Surprise, Surprise!

I can't believe how time flies! Last time I posted on this blog, I was twenty five and unmarried. Now I am twenty six and unbelievably happy. It's a puzzle how I ended up this way, I think its a combination of events that led up to my current generally happy disposition. As an update, and because they paint a thousand words, here are some of my life's significant events in the past months, in pictures:

I tied the knot with my sweetie of nine years in a gorgeous church wedding last December. If I were to do it over and over again - this whole wedding business, I would always get married to the same person and in exactly the same way. :-)

A few months later, we spent a week in Coron, Palawan, a piece of paradise on Earth, if I say so myself. I will not trade vacationing in our own Coron with traveling to Europe or the U.S. or whichever popular tourist destination. I guess its just my kind of honey moon place. Now I can tell anyone from anywhere that I've visited the most beautiful place in my country - or the whole world, for that matter.

Some of the happy trips I've gone to during the year include an office trip to Davao and a trip with college friends to Bataan. I feel so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life!

Ala-Saturday afternoon teenage flick series

Let's do it! Taken at Pearl Farm, Davao

Guess What?

A total of 52 years' worth of friendship is in this picture. Seriously.

Friendship with Abby = 17 years
Friendship with Arvin = 17 years
Friendship with EJ = 18 years (debut age!)

Grand total = 52 years!

Yes, I am proud to still be friends with those who have known me when I was eight. They will be helping me with wedding chores, etcetera, etcetera. Which means we necessarily have to be friends for decades after. And our children, and children's children should be friends too. That's a sweet yet creepy thought... (for reasons I can't explain... LOL!)

Alumni Homecoming

I am not really familiar with the standards set by whoever as to whenever an alumni reunion must be held. Yesterday, however, we had a college alumni homecoming. It was nice seeing old faces again, friendlier albeit older (and hopefully, wiser) faces. Unlike other reunions, I guess the KC Reunion was a much friendlier affair because no matter how we turned out, there was a general atmosphere of supportive-ness. I was also surprised at the number of fellow Kalayistas taking up law! A few more Kalayaan graduates to enter law school and I'll start thinking about setting up a law students' support group. LOL As if reading cases won't be enough work! Here are some of our pictures:

The triumverate is complete! Also, Carlo looks like Tracy in this shot.

 

Our requisite photo with the school founders

Old friends. Posing outside and not knowingly, right in front if the school's new van!

Bonus: we got free coffee from Vaj! He's setting up a business of roasting coffee and has given away samples at the event. No wonder Vaj was such a wonderful group mate in our Marketing classes. He's really planning on being an entrepreneur. I hope I will be as successful in my plans of becoming a business lawyer. =)

Free coffee! I am sucker for freebies, you know.

Next week, me and my college sweetheart will be tying the knot. I guess our story didn't end with our college graduation. Neither will our stories with our college friends. =)

Masquerade Party

Ho hum. I've been busy (and stressed) from all the preparations I have to go through for the wedding (in six days... yikes!) and have been neglecting my personal blog. I feel like hurling through the nearest wall any wedding magazine I see, even when only a few months ago I hungrily and dreamily search each and every page of The Wedding Digest and Martha Stewart Weddings. 

At least, in the last two days, my last weekend of being unmarried, I was able to do some non-wedding-related stuff. Our office Christmas party held last Friday is the most beautiful and opulent office event I've been to so far. I wore an old dress of my sister's, since I wanted to save every peso I have for incidental wedding expenses, even when my mask and jewelry were not exactly cheap. Even when I didn't win the Best Costume award, at least I got to doll myself up. (I'm the simple, classic, button-down shirt, straight skirt and black pumps girl, with only lip gloss on.) Here's a masqueraded me with a cocktail dress on, sans makeup. (One of these days I am truly learning makeup skills, grrr!)

A few pics of my office mates who have turned into faeries and princesses and angels and empresses for the night:

Our Best in Costume awardee:

Fried Garlic Beef Adobo

The supermarket gave me lean beef cubes when I paid for kenchie! Next time, will check the meat first before leaving. My fried beef garlic adobo would've been better with ribbons of fat lacing through the meat. I tried to compensate by making a tastier sauce... this dish was a lesson learned. I also burned the garlic in the process. Oh well. At least my boneless chicken curry from last week turned out well.

The Chronicles of Narnia

What I was not able to mention in my previous blog post was that the thing that brought me back to book buying and readings was, finding this huge bargain of The Chronicles of Narnia books 1-7 at a Book Sale, for only 40 pesos per book! (Less than a dollar each.) 

Inspired by my great find, I decided to once again comb the second hand book stores for even more bargains. But nothing came up except for Weekend by Christopher Pike, and The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans, something that I haven't read and which I hope is good, because its not my normal genre of interest and I only got it to keep an open mind about books in general.

I have read up to Book 4, Prince Caspian, when I took a break and shifted back to Pikean horror. Narnia books are children's books.

Weekend by Christopher Pike

When I was in high school, I devoured horror books (especially vampire books), mysteries / whodunnits and thriller books. I enjoyed reading Stephen King, R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike at a time when most of my friends read teenage chick lit and other trash about dating boys. Now that I look back at it, the books that I read were still very teenage-y with a lot of references on dating, but there's still some interesting aspect in them like a monster or a killer destroying everything and love prevailing over the rest. I avoid romance novels like the plague, they're something that spinster aunts love to read. But I still get my dose of romance - in books with very unromantic covers, lol!

One night after work, I fell back into my old habit of searching for second-hand pocketbooks in the mall. I found something that made me feel nostalgic in an instant - a book by Christopher Pike. Mind you, I didn't go to high school when Christopher Pike became a bestselling author; he was popular back in the '80s and '90s, and this book, called Weekend, was published in 1986, a year after I was born. Still, I am a lover of old second-hand books; I had very little money as a student, and I always chose the thickest, cheapest novels that I could buy with my money. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I chose horror over romance - I get more pages in a book, the book gives me an adrenaline fix (and not make me sleep), and thus, I get more value for my money.

When I got back to reading Christopher Pike again, it was like the good old days when all I worry about was algebra, bringing a cute shoulder bag for all of my school stuff, and finding a good book to read. Yet it wasn't as good as I remembered it to be.