Noel & Via

It could only happen to Michelle and me. After wearily making it back from our Taytay, Rizal adventure in heavy rains, we lugged ourselves up from the Golf Hill parking lot with our bolts of cloth and sampayan (clothes rack) to seek refuge from the rain and traffic. Then I heard Michelle's scream:
"Ay, there's a frog!" And there was the little brown scoundrel, bouncing up and down the vicinity of our front door. Our ear-piercing screams were drowned out by the rain as we frantically ran up the hall stairs, across the flat. We whipped out our cellophanes (I mean cellphones) and tried to call Noel who was at home. Then I remembered we were having signal problems and Michelle was still struggling with her new Samsung cellphone. So I resorted to screaming Noel's and Rose's (our helper's) names instead. By this time, Mr. Froggy decided to lodge himself directly in front of our front door!

"We're going to be here till 10 o'clock." Groaned Michelle, who was equally petrified. So we waited it out. And waited. Two passers-by later (with curious glances thrown at us, perched above with our wares) the culprit hopped away.
And dear, brave Michelle finally rang the doorbell. "I thought I heard screams." Said Noel when he opened the door for us.

Posted by Via at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last Saturday I spent the whole evening (and early morning) with my friends from High School. It was our 10th year reunion party held at our beloved school. Although understandbly only about a quarter of our batchmates attended, it was fun nonetheless. Very nice to see old faces and get to know what they'd been doing.

There was a buffet dinner sponsored by North Park, and flowing Ultra and Colt Ice beer. The theme of the party was Sports since it was held in what used to be our grade school gym which is now being converted into a multi-purpose sports center. Appropriately, there was a boxing ring in the center which they used as the stage. Kickboxing VJ Chinggay Andrada was the host of the show and sexy comedienne/singer Rufa Mae Quinto made a special apperance. 80's famed "The Rage Band" sans Juan Miguel Rodriquez also tried to entertain the drunk alumni with rock songs from their era.

After being the last set of people leaving the gym, drinking whatever cases of beer that was left, we moved on to Greenhills to a bar called AA, beside one of our barkada's favorite hang-outs, Oyster Boy. We were a smaller group with just my closest friends. Some of whom I regularly meet with but haven't seen since I returned from Italy.

It was a hilarious evening spent revisiting our old tales, loves and ways. God, how I've missed them.

Posted by Noel at 06:52 AM | Permalink

It was the first musical we'd seen since we returned to Manila. It was pretty packed, which was good considering we didn't hear a lot of publicity about Cabaret. It was our first real date since the two months we got back.

We started with dinner at Sugi, one of our favorite Japanese places in Greenhills. (Cabaret was playing in Music Museum, a New Voice Company production directed by Monique Wilson) Noel was the perfect gentleman, remembering to pull the seat out for me and everything. :) Married couples really must date regularly so we don't become total slobs... Our dinner was light (still no rice for us since we're on phase 2 of our South Beach regimen) but wonderful, and we braved the stairs to Music Museum just in time to get decent seats.

It was really too cold inside, so we ordered a glass of red wine each (yes, one a day is allowed!) and a plate of mixed nuts. Noel got me a souvenir t-shirt that I wore over my own shirt, it was so cold!

The production was actually rather interesting because we never thought that it was set in Berlin during the time of anti-Semitism. What made it cooler was that we had actually been to Berlin right before coming home, so we could make out some of the German spoken in the musical, and we had concrete images in our minds with regards to the location. Joy Virata for me, was the best performer, very convincing with her German accent. Jamie Wilson wasn't too bad either, but Monique Wilson's performance was lacking. All in all, the musical itself wasn't too bad. But it was the perfect date. :)

Posted by Via at 06:04 AM | Permalink

It was our last day of our 2 week (phase 1) diet yesterday and today we checked how much we lost. Yes, we were and still are, on the South Beach Diet. Not for vanity sake but for health reasons. We needed to shed much of the accumulated pizza and pasta we stored during our year in Italy.

WHY SOUTH BEACH? Apparently it is a fad diet here in Manila. Actors and actresses swear by it. High-end restaurants serve it. And my mom, who has been through most of the diets out there, recommended it. So I had to get the book myself and read about it. Ultimately we chose South Beach because it promised a normal lifestyle and easy-to-follow rules. It made much more sense than Atkins to me. (Atkins basically is eating a lot of meats and butter with little or no veggies)

MY EVALUATION: I can't say it was an easy 2 weeks. We had a semi-normal lifestyle since all of our food had to be cooked at home or had to be prepacked.

But the last time I had a diet, (which was ages ago and it was the one that promised 10 pounds in a week), I was really very weak, tired and dizzy. Not with this one. Yes, there are times that your tummy would grumble but I never experienced any dizzy spells. And I still got to enjoy some of the food I used to eat like bacon, eggs, chicken (white meat only) caesar salad, beef, and even local dishes like bangus and salpicao. But we do get the sugar craving once in a while.

But I think it was worth it since the bottom line is that I lost almost 15 LBS. I feel lighter and better. Now on to phase 2, which is a less strict phase.

Posted by Noel at 02:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

No not me. This was one of things we were discussing over dinner last night as we tried to contemplate on contributing to an egroup. One person said that she didn't want to spill her heart out and let the whole world know. She says that she is not one to talk about herself excessively. It just seems plain boring to her. (At this point, I felt a bit hurt since apparently she doesn't know I had a blog. SHAME! SHAME!) Another one just didn't have the time to do so or doesn't think he has anything significant to contribute.

Unfortunately I didn't have the guts or the strength to defend blogging. I always give them the right to express their opinion. Meekly I tried to explain blogging this way: Blogging is just another way of publishing. You are the editor, the writer, the designer, and the publisher of your own magazine. How cool is that!

But it is sad that some people are still resistant to technology. While at Ivrea, most people were trying to figure out how technology can fit flawlessly into the lives of people, no matter how simple the technology may seem.

But the conversation then shifted to Friendster, something I was more resistant to, and how they enjoy using it. For them it seems to be different to show your picture, write your biography and interests, tell everyone who your friends are rather than just writing down what you are currently interested in. It's really just the packaging...

Posted by Noel at 05:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Nowhere else in the world but the Philippines can you find an empty, flying, yellow plastic supot (bag) in the middle of the road with someone on hot pursuit right behind it, gleefully attempting to jump on it with two feet to keep it from completely flying away. Having successfully caught it, turning around to bare an almost toothless wide grin, the happy highlight of her browned skin and windblown hair. Nowhere else can you find a single rubber slipper (tsinelas)in the middle of the road (again)- the owner managing only to get away with the other slipper in his or her hurry to jump onto a Jeepney for his or her ride. Nowhere else can you find a man selling sandoks (ladle or teflon thingie you use to fry things with), using one of his wares to reach the annoying itch on his back, then throw the used item back into his pile for sale. Nowhere else can you find the best massages in the world at affordable prices. And nowhere else in the world can you find the Pinoy (Filipino) humor that borders between slapstick/toilet and negative/insulting that gets us through really tough times. (Unless of course you live in a part of the world where Pinoys have made their home) But my goodness, it's good to be back home.

Posted by Via at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Enlightened after watching this video about the process of letterpress (physical placements of letters that stamp a page to print) I think what I've been writing about the past couple of days is the same: the process of web design. And please bare through it as I still have lots of processes to come.

The video is a must watch for typographers or font addicts (carlog comes to mind.) I sort of miss this in my work sometimes. The lack of physicallity of screen-based design/interface design leaves me a little unsatisfied. I tried to move towards this direction by taking up interaction design at ivrea, trying to focus more on "tangible interfaces" versus screen interfaces.

Posted by Noel at 12:21 PM | Permalink

Via failed to mention in her journal that her article was included even though she missed the deadline. They must have liked it a lot to include it. You should also check out the TEAM page which has a write up of Via.

Posted by Noel at 02:31 AM | Permalink

No not really. :)

As you can see, there are some slight changes in the design of the site. I am trying to make it look like the old one while I'm trying to learn CSS. The old one was done in "old school" style of web designing, where I did it with a visual editor (read: dreamweaver) Now I'm doing it by handcoding CSS.

So pink was my "default" color right now. Aside from the fact Via loves it a lot, I didn't want to think of the design elements yet since I wanted to concentrate on coding. Look at the background carefully, do you like the hearts?

Posted by Noel at 02:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Check out this site for Pinoy expats called well, PinoyExpats I made my first contribution this month, Train Station Marathon- Spanish Style. There's lots of other tips too for you folks thinking about foraying into Europe.

Posted by Via at 02:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Still tech speak: Some minor changes here in the site. Just me playing with the CSS code. This is quite new to me so I'm having some fun changing little things here and there. Basically its still the same template, but I edited some parts like the banner and the columns just to see how it might look if I go back to the original structure of the site.

Tell me if this stuff bores you, cause I plan to document any major change in the template and try to explain it. (comment please :) )

Posted by Noel at 04:52 PM | Permalink

As you can see we are renewing the look of the site. This is one of the exisiting templates that I got from Movable Type. I don't plan to stick to it, although I thought that I should start from scratch and use it for the mean time. Please stand by. :)

Posted by Noel at 02:08 PM | Permalink

After installing the MT upgrade, I immediately installed the MT-Blacklist plug-in. This plug-in promises to block Comment Spam from coming in our blog. And what do you know it really works! Right after I installed the upgrade I already got 20-30 comment spams, but as soon as I had the plug-in running, it detected 10 and blocked it right away. It is no surprise that this plug-in won the latest developers contest down at Movable Type. And I think they hired the guy who developed this, keep it coming Jay Allen! You rock!

Posted by Noel at 09:02 AM | Permalink

I just upgraded our blog tool to Movable Type 3.121. (Thanks to the recommendation of Chris and Jenn.) Looks like everything is still in place, except for a few glitches like missing links to CSS. It was the easiest upgrade I've ever done (not like I've ever upgraded before :) ) But it was pretty quick and painless.

Now comes the hard part. I want to redesign the site and add some sections like a photo album. Stay tuned as I try to figure out this thing.

Posted by Noel at 06:46 PM | Permalink

Hotdogs, marshmallows and a pool are always sure-fire ways to keep children entertained. We had our beautiful nieces over yesterday, Aiyana and Amanda with their Lola in tow to make sure we had reinforcements in case the kids didn't want to leave the pool. And how they wanted to stay! Even the little one who was apprehensive about getting in at first. She had me paddling to and fro so she could touch the little waterfalls that she discovered we could make in the mini jacuzzi attached to the real pool.

For lunch we had spaghetti, chicken and pizza- all kiddie staples. Mandy attacked her chicken with gusto, perched on her Tito Noel's lap- and was soon knocked out on the couch after that. We lounged around in the newly-yellowed (from a fresh coat of paint not anything yucky!) study and entertained Yana with playdough. Noel had the fabulous idea of making a little cemetery complete with a friendly ghost and flowers and a candle by Lola Vicki, in keeping with All Souls' Day yesterday. (Yana kept asking if we had any other games before that) Our little guests were eager to plan their return when it was time to go. In Yana's words "I will ask my Mama when she gets back so I can come here always." :)

Posted by Via at 07:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)