Okay, so tonight I had the brilliant idea of getting back into doing my hobby websites. I opened up a layout I'd done that desperately needed to get coded, tweaked it a little, cropped out the background, and then realized that ever since having to reinstall my OS, I hadn't gotten Apache/PHP/MySQL re-set up.

So off I went: edited my httpd.conf, my php.ini, redownloaded a fresh MySQL package and re-installed it. Yay cool. To test, I went to my local Seasonal Plume site. Ooops, database not there yet. But of course.

I try logging into Cpanel. A few months back I had redone most of my passwords to have some sort of algorithm to them so that they're all very unique but still memorable...however, for that one, it wasn't memorable enough and I couldn't remember it correctly <_< so I thought I'd just log into indisguise.org's Cpanel and get to seasonalplume.net's Cpanel that way. Uh, for some reason everything started timing out, even though I could still get to my websites. So I shot off an email to support.

In the meantime, I thought I should probably start moving my websites to the new space I got at Media Temple. The whole thing is very different from Cpanel/WHM, so I spend a couple of minutes (well, an hour or so) figuring stuff out, like adding an alternate domain, getting into SSH, setting up accounts, and whatnot.

I still haven't heard from support, so now all the enthusiasm I had when I started is trickling away. :( *pokes morosely at website*

perchance went back to the Philippines late this afternoon, after staying with me since Saturday (Malaysia as well; there and back again). It feels good to be with an old friend. It feels the same, even after years of being apart and not even being in constant contact. I've noticed that the only people I've ever told some of my deepest secrets to, are old friends.

Huh, well, so I haven't completely fallen off the face of the earth, although for most web-related hobby stuff then I pretty much have, I think -- enough to seriously ponder going with a premade layout for a new domain. I already conceded with my journal, and now going on to (what will be) a major domain. Oy vey. Must resist!

Part of it is definitely because of work -- faced with HTML/PHP for pretty much the whole day, I feel like I want a break from it once I get home. I'm starting to map out some sort of schedule for my activities, though, to get more balance and get more things done overall...and not end up playing World of Warcraft all the time as there's nothing else to do to relax. Granted, WoW isn't relaxing if you wipe, but there's not much to think about other than 2-2-2-3-4 and move out of the fire. It's great for when you don't want to think about things.

Went through a few Mac woes earlier this week. I bought a 1TB external drive and a 320GB portable over the IT show weekend in order to replace by then-busted older 250GB FreeAgent external drive... and they didn't work. Did some searching, and apparently there is some issue with mounting external drives in some versions of OSX, and the workarounds (replacing kexts) didn't work.

I did a software update to clean all that up...and my Mac would go past the boot screen anymore.

I did a reinstall of the OS, and in an hour... I was back to playing WoW. A-MA-zing. I remember the days of reformatting and reinstalling Windows, and it takes three hours, four hours, to get everything back up to speed. AMAZING.

Still not amazing what's up with the external drives, though. They mount now, but I'm not going to upgrade my 10.5.5 to 10.5.6 juuust yet. Meh. Fix this, Apple! I'll probably try to upgrade sometime over the next few days and see if my drives disappear again... if they do, then it's definitely a 10.5.6 issue.

The good thing is, for now I have all my drives up and running. My 1TB is now Piro and Largo, and Largo will handle my Time Machine backup (l33t!) while Piro will store stuff like artwork, photos, scans, etc. My 320GB Maxtor portable is Maxine, because she'll be pretty much a "whatever" drive -- for shuffling things around and random stuff (which means she stays NTFS). And my older FreeAgent drive, which is not busted after all, is yet unnamed but will have music, videos, and other media. I don't have a name for him/her yet. He used to be Jason but there really was no reason why he was named Jason...probably because I was reading something about the Bourne trilogy when I got him, or something that random.

My oldest external HDD, Roland, is retiring, thankee sai. He's already rather worn out, missing a couple of parts, and is bandaged around to keep himself together. How strangely fitting. He'll probably come back again someday, as is the fate of the gunslinger.

(I am a geek.)

I should be ironing my clothes, but I felt like writing a bit, so I'm going to take that opportunity. I haven't been in a writing mood a lot the past couple of months, so this is a bit of a treat. mad_chatter's last comment reminded me that I should probably update y'all and say that I'm still at Yahoo!--the global layoffs publicized a couple of weeks back and carried out earlier this week did hit us here in the Southeast Asia office, but not as hard as the other offices. Time will tell how things pan out, but it's difficult all around, what with the economy. It's really saddening to email colleagues in other offices and get a bounce back, or to read farewell emails in the internal mailing lists. :(

But yes, I still have a job, and very thankful for that.

We had an internal Hack Day last Thursday/Friday, actually, and I teamed up with Leong-Kui, who I work with on a project. Not entirely sure how much I can talk about it ;) as there are talks about actually turning it into a product, but we won first prize :D First prize is $1250 worth of gift certificates at a local IT/electronics/appliances store, so splitting that up, I have $625 to spend on shiny stuff!

After doing my Christmas shopping rounds today, I passed by the aforementioned store today to check out what I might be able to get. There are two things that I could get: an Intuos3 or an iPod touch :D I'm leaning towards the iPod Touch, but I wanted to try out Elvie's first, especially since I will be adding a small bit to the gift certificates to pay for the iPod (I spent a few already for gifts), but also because I don't even use my iPod nano much--I'm more apt to just forget about bringing it along. However, I was terribly tempted with the iPhone, as I'm thinking a PDA+phone seems to be the best combination for me (as I just end up forgetting about the PDA altogether if it's separate from my phone...too heavy). On the other hand, my Graphire2 is still working... <_<

Thoughts? :D

I've also been doing a lot of reading this week--well, in comparison to the rest of the year, I guess. I've gone through Garth Nix's The Keys to the Kingdom books that I have, up to Lady Friday. I'm holding off on the last two because I can't find them in the edition that the other books are in, and I'm a stickler about that. It's very tempting to just buy them anyway, though, as it's getting really really good now.

Right, I should probably get on with ironing my clothes, and after that start putting things in my luggage--I'm flying home on the 20th!

I am alive! -- But rather swamped and flailing about like a chicken. I miss journalling and blogging, but I'm rusty and stuff. (Can you tell?)

I went to Vietnam the week before last with the rest of the 360plus team to meet with the 360plus power bloggers and for the Yahoo! Scooter Jam event. First time in Vietnam, and I forgot my camera :( so no photos from me. Just as well, as I ended up in an impromptu cosplay of sorts as the evil mother in the Tam Cam TVC. Ugh, the costume was hot and bulky and made me look a lot of pounds heavier.

The events we went to were pretty fun though, all purple-y and lots of swag :D The food was good -- pho and spring rolls and pretty much lots of vegetables. I'm not a big fan of the minty leaves in pho/other dishes, but it's not so bad.

We arrived on Friday morning and had lunch, walked around some. Ho Chi Minh is quite similar to the Philippines, except with lots and lots of scooters. It was hot and humid, and sometimes our cameras -- sorry, their camera -- were waved off. We visited the local iCafes (Yahoo!-branded Internet cafes) in the afternoon, and after a quick break, went to meet up with the community's power bloggers for a night of feedback and sharing.

The next day was pretty much just team brainstorming and the event, and the day after (Sunday) we flew back to Singapore. Not much sightseeing unfortunately, as everything was quite tightly packed. I was only able to shop in the airport as well :(

Then, last Thursday, Ana and Joyce arrived from the Philippines and stayed with us 'til Monday morning. My feet are still recuperating from all the walking about! Glutton's Bay Thursday night, Zoo and Night Safari on Friday, Sentosa and Clarke Quay on Saturday, and SITEX/Orchard Road/Jumbo dinner on Sunday. Yow. It was absolutely fun but oh-so-tiring. I finally did try the Chili Crab, which is the first time ever I've eaten crab right in the shell. Yum yum. I still don't care much for the chili part, but crab = good.

In the midst of all these, I had a root canal treatment done for one of my teeth. The procedure itself was not as painful as I thought, but the effect on my finances are. :( So expensive! I also need to get an impacted wisdom tooth out, which I will probably get done while I'm in the Philippines as it's cheaper and someone will be around to, ah, cook me liquid meals and watch over me while I recuperate :P

November and December is one helluva expensive month. :P

I've still not recuperated from everything, and with my vacation in the PH coming oh so soon, there still isn't much time to do anything much. Aking Mahal fanlistings are down (sob!) and I won't be able to look into doing anything with them 'til this weekend. There are chores to do (we have chores on rotation, and Carol and I have common area cleaning this week...but since I wasn't around at all the last weekend, I need to do my parts within the week), and tomorrow there's a BBQ party with the other Filipinos in Y!, and on Friday we have the Y! Christmas party. It's themed "Back to School"; I have juuust the skirt for it, which I'm getting shortened slightly, in the off-chance that I don't chicken out of wearing it. I've never actually worn this skirt before, although I've had it for over a year after getting it sewn back in the Philippines.

I'm looking at making a couple of changes to some of my websites, in the interests of making things more manageable for me. Unfortunately, a lot of things I set out to do I won't be able to get done before the end of the year, like Enthusiast 4, which is fairly depressing. It's an overall difficult time, what with the recession and everything, and I'm just glad that I'm still actually busy and have a job.

So here is the aforementioned post of doom. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, which is good! Other than the move and some odds and ends, nothing much has happened so this entry won't be too long.

So yes, we have moved to our new house. It's actually a house now, so yay! We are still settling in after a week at the new place (!!) so all I can give you are before photos, ones that don't have any furniture, lol. I wish I had them with me at the moment, but as I can't be buggered to sort them out at the moment they'll have to come later.

( Yay for the new house!, and moving is a chore. )

( DIY stuff on repainting the dining room set. )

What else? My Sunnyvale trip is cancelled because apparently, someone else has my name. I have three names, excluding my family name and middle name. How can it be possible that someone else has this name?! It's unheard of. My US visa is still being processed :( sigh. I was looking forward to the trip. So now I just have to tell myself there's a reason why I can't go. :P

I have also tried my hand at cooking--when the rest of my housemates weren't there XD the dish tasted alright, but it looked quite unappetizing. The sauce was quite clumpy and everything was oily, and I wolfed it down as I didn't want Carol (who was arriving soon at the time) to see it XD

That's it for now--pictures soon! (No, not of the horrid dinner.)

So I seemed to have fallen off the face of the Earth. Not really, I'm still alive, but tired a lot, and I'm only pretty much just skimming lj entries. I'm behind on email as well, so if you have emailed me recently and need a response, email me again as it is probably buried somewhere. I have 216 unread mail at the moment, even though I prune my mailbox daily. Merp.

I am working on a longer journal entry with everything that's up currently, but it's still in the making (zoiks!). In the meantime, this sounds like a really fun game--ganked from terra!

You pick three characters. Any fandom I'm remotely familiar with is good. I then have to choose one of them to screw, one to marry, and one to throw off a cliff.

To make this equally fun on both sides, I will also say that after I've finished explaining my choices, I'll give a set of three back to you. You can then do the same, and we go on like that until one of us gets bored or distracted by something else!

So passes one week of staying with Carol, Faye, and Elvie, my new housemates. I am doing a few chores, and also doing my own laundry and ironing. I usually wash the dishes, because I don't know how to cook yet, but I stick around when they cook so that I can get the hang of things. But actually, I generally like all chores that are water-related, even if my hands get dry because of it. They're, well, fun. So if I have a choice, I'd prefer to wash the dishes, do the laundry (not so much the hanging up, lol), clean the bathroom, that sort of thing.

Of course, I seem to waste a lot of water too. Because I think it's fun. ;)

I don't have a desk right now, and apparently that has affected my level of "productivity"--I can't get myself to work on any project/hobby stuff online. No layouts, no code. I've mixed feelings about it, but considering that the few weeks leading up to my temporary move up to now, I haven't been able to do anything (first I was busy, second I was packing up with no Internet at home) I'm getting slightly used to it, not doing anything much online when I'm home except rest, sleep, talk to people. It will impact some of my goals for this year however :( which is somewhat distressing.

However, that doesn't really mean that I'm not online. I've been suckered into the world of...er, World of Warcraft. :P I haven't played computer games in a long time, and have studiously stayed away from MMORPGs becaue I could feel that I'd get suckered in if I tried playing, even "just to check things out". The last RPG I've played was Neverwinter Nights, and I didn't finish it (omg uber long chapter two!), but I've always been very interested in RPGs. I'm still excited about Diablo III.

Well, I gave WoW a shot last Thursday with Carol, and I'm...favorably interested. I'm not yet addicted, i.e., I'm not forgetting to eat or not going out of the house, which is good. But yes, I'm hooked. I think I will get myself an actual account.

For the moment I have Eilonwyn, a human mage. Yes, her name is based on Eilonwy from the Prydain Chronicles, only "Eilonwy" is taken already so I had to make-do. I'm on level 11 currently, and working on Tailoring and Enchanting. ( Cut for those who don't want to read about WoW. )

Ooo eee. I haven't been online much at all the past week (since I had no Internet at home), and up to now I don't feel like spending a whole lot of time on the computer. I'm still recuperating (I suppose) from moving houses over the weekend! I spent most of the previous week packing up, and I ended up with 13 boxes of things (!!), along with boxes for the larger appliances/electronics such as the LCD monitor, the electric fan, the vacuum cleaner, and the radio/player/speakers.

The movers arrived last Saturday. I've never really done much moving before-- the last move I was a part of was way back when I was six or so, and obviously I didn't have much to do then, nor was I aware of anything much. I was a bit tense, but Tita Elva and Tito Mike came over to help supervise. The movers were quite quick! I was estimating around an hour to an hour and a half for them to finish--but they were done in 40 minutes.

I had my stuff stored over at Joey's house; Joey is Elvie's underwater hockey buddy who volunteered his house for my storage needs, lol. So all in all I moved my day bed, mattresses, workstation, office chair, floor lamp, side table, book shelf, footstools, dining set and TV from my cousins, my bike, and 13+ boxes of things -- all into one of Joey's rooms. Hee.

So now I am staying with Faye, Elvie, and Carol--and we'll all be moving on September 20 to the new house. Eeee excited like whoa. We've started planning things like general cleaning for their house on the 13th to get ready for moving out on the 20th. I can't wait! I'm not yet entirely sure exactly where my furniture will go in my new room, but I'll worry about that when the time comes.

So, I was Internet-less for the whole weekend. It's kind of my fault, I think? I suppose Kuya Bani changed the Internet settings last Friday for our network to be not discoverable, so my machine couldn't find it. I had to manually input the thing. Which made me feel quite silly.

I'm going home on Thursday! On business, though, so not too much time to go around. I'm going for the Developers' Evening with Yahoo! Philippines, which all you webdevs are invited to :) I will be there, and will probably look slightly uncomfortable standing all by my lonesome so please come by and say hi and let's talk shop or talk about anything at all ;) I'm flying back to SG on Sunday afternoon.

I went last night to an anniversary party with Carol/Faye/Elvie, even though I'm not really part of the group who's having an anniversary, lol. But the night was good, there were games and my group (we were segregated into three groups) won twice! And one of them was because of me :D We played Headbandz, and I was on the tie-breaker round, and I was able to guess the word in 26 seconds. :D It's probably beginner's luck though, lol.

Today I also milled around at the Orchard area. Or, I should clarify: I don't really traverse the whole Orchard area, as I only really go to four malls there: Wisma Atria, Tang's, Takashimaya, and Wheelock Place. The former two because they're the nearest to the MRT station, and I usually only go through them to other places like Takashimaya (because of Kinokuniya <3). I found out, while paying for my stash, that there was 20% off in Kinokuniya! Yay for unexpected sales.

I went to Wheelock Place as well, to check out this scrapbooking/crafts shop a friend told me about, and was in love! Laine's Papeterie seems to be well established--I will have to go back in the future and get supplies and whatnot, once we've moved to our new house. Such a wonderful place <3

I can't wait to move! :D

Tired of my house hunting posts yet? :D

Last Thursday we finally signed a letter of intent to rent this cozy, nice landed townhouse in the Kovan area. It's somewhat steep since it's unfurnished (save for the basics like stove, fridge, washing machine and air con units in the rooms), but it's landed! I would post pics, but as the unit I took photos of is not exactly the same unit we're renting, I won't.

We actually have a problem with moving, though. I have to be out of here by August 30, and they have to be out of their unit by September 14. The availability of the unit is on September 20! Egads. But at least we now have a house, and we can worry about the logistics of moving, storage of furniture, etc this coming week.

It's a three-storey townhouse, with two rooms on the second and third floors, four rooms all in all. There's a yard/parking area in front, which we obviously will not be needing for a car. My bike will be very happy with the space ;) On the back there's a small backyard area, with metal bars for hanging clothes.

The first floor is the living area: living room, dining room, a guest toilet (no shower, it seems), and the kitchen, which also contains a small storeroom. There is no "master bedroom", but one of the two rooms on each floor is bigger than the other, with a dresser area which connects to the shared bathroom. There are built-in wardrobes in each of the rooms, and the bigger room has this window bay sort of thing, overlooking the yard.

I'll be taking the bigger room on the third floor, squee! That means, more space for my furniture, and most importantly, space for my notebooking! I feel quite excited about that. <3 Finally I can get back to making notebooks. Not that I'm any good at it at the moment, but it's something I've been itching to get back to for a while now.

We're going back to the place on Monday, so that Carol can take a look (as she wasn't there when we looked at the house initially) and for the tenancy agreement signing as well. Ah, so excited! This will be fun. :D

Edit: If you're waiting for an email from me--so sorry, I've been rather busy this week! I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. <3

We went to another viewing last night, and we've made an offer. It's such a pretty unit! Aileen, who I met at Kuya Bani/Tito Mike's birthday party last year, is our agent for this one, so she's handling the negotiations and stuff.

The unit is an executive mansionette, which is basically a two-storey HDB unit, and usually contains four bedrooms (or three bedrooms and one good-sized study/etc room, depending on the owners). The HDB block is around three to four stops away from the MRT station, and is near the markets, food center, etc. The lift lobby for the HDB building is quite near the bus stop as well. It's also lift level, which means we won't need extra stairs or anything.

So the unit itself--is quite pretty! Marble floors similar to the ones we have at home (in the Philippines), and the stairs and whole second floor is in wood (parquet if I remember correctly). There's a small gate, and stepping inside you can store shoes and whatnot in there, and then the actual doors to the unit. It's not like a hallway like the previous unit we really liked, as really only one person can stand in the space. But still nice :D

The living area is cozy, and the interesting thing is, they hacked away the wall between the balcony and the living area to open up the space, and extended the wall all the way up, BUT there's a garage-door-like "window" in that open space. It can be opened to let the sun in, or at night to view the sky--that sort of thing. Pretty!

It has a nice kitchen, and a smallish bathroom in the first floor, and the fourth room is also found in the first floor. It's of a good size though, just like the other common rooms in the unit, but the floor is marble and there's no air conditioning unit currently (we're asking to get one installed).

Going up to the second floor, all rooms have aircon units, but largely unfurnished--just wardrobes and desks. The bathroom is pretty! Quite prettier compared to the usual bathrooms I see in HDB units. The master bath even has a jacuzzi XD

It's a little dirty at the moment, but it's so pretty pretty <3 I really hope we get it. I feel like I can't do anything at the moment but think about all this and hope the owner likes us! The agent apparently likes our group, since it will be just one person per room (as opposed to multiple people per room, which obviously would be worse in terms of wear and tear), and we look like the sort of people who will take care of the unit :D I think she was impressed with the fact that we were friendly with her son (which she brought along) and we asked about where the laundry area to hang washed clothes is. Actually, I asked, and she assumed I did all the washing currently XD She said no one else asked that question, haha. Additionally, three of us are already permanent residents, so that has to be a plus (of course citizens are better, but PRs are better than just EP holders in terms of tenants, apparently).

Well, here's to hoping we get the unit. If we don't... well, I'll be sad :P but I will valiantly tell myself that it isn't meant to be! :D

I should have a house icon, with the number of times I've been talking about house hunting here. And I'm finding I really like making a house nice to live in, redecorating and stuff like that. Hee.

So we had another round of house-viewing yesterday, although I didn't get to the first house we were supposed to view. Apparently it's really just a three-room, the fourth room needs to be fitted in with a partition etc before it can be used as a bedroom. Carol and Faye (who went to see it) didn't like it, so that's that right there.

The second house was quite promising! We really liked it once we came in--it was another corner unit, and there was a recessed space for bikes (they had two tied in), and the furnishings were fabulous. An LCD TV in the living room, another TV in the master's bedroom (a major plus for Carol, haha), a mini-bar, good appliances, great kitchen, spacious rooms...except for the fourth room. :( It was small, just enough for a bed and wardrobe, had no air conditioning unit (and really no good way to put one in), and the window was a sad affair. It was quite a deal-breaker, although the rest of the house was absolutely fabulous.

We're working with two particular agents (in addition to the occasional ads we see online and in the newspapers, which obviously have different agents), one a friend of my cousins (Aileen) and another a friend of Elvie's underwater hockey buddy (Nigel). They're both quite nice, and we're really hoping we find a good place soon.

This morning we had the movers give us a quote for moving all of our stuff. Basically all we have to do is pack up the small, loose items in boxes they provide, and they'll do all the lifting, trucking, disassembly and reassembly. A little steep, but at least things are taken care of. They wrap stuff in plastic and everything.

Now I just need to finalize all the stuff I'm shipping home--clothes and shoes that I don't use anymore included.

So we've started house hunting in earnest this week. We've seen four houses so far, and came close to closing the deal with one, but it didn't push through. We're not (yet) in a rush, and it seems that even though yes, finding four-bedroom houses is more difficult than your typical three-bedroom ones, it's not impossible, and they are out there.

The first house was somewhat out of the way; you'd need to ride the LRT to get there (in addition to the MRT of course). It was quite spacious, but unfortunately, all the rooms had rather odd shapes. It was a corner unit, and the quirky rooms are actually full of character, but since we're only renting and we're not like, out to remodel and make the place ours, it would be difficult.

I will talk about the next house last, since that was the house we almost got. ;)

The third house was quite spacious, had air conditioning units in all rooms, and was actually pretty good--save for the non-optimal kitchen and the curry smell. We looked around online and it doesn't look like there's a way to remove the curry smell from places, which is unfortunate. The kitchen too, was separated into two rooms: one with the fridge and stove only, and one with the sink and washing machine only.

The fourth house, now well that was a no-brainer. When we arrived, it looked messy, cluttered, and it was almost as if the owners (who lived in the unit) didn't really care that there were people coming over to look at the unit, especially since the man only had shorts on, no t-shirt (!!!). They spoke in Chinese to the agent, laughed, etc. and it was only later did we learn (when the agent told us, and advised against the unit) that they were making racist comments about us Filipinos renting the place. Can you say OFFENSIVE?

Now, the second house--we all really liked the second house. I personally loved it. It was a corner unit, and the owners bought the short bit of hallway leading up to their door, so there was a hallway sort of thing going on before the unit itself. the floors, walls, etc were nice, the place was spacious and well kept. It was also just across the street from the mall and MRT station. The only drawbacks were that only the master's bedroom had an aircon unit built in, and the unit was largely unfurnished save for the kitchen appliances like stove, fridge, and washing machine.

At the end of the day, we were prepared to go for the unit, as long as they put in two single bed frames and a wardrobe unit, to cut costs on what we were going to need to acquire/buy to get the unit furnished. But alas, the landlord wouldn't budge on the price, and wouldn't shell out to get the bed frames and wardrobe (we were going to have to get/buy our own aircon units, living room set, dining set, TV, etc). So... we let it go.

Ah well, we guess it's not meant to be. We also supposed that if the landlord wasn't reasonable enough to provide us those things, then we might end up having problems later on with regards to dealing with him, so it's probably best to just let it go.

But ah, that was one pretty HDB unit.

I haven't felt like writing recently. After Philippines and Hong Kong one after another last month, I felt pretty drained for around a week, also partly because there was a lot of catching up to do and prepping for stuff.

My week in the Philippines was good, in a simple sort of way. There were a number of Cashflow 101 games--my parents bought the board game, and if it weren't so pricey I would have loved to buy one too. There was a mini family reunion of sorts, although only half of the family was able to go, but my cousins stayed overnight, where we played Cashflow 101, watched movies, and watched Achmed the Dead Terrorist (wut?). (I think Dan Horn is loads more talented then Jeff Dunham, though. Warning, linked video may be slightly offensive; this one isn't, and actually shows off his talent better, but the former generally feels like a better show.) I bought clothes even though I didn't need any more, had lunches and dinners with people, and tested out my dad's new Canon EOS 450D. Holy moly, do I want one now. It is the shiny! (Birthday Flickr set here, Reunion/Cashflow 101 game set here.)

Hong Kong was rainy. I didn't go shopping because I was pretty much out of budget after shopping in the Philippines. Lots of free, good food. I'm finding that I'm liking seafood more and more. I had to switch hotel rooms because the first was a smoking room, although since it was a corner room, it had two windows and a walk-in closet. I'm still waiting for the reimbursement (since it was a business trip), I'm hoping it will come before I need to pay off the ol' credit card. I wish I could have gone out more. I want to go back sometime as a tourist. (Flickr set here.)

Friends and I went back to Settler's Café, and I'm really liking that place even though this was a different branch we went to. It's fun! I like board games. We discovered that we prefer thinking games more :P "Fun" games that require quick reflexes or whatnot make us stressed, hahaha. We played Ticket to Ride this time around. I still want to try out Kill Doctor Lucky again, because the other time when we tried, we only got confused. Unfortunately, reviews recommend playing it with around four people as more can get rather...complicated. I'm a stickler for mystery games, apparently (Cluedo is still my first love).

I have a badminton racket now! I've been going with Faye et al for badminton intermittently for a while now, and Faye gave me a racket as a birthday present. Hee. I'm suddenly all raring to go play now, I was even thinking of reserving a court near here for a game just a while ago. But erm, the onePA website is broken. It's probably only broken in non-IE browsers, though, because I had those same problems when I was trying to sign up for PA membership.

I bought a handmade-books book today, I couldn't help it. Of course, it's only making me itch to actually make some again. But I have to wait until we move so that I'd have space. I want to go back to that art supplies/etc store in Bras Basah again. I haven't actually gone in as they were closing the first time I came 'round, but it looks like a HUGE store, with all sorts of stuff inside. I saw easels and other implements, paper, tools, etc etc. I hope they have a bookpress, because we don't have any encyclopedia-heavy books here, unlike at home :P

I also picked up a balikbayan box from Lucky Plaza today, and have started dumping things I need to send to the Philippines like old clothes and shoes, so that I won't need to cart them all along when we move in August. I never fully realized how many of my old clothes don't fit me anymore :( Was it really just only a year ago? That feels quite sad. I do have a goal though--just within this week, a new ice cream shop opened in Citilink named Marvelous Cream, and I pass by it everytime I go home. I've been looking at the posters etc for a while now while they were setting up shop, and now they're open. I'm holding off, though. I plan to reward myself with buying something from it if I lose five kilos by end of July. I love ice cream, and not trying it out is almost painful, so this is a good goal :D (Photo shown is on Flickr, but as I found it on a website, I couldn't find the actual photo page as the person didn't link it back.)

Sometimes I wonder if I'm overanalyzing this whole permanent residency thing. Carol, Faye, and Elvie are all PRs now. I've been meaning to get my application in for a while already, but I never seem to actually decide if I will. I don't know if I'm just thinking about it too much and making mountains out of molehills.

I watched a couple of movies recently, and I think the one I enjoyed the most is Incredible Hulk. Oh, I certainly laughed a lot in Kung Fu Panda, but I doubt I'd watch it again; whereas I'd watch Hulk again, I'm sure. Edward Norton is really good. I'm liking both him and Robert Downey Jr/Iron Man a lot more than Tobey Maguire/Spider-man. I do think Tobey is cuter, but after the first Spider-man film... erm. :P Maybe the rest (Norton/Downey) will also not be as alright when they do sequels for those movies?

Oh! I almost forgot. Diablo III! Omg, I can't wait. I'm liking the gameplay a lot. I hope my MacBook can handle the requirements. Eeeee.

Okay, I should sleep. I'm breaking out again because of all the late nights I've been keeping. I need more than 24 hours in a day, argh.

So this is the long-overdue Bohol 2008 entry. Finally, finally, I know.

Last April, I went home to fly with the rest of the family to Tagbilaran, Bohol. Part of the reason for it was because it was the BCBP's national anniversary, which was being held in Bohol -- my parents were going. So we went with them, as we'd never been to Bohol before.

Bohol is such a pretty, pretty place. I've been to Boracay and I can say that Bohol's beaches are much more to my liking than Bora's, although I suppose that's because I'm not into the night life and parties and stuff like that. The beaches and the water in Bohol are so clear, cool, and clean, perfect for a relaxing getaway.

I flew in on April 3, and while I was in the terminal, there was a domestic helper who was making a bit of a scene. I don't know any details, but she was being detained by a couple of police, and she wouldn't answer any questions asked of her (which I didn't hear). She was saying, almost yelling, things like, "asan na mga kasama ko (where are my companions)?! ", "ano, kinahihiya n'yo ba ako (well, are you ashamed of me)?!", and "ako ang totoong (I am the real) Flor Contemplacion!" Her movements were jerky, erratic, showing her apparent distress and annoyance, and I suppose most of them alarmed the police because they soon cuffed her, and then led her away when she started to jerk about in an attempt to... dislodge the cuffs? I don't know.

The people in the queue (and myself, I admit) were mostly silent: pretending indifference, studiously keeping their eyes away to keep from staring, or discussing the event in hushed tones. My own feelings were mixed, as I obviously knew nothing of what she was being detained for, although from the comments of the people ahead of me in the queue it seemed that something was found in her bags. Was she being framed? I had no idea, but her obvious anger and annoyance and refusal to cooperate with the police did little to make people sympathize, I think. I did feel annoyed when a few travelers passing by took shots of her being led away. It felt like such an invasion of privacy, and I felt quite sorry for her then.

The rest of the flight went by as usual, though, and when I arrived in the Philippines, we went shopping for a few last-minute things. We flew to Bohol the day after on Cebu Pacific, and checked in the hotel. I went with my sisters to a Lingkod ng Panginoon prayer meeting that night while the parents went to a BCBP dinner.

The next day, we went to the BCBP breakfast. The skies were absolutely lovely, it was breathtakingly blue. The speakers' sharings were inspiring, especially the ones that dealt with putting up businesses. Afterwards, we went with a bunch of other people to one of the two floating restaurants in the area, in Loay, I believe. Again, the scenery was absolutely fabulous, and I almost used up all my camera's disk space! I deleted quite a number of earlier photos to make room. We went to the Clarin Ancestral House, saw this HUGE dictionary, saw a HUGE python, and then went back to the Bohol Beach Club for the anticipated Mass and BCBP's Sabado Nights celebration.

The next day, we set off again. We saw the Chocolate Hills (but it rained :( sniff sniff), the butterfly farm, and went to lunch to the other floating restaurant in Loboc, Bohol (which was actually the first; when demand got too high, the owner's brother opened the second one). I got terribly dizzy and seasick while on the ride, so not many pictures there. I'd been having a headache even before (probably because they were singing on the Magic Sing inside the chartered bus...) but the food was probably not that good--my dad also felt rather odd after.

We went to see the tarsiers afterward. Oh, the pretty, cute little things! Now, I've seen photos of tarsiers but I've never ever thought they were cute. Whenever someone would say they were, I was skeptical because they really look odd and... odd. However, after seeing them up close, omg, the cuteness! Unfortunately we're not allowed to hold because unless you do it correctly, they may either go into shock (and then die), or bite you.

Using flash for photos was not allowed because they can also go into shock (and die), but unfortunately.... oooh this really annoys me no end. Of course people didn't listen. There was this one guy who had a huge DSLR, and we waited patiently for him to finish taking his photo of the tarsiers with his girlfriend. He aimed, and then poof! went the flash. ARGH! What's the freaking use of his DSLR when he can't just fiddle with aperture and not use the damn flash?! The result was, the poor tarsiers were blind, and in shock (the tarsiers in the photo here is the same as those). Can you imagine?! The poor tarsiers with their huge bug-out eyes, and then suddenly there's this white blinding light right there in front of them. No wonder they go into shock and die.

I'm still seething.

Anyway, as I mentioned in this post, the video of a tarsier eating is absolutely cute. They are adorable!

We went to Baclayon church afterward, which was breathtaking! The church is one of the oldest churches in the Philippines. The walls are built from a mixture of corals and egg whites, and the church itself is wonderfully preserved. I loved the colors of the church--vibrant pinks, blues, and purples.

We went down to the Hinagdanan cave afterward, which is a natural underground cave found by the landowner, on which he built stairs, hence "hinagdanan" -- for non-Filipinos, "hagdan" means "stairs", so "hinagdanan" translates to something roughly like, "to put stairs in/on".

The next day, we went to the Bohol Bee Farm. This is a fabulous place, and is actually in the running for me for my top ten honeymoon spots, for example if you don't want to spend too much on the honeymoon. There's a bee farm close by, but the area we were in is more of a "front"--there's the "Buzz Shop", with Bolano delicacies and various spreads and stuff, all of which they also sell in the restaurant just a few steps down. There are cabins and small houses which one can rent in the midst of the bee farm garden (again, no bees--the actual bee farm is elsewhere), the most expensive being around P7000++ for a night. Going all the way down, though, there's this fabulous snorkeling spot (pictured here). The water is so clear, so cool, and the scenery is so beautiful. We didn't wade in, but we stood at the steps, and it's absolutely breathtaking.

We spent the rest of the day with my dad's Tagbilaran plant manager et al in Panglao, on the beach. They brought lots of local food, and the beach was fabulous and clean -- it was a really wonderful, relaxing time. Even in the heat, the water was cool. Later on, when the tide was low, we found out why: freshwater rivers on the island emptied out into the sea right there on the beach, so much that you could see tiny geysers of water on the beach's puddles. On puddles without these small holes/geysers, the water was warm, but when the puddles had these geysers (in varying strengths and sizes), the water was cool. I took a video of these geysers but haven't uploaded it yet -- the format's unsupported as I had edited it when I imported it from my camera.

When we got home, it was only then when we realized the real extent of our "tan". It wasn't even a tan--we were quite sunburned! I wanted to get a nice tan, and during the day when we were in the water, langging and I would face the sun (or turn our back to it, depending on what we wanted) and raise our arms above the water in an effort to soak up as much sun as we could. Oh boy, did we soak up a lot. :P

The next morning, we had brunch at the Bohol Bee Farm (since we didn't eat the previous day there). Brunch included salads with flowers in it! Apparently, anything a bee lands on is edible. The flowers were a bit more "leafier" in taste than I cared for--I suppose you could say that they're really just like ordinary green vegetables, but they taste stronger.

After that we went on to our early afternoon flight back to Manila, and the day after that, I flew back to Singapore. :)

( Picture wall of doom! 201 thumbnails of photos from Bohol under the cut. )

So, yes. I'm a quarter of a century old! It doesn't seem possible. Nancy Drew is still older than I am. By at least two years.

Family woke me up around 5:30am to sing Happy Birthday and give me my presents. A couple of books, and cute stuff like mug covers and eyeglass holders. And the cake! It's huge, and pink. I'll have photos up soonish. I'm trying to force myself to finish uploading the Bohol photos to Flickr, after which I can finally put other stuff up. It's just so tedious to add titles, tags, groups, etc to my photos.

We're staying in the rest of the morning, and then go out later this afternoon and the rest of tonight. My vacation's been good so far, but I'll have to get more into it some other time. I did finally find a trade paperback copy of Eclipse though, which I promptly picked up. Finally! Naturally I finished it in one day. I'll have to collect my thoughts on it soon.

I don't feel too much like staying on the computer (mostly because it's rather dusty where I connect to the home network via cable...since nobody has been using this space for the past year!) so this will have to be it. Next December when I go back I'll have to bring a wireless router with me...

Anyone on Plurk? Looks interesting.

My flight is delayed. I am speechless. It's my first time riding on Cebu Pacific and I get a delayed flight! D:

Good thing I got here early enough to get a spot on the Laptop Zone here. And that I did not have any more space in my check-in luggage for my laptop adapter. I'm going to grow roots.

I did that iPersonic personality test, and came up with:

It doesn't describe me all that much, though. I agree with some points but don't with others, for example this one: "However, one cannot expect romance and effusive expressions of feelings from him and he will definitely forget his wedding anniversary." I am very effusive and expressive of my affection if we're talking about family and significant others, and sometimes with close friends if I sense they won't mind (but I find that most are uncomfortable if I get all genki on them). I love making things romantic for special occasions. But, I do forget a lot of birthdays and special events! I usually remember the day before, but on the day itself I'm rather likely to forget about it. It's really sad.

I went through a couple of domain renewal problems, but after a lot of emailing, calling, and general panicking, everything's sorted out now. It will be "really over" in a few days time, as I'm now just waiting for the final stuff to go through. It really scared the wits out of me, though; the .com and .net versions of indisguise.org have domain sitters on them so it's scary to lose that, not to mention the whole problem with it being my primary domain with my nameservers.

But because of all that, I now have a new domain :3 it is a secret for now, but hopefully sometime soon I'll get it up--I wanted to snatch it up quickly because the .com and .net versions of the domain is also taken. It won't be too much of a surprise though; if you know me you might be able to guess what the domain is (especially as I've spoken about it previously, maybe not about the exact domain name but something close to it).

Eeee plane flight tonight at midnight! I'm not yet done packing, although most of my things are ready. This afternoon the Production and Engineering teams are also going on the Singapore Duck Tour XD and I'm looking forward to that. Eee fun!

I'm hungry. I need sustenance.

One more night and I'm off to the Philippines for a week-long vacation! I can't wait. :D This is the first time I'm going to try flying on Cebu Pacific -- previously I've always used JetStar Asia for my flights, but they can be slightly pricier and they have ungodly flight hours (7am, which means you have to be at the airport by 5am). The seats are supposedly more comfortable on JetStar planes, but we'll see how I fare on Cebu Pacific.

I'll be back in Singapore on the 16th, but will be leaving just a few hours later for Hong Kong. Scary! I'll be there for a week with some officemates (who are flying there on Monday, actually) for some training and development for an ongoing project. I have never been to Hong Kong before, and while I've read a bit and I can just hail a cab to get me to the hotel, I'm still scared. I read this bit where you have to have a scrap of paper with your destination's Chinese name on it so that the cab driver knows where to take you. :s Is that true, even if I'm just going to ask to get to my hotel? I'll be flying back to Singapore from Hong Kong on the 21st.

I still have a couple of things to prepare, like final list of clothes, gadget chargers and cables, stuff like that. As usual, I have this nagging feeling that I will forget things, which is horrid. Ayieee. At least I think I have all my shopping done. I think. I feel like I am a chicken with my head cut off. *clucks around madly* (...wait, if I don't have a head anymore, then I can't cluck. Oh, bother.)

I will be missing The PC Show which is sad, but it's all right; I do NOT need more gadgets in my life. I do not. *repeats to self* :D Well, for the moment anyway! I need to save up for our move to a new place in a few months.

I can't believe how fast time flies. In a bit over a month's time, I'll have been here in Singapore for a year already. This time last year, I was stressing about processing my documents and POEA papers, trying to plan out my leaves, and general stressing over where to get the money to actually move to Singapore.