etcetera
my life of late is an endless cycle of:
drafting, drafting,
writer's block,
long sleep,
no sleep for 48 hours- straight,
more drafting...
and in between are:
yoga
cooking greaseless, low sodium, low sugar anything (am forming a habit of healthy lifestyle)
exchanging notes with married friends on household budget and baby stuff while drowning ourselves in caffeine.
and dishing out pieces of advice to hormone-driven teenage boys, who seem to have anointed me their confessor, along the lines of: "true love waits, but if you can't wait then better be safe. and for goodness sake, you don't buy c*nd*ms in the bookstore!" (what the?!) i really need to tell their parents to walk them through the 'birds and the bees' topic, except that i might have to betray their confidence. ah, kids these days, they are scaring me enough to remain single and childless forever.
Not A Very Nice Christmas Post
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year- Not!
At the risk of sounding like the Grinch, I really am not too gungho over Christmas. I have the highest stress level around this time of the year. Work just and deadline seem to pile up along with other ‘extra-curricular’ activities you have to do for Christmas, like that dance number for the Christmas party or helping wrap office giveaways because the Boss is too stingy to hire people who do this kinds of things.
Of course it’s a major killer to go home. After spending hours of overtime, you spend ages waiting for a ride. Cabs are nowhere to be found or they charge exorbitant fees that one as desperate as I am has no choice but to agree with. There are simply no words to describe how the traffic makes me feel. I cannot avoid falling asleep on the drive home (it’s a blessing the cab drivers I pick are good-hearted).
The crowds in shopping areas make me curse in a number of different languages (of course, I never do). And you know one can never avoid shopping; you really just have to give something to the people important to you in this Christian country. And sometimes even to the many not too important ones which necessitate the yearly pilgrimage my sister and I make to the shopping mecca of the Philippines- Divisoria.
For Manila is but a transient home, I am obligated to go back to my ‘real’ home on holidays like this. You cannot imagine the stress of reserving a bus seat (I do not even attempt booking a plane ticket at this time.). And then you stress over whether you will get to the station on time (for if you don’t they will forfeit your reserved seat) after you manage to extricate yourself of these last minute office parties you just have to attend lest you be branded an ingrate by the boss. Then brace yourself for the longest trip of your life as the expressway is almost always packed with cars.
And when you manage to get home, you do not even see any of your family members (except maybe on Christmas itself) as they are busy doing the rounds of these obligatory parties. Agghh…
taegukki
my taegukki boxed set dvd! thanks unnie soyoung for this welcome (to korea) gift^^
a ray of sunshine
look who the stork brought; LEE SOHYUN! her name means 'spread your light', so i just had to nickname her sunshine (never mind that her dad thinks 'soleil' sounds better for a nickname)
she's often mistaken a boy coz she's an exact replica of chris down to her earlobes! but i'd say her expressions are purely from soyoung (though everyone gives me a doubtful look; am i the only one who can see that?)
she's so adorable, she's barely four months old, but she can already turn on a crawling position! and she baby talks already! ohh...i miss carrying her and our nightly ritual of 'monkey see, monkey do'
laughing trip with omma and tita anna
making pa-cute at me
'ohh...something interesting...'
'pick me up NOW!'
'i mean NOW or i'm going to smash my face!!!'
'loving the water'
'ohh...this feels good, omma. i could get use to this...'
seoul survivor
after all the glitches, i'm here in seoul.
i can't believe i lasted this long. the moment i stepped out of incheon airport, i had the half-baked idea of taking the next flight back to manila. my gulay, ANG LAMIG! The air is stinging cold and very dry, it's so hard to breathe. i thought i'd never make the 5 meter walk across the parking lot! by the time we reached the car, i was shaking (and chris just had to tell me it's the first time he turned on the car heater this autumn).
this tropical bird assimilated to the temperature quite fast. even i surprised my self. now i don't feel the need to put on too many layers of clothing (the first day i had 5!) and better yet, i have not broken out in allergies nor asthma (surprise! surprise!).
anyway, since oppa and unnie can only show me around on weekends, i have to be on my own the rest of my stay here. to be honest, the idea frightened me at first, but in seoul only the really, really stupid will get lost. well, that is not say that you can find your way with eyes close. you have to least have a functional understanding of how the seoul subway system works (which is the best way to commute in seoul). it may look like a labyrinth, but all you have to do is follow the yellow brick road, meaning just follow the arrows, provided of course that you know where you are exiting or transferring. unlike in the philippines you do not need to pay again when you transfer to the next line. and, yeah, if you are not using a prepaid card, you better tell the ticket vendor where exactly your exit is, for while almost all stops cost 900 won, you can't just stop anywhere, the friggin exit won't open. it happened to me and i had to ask help from a good-looking university guy (in a country where english is semi-functional, ask help help from the youngest literate person you can find in the area) who had nicely opened the emergency exit for me. actually, i should just have crawled under (as some koreans who must have missed their stop do) since i paid anyway, but i didn't risk being dragged to the police station.
save for the exorbitant price, a mc chicken meal is 3,600 won or almost 250 pesos, seoul is a very liveable city. for a big city, it's very safe. stores here do not have guards nor a store clerk watching your every move and it's safe enough for children to travel on their own even at dusk. unlike manila, be prepared to walk a lot (heck, i can't believe i walked this much in my entire life) and move fast, time flies really fast here, no wonder koreans have a culture of 'pali-pali' (hurry up). in manila the same span of time is very long, but here i can't seem to finish all that i have planned for an equal period of time. i'd have to admit that i'm beginning to like the vibe here. though not cosmoplitan, it's a very modern with a touch of nostalgia. it's just as their tourism magazine describe it to be.
essential: mobile phone (in case i get lost), MAP, won, phone card (in case mobile phone konks out, camera!, and kikay kit of course. make sure to place them inside a messenger bag (it's the only bag 'seoulites' seem to use) if you want to be less conspicuous
