Family Road Trip: Baguio

We usually try to take a few family trips every year. We always avoid crowds though and prefer to travel after the holidays.

We decided to head north again this year. We have not been to the summer capital of the Philippines since January 2014. It was an easy drive up from Manila with lots of stop overs to check out Poke Stops and to contribute new gas station locations on Google Maps. We left Intramuros at around 9 and reached Baguio at 4 in the afternoon. The trip would have been shorter, but we took time eating at Matutina's and checking out the new gas stations along the way and we went via Marcos Highway because it's safer.

We rested for awhile and then headed to SM to buy a few things and then walked over to Session Road to eat at Don Henrico's (the original!). We had dessert at "where the locals get their dessert fix" (Accord to my friend Vince) - Vizco's. After eating so much we were too tired to do anything else and headed back to the hotel.

I decided not to bring my laptop so I'm just blogging using the Blogger app. More photos when I get to blog on my laptop!

How to Make Your Love Last a Lifetime

Today is my parents 56th wedding anniversary. We had celebrated their golden wedding anniversary back in 2010 with a simple renewal of vows and a party with family and friends at home. It is going to be a milestone year for me as I have been asked to be a godmother for two weddings. I honestly got freaked out the first time I got asked and it took about a year before I was ready to accept an invitation.

My parents imparted on us the seriousness of marriage. As the old saying goes, "Hindi yan tulad ng mainit na kanin na pwede mo na lang iluwa" (It's not like newly cooked rice that you could just spit out). Your love should go hand in hand with commitment.

I never saw my parents fight when I was growing up. The only time I saw them not talk to each other was after their golden wedding anniversary. For three days they did not talk to each other and refused to say why. I panicked and called up my siblings to let them know. It was a bizarre experience. And then on the third day they just started talking again and explained that they had forgotten about what they had argued about. My Mom explained to me later after Dad passed away that they would fight, but agreed to never show it to us.

My parents were great role models for me. I had stumbled a couple of times along the way, but my Mom always reminded me that when I find a spouse he should have the same values as we had. I remember making a very long list of the ideal guy. The only item that Sweetie didn't get was to have straight hair (haha). Finding the right one is another story I will tell on another day, but here's a list of bilins from my parents before I got married and some stuff I've picked up from them.


1. Put God at the center of your family.
2. Always settle your differences before you sleep.
3. Give and take. Negotiate.
4. Talk, always. Laugh everyday and be playful.
5. Be on time all the time. Follow the 5Ps.
6. Be happy to be in each other's company and do things together. (My parents rarely went out and were always together).
7. Share your friends!
8. Budget very wisely.
9. Live simply.
10. Family first.


My parents lived a very simple life. We lived on a bungalow with lots of space which took my parents 15 years to pay. We rarely took out of the country family trips (only 3) and usually stayed with relatives. Their idea of a family vacation was taking a rode trip to go to our hometown in Bicol where we'd live in a nipa hut by the beach. Our home was also like a mini-farm. We had fruits and veggies growing in our backyard and had chickens, quail, kuhol, dogs, cats, birds, fish etc. as well. Eating out was a luxury. We were simply just together all the time.

We are far from being a perfect family, but my parents strong marriage always kept us together. Their original wedding date was supposed to be January 2, 1960, but because of a very strong typhoon they had to move it the next day. Their marriage may have started from a disaster, but their resilience and their commitment made it strong and a love that is forever. 

Blog Everyday Month

I have been challenging myself to blog for 30 consecutive days in the last few years. I do this to make sure I don't go into a writing slump again which went on for eight years. There are days though when I feel like sharing a lot of things and then there are days when I just want to keep things to myself. When I used to be in charge of our parish newsletter I used to get a lot of instant feedback from neighbors. It encouraged me to write more.

In the last few years I have been doing this challenge I have been blogging whatever pops in my mind. I was thinking maybe this year I would make it a bit more structured and planned so I asked Sweetie what he thought I should blog about. He suggested I take a look at the most read posts from my blog to see what people like reading. I did and was surprised to see that the most read posts covered a wide variety of topics. Here's the top 10:

What It Means to be a Scholastican (November 2016)
Solar Bottle Light (March 2011)
My Epic Guide to Puerto Galera (March 2011)
The Most Horrible Taxi Ride Ever (August 2010)
The Convection Oven that Blogging Bought (September 2010)
Tulala (January 2008)
Single vs. Married? Which is Better? (June 2007)
Movie Review: In the Name of Love (May 2011)
Onboard the USS Blue Ridge (August 2010)
Handog Pangkabuhayan Text Scam (March 2008)

The last few weeks though a lot of my posts where I share thoughts about politics have been getting a lot of attention. I could write more about politics but I choose to have peace and just share ideas which I think could be helpful.

The list doesn't really resolve my issue on putting a structure to what I would be blogging about in the next few weeks. So I think I'll just follow my instincts and blog about a wide array of topics that I hope would be helpful/inspiring.

Goodbye 2016, Hello Hopeful 2017!

A lot of people would probably agree that 2016 was a very bad year. It was tumultuous, a year full of regret, bad decisions. It was the year that evil took hold. Killings, war, terrorism, people fighting online and offline etc. It was a very stressful year and I must admit that towards the end I decided to just hibernate and focus on work and family.

2017 will be a better year as long as each of us make an effort to make it a good one for everyone. I was thinking about what I could do this year to make it a great year for me and the people around me. In 2016 my main goal was to put my family in one place as advised by a friend who passed away in 2015. He said we just have so little time on earth and we should spend as much time as we have with our love ones. I was also have a very difficult time being away from my family and the frequent trips I had to make was taking its toll on my body.

I haven't really thought about what I'm going to do this year. The big audacious goal I have is to create more memories with my family. One thing I learned from work is you need to define your goal well and then identify two to three key things you will do to meet this goal. Time is also a limited resource determining key goals is much better than making a long list of things you'd want to do for a year. I have not written a new years resolution for a long time now. So the big goal this year is to make more memories through spending more time together doing mundane things and more exciting things like traveling.

It's been almost four years since I had heart surgery. We had to change our lifestyle a lot because of me. Now that I have better idea of how to cope with my condition I'm hoping I'd be able to serve again. I just need to figure out what to do and how I could do this because my parish is far away from where I live now. I'm sure God will make a way =)

I pray that we will all have an awesome 2017 anchored on love, truth and being simple.

Happy new year!

What It Means to be a Scholastican

Recently a supposedly influential person accused my alma mater that it was brainwashing and forcing students to take to the streets to protest the burial of the dictator president at Libingan ng mga Bayani. The post was eventually clarified with a message from one of the school administrators. This does not change the fact that our reputation was smeared already with the accusation.

I spent ten years of my life at St. Scholastica's College (Manila) for my primary and secondary education. It's where I learned all the basics. My values, how I think, how I perceive things, how I act was shaped in that institution. My manager always tells me that he is amazed with my discipline. I always tell him that it's because of the education I got from the nuns.

From my job I learned that we must teach students the following skills: communication, critical thinking, collaboration, analyzing information and problem solving. Why? Because we have to prepare students for their future. They will eventually become part of the work force and will be leading the country. Jobs, situations, issues will always be different so they need to be equipped with proper skills to cope. These were the skills I learned from SSC.

I was in fourth grade when the 1986 EDSA Revolution happened. Classes were suspended a lot of times. One of the activities that was assigned to us during that time was to collect newspaper clippings about what was happening. I remember compiling a thick collection of clippings. My teacher returned it to me and said that I needed to give a reflection for each and every article. I went back home and read each and every article and shared my thoughts at the bottom of each page.

We were always made aware of what was happening in our surroundings. Former President Corazon Aquino being a Scholastican visited our campus before the 1986 snap elections. A circular was sent out before that asking our parents permission to join the school event. We always had an option to join or not. I was selected to be one of the flower girls to welcome Mrs. Aquino to the campus. After the EDSA Revolution we participated also in the campaign for the ratification of the 1987 Constitution. In high school when our teachers did a labor protest we were also very much aware of what was happening. Our field trips were always tied to deeper learning like the time we went to do outreach in Pampanga after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. And being part of the the REC class we also went to Apelo weekly to teach catechism to kids.

Scholasticans have a different kind of education and it's the same for all of its campuses. We were brought up to think critically and plan proper actions after reviewing correct information. Each of us have a different calling. I am in tech for education. I have classmates who are doctors, lawyers, judges, politicians, marketing gurus, teachers etc., but each of us put a different stamp to our work because we are guided with the basic principle "Ora et Labora" (Prayer and Work). And you could expect that each of our children will be brought up similarly (you could try debating politics with my son).

So to the children who are being accused of being brainwashed, just stick to what you believe in. I was doing exactly what you are doing now 30 years ago. We all have to come together to ensure that we protect the freedom our parents (your lolos and lolas) fought for.

Thank you St. Scho for shaping me to be the person I am today.

2016

Years from now I'm going to look back to the year that was 2016. I would probably remember it as a sad year. The year that we failed ourselves as a Filipino people. The year that my friends from another country failed themselves. It was the year that a lot of decisions upset many people. The year that turned the tide to what we all believe would be worse. 

I have so many questions in my mind. What could have we done? What could I have done? Are there things the majority see that I don't understand? Was I programmed differently because I don't think like the majority? Is there anything I could do to put things in order?

Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" indicated that there are 5 basic human needs - self-actualization, esteem, love/belonging, safety and physiological. We all yearn to have all of it, perhaps in varying degrees. I consider myself lucky because I have what I need and I am content. So why am I so affected with the events happening around me? I could just simply take a step back, live my life the way I want it to be and not care. 

I care because that's how I was brought up by my parents. My Dad always told us that we are alive because we must serve. We are not here to just fend for ourselves. We are here because we each have a mission. And I realized today that inspite of all the bad things happening around us, it doesn't mean we should allow ourselves to be swallowed by the system. 

So a few years from now when I look back at 2016, aside from remembering the bad stuff, I'd like to remember the good things I did and the good things my friends did to turn the tide back towards the sun. 

Kapit lang friends. 

And pray.

The Yoda Quilted Bag

I learned how to quilt the summer before I started high school. It was my Mom who taught me and I started with just simple squares. I was really proud of my handiwork and used my homemade lunch bag and school bag throughout high school. Surprisingly those two bags are still useful until today.

When I started to spend more time in Singapore I thought of going back to an old hobby. Thought about doing bead work, but it was going to be a pain to transport my collection of beads from Manila to Singapore. Crochet would have been okay, but the projects would have been limited. So I started quilting again late last year. I began with creating small items - a small wallet, laptop sleeves and Jet's Star Wars blanket which took 10 months for me to finish.

Now that I have had more practice I find more fulfillment in making smaller projects that I could complete in 2 weeks. This started when I decided to make a small bag for my friend's daughter which I finished in less than a week.

It would have been better though if I had Minnie Mouse fabric, but I only had Winnie the Pooh available so I just used that. I remember the very first bag I had when I was a child (it had a butterfly on it) and I have since loved using quirky bags. 

I have been collecting Yoda figures for sometime now and my dear friends Shirni and Marcus gave me some Yoda fabric on my birthday. So I made it into a cute Yoda bag.

It's the first big bag I made so I consider this still a prototype and I have to plan cutting the fabric a bit better. I started using it only in the last few days so I hope all the stitches will hold up. I made the bag a bit smaller than the original design since I don't carry around a lot of stuff anyway. It took me almost 3 weeks to work on this since I had to rest my arms for a few days as advised by the doctor.

After the Yoda quilted bag I realized my Mom was coming over for a visit so I decided to make her a small bag. I realized that it gets easier with more practice! It just took me over a week to finish this bag. I also experimented a big and added some lace (my Mom used to add lace to my bag projects) and found a better alternative for the strap from Daiso. 

It's been a year since I started quilting again and I think I'm more confident now with my projects. I've been working on using other shapes too (working on a pinwheel cheddar cheese blanket which will probably take a million years to finish). Some friends have suggested I get a sewing machine already, but then I usually quilt just before going to sleep so I will lose the location flexibility if I use a machine for sewing. I've just been using very basic materials, but I think it's time for me to buy a mini quilting iron to help me with creating the bias. 

If you want to try quilting you just need the following basic materials: needle, thread (ordinary and quilting thread), pins, scissors, ruler, plastic folder (for making templates), pencil, wadding (I've been using the fluffy ones, but it's easier to work with thin wadding), fabric and lining fabric. 

This is my tiny bring it everywhere sewing kit.

*The lady bug is a tiny scissors.