27 Dresses

here we are tortunring ourselves again... yes, we watched 27 Dresses days after valentine's, and we were surprisingly happy that we did. even a male friend, who's more of a fan of sci-fi and action flicks, did enjoy watching this chick flick.

katherine heigl's acting is very natural, and oh can she really get your sympathy without looking oh-so-pitiful. she's a refreshing version of julia roberts, sandra bullock and meg ryan-- my luminaries of the romcom genre.

and the story...i liked the twists in the plot, especially the time when george finally reciprocated her feelings--- only for her to find out from that, that he is not the one her heart beats for (dig it!). not because she found somethng bad or ugly about george. he actually remained very likable the whole story, unlike some predictable romcoms. it was just 'something'. and i like how her relationship with kevin doyle progressed. it wasn't forced nor unnatural. it can really happen ;) and i agree with her when she said that the best part of a wedding is this: when the bride walks up, all the people looks at her. but for her, she'd look at the groom and see a world of love in his eyes....

the director infuses humor in supposedly dramatic situations. it's fun without trivializing the events. and the comic timings of katherine and the other actors are good. really a feel-good movie for girlfriends (and boys alike!). and editing was good too. for me, there was no unnecessary scenes, and no unrelated scene sequencing.

and of course, the romeo (james hayden), the Commitments page reporter! honestly, he did not appeal to me at first. but when the character evolved, i ended up having another crush in the longgggg shortlisted (?) list. haha!

they ended up marrying each other, with the reporter and the subject of that infamous article "Always, always a Bridesmaid..." becoming the story/wedding of the year! and of course, she had 27 bridesmaids, wearing the 27 dresses/gows she collected! nice motiff! haha!

Othello, how are you?

othello... i met him last aug 30. we did not have a good start. he was sizing me up and did not seem to like me at first. as for me, i can only be very casual with him. i do not have a choice. i told mano i am so used to with his kind. and we will be breathing the same air for the next 4 days!!

second day, he kinda sent a different signal to me. i think now, we'll be friends... i was right. at 1 am, he did not let me sleep. he kept coming in and out of our room. he was lonely, very lonely. and we were there to keep him company.

third day, we rocked! we danced! we cuddled!

fourth day, he should not know i am leaving... i sneaked behind his back. no goodbyes... i shall return...


that was my encounter with my new canine friend! oh, i badly miss panda....

Awakening the sleeping bookworm

mano is such a bookworm! every time she goes to the mall, she does not go home sans a book. and even her habibi is such an avid reader. and the more i spend time with her, the more i get brushed with this passion. i guess she has just awakened the sleeping bookworm in me! such a nice positive influence...

she gave me "tuesdays with morrie" last april, and it spoke strongly to me. and "teacher man" for my birthday which is my current read. she lent me colayco's book on investment, and the expat's guide to managing your money, and it enlightened me on many practical matters. and when she left for oman, i saw on her bed "rich dad, poor dad" which i breezed thru in 2 days! she also made me reminiscent and laughing out loud with abnkkbsknpl of bob ong! when we had a book sale at the church, we both bought "a woman after God's own heart" which i've finished a few weeks after. and i'm also done with "the devotionals for women" which has seasoned my thoughts with the essentials.

now, i enjoy more my bible reading. i enjoy my devotions. we discuss many things over a cup of coffee from our latests reads. i can't let a week pass without reading something, or let a moment pass, whether i am waiting for something, riding the car for a long drive, having my foot massage or lulling my mind to sleep. i always have bathroom books too! now, i get excited with bookstores. i get high with the sight and smell of books, old or new. mano and i enjoy quiet moments together - with good reads on hand! of course, this is squeezed within the time with my old friends -- the journals, the internet and the magazines.

i think i am already having information overload... but the reality is, the more i realize i know so little coz there is so much more to be learned out there! it's great to be a bookworm ;) thanks mano! i'm gonna read your "princess diary" soon. it is a shocking and revealing true accounts of a saudi arabian princess... and more book adventures to us!

Wazzup? Keif? Musta?

i've always dreamed of having this special power of conversing in many languages. like Jason Bourne. he just speaks spanish, french, italian, whatever the language is spoken by the person he is talking to.

how do i do that when i don't even know a single dialect? i've always envied my college friends who speaks their province dialects. it seemed a nice 'secret' language in the company of many people.

so in this quest of mine, i would like to start with arabic. yeah, i know. i've been here for five years, and i've only thought of doing this only now? why? beats me! but i guess, it's never too late to start.

i bought an arabic book, with tapes which i usually play when i am driving so that it goes into my subconscious. it helps since my memory anyway always fails me. it's been 2 weeks, and i think i'm learning quite a bit:

welcome - marhaba! or more formal saalam mulaykum
reply - zain or bikhair or mulaykum maaslam
kumusta - keif halak? (to man) keif halik (to lady)
what's your name - shu ismak?
do you understant arabic/english - tefam arabi/inglesi?
no - la
yes - na'm or aiwa
i don't have money - ma andich fulus
no problem - ma fi mushkila
big problem - mushkila kabeera
Filipino - filipini


just like any skill, it has to be continually honed. i have to, so that i can move to the next level-- french! ;) wow, what a dream! haha! and i also would like to learn sign language and one pinoy dialect... one by one tetch... one by one...

Friendster vs Facebook

Friendster

i love friendster. i've touched-based with my long lost friends even wayback in elementary, in yes, friendster! how amazing can it be? it surprises me with the extent of its reach among the pinoy circle all over the world! it used to be the number one online social site, but it slid down and gave way to myspace. no. 1 or no. 2, just the same, when it comes to hooking up with my ex-classmates, ex-officemates-- nothing beats friendster! the true filipino online community! almost all people i know has an account, young ones and young once alike!

whenever i want to wile away time, i go to friendster and look at profiles and pictures of friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends... got it? i like flicking thru the pages of friends and strangers as well, and how they are doing now in life. new parents usually have their baby's photos on the first pic! newly weds have wedding pics, or the pre-nup pics and honeymoon pic, mala hollywood romance movies! those 'in a relationship' of course would banner who they are with at the moment! and the singletons---- their pets, travels, pamangkins and what-have-yous!

i am amazed at the 'how you are related' portion of friendster! i can't believe that my friend is also a friend of my friend! talking about 6-degrees of separation or in this case, relativity huh!

so now, whenever we take pictures here in the office, we make sure it is 'pang friendster'! haha.

Facebook

i also like facebook. salawahan! haha! blame its rise to stardom to prince william! but you see, for my non-pinoy friends, what they usually have is facebook. though i find the template kinda boring (blue and white), what they lack in color, they make up in applications! a whole lot of applications! even 30-ish people would enjoy these funky and interactive profile add-ons. right now i am still trying to figure out how to apply those to my profile!

facebook is not a good site if you wanna 'take a peek' at someone else's profile. all you'll see is their name (no nicknames, as opposed to friendsters' nickname mania... i wonder why!), thumbnail sized shots and the network they are part of. it's rare that one's profile is open for public (as far as my experience with flicking is concerned). you have to have the guts to 'add him/her as a friend' or 'poke him/ her' or 'send him/her a message'.

but one thing i enjoyed though is browsing thru all the clubs/organizations that facebook people have created! gazillions of them! it reminded me of my freshman days in college, when i'd apply in so many orgs and clubs, but ends up in maximum of 2 at the end of the year!

there you go with choices for online social networks.... so enjoy browsing!!!!!

Ciao! Arriverderci!

tues, my friend gelli introduced me to her three italian friends. we met in Vu's bar. after a few mintues of pleasantries, we instantly hit it off with discussions ranging from italy, to philippines, to business, to dubai, to each one's works. when we left them, we learned that they still jammed with the people from the other table, who happened to be-- you guessed it-- italians!

then thursday, they were invited by their new-found kababayans to a (italian) house party. they invited gelli, and gelli tagged me along, not wanting to feel left out. with nothing else to do, i agreed. plus, i think it sounded exciting! and an adventure...

at 10pm, gelli and i arrived at the villa by jumeirah. we were met by our friends, and then, by the host of the party. with all blondes, tall people, long noses and speaking italian, i suddenly felt out-of-place!!!!! they even separated me and gelli from the sitting arrangement in the dinner table, but was glad i was seated next to this cute italian guy ;)

the first part, as any social gathering is of relative strangers, was kinda awkward, especially when they started talking in their language. once in a while, when they remember us, they'd speak in english. hmm.... now i kinda know how it feels to be in a conversation where each word they speak is greek to me, and i really felt so lost! and the best conversation piece i can give is just a nod and a smile! now i can sympathize with foreigners in the company of pinoys who endlessly talk in tagalog! this is one of those times when i wish i had the power of linguistics!

but that part usually ends after a few minutes of ice breakers! and the big group talk disintegrates to small group talks... and that's when a cute seatmate comes in handy! unfortunately, to his right is a disarming pretty fil-italian! but he was kind enough to engage both of us in a good english talk...

now comes the part when they serve pasta... pasta... pasta... yes, in one plate, i was given 3 kinds of pasta! whew! one was carbonara, one was tomato-based and the other one was meat-based! i have to remember i was in an italian party. the noodle was so al dente, that i realized i liked my less al dente pinoy spaghetti so much more!

after the pasta feast... they served steak-- rare!!!! oh, haven't eaten a rare steak before, but with an adventurous palate, i tried it, and i liked it! and for dessert, i've tasted the best tiramisu i've tasted! i had two servings. i already lost my 'hiya'. and the hostess appreciated my fondness for her dessert.

then of course, wine flows like a river! they talk about different kinds of wine... wherein i only know 2-- red and white! they served different kinds of red wines, and different kinds of white wine, with each wine having a story of its own... and that simply means the table is filled with wine glasses! the last i've seen so many wine glasses on a table was during our home economics fine dining exam!

then, lastly, and the part closest to me--- was the picture-taking time! gelli took two shots, and left my camera on the table, and the guy beside me started taking candid shots of all of us, and even of the cherries in front of us! that was cool and fun!

then later still, as we let the food we ate settle in the inner corners of our tummies, there was the natural gravitating of the genders-- the guy talk there and the girl talk here! and some one-on-one talk on the living room...

at around 1 am, we bid ciao and arrideverci! it was a nice house party, and i would gladly be a willing victim next time gelli tags me along again...

Coffee Talk: Central Perk in Jumeirah

this is actually long overdue! this happened end of june, and yet i will only be able to write about it only now. but i cannot NOT write about this too. because i would like to remember always how we can make our evenings different-- with friends!

all of us 4 love "Friends". even J now is addicted to it! so, where else is it fitting to grab a cuppa? at Central Perk!

after dinner, we searched for it within the inner roads of jumeirah. until after almost an hour of driving around, and close to giving up... we saw the wondeful sign!!!






they have magzaines, wifi, warm ambiance, very comfy couches, good coffee lines, and cool staff! i'm sure we found a gem in the city, specially on days when you needed to unwind...




















and as the pictures reveal, we had one crazy, make-believe 'Friends' night with the help of the friendly staff there! they said they have bands playing every saturday night, and movie nights every monday... so, i think we'd give our grand hyatt tables a rest for a while... ;) they also have in Uptown Mirdiff, which of course we already visited!

My Gym Blunders

i don't know why i had this aversion to gym. i think it stemmed way back high school when it stuck to my mind that if i start gym-ing, i have to do this for life or else those muscles would just transform to fats! and since i cannot commit, then i will not start... anyways, i was thin like a stick then, so i did not care...

... not until the unsightly flabs started to appear 20 years later!!! and so now, i have to start loving the gym. to do that, i've to have a good gym-mate, and Mano just provided that. next, a good gym place, and that we easily got. and now, i just have to acquire the 'willpower', that i am slowly working on...

for one month, we've gone to the gym, and unfortunately commited the following blunders which you should avoid:

(1) hard workout = hard pig out.... haha! when we're stretched out and worn out, we find it so much more conducive for hearty meals! correction-- after a good workout, wait for 30 minutes before we face the moderately-portioned delicious temptation, and make sure we do not nullify the workout by putting in additional pounds! we were advised to have 6 small meals per day, so that the food will be burned properly and not stored as fats.

(2) treadmill running... heavy feet, rubber shoes heavily banging on the treadmill floor, seemingly telling everyone 'hey, i'm running!' correction-- run smoothly and quietly by lifting properly our feet and letting it stride with the mill. miraculously, i perspired more easily after just 15 min on level 7!

(3) long gaps in between lifting weights... oh, we keep relaxing after each set. coorection: we were told to keep on the rhythm and keep our heart rates up in order to achieve both cardio and muscular goals.

(4) jerking when using the arm curl... so that's why even after a month, i've not felt my upper arm flabs tightening! i was shown that arm should be clipped, and only the lower arms moving, with the back part feeling all the aches of weight lifting, which means that the muscles is working!

(5) going to the gym just whenever... ah, this is the part i used to be afraid of. but then, ageing is here to stay, which means metabolism is slowing down, and either i stay with an unhealthy heart and flabs, or commit to health for life! and consistently!

so to all gym-wannabes, hope you learn a thing or two from the one-month wasted gym-time that i rendered... and realize that going to the gym needs discipline and enjoyment to be successful!

Strategic Planning the TMJ Way!

ACTIVITY: STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR 2ND HALF OF 2007

THE STRATEGISTS:
T - the bull
M- the CPU
J - the creative juice

PLACE: GRAND HYATT

METHODOLOGY: SERIOUS COFFEE TALK

planning...

thinking...

discussing..

arguing...

more discussions...

more thinking...

add in creativity...

hooray! i have an idea!!!

at last!!!

cheers!!!

THIS IS HOW YOU

TARGET YOUR 2007 GOALS:

PEN BLASTS!

THIS IS HOW YOU

DEFEAT YOUR

COMPETITION: TIC-TAC-TOE!

THIS IS HOW YOU

EVALUATE YOUR TEAM:

FLAMES!

BUDGET: AED 20 each, make sure you bring the free piyaya so no need to buy cookies

COLLATERALS: pens, unsued notebooks and crazy minds!

i think i've had so much of Bob Ong's "ABNKKBSKNPL" book.

see, who says you don't learn anything from high school? ;)

Coffee Talk#3 and #4 Grand Hyatt

oh, we broke the rule of hotel-hopping!!!! as you can read on the title, it is #3 and #4! why there? oh, let me count the ways...

1) very nice lobby! huge expanse of space! this must be the biggest lobby i've ever seen!

2) very nice themening! if you do not have the real one, recreate it! from where we were comfortably seated (second level lobby), we can see the nature-themed back area where rows of great restaurants are lined up! they mimicked falls, lake and a lover's type bridge which serves as the passageway to the different dining options. the lushy greens (which are real plants by the way) makes you feel you are not in the middle of the desert!

3) very welcoming grand lobby! the front side which houses the piano bar, exhibits the grand staircase leading down to the main lobby, which is also by the way, huge in comparison to the others.

4) very relaxing mood music! the lobby reverberates the smooth piano and sax music. we've befriended also the resident musicians, so when they see us coming, they already play "moon river', as requested by Mano on our first visit!

5) very cheap valet! no problemo in parking!

6) good tasting drinks! on our second visit, it was not 'coffee talk in the truest sense of the word', as we experimented on other drinks, such as cocktail, hot mocha and frozen iced tea! we actually called it 'confused talk!' hahha! but the club sandwich is very poor! the smallest and most expensive club sandwich i have seen. and by the way, it also does not taste good!

7) very good place to take-off your mind from work! since the whole ambiance seems to take you into another dimension (wow!), you are assured of full mind relaxation... or stimulation, whichever you wish. for the later, make sure to bring with you well-equipped resource persons! and we had that for the past two sessions!

8) very good place for people watching, in case you have gone out of topics to talk about! poor guys!

9) very good reason for us to dress up a bit on a thursday night! who knows whom we may bump into when we stroll around the place?

10) spoilt for choice of restos in case we need a gastronomic challenge before a coffee talk! haha!

well... we have to hop on to other places once in a while... at least for now, we've found OUR PLACE under the mid east moon!

Coffee Talk#2 Hyatt Regency

for our coffee talk 2, we went to Hyatt Regency. nestled at the boundary of Deira and Bur Dubai, and facing the gulf sea, Hyatt stands elegantly as it did some 15-20 years ago, being one of the oldest hotels in dubai. despite the years, it has caught up well aesthetically with the newer ones... we had a good resource person that evening who even treated us for dinner! yum yum! we dined in at The Kitchen savoring ceasar salad for starter, then nasi goreng and seafood rice noodles for the main course. i loved the food! just perfect taste and quantity! i think we enjoyed it so much that we did not realize it was already past eleven!!

later, after a good two burps, we knew it was time for coffee!!! for the remaining 30 minutes, we went at the lobby side of the hotel, and threw ourselves comfortably in their soft cushion sets! our friend had to leave just before the Coffee talk so Mano and I are left on our own. i ordered almond choco drink, while she ordered macchiato, and we shared the tiramisu which is delicious! the almond choco is good for a non-coffee drinker like me...

the ambiance was great, and there was a good vertical space giving ample air to really breath and indulge in relaxing! we were strategically seated at the aisle of the main hotel hall, so people watching was action-packed! it occured to me that there was really a downpour of men on this side of the planet, as we noticed that there were only a handful of ladies walking around! while Mano and i were seriously discussing, a group arrested my attention-- three men and a baby! the baby was oh-so-cute, and so was one of the guys, who seated 3 meters across us with a very good angle for surreptitious glances! haha!

the remaining minutes were spent just talking about random topics, but this time, with more pauses and gaps of silence... we just let our eyes and brows do the talking! this is one of the rare times when Mano and I are silent... hooray!

at 12 midnight, we both smiled and sighed... another coffee talk is over...

Hotel rating:
almond chocolate and tiramisu = very good
service = fair (we waited for 10 min before someone got our order)
ambiance = very good! good music too!
experience = very good! i think we will repeat this!

Coffee Talk#1 The Debut

living abroad made me creative in terms of extra curricular activities. back home, i am content with staying at home, or at friend's houses to sing the blues away... but here, i have no family, and i do not have many friends... but, i still have work stresses to deal with. so what am i gonna do? suck my thumb? cover my head with pillows?...

we thought of going malling (nah! too expensive!), or bar hopping (nah! we're not fond of alcohol!) or how about 'let's sit and talk a while, in a one world of coffee..'? sounds familiar? yeah, that's the Nescafe commercial. but instead of having this coffee talk in just any cafe, Manoleth and I thought of doing it in more exciting places-- the hotel lobbies!!! we wrote down the 5-star hotels in Dubai, and we realized we are going into a weekly thing! and coffee in hotels are priced fairly compared to cafes. what's more? we plan on infusing topics for the evenings, depending on our 'resource' person for the night. resource here means either 'financial' or 'conversational'! haha! and even if i am not a coffee-holic, i think the idea is very tempting enough.

so for out coffee talk#1, we chose the closest to Mano's office, the Hotel Sofitel lobby. being quite a small city hotel, the lobby is not as captivating, so this is not an intimidating first time for us. we saw other groups of men discussing, while on the other table, a girl reading a book while probably waiting for someone. i thought, 'this is a great idea to whoosh my mind away from strain...' the ambiance is relaxing as we listen to piano playing from the second level...

we ordered donut, choco cake, and croissant, and decaf cappucino for both of us. we did not like the choco cake, but finished it anyways while talking about many things-- from writing a book about this, to naming resource persons, to dispensability of people, to our plans in life, to how we were betraying our gym commitment by munching all these sweets, and so on and so forth... so 3 hours, countless stories, endless laugh and $10 after, we were home-bound with a great smile!

...watching the world go by sipping coffee with a good friend, in style, is not a bad idea after all! i am now excited with coffee talk#2...

Weekend Spree

finally i had a normal and nice weekend! weekends here means friday and saturday...

thursday night was with my girl friends for a sumptuous dinner at Noodle House (the best Chinese resto for me!) in Madinat Jumeirah, the newest toast of the Dubai hospitality industry. after that, we dropped by Trilogy - a 3-levelled bar where there's separate places for house music, hiphop and r&b, and jazz music, all under one roof! i liked the r&b place the best! it's a rip-off when you go there on a weekend as they charge between $20-30$ just for entry because they have invited DJ's who do (boring! for me at least) music mixes! we stayed for a copuple of minutes, just had a few drinks, and off we went back home... as one friend has to be out and about by 7 am as she needs to go to abu dhabi, and I need to go to the church the next day.

friday morning. went to church, and was fed with meaty preaching from Pastor Dan on the topic "Nothing is Impossible with God". the church is venturing into various local ministries, and the people need to be fully armed with everything needed for the battle.

afternoon, went back to the villa. with power brush, power hose, car soap and vacuum cleaner in tow, i mustered all my energy for an equivalent, but more productive, of a 30-min gym workout! i was so happy seeing my car shiny and smells clean! after that, a lunch prepared by my villa-mates were already waiting in the dining... wow, can life be more wonderful? haha!

late afternoon, i cleaned our dining and living room, and a colleague asked "is something wrong with you today?" haha! no, actually something was right! after that, went to my room, cleaned everything, washed my clothes, cleaned my ref... then i prepared my clothes-combination for the next 6 day. i am starting to do a weekly color motiff of my clothes so that it makes machine-washing more economical...

later still, after all the hard labor, rested on a hammock tied to a tree in our garden, while i talk to my mom and dad (it's Friday!) over the phone which lasted for almost an hour! wow, it must be the cool winter breeze and the lazy hammock ambiance..

evening, after being fed by Mano withj her sumptuous pork steak, and after cleaning up myself, i did some aromatherapy sessions... lit candles, dimmed lights, dipped my tired feet on the foot spa, and plugged on my fave Friends DVDs for re-runs... truly relaxing! later still, Mano joined me in watching The Devil Wears Prada which is a great movie we were able to relate to, while she herself does the foot spa this time...

at 12mn, i've called it a day... turned off the lights, played the Body and Soul music... and there i drifted off to dreamland....

this is my idea of a balanced, fun and mission- accomplished weekend... which i just get once-in-a-blue moon...