Two weeks ago in Mt. Cristobal...

I took pictures of the local scenery, which was mostly ferns and moss--and found it fascinating! The mountain was a lush tropical forest, and it felt great to be surrounded with greenery almost every step of the way.

I also met cool new people, fellow lovers of the great outdoors. The total attendance was around 60. Some of them became new friends!

I learned that I need to go back jogging! The climb wasn't supposed to be very tiring (based on what I remembered when I last climb Cristobal two years ago), but it just sapped me of my strength. It was exhausting.

Still, I had tons of fun! I also learned that tomatoes can a good tinola make. Surprising but true.

More pictures here.

remembering what I did last Monday

A few minutes ago, as I was recording my tasks for the week in our office "work monitoring system", I noticed that I signed out relatively early (around 6:30) last Monday. However, I can't, for the life of me, remember why. Did I go jogging after work? No, I did that on Tuesday. Did I have a date? I would have loved that, but no again; nobody to date. Oh, now I remember! I went to a pre-climb meeting, to plan for the climb I'm joining this weekend. Now, why did I forget that, when I drove all the way to Makati just to get there? I guess my brain's not yet fully functioning this early in the morning. Or it must be this headache I'm experiencing right now, messing with my memory!

Mt. Batulao

After many weeks of not blogging, finally something made me write again. And it was my most recent climbing trip that made me do it. You see, after many "inactive" months, I was once more able to conquer a mountain, this one called Batulao, in nearby Batangas province.

I went with a different group this time. And so for the first time in a long time, I was a "guest" again, with former labmate Leo and his gracious officemates as hosts.

The trail leading to the camp was easy enough, but except for a tree or two, most of it was exposed under the burning sun. And having neglected to put on sunblock, I got an unexpected tan. I actually got much darker and it's safe to say I--most unfortunately--got fried during that weekend.

Climbing from the camp to the summit was the hard part. The way that lead from the camp going up to the summit contained the steepest parts of the trail. A lot of times, the only way to proceed was to use all four limbs and kiss the wall. Some parts, because of the dry loose earth, had become slippery and it was hard to look for footholds.

I didn't expect it to be the tricky and challenging ascent that it was, but I gamely took all the experience in. I knew it was part of the adventure, even if your very life depended only on the grip of *the tip* of your shoes as you step from one tiny foothold to another. Besides, I thought, the descent was probably more scary, because at parts the soil had become so loose the trail would surely be dreadfully slippery going down. (Thankfully, it wasn't! Though I had to slide down on my butt from time to time, but with the big help of my trekking pole, going down turned out to be manageable enough.)

Finally, we reached the top alive and well after almost an hour climbing from our camp. The breathtaking view at the summit was well worth all the difficulties. We reached the peak just as the sun was about to set, and no time was wasted as we tried to capture the moment on our digicams. We had to go down before it gets dark, though, so after some jump shots, we headed back to camp.

Nighttime at the camp was dinner and socials. And for the first time in my entire camping history, I cooked a meal. I prepared penne with sardines in red sauce. It was a success! And the others seemed to agree. (You gotta love the the effects of having tired bones and muscles and high altitude!)

We went down the next day. But what torture the homeward hike was! The sun seemed hotter, and the trail had more upward slopes than downward ones. My skin was a roasted brown after that trip. Well, I had lots of fun though. I enjoyed the climb a lot, and a lot of that had to do with the right mix of thrills, hardships, and relaxation that Mt. Batulao provided; and the company of a fun bunch of friendly adventure-seekers.

"Pride" proud

"And I... was born... to love you,
With every single beat... of my heart..."
--Queen (I Was Born to Love You)

This song by Queen is still ringing in my ears as I've just only recently finished watching the Japanese drama Pride. And I must say what an enjoyable series that was! I loved the chemistry between the leads, the kakkoiiii KimuTaku and the pretty Takeuchi Yuko. The story was great, and the storylines about the other characters were engaging too. And the Queen themes (We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, Too Much Love Will Kill You) weren't bad additions either, as the soaring tunes mixed really well with all the well-acted drama.

Haven't really watched a lot of jdoramas (just three so far including this one), but after learning terrific Japanese-made shows like this exist, I think I'm going to get hooked with jdorama now. And if I don't find other jdoramas to watch, I wouldn't mind watching Pride again.

smile for the camera

Photos courtesy of Peejay and Pat. These were from last December, when I was still in Tokyo. My trip has been cut short so I've been back here since Christmas.

Imperial Jump

My first post from Japan. This one was taken outside the Imperial Palace.

Friday lunch

Friday's lunch was at Cas in UP with my officemates. Mine was the spanish omelet on the left. The beef and veggies was Tid's. Loved my meal but Tid didn't looked thrilled about hers.

maybe next time

Because of the upcoming long weekends, the office higher-ups have decided no one can go on leave next week unless we give them compelling reason why we deserve to be gone from work for five straight days. Since I won't be able to justify four days of mountain climbing, I've decided to skip Mt. Halcon.

But I'm not so disappointed as a bit relieved. With it's own rain-soaked weather and abundance of miniature bloodsuckers called limatiks, Halcon is one bad ass mountain. It posed to me such an intimidating challenge that, truthfully, I'm not so regretful to have missed the chance to conquer it.

It remains though as the mountain to beat. But the time to do that is not now. In the summer, maybe.

Videoke

Friday night, after a really good tuna, salmon, tofu and salad dinner at Soul Food and my first ever DOTA session (tons of fun!), I went to videoke with Che, Ades, and Jorel. It was around 12:30 am. When we decided to call it quits almost four hours later, Jorel had already dozed off and I had run out of voice that I was actually whispering already through the last couple of songs. But, I was still singing! Or trying to. Heheh. What can I say, I love videoke.

Doubt

I know I've signed up for the climb and I'm fully aware that this one's definitely not going to be a walk in the park. But with preparation and good weather, I know i can do it.

However, if the weather gets bad, I'm out.

Goal

Now I have more reason to jog and climb stairs. It's because i've signed up for a climb which will happen at the end of this month. I'm going mountain climbing! This time it's not just to any mountain though, but the treacherous Mt. Halcon, 3rd highest in the country and they say the most difficult. Undoubtedly it's going to be challenging as hell so I need to be fully prepared. And right now, I need to go jogging. So hopefully the rain outside lets up soon so i can head to the acad oval and jog already.

got milk

Today I learned that skim milk is equivalent to fat free milk, which is calcium-rich milk with less than 0.5 g of fat per 8 oz serving.

And it's very useful news because last week I decided to incorporate milk into my diet, but found myself a bit lost at the grocery store when choosing what milk to buy. There were whole milk, soya, reduced fat, lite, 98% free, fat free, skim. I wanted the not fattening and least-damaging-to-the-wallet kind. (The latter rule was a bit more challenging because the price tags were missing.) Finally I settled for Cowhead fat free. (Earlier today I learned that the fat free kind was a good choice but the Cowhead brand was too pricey.) I didn't touch the skim milk labeled varieties because I didn't yet understand what they really were. But now I know -- skim milk is good. And that's great news because it has opened up more options, and cheaper ones too.

Another healthy option: reduced fat soya milk with no sugar added. Sounds expensive, though.

fixed

So my blog template going bonkers was Blogger's fault after all. Nearly went haywire trying to find any errors in my template only to discover that nothing's wrong with it! Good thing Blogger has already provided a way to handle this issue. Yey! I'm back to normal.

And sorry if i haven't been blogging. Aside from being a first time bridesmaid and trying to lose some weight for the wedding, not much has happened in this past month.

I'm feeling like posting more often now, though, now that my template's fixed already, even if *still* not much is happening.

eyes almost shut

Last night, I drove home squinting. I was so tired, it was all I could do to keep my eyes from closing. I also tried shaking my head, and pumping up the radio, which worked to keep me awake. But because my eyes had become so tired, it had become difficult to stare at the road and bear all the road lights, which by then had seemed glaring and just too bright and painful to look at.

I slept without changing and woke up at 1 pm.

chance

This morning I had an upset stomach. A real one! Recently, faking one so I could skip work had *crossed my mind*. Well, what do you know.

But I really needed to skip work. You see, my driver's license is already two weeks past its expiration. And the penalty fee is not going to get any friendlier the more I put off renewing it. However, I was also wishing I could renew it without having to waste a vacation leave, which I'm saving for a real vacation.

Well, this morning I became sick for real. Fortunately, even though it seemed at first that I would be stuck at home, it was a good thing the upset stomach was still bearable enough to let me get out of the house and drive and have the renewal, the majority of which just consisted anyways of hours of sitting around waiting for my name to be called. It was still uncomfortable though - definitely too uncomfortable to have to be working with at the office.

So I called in sick (for half a day) and made good use of my time. :D

back to jogging

Happy that I get to jog again last night. After more than a month's break from doing any form of exercise, I'm trying to jog again. Yesterday night, when the day-long heavy downpour finally ended, I took my chance and headed to the acad oval. It was a bit dishearting to find the jogging track empty save for some guards and one or two joggers, but the transformed weather, which had become quite welcoming, was irresistable. The slight wind was providing cool, refreshing air that was just energizing. And having just recently obtained a new watch bought specifically for jogging purposes, and also having two knee guards now to support each knee, I knew I it was a great time to jog.

So I said a prayer for safekeeping (the road was well-lighted and the guards were conspicious enough, but you never know...), and jog I did , and enjoyed it too. The weather remained friendly, I got to cover two rounds without my knees feeling any pain, and I got to exercise. Woot!

numb

After more than a month of not playing the drums at church, I got to play again this morning.

But since I haven't been practicing much lately, my right hand got tired sooner than it should. Meaning, the songs weren't over yet but my hand was already giving up. There came a point where I was barely holding the stick anymore, but with half-curled fingers too tired to wrap themselves more tightly around the stick, I was just supporting the stick to prevent it from flying off of my already numb hand.

Gratefully, no stick came hurtling off of the drumset (which had happened before, with no spare sticks, in my drumming days of many many months past). And maybe the tempo slowed down a tiny bit because of my getting tired. But, at least, there weren't any show-stopping blunders. (I can't exactly remember when or how bad, but somewhere in my drumming days past, there was at least one of those too.)

Well, this should remind me to practice more often...

E.E.E and KTV

Yesterday night turned out to be an eventful evening after all. I had dinner with my college batchmates at Marina, a seafood resto along Timog Ave which served wonderful baked oysters. Afterwards, we were off to IO KTV for hours of singing-our-hearts out fun! We had lots of munchies too. I loved the big fries and the sisig. And Marvin paid for at least half of the bill. Another fun night!

rain rain go away

I'm a little jealous of my brother Moti. This afternoon he called me to ask what time i'm going home. He was planning to go home very late, around 1 am, and he was hoping he'd have a ride. Of course it meant he was hoping I'd go home very late as well. In previous Fridays, me heading home very very late was expected, because I usually still have work. Yep, tons of work to finish. And in much much earlier Fridays, my brother asking me would be a formality because during those days of not much heavy Friday night work, there's usually a night out, be it super a extended dinner, videoke, movie, party, or just a chill-out session at starbucks.

But as of this moment, I have nothing lined up for tonight. So most probably i'll just end up going home earlier than usual. Not a problem really. It's just that my brother is going to play basketball! His affair tonight is at least three fun hours of shooting hoops, a sport I just never grew tired of playing. It made me wish I could play too... right now, of course.

Truth is, if not for the cat-and-dog weather, I'd be dribbling to the parking lot halfcourt already.

OK Sunday

A few good things happened today - enough good things, actually, to make today one of my better days.

First, even though I was just in time for church when I should have arrived much earlier because I had to replace a guitar string that I snapped yesterday, it turned out I didn't have to. A new string was already fixed in place and the guitar was even tuned already.

Second, even though the guitar was tuned one key lower that the other instruments, and despite finding out about this too late, meaning I was actually already playing on stage, I was able, for the first time in my life, to transpose the chords on the spot. Being a far from good guitar player, I was really happy I pulled this off, because it can get really confusing! And good thing my bandmates were the most helpful, adjusting to me for the first song. Afterwards, though, it was either my way or the right way. Fortunately, I didn't mess up.

Third, I got to do some work at the office and help teammate Jon a bit with some debugging.

Fourth, I made it in the closing hours of the SM sale! And I got to buy some clothes and even a cardigan that I need for a friend's wedding.

Last, when I returned to the office from shopping, two heavy sticks of the most delightful Dannylicious barbeque, picked up and paid for already by my boss, were waiting for me! Yeah!