leaving on a jet plane

my mom and nate are flying back to the philippines tonight and i feel sad. i am trying to drown my sorrows by watching Whoever You Are (a.k.a Maging Sino Ka Man) and looking at John Lloyd's face (i'm jologs but i don't care. i'm a die-hard john lloyd fan! i still regret not having my pic taken with him when i saw him at podium!ok, tama na. balik sa kwento.) anyways, i just feel alone tonight because aside from the fact that my family is going home, i'm all alone on a saturday night. not that i was ever the party girl who went out every weekends but still- at least when i was back home i there were always friends who i could hang out with kahit kwentuhan lang sa bahay. here, i have friends but i rarely see them and one (paging tynee) even went back home so i'm seriously lacking in company. it's times like these that i really question whether i made the right decision to come here. if leaving everything behind was the right thing to do. i miss being able to just walk over to the corner and drop by deirds' house unannounced. i miss just picking up the phone and calling papu out of the blue. i miss hearing her voice while she tells me all her amusing stories and latest chismis (hehehe!). i miss ian and aldwin texting me asking me where i am and asking me to go places. i miss the xaijua girls (a.k.a. UP peeps) planning a lunch or dinner and me insisting that we have somwehere in the south para malapit sa akin. and i especially miss just sleeping in my own house, seeing my mom and siblings everyday, playing with nate- just living with them. in short, i just miss BEING there.

sigh.

hopefully, this mood doesn't stick because i'm gonna be here for some time and i can't be like this forever. i'm gonna crazy. i have to entertain myself somehow. i have to do something. i have to think what though.

sigh.

i love you, you're welcome!

my parents, meann and nate finally arrived here last wednesday!! i can't even begin to tell you how happy i am that they're here. kahit na it's been barely three months since i last saw my mom, meann and nate excited pa din ako. lalo na my dad kasi over six months na kami hindi nagkikita. when they got here first thing i noticed was how big nate already is. when i left last february, hindi pa siya ganon kalaki and now, he's a big boy na! he's gotten taller and- just generally bigger than the last time i saw him. since he got here he's been really sweet to me. he always wants to do everything with me. pupunta na lang ako ng bathroom gusto pa sumama! i missed my brother!! and i'm gonna miss him even more when they leave on sunday! man, now i'm getting sad.

anyways, nate was very proud when he saw me and shared that he knew how to say "you're welcome" already. he proved it by saying it all night long. in fact, he kept on ending all his sentences with "you're welcome". let me give you an example of our conversations:

me: i love you, nathan!
nate: i love you, ate! you're welcome!

me: nate, later na yan. kain muna tayo.
nate: o sige. you're welcome.

me: eto na toy mo o.
nate: thank you. you're welcome.

lahat na lang may "you're welcome"! i don't know who thought him that but i think he did his job a little too well.

ang kulit ni nate! but i'm not complaining. i missed my little brother the whole time i've been back. before i went here, we were always together- doing errands, going to the bank, grocery-shopping, mall-hopping. we even looked for per-schools together. seriously, parang anak ko na siya. maybe that's why of all my siblings, pinaka-attached ako kay nate. i was really touched that he wanted to sleep beside me the whole time he was here on vacation. kahit na kulang na lang mahulog ako sa bed kasi hindi kami kasiya (if i bent my knees a little, my butt would be off the bed already) and my back hurt every time i woke up, it was great. sigh. i'm gonna miss him when he goes home. hopefully it doesn't take years before i see him again.

i've just been robbed!

i have no idea how it happened but somebody was able to charge 28 dollars in my account! i have just been a victim of debit card theft! darn it! somebody was able to charge 28 dollars worth of gas in my card. when i called the bank i told them that it definitely wasn't me because i don't even have a car! what the heck was i gonna do with 28 dollars worth of gas?! drink it?! buti na lang i check my account online and was able to see it kung hindi nawalan na ako ng 28 bucks! i've noticed na lagi na lang ako nawawalan ng money! why me?! do i have a sign on my head that says i'm stupid?! it's definitely not because they think i'm rich, because I AM NOT RICH! far from it! it's a good thing the bank was good enough to acknowledge my claim and credit back my lost money. ang hassle lang ngayon kasi they cut off my debit card and they're gonna send me a new one in 3-5 days pa. now, i have to actually go inside the bank to withdraw money. hassle, man! sigh. i've been here only 3 months and i've already been victimized by identity theft people. wow! just my luck.

happy birthday to me

my birthday is actually now officially over but still, i think i still have the right to greet myself. my birthday was nothing extraordinary but still this is one of the better birthdays i had. it actually started friday night. i know, i know, it was a good friday kaya lang i had no choice. twinkle, tito ted, tita cora and loy were going to cali the next morning and i wanted to celebrate with them hence the dinner friday night. since it was no-meat friday we ate pasta with shrimp (c/o of tita cora. the pasta was YUMMY, btw.), cheese and veggie pizza (c/o of pizza hut, which were also yummy), chips and sour cream, and for desserts, brownies and cheesecake. it sounds a lot of food for less than 10 people and actually- it was! ang daming pagkain na-overwhelm ako. i really thought hindi maaubos yung food. boy, was i wrong! i underestimated the powers of five hungry (and sometimes not even hungry) girls. we ate everything over the course of the entire weekend. but i am getting way ahead of the story. so, friday night, since some people were going to be late, nauna na kami nila twinks and tynee kumain at syempre mag-magic sing. i've come to realize that it doesn't matter if we have magic sing every time may gathering and we keep on singing the same songs, magic sing will never get old (baka kaya MAGIC sing.wahahahahaha! sorry, i couldn't resist it!). going back to the story, finally faye, phoebe and loy finally showed up and joined in the festivities. we just sang and laughed all night and didn't go to sleep until the wee hours of the morning.

my yummy handa

the "earlybirds"

taking advantage of the mic before everybody else gets here

early saturday morning (and by early i mean, EARLY), i woke up to the sound of wham's "wake me up before you go" courtesy of tynee's alarm. sa sobrang antok ko while looking for her phone to turn it off, i bumped my mouth into a corner of the center table and hurt myself. i even bled a little. after that, i slept again and woke up at around 930 am. by that time, gising na din si tynee so i made breakfast for us. actually i just cooked eggs and heated waffles in the microwave. hehehe. after that we basically just watched tv and waited for faye and phoebe to wake up. at lunch, we stuffed ourselves with crabs. at dahil sa kasibaan ko sumakit ang tiyan ko after lunch hanggang we got to dc and tysons. thanks to kuya don and ate milet for taking us to dc. buti na lang you did kasi if not we would have ridden the metro at pagdating namin sa DC maghahanapan pa kami ng cherry blossom tree na may pink flowers pa. asus. ang mga trees puro green na yung leaves, wala nang flowers eh ang highlight nung trip namin to dc is to see pink trees! as tynee put it, we played find-you-own-cherry-blossom-tree-and-quickly-take-a-picture game. but it was still fun. then we went to tysons (fyi, tysons is a mall. parang atc.) and medyo nawala ang tummy ache ko. hehehe. na-distract sa mall. we got there kinda late na so we only had an hour to explore the place at medyo nataranta kami ni tynee! an hour was not enough for us. we were rushing through the stores (sayang and H&M!. )anyways, i really wanted to buy a pair of gold shoes but wala akong size! kung kelan sobrang decided na ako to buy it, wala akong size! so on the day of my birthday wala akong nabili sa mall which made me kinda sad (in a totally superficial way). when we got to the house, kantahan na naman and then we went to sleep na kasi the next day was Easter and we were going to church early.

ang (feeling) anak-mayaman nagkakamay to eat crab

my birthday picture! (c/o faye)

i love my shirt on this pic! and of course, phoebe who's with me!!

sunday morning, i woke evrybody up and we went to church and we were really late and i felt guilty but i didn't hear mass again. when we got home, we made breakfast and because we were all meat-deprived for two days, meat fest and breakfast namin. we had longganisa (craving ni faye), bacon, sausages and eggs for breakfast. after breakfast, we basically just hung out at the house. me and faye went out for a while to have her car oil chenged but other than that we just stayed at home and watched tv and slept the whole day. tapos for dinner, tita rose and tynee took me and george out to eat at red lobster! super sarap! then we had coffee at starbucks. buhay baboy kami that sunday. grabe!

us: trying to prepare breakfast, george: looking on for moral support

the meat-fest breakfast (at syempre nangunguna ako, may rice na ang plate)

gutom na pero pose muna bago kumain!

my simple birthday dinner turned into a three-day birthday bash (feeling ko celebrity ako, talagang birthday bash!hehehe) and i couldn't be happier (except if my family was here). i was with friends and we had fun and even more food and it was great. i'm so thankful that even though i'm in a foreign country i have friends to spend my birthday with. sigh. thanks talaga guys! and to everybody who remembered my birthday and greeted me, sobrang thanks! it really, really meant a lot that you remembered! mwah!

thank you, zworykin

i am a tv addict. i watch everything that's on tv, well excpet infomercials (although i think there was a time that i did watch them. but that was when i was way younger). anyways, i have always loved watching tv. i remember when i was a kid, i would watch tv until the wee hours of the morning. and we didn't even have cable back then! i remember that i would watch this tv show Homefront on channel 2 every midnight and that's where i first saw kyle chandler, years before early edition, king kong and grey's anatomy, and crush ko na siya that early on. even now, years later, crush ko pa din siya and it really shocked me when he just burst into a pink haze on grey's anatomy! grabe, one sec he was walking away, the next minute BAM! he was gone, literally. all that was left of him was a pink fog. that must have been painful, i would imagine.

i love tv and most of my friends know this about me. they can ask me anything about tv shows and i would know it. there's no way for me to explain why i love tv but i just do. i am one of those persons that can just sit in front of the tv all day long and would not mind at all. it doesn't even matter if there's a good show on (although it would help), i can sit through a really bad show and still find something good about it. we didn't have cable for the longest time and i still watched tv all the time imagine what happened when i was introduced to the wonderful world of cable. seriously, i would put reminders on my cellphone about all the shows i had to watch because there was just too many shows to keep track of. medyo nataranta ako with all the shows i could watch. having all those channels also made it harder to channel surf eh i really liked channel surfing. kapag commercials i would always be flipping channels. minsan sa kakalipat ko ng channels i would forget or miss the show i was originally watching. las pinas cable made me realize how many good US shows i was missing. before cable, my only source of US shows was studio 23 and you know how delayed they are. pero on cable aaaahhh! natuwa ako with all the shows i could watch! LOST, House, CSI, CSI Miami, CSI NY, may CSI pa bang iba? basta there was just a lot and i loved it! tapos when i got here sa US, heaven! i could watch all the shows on time na! i am still loving the fact that i get to watch new shows that might or might not be shown sa pinas. like now, there's this new show october road which i just love. ang cute ni bryan greenberg (from Prime and one tree hill)! hehehehe.

sometimes i think maybe i'm such a tv addict to make up for the fact that i don't really have a life. i mean, i have no boyfriend. i only go out on weekends and not even always. maybe i watch tv to make up for the boredom that is my life. but whatever the reason is, i still love TV.

*btw, zworykin is the disputed father of tv

2 days to go!

two days to go before my birthday and i'm excited!!! i don't know why i'm particularly excited about this birthday eh i'm getting older and getting older is not something people generally look forward to. but i just feel excited. maybe because this year i have some kind of plan on how to spend my "big" day. and even though i won't be with my family and my closest friends i'll still be spending my day with good friends. i'm just looking forward to having fun (even with no money). i just really hope evrything goes well on saturday. and guys, i am looking forward to presents! i posted my wishlist. kahit coach bag LANG ok na. hehehehehe. psych! i'm good even with no presents just as long as people show up. =)

aaagghh! i can't take it! i'm so bubbly i'm irritating myself! wahahahahaha!

i am a weirdo, it's kinda scary sometimes.

you've got mail

i absolutely LOVE this movie! i've watched it for the nth time but it never gets old. i just love tom hanks and meg ryan together! as in! pinagtatawanan nga ako ng mga kasama ko sa house because whenever it's on on TV i just can't help but watch it. it doesn't matter if almost ending na lang ng movie, i still have to watch it. and i always cry when they finally meet as shopgirl and NY152. i'm such a sissy. hehehe. but i don't care. i still love it anyway.

so far...

i want to write something but i can't think of anything interesting to write about. feeling ko i want to share something- a thought, an idea, but i can't think what it is. i don't know. i might just be bored right now kaya i'm writing a post even though i don't really have anything important or interesting to share.

i've been thinking lately what have i been doing since i got back here. i mean, aside from going back to work. i'm pretty sure everyone has an idea of how my life at work has been recently. hopefully, everything gets better as weeks go by- or my boss finds somebody new to hassle besides me. anyways, going back to my original thought, what have i been doing here since i got back? in an attempt to make myself believe that i've done a great deal since moving back here, i will try to make a list of it starting with:

1. i've opened a bank account. a first for me. before, when i was still in school, i actually put my "savings" in a piggybank, as in yung coinbank shaped like a pig. i think i did that until i was in college already. i know it's pretty old school but i never really thought of opening a bank which is kind of weird for me since both my parents work at banks. heck, my dad used to manage a bank! ewan ko ba, i just never thought to put my money somewhere else safer.

2. in line with opening an account i've also opened a checking account. para akong gaga when i got my checkbooks in the mail. i wanted to write out checks just for the heck of it. hehehe. hindi ako masyadong excited. i didn't care that i didn't exactly know how to write a check. i just wanted to issue one. days later, when i actually wrote a check for something and mailed it, i totally forgot to sign my signature on it and had to ask the person i sent the check to to forge my signature. i know it's pretty dangerous to ask somebody to forge a check, especially here but i had no choice. the check needed to be cashed in right away. besides i knew naman that it was going to be safe kasi family naman yung nag-forge. but still, i know it was stupid and i promise never to do it again. i know better now.

3. i've managed to land a lead teacher position without doing anything. i know i wasn't suppose to write about my work anymore since lately that's all i've been talking about but i felt i just had to list it as an accomplishment- or a quasi-accomplishment, at that. i have my own room and two assistants to handle and direct as i see fit. sounds very accomplished, right? pero in real life, it's not really the case. i can't really do what i want in my room kasi napaka-pakialamero ng boss ko. my two assistants are pretty much like a pretend staff i have. most of the time i end up doing most of the work since i am the lead teacher. come to think of it, landing a lead teacher position was more of a curse than an accomplishment because i got more work without getting more pay which sucks so bad i can't even begin to tell you how much.

4. i finally got my own cellphone line. can i just say that i was REALLY happy when i was finally able to get a cellphone. i can't really think how people got by without cellphones before kasi it was hard on me not having a phone for the first few weeks after i came back. i always had to borrow somebody else's phone just to make a call. nakakahiya na manghiram after a while. i was so happy when i got my phone even though i had to pay a few hundred bucks to get it. plus, i was glad to finally get a start on building my credit. you see, here, everything is about your credit. if you have good credit, meaning you pay all your bills on time, you're not on debt, etc. etc. you can get loans for everything- a car, a house, a new pc, anything talaga. hopefully, i don't do anything stupid to mess up what little credit i have right now.

5. i got medical insurance. now, this is also really important here kasi OA sa kamahalan magpagamot dito. here, seryoso talaga yung saying na bawal magkasakit. lalo na if you don;t have money and/or insurance. recently ko nga lang nalaman that you got charged for calling and being rescued by 911- at mahal siya. when i first got here, my cough got really bad and i wanted to go to the doctor's but pinilit ko talaga to get better through over-the-counter drugs kasi wala akong pera. now, kahit wala pa din akong pera (a large chunk of my salary goes to paying insurance every month), at least i have insurance na.

6. i pay taxes now. the first year i worked here i didn't really pay taxes because my status here was kind of complicated. but now that i am, i am still surprised at how much the government deducts from my salary for taxes. man, nakaka-frustrate to see all these deductions on my payslip. ang dami eh. tapos at the end of the year, i have to file my taxes and then pay up again. the UP grad in me feels sort of guilty that i'm not paying taxes in my own country (and i never did) but wala naman akong choice eh, i work and live here so i must pay my taxes here.

7. i've reconnected with the friends i gained the last time i was here. the said friends wouldn't include twinks and faye though kasi we've been friends practically forever so i don't really need to reconnect with them. we're just friends, no matter how long we don't see each other and how much we've changed since the last time we were together, we're just friends (i tend to repeat myself sometimes). anyways, i'm just glad that slowly i'm getting to spend some time with my last-year-gained friends. it's kind of hard to really spend time with most of them kasi most of them live far away but there are a few (tynee? mainstay sa bahay? hehehe) who live nearer that i get to see a lot. i feel really blessed that i got to meet people that i understant and kapareho ko ng wavelength. but i still miss my friends sa pinas. kahit anong mangayri i don't think any new people will be able to replace all the friends i've grown up with sa pinas. ika nga ni beyonce, they're irreplaceable.

hmmmm..right now, i can't think of any thing else really significant (for me, at least) that i've done since i got back so i think i'm going to stop writing now.