This is my first post here and I am sick. I woke up yesterday with a bad headache that didn’t resolve. I woke up today still with that bad headache and I’m feeling slightly feverish. The timing isn’t good (I should have gotten sick over the Christmas break or on the 6th instead! Hehe) Unfortunately for someone out there, never in my right mind will I buy a computer memory or any computer stuff and give out as a gift. Where’s the romance in that?!?! Haha. I can almost imagine this scenario:

Friend: So, what did you give Bee for your first anniversary?
Me: this new memory chip for his computer *while scooping out ice cream*
Friend: *confused*

See, the first anniversary is almost up and I want to make my gift as special as I could. I already have something in mind - too bad I’m too sick to get my butt out of the house.

And oh, before I forget, Happy New Year everyone!

Since it’s just a few weeks before Christmas, I bet people are flocking to the malls (especially when they’re on sale) to buy Christmas presents for their loved ones. Just recently, the Trinoma mall held its very first mallwide sale. I purposely shied away from that mall on the dates they were on sale. I just know how I wouldn’t be able to stand the traffic and the crowd. Apparently, my hunches were right as I heard from the radio review of the traffic last Sunday that the whole stretch of Quezon Ave. to North Ave. was bumper-to-bumper. When Bryan and I met last Friday, he was supposed to drive ourselves to Trinoma for dinner - until I begged him not to (or else, we would have ended up ketotic in that traffic. :P)

I get psyched up when I do my Christmas shopping. I’ve been giving presents to my family no matter how big or small since 2nd grade and it’s so often that I end up clueless as to what to give them for the holidays since I’ve already ran out of ideas. Just a few weeks ago, I chanced upon a branch of Regalong Pambahay at SM Southmall and was amazed at all the good stuff they’re hiding in there. I know - it’s not as if the store is new, it’s just that I’ve always associated that store with mommies looking for gifts for their kumares. LOL. But now, I’ve figured how the age group I belong to is slowly entering that stage. In fact I have a handful of people I personally know who have already started building their families (Dana, are you reading this? :P) Just to make things clear though! I’m not getting envious alright! It’s just that maybe I should include useful - and of course - pretty household items in my shopping list (I usually get them personal stuff, you see). Take this for example which will be perfect for my mom’s newly repainted modern bedroom:

Since the stuff I still have to do before Christmas remains to be up to my neck to this day (which reminds me of the paper I am supposed to be editing now), I’d probably be just contented at the moment listing down gift ideas or frequenting online stores instead of wasting my time at the malls. Argh. Med school is the biggest grinch of Christmas. So, you think I’d be able to finish my gift shopping on time? Only God knows. LOL.

You know you need to lose some weight when suddenly your jeans won’t zip up no matter how much you try. I was surprised when one fine afternoon, I had trouble fitting in my jeans - and they weren’t even the pair I had back when I was slimmer. My thighs have indeed grown larger. I know it’s supposed to bring me good news, but then I remembered how I haven’t been taking the weight-gain supplements for a couple of months now. It then only means one thing: I’m in auto-pilot mode. I now gain weight without the help of food supplements. Although gaining weight has been my goal since time immemorial, I don’t want to end up weighing more than I’m supposed to weigh. No. I don’t want to end up having big and flabby arms. That’s just scary, considering how stick-thin I used to be. And so, I’m back again to my weight loss regimen: keeping fit while having fun. I recently just signed up for another 15-session pilates workout and in fact, just got back from playing badminton with my roommate and Jessa. We realized how ironic it is to be future caretakers of health when we don’t exactly live a very healthy lifestyle ourselves. From now on, we’ll make sure we do something else other than reading books and making patient papers and being physically active tops that list. So who’s afraid of wearing a bikini next summer? I know I ain’t.

Funny how I really had to document this! =P Mela in green, Jessa in blue.

November 1 and 2 are special holidays for us Filipinos because we remember our dead loved ones on these days. Since my grandmother died, it has been our tradition to visit her grave every 1st of November. We set for the memorial park at 6 am and stay there until the sun goes down. This year’s November 1 was no different except maybe for the fact that traveling to the cemetery was a breeze and it wasn’t as toxic as I thought it would be. Two All Saints’ Days ago, the travel to and from the cemetery was horrendous – it took us an hour from a few meters away from the gate to my lola’s memorial lot and around the same length of time to get out of the cemetery grounds.

Like most Filipinos, the visit to the grave is like a mini-reunion where immediate family members of the dead gather to pray, eat and eat some more. It has been more special to us since my grandmother already has my grandfather and baby Brent as neighbors in that little ground space we bought (the bones of her father and Brent’s older brother who died a few hours after birth are also buried with them). I remember how just last year, my grandfather was still with us when we went to the cemetery. This year marked the first time we visited him on November 1 as he lays buried beside my grandmother.

The situation at Manila Memorial Park in Dasmarinas is perhaps farfetched from the situation at other major cemeteries in Metro Manila. Every year, there is a live coverage of the situation at the North Cemetery where people visit in droves by the millions to honor the dead and as far as private memorial lots are concerned, the situation at Manila Memorial Park in Sucat is congested as well. Lucky for us that the memorial park in Dasmarinas is fairly new and don’t have as many people buried in one place like in others. But then, I just know that perhaps next year, things will be a lot different as more people bury their dead and the place fills up. Just recently, the lot right next to my grandmother’s had a new occupant. It was so new that there wasn’t even an epitaph to mark it with. We stayed there the whole day but there wasn’t even anyone who visited the grave and even the rest of my grandparents’ next-door neighbors – as it has been through the many November 1s that had passed. We end up putting a flower or lighting a candle or two for them just so they’d know someone’s been praying for them – never mind if they didn’t really know us to begin with.

Another holiday has passed. Christmas is really just around the corner. I wonder though why I haven’t been feeling the so-called Christmas spirit.

Looking for industrial clamps? Click here.

I’m alone. My roommate went home and isn’t coming back until tomorrow morning. While I was surfing the web, something flew over my head and landed on the garbage bin near me. My instinct of course was to spray some insect killer but there was no movement – nothing! The mystery flying thing is gone and it’s getting me all paranoid. Every unfamiliar sound that I hear inside the room that doesn’t come from the television makes me look over every now and then. I can’t help it. After that night when a total of nine – NINE! – flying roaches attacked Mela and I all evening, I’ve somehow developed an extra sense for detecting flying cockroaches. I wish Mela’s here so she could warn me of roaches behind me before they land on my head. Oh horrors. This is a lot worse than Hotel626.

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Need added memory? Grab a memory stick here. 

The reason why I put up ladolcevita was because I wasn’t really ready to give up the kind of blogging I had been used to in the many years I’ve kept my presence online. I don’t dare put up links to my old blogs because I deemed they’re way too emotion-filled to be shared to not-so-strangers I’ve met online. I read horoscopes but I don’t necessarily believe in them. How can I do so when my sign tells me that I’m supposedly detached with my emotions? For sure, my blogs and my diaries can belie that claim.

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After much ado, we finally managed to remember the exact date of our first date. Much to our dismay, it wasn’t October 28 (as I first said in my “First Kiss” entry) nor was it October 25 as we knew all along. Instead, it was on the 24th of October! Too bad we missed it altogether.

Anyway, there’s still the first anniversary that’s more important to celebrate. Think we’ll cross that 1 year mark? Hope so.

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My room has just been repainted. From a sad lavender, it now looks like a kindergarten classroom with pink, blue, lavender and yellow against an off white background. My glow-in-the-dark stars are now “shining” over my bed. It reminds me of the Nativity really. Although my room is a far cry from the upscale designs of las vegas suites, I cherish my room simply because it’s mine and I feel all comfy plopping down on my bed which is just a few inches off the floor. Speaking of which, I’m gonna get my butt again out of the house tomorrow. Argh. I hate school.