Day 271 - Mini-Reunion

Oh how busy our lives have become. We can't even get complete attendance, let alone go on a summer outing. :( Actually, we have Christmas parties in March and birthday celebrations 3 months after ones birthday, too. I don't know why everyone else in our lives is more prioritized, but maybe it's because we know that we'll always be there for each other no matter what? I'm being too sentimental.

This is me and 2 of my college friends, X and G. The cute little boy is X's son (my godson!) A. He's turning 5 this August.

Anyway, we all ate lunch @ Tempura in ATC today (one of my favorite restuarants, despite their betrayal) and had some Serenitea. Happy day with my happy friends. I wish we lived closer to each other (X lives in Laguna, G in Makati, and our other friends who aren't in this photo--M, G2 and R live in Makati, Manila, and Singapore (!)) and had more free time.

Day 270 - The Outside World

I'm usually cooped up in my room whenever I'm home. Even when I was a kid, I didn't like going outside too much, even if there happens to be a park in front of our house.

Because it's summer vacation in the Philippines right now, it's too humid to stay inside the house. And the sun was no longer very hot when I took this photo at 6PM, and there's a basketball game going on in the newly covered basketball court. So there are lots of people. I feel like an outsider looking at them from behind the gate of our house, although they are the real outsiders because I'm technically the one inside (our house, that is).

Day 269 - Ayala Center

I went to Makati for a dentist appointment today and walked to Ayala Center before going home. I passed by this sign on Ayala Avenue. It's pretty cute and I guess it helps the foreigners (who we all know are Ayala's target market) find the mall, not that that's difficult, considering it's the biggest mall there is in Makati.

The background is the too crowded with cars Ayala Avenue and one of the oldest (but still posh) hotels in the country, The Manila Peninsula.

Day 268 - Leaving

We took my sister and her fiance to the airport today so they could go back to New Zealand. This is my sister with her usual facial expression :P It's most probably due to the heat.

Day 267 - Stay at Home and Play with the Dog Day

It's a religious holiday today in the Philippines (Good Friday) so all the shops and everything else are closed. People either stay at home, go to church, or go on holiday at some resort. We stayed at home and played with the dog. This is my sister's fiance with the family dog Brigham.

Day 266 - Requisite Group Shot

So, I don't know how it is for other cultures and why it's like this in the Philippines, but nearly all gatherings, formal or otherwise, and it doesn't matter how long/short the duration of the event is, end in taking a group photo.

My cousin said that we should all go out again before my sister left for New Zealand, and during said "night out" (we just had coffee in Seattle's Best Coffee at Bonifacio High Street), she also suggested that we should go and check out our other cousin's new house, which they'd moved into only yesterday.

After giving us some sort of a tour of the house, we all went back to the living room and took this photo. I don't think it's strange at all because I'm so used to it, but I think maybe people from other countries (like my sister's fiance) found it weird.

Day 265 - Old Library Card

I cleaned parts of my closet today and had flashbacks to my childhood for every other shirt or toy or piece of paper that I saw. This is one of the pieces of paper, or cardboard I guess. I can't believe my library card from 2nd grade is still alive after all these years. Also, my hair has not tamed after all these years either.

P.S. Today is Day 265! 100 days to go and this 365 Project is over. I said last June that this project will only be until May 2011, but apparently, I've missed enough days to fill an entire month that although it's April, I'll need 100 more days to complete the 365. Well, it still counts as one entire year of pictures even if the dates aren't exact, right?

Day 264 - View from the Top

I got to visit my mom's office in Makati today. They have a view of the Ayala Triangle from their meeting room. Amazing.

Day 263 - Chick Lit and Man Lit

A friend asked me to recommend some books. She said she wasn't into any particular genre and wanted to read different kinds of books, so I recommended these two, which are at the different sides of the fiction spectrum as far as I can tell. One is Chick Lit fluff, and the other is Sci-Fi Suspense Mystery.

I want to say that I enjoyed both of them equally, but actually I think The Shopaholic Series is a little annoying. But I accept the fact that there are some people who like those kinds of stories, so I don't discriminate against them when recommending.

Day 262 - And Happy Birthday Again!

And finally, the joint celebration of my mom and my brother's birthdays and the fact that my sister who is usually in New Zealand is here in the Philippines. Definitely enough cause to have lechon in the house. Yehey!

Though to be completely honest, I'm not a big fan of lechon, and would've preferred Inihaw na Liempo. But celebration is all about giving people what they want, and this happens to be the celebratory food of choice for most Filipinos. Right?

Day 261 - High and Low

Because my sister's in town, our family went to Tagaytay Highlands today. I got to ride the cable cars for the first time! I discovered that you could see the swimming pool from the cable car, and apparently my dad discovered that you could see the cable cars from the swimming pool, too. Here's a picture of him taking a picture of us. ;) You can even see the shadow of our cable car on the ground. Haha, ang babaw ng kaligayahan ko!

Day 260 - Hot Chocolate is Better than Coffee

My sister Z is happy with her decision to order hot chocolate. Her fiance E... not so much with his decision to order coffee. Obviously. :P

First in their itinerary in the Philippines is to go shopping. But not before having a hearty breakfast, so we ate at BFast in Ayala Triangle. We walked to Glorietta, Greenbelt and Landmark afterwards.

Breakfast was good, and not as expensive as I thought it was going to be. The hot chocolate was delicious, but too much for me. I didn't finish drinking mine. :(

Day 259 - Happy Birthday Still!

So my mom's birthday is on April 9, but because we were on vacation then, her officemates were able to give her this birthday cake only today. Which is great, because my sister Z and her boyfriend E have just arrived for their summer vacation here and look! We already have a cheesecake to snack on! :D

BTW, this is my mom's favorite cheesecake. It's only available at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Restaurant, and you have to order it a few days in advance. Talk about special. :P

Day 258 - Happy Birthday Again!

My mom and brother's birthdays are only a day apart, so as soon as we got back from Coron, Palawan, we waited for my brother and his girlfriend M at the airport (who would arrive only an hour after we did, but from Boracay) and went straight to Friday's restaurant at Bonifacio High Street for my brother's birthday dinner.

This is him with his free cupcake ala mode. The Friday's staff didn't sing Happy Birthday anymore because we asked them not to. :P

Day 257 - Marine Life!

Yesterday was chill out and relax at the resort day, so today was tour around Coron day! We went to the lakes and lagoons and hot springs and somewhere in the middle of the sea in an area called Siete Picados where we saw lots and lots of fish. That's where I took this photo (with my underwater camera!).

I'm actually kind of afraid of fish. When we were in Davao, a fish, that had teeth like a dog, bit my leg. But these fish are harmless. Or so they were in my experience. Anyway, I'm happy to see marine life and hopefully the seas don't get too polluted that they'll be around for a long long time.

Day 256 - Happy Birthday!

Cake! It was really nice of the resort to give my mom a cake for free because it's her birthday today. I mean, yeah they have their own bakery and they're probably bored with baking the same bread everyday, but still.

And it was delicious, too. You can go wrong with spelling my mom's name, but you can never go wrong with chocolate! Hehe! :D

Day 255 - Only One of the Destinations

Today our entire family rode an airplane. But here's the kicker: Not together, and not to the same destinations, i.e. my sister and E went to Hong Kong, my brother and M went to Boracay, and my mom, dad and I went to El Rio Y Mar Resort in Coron, Palawan. The photo is of the entrance of the resort. Pretty amazing. I mean, not just the resort, but the fact that semi-coincidentally, we all had a trip on the same day. :)

Day 254 - Blue Building

I don't even know what building this is. But it looks great from the window of the Power Books store in Greenbelt 3. Lovely shade of blue that is.

Day 253 - Leftover Souvenirs

In preparation for my sister's arrival next week, my brother tidied up his room a little bit. So we discovered forgotten souvenirs that he brought back from Japan. Among them, these electronic keychains. I'm sure he was planning on giving them to certain people at some point, except it's two years later and he's forgotten all about those plans. Hence, he gave them to me, because I'm the hoarder of the family.

Day 252 - Useful Freebie

When my mom attended a conference in Tagaytay 3 weekends ago, she got a bunch of freebies from different companies. This 2GB flash disk is one of the more useful ones, although personally I like all the pens and notebooks and post-its and notepads, even if they have bank names or computer company logos all over them.

Day 251 - Lion Hat

I spent the day at Solenad (a sort of shopping centre) at Nuvali in Sta. Rosa, Laguna with my friends who were celebrating their birthdays. There was a bazaar beside the parking lot and we bought these silly hats. There were several designs and it was fun looking through all of them. I think you can tell our personalities from the animals we chose -- J1 chose the Siberian husky hat (because her dog is a Siberian husky), J2 chose the tiger hat, J3 chose a pink bear hat, and as you can see, I picked the lion hat. The best thing was that none of us wanted the same animal. I love that my friends and I are all different from each other. :)

More details about our day at Solenad in my main blog.

Day 250 - Travels in my Mind

This is the back cover of a notebook I bought several years ago but only started using today. It's a new day, a new month, and therefore I'm starting to write on a new notebook. I won't be using it as a travel journal, though, even if it says that on the cover. I think travel journals should have a hard cover and ring binding, so it's not too easy to rip the pages out, or that it'd still be intact even if it gets wet. But that's not to say that I like the notebooks from Papemelroti any less. They're still my favorite stationery shop.