Fire!

I was at Ateneo yesterday at the Tech Tanod training when my long time Kuya pinged me on Facebook. He said there was a huge fire in our village and that the Parish Convento was partially affected. Good thing no one was affected.

I was shocked.

It was the first time in my entire life that I heard about a fire in our village (I've lived here since birth). I have heard of incidents within our barangay but not inside our village. It made me antsy since we were far away from home when I was told about it and I really have this crazy fear of fire (yes even matches and candles). I think that phobia started when I watched Firestarter when I was a kid.

Anyway, my friend said that the fire spread quickly and since it was windy it immediately affected the Parish Convento. Good thing there were quite a number of people in Church attending a BEC meeting and they helped save the house and Convento and prevented the fire from spreading. Tulungan talaga my friend said (he is also btw a barangay kagawad). He also said that the priests were okay and that their vehicles were saved, except for Fr. Lito's car because the roof was singed.

The location of the house and Parish Convento is our regular route. We passed by it last night on the way home. The house was totally damaged. The only thing saved was the tarpaulin that hung on the gate. It was hard to see the damage on the Parish Convento. Will probably see it when we hear mass later.

Thank God only material things were damaged and everyone's safe.

I'm pretty sure that the priests and family needs help. If you are interested to send help (hey Sun Valley neighbors!), please direct them to:

Fr. Ramon Ramos, C.P.
Parish Priest
Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish
4068 Bougainville St.
Sun Valley Subdivision, Paranaque City
Or call +632-8231210

Dugo-Dugo Gang

When I was a kid we were victimized by the dugo-dugo gang. My Yaya Men (nickname for Carmen) got a call and was told that my parents met an accident and needed money. Since she didn't have any cash on her she was instructed to bring whatever appliance she could get her hands on. She then went out of the house and met the guy at the labasan and turned over our VHS player. It was our most expensive appliance in the 80s and it came from my Ate who lived in the US.

Last week we saw written on the homeowners association a warning that the dugo-dugo gang has been focusing on our village. My Mom briefed our helper about it before she went on vacation. Just two days after my parents left our helper got a call and was told that Jay (my husband) was in a car accident with his Mom in Makati. I found out about this when she called me up right after the call. She sounded very harassed when she relayed the message to me.

I had to have her tell the story twice because she was really rattled. I told her then to calm down and not to worry because Jay was okay (he was right beside me) and that their car was actually parked in our garage.

The day after early in the morning our helper noticed that there was somebody outside the house. The guy looked like he was stalking the place. She immediately went inside and locked up and asked the neighbor to check if the guy was still around. At around lunchtime she got another call from the dugo-dugo gang and got the same story. She didn't panic anymore since she realized that it was the same guy who called the day before.

Unbelievable. While so many people are working hard to earn a living these criminals continue to scour and victimize homeowners. It's sad to see that more than 2 decades later since we were victimized they are still around.

Stingray

Don't let that pa-cute stingray look fool you because that animal looked at me, grinned, and promptly flapped its wings to wet me!

And this is its huge smile after. Rawrrrrrr!

This happened at the Underwater World at Sentosa, Singapore. Hmph! The stingrays at the Manila Ocean Park are much nicer. Hmph!

One Month

What can I say, Sweetie and I have been married for more than a month now. When we realized this a week ago (last January 26), Sweetie said, "Wow! We survived!" I agreed because:


(1) I travel a lot but I have lived in the same home since birth. 
(2) I don't cook and I don't really know how to cook (I'm just all-theory!).
(3) I never really had any household chores save for washing dishes once in awhile. 


So you can just imagine how apprehensive I was about moving. Caring for my own family. And living with someone who is 100x more O-C than me. My Mom was apprehensive about the last point since she likes everything neat too. She tried to mold me properly, but she just eventually gave up when she realized that I have my own way of organizing things.


We "cheated" a lot in the first few weeks. We ate loads of leftovers (good thing we had lots of family get-togethers). We had our laundry done at my Mom's when our washing machine went wild (perfect excuse that it had to be repaired). Ironing was also done by my Mom's helper. Miguel stayed over with my Mom until his cousins all went back to the States and Jakarta. So Sweetie and I just basically had to worry about fixing the house and things just fell into place when we had our tiny home blessed.


So it's just me, Sweetie and Miguel now. My parents left yesterday for a long vacation. The leftovers have been long gone and I have been trying my hand at cooking. Started with adobo, then afritada and a lot of fried and sauteed stuff (prepared dishes and canned goods).  I have 2 knife cuts though from slicing veggies, but it's okay, I think it's part of the learning process. We have also managed to tame our washing machine with help from Samsung (great customer service!). Ironed Miguel's uniform last weekend (I should watch more YT vids about it).


Misis na misis ba?

Unboxing a New Toy, the Nexus One

I don't much have to say about the phone as of the moment since I am still very much amazed with it. I got it last week and it was shipped to Manila before I got back from Singapore. I'll let the photos speak for itself.

Want one? Go to the Google Nexus One page.

Dancing Inmates with Michael Jackson's Choreographer and Dancers

Saw this in the news while I was preparing dinner -

Awesome vid!

Where the Clicks Started (Aileen and Jay's Pre-nup Video)

Thanks to Buddy our pre-nup video is finally on Youtube! Hooray!

Here's the story before the 800th click.

The Day I Cooked Adobo

While I was washing the dishes after dinner Sweetie stood behind me and with a hug said, "Wow! My wife has been domesticated!" I laughed out loud and Sweetie asked, "At bakit ka naman tumatawa?" I told him that if my Kuya heard what he just said he'll probably faint and Anne would probably declare, "The sky must be falling!"

A few years ago when my brother asked me what I wanted to be years from now I told him, "I want to be a housewife!" My Kuya promptly laughed and said that it was impossible. He went on to say that I was too focused on my career and that managing a household would probably drive me crazy.

Save for the cooking classes we had in high school I never bothered to learn how to cook. I was a good student though so I learned most of the cooking theories. I always got myself assigned as the marketer and dishwasher back in high school because I was so scared of the kalan. At home someone always did the cooking and Miguel would complain whenever I fried bacon for him, so any cooking duties I had were done by someone else.

After more than two weeks surviving on leftovers taken from all the family parties we had and canned goods I knew I had no choice but to cook something. Drew suggested I start with some basic dishes like adobo and sinigang, so a few days ago I started to do some research about how to cook adobo. I started off by watching this video by Komikero -



Bought a couple of recipe books. Bought the ingredients and then as instructed by Komikero marinated the meat last night. An hour before cooking Anne coached me a bit and told me I can do it and there were loads of advise as well from Plurk. Just before I started cooking I panicked and called up my Mom to ask Dad some important cooking questions.

So I dumped everything in the pot and waited and waited and waited. Followed Ria's and my Dad's advise to add some sugar and waited till the meat was tender. Was it yummy? Ask Sweetie :)

Photos of how it went is at our Mabuhay ang Bagong Kasal blog.

Onions Make Me Cry

It's been 2 weeks since Sweetie and I tied the knot. In the past two weeks we've been achieving a good number of milestones (well we consider them as such). The major ones are:

Cooking

Our first cooking attempt failed because the electric stove suddenly churned out white smoke. We both got scared, so it took us almost a week to try out the stove again. Gail mentioned that it takes awhile for an electric stove to heat up and she's right. During our second attempt we managed to cook an omelet and sinangag. And we've been cooking some stuff here and there and that's how I discovered that onions make me cry. Things have so far been edible and I haven't heard any complaints yet from the boys. Yay!

House blessing and Enthronement of the Sacred Heart

We really want our marriage to be blessed so we had my Mom invite Fr. Dave to bless our home and enthrone the Sacred Heart (passed on from my Lola to my Tita then to me). We had it this afternoon with immediate family and a handful of neighbors with Fr. Dave. It felt quite overwhelming because it was our first party (albeit very small) and made me realize that I have really moved (my very first time!). Hopefully when we're back from our trip we'll be able to invite a couple of friends to come and visit (probably by batches since we have a very small home hehe).

We haven't been able to conquer our washing machine yet. Our second attempt proved that our Samsung washing machine had the talent of strutting around the laundry area on its own (too bad Sweetie wasn't able to take a video of it). Well, in good time.

Have a great week everyone!

Happily Ever After

Happy new year everyone!

The past couple of weeks have been really crazy with major things happening and I haven't had any time to sit down and blog about all those exciting things.

Here's a glimpse anyway:

1. Sweetie and I tied the Knot!

Photo from one of my nieces (not sure whose cam)

We purposely did not blog about the preparations because we wanted to surprise our family and friends with our plans. Despite our busy schedules we managed to do everything for our wedding on our own with help from dear friends and family. All the effort paid off since everyone said that it was a beautiful wedding.

It was a magical day and before the church doors opened I said, "This is it!", took a deep breath, smiled and walked down the aisle towards the altar. It was Miguel who walked me first and then my parents brought me to Sweetie. I'm glad I managed to hold back my tears the whole time. I'm so excited to see the photos next week!

Special thanks to our parents, our family and friends who helped us make it a beautiful wedding (more details to follow in another post).

More photos here and on the day video here.

Janette's post
Jayvee's post
Juned's photos
Karla and Sha's video
Jude's photos (in FB)
Buddy's video and post (from the videographer's POV)
Mica's post (at NyokNyok)

2. We have moved to a new home!

We went home to our new home the day after the wedding. We decided to delay our honeymoon a bit so we could fix our new home. It's really exciting! Took us a couple of days to finish opening our gifts and figuring out what stuff we still needed. Things are settling a bit save for our wayward Samsung washing machine which keeps strutting around the laundry area and our electric stove which we're still scared to try out again.

We're blogging our new adventures at "Mabuhay ang Bagong Kasal". The new blog still needs a lot of sprucing up, but we're slowly putting in some posts as we go along. Sweetie's big move from Marikina also inspired us to start a new blog about "Paranaque City Life".

3. Happily Ever After

Fairy tales do come true and my parents are the living proof to that. We celebrated last weekend their golden (fiftieth) wedding anniversary. It was a joyful milestone for our whole family and I'm happy to report that everyone was present for the occasion. Hopefully I'll find some time this week to edit some videos I took from the celebration.

Photo by (Kuya) Luke Esteban.

I haven't thought about any new year's resolutions yet since I'm starting a new book (not just a chapter) in my life. The new role "wife" is already a biggie and I think that's something that's going to be central for the whole year.

God bless you!