Roasted Kasoy

Random thoughts lately captured in a box.

What was I doing 10 years ago:
Absorbing basic accounting, databases, derivatives and systems analysis and design during my second year in uni.

5 things on my to-do list today:
1. Do the laundry
2. Drop by the neighbourhood fruit/veggie store to get bok choy for no. 3
3. Cook beef shank soup/bulalo good for the next couple of days
4. Drop Joanne a line in YM and congratulate her on her last day at work
5. Post this in my blog

Snacks I enjoy:
Ice cream, chocolate, choco-chip cookies, potato/corn chips, dimsum/dumplings, noodles... not so big on fruits :(

Things I would do if I was a billionaire:
- With the risk of sounding like a beauty pageant contestant, setup an orphanage for unwanted children
- Build schools for the needy yet hopeful kids back home
- Provide good training program to public school teachers back home
- Buy a house here in Melbourne
- Sponsor my family and friends on anything that will make them join me here in Melbourne (ok, this entry is making me sad..)
- Travel with my loved ones

Places I have lived:
Manila, Philippines
Melbourne, Australia

People I want to know more about:
Maan, Net, Mel

Aside from spending a lot of time in the internet, another thing that keeps me entertained here by my lonesome is the telly. I'm not big on watching shows in the telly back home as I'm often out of the house or I let the goblins reign over the telly while I surf the net. But here in Aus, with the lack of more important things to spend time on, I have a new-found friend in the telly.

Much as I thought Aus has this anti-American culture stance, I'm relieved that free TV here has CSI, House, The Simpsons, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Two and A Half Men and 30 Rock. I turn the telly on at 6pm to catch Friends re-runs and depending on what day it is, I get to watch CSI, House, Hell's Kitchen, The Simpsons, etc. And on weekend nights, it's time for Hollywood movies. I'm fortunate that since I also don't do a lot of movie-watching back home, most of the time the featured movies are still 'new' to my eyes.

But the best part of being hooked to the telly is the TV ads here. They're so bad for my taste that they're already amusing. The ads can be very straightforward it would seem you're just watching an animated poster or just downright cheesy. Like this Campbells commercial:  

But once in a while, they manage to produce a classic. Even a tearjerker at this case (make sure you have tissue papers with you).

While December found myself in different kinds of parties, wedding, Christmas, birthdays (Euan's and my brother, Mark's), a good part of January was spent catching up with good friends may it be over lunch, dinner or coffee.

Memen invited our batch from OOCL for a dinner in Conti's, Serendra as her birthday dinner treat. Almost all of us from our batch came, missing the company of our friends who are now working overseas. Memen surprised us with big slices of Conti's famed Mango Bravo. I was even more surprised I easily finished it off in a few minutes, hehehe. Had after-dinner coffee at Bookworm (a different bookstore's in-house cafe) Cafe with Joanne, Deng, Eunice and Memen and extended catching-up on one another's happenings with a few Aussie talks thrown in.

Pardon for the following very long posts that attempt to capture how the last three months went for me. I'll try my best to condense them into concise bits of happenings.

Irony is when you easily blame your life being uneventful when you can hardly post anything in your blog, and still point your finger to a hectic social calendar when updating your blog seems to be a daunting task. Even with the flurry of events I had found myself in in the past three months, December still feels just like two weeks ago. Which is not a bad thing at all since this makes retro-blogging a lot easier.

Just like everyone else I guess, December was another busy month for me. Aside from everything that goes with Christmas, one of the highlights of December is my good ol' friend Cindy's wedding in Baguio. Finally, wedding bells rang for Bryan and Cindy, after 9 years! Their wedding is probably the most personalized wedding I've ever attended. From their wedding cake to the table napkins, not to mention their souvenirs, of course. Added bonus was I got to spend time with Gail and her fiancee, Vip, as I hitched a ride going to and from the City of Pines. On top of that, our thesis group had an instant reunion, all the way up in Baguio. Good times indeed!

I was a bit late into the Christmas frenzy as I was preparing for Cindy's wedding a.k.a. trying to restrain myself from eating too much so that I'll still fit into my gown. So no holiday binge-eating until the Baguio wedding was over. Good thing that our company Christmas party was held a week after - or not so good since I wished for it to coincide with my Baguio trip so that I have an excuse not to attend (that's just the anti-social part of me).

Our company Christmas party heralded Christmas 2007 ala Broadway. It was a fun night, the best Christmas party I had attended ever since I joined the company. Or perhaps I saw to it that I have fun knowing it will be my last Christmas party with them.

The day after our company Christmas Party was our team's Christmas bash. This was held at Bernie and Mon's unit. We had the unit all to ourselves since their baby and his yaya were already in Zamboanga with Bernie's parents. After Liezl and I (November celebrants!) treated the team to a dinner in Dampa, we headed back to Cityland for our Christmas celebration. I shared being Game Master with Hector. Thankfully, most of them were cooperative on the games we had prepared, all in the spirit of fun! The party turned out to be an all-nighter for those afraid to be caught by the cam sleeping, haha! We capped the party off with a breakfast (I said it was an all-nighter) in Cafe Breton courtesy of our PPM (piso per minute late) fund.

Another event in the office that signaled that Christmas is upon me was this year's Kids @ Work. This time around I got to invite Joanne and Andrew. I remembered Joanne's stories of how Andrew is fond of Jollibee and figured this was a good opportunity for my inaanak to be up close and personal with Jollibee again. Not to mention a good time to spend with other kids and get goodies from Santa himself!

A few days after Christmas, my officemate Eileen's first born celebrated his 1st birthday at Makati Parks and Garden having Bob the Builder as theme. As usual I brought my goblins with me as requested by Eileen to add to the kiddie population, since after all this is a kiddie birthday party. Eileen didn't expect the party to be as well-attended as it was in spite of it falling on Dec. 30. The goblins loved the games' prizes and loot bags, they were all over their new toys when we got home. Kudos to Mommy Eileen for cooking up a wonderful birthday party for Euan!

Right after Euan's post-birthday celebration, I brought my goblins to Bonifacio High Street which is only a few minutes drive from where the party was held, tsaka sayang naman ang bihis nila. This was their 2nd time to visit Boni High Street but first time to go there after it has become fully operational. More than anything else, I took it as a photo opp with my goblins who are always game for picture-takings like this.

It was the 1st day of March when Cebu Pacific offered One Peso fares to their international destinations. More than half of our team wanted to check out Singapore since most of us have been to Hong Kong already and we weren't that keen on trying out Malaysia. And so the next morning we got ourselves booked for Nov 21-26, paying only P2862 for our 2-way airfare. Not bad, eh?

8 months of waiting turned what was supposed to be a party of six to a group of 3. Good thing though, this made it easier for us to invite ourselves to a 4-days-3-night stay in Dennis and Cindy's beautiful condo :) With tips from other Singapore-expat friends, internet, and guides/maps Tracy gave, our itinerary was finalized.

A few days before our trip, I learned from Joanne that another former colleague, Monzie, would also be in Singapore during our stay. I hooked up with her and invited her to join us since Jas, her host, wouldn't be able to tour her around until Saturday. Yey, I say the more, the merrier!

On my first trip to Singapore, I had fun doing these:
- Seeing different kinds of animals in Singapore Zoo including a cheetah, a polar bear, black bear, leopard, jaguar and kangaroos
- Watching little penguins, sea lions, sea cows/dugong strut their stuff at Splash Safari
- Watching an animal show which is really more of a dog show at Animal Friends Show
- Seeing nocturnal animals at their natural habitats at Night Safari
- Watching another animal show at Creatures of the Night in Night Safari
- Taking the MRT and experiencing one of the world's most efficient transport systems
- Getting lost in looking for the bus stop of the bus to Singapore Zoo's
- Riding a Mercedes Benz cab
- Touring around Sentosa but only trying the Luge and Sky Ride
- Getting to try Roti Prata & Hokkien Prawn Noodles
- Getting to try Pork/Chicken/Lamb Satay and Oyster Cake at Glutton's Bay Hawker Center
- Getting to eat out at Marina South Steam Boat - eat-all-you-can fresh seafood hotpot
- Posing with the Merlion & Mercub at Marina Bay, Fountain of Wealth at Suntec and durian-shaped Esplanade
- Going on a night out at Clarke Quay
- Walking along Orchard Road
- Shopping/Window shopping at Citilink, Marina Square, Suntec, Wisma Atria, Lucky Plaza, Funan IT Mall, Bugis Street Market and Mustafa!
- Playing with Little Daniel
- Catching up with friends based in Singapore and spending lots of time with my Singapore travel buddies Monzie, Bernie and Liezl

A snapshot of my work area on a typical day.

Keeping up with my observance of letting a movie's first week go by, I watched Stardust with Su last Tuesday night even if I was raring to catch it on its first day.

Gaiman purists would probably loathe the freehand given to the production team to do major tweaking on the movie's storyline.  Right from the start,  it was apparent that it was a movie of its own. This being only my second time to watch a movie adaptation of a book I had read (I haven't read any Potter and LOTR books), I was expecting a faithful adaptation such as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe but didn't get what I had expected though it doesn't mean I was disappointed. It is far from being faithful to the book's details which gave it a new dimension, even those who have read the book wouldn't know how the story will unfold. That made me love the movie even more, it kept me at the edge of my seat especially on those scenes that I thought I knew only to be proved wrong.

Charlie Cox is perfect as the love-strucked and awkward Tristran (beats me why they changed it to Tristan). Robert De Niro... the movie did a very hilarious take on his role as the Captain, I never thought I'd see him in such a role. He's simply amazing! And then, Michelle Pfeiffer. She's actually the reason I badly wanted to watch this movie and of course, she didn't disappoint.

If you haven't watched Stardust yet, check out your favorite cinema's schedule and go watch it NOW!