Day 35 - Alabang Sunset

"I love this place. I take pictures of this place during sunset!" K said when I asked him if he was going to miss working in Alabang.

"Me, too!" was my reply.

And as you can see from this picture, there is a reason why.

Day 32 - Hall

I've taken many a picture of our building's hall before, but here's another one just because. Just because it always looks real creepy when it's empty and especially now that the carpet's gone. I think this would make a nice location for a film or music video of some kind.

Day 9 - Pot Luck + Cooking in Our Kitchen

Yum! Don't they all look yummy? They all were. :)

So, technically, this was our dinner for Saturday night, but eating these extended until the wee hours of Sunday morning so I think it's fine to use this pic as my January 24 picture.

I hosted a farewell party for a dear, dear work acquaintance who will be returning to his hometown (forever!) in a few days. Since he's been our personal chef for the past four years we've known each other, we requested that he cook us something on his farewell party. He decided to make a chicken dish (it's the one on the lower right of the photo). He deboned it and everything. It's chicken stuffed with feta cheese, spinach and pâté de campagne, whatever that is. The sauce is a combination of orange and mango juice + my grandfather's Martini and chicken bone er, essence, I don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, it was really, really good.

So that he wouldn't have to cook so much stuff, I decided it would be a pot luck event so our friends brought the other dishes. X brought the macaroni salad, which she made herself, too. The liempo on the upper right of the photo was brought by B. And the creamy garlic potato dish was made by me. All dishes received good reviews. Hooray! We are successful foodies!

R brought red and white wine and our desserts, from C and M, were J.Co donuts and Frozen Brazo de Mercedes.

Day 8 - At Your Local

For lunch today, my former officemates and I decided to eat at Your Local, a hipster-y restaurant in Makati. I ordered their salmon dish and I must say I enjoyed it very much. :) A bit pricey, but that's Makati for you.

Afterwards, we went to Glorietta and bought ice cream from Manila Creamery, which makes artisinal gelato, which made for a very hipster day, culinarily speaking. ;) After having ice cream, I bought another dessert item--Sweet Surrender, a variant of the frozen brazo de mercedes from the outlet of The Suite Life by Ange, also in Makati. And then I got a ride from Uber to get home in time to prepare for a farewell party for one of my work acquaintances. Not a bad Saturday indeed.

Day 364 - Paellyeah!

New friends = new activities!

Today we had a paella party because we're now friends with K and his hobby, apparently, is cooking for others. Talk about a great hobby! :D

So this is me and a few of my new officemates in the dining room of my house, because we live in the middle of the Muntiparlas area and I guess that makes it the most ideal place for a party that involves people from those places. And, my parents are fine with having people over anyway. They even played Flamenco music because it suddenly became a Spanish-themed party with the paella and all.

BTW, crazy eyes expression on my face is due to my dad's corny jokes (that I've heard way too many times before!) during the taking of this picture.

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Ako nang umabot ng 2 years sa 365 days project. Sorry na! Ang hirap mamili ng pictures and... I only have 1 more to go! How do you choose a picture that's good enough to be the last one?

Day 358 - Slide

Yup. You guessed it. This is another requirement for our office's scavenger hunt -- a photo of the entire team on a slide, one in front of the other. It seemed ridiculous when we read about it on the list, but I think we look really cute here. And I'm so glad that the slide in the park in our village is this old-school metal slide, not the cartoony plastic ones that you see in other playgrounds nowadays (like in the photo of the other team. haha! how competitive am i?! :P).

Day 356 - At the Walk of Fame

Yet another requirement for our office Scavenger Hunt, is a photo of 3 members on our team with the star of Francis Magalona at the Walk of Fame in Eastwood. So yes, we South people went all the way to Eastwood to take this photo. And it was raining. And the floor was slippery. But in the end, we won the game, and we had a nice time together so it was all good! :)

Day 355 - So Many Starbucks

For a scavenger hunt event in the office, I needed a photo of myself in front of at least 10 different Starbucks branches. So today, when I met up with my friends A and K at Glorietta, I decided to take advantage of the fact that that small area has 4 different Starbucks branches -- Marks&Spencer, Glorietta 4 Cinemas, 6750 and Glorietta 5. Actually, there are more branches in Greenbelt, and I probably could've completed all 10 branches if I'd walked a bit along Ayala Avenue. But it was late, and there are more branches in more parts of Metro Manila anyway, so.

Thanks much to K for taking these pictures and understanding my cause! Hahaha!

On another note, 10 days to go!

Day 354 - 1110111211

No, the title of this post isn't binary. (Hence the #2 in it.) It's just that way because the last 3 days seemed to have meshed into just one very long day for me.

It really started on Thursday night when E asked me to join their paintball game on Friday morning. I said yes and because my shift in my new office ends at 5am, as soon as I got home, I just took a shower, threw some extra clothes in a bag and headed for Quezon City, where the paintball venue, La Mesa Eco Park, was. I know, it's so far, but I've never tried paintball before and I did have nothing planned for 11-11-11. And okay, going to the north is not that bad, as long as you have a good reason to go there.

Anyway, after the paintball game (which our team won!), we had lunch at SM Fairview. And it was my first time to step into SM Fairview ever. I never thought I'd ever see that mall, but you never really know where life's going to take you. And I know, going to a different SM branch is hardly a significant event in someone's life but, ano ba, mababaw lang ako.

After lunch, E and his officemates still had to work so after a quick shower at C's house, which is only a 5-minute drive from their office (Thanks so much C!), we went to their office, where I took this photo of them working. They looked like this for the next many hours, only slightly changing when they had a meeting and when we all ate dinner. So this was more or less how they looked from 2PM til midnight.

And after midnight, we decided to just sleepover at C's (Thanks so much! Again!) because it was too late to head 40km to the south.

We left C's house at around 7am on 11-12-11 and I got back home around 9am and only really slept properly at 12nn. So, yeah. November 10, 11 and 12, was one long day for me. Enjoyable of course, but still really long.

Day 350 - New

Snapshot of my desk in my new office. Already a mess and it's only my second day. Oh well.
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Also, only 15 more days to complete this 365 project. Does this mean I have to pick the photos I post here really well? I guess only time will tell.

Sorry about that cliché.

Day 343 - MM Merienda

The first things I did when I got back home, in order of importance:

1) Ate chicken joy @ Jollibee!
2) Watched the season premiere of Gossip Girl
3) Met up with my friends @ Starbucks!

Hehehe! Just kidding. I missed everything equally. No, really! :P

Anyway, these are the girls from where I used to work. I miss them so much because not only do I no longer work in the same office as them, but I was also not in the same country for the last 5 months. I'm really happy that we still make time to see each other even when we're no longer officemates. Actually, two other people in this photo don't work for the same company anymore, too. So, I think based on that, I can say that we've all become real friends. :)

Day 248 - Government Office

Ngayong araw na ito, ako ay nagpa-approve muna ng SS ID Application (SSS Form E-6) sa SSS Servicing Branch na malapit sa aking tirahan o pinapasukang kompanya dahil ayon sa SSS Diliman, magpupunta lamang ako sa SSS Diliman Branch kapag approved na ang E-6 at kukuha na ng appointment para sa SS ID Data Capture. Bow.

Day 225 - Did you cry during Casablanca?

So there I was studying a book for English learners and one particular picture caught my eye. See the drawing for #3 Did you cry during the movie? The girl is watching Casablanca! There's Rick, Victor Laszlo, Captain Renault and even the airplane in the background. :) I don't think there was actually a scene that looked exactly like this in the movie, and it's too bad Ilsa didn't fit anymore, but that's okay. It's still obviously Casablanca.

It surprised me because the pictures in these books are usually generic and don't make references to pop culture, because you're supposed to focus on the sentences/grammar (I'm assuming), but maybe the artist for this couldn't resist? Or is Casablanca the go-to movie when you want to refer to one in a textbook?

It's so cute. :)

P.S. Apologies for the very poor quality of this photo. I used my cellphone camera, and I don't think it's meant to take pictures like this.

Day 217 - Food Court

Last day of 3-day-training for my new job and nothing too significant happened except that we discovered the food court in the building that we work in. And here I thought we were going to live on McDonald's and 7-11. Lucky I was wrong. :)

Day 215 - Welcome Dinner

Started training for a new job today. Apparently, it's tradition for the company to treat its new employees on their first day. Lucky for us, there was Shakey's nearby. :D

I love Shakey's chicken. And their mojo potatoes. And garlic bread. And pasta. Actually, I love Shakey's food that isn't pizza. Is that ironic? I still think the best pizza in the Philippines is Pizza Hut. I mean, Yellow Cab is good and all, but it's too expensive and, they don't have cheesy crusts! Which I think is the best thing that has happened to pizza ever.

Day 161 - Christmas Party!

Because I'm now an ex-employee and have no office Christmas parties to go to, I volunteered for the Christmas party to come to me. Haha! :P

These are my friends from the office I used to work in. They went to my house after the company Christmas party to exchange gifts and play board/card games. Lots of fun. :)

P.S. The company Christmas party was actually last night, but they got to my house at around 1AM today and stayed here 'til 9AM so this counts as my photo of the day for December 4 Saturday and not Friday night.

Day 112 - Egg Hunt Ending

The games of Mattera Matibay 4 ended with an Egg Hunt. The team who found the most number of relevant eggs (because the other eggs were only decoys and therefore not counted--you can tell which egg was a decoy and which was relevant by reading the names written on the eggs) would win. But because we were all so equally matched, all 3 teams found one relevant egg each, and the final score was a three-way tie. So the organizers came up with an "emergency" tie breaker, which our team (Blue) won. :) Congratulations to us! :D

As for the eggs we found, we cooked them for breakfast. I took this picture just before I threw these broken shells and discarded carton in the trash.

Day 111 - Mattera Matibay 4

Oh, I can say a lot of things that I didn't like about the job I quit 3 months ago, but it would definitely not include working with these people. :)

Today we had our 4th teambuilding event, which is a fancy way of saying "team outing", because it's not exactly a real teambuilding (Case in Point: I'm still included, even though I haven't been an employee of the office since July). We've called it "Mattera Matibay", after our office team name, which starts with the word "matter". Talk about bonding experiences. We have these teambuilding events out of our own pockets and we organize them ourselves, too. I'm usually one of the organizers, and therefore not a participant of the games, but we changed it up a bit this time and had the boys be the organizers (that's why they're wearing matching jackets).

The rest of us, all girls, were split into 3 teams -- Blue, Gray, and Red. As you can see, we're wearing our team colors. :)

One of us, R couldn't stay overnight. We didn't want her not to be in the picture, so we took the "traditional" group pic tonight, instead of the usual Sunday morning.

In case anyone's curious, we're at one of the (many) private resorts in Pansol, Laguna. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the name of the place. But if you really want to know, leave me a message and I can ask one of the organizers.

Day 82 - Condolences

A friend's sister died and we went to her wake today. We asked the reason for her death and he said that even the hospital didn't have an answer. All they knew was that she was checked into the hospital Sunday night, and by Monday night she was gone. She was 31 years old.

Maybe it was because the hospital was ill-equipped to handle a case like hers. I guess I can say criticisms to our country's health care, etc. But at this point, it doesn't really matter. I'll just pray that she rest in peace.

This photo was taken outside the chapel in Imus, Cavite, where the wake was held.

Day 71 - Gachapons

Have you ever seen so many gachapons? Maybe if you live in Japan, you have. In my case, this is the most no. of gachapon machines I've seen, or at least the longest line I've seen.

I took this picture in Robinsons Mall in Ermita, Manila. I know, what was I doing there, right? Well, I had just enrolled to a Japanese language class. But before I could do that, I had to find the school first. Since I'm a direction idiot, I asked my friend K, who lives in Manila, to come with me and show me around.

Afterwards, we saw Tekken at this mall. The movie didn't really disappoint me since I was expecting it to be bad, but I guess I really should've just waited for it on HBO or something. Still, K and I had a good time as we also went to all the bookstores we could find. :) BTW, K is unemployed, too. She quit the same job I did, but 2 months before me. Hence, why she was able to show me around Manila in the middle of the day on a weekday.