sweet!

hola, sis!

sorry I've been an absentee.. i've been quite out of it.

anyways, here are what have been waiting for you in our kitchen...

(1) custaroons...

imagine coconut macaroons but this time more custardy, cheesy and creamy.......

(2) custaroon "poppers"...

now imagine chocolatey fudgy balls....

and inside are the custardy, cheesy, creamy custaroons (!!!)

(3) from twinpopyale: cadbury with creme brulee filling....

come over quick!!!

three cups of tea

... (literally)... that i designed in my pottery class :) leaf tea cups...



... and a little teapot, with a leaf handle and bird on top... *chirp*



these should go together with the sushi plate i made a few weeks ago :) glazing and firing them next week!

p.s. i finally bought a copy of your fave book "three cups of tea" as well :)



hopefully i'll find time to read it soon :)

teehee :)

just thought i'd share a wedding blog that featured the copywriter-couple wedding i styled early this year :)

"With the help of stylist..., they managed to infuse their wedding with elements that reflected their personal fancies – a shared love for travel, diving, photography, curios, and of course, writing. What struck me most about the decor is the predominance of paper elements – quite appropriate for a marriage between two people who weave words for a living, yes?"




read the full article on: http://weheartweddings.com/blog/2009/08/a-wedding-made-of-paper-and-then-some/

teehee :)

last lah!

Just one more post on my Singapore trip - its just been so many years since I was last there. It mostly still looks the same - very manicured :) And it was probably especially manicured that weekend - as it was their National Day. Their flag was displayed everywhere! Here's a night photo of Istana Park (right across the President's mansion, which seemed to have an event that sunday night).


I remember during my stay there years back, the newest thing was the Esplanade - the "durian" theater where I got to watch "Raising the Red Lantern" with K. Jun and family on their visit. On my last few days in Sing, I took my newly purchased canon ixus 2.3 megapixel digital camera to snap some photos of this new piece of architecture.





Fast forward to several years later, there is yet another new building in the city - which sort of reminded me of the Esplanade - the ION. Its the newest mall on orchard that carries a lot of the highend brands (LV, Prada, DVF, etc); has a large Sephora store; and holds the first Uniqlo in Singapore. Not that a new mall really excites me anymore, but I thought that the architecture was very interesting. Its quite a standout on Orchard Road.




Its got those modern fountains in front and some interesting pieces like these mannequins (where everyone poses, including Singapore Salsa!).


One of the things that changed the most in Singapore for me was Boon Tong Kee, the hole-in-the-wall restaurant across my old apartment, that served the best hainanese chicken rice in town! And for a very cheap price! The cab drivers all knew this restaurant better than they did my building, so I always used it as a landmark. Thankfully, its still there on the same street, but is no longer a hole in the wall! The place has gotten bigger and "swankier"! They now have black and gold chairs and tables, hanging lamps, and now use these funky-colored place settings. I did love the bright salmon and apple green against the black tables.


I ordered the same thing as I always did before. The chicken still tastes good (but not as earth-shatteringly good as I remembered it), but the servings seem to have gotten smaller and the prices a lot higher. Still glad I ate there though :)


What really hasn't changed all these years? The fact that I still hate packing. Haha. Here's a photo Singapore Salsa took - of me on my bed (at her place), the night before flying home, with all the stuff semi-packed and semi-unpacked all over. HAHA!


p.s. oh in case you forgot why i was there in the first place....my frisbee team finished third in our second international tourney :) not bad! :)

oh come ye!

i'm sold. i shall start my fruit diet this weekend...

right now though, we're pretty carnivorous.

yesterday, in honor of ye yang, we had lita's famous korean barbecue.

my phone camera didn't do it justice... it really looked more like this...

hooray for asians! ye breaks all the pga champ molds -- he's yellow-skinned, he's 37, and he started golf pretty late.

according to twinpophub, he's a son of a rural farmer... was planning to be a body builder... got injured... became a golf ball picker upper... then took up the game...

don't get me wrong... i do love tiger woods still... but ye's upset is still pretty cool.

imagine that, an asian and a half-asian, half-african-american at the top two of the championships.

yahoo to minorities in a pretty high-brow anglo-saxony game! haha!

fruit diet

c

i survived day one of my self-imposed 7-day fruit diet - the only detox/cleansing/weight loss diet i can realistically stay on (as you know how much i love fruits). i had to psyche myself for it though several weeks back, read some fruit diet facts and tips, and filled the ref with a variety of fruits that i like :)

if you (or anyone) would ever want to do it, here's what i learned so far....

1. a fruit diet is actually lower in calories than juice fasting, so its better for deeper detox.
2. unlike juice or water fasting, a fruit diet doesn't lower your metabolism nor shut down the digestive system, so its safer for weight loss :)
3. they say it is better to do it for a longer duration (less times a year), than doing it often for a couple of days. the first three days are the hardest (detox and withdawals), and once you get past that, you will start to really feel and enjoy its benefits. (i will let you know in a few days if that's true....)
4. the trick is to eat as much fruit (all your favorite ones!) as you want. you're not fasting and there is no need to stay hungry. so eat fruits everytime you feel hungry; bring fruits around with you if you have to. its so much more tempting to go off the diet when you let yourself get hungry.
5. learn the difference between hunger and cravings. they say the fat, salt and sugar withdrawals will subside in a few days (we'll see...)

so far, so good i guess :) a little bit harder than i thought it would be - ALL kinds of cooked food now smell so much better. i don't think i noticed food smells as much as i did today, walking around the malls, whiffing all the fastfood flavors.....i'm afraid i'll binge eat at the end of all this.

hopefully, the detoxing will make me want to keep my diet healthy. keep your fingers crossed! i'll let you know how i do :)

the last journey

missed you at the premiere too!

i must say, (biases aside), the docu-drama was superb.

the whole docu was narrated only by two people:

ninoy, of course...

and cory (through her LAST interview).

i was afraid bam might throw us off, but he did a great job... and there were no speaking parts so i guess that helped.

the whole docu revolved around ninoy's actual last journey home. 7 days (i think) of traveling from boston, until that dreadful day in the airport.

so many revelations and untold stories...

even if we all know what happened on the 21st of aug, it really hurt so much to see that infamous footage in the movie.

it was not a whodunnit at all...

in fact, the goal of the film is to make the younger generations watch this, so that the lives of these 2 national heroes will not be in vain.

it was really so heart wrenching... anyway i'll stop talking so i won't give too much away.

here's to doing what we can for democracy, for filipinos, and for freedom. naks.

and the winner is.....

i missed you at this year's ateneo art awards!!!! took photos of the artworks i liked so you could see them too :)

paintings by Pam Yan Santos from the exhibit "Like" at the Blanc compound. there's an "educational" theme to the paintings that seem "unfinished" with instructional texts like "color the picture", "connect the broken lines", and layers of words and numbers in the background....



Allan Balisi's "Mama Explaining Dawn to Me", from the exhibit "Spacing Out" at Blanc compound. i LOVE this painting - i love the colors, the women and their dresses; i love that the hues are somewhat subdued even though it is an oil painting.


CD's loong charcoal on fabric wall from the exhibit "Soaplands" at the CCP. i can just imagine how long this took to make! i love her flowers. i thought this would make a cool black and white tattoo design... hmmm :)



Goldie Poblador's thesis! "The Perfume Bar: Collected Memories and Ephemeral Representations". Such a clever collection! Its an entire perfume bar with the artist's unique handmade bottles and scents, each representing a different scent that evokes a certain memory or emotion - like "city streets" and "wasted youth". You can actually open each bottle and have a whiff. I was too afraid I'd break something though - and i wasn't really that excited to smell "pasig river". Oh and she had perfume boxes to match them too :) clever :)


and the winner (at least one of them) was Patty Eustaquio! yey! for her "Death to the Major Viva Minor" collection at SLAB. LOVED that. the only winner i picked this year :)



they'll be showing more pieces at the Ateneo Art Gallery next week. i can go see it with you if you want :)

more of da vinci

...which leads us to that question...

why would a genius like leonardo,

paint a woman beside Christ in the last supper?

hmmm...

the genius of da vinci

speaking of "mad" men.... i just got back from singapore and my first stop when i got there was the Da Vinci exhibit at the Singapore Science Center with singapore salsa....




such an interesting (and rather dorky) exhibit (and poses)! haha

much of the exhibit came from his "codices" - little notebooks where he wrote and drew all his great ideas on! one codex was on display in a glass case (apparently, bill gates owns one or some of his codices). he wrote on them backwards, as in from right to left, and the letters are literally backwards too. they say it is because he was a natural lefty, and also so he could keep his ideas secret. here's what one of the pages looked like....


the pages were decoded and his drawings were built and displayed at the exhibit. here's his early ideas for a "chopper"...



looking through his inventions, you realize he had an idea for almost everything we know in the modern world... the airplane, the military tank, scuba diving, the piano, the clock ...


the car...


anatomy...


he was an inventor, a scientist, engineer, sculptor, anatomist, biologist, musician, architect, philosopher and an artist. i love what he said "art is never finished, only abandoned" (nuk).

so there was a whole section on the mona lisa too of course. unfortunately, they can't display the actual painting so they had replicas of it displayed. they actually took an infra red photo of the mona lisa to reveal a lot of details we can't see anymore - because of aging, or because it has been painted over in several layers....


did you know that...
- she is actually wearing veil? its a very thin layer that can hardly be seen anymore
- that darkish figure on the left of the painting is actually a detailed column
- there is also a detailed railing (on which the column rests), which actually situates her in some sort of porch or balcony
- the arm chair she is sitting on is also much more detailed than we see it
- she is also holding a blanket on her lap, that is pressed between her arm and belly (which also explains why her arms and wrists are bent that way)

..... eenteresting.....