I started writing when I was 8. My mom got me a journal where I could rant (prob so I won't be an annoying brat). I stopped writing for 8 years until the pen and then later on the keyboard called on me again. I blog because I like writing and that's just about it. Hope you get inspired though... Bite the apple!
One of the happiest day in my life was when I had my debut at the age of 40, haha. I came across some of the photos while decluttering. It made me smile because a lot of my friends throughout the years were present. I even have friends who flew in to attend! Mom, my boys and the titas I grew up with were three too. Of course, my choir family was complete.
It was a very unique celebration. Sweetie took charge of organizing it and there were a lot of surprises! We selected to do it at the AIM Conference Center because I had good relations with the team managing it. They also have really great food. The venue is also comparably more affordable than hotels, have ample parking space and we could let our hair down there. All the suppliers were also friends which I think is key to having a great celebration.
My introverted self is always anxious whenever I celebrate my birthday. I don't really like the attention. I remember hiding when I was a child whenever I had birthday parties at home. I only settle down when it's time to eat.
The party was a whirlwind of surprises. The Gaylas dressed me up as a fairy and then there was a flash mob led by Sweetie. I have videos of the night somewhere. On hindsight, I should have had it edited since I never had the time to edit. Well, I have a gazillion photos from the evening and it's fun to look at it every so often. Core memory ftw!
My plan for my birthday was to just hibernate since I felt it's just best to celebrate quietly. The universe and the doorbell had other plans. When I woke up Sweetie told me to dress appropriately. I didn't know what he had in mind so I took a shower and wore a shirt and decent shorts before I went to the living area. And that was when a day full of surprises started.
My friend, Shad, suggested I make a birthday vlog. As requested, here it is!
Surprise strategist:
Sweetie Jay DJ
Collaborators:
Ms. Myna, QSR and the Gaylas
Marcus and Shirni
the neighbors (Myra, Ralph, Jason and Phil)
Thank you to my family and friends who made my day special! Love you all :)
I celebrated my debut last Saturday, 22 years too late. It was worth the wait though and was magically perfect.
Being an introvert I see-sawed between wanting to have a party and not having a party. There were days I'd be gung-ho at celebrating and there were days when I just wanted to hide in a hole on my birthday. I didn't actually want to be stressed out about worrying if people would actually go to the party and entertaining a lot of people in one go is just really hard for me. It was Boss (yes that's the name of my friend) who swayed me to celebrate. His winning statement was, "You don't just celebrate a birthday just for yourself. Your friends also want to celebrate it with you." And so I said yes and promptly emailed Jigs to book a room at AIM Conference Center.
A lot of people asked me, why at AIM? AIM is a core memory I have with my Kuya. When he was a student there I would hang out at the SA Store all day, decorating the window, selling stuff, generally being a nuisance at the school. I think I was just 10 or 11 then, but I spent a whole summer at AIM learning retailing and getting to know students and professors. I naturally chose AIM because it's a comfort zone for me and they already know what I like.
After booking the place I promptly left for Singapore and apparently left Sweetie and friends a lot of time to scheme for my party. You see, I was kept at the dark about what was going to happen at my celebration. I had no idea who was actually organizing the evening and I had no idea what was going to happen. Sweetie wouldn't even give me the list of organizers because I wanted to buy gifts for them. I managed to get a list though using Google Calendar! Sweetie forgot that his calendar is shared with me and so I saw the list of the mafia scheming to organize my party.
I wanted to be at the venue before 6pm because I wanted to welcome the guests, but Sweetie insisted that we come at 6:30pm. I kept tripping on my long dress on the way to the room and was nervous about falling flat on my face. I had no idea what to expect. When we arrived at the room I saw familiar faces, all smiling and excited to greet me. I was welcomed by my Mom who exclaimed, "Are you really now 40? But you're still my baby!" Mom then hugged me tight and whatever nervousness I had went away.
I had no idea about the program so when I arrived I went ahead and went table to table to greet everyone who came. It was overwhelming to see all my loved ones in one time! When I finished greeting everybody I was ushered to my seat and the program started with a very beautiful prayer by Ate Edith. After that Ate Neysa and Harry did their rendition of some of my favorite Disney songs. Then we had dinner and a few speeches from my Mom, Sweetie, and Miguel (finally broke his silence!).
After that the Gaylas Filipinas (Gab, Iosif, PX, Sephy, JK, James, JD and Philip + Rose) marched in and transformed me into a fairy (watch at 22:45 on the vid)! After dressing me up they did a fabulous 80s dance number. It was then followed by my best friend's, Darwin, speech (who I had a huge row with a month before my birthday). You have to watch his speech (at 27:55) to hear about his big revelation (we're good now, row forgotten). And then I was surprised with a sharing from my favorite brother, Kuya Jojo, who described by turning my name into an acronym. He made everyone laugh and cry and everybody thought he was on a live hangout (he was good at anticipating my reactions too!).
And as we always do in work events I run, we had a breakout session! Each table was asked to work on a craft project. I managed to read through and appreciate the projects made just before I left for Singapore. I'm still trying to figure out how I could best preserve and make the projects easy to re-read (haha). So I thought the evening was over with the craft project, but there was still another huge surprise -- a flash mob!
I was talking with TJ about crisis response when Gab pulled him away from me. And then I saw Sweetie approach me and he just suddenly started dancing (35:05 on the vid), the gaylas joined in and then almost everyone in the room was also dancing! It was a feast! I'm glad we have it on vid so I can appreciate the gesture again and again.
The evening capped off with me blowing my birthday candles. Jay really wanted me to use his 40th birthday candles but he left it at home (haha!). I just made a simple wish and heartfelt gratitude to everyone who tirelessly prepared for my birthday celebration (the list is very, very long!).
Thank you to all my family and friends who prepared to make this the happiest birthday I ever had! I've been working on this post for over a week now and I'm still very much overwhelmed, happy, joyful, galak, on cloud 9 (insert all happy synonyms here)... Thank you to everyone who travelled to come -- Marcus, Shirni, Andrew, Darwin, Mica, JR, Jas! And thank you for those who braved the traffic (and the INC protest) to come over, your presence was much, much appreciated!
My debut came 22 years too late, but I must say the wait was well worth it.
And now let's wait another decade when I become a golden girl.
I always celebrated my birthdays when I was a kid at home. Being the baby of the family, my parents and siblings would prepare to celebrate my birthdays by cooking spaghetti, ordering balloons and Golidocks mocha cake, year-in, year-out. I think we only stopped hosting parties when I was in my 20s. I was always envious of my classmates who had parties at either Jollibee or McDonald's, so I told myself someday I'll do one of my birthdays there.
This year I was too lazy to do anything on my birthday. I took a 2-day leave to just rest, do the laundry, go to the dentist and spend time with my family. On my birthday I managed to get myself out of the house and had a lovely dinner with my boys. After that I obliged Anne's request that I meet this guy --
Twas great to meet Hugo and found out that we both worked under my favorite VP - Nelson Mattos!
The next day I went to my dentist with Miguel. I bugged him all day to let me know if there was a surprise awaiting me in the evening. He just kept smiling at me and said that his lips were sealed. Sweetie told me to dress up for dinner and said he needed to drop some stuff off before we had dinner.
So we ended up in McDonald's and I was surprised big time by friends and colleagues! I had no clue that Sweetie had been conspiring with them and that he had been secretly preparing for the program! As I entered the room I was given a crown and was directed to sit in front. A full program was then unveiled, starting with a short explanation about the surprise and a song number from Harry (who I have not had a chance to hear sing in person!).
Then the games came after.
ROFL.
Extra lang si Birdie dito. Hahaha!
And the biggest surprise of all was a dance number by Sweetie! I know he likes dancing, but I've never really seen him dance a full number! I have the video, but I think I may never get surprised again if I post it publicly. Haha.
Of, course, mandatory photos with Birdie!
Wow! It was a great evening, full of laughter, hugs and french fries! Finally my fastfood chain dream party has come true!
*Birdie needs a bath though. Haha.
Thank you Sweetie, my bagets Miguel, Little Princess Philip, the girls - Sephy, PX, LA, Gab and Iosif; the community reps - Jomar, Anne, Wayne, Reymart, Ros and Raffy; my furry colleagues - Gail, Casey, Jerjer; my sis, Anne and Harry. Wagas na wagas ang surprise ninyo! Thanks so much for making my birthday special and making me feel loved!
I wrote this post over a week ago... just got so busy so I wasn't able to post it immediately.
I’m somewhere South right now and having a hard time connecting to the Net so I thought I’d do a blog post while I’m trying to connect to the cyberworld. Eraserheads’ songs are playing in the background and it’s a great upper for me (not sure with the rest of the people here as most of them are probably above the age of 50).
I was bedridden the whole day yesterday, probably got over-fatigue due to Saturday’s concert, but it was worth it. The songs are still buzzing in my head and I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with the number of views my Eheads video has gotten. I did that as a thank you for Ely for doing a previous project, I never got the chance to thank him personally since I kinda left. Keep the views coming!
It was definitely a full weekend. I also had a small birthday celebration with family and close friends – something I rarely do and the next one will probably be 7 years from now when my my life begins. It party was a small luncheon at one of my favourite places – Taste Asia – I didn’t have any trouble fixing it up since I only decided to push through with it just a few days before. I just SMSd them my budget, number of guests and they took care of everything. Party in a snap!
I don’t really like hosting parties for myself since I honestly have no idea how to entertain people (my Mom’s good at it though). I hope they had a great time and here are some snippets from the Winnie the Pooh autograph book I passed around (the slam book was Juned’s idea actually hehe), kinda shows what kind of family and friends I have huh (guess the bloggers!):
Favorite actor: Rommnick Sarmienta forever
Favorite actress: Jolina Magdangal
Happiest moments with friends: Talking about Shrek. While eating. Drinking!
Worst moment with friends: Being with Shrek Falsification of documents :D With F______n While not eating. Drinking!
Favorite slogan on friendship: Even in hell one needs friends. Friendship is like a butterfly, it's beautiful!
Here are some fab pictures from the small celebration I had:
I've wanted to blog about this since the other day, but I've just been extremely busy, I couldn't even Twitter! Arggghhh!
I never planned anything for my birthday. I guess I'm just bored with celebrating it year-in, year-out. I've been quite exhausted lately and thought I'd just hang-out at home and spend time with my family. I know my friends are disappointed that I didn't plan anything for my birthday. So sorry! But, I still have no plans to celebrate. Maybe I am really getting old... Nah!
All I could say though is that so many wonderful and unexpected things happened on my birthday and it made me giddily happy even thought I've been feeling sad lately. I also kept forgetting it was my birthday and I guess that made me really mababaw (more so) that day.
#1 First off was the salubong celebration through an IM conference with quite a number of bloggers! Thanks guys! I really, really appreciate it. Big hugs for all the virtual gifts/food/drinks you brought and all the well wishes! I will never forget how the birthday greetings popped one after the other like fireworks! (I did save the conference somewhere in my PC).
#2 Waking up to birthday greetings. Thanks so much! So sorry if it took me a while to answer back, I was utterly distracted with IMs from all over the world.
#3 Gifts sent through Facebook. Cool eh! (You guys can always give me the real thing soon!).
#4 The unexpected birthday bash at Manila Pen with the Philippine Internet Commerce Society. Nah, it wasn't a party, I just attended the induction ceremonies for the new officers. Thanks Mike for the invitation and the bunch of flowers, I thought it was really sweet. The funniest thing though happened and you just really got to watch this and find out what it is.
#5 I had a series of unfortunate events before the function and to make a long story short I wasn't able to borrow my Dad's driver which was supposed to be my excuse to go home early. Anyway, a colleague who has been vacationing here made me feel really, really guilty that I didn't have the time to spend any time with him and so he insisted on going out to celebrate my birthday. I had so much fun though and I was bowled over by the TGIFriday's crew for doing their birthday spiel on me. I never expected to blow a candle that night. (Thanks Dude! I'll see ya in 2 weeks!).
I think I must've gained all the weight I worked hard to lose the whole month in just a couple of days! Oh well, it is after all my birthday week and all I could say that it worked out well especially since I really didn't expect anything to happen. But guess what, it was filled to the brim the whole week!
What about you? Was there something unexpected that happened that made you really happy?
Anyway, I never had any problems setting up his birthday parties in the past. Miguel's parties were always themed and I usually did it on my own. I could even whip up a party in less than a week! I'd also get the help of my nephews and nieces (when they're vacationing from Jakarta) in decorating our home. Since they're so good at making art pieces it's always quite a challenge for them.
We've gone through Pokemon, Scooby Doo, Spiderman, Winnie the Pooh (that's my fault!), Super Friends and whatever! But a Shrek party is definitely out of the question! Miguel might disown me if I do such a thing. My amigas who already have children have been bugging me to help them in preparing for their kids birthday parties (I must have missed my calling and should've just been a wedding coordinator/events planner).
And now I'm at a loss on what to do. He's growing up! And is now in high school! And they say that turning 13 is something you really have to celebrate. It is a rite of passage. I remember my Mom prepared a birthday bash for me when I turned 13. The only significant thing I remember about it is being allowed to invite boys to attend! LOL. Hmmm... no girls yet for Miguel! Noooo!!!
I just have 17 days to come up with a plan and with all the work I'm currently swamped with, I'm really lost!
Goodness! What do I do? What do I do?
*Photo circa 1999. Miguel recites "Lines for My Mother", a poem used normally by high school students. I remember at that age Miguel had the books of the Bible (old and new testament) memorized! Mana sa Mommy eh. LOL.
