It’s been so long, too long since I’ve had an opportunity to take this photo. All I can say is, it’s about damn time.

Bowling, which I rediscovered about a couple of months ago during a work-related outing, is not my sport. Heavy, large balls rolled beautifully down a lane is not something I can do with style. Taking my turn at a lane just shows off what little control I have and my loss of technique.

Take for example the three times I’ve gone bowling before I was told to use my middle and ring finger for better control (I had been using my pointer and the middle, thanks). The tips from well meaning players telling me to try and roll the boll down the lane instead of ceremoniously bouncing it down to hit the pins in (what I suspect is) anger and frustration. The photos that show how incredibly bad form I had compared to the beautiful poses they had without knowing someone was taking pictures.

Not to say I had really bad scores during games. I did fairly well, breaking the 100 mark in my second time bowling in years. I bowled a couple spares. I could hit a few at least with my bounce technique, but bowling with people with actual technique, well, I was in the bottom two.

This is not to say I will stop playing. I will keep at it, but not really learning, as the more I concentrate on winning, the lower my scores get.

And really, isn’t bowling at this point in life really for fun?

Badminton on the other hand, I will be working my butt off to get better at. I just hope I get more opportunities to play.

Hello six readers! I saw this a couple of days ago, it’s about a design student reworking Disney Princesses to look more “real” and it got me thinking about my Disney childhood. It really was a great experience growing up with Disney characters, feeling their pain, seeing their triumphs, and wishing for their hair.

So here are a few random facts about my childhood with Disney:

• Growing up, I was told I looked like Jasmine from Aladdin and Pocahontas from the movie of the same title. No, it was not lost on me that these were the princesses that were colored. I was darker, umkay?
• I memorized the whole Pocahontas soundtrack when it came out, our mom bought us tapes and the sing along lyrics to the whole thing. To this day I still remember snippets of random songs.
• I really loved Ariel’s red hair from the Little Mermaid, and have a soft spot for redheads up to the present coz of it.
• I dressed up in a genie like costume (that I picked up from Supersale Club with my own money) for my seventh birthday. I liked the blues, greens and purples of the thing.
• I remember one friend for his Lion King lunchbox. I wanted it so much coz it changed colors in the heat.
• I went to the preschool section of our elementary school library to read Minnie Mouse’s adventures.
• My favorite character to color in coloring books is Minnie Mouse, her outfits were always color coordinated for me.
• For so long I wanted a pet tiger like Princess Jasmine’s.
• Snow White is my least favorite princess, her voice was too high, she was too sickly sweet for my taste.

When I do get my own kids in the future, they will find Disney a part of their childhood as I did mine, I hope they love it as much as I do.

It takes the littlest things to make me smile, and this weekend was full of large grins. Simply said, even if I did clean out my salary in a weekend, it was well worth it. Random, simple things that well, make all the bullcrap I go through at random times in my life all go away.

For one, I saw my friends for a couple hours last Saturday. Abby, Vinnny, Pao and Kiko, it has been too long, and that lunch was too short. Sausages both consumed and inferred, made me a happy bunny for Saturday lunch. I can’t wait for the decimation of Poco Deli’s supply when we do conquer it.

HMR and its random fun items made me want to buy a stuffed bear bigger than me, it’s a good thing I was setting aside cash for other activities, that would not have fit in our car. Still want one though. Maybe if extra spending money comes along, or an enormously bad day has me running to that American surplus store for fluffy companionship.

Bowling with the fam (and the boyf) and getting high scores with my “bounce” roll. Here’s to winging it and winning it. My bowling arm had me moving to a 10lb. ball, and getting a strike for the first time since I can remember. It also had me with a swollen ring finger for the last few frames, as it got squished between 2 10lb bowling balls in excitement to “dribble”.

Seeing people play badminton got me frustrated I couldn’t play and excited to try it for the first time since high school. I was pretty competitive then, but well, I knew no rules and was only killing shuttlecocks across our school’s basketball court. Must play soon and see if I can still hit those things.

Free ice cream (see previous post)

A golden retriever pup that keeps dribbling dog spit on my pants but looks quite adorable doing so. He’s getting big, and has his moments of “NOOOO” but most of the time just hangs out watching tv being cute. I <3 Ferb!

So here’s hoping the coming weekends will be as good as this one. Hello Universe!

This past week, my view of the world took a beating. Hard truths about human greed smacked me in the face, and the sick, depressing video of a two year old Chinese girl getting run over and ignored by thirteen people really shattered the rose colored glasses I still put on every morning.

Last Sunday, my faith in the world got a little pat in the back.

After mass at UP Diliman, we headed to the shopping center for a light lunch, Rodic’s so the post lunch badminton game wouldn’t have us sluggish and sloshing random food around in our stomachs. I had been craving ice cream for days, longing for (but too lazy to go to) Sebastian’s cookie dough ice cream. I figured I’d soothe my crave monster with a cone from the Fruits in Ice Cream freezer/scooping station in one of the center’s stalls, and get it cheap, with P23 a scoop, I won’t feel gypped and I’d have ice cream in mah belleh.

There was a 40-ish man in line in front of me, buying 2 ice cream cones for him and his son, who was outside the stall. I kept my distance as he had already told off his son to not wander off. I remember he ordered a mango scoop for his son and a strawberry one for himself. Handing the mango one to his son, he repeated his order to the lady who was scooping. He then turned to me and asked “Ano sayo? (What are you getting?)” and I said green tea. I figured he was asking because 1. He was making conversation. 2. He was trying to get the lady to hurry up as she was quite slow. 3. He was the owner and was making the lady go faster for customers. What I didn’t expect was for him to repeat my order to the lady scooping up ice creams, and repeating his order of a strawberry scoop. After the lady handed him my green tea, he said “What a healthy order.” to me, and told the lady that he was paying for my ice cream. He then handed me my ice cream and said “Have a great day.”

Dumbfounded, I said, thank you and shuffled out the stall in shock. It was so random, so nice, and so perfect for the week of harsh truths and crazy news items that I had, that I could only go back to Rodic’s (where the rest of my family was) and tell them about the story.

So Mr. Ice Cream man, thank you. You just made this girl’s Sunday better, and restored her faith in the human race.

My friends are old. From ten years ago where the party would start at 10 pm and end after breakfast at Mr. Kabab, we are now cracking open bottles of wine at 5 pm and ending at 8. From them bringing random girls around to parties they now talk about the name game song and how their daughters are growing up. This is quite a disturbing, yet comforting thought to have as we wind down to later in our lives when everyone has settled down and well, still laughing about the same stories they’ve been repeating since I’ve known them.

They didn’t start out as my friends, rather my sister’s. But they have adopted me as their own and sometimes forget that I’m three years younger, telling me about a random classmate from somewhere that I don’t really remember. And other times they think I’m too mature for my age so they left me alone, without notice to wake up in a tent in Puerto Galera at the age of 16. (It was my first trip without my parents, thanks guys)

They are the most dependable and the most undependable group of friends I know. We never expect them to show up when they call two days before, but don’t get surprised when they say they’re on their way over (or just randomly show up at the house with food).

So maybe in five years I’ll be writing about them getting even older, but hey, life happens.

So I have the humor of a fifteen year old boy. I just feel like sometimes we need to laugh at accidentally funny signs and things lost in translation sometimes.

And I sort of needed this after a long day. Happy Tuesday to my five readers!

 

I have been told that I look “suplada” or standoffish or just plain “mataray”. (There are no English translations that I can think of for the two Filipino words in the first sentence that I’m quite satisfied with, let me know if any of you five readers think of one)

I don’t quite agree. I’m just, for a lack of a better word, shy. I am not the type of person who can walk up to someone and just strike up a conversation (I just met one, a colleague named Jean and I think she rocks). I just can’t. However, when I do get approached, I try my best to maintain a flow of words between us, to most of my ability.

I say to the most of my ability because sometimes there really is just more dead air than actual words. For fear of being politically incorrect, unfunny or offensive, some of the things I do want to say are stuck inside my head, only to be told later to someone I’m sure would understand or appreciate the joke.

It is a power I would like to have. Yes, I consider it a power to schmooze, as this will get you places in life, your job, your social status and your future family’s place in the world cemented by the power to rub elbows quite effectively.

This thought did not materialize randomly in my head. Last week, I had multiple opportunities to mingle and widen my social circle with quite frankly such amazing people and personalities were presented to me on a platter. What did I do? I sat in a corner and finished a book. (It was a fun book, but hey, actual people!)

So here I go again, saying next time I’ll do better and socialize more. I will. I will.

Once during a blackout when I was a kid, a frog jumped on me at night. Childhood trauma? Check. So it comes as no surprise that at the age of 25, I still hate them with a passion. Those jumpy, warty, slimy things still make my skin crawl whenever I hear them, and no exaggeration, I run like hell when I see them on the street.

So about 3 years ago when I was given an opportunity to have them for lunch I really was iffy. A friend was offering to order them for me for free as long as I took a bite. I kept hearing about frogs tasting like chicken and whatnot, and I figured what the hell, they were dead and I’d have my revenge.

They did taste like chicken, a bit cleaner for some reason, and as I can imagine, cooked to perfection coz I could actually swallow the thing. It’s just, they came like this. (see above photo) Full bodied suckers that were posed like they were stretching in the swimming pool before they started a lap of backstroke. Needless to say I was staring a good ten minutes before I actually had the strength to venture the taste.

Anyways, I got a bit of revenge, and chalked a notch on the “weird food I’ve eaten” list.

And it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

You can get these at Abe or Cafe Adriatico in the Metro Manila area, and native food restaurants in Pampanga. Ask for Betute.

… to a four year old bunny. Ever since I got this guy I have been amazed that I have him. He is such a cutie patootie, with his black eyes and furry butt.

Not that we don’t get into arguments, I always lecture him when he turns over his just replenished food bowl (which he does a lot, I think for attention).

Usually I just stare at those eyes then rub the part between his eyes and nose (he loves that) and tell him what a cutie he is.

Now all he needs is a woman, anyone with female bunnies as volunteers? You’ll get to keep all the offspring!