Call for Keeping the Tradition Alive =D

December is here. It's the first time I won't be home for Christmas. I was asked by my Secret Santa what I missed the most from home and what my Christmas must-haves are, which got me thinking of all the things I used to do and all the people I used to see over the holiday season.

Some things, I'm sure I won't miss, like the heavy traffic and all the last-minute Christmas shoppers, feeling the sweat of and rubbing elbows (among other things, literally) with the entire Metro Manila population who always manage to be shopping where I decided to shop that day.

But a whole lot of things I will surely miss. Aside from the obvious, family and friends, I'll miss stuff like cheap clothes, shoes, bags and wallets at Greenhills, Christmas lights everywhere you look, up, down, left, right and center. I'll miss tuneless Christmas carollers who just yell out carols and get mad at us for pretending that we don't celebrate Christmas. I'll miss all the Christmas parties, dinners and get-togethers and all the food people always complain about that make them gain so much weight during the season.

But one thing that dawned on me that I won't be able to do or have this Christmas, is to have countless cups of coffee with friends and come up with every excuse in the book to grab a cup of coffee just so I could collect stickers and save up for the new Starbucks Planner. hehehe

So to anyone who would like to get me a gift this Christmas, the 2008 Starbucks Planner would be a great gift!

Homesickness F**king Sucks!

If I get it all down on paper,

it's no longer inside of me,

Threatening the life it belongs to

- Breathe, Anna Nalick

I've been feeling homesick for the past week. There are so many things back home that I'm really missing right now. On lazy nights, as I lay on my bed, it gets me thinking if I made the right decision in coming to a far off place with no friends and family to get me through times like these. But I just always manage to sleep it off and when I wake up, it's all good again.

But this time, it's somewhat different. I can't seem to shake it off. I just keep thinking of stuff I miss and stuff I'm missing out on. So just to get it all out of my system, I decided to write a list of what I miss (and therefore now greatly appreciate having all the while).

I miss my family and having the support system they provide!
I miss my friends and having people who understand me even when I don't say a word!
I miss my home and having a place I'm confident and happy to call my own!
I miss my car and being able to go wherever and whenever I want (free gas too =D)!
I miss my room and everything that's in there!
I miss Manang and Melody and how life is soooo much easier with them around!
I miss the food! As in! It's not even funny! (I shouldn't really list all the food I miss coz it would take me forever!)
I miss watching movies and the processing after! hehehe
I miss roadtrips and the crazy stuff that goes on and the weird games we play in the car!

I miss tambay, just chatting over coffee and talking about whatever!

In Lieu of Christmas Dinner

Every year for the past five or six years, we have had a thanksgiving dinner every Christmas season just to spend time and catch up with each other. This year, however, given the distance between us all, regretfully, we won't be able to sit at a table together and share wonderful stories and insights of the year that passed. (as if! hehehe) or at least we won't be able to laugh with (not at :D) Ganter! (I love you Gantz!)

But just to keep this wonderful tradition going just long enough till we all find our way back home, Aloy and I have set up a virtual Secret Santa, if you will, at a website called Elfster.com, an online service that will allow us to do our annual Kris Kringle even if we are all miles away from each other. Gifts can be anything from photo montages, e-cards, powerpoint presentations to actual post cards or Christmas cards, or you can actually send a gift through the post. (Well, if you're both in Manila, i-abot mo na lang.)

So if you want to join, email or YM me or Aloy your email address so we can send you an invitation. The website will be drawing names on Friday, November 16, 2007. Hopefully, emails/gifts will be exchanged on or before Christmas. :D

Game Nights

Once in a while, we have game nights in the house. Tegan usually brings over a game for all of us to play and we spend the entire night sitting around on the lounge room floor playing our hearts out. It's like a speed bump that slows their fast-paced lives down, even for a night.

The first game we played was Scattergories. It comes with a dice that has letters of the alphabet on its sides and a list of categories. When the dice is rolled, the timer starts and you have to write a word starting with that letter for every category in the list. When the timer goes off, the players would compare their answers and if you have a unique answer, you get a point. It was really fun and at a few times we were just laying on the floor laughing so hard we developed ab muscles. :D

The other game we played is the interactive DVD version of an Australian quiz show on TV called Spicks and Specks. This game tests your knowledge of music and the music industry. It's like the game Cranium but all about music. There's a game where you'd have to get your teammate to guess the song you're singing but you had to substitute the lyrics to a book you were reading (and of course, Nadia's textbook from cooking school to the tune of YMCA was hilarious!!!!).

Just wanted to share! hehehe

Great Day for the Beach!

As with a lot of Wednesdays, we all got today off and have been planning to go to the beach since Sunday. We'll bring the dogs, bring a picnic basket, have a barbecue and just hang-out! It's going to be a lot of fun!!! So at 10 a.m., I got woken up by a phone call telling me to get ready for the beach. I looked up and the sun decided to come out. Yipee!!!

Three hours later, Mel and I are still in the lounge room waiting to go to the beach. When we finally get all our stuff together, and the dogs, we were off. In the 45 minutes we drove to the beach, the sun decided to go back to bed and the rain started to come out and play with the wind!

So when we got out to the beach we were freezing cold and dripping wet. But we still ran around in the rain and played fetch with the dogs. It was a lot of fun. It was different, not your normal preconceived notion of a day at the beach. My housemates said it was an Aussie thing since they do everything backwards... but of course, it's not.

An Answer to a Great Friend

I was reading one of my friend's blogs and he was asking a question about friendships and how they fare against distance and time. I've always thought friendships are phases in one's life and friends are the people with whom you share mere parts of your life while you share parts of theirs. All good things never last, right? And realistically, of all the people we've met, and will meet, in the span of our lives, however long that period of time might be, it would be impossible to sustain a level of friendship with them all. Personally, I couldn't and wouldn't be able to do it because I'd be spreading myself thin. It just takes too much effort.

Thinking back, I guess I've lost a lot of friends because I just wasn't prepared to put in the effort needed to sustain relationships with certain people. Although sometimes I really wish I wasn't lazy one night and went out with them or too caught up in my own world to even send a message.

As a twisted mind's reply to whoever's asking, for me, the level of friendship two people share is just what they both want it to be. If both parties still put in an effort into the relationship, then they're sweet. If not, then whatever right? There are billions and billions of people in the world. My only fear is not losing good friends, but letting the great ones just slip away.

**This is unsolicited advice: an answer to a great friend!