Thank you for giving me Hyde

Dad got home from Las Vegas last Tuesday. He knows I've been wanting an iPod (I was supposed to get one for free but it didn't push through), so I expected it to be his present for me. But no - that wasn't what he got me. It was this:

An Acer Aspire One netbook. A netbook's like a laptop, only smaller and lighter. You wont get back/shoulder pains from carrying it with you in a bag. Thanks, dad ;___; I really am touched. You always finds ways to surprise me.

It sounds so goth-y, but I named my netbook Hyde Lovelace (a guy). Hyde's a cool name, whereas Lovelace, well, I got it while I was doing some Facebook tests :P

Anyway, my brothers and I goofed around with Hyde, since he has a built-in webcam.

O hai thar 8D


Kyle, Kring, Bryan as usual goofy selves


"Bryan... you did take a shower, didn't you?"


Bryan's still thinking of a way to piss me off. *Pokes Kyle*


Gasp, look at those iron-hard abs!


"Ate, let's go upside down!"
Also, last Friday, my grade school mates and I met up after... WHOA 7 YEARS. We were a big, happy group back at 6th grade, but we stopped hanging out when we graduated. An overwhelming feeling of nostalgia hit us while we were chatting in Facebook, so four of us met up in order to plan a reunion party.


Yum McDonalds! Bea (@ left) is video chatting with us all the way from New Jersey. Good thing Hyde also has a built-in microphone :)


Ngaaaw, here we are showing Bea our grade school graduation pictures! Joca (@center) is holding my picture (left hand) HAHA


*Heart* we miss you, Bea!

I also hung out at Joca's place yesterday, since I was dismissed early at school. She lives in Concepcion, Marikina while I live in the part of Cainta which is near Taytay, meaning we live far away from each other XD

Me with Joca's pet poodle, France!

Here's an interesting fact to all Boys Over Flowers fans: Jo Carol voiced over Ha Jae Kyung's voice! Jo Carol is a talent of ABS-CBN since two years ago, when she won Hero TV's dubbing contest. Aside from BOF, she's dubbed loads of animes, too!

See this site:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxTqqzOPyhw
You'll hear her at around 02:23 :)

See how Hyde helped me reconnect with my friends? ;_; I'm really happy. I have to thank dad again.

Blast at the past (with my future son/daughter!)

I am now in too many social networking sites.

I've got an account in Blogger, DeviantArt, Multiply, Facebook, Plurk, and Tumblr; the last three I only joined recently. Way too many accounts, IMO - I want to delete some of them, but I've already posted a bit of content in them, so it's hard to do so.

ANYWAY!
When you look through your old pictures, do you imagine yourself looking at them 25 years from now - together with your already-teenage son/daugher? I always have, but it's only now that I decided to blog about it :D

I would really want to be close to my future anak (that son/daughter in english)- I want him/her to treat me more like a friend than a mother. And that, of course, includes me sharing with him/her how I was like "during my time". I could already imagine my anak giving me an amusing look while s/he's browsing through my photos and saying something like, "WTH, Ma, this picture of you is hilarious/disgusting!" And I'll be all, "STFU! You've got my genes, noob!"

I give to you some of the pictures I'll be preserving in order to show to my future kin XD
(OHOHOHO SORRY The pictures are limited to the ones I have in the PC D: I'll have a decent entry about this topic soon, with pictures covering a greater scope!)


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You know, anak, I didn't like posing in front of the camera. See the awkward pose. YOUR GRANDMA MADE ME DO IT T_T


...but! In spite of that, I always got hounded by the Filipino paparazzi. Goodness, you don't know what it's like to stay at home, afraid to go out D:

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I had a really pretty dress at my high school's Senior's Night.


But I ended up messing around with it. See awkward pose with my partner HAHA

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While all my friends were drunk out of their wits (and ended up sleeping in their puke)...


...I was sober! HAHA! So you better not think of drinking, mister/miss! (Wait, am I sounding too moralistic here? O_O LOL)

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...You know, I wasn't lying when I told you I was - and still am - hot. See your ninangs (aunts) in the picture? I know you can barely recognize them here - they're very fat pigs now that they're at their 40's. Good thing I stayed fit.

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We were a weird generation. My cousins liked smelling each other. Look at them closely. They're making gestures.


But, you know, I love my family to bits! We were so weird and so gay - some outsiders were actually scared at us (not joking) - but I was happy about that XD

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Whew! Too bad the pictures covered only a minuscule part of my life, but I'll definitely be looking for older pictures! This post was fun to do!

Wait... there's another picture here...

Oh.



That part where I was sober? I lied.

The huge photo gallery (and a bit of the weather)

I've become dependent on my eye cover; I can't sleep when I'm not wearing it :| This is a very bad habit. It's like drugs OMG -_- I must overcome it! Or else I won't get a wink of sleep if I lose it :P

My 18th year is my best year, so far (although the thought that I'm no longer 17 still bugs me. Oo, exagge.). I've never lived my life as fully as I have now :D I have to say that Kiko greatly contributed to this, and kudos, too, to my ever-persistent friends, who would pressure me into joining them wherever XD

My 18th year, so far, consists of the following:

January 31-February 1, 2009: Celebrating my birthday with my clique, Kada Siete. This is one of my life's milestones, as the celebration was realllllyyyyy fun and brought my friends and I together :D Honestly, it was the best party I had ever had.

Of course, celebrating my 18th with my eccentric family XD I feel a bit bad, though, as I slept my whole birthday away (since I didn't sleep throughout the celebration I had with my friends). I was still very drowsy when this picture was taken, having just woken up :P

Karaoke nights with my friends, which consisted of laughs and of drama (drama = walk-out moments. LMAO).

Watching other people get drunk. It was terrible D: I was sober the whole time, and watching my buddies getting all scandalous was, well, scandalous. But, heh - I have unknowingly instilled fear in my friends HAHAHA. Now they don't drink whenever I'm around, as they're afraid of a lashing from Ate Kring. LOL

Trying out thongs. My close buddy, Ashleiy, gave me a ton of thongs as a birthday gift -_-V And I haven't worn them yet, but someday, I surely will HEEHEE.

Riding tribikes around subdivisions. Call me a loser, but I don't know how to ride a bike. So tribikes are perfect for someone like me, who wants to work out and sweat AMAP (as much as possible). Obvious info: tribikes are more beneficial when your passenger is a heavyweight. XD

Random moments. My friends are very, very spontaneous; it can sometimes be startling how they manage to be in a random place even when they're academically busy. This is a picture of us in (duh) McDonalds: I was in the car when they suddenly messaged me to go here. Since I can't get enough of my peers, I tagged along.

Trying out new things. And new food. I'm very adventurous when it comes to food, but I do have limitations (don't give me super-exotic things like lizard or cockroach - I think that's so gross, it's inedible). I like food most (young) people don't even want to taste. In this picture, I tried out dugo (dried pork's blood), and eugh - as much as a foodie I am, I didn't like it :|

Having new friends - and introducing them to old ones. It's great how you can make the world a smaller and livelier place by making people interconnected. It's even better when you see your friends, old and new, click, and become buddies in the process.

Bonding with people you barely know. This is equivalent to stepping out of my comfort zone - I, an outsider, being with a huge, close group. LOL. But it really is fun as I met lots of new people, as well as got closer to the ones I already knew. Reader, if the opportunity comes that you are invited to a similar situation, don't refuse. It's a unique and surprising experience.

Befriending people you never thought you'd befriend. And hitting it off with them, no less. Eddy and I had no more of those awkward formalities - we were demon friends the instant we got the chance to bond.

Impromptu bonding. What are the chances that you'd approve of going to Eastwood at 7:30 PM when you were invited only at 6:00 PM? LOL. My friends and I did just that when James invited us, although we were an hour and a half late. I think James was starving by the time we arrived XD

Swimming the heat away. What's summer when there's no swimming? My friends and I went to the nearest pool and took a dip (and exercised HAHA FTW).

I'm usually not into swimming, since my vanity can get the best of me (I don't want to get tanned). But what the hell - I'll go take a dip this summer, as long as it's not in the middle of the day. LOL, arte noh? Nakakainis. (BTW, I'm not wearing colored contact lenses. My eyes are kinda blue in the picture.)

Seeing friends after months of not seeing them. Updates, anyone? It was good hearing from my friends after 2 full months of failed attempts to see each other.

Helping people and animals - all at the same time. My pet bulldog, Brosia, gave birth to 8 puppies (one of which died because it was abnormal. Abnormal: CYCLOPS. Not kidding). She was taken to my relatives' place, where the helper, Ate Jen, took care of her. Of course, taking care of 7 puppies is no easy task: for the sake of keeping an eye on them, Ate Jen had sleepless nights. And yes, I took her place, helped her out, and had fun in the process. Puppies are so cute -_-

Rekindling friendships. I grew apart with my high school best friend, Dian (left), because of some unresolved issues. But time heals all wounds - and now I'm open to making her my best friend again. I missed her company very much :P

Getting pwned. I had been pwned many times, but being rejected of a US visa takes the cake.

Exercising at night. Surprisingly, even the nights are incredibly hot these days. We took that as a sign and played badminton at around 7:30 PM. It was sooooo fun! I sweated buckets and felt good! We must have more of these :)

Celebrating birthdays. It can be quite amusing, celebrating birthdays with a small group. You don't get easily distracted, plus there's lots of time for stories and laughter.

Eddy here celebrated his 19th birthday last Monday at Greenhills. Notice how he's surrounded by girls :))

Anyway, I'm very irritated with the weather. OH MY GOODLINESS, WHY IS IT RAINING IN APRIL?!

I have a theory.

The man-made calendar says it's April. Of course, man-made things are wrong most of the time; and the passage of time, as dictated by people, can be very inaccurate. So the biological calendar (the natural one, that of the earth) says otherwise - speaks the truth.

Notice how in February it became ridiculously hot.

Man-made calendar says it's February.
Biological calendar says, what the hell, in man-made terms, it's actually April. (It was, after all, freaking hot at this period in time.)

Meaning that there is a one-and-a-half to two-month gap in between the two timetables.

So now that, in man-made time, it's April, in biological terms, it's actually June.
June, the rainy season.

Holy ef, I'm convinced that I'm right.
Think about it.
ROFL.

Supertrip

Got home from our trip yesterday. We were supposed to head home the day before, but due to the many places (there was Naga, Legaspi, and Donsol) to see plus the little time we had, dad decided to extend our stay by a day.

The trip was average: I had many fun moments, but it was equal if not overriden by annoying happenings caused by some of my annoying relatives (particularly by the grown-ups who are miserably single). -_-

I won't be giving a blow-by-blow account of the trip (really?), that'd be too boring and time-consuming. Anyway!

I. On the way

The trip takes eight hours by car, so in order to prevent traffic we had to leave at 4 AM. We met up with our relatives in some gasoline station an hour later.

I've always known that Kyle, my younger brother, is a super-smart kid, and in this trip he again made me aware of how he may be smarter than me. -_- Here's how the conversation went in the car:

(*My family talks about my armpits, which is really annoying*)
Me: Bryan, you forgot to wax my armpits last night.
Bryan: Oh, yeah! I told you I should've waxed it earlier.
Me: It's okay, I waxed them off myself.
Dad: It's really hard, isn't it, having a forest for an armpit.
Me: -_- ...
Mom: (*Defending me*) Kring'll laser her armpits one day.
Kring: Yeah! That I will. Laser.
Kyle: (*Defining laser*) Light amplification by stimulation; emission of radiation.
Everyone: (*Silence, then blood trickles from my nose*)

...

When I was 12 I didn't talk about such things!

What's up with that!

Aren't the eldest children supposed to be the ones to get all the brains their parents have!

So we later found out that he got that definition from the club he joined two years ago, the Book Lovers Club. When did books start to have definitions of lasers? -_-

Moving on...

There have been many breathtaking sites on the way to Bicol. But my favorite was the Lamon Bay in Gumaca.


I swear, the bay looks amazing. This picture doesn't do it justice.

So, after a grueling nine-and-a-half hours, we finally made it to Camsur Watersports Complex, or CWC, the resort we stayed at in Bicol.

II. CWC

A brief introduction: CWC is reputed to be the best cable wake park in Asia.

We stayed in the Villa del Ray Villas, which is the most expensive villa in CWC. We had no choice, by the way, coz the other villas were full. We got two rooms, since one room isn't enough for all of us (there were 12 of us).

And have I told you of how we cheat our way to these types of things? Sneaky, I know. And we actually already got banned from some resorts. -_-V Anyway, what we always do is: 1. Not tell the truth of how many we really are and 2. Bring a rice cooker, water heater, food, etc even if it's not allowed. Money is important, people. Must save as much as we can.

Anyway, the villa is so nice! So cozy: the bed and pillows are soft, plus the comfort room and bath room are so appealing to use. Hehe. Plus there's also an outdoor jacuzzi, and the TV has cable, too! Love.♥ I actually thought to myself, when I get a job, I'm going to have a house like this. Bigger, of course, but like this.

There I am, trying out the jacuzzi.

III. Second day: CWC + Mount Mayon

Since CWC is the best cable wake park in Asia, we shouldn't miss on trying wakeboarding ourselves. Though I'm not sure whether we wakeboarded or kneeboarded... whatever.

It was quarter to nine when we went to the man-made lake to go wakeboarding. I kinda expected that the grown-ups would just be watching and not joining us to go wakeboarding, and I thought right. It was just me with my brothers and my two cousins.

From left: Kyle, Bryan, me, Drex, and Ryan

Wakeboarding/Kneeboarding/Whatever we did there wasn't so bad when we got the hang of it. At first it was hard to hold on to the cable, I didn't expect it to be that fast. Plus my arms and hands hurt from holding on. But later on I got hooked, although I didn't last longer than one whole round, and then I'd fall to the water.

By the way, Tita Rose was sooo embarrassing. When I got back from my first round at the lake, she saw that I was full of sand, thus she called me "Miss Earth" After that, whenever I'd go wakeboarding again, she would shout at the top of her lungs, "GO MISS EARTH!!!" and people (which included LOTS of foreigners) would go look around, saying, huh, there's a Miss Earth candidate here? And when they see me they're all, oh, so it was a joke, after all. So embarrassing!

After lunch we went to Legaspi, a good one and a half hour from CWC, to see the Mayon Volcano (or as my Tita Rose called it, Mount Volcano) from the Cagsawa Ruins. When we got there we were disappointed as Mayon was covered by the clouds. Turns out, the Mayon Volcano seldom shows itself in its full glory, because clouds always envelope it.

With my brothers at the submerged tower

With mom at the submerged church ruins

Apparently, mom is trying to make me look vain.

It was here that dad found us a tourist guide, Kuya Jules. He would be with us on the next day of our trip.

By this time I was already worrying about whether or not we'll make it on time to CWC so that I could watch my favorite anime, Samurai X on Studio 23, 8 PM. I wanted to watch the episode especially since it would feature my long-time crush, Soujiro Seta (loved him since 5 years ago).

So handsome... -_- too bad you're just a cartoon.

So when we were finished with the Cagsawa Ruins, I thought, finally we're going to go back now... but it turns out that we weren't. We still went to some mountain top. And it was already 7 PM when the adults decided to return to CWC, and with a hour and a half trip back I didn't get to watch the episode with my beloved Soujiro. My cousins and brothers sympathized with me since they're also avid watchers of Samurai X.

And here was when a particular unmarried relative started to get annoying. Argh. So irritating. I won't put it into details now, but s/he wanted the trip to go his/her way, and s/he wants us younger ones to behave to the point where just a little witty remark will make him/her turn to us and give us a mean look. S/he has lost the child in her.

IV. Third day: to Donsol

By this day Kuya Jules was with us to be our tourist guide. We went to various places on our way to Donsol, which is in Sorsogon.

--> Hoyop Hoyopan Cave

Now here is a good part of the trip. The Hoyop Hoyopan Cave is beautiful and exciting. And who would've thought that there'd be human fossils there, dating back from 200 BC? I saw it with my own eyes, a part of the feet and the ribs. Too bad I didn't get to touch it, though.


The funniest thing happened inside the cave; too bad I didn't get to record it since it's worthy to be aired on Bitoy's Funniest Videos. See, there's a part of the cave wherein the holes are small and you have to squeeze your way through them in order to move on to the other parts of the cave. All of us didn't have difficulty in squeezing through; it's Filipino-sized, after all. But my huge Tita Rose had a different story. Half of us have already passed through the holes, and it was her turn. She couldn't fit! All of us had to go through before she could try to squeeze herself again. It was REALLY FUNNY. She tried every possible move, bent her body in every possible angle for the sake of going in. It took so long, and all of us were laughing. It was hilarious, I tell you.

(Okay, just now Kyle corrected some of the grammatical errors he found on this post. T_____T I hate him.)

My family + relatives.

Seated: Ninong Ipoy and me, holding a crystal
Huddled on the left, clockwise: Drex (in green shirt), Ninang Tetet, Ninong Joji, Ryan, Tita Rose, Ace, Bryan
Huddled to the right: Mom, Kyle, Dad

We brought some crystals as souvenirs, and the crystals are said to have energizing properties. Just submerge them on your drinking/bathing water for a while and presto. Energizing water.

--> Mayon Volcano

We had lunch after that and went to the Mayon Volcano (not at the tip, of course). We ate there; and it was also there where I found out of the tragedy that struck Kuya Jules. His mother and younger sibling were swept away and killed by the typhoon Reming. I feel sorry for him because of that.


--> Waterfalls

I was tired and wanted to rest after lunch, but the trip wasn't over yet. We went to a waterfall, where we didn't bathe at all. Too bad. This time it was Drex - Tita Rose's son - who made a blooper. He stumbled through one of the boulders. Dad laughed so hard that he put Drex to shame. Poor kid.

And after that we finally went to the place in Donsol where we would be staying. It was a humble beach resort, the TV had no cable (so I can't watch Samurai X again) and there were no fancy stuff or whatsoever.

Then came another blooper from Tita Rose. The kids, along with me and Tita Rose, were at the beach, and since Tita Rose and I were just there to watch the kids, she decided that both of us play a game. She drew a big circle and told me that we run along the lines of the circle and tag each other. So we did. I was having so much fun running around the circle (we looked like idiots), and after a while, when she tagged me she lost control of herself, ran outside the circle and fell face-first to the sand just near the water. AND I LAUGHED SOOOO HARD! I'm laughing now just by the thought of it. Anyway, as I said, I laughed so hard that I peed in my shorts. That's how funny it was.

IV. Day IV: Whale-watching and going home

The reason why we went to Donsol in the first place was to interact with the whale sharks, or butanding as we call it. So at 8 AM we went to another resort, just near the one we were at, as that was the place where these interactions were financially settled.

Dad and Ninong Joji didn't bother coming, because aside from the butanding interaction being expensive (3,500 pesos), they also had to rest as they were going to drive us home.

Anyway, first up to see the butanding were me and Kyle, since there were only two guys who were with us so we had to go at it two at a time. And guess what I saw?

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A whale shark, baby. It's HUGE!

It was amazing. It's the first time I've seen a butanding so close. Kyle and Ryan were lucky, though; they were able to touch it.

We finished after three hours, after that we ate, packed our things, and went home. Though we went back to CWC to stay the night there; it was already 8 PM and dad didn't want to drive all the way home at an ungodly hour. And as usual, we cheated into sleeping in one of the hotel rooms.

V. Fourth day: HOME

We started at 8 AM. The only different thing about this trip is that we took a different route in Atimonan. We drove through the Quezon National Forest Park, and I tell you, it was AMAZING. Depending on the person, it may be seen as frightening or beautiful. But the park really was amazing. It was as if I was in a place where fairies and anitos reside. The trees were humongous, and the roads were all zigzagged. You MUST go there at lest once in your life.

We got home at 6 PM, just in time for American Idol. Phew! Finished, at last.