Last Friday night, we had a little get-together with my close friends from way back Nissan Rent-A-Car days at the Tiendesitas at Libis, Quezon City.  David was looking forward to meeting my friends for the first time. 

We got there before they all did.  David ordered a beer while I walked around the whole place to see if anyone of them was around yet.  It was a Friday night, so there was quite a number of people around enjoying the evening too.  About a few minutes later, I noticed a group standing a few tables away from us, who seemed to be looking around too.  Oh yes, it was them alright….  Noemi, Marisse, Roda, Edwin and Abet were there.  It was great to see them again!

When Marisse called me up a few days ago, she mentioned that there was a special announcement to be made that evening.  I kept asking what the announcement was all about.  Do I hear wedding bells?  Well, I was actually hoping Marisse or Roda had an announcement to make.  Marisse gave me Noemi’s cell number, and I texted her right away to ask if she was coming.  And while I was texting her, there Eloi was, online Yahoo Messenger and asking me about the get-together.  She was so awfully envious she couldn’t be with us that evening!  Bestfriend, I know Cebu is great, but on rare ocassions like these, Libis is definitely the place to be in right this very minute….balik ka muna dito!  LOL! 

Anyway, the good news was that Abet and Noemi have finally decided to tie the knot!  Yehey…Ang Pakner ko mag-aasawa na!    The wedding date: January 19, 2008!  That is absolutely something to look forward to!  Ano bestfriend, are you coming?

The rest of night was wonderful.  It was just like the old days when we were all together.  I guess I just missed them a lot.  David got along easily with my friends.  He gave his words of advise to the engaged couple.  We all updated one another about things that have been happening over the passed few years.  Noemi and Marisse happen to be the godmothers of my Angelee, and I showed them pics of the baby girl who’s now 4 years old.  The last time they saw her was during her Christening!  Tagal na nun!    

Anyway, here are a few shots of that great evening we had together…

                Me, Marisse, Noemi & Abet                      Marisse, Roda, Edwin & David

                    Marisse & Roda                                                       Roda & Edwin

The lovely couple….Abet & Noemi

grabe, bagay na bagay!!!

and all the rest of us.. enjoying the night!

Bros, thanks for that great evening.  Hope we have another get-together like this soon!

Here’s my little quote for tonight…

“No lapse of time or distance of place can lessen the friendship of those who are truly persuaded of each other’s worth.”
- Unknown

My brother Jonas walked into our unit a little before 5am this morning.  I had just gone to bed and hadn’t fallen asleep yet when he came in.  I heard him saying something to Jenjen, our househelp, about one of my staff while I was still working at The Wave Ballroom.  This employee had passed away early this morning.  David couldn’t understand what he was hearing, so I translated my brother’s words to him.  Kulot had passed away. This boy was so young!  He’s barely 22 years old!  I just couldn’t describe the grief in me at that very moment.

Let me tell you about this boy.  JR, or “Kulot”, which means “curly”, as he is fondly called, is almost a brother to us.  He grew up together with our youngest brother, Harold.  He spent most of growing up days hanging around with Harold wherever he went. They were playmates, they were real buddies.   He almost lived in our house!

About 4 years ago, when my mom decided to start a Ballroom-Restaurant business, Kulot wanted to be counted in.  He began as the janitor, the cleaner, and the errand boy.  He worked hard.  For a measly allowance of P100 a day, he was doing more than what we expected from him.  We were so impressed by his enthusiasm with his work.  We then decided to give him a little break.  We began having him trained as a reliever for the waiter at the dining area.  He continuously proved his worth as an employee.  He was trustworthy, flexible and easy to teach. Eventually, we decided that he was ripe enough to become a Bartender.  He quickly learned all the cocktail mixes by heart, and soon enough, he took over the bar completely.  I do admit, I would reprimand him every now and then about his inventories, but that was really all part of his learning experience.

Now Kulot is gone.  Gone at a very young age.    I was so touched when Harold asked me a question I had no answer to…”why didn’t he wait first till another Kulot was born?” I guess, maybe it was his time.  We don’t know.  We will never know when our own time is up.  These are questions that are always left unanswered.  We all need to be prepared.  I just wish he had more time, more time to experience the future, more time live his life.

Whenever I think of things like this, I always realize how fortunate I am to be alive.  Alive at this very moment, to be writing this post.   Let’s all thank God for this life we have, and let’s live each day like it was our very last.

As I end this post, we would like to extend our condolences to the family of the late Virgilio Aguilar Jr., a.k.a “Kulot”.

Here are the last pics we were able to take with Kulot on my last day at The Wave Ballroom last year, July 31, 2006

Good bye, Kulot…

Tears In Heaven Lyrics

Last Sept. 7, 2007, Notre Dame of Greater Manila celebrated it’s 44th Foundation Day.  One of the highlights of the celebration was the grade school field demonstration.  We were required to provide for the costumes that the children would be using during the event.  Being a grade six student, my son was required to war white jogging pants, a plain red t-shirt and a pair of rubbershoes. 

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Well, guess what, people! Mr. Workaholic finally decided that it was time for him to take a short break from work last night….*applaud! applaud!* It was a decision he made at the spur of the moment, but I sure was glad he did! He’s been quite stressed out with work lately, and I really felt he needed at least a few hours away from work.

DKR Grill is at Timog Ave, just a block away from Delta, Quezon Ave. This is a place we usually go to whenever we just want to talk, listen to music and enjoy the night with each other. I particularly like the little huts with small dimly lit lamps that hang at one corner of the huts’ roofs.   We were looking forward to listening to a live band play some romantic music.  Unfortunately last night, there was no live band.  The waiter told us they only play on weekdays nowadays… *sigh!*  I guess it has been quite a while since we last came by. Oh well, at least they had some music playing all night long. Food in the menu is good, and very affordable. David enjoyed the “lechon kawali” and the “liempo,” and we had some garlic mushrooms too. We ordered a few bottles of beer, and spent all night talking about our life, our concerns, and our plans for the future.  We simply enjoyed each other….it was definitely a lovely romantic evening for both of us!

THE MENU 

The Hut, the pink and blue lamps

Here’s today’s love quote from my favorite site…

“When love is true, a string connects your two hearts and absolutely nothing can cut it.”

That’s all for tonight… have a lovely Sunday evening!

Hello everyone!  Here’s a video clip of the Jollibee Birthday Party of Angelee last Sunday, October 7, 2007.  The pictures for this party are posted at my previous thread a few days ago.  Thanks to Tahir and Mom, who had their tiny video cam with them last Sunday, and my sister, Rai, who patiently recorded this video for us!    I downloaded the file and fixed it up with windows movie maker, and voila!  Here’s our little video!  (Just allow it to buffer up to 100% to enjoy the whole movie completely).  You may also view this video at imeem.com

Happy viewing!

Wednesday afternoon we had a meeting with a prospective client at Makati City at 3pm.  After the meeting at around 5:30pm, David and I proceeded to the Shangri-la Plaza Mall at Mandaluyong City.  It was rush hour, and traffic at Edsa was really heavy.  When the cab we were in got stuck in traffic about two blocks from the Shangrila Mall building, we decided to get off the cab and start walking.  David was really hungry already.  So we had our dinner as soon as we reached the mall. 

After dinner, we attended the Midweek Service and Sermon Series at Bread from Heaven Community Chuch, that was at the 6th floor of the same building, the Shangri-la Mall.  David likes listening to Pastor Nomer Bernardino’s teachings a lot.  Pastor Nomer Bernardino is the Senior Pastor of Bread From Heaven Community Church. He studied in Israel and he obtained his doctor of ministry in leadership from Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia, U.S.A where he was given the International Award for Academics and Leadership.
 

PASTOR NOMER BERNARDINO

(Photo from family.webshots.com)

After the service, David wanted to relax a bit, and to wait for the traffic to settle down a little bit.  It was about a little past 8pm, traffic was still extremely heavy at Edsa.  Everyone was on their way home.  It was difficult to find a taxi who would be willing to bring us all the way to Quezon City at that time.  We hate the traffic,  but taxi drivers hate the traffic even more than we do!  So we stopped by and had coffee at Starbucks at Shangrila.  While enjoying his coffee, David put up his laptop, and (of course) began doing some work online.  Oh my workaholic baby, his work is definitely his passion!

Anyway, while he worked, I walked and took a few pictures around the place…..

Here’s my baby on his laptop, the white telephone is the new wireless landline Bayan Span that we availed of less than a month ago.  It’s internet-ready too! 

My baby and me

(this photo from alleba.com)

By 9:30, David decided it was time to go home.  Not much people around anymore, the mall was closed, so it was now easy to get a cab.  But traffic was still congested at Edsa!  So we took few more pics from inside the taxi…

This is the SM Megamall

“ok, ok, baby, this is the last shot”

So that was it for our Wednesday activity outside our home and office…  see you again tomorrow, folks.  Have a good day!

Life is a ball.  There are days when things are doing pretty well, and there are days when you just feel like the world is about to crash on you.  When it rains, it pours, as they say. 

Good things come in bundles, sometimes one after the other.  Oftentimes you can’t believe they’re even happening at all!  But when the awful things start to come, be prepared, because they also come one after the other!  No need to despair at all! When things start going wrong, I always try to look at the bright side of life.  There’s so much to think of!  It isn’t always so bad, afterall.  Thoughts of those days when good things poured like rain always make me feel better about life.  My dad used to tell me to “always make a stock inventory of everything that you do in life!”  These words echo in my mind over and over again.   And when you do make a stock inventory, you begin to see the good things that you tend to overlook because of the worries that load you at that moment.  Am I right or am I right?    

Life will never be perfect, as I constantly say.  But I always consider the bad days as challenges in life that make me a stronger person.   Through these challenges, I discover something new in myself, and something new about life.   Life is beautiful, life is wonderful.  No matter how awful some days turn out to be for me, I would keep my hopes up, and look forward to the coming of a better day.  I do what I have to do, and God will take care of the rest. Here’s a little collection of some nice music that I like listening to whenever I’m making that "stock inventory" of my life.  I would fix myself a cup of coffee, sit down and just relax.  Music always makes me feel good.  Christian music, instrumental music, they all inspire me to think about love and to appreciate the beauty of life.  It sets me on that mood to think clearly, to evaluate things, and to make new plans and goals.   It inspires me to look forward to a better day ahead.  Let me share this beautiful music to everyone.  You may feel like listening to them every now and then.

Sunday was a really busy day for all of us! We celebrated Angelee’s 4th birthday at Jollibee Don Antonio Hts. We arrived at the venue at exactly 2pm. Our friends Joanna and Deck and their kids were already there.

Upon entering the function room, we instantly noticed that the name of Angelee was misspelled “ANGELE”. David immediately called the attention of the crew on duty about the misspelled name. According to the staff, they didn’t have enough “E”s, so they just decided to put her name up that way! Talk about the dumbest excuse they could come up with! So they asked for a nickname, and when I replied “AGEEBEAR”, obviously, they didn’t have enough letters for that nickname either. So we opted to shorten everything with “AGEE”. 

Funny, before the event, I actually had that strange feeling that something would go wrong, somewhere. In all my experiences with Jollibee service, if it were not the excuse of having no available softdrinks, or a phone not working, it had to be a manager going on leave and forgetting to endorse my reservation AND THEN passing the buck to someone else after this failure! Well last Sunday wasn’t an exception. This time they didn’t have enough letters on their alphabet! LOL! They never seem to miss, do they? We were so dismayed, considering the fact that they had a whole week to prepare for that birthday party! It just so happened that Angelee really wanted to see Jollibee on her birthday.

Anyway, to give some credit to them, the party turned out well. The cousins came a bit late as the rain poured hard for almost an hour or so. David started off by leading the prayer, and the games began. Everyone was already enjoying the games when the Jollibee mascot entered the room. Angelee was so elated! She ran to him and welcomed him with the tightest hug she could give! She didn’t seem to care how huge the mascot was! Jollibee joined the kids’ games and entertained everyone in the party. He had a silly dance number and the kids were so happy! So party ended with our birthday wishes for her. All the kids went home with little giveaways and balloons for everyone. All’s well that ends well…

Here’s the slideshow I made to collect all the pictures we took last Sunday.

All praise and glory to You o Lord for all these blessings and graces, for all the trials that make me stronger, for all the wonderful love You make me feel each and everyday of my life!