Surbaboy Caramoan

Out-eat. Out-sleep. Out-eat again.

Gota beach was just gorgeous! And we got to play with the discarded (and tacky!) Survivor Serbia? Sweden? Israel? props.

Little Earthquakes…

…that aren’t so little in some parts of the world. We’re still so blessed. Ilocos was hit yesterday with a 6.8. My parents are fine but I worry. Their house is on a hilly terrain, far from the coastline, so the view’s great and their safe from tsunamis but what of earthquake induced landslide? During the 7.7 back in ’92 there had been a landslide and part of the house was buried. 

Well, I guess we should all keep praying for the safety of everyone we love.

Awhile ago at work we felt our building shake and we half-ran down 11 flights of stairs (but not before updating our facebooks and twitters!) Gosh, when are things gonna calm down? Tonight I’m going to sleep fully clothed—in case I need to run outside in the middle of the night. Be safe everyone.  

binge, bikini

 So everyone's on a diet (including us) what with bikini season and all. Honestly, I've been hungry for a while now. Ysa's been hungry longer. I think I started cutting back on rice too late though. Because I'm just cranky and hungry but I didn't really lose any weight. So days before our Caramoan trip --- and because life is too short to not eat good food --- Ysa and I broke our fast like whoa! :)

Waiting for "On The Road"

For years I've been hoping for a Hollywood adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Yearssss, I tell you! Now I know why it took this long: They were waiting for Garrett Hedlund. *swoons*

I've seen all his movies (there aren't a lot) and he is good! It also doesn't hurt that he's so gorgeous!  I'm  sure he'd make a damn good Dean Moriarty. But I will never forgive Kristen Stewart if she ends up ruining the movie with her Bella Swan stammering.

Some stills:

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

- On The Road, Jack Kerouac

  

How I missed you!

My wonderful Toni got back last Saturday after being away for one whole week. It was agonizing. I hate it when he has to go away for work. Like a cloying Dusty Springfield song, when he’s not around I just don’t know what to do with myself, being so used to doing everything with you, planning everything for two and all.

       

But yay, wonderful Toni is back and so we elected to celebrate his safe return at Crystal Jade. It was packed! I tried to reserve us a table earlier that day but they don’t accept reservations for a party of two.

Drunken Chicken Marinated with Chinese Wine & Wolfberry

Noodles in Peanut Sauce

Xiao Long Bao 

Yang Chow

Excuse the poor food shots. The 50mm lens doesn’t really give you much versatility, and this isn’t really a food/photography blog.

I got lucky. He has this melancholic and brooding face and he can look like he was born sad and that he has never known happiness. Oh, but when he smiles he’s the very picture of boyish mischief.

He’s one of the good ones, really, and the best I’ve ever met.  We celebrated our 3^rd anniversary last month, which explains why I haven’t been blogging all that much. Feb is a very, very busy month, what with our anniv and Valentine’s. Yep, we go all out on our special days, as well days made special by our capitalist, consumer culture. Love it!

Seriously, if you’re boyfriend doesn’t make a big deal of Valentine’s, or your anniversary, or the anniversary of the day you first met or of your first date, first kiss, etc…I’d be worried.

I’m not a complete sucker, though. I don’t require flowers and chocolates on V-day. I don’t even like flowers or chocolates. But I got them anyway… Sigh    

January books

I've been really good at keeping my promise of four books a month...So far :) 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

It was a page turner, that much I attest to. I finished the 600-odd paged book in record time! I began reading because I got bored waiting for my dinner and I had no intention of finishing it. But finish it I did – in one evening with several bathroom breaks in between. I never even got to eat.  

I’ve had the book for awhile but I stayed away because of all the hype around it. But with a movie coming out – a movie I will most certainly watch if only for Rooney Mara – I thought it was high time I gave it a read.

It took quite a while for the story to reel me in. Lisbeth Salander, the titular hacker with Asperger’s syndrome, didn’t immediately make an appearance. After several chapters, I got restless and read the ending. It’s a bad habit (I know!) but I have to know if there’s something I can look forward to.

The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is a thriller set in Sweden. That bit is hard to forget because they drank a lot of aquavit and referenced Ikea often. I should like to shop in Ikea myself but even thinking about aquavit makes me shudder. It tastes like nail polish remover. 

No one had any crayfish though. I was almost disappointed.

Digression: Here are photos of Toni during the Swedish Crayfish party ’08 and at home later that evening. We had a couple of shots of aquavit and went a little loopy.

Also starring is (can I say ‘starring’ if I’m giving a book synopsis?)Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged, disgraced financial journalist who is irresistible to women. (But) He (only) beds 3 during the course of the novel. After over 600 pages, I still don’t get why. Maybe the two other books in the series would condescend to explain. I hear Daniel Craig is playing him in the movie, which makes it even more mystifying. I’m not really a huge Daniel Craig fan.

After the murder-disappearance mystery plot surrounding the high-profile Vanger family played out, the story then focused on Blomkvist’s quest to take down one of Sweden’s wealthiest and most powerful businessman guilty of financial crimes, among others. He never made an appearance in the book, by the way, which made it a bit difficult for me to care about this particular subplot, but it was interesting in its own way. Blomkvist is a part owner of a magazine (Millennium) that is about to go under because of the scandal he caused and the enemies he made. I have a soft spot for books that deal with publishing, even tangentially. (The Devil Wears Prada, Confessions of a Shopoholic. I’ll Take Manhattan, Lipstick Jungle etc…I read them and loved them all!)

And during all this Lisbeth was doing some major sleuthing… She’s a freelance private investigator after all.

The original Swedish title of the book translated to English is Men Who Hate Women, which should give you an idea of the central theme of the book. Some parts were horrific to read. I was sure it was going to give me nightmares.

I'm not "in love" with this book but I like in enough to be currently reading the sequel. I'm about a hundred pages in. I've read the ending, too. I can't help it. 

For your viewing pleasure, here is Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander:

Diving Off the Deep End

I saw Elga's post and I got inggit. :(  So I decided to repost my own Bohol travelogue published in Expat Travel and Lifestyle Magazine. I stayed in Amorita Resort and it was gorgeous! I had a villa all to myself and it came with its own (teeny) infinity pool overlooking the sea. Good times. le sigh. Great times.

Diving Off the Deep End

A plunge into Bohol's pristine waters brings a reluctant, first-time diver face-to-face with the surly creatures of the deep, in a mesmerizing landscape unrivaled by anything that can be seen on land.

From a certain altitude, Bohol's famed Chocolate Hills, once a contender for a spot in The New Seven Wonders of the World, look like little green swells bespeckled with several shades of brown. They are exactly what their name implies – hills that take on a chocolate hue during the dry months. All 1,268 mounds of limestone are perfectly shaped and clustered together, a natural geological formation that occurs nowhere else on God's green earth.

I had to content myself with an aerial view of this Western Visayan province's most recognizable landmark because the focal point of the trip is not any land-based terrain.

Fish Out of Water

Oval-shaped Bohol and its 72 smaller islands are surrounded by beautiful coral reefs abundant with marine life,making it a popular choice for professional and neophyte divers – of which I was neither, nor did I ever desire to be. Regarding the beauty of the world beneath the sea, Jacques Yves-Cousteau, the father of scuba diving, uttered the famous line il faut aller voir or “we must go see for ourselves.” Msr. Cousteau, I really would have rather not.