Bloggers Christmas Party

A few pictures from our Christmas party yesterday!!


[Me, Ria and Gwing]


[Jude(?), Angel, Jim, Chattee]


[Angel, Jim, Chattee]


[Me and Gwing]


[Angel and Dominique (who was also celebrating his birthday)]


[What are Chattee and Brendel doing?]


[Gwingston FTW]


[Andrew, Gwing, Ria, Winston]

The party was held at the World Palace, which is practically on the same street as my house, Gwing's, Blogie's and Ria's hahaha. Talk about convenient. The food was great particularly the calamares (squid rings) and buttered chicken. I could have stayed a bit longer had my tummy behaved appropriately. But I had fun! Till next time!

Merry Christmas and Then Some

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you!

This year's Christmas has been the same for me for the last ten or so years. Boring, lame, lethargic. The food, although deliciously cooked up by my talented mom and aunts, fail to liven up the party. And I'm on a diet. The most exciting part of our celebration has to be the kris kringle part. A few weeks before Christmas my cousins and I pick our manitos/manitas using an online application I made up 3 years ago. It is simple: you login, click a button, and the system picks out someone whom you should buy a gift for. There's also a wishlist where you can put in what gifts you want from your secret santa. Since most of us are already in our twenties and thirties (ehem), working or out of town, we barely have any time to do this manually, that is, roll up our names in pieces of paper and pick one out from a jar. Some of my cousins wonder if I'm leading them to think that they are actually picking a name randomly but in reality they have already been assigned their manitos right from the beginning. They can think whatever they want. What's important is the app does its job and it does its job well!

* * * * *

Leading up to the holidays I have been hitting the gym almost everyday. I am absolutely addicted to this group exercise called 'spinning'. You have an instructor in front of you, yelling at you and telling you what to do. There's very loud thumping music and ten other people on stationary bikes. Fun! One of the instructors named Jet tells us that an hour's session burns 500-700 calories. Whoa. That is a lot! That's why I've been so engrossed in it because I wanna lose my belly so bad. Like desperately bad. I know I'm not exactly the type that needs to lose weight, but despite my thin frame, my belly is disproportionately big. I get that from my dad. But anyway I am seeing some success with my regimen. I've lost about 2 inches around my waist and around 6 pounds. My belly still needs some work. So far I only have a "two-pack" instead of a six-pack. Haha. Gotta do more of those ab exercises I guess.

* * * * *

Tonight we're having a Bloggers Christmas Party here in Davao City. It was organized by my friend Blogie. We're supposed to buy a gift worth P150 for another round of kris kringle. I bought a Melody Mouse worth P180. Problem is, I don't know who I'm giving it to. :] I hope to have a good time tonight.

Hottest Searches - December 20, 2008

Google:

1. rca dome implosion
2. a very brady christmas
3. paul rhoads
4. miss uso
5. ethan bortnick
6. paul rhodes
7. picower foundation
8. world gsm chip
9. gooey duck
10. miss uso mayra veronica

Yahoo:

1. sock and awe game
2. evan rachel wood
3. cheryl burke
4. rachel weisz
5. chace crawford
6. lindsay lohan
7. nfl
8. lisa rinna
9. hi-5
10. walmart

Big differences in search trends between Google and Yahoo. Google tends to be more relevant to current events, while Yahoo's users are more after pop culture than anything else.

Depapepe

I was listening to a nice instrumental song at Kangaroo Cafe that sounded Christmas-y and eerily Korean, but I wasn't sure what it was. I asked a barista if he knew the title. He didn't know. He said it was an Mp3 file playing off of a USB stick, and generously offered to give me a copy. I scanned through about 200 songs in the drive. Ugh, it was not until the last 20 songs that I found it. It's a song called "Spur" by "Depapepe", a guitar duo composed of Takuya Miura and Yoshinari Takuoka. Honestly I was a bit thrown off by their name. "Pepe" stands for a female sexual organ in Filipino. Lol, now I see why they're not that popular here. But seriously I love the style and composition of their songs. To think they are limited to only two guitars, which is not a lot. Although some tracks have violins and pianos occasionally mixed in, the pair's superb guitar skills stand out in every track.

Depapepe's music is the type that you listen to when you wanna take it easy or simply "chill". You can say it's kinda what you hear in Korean soap operas (they're Japanese). Out of all their albums, my favorite songs, besides "Spur", are "Days", "Summer Parade", "Hoshi no Kazu Dake Negai Todoku" and "This Way". If you want to experience a different genre of music, Depapepe's worth a try.

Here they are playing Spur: