When We Were Young(er)

my girlies: Tonet, Joy, me, Ren (photo taken by Pam)

Time is tricky. Minutes, hours, and days pass. And before you know it, years had passed. And you wake up wondering where all that time went. It's weird to go through today feeling like I'm a bag full of happy memories. Maybe it's the way the year is almost ending and I'm remembering all good-things-past. 

This is a picture (one of the many of us) of my really good friends taken on a send-off party for one of us leaving for a new life in the US. Did we look any different from then till now? Despite everything, I couldn't argue that life had definitely been kind.

A Feast Of Strangers

I was cleaning up my files to free up some space on my hard drive and found some pictures I took of people I met along the way.

Such friendly strangers. 

I love how the world is full of them. And how the power of a smile make people into friends.

I met Rebeca in Kalinga-Apayao. She was so very gracious and so beautiful. The tribes in the Cordilleras are wary of strangers but she let me take a picture of her to remember her by. The necklace she is wearing in this photo belonged to her ancestors. Each bead would make it priceless beyond imagination.

This little girl I met in Vigan in a burnay-making factory. She took my hand and showed me around her family's estate where up till now the centuries-old tradition of burnay is kept alive. 

I met Karolina on jeep stop in Sagada going to Bontoc. She  and I had the same route and we ganged up till Banaue. While there, she found out her Chinese VISA got cancelled and she had to spend an extra day in Manila. So we ended up trekking back to the city and this is a picture of her on her send-off in Malate. 

During the Holy Week, residents of the older part of Makati celebrate the Holy Week by parading different statues of saints and Jesus. These men who carried this statue of Jesus crowned with thorns for at least 2 miles barefoot gamely posed for me for a respite. 

Girl from Krispy Kreme

Oh how perceptive. I asked this tour guide in Ha Long to pose next to the sign. Funny thing was, I don't think he got my joke. 

Maria and Andy were some random people I met up with on a Valentine night in Siem Reap. Along with other Couchsurfers, I still kept in touch with them, each of us promising a couch and a friend if anyone visits one another's countries.

Today I watched a beautiful sunset. And with a candy bar on my left hand, everything in the world was made right again.

Creativity Can Solve Anything

Got my complimentary tickets and ready to go!

Adentro

The old crumbling city outside is looking in while I'm inside looking out.

Mele Kalikimaka!

September the sodding 8th marks the day I heard my first Christmas song for the year.

This year, I'm spared a layer of cheese and got The Beach Boys to herald my holidays. Yey!

(... and yes, I'm taking this as a good sign)

Advance Happy Meli Kalikimaka everyone!

From songlyrics.com

Listent to the Song here: Meli Kalikimaka by The Beach Boys

I Want A Hearth

In these rainy, cold Ber months, there's no better place to be than by a crackling fireplace.

..Then again, I reminded myself that I have no hearth nor anything remotely resembling such things. Lamentable that the closest thing I do have is an electric stove..

Still it would be nice to imagine that if ever I do have a hearth, I'd be doing the following things:

a. Invite some musicians over and interview them and watch the flames' shadows dance on their faces.
b. Spread a handmade doily-blanket across my legs while reading the rise and fall of empires.
c. Invent stories and tell them to my dog ala John Hurt as The Storyteller.
d. Sit behind an old-fashioned typewriter and randomly type things. It doesn't have to be anything really, just the sound of the typewriter clack-clack-clacking against paper is enough.
e. DIY postcards and write random notes to friends scattered across the world.