W2W?

What to wear in the upcoming Townhall - a company event/party. That's my problem now. How shallow.

And if I can't find the killer outfit, I just need to have killer make up. Joice, help me... glam-goth-look tutorial :)

Next up, I'll be posting inspirations.

The Art of Blogging

Three people are back to blogging. That's me, her* and him*.

Back in college, due to the shortage of worthwhile social networks (i.e. no Facebook yet so we were stuck with the oh-so-ancient-design-and-function of Friendster), me and my circle of friends used to blog. Even mini-posts that could count in present time as status-update-worthy only, we blogged. We blogged anything, everything. My goal was to tell stories, share opinions and be highly Googlable; more search engine hits = happier me. It was pseudo-celebrity status. O, the fame.

I guess things changed since then.

He* is now known for evading Google.

The same thing applies to me. Notice the profile name. And I've been trying to have my name removed from the Google-able search words. But somehow, I haven't done enough privacy setting to succeed. I also am still deciding if I'll keep my blog URL, I might change it, until I come up with a good codename. I stopped using clandestine usernames by the middle of college because I tend to forget them a(nd Jobstreet says that using codenames are not very professional).

So there. Blogging demi-anonymously. There's a face but no name. Back to The Big Bang Theory.

*Friends whose names will remain unmentioned

The Vatican

Me in the Vatican... not

Mike and I saw (passed by, really) the Vatican Observatory Exhibit. And I saw this massive St. Peter's Basilica cut out. Excuse my face, I didn't have anything on, even lipgloss or moisturizer, I just came from the dermatologist. I posed in front of it and thought the photo Mike took was actually decent enough to punk people into believing that I'm in Cittano del Vaticano. Molto Buona!

Zombie

Mike woke up around 3am on a weekend while I was busy designing my blog (I was busy blogging the past few days, I decided I'll do this daily if I can). He was amidst sleep cycles, peeked from the blankie and said "Zombie, zombie!". He's got some cojones to call me a zombie when he's the one holding the record for being online 24 hours straight - just playing online games.

You be the judge on my zombie-ism, he pap'd me while I was busy.

An Opinion (because there is NO Absolute Truth)

I said I don't want to blog politics anymore. But I feel like this one is inevitable. I am merely speaking as a woman, an educated woman who cares for her body and the future of her soon-to-be-family, who is aware of the dangers of giving birth and how mothers die giving birth when it could've been avoided to start with, the peril of sexually transmitted diseases spreading, the degrading economic conditions and how poverty is at all time high. Yes you might judge me for my agnosticism, or my past and current political affiliations for my biases, and that I am a rebel without a cause bratting my way into this debate.

I am not as articulate as I used to, I realized; I have not read 60-page readings on the subject at hand to back me up. However, I cannot quite create a coherent wordplay to express my disdain on the Catholic Church for spoon-feeding, if not brainwashing their followers into a state of sublime naïveté on the matter. Again, I am not an expert; I will not debate and challenge friars, fanatics and pompous asses. This is just my two cents, free-flowing.

The Bible did not fall from the heaven, inscribed by lightning, landed on earth to be our sole guide in everything. If anything, it is a history book, a literary piece, a constitution of sorts if you will; and just like any constitution, it may be subject to amendments once it's proven to be untimely. Jesus, is anything, is an icon, a revolutionary. I am not an atheist, though. I do believe in some form of Higher Power or Supreme Being. But the dogma of Catholicism is too much. Believe me, I studied in a "Catholic School" and was even dubbed Best in Christian Living. But if there's one thing that I understood well in the Old Book, it is that human beings have freewill and I am merely practicing it. That has been my principle. Freedom. Tolerance. Freewill. I am free to to know, to understand, to analyze, to challenge theories and create my own ones if I found those existing to be insufficient and incapable of satisfying all my questions. The world, the society we live in, the technology we posses exists because of people who ask, who challenge and are not satisfied with what is just being handed to them. I feel the deepest of contempt to the blind followers.

Sure, the natural family planning method worked back circa 15 AD to 1940s, when the earth still needed inhabitants. But now, people are fighting for the most basic resources to survive. I think earth doesn't need more inhabitants, I'm definite we're nearing the threshold of earth's capacity population-wise. The people are suffering because of this: low quality education, high poverty rate, rotten health care and social welfare programs, mass hunger. Awareness is the key to responsibility. If the Church continues to instill the idea of 'sex is taboo', people will never learn.

Sex is good, it is primal. The result of which is an infant (Juno, 2007). But if the parents cannot provide a good life to the kid, if the parents cannot even provide nourishment to the baby because they have seven more that they also need to feed, if the children resort to begging in the streets, if the mother will have to die giving birth because of lack of options, leaving the father raising a kid by himself, if the children will have to literally fight for a chance to quality education and health care. Wouldn't it be nicer if the couple had an option firsthand on how they'll go about with their sexual affairs and were clear with the size of the family that they want? As such all the needs will be provided to these children. I am all about family, it should provide the children the proper building blocks of life, values and principles for the next generation who will inherit our country and our world.

The RH Bill is not about legalizing abortion. It must be seen and understood in it's complexity, how it has the capacity to solve the grassroots problem that escalates into the economic crisis we're experiencing. It is about giving better options, to provide better life that will produce better people that will create a better country and a better world.

I've heard this on the news, unsure of the verbatim, but in essence: Catholics are not to be bound by the RH Bill. My reply: Filipinos are not bound by Catholicism neither. We are all only bound by our own decisions based on freewill.

A Year (Almost)

Mike and I got married last year. December 18, 2009. A week before Christmas. No fuss, civil wedding, simple, nothing was carefully planned, and I loved that about it, it was spontaneous, it was like getting married in Vegas.

It was a very sedated celebration, no room for pomp and parade. I put on conservative make up and put my hair in a bun, wore a white dress, that was it. With only the closest family members - they are the only ones who mattered after all. I did not bother to get other witnesses as well, my brother and Mike's sister did fine. Our family had lunch and that was it. We went home and lived our normal, monotonous lives again.

Here are some photos from December 19, 2009.

We were so embarrassed having to kiss in front of everyone.

And now, it's been almost a year since we got married. And I wanted to celebrate our first anniversary extra special. So I've been researching where we can spend it. I was looking first at Thunderbird Poro Point in La Union, Mike wanted to go to La Union to surf and I wanted to go there to get the Santorini vibe, but when I tried booking online, everything was taken already. Of course, second choice will be Thunderbird Rizal, but it seemed like we'll have a really hard time getting there if we brought a car, Angono is unfamiliar territory for both of us; and if we got a cab, odds are we'll be paying a lot because Mike's been there before - business purposes - and he said it was far from the main road. And so I next decided that perhaps we should stay within Metro Manila, if not, just within the outskirts, and so I was torn among Marriott Manila, One Tagaytay Place and Antel Spa Suites. For some reason, I am not quite satisfied with these top three choices, maybe because there seemed to be nothing new about them. Until  stumbled upon Hotel H2o and it's Aquarium Rooms. Take a look at this room...

I told Mike about it and he was stoked with the idea-something new (he was so-so with the first few choices as he is kinda bored with the idea of the usual hotel room, after all, we've been to a lot). And so we'll stay there and I'm booking online and I'm excited!

Restoring Our Sanity

One of what I consider as the best source of unbiased international news happened to be The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It's funny, unlike the usual boring international newscast and opinionated, the fact that I usually share opinions with Jon Stewart created my bias. So anyway, Jon is calling to arms.

Watch the rest of the announcement HERE.

The Boy

I am on a new blog, so just to keep everyone abreast, I need to give a refresher course on what you might have missed. Either way, you can always check the Older Stories link at the header part.

First off, I'll introduce The Boy. The boy I'm spending my life with. His name is Mike, a gorgeous and cutesy-patootsey furball of a Mapuan Civil Engineer. He loves ice-scramble, kare-kare, pizza, toge, dodgeball, airsoft, beaches,  autocad, watersports, the gym and ME. He makes me happy like Skittles and froyo does. We got married December of last year. So far, we're having a blast in this married life.

Me and Mike at Kenny Roger's. *nom*

My First Real Post Should Be Worthwhile

I signed the "Declaration of Support for the Immediate Passage of the Reproductive Health Bill" petition. Sign if you care about babies, women, families, hunger, poverty and the economy. Thanks!

Here's the link: Petition for the Immediate Passage of the Reproductive Health Bill into Law

Carlos Celdran couldn't have put it any better.

Starting Anew

This is my attempt to start blogging again and this time, I decided to stop the old blog. I guess I just don't want to look back anymore and I wanted to start fresh. I don't want my political beliefs, past rantings and what-have-you's taint my new endeavor. I am doing this to leave imprints. Though micro blogging in Facebook proved to be sufficient in the past year, there are just those days when I want to tell stories, without inhibitions, without fear of flooding people's walls. Updates for myself to keep me sane, not updates to keep you entertained.

So yeah, I am blogging.... again.

Blogging on the first day of the tenth month of year 2010