graduation party

mood:

I went to New Jersey for the weekend. I haven’t visited Tita Gie since the New Year. It was the graduation party of Viviene and Vaughn. I got there around 1pm. And as usual, Tita Gie was busy in the kitchen. I just had some ziti and hotdog on a bun then I helped her with the cooking. There was so much food…good tasting food like lechon, bistek, sotanghon, pininyahang manok, menudo, lumpia shanghai, ginataang langka, chicken lollipops, palabok, and desserts like ube and cassava. There was also green salad with ranch and thousand island dressings.

The people who came weren’t as many as before though. And… my cousins made fun of me…well kind of, by letting me drink Smirnoff. I don’t really drink but I got to like this beer since it is flavored. And believe it or not, I had 4 bottles for the night. I had the apple and cranberry-flavored. The bad thing is I had map-like marks (reddish) in my body. I don’t have history of any allergy…not even from food. So I really suspected there was an ingredient of that beer that’s not for me.

I went to pick up Tita Inday and KC at the Journal Square Station. Benny who was with me served as my navigator since I’m not familiar with the area. I haven’t driven in a long time. I’m just very happy and excited when I got to drive again. It wasn’t bad at all though I must say the steering wheel was kind of shaky at times. Well maybe because I’m not yet used to driving. I was glad that Tita Inday came. At least I had company for the night. We talked until the wee hours of the morning and decided to go to sleep at around 5am. I woke up at 11am, had lunch and Tito Freddie took us to Manhattan by 3pm.

As soon as I got home, I just fixed my clothes and went to the Laundromat. I made some phone calls last night and finally went to sleep at 10:45pm. Now, I’m back to work.

death

mood:

A lot of us are afraid of death, aren't we? But whether we like it or not, it's a stage of life that everyone has to face. Some may be sudden due to an accident or sickness and some will be normal because of old age. I've come accross this topic on another blog and found the websites supporting this... Death Clock and Bella Online.

Death Clock:
Your personal day of death is... Tuesday, September 16, 2053
Seconds left to live... 1,521,969,230 as of 2:58pm

Bella Online:
YOUR LIFECLOCK RESULTS

You are born on: 05-07-1974


Given your current habits, you are likely to die on: 2/7/2062

That is in:
57 Years
680 Months
20683 Days
496378 Hours
29782630 Minutes
1786957741 Seconds

You will be 88 Years Old.

The thing is I got different results on each. Now which one is correct?! Hmmm...

Father's Day

mood:

As usual, I’m making my post a belated one. I called him on Saturday anyway. I didn’t stay that long on the phone though. I spoke with Mama for like an hour already before I got hold of my Papa. Anyway, Happy Father's to my Papa!

Over here, we went to a Malaysian Restaurant named Satay to celebrate Father’s Day for Kuya Nel (my landlady’s son). That was our 2nd time to dine in there. They have good food I should say. And the price is very reasonable too. I love the Roti Canai. The spicy curry chicken dipping sauce is really good. Hmmm… yummy! Their chicken and beef satay with the peanut dipping sauce also taste great.

That's about it!

summary of past events

mood:

It’s been a long time since I last posted. There have been a lot of things that had happened in the past days but I was just too busy at work making me tired when I get home.

It was my first time to visit the Philippine Consulate of NY on June 3rd. I have nothing much to say. Well it’s still the same system that we have back home…manual. I had to go back the following business day just to pick up the docs that I had them processed.

My Uncle Dennis came for a visit on June 2nd. But I went to see him in NJ at their friend’s apartment on Saturday. He’s now based in Singapore. He teaches ballroom dancing and he attended the Salsa Congress in LA so he decided to go east. We basically just stayed there the whole day, cooked some food, catching up for the years we have not seen each other. You can see the picture here.

There was a sudden change of the weather this past week. It’s freaking hot! You feel tired…you feel sticky…you have headache... name it! The only good side of it… you’re wearing light clothes. I’ve had enough of sweaters and jackets. And… we’re still getting too much rain.

Yesterday, I had a general cleaning of my room. I washed all my sheets, vacuumed, dusting, threw out stuffs that I don’t need/use, and basically organized my things. I did my laundry already late about past 4pm. Today, I feel so lazy. I woke up almost 11am so I missed the 10:30am mass. I had brunch and literally just stayed in my room until 4:30pm. I went out to do some grocery shopping. Exciting huh! Oh and before I forget… it was my landlady’s granddaughter’s birthday today. We had good food…grilled pork belly, shrimps, ‘pansit’ (noodles), ‘lumpia shanghai’ (meat rolls), baked salmon, green salad, and the yummiest of all…ice cream cake. Hmmm…

I better go to bed now! It’s getting late and I have work tomorrow.

Note: I did this originally last night but I had to delete it and post it again. It changed the look of my blog when I published it.

shopping at tanger

mood:

May 29th – Shopping at Tanger / Adoy’s birthday on May 30th and also Malu’s

Memorial Day is a national holiday in the US. This is being observed every last Monday of May. I would say it’s one of the big holidays wherein you could also get good buys from the stores.

Tanger is an hour drive from home. It’s kind of worth it since there were really a lot of items on sale. I got some good deals. At least I have already started buying stuff for my siblings in preparation for my trip to the Philippines on September.



Happy Birthday, Adoy!

It was around noon when I sent a text message to my brother. His birthday is May 30th but since they are 13 hours in advance, I greeted him in time that they changed date. I didn’t get a reply from him though. Hmmm…

Happy Birthday, Malu!

I called and greeted Malu at 10pm. I also learned that they went to Seattle to take advantage of the holiday sale too. She said she had fun and she got stuff for their new house. We didn’t talk much as she will still go to church.

Roy's visit

mood:

May 28th – NYC Tour with Roy

Roy used to be an officemate in the Philippines. I haven’t since him in more than 5 years I guess. He went to Canada when he left the company and not long enough, he moved to California. He came to the US on November 2001 which was just 5 months before I got here. Anyway, he called me around 2 weeks ago to let me know he’s coming to NY for a family reunion. We agreed to meet and I made a promise to take him for a tour in the city.

I met him in Grand Central Terminal at around past 8AM. We took the No. 4 train to go to Battery Park. This is where we took the South Ferry to go to the Statue of Liberty. There were so many people in line wanting to see Liberty. While we were at the Ferry, Roy was busy talking to 2 Japanese ladies. I, on the other hand, was busy taking pictures of the view. We didn’t get the chance to go inside though. We didn’t know there are 2 kinds of tickets. The ticket which will allow you to go in will have to be purchased at least a day before the visit. We enjoyed the view anyway. It was also a good thing Roy brought a tripod for the camera. At least we didn’t really have to bother someone else to take a picture of us.




Then, we went to Chinatown. We took the same train going there. This is the place for cheap stuffs and oh well…imitations. It felt like I was in Divisoria. Too many vendors on the sidewalks…too crowded…people were loud…so many bargains. We headed next to Little Italy which is just 2 blocks away. There you can see a lot of people eating outside the restaurants enjoying the nice weather. We had lunch at Benito One. Roy was craving for the traditional spaghetti with meatballs. It was good though. I made the wrong choice though. I was looking for the Seafood Linquini in their menu but I couldn’t find it. I ordered something with seafood then not realizing it doesn’t come with pasta. It tasted good in fairness. We had Starbucks coffee before we headed to Times Square. Roy accompanied me to scout for fabric swatches. We had a hard time locating those stores considering I didn’t find the exact fabric shade that I was looking for.

Our day together ended at 4:30pm. It was nice to have been with a former colleague…that I haven’t seen in a long time. He’s scheduled to go back to CA on Sunday.