that crazy laugh. Remember that before you think that there’s never gonna be the one for you. Just wait. You’re wonderful, you’re smart, you offer the world a lot more than you give yourself credit for.

And yes, I’m talking to you. You might not feel it right now, it might be one of those days, or you just feel invisible in the sea of dolls and long legs, but I am talking to you.

Stop beating yourself up for the one that got away. They didn’t deserve you coz they didn’t see you. How wonderful you are, how loving you can be. They didn’t take the time to know you.

Have fun with your life. Forget about finding “the one”. Forget about the endless search for the right person for you, just let them find you. Coz if they’re smart, they will. And really, do you really wanna go for the stupid ones?

So hey, chin up. You’re alive for a reason.

I am very happy that I am a private citizen. While I am a gossip blog addict and a blogger, I couldn’t imagine living my life for everyone to see.

You might be saying right now, “This is coming from a girl with 4 blogs to her name”. Yes I do blog, I do share my thoughts and sometimes pics of the people I love, but I choose what to share. It’s not a life like those people who have photographers running after them hoping to catch every slip, every mistake.

And it’s not just celebrities. I can’t do the whole Facebook thing, posting all I feel when I feel it for the people they’re connected to on that thing. No judgment on those people on those who do, in fact I admire people who can put it all out there. Those “I love you @significant other” posts, living your romance in front of all your facebook friends, is for me the equal of writing poetry and posting it on your blog, too soul bearing for me. PDA for the 21st century, whole relationships can even be printed out on a Facebook news feed.  And even if I do get the urge to do that sometimes (coz hey I get the butterflies too) I resist it, as I believe that if you live in public, you crash and burn there too.

I am afraid. While I love the idea of sharing how happy I am with my friends, the times that aren’t so happy I couldn’t bear to have all out there in the open. And from what I’ve seen, even the changing of a relationship status is cause for comments and questions I sometimes don’t want to answer.

Things go sour, things get tense, people leave, people arrive in my life, and for the best, stay there. They know how important they are. I might not shout it from the heavens right now, but that doesn’t mean i don’t feel it. And that I’m trying to keep it secret. I’m just trying to keep it sacred.

This is Nathan, my friend Bernice’s 2 month old. I am his godmother. Even if the title makes me sound old, I totally cherish the fact that I’m gonna be part of this adorable baby’s life. I could not stop goggling over him at the christening.

And just coz I can’t post just one picture:

I sure hope that when the time comes, my baby will be this cute.

*this is a photo of my dad’s friends. they’ve been a group since they were 12, thus making it a 40-year friendship and counting. This is my standard of friendship.

Some people are constant girlfriends, some are constant antagonists. I am a constant friend.

I have been single for most of my life, heck, all my life, up until recent months, and as a side effect, I have had the time and the freedom to fully cultivate my friendships. Not that people in relationships don’t have the time and freedom to be a friend, really, but my pseudo-relationships of my 23 years, have been my friends.

I have been the constant shoulder, the ear, the hand to smack them in the forehead with, and I have always been available, any time, any where when my friends wanted to pick up and talk over a beer, or a coffee, or most likely, a good meal.

Suffice to say there were times I took things too seriously, bemoaning my friends not being available when I was blue, flaking out when I needed an ear. True, when things really mattered, they were there. But to say my friends are in and out of my life on a constant basis is not an exaggeration, but a statement of fact. There are days when suddenly I get texts of wanting to meet in an hour, or sudden houseguests for when i arrive home on a Sunday after church. I love that. I truly believe in the adage “True friends pick up where they left off, no matter how long they’ve been apart or far the distance”.

But singularity and being the token “dependable” wore me down sometimes. I mourned when the friendships I truly wanted to work out didn’t. I desperately tried to fix utterly destroyed ones, only to have other people ask what the point was. And i truly didn’t know, except that I knew I would miss them and still do. Anger got the best of me at times and I lashed out and gave up on others, after months of thinking it over and experiencing just grief and emotional upheaval every time I talked to them.

As hard as I may want to just don’t care about the people that have left, whether in high drama or just quietly, I still get a tug inside when I see them. I have even suppressed their updates on Facebook, as it pains me to see how happy they are going about their lives, even with those I considered near and dear, I’m just the one who’s not there anymore. Juvenile as it seems, part of me still can’t believe how I bent over backward, killed myself over my friendships, to the degree where I could be seen as a complete martyr. But that’s just me.

Have I changed? I guess a little. I’m not as readily available that I rush out the door to be there in 30 minutes when someone needs me. I won’t watch a movie 3 times with 3 different groups coz I have all the free time in the world (Sigh, of all the movies in the world Transformers 2, I still can’t get over with).  I still will find the time to meet them at my earliest convenient time, or talk over the phone/ym/email. I won’t text “You suck I haven’t seen you in forever” but expect a few once in a while if it’s true. I may not reply in 5 minutes, but I will, and even ask to meet if a friend needs a shoulder or an ear. I won’t try to fix up a friend from one group with a friend from the other (i think we can all heave a sigh of relief about that part). I won’t keep trying to fit in people in my life that don’t want a part of it, and wish them luck on their own lives. Everyone will be happier, I won’t have to be awkwardly saying hi, they don’t have to respond.

As someone told me once, “Why not let it be the other way around? Let them bend over backwards to be your friend and not break yours?” It may sound selfish but hey, a friendship is a relationship is too, and it’s a two-way street. If you’re abandoned, don’t run after them, let them find their way back to you. Try not to hold grudges.

I <3 my friends. They are the weirdest collection of people and I cannot thoroughly explain how we connected. I pick up the strangest connections and the most unique groups. They’re the hardest people to find when you need them, but show up in the best times. I see a few of them everyday, some once in a decade, but I love them equally and miss them all the same.

I am a girlfriend now my friends, but I’m still a friend who won’t forget you. No matter what happens.

Someone near and dear is off to Boracay next week.

It made me realize how much I missed that island.

It really is perfect for hanging out on the beach and eating, and drinking, ang laughing, and whatever you might wanna do.

And while browsing on someone’s blog today I saw this!

Win a Free Boracay Vacation Package by WOW Philippines Travel Agency

WOW Philippines Travel Agency, Inc. is celebrating it’s 5th year in business during July of 2010, and we would like you to have a chance to celebrate with us, so we have decided to give-away a FREE Boracay Package complete with 5 Star accommodations at the luxurious Le Soleil de Boracay Hotel on Boracay Island. The lucky winner will win the following Boracay vacation package.

Vacation Package Inclusions:
- 5 Days / 4 Nights Luxury 5 Star Accommodations at the Le Soleil de Boracay  Hotel
- Flights to Boracay from Manila to Caticlan Airport on Philippine Airlines
- Island Transfers – Door-to-Door from Manila to the resort and back to Manila
- Three (3) Meals each day, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
- Boracay Activities – Horseback Riding, Island Hopping, Glass Bottom Boat
- PLUS – 5,000 peso Spending Cash

Read More Information: http://www.boracay-packages.com/

Doesn’t that sound deliciously fun?

It sure seems like a winner 5 days to me.

Heck you, dear reader, can join too! clicky clicky on the link above.

I picked these up at the Saizen Japanese store in Galleria. They are the cutest things ever ever ever. Ever. I got the stuffed food thingies, just coz I wanted to ask people “You hungry?” and offer them one. (Which I’ve done to almost everyone) And I’ve squished and almost nibbled when bored.

Since they are kept in my bag now and my perfume bottle keeps uncapping itself they now smell like me too.

Winner explosion of cute.

Can’t wait to bring ‘em over the new office.

Destruction, hunger, murder and a million other things. Proven to get any other person down any given day.

Read your newspaper and guaranteed there is one thing on there that’ll ruin your morning.

The choices people make to lie, cheat, steal, kill, ravage and destroy the beauty and goodness that is out there is unbelievable.

But we have to look up, see the sun that burns our skin and feel the warmth that it gives us when we’re chilly in the morning.

The sky that we prod for rain when it’s dry, so breathtakingly blue with a smattering of clouds.

Nature, the same thing we’re killing with our bulldozers and pesticides, the same thing we long for when we see gray buildings and walk on concrete.

To feel dewy grass and smell the salt in the air when we’re near the ocean.

I pray the generations would get to see.

Not in photographs and paintings, but to really feel what it’s like to just be where the sky is blue and the water cool, as it was when we were kids and we didn’t need anything but the street to play patintero in.

No PSPs, or DS lites needed for a road trip, just pointing out things on the horizon like an oddly shaped mountain or all those ducks in the rice field.

I sound like a hippie don’t i?

It’s just, there is so much beauty in the world, and I hope we all still get to see it before it washes away.

Oh Kulfi, you were so strangely good.

And I had you all to myself coz you were weird.

Pistachios and rose syrup, purrfect.

What a way to cool off.

No I’m not doing an ad for Starbucks, I just want a cold drink, and these really looked good to me when i was looking through pictures. It’s far too freaking hot for a toffee nut latte, but can you imagine a toffee nut frap right about now? With this sweltering heat that doesn’t go away even at night, I just feel like drinking everything iced and sticking to places with AC.

Or maybe go to the beach.

Oh the beach. How I miss you.

But I would settle for IVs of these or those banana smoothies Ria made last night. Man those were good. With vanilla ice cream, heavenly.

Cold drinks, the savior of the masses.

Starbucks, save your masses with free drinks kay?