it finally arrived, after weeks of christmas parties and exchange gifts and last minute [ and very last minute ] christmas shopping. it came despite all the crises and lack of christmas spirit [ think "the grinch" ]. our celebration was a simple one - i am, anyway, getting older every year [ i hope ], and the need for my parents to amuse me and follow my every whim come christmas eve has reached its end years ago. some christmas traditions remained unchanged though [ like buying last minute gifts for my mom, no matter how much she tells us every year not to buy her a christmas gift; and eating arroz caldo and ham every noche buena ].
so yesterday afternoon, we went to robinson's with papa, [ mama was left at home ], neil and papa's cellfone. the whole time, i couldn't talk to my dad at all, he was too busy sending everyone in his phone book a christmas greeting. he has been transformed into a text junkie. and they say we are the ones who have become too attached to cellphone and other technological advances. i was joking that if we need to talk to him, we would have to send him a text message even if he's sitting right beside us since his only communication with the outside world is his phone. it's scary. anyway, we later went to shangri-la and bought mama a bottle of perfume [ actually i chose the perfume - i had to call home and ask what brand my mom uses - and i just asked papa for money while he was busily texting away ].
neil stayed for a short while at home. we exchanged gifts. he gave me a paperback copy of "american gods" by neil gaiman, bamboo's first album [ yahoo! ] and a set of cray pas. at 12 am, we had our noche buena with mama, papa, bubbles.. my sister, bombee, patti and bianca arrived at almost 2 am and opened their gifts. we opened the other gifts on christmas morning.
the rest of the day, i was just finishing off [ almost ] all the leftover ham and the chocolates given as gifts by my parents' friends. haaa.. i wanted to go shopping for new clothes, but with the rate i'm going, i think i'm going to end up disappointed having to buy myself a size 30 pair of jeans.
well, nonetheless, merry christmas everyone!!! 1 more week to go before the new year.
last wednesday, we had another mongolian buffet fest at pat's house.
[ before that, we watched a dvd of "good luck tomorrow" at oggs' house with nico. it was supposed to be a movie marathon, but thanks to the traffic, we reached oggs' place at around 4 pm, and we only had time for one movie if we wanted to be at pat's house at dinner time. ]
the christmas party turned out to be a ab psych reunion, since most of the guests who actually came were from block C/CC, batch 2003.
highlights of the night: seeing everyone after after a looong time; penny's carrot cake [ naks! alam ko kasing binabasa ni penny ito. hehe ]; new "boylets" [ hwehe ]; mga kalokohan; bagong chismis; pat's niece who is also named sophia; videoke!; of course, mongolian buffet.
sayang lang wala si jenny at jonel. kulang din ng "left-right" pics & vinci's corny jokes. hehe.
wex, val, penny and me
harkada pics! [ minus jenny and jonel ]
honestly, i look forward to seeing my college friends more than any other group of friends i've had in my 22 years of existence. we relate with each other in so many ways, we don't backstab each other, we can tell anything to each other directly, we support each other in everything we do, and we're all simple and jolog and down to earth. i'm proud of the fact that there has been no really major fights between us yet [ god forbid ] and that we still have the same strong bond as we had years ago. wala lang. 'makes me miss college even more. [ hehe senti nanaman ba? ]
the boys' mugshot. hehe joke
sophia, pat's niece :D
wala lang, christmas decor. hehe
for more pics, click here. if you don't have an imagestation account, use my username: lianner00 and password: lianner0. but i think i posted almost everything anyway
rizza's debut
[ another reminder that i'm so damn old hehe ]
the other night, my parents and i attended rizza [ a distant relative ]'s debut. i'm not so sure she remembers me though, but i see her on rare occasions and we have a few group pictures together while growing up, also with her older brother ronjo. these are the times when i miss my older sister the most [ manang leiya ] - i always feel uneasy when my parents tag me along to go to family events, especially when i'm not so close to the other relatives. most of the people there are 2nd-3rd degree cousins/uncles/aunts and i don't know the names of a handful of them, although i recognize their faces. and i feel like i'm in such an awkard age. i'm too old to play with other kids and too young to talk about marriage plans/work. it was a good thing i had a camera with me, i had something to keep me busy the whole time. i really wanted to talk to my other relatives, but aside from the fact that i don't know most of their names, i don't really know what to talk about. all they ever got from me that night was "oh yes, i'm a law student, in my sophomore year, and on my way to eternal doom".
anyway, the whole event was great. it was, as i mentioned in my previous entry, a hawaiian themed debut, so everyone was in a floral get up. i was wearing this dress i bought from surplus shop for 200 bucks around 3 years ago, which i haven't worn yet. the weather was great - not too december cold [ no snowfall. hehe ] and not too warm either. it was nice having a summer-y event in the middle of a christmas vacation. i ate a lot again, as always; i had a plateful of mongolian buffet, which didn't do much for my dress. hehe. the program was short and sweet with the debutante's baby pics flashed all over the screen and the touching messages from friends and family. you know how debuts always make you go "awww.." [ well, all except mine hehe ]
with everyone giving us christmas goodies in the form of sweets, the gym closed until the 4th of january and not enough stress to make me lose my appetite, i have no choice but to devour everything in sight and bum around the house the whole day, surfing from one channel to another. law school worries are buried somewhere underneath the mental christmas lists and the schedule of [ rare ] get togethers with friends/family that only occur during the holidays. [ although i dreamed the other day that i was making a reviewer for civpro. well i intend on doing that in the days to come, i just need a few more days to rest.
last saturday, i ate at gayuma with the harkadah [ minus jenny and penny ]. pat's home! one good thing about having a friend based in a far away place is that whenever he/she comes home and he/she arranges a lunch/dinner, everyone comes. at least, everyone tries to come. under ordinary circumstances, no one has the initiative to go out kasi wala lang. there always has to be a compelling reason. anyway, i was glad to see everyone else and to hear about each one's update on her life. we watched tanghalang ateneo's lam-ang starring jonel as lam-ang himself. [ which i watched for the third time already. at least i watched it for free on all occasions. and it still cracked me up everytime ]. we got the front row seats so we could distract jonel as he made the [ supposedly ] sexy dances. hehe!
there's jonel singing and dancing in the middle
and this is jonel before he took off the make up. hehe
the harkadah [ minus 2 ] taken by cesar.
we ate at world topps afterwards with wex, jonel and cesar, then wex and i ran to the podium to watch maksim in concert. we actually thought it was going to end at 10 pm, which was a pretty good deal, considering it was for free [ well, you can sit up front if you buy a cd, which weki and i did ], but it turned out the concert lasted for less than 30 minutes. we liked the concert anyway; the pieces were powerfully played. the recorded orchestra/techno music also helped a lot. the whole cd is reminiscent of robert miles, actually. afterwards, we ate at nypd [ pizza ] at podium with nico and his friend [ they also watched the concert ].
christmas blues
lately, i've been getting surges of random memories of christmas past. and they usually get triggered by the most unlikely stimuli. like one time, slipknot's song, "wait and bleed" was played on the radio [ which became popular around december of 1999 ], and i suddenly remembered giving out gifts for my freshman blockmates 5 [ wow was it that long? ] christmases ago. another time, i was thinking about what to get my parents for christmas, and i suddenly thought of those times my family, especially my sister who's now in the states, and i would go to glorietta/some mall in makati on the 24th and buy gifts for each other at the last minute. and i realized how much i miss those times when we were still complete as a family here in the philippines. given the proximity, we had reunions every week. of course back then i didn't appreciate those times as much as i do now, and i probably took them for granted, thinking that they would go on and one for years. but, things change and that's that.
i'm almost done with my christmas shopping, and i swear, trying to buy all the gifts on my list was NOT easy. yesterday, after i had lunch with my parents somewhere in manila, i headed to glorietta to buy gifts, although i'm not very familiar with the place [ i'm more of a shangri-la, galleria and sm fairview person ]. bayo has a new line of clothing/accessories for children, so i went there to buy gifts for bianca. after that, i tried to look for a bookstore to find patti scrapbooking materials [ which she wrote on her wishlist ], but i kept on finding myself on the same area [ where the "kids of bayo" store was located ]. it was twilight zone. i was afraid that i might end up dead due to exhaustion, sprawled all over the floor while oblivious last minute shoppers irritatingly try their best not to step on me. after circling the same areas several times, i suddenly saw a familiar store, "in style", the only distributor of old navy/gap products in the country [ excluding the export overruns at greenhills and surplus shop of course ], so i just proceeded there and bought myself a shirt. i was finally able to get to a powerbooks store where i got patti her gift. good thing it was right next to the exit.
greenhills wasn't any better. i went there earlier today with my mom. there were a lot of good stuff, but it was so crowded and inconvenient. everyone was trying to push everyone else, and stopping to smell the flowers is a crime, unless you want people to cuss at you or worse, forcefully push you aside. i was able to buy two pairs of nice white shoes for 400 bucks each. i had to try on different sizes and decide which one to buy in less than 5 minutes because i was blocking the way. mama was able to buy something also, but we had to leave early because she didn't feel so good anymore.
anyway, so far, that's what's happening in my life. in less than an hour, i have to dress up since we're going to attend a relative's hawaiian themed debut and i still have to find something to wear.
and that would be olops the other reindeer by parokya ni edgar. hehehe.
ang pilipinas daw ang may pinakamatagal na pasko.. september pa lang, pasko na. tapos na ang new year, pero pasko pa rin. but i think a lot of people would agree when i say that the "christmas spirit" isn't too manifest this year. i think the recent typhoons [ and i heard another one is coming up ] plus the worsening economy [ and maybe even fpj's death ] are enough to drown everyone's spirit. everyone i know is thriftier this year - i think divisoria has become the new christmas shopping haven [ hindi na greenhills ]. plus, less households have decorations/christmas lights. i'm not saying that christmas is all about giving and receiving gifts and embellishing the household with parols and lights, but it plays a part in the whole christmas tradition anyhow. and the fact that people are cutting down on such is an indication that something's definitely wrong.
nevertheless, we still pushed through with our christmas traditions [ exchange gifts, christmas parties ]. we had lunch today at tempura with my law school barkada where we traded gifts, most of which were food [ not that i'm complaining. hehe ] we also watched bridget jones afterwards. and yesterday, we had the winlaw org christmas party in school.
and so begins my 3-week food binge.
things to be happy about:
oh wait, i still have labor tom. :P
[*anyone up for paskong pasiklab? i'm serious. hehehe. ]
and the list goes on.. i'll add more within this week. heehee.
Labels: christmas
i don't intend to wallow in self-pity right now, it's just that i feel so pathetic about myself, especially after the damn property removals which i don't want to talk extensively about [ let's just say it will take a miracle for me to pass the exam since i'm certain that i got a score of zero in 1/5 of the test due to carelessness ]. as an effect of which, i will need to drop out from a major subject this sem, be delayed by a year in law school and just be good as dead. before that, i've been feeling so down again about my mediocre existence and with the fact that nothing magnificent is happening in my life, i'm not doing anything great at all, and i don't know what i'm doing in this world right now [ or in law school for that matter ]. it's like i just sprouted out from the earth to serve as an irritation to other life forms. i don't know.
i know it's december and everyone's supposed to show a little bit of christmas spirit, but really, i don't feel even a hint of it. maybe growing up just takes away all the good things we used to take pleasure and find comfort in when we were young - like saturdays, love, christmas.. as we grow up and become more disillusioned [ and cynical ], we find out that these things are nothing more than myths our ancestors made up to make us feel better and more hopeful about life.
[whee. let's go to paskong pasiklab and be happy]
Labels: rant
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