Sunday, October 30, 2005

H.R.H. Princess Layla

Welcome, Layla Andrea! Born on the afternoon of 29 October 2005 to Alia and Jay at St. Luke's Medical Centre, Quezon City after more than half a day of labor. 7.10 lbs, 10 fingers, 10 toes, looks just like her Mom, and has a full head of hair (Thank God, it's not curly!). You got us on our knees, sweetheart!

Sorry, Max, you're not the star of the house anymore. But you will always be "My Precious".

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Student Videos

Check these out! (Sorry, there is something wrong with the way I post links. I'm an idiot)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6739710473912337648&q=chinese&pr=goog-sl

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1595589049983132207&q=bsb

Now I know what some of my officemates do with their non-billable time.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Halloween, Here We Come!


I carved my first Jack-o-Lantern (Jack O'Lantern?) in 2002 when I visited my cousins in Honolulu. My Tito Mike gave my bud Gars and I the honors of carving the pumpkin. It wasn't as easy as I thought, but luckily Tito Mike took all the seeds out and carving was actually quite fun to do. Or therapeutic.

It's essentially an American" holiday, but I enjoy decorating and dressing up for Halloween. My sisters have been trick-or-treating since we were 4 or 5 years old, and we still do! Back when our parents were kids, the best place to go trick-or-treating was posh Dasmarinas Village in Makati. The place to go when we were young was Alabang Hills Village in Muntinlupa, and we always went with the Joseph clan. For the past 10 years, the "it" place has been Ayala Alabang Village where residents actually compete for the best decorated home. The "Joni's House" on San Bernardino street used to be the best place to go when I was in college - everyone in the house was dressed up, they had strobe lights and sound effects, and gave away the best cookies and candies.. Years later, I found out that one of our analysts at work lived in that house, and that her aunt, one of our directors, would help decorate. These days, everyone troops to this house on Madrigal Avenue (check out Gabby's blog for what they set up this year), and it's absolutely amazing. The traffic on Zapote Road and inside Ayala Alabang Village, though, is just horrendous! I don't understand these parents who send their kids off in cars and vans, when the joy of trick-or-treating involves WALKING around the village. But I digress....

For the past couple or so years, my office has been celebrating Halloween with a big party for associates' kids. Associates are allowed to come to work in costume (I think. Well, at least, I get away with showing up in costume) with their children, young siblings, cousins, nephews and neices. The kids get to go around the two floors that our company occupies and get candies from all 100 of us. I hope to bring my little Princess Layla next year.

At my office's the second Trick or Treat Party in 2003, I came dressed as Dernhelm (a.k.a. Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings disguised as one of the Rohirrim to fight in Gondor. Yes, I'm a geek! However, I was often mistaken for either Aragorn or Joan of Arc), Harry was a priest, and Annella was a bunch of grapes (she couldn't sit down without popping a balloon). Of all the costumes I've ever donned, "Dernhelm" is my favorite. And the most "re-used" - Joey and Alia have borrowed it on separate ocassions.

One of Bianca's friends, Nina, made my Dernhelm costume (complete with sword!) and she actually runs a successful little costume-making business. Mine was among the first ones she made. Unfortunately, I didn't have one made last year (I couldn't make up my mind) and it's too late for me to have one made this year. So with one week to go to my office 2005 Trick or Treat Party, I have no idea what I'm going to wear! Any suggestions?

Friday, October 21, 2005

My Camera is Bigger Than Yours!

You know, I actually wish I could make a living out of "taking Friendster pictures". My friend's boyfriend is a professional photographer in Singapore, and apparently, people there take their Friendster pages seriously. Especially their photographs. I think they use it as a dating service ("Who do you want to meet? Here, take your pick."). Interesting.

I enjoy photography and fancy myself an enthusiast, but I'm not very good at it. I've got my dad's fully manual 1971 (or 1972?) Nikon F2 and it's great. He's had it since before I was born and it survived his stint as a photojournalist during Cory Aquino's presidential campaign and the first EDSA People Power Revolution in 1987. But the light meter's busted. I never really know if my settings are right so I do a lot of guesswork. I'm comfortable with Kodak Max ASA 400 film, but give me something else and I'm screwed! Let me take pictures during the day, especially under bright sunlight. But put me in a dimly lit room or ask me to take pictures at night? Goodbye!

I took a class back in college where we were taught to develop our own black and white film and print pictures. Man, that was tough! But loads of fun. I think I spent more time in the dark room than in my regular classes. I have yet to scan my favorite picture of Alia and post it on my blog. It looks like her face appeared out of nowhere. Beautiful but creepy. I wish I could afford to set up my own dark room.

Right now, I don't exactly feel the need to trade the quality of pictures taken on old school film for digital ones (although I must admit that I am tempted to buy a little digital camera to take around on short trips, nights out and weddings). I'm somewhat jealous of those who have digital SLRs. They can do so much! And if they makes mistakes, they can just delete them. Although...my camera is a good conversation piece. It's great to talk shop sometimes.

On the day before Miggy and Tanya got married in Baguio last January, I had lunch with some friends and their parents at the Baguio Country Club. I shared a table with my best bud Gars, Miggy's dad Tito Godo, and Miggy's brother Diego. Each had an SLR, but Gars' had a Canon Digital Rebel. They're the guys on the left, there. We whipped out our cameras, took pictures of each other, and talked about our "gear". In the words of Tita Merlie, "Palakihan ba ng ano yan?"

I enjoy taking candid photos, and I practice by taking pictures of children and dogs because they move around a lot. They train my eye-hand coordination in "capturing a moment". I'm sure to get loads of practice when my niece arrives. Babies are great subjects. Poor Max. There will be less pictures of him.

I seriously want to improve on how I take pictures with an SLR before I go digital - preferrably with a Nikon D70 (my dream camera). I'm not my father's daughter for nothing. I want people to say I royally earned the right to his F2. I'd also like to learn to do portraits. One day, I hope to cover events. I know I can do a better job if I had more practice...and a working light meter!

Rockstar Redux?

Local channel ABC5 has been showing re-runs of ROCKSTAR: INXS. I missed the first episode on cable's Star World, so I caught it on ABC5 last Wednesday. Man! JD and Marty came a looooong way from how they were at the beginning of the show to the very end. After seeing the first episode, I would never have thought that they'd make it to the "final two". My votes would have gone to Heather, Jordis, Neal and Ty. Marty and JD were good, but as Dave Navarro commented, "looked possessed". Who would have thought?

I just love Marty. In the words of Bjork, "I miss you, but I haven't met you yet." Hahaha!

Photo care of www.martycasey.org

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Pump up the Animo!

Congatulations to Coach Boris Aldeguer (DLS-Z, 1992) and the La Salle Junior Archers who recently won the UAAP Men's Junior Basketball Championship!

Conversely, I find it extremely unfair (and that is an understatement) that the success of other athletic teams are not celebrated with even half of the enthusiaism seemingly reserved for men's basketball. I didn't realise that the Lady Junior Archers were something like 5-time WNCAA champions. Why were we never invited to celebrate their success? Both the Grade School and High School Swimming Teams have won several inter-school tournaments over the years, as well, and quite a number have made it to the national team and competed internationally. No party for them.

No one congratulated my team mates and I whenever we won a swimming competition in High School and College. The most I ever got was a little glass plaque congratulating me for being one of the athletes whose team won in the 1992 UAAP (that was the year when DLSU was the overall UAAP Champion). I never won an individual event and was never a fantastic swimmer, but I did swim alongside some of the country's best. They weren't given a party, either. My classmate Hochi pointed out that DLS-Z did not celebrate the men's football team's winning the national championship back in High School. Many of our footballers competed in the Gothia Cup. If I'm not mistaken, Tats was recognised as one of the best goalees around. In fact, I clearly remember DLS-Z having the country's best baseball, football, swimming, and volleyball teams, and none of us got a big party at the gym with alumni bringing five kegs of beer and parents preparing lechon.

Apparently, a couple of my schoolmates are setting up a basketball scholarship for Zobel. But what about a football scholarship? A swimming scholarship? A track-and-field scholarship? A volleyball scholarship? Heck, even a chess scholarship? Did student members of the Math Olympiad receive a scholarship? What happened to DLS-Z1990's scholorship program for deserving but poor students of high academic potential? I'm not pooh-poohing my schoolmates' efforts. In fact, I admire their selfless efforts to provide a basketball scholarship to a deserving student as this is a sure shot at giving the boy a La Sallian education (which is rivaled only by an equally excellent Atenean education. Seriously). However, there are more pressing issues than sports excellence.

Basektball is NOT everything. Sports, for that matter, is NOT everything. Although getting kids into sports keeps them off the street and away from drugs (I think. Hahaha!), there is nothing like a good, decent education. It is simple, necessary, and is the one thing that can "improve the status" of the Filipino today. A good education (and by "good" I do not mean "expensive") will save us millions of taxpayers' money in bickering amongst grandstanding government officials. People would be able to "walk the talk". Can you imagine what a good, strong country (not just a "nice place") the Philippines could be if we only focused on education and everyone grew up to be a good sport?

Monday, October 03, 2005

Let's Troop to Araneta!

Got this via email today (let's go, friends!) -

Dear Fellow DLSZ Alumni,

The DLSZ Junior Archers are one win away from winning the school's historic first ever UAAP Juniors Basketball championship. They beat the UPIS Junior Maroons in Game One of the best-of-three series last Sunday (October 2) at the Blue Eagle Gym, 73-49.

The very crucial Game Two and a date with history is set for October 6, 2005 at the Araneta Coliseum starting at 1:30PM. Hope that a lot of DLSZ alumni will attend to witness history unfold before their very eyes.

The 2005-2006 DLSZ Junior Archers are composed of Simon Atkins, David Urra, Miguel de Asis, Martin Reyes, team captain Dan Salvador, David Webb, Manoj Chandumal, Colin Buckley, Enz Tumlos, Gio Espina, Joshua Teodosio, Melvin Sun, Aldo Malixi and Mike Fernandez. Boris Aldeguer (DLSZ-92) is the team's head coach.

The team needs all our support now more than ever. The time is high for Zobel to take home the UAAP title after 20 years of frustrations and heartaches in the UAAP. Troop one and all to the Big Dome this Thursday and cheer for the Junior Archers. Please pass this e-mail to other DLSZ alumni.

Tickets are available at the gate at popular prices.