Oh yeah..

I forgot to mention that I found some Japanese craft books in National Bookstore in SM North Edsa.  I was like ”Ah! Japanese craft books!”. Good thing it was early and there weren’t any people around or else I’m sure I would’ve gotten some stares.  Too bad I can’t read Japanese since all the instructions are in Japanese. Booo…oh well I’ll probably still get one since there are lots of pretty pictures

Progress Report

Its been more than a week since we started renovated Jeremy’s & Jack’s rooms and we still have a week before our deadline of August 31.  It looks like we’ll be finished in time…well I hope we will.  As I said last time we had to redo all the electrical wiring and moved almost all the outlets and switches in the rooms.

We also had to patch the walls that we didn’t cover with drywall.  The walls in this building are all badly plastered.  Actually its pretty hard to find good plasterers here in the Philippines.  We’ve finished moving the door and adding a wall to Jeremy’s room. (this is the same view as here )

This is the progress of Jack’s accent wall.  The wall is made from individual moldings made of EPS (expanded polystyrene shapes).  The moldings we make and sell are made from expanded polystyrene coated with a special kind of cementitous coating called Decobond.

Right now the rooms are being painted and on Wednesday the flooring is coming in. I can’t wait to see the finished rooms

As I promised here is the picture of the finished bag along with some random flowers that aren’t attached.

Just realized that this picture isn’t all that clear.  Sorry ’bout that.  Right now I’m crochetting some slippers for my brother.  Haha hope it comes out wearable.  I’m also trying ot make a bag with a flat bottom based on this tut on laughingpurplegoldfish’s blog

Renovation

The building that we are renting is a warehouse, office, and a house.  The first, third and fourth floors are the warehouse areas that house our stocks of imported construction products.  The first and third floors are the office areas.  The second floor is where we currently live.  The area of the second floor isn’t as big as the other floors since it has an area thats a mezzanine.  Living in the same building that you work in has its pros and its cons. 

Pros:

• You don’t have to wake up early to go to work
• You save on gas and time since you don’t have to commute to work
• You can still cook lunch
• If you forgot something at home or at work you can get it easily

Cons:

• You’re in the same building basically 24/7
• You might have work even after work hours and on weekends or holidays
• If you’re sick people at work might bother you
• Some of your home supplies end up in the office…especially scissors

The thing that really bugs me is that I’m in the same building 24/7 but the pros out weigh it since I really enjoy those things.

Right now we are renovating my two bros’ bedrooms so our house looks like we are half moving out and half moving in.  There are clothes and boxes from my brothers’ rooms all over the house and even outside in the stairway. 

On the left is Jeremy’s (my dihia) room and on the right is Jack’s (my sahia) room.  We are re-covering most of the walls with drywall (gypsum board) because the walls in this building are all horribly plastered.  We are trying to get it all done before the end of the month, when my Si-chiak comes.

Heres a short Chinese(Hookien Dialect) lesson: Ahia = eldest brother; Dihia = second eldest brother;  Sahia = third eldest brother; Si-Chiak = Si – fourth/ four, Chiak – uncle that is the younger brother of my father.    

On a yummier note,  I made some cooks from this recipe.  I added 2 eggs instead of 1 though, which made it a little too dense. 

But it was perfect eaten with milk or warm with some ice cream.  Jeremy said that it tasted like black forest cake when he ate it with strawberry ice cream.   Isn’t black forest made with cherries though?  Weird. 

I finished the crochetted bag I posted last time.  I’ll post a picture of it next time

Embroidery, Crochet & Gelato

My mom found her embroidery hoop and floss a few days before I was planning on buying them.  What luck I have! So I’ve been practicing some of the embroidery stitches in Doodle-Stitching by Aimee Ray.  Its a great book for beginners and it has fantastic projects too.  I was just practicing without any design in mind and this is what came out

I haven’t tried all the stitches yet so I’ll probably be adding more to this.

Other than embroidery I’ve been crocheting again.  I haven’t crocheted in years.  I decided to try and make a bag.  Its very simple since my knowledge in crochet is very basic.

Its supposed to be for a friend, its her birthday party today.  I haven’t finished it yet and I wasn’t able to go to her party.   Sorry Paula!!

We went to Amici, the Tomas Morato one, for dinner.  Amici is a Italian canteen style restaurant that was originally located at Don Bosco in Makati.  The place was originally owned by Don Bosco and there was a priest from Italy who was the main chef.  The priest returned to Italy a year or to ago and now its owned by Jollibee, or that’s what I’ve heard.  The pizza is cooked with a wood-burning oven and reminds me of Grimaldi’s in New York. 

The place is pretty much self service.  You order from the counter and get your own table, utensils, plates, cups, water, and condiments.   We ordered a pizza with percuitto, spinach fusili, and there seafood spagetti.  There pizza and pasta are always good good good!  The spinach fusili was especially good.   After the delicious food we had delicious gelato.  They have very good gelato too! The four of us shared an a scoop of ube (taro)

 and chocolate flavors. 

Doesn’t it look delicious? In the past I’ve had their sansrival, mango jubilee, blueberry, strawberry, and vanilla.  All of them are good but I’d have to say that the sansrival and mango jubilee are the best.

Saved by a Shower Curtain

It was Saturday afternoon, I had just finished cleaning out my room of all my college stuff and decided it was time to get clean myself.  I was singing “And it’s alright, yeah I’ll be fine Don’t worry ’bout this heart of mine..” or that’s how I remember that Wreckers song to go.  I took one step onto our non-slip mat in the shower and slid forward hitting my big toe on the wall of the shower.  Good thing I grabbed the shower curtain and I was saved from a bruised bottom.  I had no idea shower curtains were so strong and boy am I glad they are.  It turns out our non slip mat wasn’t suctioned to the tiled floor properly, so my foot didn’t slip on the mat it was the mat that slipped on the floor.  Did that make sense?

It’s been raining on and off since Friday and at one point yesterday it started to rain hard, like a typhoon hard.  Okay, turns out there is a typhoon and the news says that there will be around five more this month.

We stayed at home all weekend but didn’t have anything much to do except clean and sleep since our cable went out Saturday afternoon.  My mom missed all her shows  

I did do some sewing though.  Oh my mom found some embroidery my Ama (chinese for grandmother on the fathers side) made a long time ago.   It’s gorgeous and its all done with single ply threads.   

The colors are beautiful aren’t they? Hopefully I can make something like in the future

Most of my Sunday afternoon was spent watching the first and second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender on DVD.

We ordered some prime rib-eye cut steak from Dulcelin for Sunday night,  we also had some Wagyu from Dulcelin on Saturday.  The steak was pretty big it was around 900g and it was so soft.  It’s probably the softest I’ve had ever and it tasted so good.  It was just my brother and I that had steak, my mom doesn’t eat beef, so we still have more than half of it left in the ref.  Dulcelin has a lot of good items on their menu like their pulled pork and their lengua.  My gosh their lengua is also one of the best I’ve had, it actually gets better and better with each reheating.  The orders are pretty big at Dulcelin so whatever we order usually lasts a few days   Dulcelin is located at #36 Times St. West Triangle, Quezon City (T:+632 374-2165, + 632 374-2167 )

I took the longest nap this afternoon.  I must have been really sleepy to sleep from 1:00pm to 4:00pm.  Good thing today wasn’t a busy work day

Rainy Days

It was raining when I woke up and it still is.  I love rainy days and that feeling of curling up under a blanket and sleeping.  I used to do that all the time when I was kid and still did it when I was in college .

Sadly I can’t do that anymore.  I have to wake up early and open up the office now, especially since my dad and brother are in Hong Kong right now.  Did I mention I work for the family business?  Well I do and I think its great experience its just that I miss those days when you can curl up and sleep even though you have school.  The fact that I feel sleepy right now doesn’t help.  Maybe I’ll do that later after lunch…if its still raining..or if I’m still sleepy.  Thats the perk of a family business, afternoon naps!

People tend to think that its an unfair advantage to have a family business since us “kids” can just take over when its time.  But its not that easy.  Even if you are a COO (Child of Owner) you got it hard.  I’ve been working or rather helping out since I was around six years old.  My dad was a general contract/developer back in the US at that time. Every weekend we would go to the site of whatever project he had at the time and help out.  He would check things out and do things that he could and we would help out.  Sometimes we would be sweeping the building and getting it ready to get turned over.  Although, now that I think about I couldn’t have been much help at the age of six. :p

Well I really need to work now..:)

*was supposed to post this in the morning but I got disconnected.. *

Eheh

Yes I’ve totally abandoned this place again.  Works been keeping me busy during the days.  By evening I’ll poop-ed out from work and will instead watch tv, attempt to make softies, or play around with some Sculpey.  Okay so basically I’ve been ignoring this place.  But I got frustrated with me would be last post (I didnt get to post it) coz it took to long to upload pics.  I blame it all on our crappy interent connection.  We really need to upgrade the speed.

Sorry, I won’t be continuing with my Beijing posts since I’m still disappointed with not uploading pics.  Maybe in the far future I’ll feel like posting the rest of it.

So when my bro came back from the US, last June, he came bearing gifts!  I was very happy to finally hold in my hands the books I ordered from Amazon, courtesy of my mom’s card (^_^).  I got three books: Doodle Stitching, Softies Kit and Bend-the-Rules Sewing. I also got 2 boxes of white Sculpey.

Did I mention I got bit by the crafting bug?  Well I did…and very badly.   Now I want to do any craft that I can possible get my hands on. Thats why I got the crafting books and polymer clay.  Hehe.

Well its lunch should go eat.

Till my next post. (hopefully within the month) hehe

Beijing Day 1, Part I

I wanted to start posting about my trip with pictures but my brother took the camera with him to Baguio.  So my first post of my Beijing series will have to be picture-less. 

So as I said in my last post, I went on a 4 day 3 night trip to Beijing, China.  We got the tour through Sunhong travel agency at Nueva St. in Binondo, who got the tour from Panda.  Panda travel agency is supposed to be the main travel agency that does China tours and all the other agencies just group with them. 

The flight from Manila to Beijing was around 4-5 hours, can’t remember the exactly.  The plane was small and cramped, one of the most cramped flights I’ve been on. The setup of the seats were three seats on each side and around 35-40 rows of seats when there should have only been around 30.  There was very little leg room, even for me (4′11).  On top of the small plan, the flight was fully booked so we were all sitting elbow to elbow.  Well it didn’t really matter that it was cramped since I was sound asleep for most of the flight .

We got to Beijing around 11 or so and boy was I surprised.  The airport, the old one, didn’t look that old and the look was pretty modern.  We found our tour group which was composed of 3 groups.  Two groups would remain in Beijing only while the 3rd would go to Shanghai after four days.  There were three tour guides: Rose(I think was her name), Jason, and Frank.  Our group got Frank, who in my opinion was the best out of the three. 

Upon leaving the airport you could see that China was on the boom.  Here and there high-rise Condominiums were being built or were newly finished.  Many of these Condos looked pretty high end too.  I really didn’t expect Beijing to have that many high-rises.  Oh the streets, they were so wide and are lined with trees on both sides and the center island as well!  Some of the islands were so wide that they were used as parks. As my brother said it was much like Park Avenue, Manhattan.  Such a difference compared to here in the Philippines.  But similar to here, crossing the streets are somewhat difficult.

We went to eat lunch at this restaurant thats supposed to be well known, not sure.  It was around 5 floors and there were lots of pictures of Actors and Actresses that have eaten there.  The food was simple but satisfying, and this was the only restaurant that we got more than one cup of drinks other than tea.  The soup was flavorless though.  The restroom at the restaurant was nice, although there was only one stall with a toilet and the other two were squat style. 

After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven…which I will talk about in my next post since I really should get back to work…^.^; hehe

Till then…(hopefully with pics)

Back from Beijing

Last Friday I went to Beijing with my family, minus one of my brothers (he had to stay and take care of the office).  We went on a tour for four days and three night of Beijing, China.  Well the actual touring was only three days since the fourth day, today, we came back.

I’ll talk more about my trip in the next few days.  For now I’m gunna rest up

Till then…

Kicked Alive

Wow haven’t been here in a long time…kinda lost my username and was to lazy to look for it. ^^;  Anyways thanks to Jack (ya happy? :p) for kicking this blog to life again.  Let’s just hope it stays this way.  Alive that is.

 So in the time I’ve been gone I have:

1. gone a two month vacation
2. started work
3. started to think of business ideas
4. read more manga
5. watched more anime
6. made myanimelist ( fayth03.myanimelist.net )
7. read fics
8. read The Secret 

  Thats about it.  Oh about #7 it is a great book.  It totally blew me away and changed how I look at life.  I think everyone should read it. Visit #6 and make your own animelist so we can compare tastes in anime    (lol sounds like an ad or something ^^;)

 Over the time that I was MIA I wrote blogging thoughts on paper hehe.  I’ll post them one of these days.

 Anywho I found this interesting blog about bentos and Japanese food.    Its www.justbento.com. The author has some interesting stuff on her site and all the recipes are around 500 calories   Haven’t tried the recipes but they look good & healthy! It also makes you want to make bentos…so much so that I eat my lunches in bento boxes..^^; Now all I have to do is visit Fujimart to buy some stuff…which I have been planning to do for 2 weeks now.

 Well I leave it here for now…