house cooling with GS girls

almi, gerlie, jeng, liv, sha, karen, andy, mica, leng: they were my officemates for four months who turned into my girlfriends. hehehe. they helped me adjust to manila life better, and encouraged me when something super terrible happened at work.

even though we're in different workplaces now, we (under almi's superb scheduling scheme. haha) still make sure we see each other once a month. our july get-together was held at our home, making it one of our several hosted house coolings. hehehe. we ordered food from sandy's pizza at 50% off, thanks to gerlie's mad groupon skills. hehehe. i made my tita mylene's simple tortilla wrap and modified it to my taste. :)

thanks to almi girl for the photo

Tita Mylene's Chicken Tortilla Wrap

1. Warm tortilla wraps on heated pan (about 20 seconds each side).
2. Spread cream cheese generously (thicker spread, yummier) on the tortilla wrap.
3. Put lettuce, a couple of tomato slices, cucumber strips, some corn kernels, a few boiled chicken breast fillets, and a sprinkle of cheese.
4. Roll the tortilla and wrap it in tissue to hold it together.
5. Enjoy.

jeng, gerl, liv, leng, gail, ching, almi, kim :) 

ps: manila is super better with these super fun girls.

why not wednesday 07.20.2011

looking forward to the weekend

did you read that in tune with a song that talks about how cool the weekend is? *apir* if you did. *wavelength calibration*

why not look forward to the weekend? honestly my wednesday is far from the kewlness of my weekend. this is the first time in a long time that im going away without any agenda except for lazing. we listed parasailing as a must-do, but it takes only a few minutes. haaaah, three full days of chill. the only pressure on me actually is that ill be the photographer. i volunteered since i need to learn it as well, just so that i can take better pictures.

print and laminate :p

ps: can't wait! Also... this:

figurative flying

last week, gail, mike, garrett and i were talking about dreams of flying. all three of them already had that dream, while i, the miserably inadventurous hanggang sa panaginip person me, never had it. so i prayed to God to let me have that dream of flying kasi masaya daw. instead, i woke up in the morning feeling overwhelmed because i had a dream that felt so real: i was in a rocking chair and my baby was resting on my chest. i guess we can call that a figurative flight.

since we're on the subject, i saw this comic strip:

pease porridge hot is one of gail's random songs! and baby blues is my absolute favorite comics, im backreading to the max. but what's pease? i googled it and found this:

Definition for pease:
Pease is a lunar impact crater that lies in the north-northwestern edge of the huge skirt of ejecta that surrounds the Mare Orientale impact basin. It lies just over one crater diameter to the east of the smaller crater Butlerov.

whoaaaaa... pease porridge hot! hahaha. :p 

and to cap off all these baby stuff, this:


Baby's First Audition from alex on Vimeo.

56 Worst Analogies of High School Students

i miss teaching, all of a sudden. i used to bring all my students' notebooks wherever i go just to check their essays, etc etc. nakakamiss super. the creativity and the enthusiasm of teeners never fail to energize me. im not some great literature critic, but the burden on me as a teacher never failed to push me to become better, to transform to a teacher-teacher every single class. hay. i would love to teach literature again, even to a small bunch of kids, even for free. maybe ill start with gail later. hehe.

warning: this is mildly geeky, but if you love to write or read or just enjoy words, be my guest. here, larger font for an easier read. :) 

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh   Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5.   John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
11. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
12. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
13. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
14. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
15. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
16. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
17. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
18. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
19. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
20. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
21. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
22. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
23. Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
24. He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
25. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
26. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
27. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
28. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
29. “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
30. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
31. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
32. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
33. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
34. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
35. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
36. The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
37. The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
38. She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
39. Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
40. Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
41. They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”
42. Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
43. The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
44. He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
45. The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.
46. Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.
47. The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
48. I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.
49. She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
50. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
51. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
52. Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
53. You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.
54. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
55. Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
56. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.

ps: LOL.

why not wednesday 070611

why not finish a book in 2 days?!

this book is my new harry potter series = hindi binibitawan hanggat hindi natatapos. thanks to ivory for giving me the 3 ebooks of the hunger games trilogy! this series, my kind. as in! buti na lang i read it at the time i was removing coffee from my system, because the hunger games can well replace a cup of coffee. maygash!

i now know for sure that the problem is not the reader, but the book. (here is me talking about the problem) if a book is great, you won't have a problem finding time reading it. im super excited to start on the second book, and then finish it, and then the third book, and then the movie. by that time, i should be able to find a new series/book to get addicted to. :)

and most of the time, what's in your imagination is better than the movie interp

 ps: google+ anyone? i don't find it appealing, but im there. also, we're looking for a female housemate for my sister. the apartment is at boni, mandaluyong. please email me at chingcustodio@gmail.com if you're interested. :)

blog, blogger, bloggest

trust me when i say that i can't stop thinking about my blog and my neglect of it. i decided to step away for a week because i was sick, there was work, and i just had to detach myself from writing blog entries. and also, i removed coffee from my mornings, hence the inspiration shortage. but my blog, in my mind. constantly like a baby who needs feeding and diaper changes. 

but of course i'm getting back to blogging again, though im sure most of you didn't even notice my 1 week absence. i love to blog, and the week that was is ultimate confirmation that i have turned into a blogger before i even noticed it and beyond my intentions of becoming one. *hugs* to my blog.

i have a lot of stories lined up (our anniv week, myself), you know, stuff about me. :p so thanks for sticking around and reading up to this point even though this blog is nothing short of a big nametag in rainbow colors. hehe. seriously, i only hope you get as encouraged as i am every time i post stuff here. i hope we all find joy in simple things, like arroz caldo and old photos and love. i am ecstatic i got to finally give myself the time to blog. if you read my blog regularly, super thanks. happy saturday!