Spur of the Moment trip tp Pagsanjan!
11:53 AM
April 28, 2008
Last Saturday, while I was nursing feelings of getting left-out of the graduation ceremonies going around, my mom, sisters and I got invited by Tita Lea (the mother of France) to go to Pagsanjan with her and her daughter. And so, we woke up at the crack of dawn the next day, and went on a 3 hour roadtrip with the end goal of shooting the rapids! XD
It was great! XD The scenery was great, almost straight out of a safari movie or something, and at the end of the boat ride down the river, we even got to ride a raft under Pagsanjan falls!!! I swear Vigile, you have to try it sometime! It's for nature lovers, definitely. We saw the prettiest dragonflies too! It had a plain black body, with opaque black wings. And then, when these wings fluttered open, they were the brightest green and blue color. Nice. And we also spotted some really cute birds, one with the brightest blue color, and another colored orange and gray. <3
Anyway, shooting the rapids was great, and so was riding the raft under the falls. (We even saw the cave underneath the falls. XD) We then took the three hour trip back to manila and we were home before the sun was gone. ^^ Unfortunately, we were unable to stop by any store to buy pasalubong. T_T And ironically, Pagsanjan is one of those places where my family LOVES the pasalubong food. (Which isn't very common.) There's buko pie and special Pagsanjan bibingka and espasol, etc.
So moving on, I'll try to upload some pictures in my multiply (imagine, I actually braved using a camera while shooting the rapids. Hehe...). Try it guys! The boatmen working there need tourists. There are so many of them, about 950, that they can only take out their boat once a week (cause they have a number waiting line system). So in the meantime while waiting for their turn, some drive tricycles, while others have no other jobs. Kawawa sobra.
my delayed Bacolod entry
9:54 AM
Bacolod was great, but it was so activity packed, I decided to just list down some highlights so I don't forget anything. XD I went with Sig, Stacy and Vigile, along with Sig's family, and we stayed at Sig's family's resort, the Quiet Place. Free of charge too! They're so nice. /hug (I'm actually using Vigile's skeletal entry as a base, cause I get confused with the days. ^^)
Day 1:
Sims and waiting
Departure from Manila. Delayed flight.
Korean couple-stalking at NAIA. 29 matching pairs of clothing. Sweet~
FOREIGN GESTURE. X
I got the window seat!
Storm during the flight. Beautiful lightning bolts. XD
Arrived at Bacolod airport. Brown-out sa airport!!
Vigile.. erm... red week? ;p
Chicken Inasal and Calea cakes with Manang Omi.
The Quiet Place. Roomie Sig in Room 9.
Hector!
Frog Symphony. Ewww...
Began with the "frog-protection-formation".
Monopoly. For some weird reason, stacy's been throwing a lot of doubles. Sig and Stacy tied.
My roomie has a nightly beauty regimen! (And of course I got included a bit. ^^)
Day 2:
The Quiet Place. Went Exploring. Angry Ducks!
Vigile is a tree-hugger! XD
Angry Ducks! Wack wack wack~!
Angry Monkeys. 0_o Pigeons and herons too!
Eating. Mommy Dog? Not sure if this is when we meet her. But we came across her during exploring. I think.
Nognog Si Yuv yuv!!!
Boating! And emptying the boats of rain water. XD
Dinner at Bob's. Dessert at Bob's Cafe.
Monopoly~ I won!!
And our room was so full of static, for some strange reason. It actually crackles when you brush your hair. ^^
Day 3:
We went fishing in Sig's dad's fisheries with live shrimp bait! It was 1hr and 30minutes away from civilization, with the car driving mostly at 120kph. So far! @_@
Stacy caught the first fish! And I caught the weirdest fish. A tadpole looking fat fish. ^^
Crab! Waah! T_T
Shopping. Never in my life did I imagine that I'd go shopping together with some of the Kada in Bacolod. We really were becoming girly. But we did need socks. Poor Vince.
Maru shirt! XD
Pink shirt for Dwelly. Real men wear pink!
Note: Shopped in Gaisano, bad bad place. A sock priced at 180+ suddenly costs about 290+ at the cashier. WTH?!?
Happy birthday Vince! Dinner at Kaisei. Curry Vigile!
Monopoly! and I won thanks to my landing fortuitously on both Park Place and Boardwalk. XD
And we first meet the Baby Seal Shirt while packing for the overnight in the mountains. XD
Went night swimming in the Kiddie Pool cause the main pool was infested with live swimming and mating frogs. X_x I almost died. I had to walk around with a flashlight. ^^
Go Sig! Spit on the frogs in your disgust for their super slow reaction time!! XD
Day 4:
Overnight at Patag Mountain and swimming in the freezing waterfalls.
Vigile is a tree-kisser! 0_o And her cellphone tried to leave her. ^^
Met the Pena (with an enye) brothers and cousins. Codename: Frnd 2.
Tadpoles in the water. One even had the audacity to swim near me, and nobody else, despite the fact that i'm the only one freaked out by frogs and tadpoles. @_@
Discovered "Vince the Twins". Hehe..
James said to Sig: "I love you manang..." and almost got hit by a monoblock chair. XD
Bonfire and toasted mallows!
Fireflies!
Played Mafia. And enjoyed several cracks about sig's brother, Paulo, being not totally useless, cause he can breathe on the plants (or be used as a bad example). XD
Didn't sleep much that night cause it was freezing and the mosquitoes were eating us. One of Sig's brothers said we should have brought Katol, plus we were waiting for the driver to wake up.
Bonded with another Pena (enye) brother. ^^ Who at some point scared me and stacy into hysterical laughter. XD Never watch Saw again Stacy!
Day5:
Descended the mountains at 5 am with Bravo and JP.
So tired, we slept most of the way back to the Quiet Place.
Ate and slept most of the day. (We were supposed to go look at the museum of dolls, meet Stacy's nikki, etc.)
We ate at Pepe's that night with the Pena (enye) clan. And then we had cake a t calea's, and played monopoly with Sig's brothers James and Sean and Vince.
Sig made a crack about lying, not sugarcoating. True~
Day 6:
Stayed at the Quiet Place all day because we wanted to play more monopoly that afternoon, to try the insurance ideas, etc. I almost won, but then Stacy has the greatest luck at throwing the dice. ^^ So I was 2nd place.
Also, we went swimming in the adult pool. ^^ We tried the slide, played Agawan Base, Chicken something, Patintero, etc., but I'd say the biggest success was Pespi 7-up. We changed a lot of rules to make it better, and Sig's poses and the evil race back to the base (evil cause there was cheating, pulling and blocking) made our day. XD
We went to the smallest SM ever! And ate dinner at Bob's. (Weirdly enough, both stacy and I thought we were in Pepe's. :P)
And sig wore the Baby Seal Shirt, today. XD
Day 7:
We decided to head to Guintubdan Falls. It was so nice, except I woke up with a really sore throat, and all my usual symptoms of a coming fever. But I was not about to get left behind. I mean, who knows when I'll be back right?
There was a Carabao in the middle of the road on the way there. XD HEhe.. It was funny. ^^
We saw the flowers that can literally drive you crazy (and we call it the: "flowers na nakakabaliw") and drive past a small nature park on the way back.
And I really succumbed to the fever that night. But my friends were really really nice and helpful and responsible about it. :D This is one of those times when I really feel younger than all three of them, despite being actually older. ^^
Day 8:
Today was packing, *sniffles* and shopping for pasalubong day. I was still a bit sick, but way better at least. We ate at... erm... I forgot. But this was where we bought Piyaya. We visited Sugarland, BongBong's, the Showroom, Bob's Cafe, etc. And then finally, back to the airport. T_T I didn't want to leave! T_T We ate at Jollibee's in Petron Taguig when we got to Manila.
Ooooh~ And this trip ended with a kiss for
someone *wink wink*. But not me of course. :P
Things to note:
The scenery was always great. We were constantly driving everywhere. I think the Quiet Place alone was 30 minutes from Bacolod City? But we always had a driver, at Sig's request. XD
We also kept using our foreign gesture throughout the trip. If you play sims, one of the vacation goals is to "Learn a local gesture". In this case, we were in the Philippines, talking to Koreans who couldn't understand us, hence the gesture. ^^
We also kept saying we were living in sin, another relic from our Sim playing (we played before leaving, remember? And my Sim was actually on vacation then.) But whereas in the Sims, living in sin refers to roomies who aren't married and yet sleep together, in our case it just means living in sloth and gluttony. ^^
Also, we kept finding (and giving Vigile) food hearts, namely food that just so happened to be heart shaped. This included a heart-shaped tapa, and a heart-shaped onion leek. ^^
And throughout the trip, I couldn't help but feeling severely underdressed beside stacy, and even Vigile sometimes. T_T Oh well, it was inevitable. ^^
And I think that place contained more frogs than I'm ever willing to see in my lifetime. @_@ I actually took pleasure in the fact that we get to run over them everytime we leave the place at night. ^^ Why did the frog cross the road anyway? Mica says they get shocked by the car's headlights, but i think they're just too slow. One episode we caught of Mythbusters even mentioned a little sport involving Frog Killing. Jamie tried it when he was a kid. XD
Speaking of mythbusters, I don't think I've ever watched so many episodes in one week. In Bicol, when the commonly loved show was House, I kept seeing so many episodes of House, while in Bacolod, the show of choice was mythbusters, so suddenly, mythbusters was always on air. It was weird, but I wasn't able to catch any of the other show in the other place. Confusing? But isn't it weird? @_@
And I have to say, I was unusually observant during that trip. I dunno why. @_@ And we also kept having the WEIRDEST topics of conversation. ^^ My favorite was the name mutilation one, where we talked about the worst variations of our name. Then we gave it a job. (I didn't start it! Vigile and Sig insisted that Genin was a Ronin, so (Vigile) Virgie naturally had to be a clergy. XD Eventually, (Si)Gourney became a Journey, and (Stacy) Tessie became an Odyssey. ^^; Must later, Gournei became a Gourmet. :P)
And sadly, we missed out on a bunch of things while we were there. We missed Nikki (not that we know him personally, only Stacy does, but it was a shame she didn't get to meet him anyway), the Doll museum (cause we kept waking up really late, Stacy must be ashamed of us. ^^), and Lakawon, the white sand beach. But oh well, less sunburn for me I guess. I'm actually darker than Vigile already. ^^;
What a vacation! Please may we come back sometime! XD
Happy Earthday everyone!!!
6:41 PM
April 22, 2008
Earthday! Nice idea ne? And about time too. ^^ See these screencaps from other websites (disclaimer: I just print screened them, I do not own these sites whatsoever (though wouldn't it be great if it did, like in monopoly XD nor did I design these icons):
What's happening?
6:26 PM
Gaah! I'm gone for a week and my computer is suddenly failing me? Why?!? I feels like it contracted a ton of viruses while I was away. Hmm.. I wonder if somebody used it while I was gone. >_<
Also, I've been watching Princess Hours on YouTube recently, having just finished the very amusing Coffee Prince several weeks ago. To my horror, within the week that I was gone, amagad! It has been removed from YouTube. Noooo~! And it's not on CrunchyRoll either, I've checked. :( Oh well.
Oh! And as agreed upon, 2/3rds of the trio decided to hunt around the internet for a certain past classmate in grade school. Hehe... I found her, and Stacy was right, she's barely recognizable! @_@
And for some bizarre reason, I think I've developed a really really really stupid fear. I think I'm now afraid of
job interviews. I swear, i get a really queasy feeling in my stomach, and I get incredibly depressed just at the thought of needing to go through one. Seriously depressed and worried and nervous. I've been trying the tackle the issue internally all day, trying to understand why my stomach is being so irrational and where it all comes from, in vain. Arrggh! Of all things!!! Why am I such a loser!!! X(
Boogie TRap~ Tan tan tan~ XD Bacolod was great~
Blogger managed to fail me again!
5:04 PM
I was looking back at some of my entries, and I noticed that the Bicol entry was unusually short. Grrr.... It turns out one entire paragraph was cut out, the part explaining the "stronger" and the picture. (hehe. the picture must have looked weird alone without an explanation. ^^)
To continue...
The second part of our Bicol trip consisted of a trip to Naga, a part of Bicol 2 hours away from my relatives' house in Legaspi. We had to drive to the place, and since we drove back from Sorsogon that morning (where the Whalesharks were) and the drive to Naga was in the afternoon, my aunt was so tired, she let me drive half of the way. Driving in the province is definitely different from City driving. Too bad my speedometer was busted and I couldn't tell what speed I was driving at, or I'd brag about it here. Hehe... Kidding. ;) Anyway, what did we do there? Upon getting to Naga, we went to a place called CWC (and I already forgot what it stands for, sorry. ^^) where we got to try wakeboarding. Imagine, WAKEBOARDING! For those of you who don't know, wakeboarding is (this is a personal definition, so nobody shoot me) a watersport where you step on a board and hold onto a cable that a motorboat drags around. Cool ne? Except in this place, the cable is attached to a motorized rig that goes around the body of water, so it probably isn't as hard, freaky or dangerous as the motorboat version. And I only got to try the knee board, cause beginners apparently can't start out with the standing ones. ^^
And it was fun. Although heaven knows that you need all the arm's strength in the world to complete the entire round over and over again. (cause you're being pulled around by a string you have to grab hold of right?) More than once I washed out because I lost hold of the cable (all my companions did, in fact). By the end of the hour, my arms were trembling. T_T I sincerely wished that I had still been doing weights while hanging on to the cables. (The picture in the "Back with a Vengeance! XD" entry is me about to wash out. :p
And to add icing on the whole thing, for a water sport, it's really quite cheap! Yay! (Would I stomach anything else? XD) It costs about 160 per hour, all the equipment (board, helmet, lifevest,etc) included, plus a lecture to teach you what to do. :D
And the food there is great too. XD XD You guys should go try it sometime. XD
New Lay-out!!
12:32 PM
April 10, 2008
It's always so exciting to have new lay-outs! Wheee~ And this layout is so clean! XD
*imagines rolling around on the clean surface like a crazy gif or an anime emoticon*
Although I really really loved my last lay-out, the background was a bit messy, so my posts were a little hard to read. Hence this new one is a bit more bare. Whheeee~ There's a little bit more about this lay-out in the Links part of the blog. Weird, I know, but since I started using iframes, the links section has also housed my "the lay-out" section. ^^ Imagine, I'm on my tenth blog lay-out! XD It's been what, 4 years since this blog was born? HEhe... I'm pretty slow aren't I? XD
Just a passing thought..
11:37 PM
April 09, 2008
While we were firefly watching in our little boat, a fish suddenly plocked into France, making her scream and jump to the panic of the boatmen concerned with our little boat. The fish had accidentally jumped into our boat, and it was about one handspan long. The boatmen decided to keep it for food, except that after a while, they realized that they've all had dinner and no longer wanted to eat after the trip. ^^ So one of the boatmen picked up the fish and returned it back to the river.
This puzzled us, since we figured they could keep it and cook it for breakfast. So we asked why he returned it. And he replied, so that the fish could go off "
at magparami" (and multiply, I guess?). To which France mumbled that it's good that they think that way, because so many others would have been more selfish about the whole issue. It's good to know that there are people like these out there.
I know it seems typical, but seeing it happen really does get you thinking.
Commenting on Vigile's "any suggestion on what I can read next?" entry
11:23 PM
*sorry... it was starting to get too long for a comment. You can skip this one if you guys like. ^^*
I'm amazed. In a good way, just to clarify. We kind of read a lot of books differently don't we? (Question originally addressed to Vigile. ^^) This is one of those time-stopping *yes I'm exaggerating* moments when you realize how one set of words and ideas can be interpreted so differently by different people. Hehe.. While such things always obviously happen in reading poems, I don't usually notice such things when reading novels (as I've noticed it now). ^^ But then again, we're usually directed towards a single representation of what the whole book presents when a book is discussed in class, most likely our teacher's interpretation. S/he directs us to the lines and ideas that struck him/her the most and by discussing it enough, we start to see how s/he first sees the line or idea or why it seems to jump out at him/her, despite the fact that we missed it entirely when we were reading the book on our own. I wonder how we would have interpreted the English Patient if we both read it on our own? ^^ Fascinated. Intrigued.
For instance, I didn't particularly find striking lines in the book Beauty, but when I talked to Vigile, she said there was a lot. (Is there still a lot now that you've read it twice? Just curious. Hehe..) And I think I can get really sympathetic with certain characters, to the point of near tears (note the word near, not actual), and I can severely dislike certain characters for reasons as shallow as the fact that they seem "oh so perfect in every way that inconsistencies must be put up with" (*cough*Sharra*cough*Jaxom*cough*). Hehe.. I can feel Sig rolling her eyes again. ^^
Books are great aren't they? And they're even greater when you have someone you can rant to about them. Or discuss them with. Or something. XD
Back with a Vengeance! XD
8:43 PM
I'm back from Bicol! A little darker, happier, stronger and wiser to boot. XD
The trip was meant as a visit to our dear Sarte (cousin France) relatives in Legaspi, Bicol, but as it turns out, we had a full itinerary for the visit. We were constantly on the go, so much so that you could actually feel fatigue in your bones already. ^^
Darker - I sunburned my face off. Ah, the pain! If you see a dark wall walking towards you, look closer, it just might be me in black clothing. ^^; Or even worse, if you see a set of teeth floating towards you, try talking to it, so I can reply and you'll know it's me. XD My family went swimming in Donsol (it's part of Sorsogon, Bicol) during the second day of our trip. We spent the morning driving to the place, then we spent an afternoon and a morning boating and swimming. ^^ The goal was to see some whale sharks and hopefully get to swim alongside them. I loved it. I was so pleased with the whale sharks, I actually bought myself an overpriced whale shark ("Butanding") keychain, to remind me of the whole experience. They're such sweet and gentle creatures. I dunno how, but you can just tell. ^^; It's something worth trying. ^^ And it isn't even very expensive really. It costs under 200 pesos per person, if you have enough companions to split the cost with you, to rent a boat (with a guide and spotter) to swim with the Butanding. :) Just remember not to touch the poor creatures, they're very sensitive and I heard from some foreigners that they could catch an infection and die quite easily. @_@
Happier - The night of our Donsol stay, we went on a firefly boat trip (and I thought it was just called that cause the bangkas (boats) were tiny ones, or that the river was named Firefly or something, but it turns out, we really were going to see fireflies in action). Think Samurai X, the farewell scene of Kenshin to Kouru before leaving for the Shishio thing. Gawd, those fireflies were... pretty much magical. They gather around flowering trees like the Talisay and swarm there by the hundreds. You could actually see them from afar. ^^ We even caught some, and one even landed on my shirt. ^^ They look like constant fireworks stuck to one spot, bursting over and over again.
Wiser - an issue meant for another entry. ^^
And so I'm back. And for some bizarre reason, I seem to have caught that old summer infliction of Vigile's, the one where the inflicted gets restless all the time and has the need to constantly be out and about. I can't wait for Bacolod! And while waiting, I can't help but bug people to go out or hang out or something! Waaah! What happened to docile homebound domestic old me??? X__x I used to be really content to hang out at home, reading books, watching TV, surfing the net and what not. T_T Maybe it's just acads-inflicted-gimmick-deprivation hang-over from the past sem. ^^ Plus I miss so many people! Kimmy, Gremio, Selda, UP and CE people, etc... Waaah!
BTW, I got a haircut. With most of my adult companions plotting against my hair, I can hardly escape. ^^ It's not so bad I guess. Except that my hair looks even messier when I tie it (which is often due to the hot weather) than before. ^^
My sem has ended!
2:17 PM
April 03, 2008
And it even ended earlier for me than for the rest of my batchmates. At a cost though. But let's not get into that. I'm feeling lazy, so I don't feel like going into much detail, besides, I've filled in the trio and sig with most of the details of my sem end.
~relieved(?)~
~Worried about my grades~
~Troubled by internship issues~
~still fighting off attacks on my hair~
~Finished and enjoyed Coffee Prince~
~Want to play Sims 2 in Sig's house~
~Looking forward to Bacolod~
~Currently in Bicol~
~sleepy~
Everyone, keep in touch! XD Keep blogging! Keep texting! XD
