Wander Why so many Blah Blahs???

(continuation…)

Hospicio de San Jose

December 26 - a day after Christmas, our choir visited the aged at Hospicio de San Jose. Thanks to our friend for organizing and making Cycle a part of this meaningful activity for her birthday. The place is quite easy to find, but definitely odd coz I bet you’ll never imagine such place exist in Metro Manila. (Visualize) - take Ayala bridge (Finance road to Legarda direction) and turn right at the middle of the bridge. Yes, you read this right! There’s actually a small alley leading to Hospicio de San Jose at the middle of the bridge! If I’m the one to drive, I might bump the car coz the turn to the alley is just too narrow. Hehe.. I need more practice. Anyways, the place is nice and quiet. Fresh air and greens… it’s like you reached the other side of the world. The gathering was held in a gym at HDSJ. Most of the lolos and lolas were on wheel chairs, but some are still strong and energetic. We serenaded them with Christmas carols… and some of the lolas also showed-off their singing talents. Aba, ang galing kumanta ni lola - ika nga nila, parang ibong tiririt ang boses! Non-stop talaga! hehe… After some rounds of singing, food were distributed (c/o the birthday celebrant). Cycle prepared and distributed loot bags (yeah really beautiful loot bags *WINK*) filled with sweets… mostly soft foods. We were also toured around their dorm. It’s clean and nice actually. And there are lots of caregiver looking around for them as well.

* Reflections: Surprisingly, I felt happy after the visit. Heard stories from friends before that visiting the home for the aged makes you feel sad kasi nakakaawa daw yung mga matatanda. I looked at it the other way naman. Although the fact still remains that these people are sad because their family are not by their side, at least they are not totally neglected. In some ways, I felt they are quite lucky for being able to have a place to stay and food to eat. Well, I don’t know, that’s just my point of view. Anyhoo, it’s nice sharing love to the people in need — Give Love on Christmas Day — nga daw.

Yuletide Season 2005

I so love love love Christmas! It’s the time of the year when: (music please)

People making list…
Buying special gifts…
Taking time to be kind to one and all…

The other thing that I love about Christmas — CHRISTMAS TREES!!! I enjoy going to malls, restaurants, friends’ houses to look at their Christmas trees - (kilatisin ba naman ang bawa’t isa? hehe…) I especially like those with a lot of ornaments, angels, ribbons and whatever they could think of to make their tree unique. And of course, being me, taking pictures with the beautiful trees is a MUST (as the pictures show). Our tree? hehe.. Well, apparently we don’t have one in our house. Hehe they are nice to look at, but a pain in the a** to keep after Christmas season. Well, maybe in the future when I get a house of my own. I also enjoy the sight of Christmas lights and decors along Ayala Ave. during Christmas season. Too bad there weren’t much decors these past few years. Tag-hirap yata talaga. Well…

DVD Authoring - IJUKSA

My entire Christmas vacation went here - DVD Authoring. This was when I learned about DVD authoring lingos like mux, submux, encode, decode, transcode and the like. Still quite confused with which is which. Tried tons of software, but finally settled with dvdSanta and DVDLabPro. Actually I just needed to embed the subtitles to the video/avi clips

downloaded from the web, and burn them into DVD format which will be playable by ordinary DVD players. It took me a long time to understand what’s with DVD! VCDs are a lot simplier coz the file structure is more straight-forward. It’s bascially .DAT files in the MPEG folder which are also playable on any media players. Anyways, to cut the story short, DVDs are a lot more complicated. It took me almost 3 hours to convert, proof, and burn a DVD containing 2 hour episodes. And it’s a total of 16 episodes! Whew! Imagine I can’t sleep well coz I keep waking up in the middle of the night to check if the videos are done! I just can’t wait! hehe.. paranoid! Poor computer… if it’s a human, it would have probably had a heart attack because of stress! hehe… fortunately, it didn’t break down.

This is the korean series that I downloaded and eagerly wanted to share with my friends - starring Rain and Shin Min-ah. Ok, I confess! I have totally became a Rain and K-drama addict already! I have totally forgotten what I said in my previous blog entry (see “aja aja”). I started to like Rain as a performer after watching his Rainy Day concert on video. He’s not exactly good looking, rather HOT!!! If you just see how he sings and dances on stage. Who can resist his sexy muscles! haha.. ok too much about that… you might think I’m starting to become a pervert! hehe… Back to the original topic. The title of the series is “Ijukul Nom Ui Sarang” or IJUKSA for short. The english title is “A Love to Kill”. Actually there are other variations of its english title (”A Damned Love”, “This Love I want to Kill”, “A Love of Death” etc). As the title implies, this series is indeed a sad one. I’m not gonna spill everything in detail so not to spoil the excitement of those who haven’t watched it yet.:) Hang on friends - the DVD is done and it’s now on circulation! Wait for your turn.

* For more details, please visit d-addicts or soompi. These two forums are heaven for K-drama addicts! They have everything! Korean, Chinese, and Japanese series, TV and movie soundtracks, latest showbiz news and gozzips - name it and they’ve got it - for free! I just so love the INTERNET!

Welcome 2006!

Year 2006 welcomed our family in a quite unique way — brownout from 1am to 10am! Yeah, this surely is an unforgettable one. Anyways, I enjoyed celebrating the new year with my mom, little nephew and BF. We had dinner and wine drinking session on the night of Dec 31, while watching fireworks (on TV hehe). Then on Jan 1, we had shabu-shabu for dinner! Slurp! After dinner, we went to this new place near CCP for a stroll and coffee (I forgot the name of the place.. Harbor something?). I can feel that mom’s so happy the whole day. I’m glad… mom’s laughter makes me feel good.

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Whew! This blog entry is a long one… Now I’m am back on track. :p