Life, Take 2

September 19, 2008

Al Jarreau/George Benson Take Manila by Storm (literally!!!)

I am a jazz lover and a child of the 70s/80s in terms of my music taste. There is a wide range of jazz artists I listen to but 2 of my favorites are Al Jarreau and George Benson. When a friend told me that they were holding a one-night concert in Manila, I called up yogini friend Chona who agreed to watch with me. This was my first concert again — in ages!!! And I am not exaggerating!

On the night of September 8, just when Chona and I were waiting to be seated at Italiannis Gateway, the heavens opened and a downpour of cinematic proportions came crashing down on the entire Araneta Coliseum area. Many of those eating dinner at Italiannis, like us, were just waiting for showtime. We even spotted some politicos in nearby tables as well as parents from my sons’ school. Seemed like my generation was coming out in full force to see the power duo of jazz!

Chona and I had Upper A tickets and as we purchased early on, we had a front row view. The show was delayed for half an hour due to the rains but as promised, it started at exactly 8:30 PM. And wow, these 2 did not fail me.

Al Jarreau started out the first set. Is this guy already 68 years old? Well, he belted out songs with the same timbre and versatility he had from decades ago! His vocals were intact! I heard snippets from different songs: “Berimbau”, “Mais Que Nada”, “Agua de Beber”, and even “Girl from Ipanema” sang in that all-too-familiar Jarreau voice like no other. My only disappointment? He did not do “Spain”!!! 🙁

The next set was George Benson and personally, I loved him better because he sang many of the songs I loved: “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You”, “In Your Eyes”, “Give Me the Night”, “Turn Your Love Around”, “Love Times Love”, and others.

If we talk of performance level, Al Jarreau stood out because he had a flair for playing around with his vocals and the songs, being playful with the audience and the band. But in terms of music to my ears, George Benson’s repertoire was IT!

They did a jazz piece together bringing the audience to its feet, clapping, dancing and singing along. And when everyone roared for an encore, they sang “On Broadway”.

The blogger in me wanted to bring a digicam but I was not sure of Araneta’s rules. I should have listened to my instincts! The video snippets I took from my camphone leave much to be desired.

But just to give you an idea of what we experienced the night that the Jarreau/Benson tandem took Manila by storm, here are some of them (warning: the visuals suck with the camphone I had. But the music is still awesome).

Thank you, Al Jarreau & George Benson, for a wonderful, nostalgic trip back to a wonderful time in my life. It was a night I would long remember and relish.

Turn Your Love Around

Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You

In Your Eyes

September 17, 2008

California Pizza Kitchen’s Bloggers Night

Manila’s famous (or more aptly, infamous) rains and floods could not dampen the bloggers’ enthusiasm and determination to attend California Pizza Kitchen’s (CPK) bloggers night at CPK Glorietta 3 last Sept. 10.

It had been raining all day and fiercely at times. Some bloggers were deliberating whether they would still go or not. So I thought that if I left the office at 7pm, I would still be in time for the event. What a surprise met me when I got there a little past 7 pm to see the 2nd floor function room of CPK practically full of bloggers already!

At the registration area, I saw several CPK boxes marked with themes. We were supposed to pick out a theme we wanted. I selected the theme “More Than a Massage” as I was fascinated by its health theme. We found out later that whatever theme we chose corresponded with a new pizza flavor which CPK arranged for us to make.

This was a meet & greet affair. Got to meet Archie Rodriguez, the President of the CPK franchise in the Philippines.

Also had time to chat up emcee RJ Ledesma. I told RJ that I knew he was a yoga teacher and first saw him at Vinyasa. When I introduced myself as the one behind the yoga blog, The Yogini from Manila, it turned out he actually heard of my blog. There and then, we began chatting like 2 people who found something common to talk about.

Later, I also met Brad Geiser, one of the partners behind Geiser Maclang which prepared this event for CPK. I had long wanted to meet Brad who was just a buddy on a social networking site. Another buddy on that network was Jen who was there with her husband Stan.

An eyeball with Jen who I only knew as "jencc" for the longest time — An eyeball with Jen "jencc"

It was a night of pure fun. I think most of the bloggers there were a lot younger so you can imagine the energy filling the room.

We watched a video about CPK’s beginnings. Gift certificates were later given to those who successfully answered the trivia questions. Next, we were asked to decorate our CPK boxes (they dumped art supplies on each table like colored glue, ribbons, decals, crayons, etc) with the best PICK-UP LINE we could think of. This was really hilarious because these bloggers turned out to have really HOT minds! For the life of me, I could not think of any pick-up line. I began with one that said “Taste Heaven With Me” but stopped after seeing that this was sooo tame compared to some others. Haha…

The best part, at least for me, was when we made our own pizzas depending on the theme we chose. Very aptly, my pizza was the Thai Chicken one, which was so healthy because of its ingredients: scallions, chicken, bean sprouts, carrots and peanuts AND garnished with cilantro. I started out with a pizza crust, then one by one added the ingredients with the help of CPK’s friendly staff. My finished pizza was then marched off to be cooked in a hearth oven (the secret to the delicious CPK taste).

My pizza BEFORE it is cooked — My pizza BEFORE it was baked

The pizza I made! — My Thai Chicken pizza after it was baked

Next time you visit CPK, try one of their other pizza flavors:

1. BBQ Chicken Pizza – the most popular pizza and one of the original recipes of the founders

2. Greek Pizza – made from Mediterranean spiced grilled chicken and Mozzarella cheese, topped with a chilled Greek salad of cucumbers, red onions, fresh tomatoes, Greek olives, Feta cheese and lemon-herb vinaigrett and served with homemade Tzatziki sauce and chopped Italian parsley

3. Jamaican Jerk Chicken – made from grilled Jamaican Jerk spiced chicken breast with spicy sweet Caribbgean sauce, Mozzarella cheese, applewood smoked bacon, mild onions, roasted red & yellow peppers and green onions

4. Cajun Pizza – made from blackened chicken and spicy Andouille sausage with Creole sauce, roasted red and yellow peppers, mild onions and Mozzarella cheese

Here are more pics of the night:

September 13, 2008

Mooncakes and the Mid-Autumn Festival

Tomorrow, September 14, is officially the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the August Moon or Ghost Month). This period changes from year to year and does not fall into the August western calendar.

These past weeks, mooncakes (locally referred to as hopia) had been selling all over Chinese stores again. While the daily fare hopia is available year round, these special mooncakes come in all kinds of variety (with nuts, one egg, 2 eggs, watermelon seeds, fruits and newer variants).

The origin of the mooncake is quite interesting. In Wikipedia, its history is given as follows:

Mooncakes were used as a medium by the Ming revolutionaries in their espionage effort to secretly distribute letters in order to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China in the Yuan dynasty. The idea is said to be conceived by Zhu Yuanzhang and his advisor Liu Bowen, who circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading and the only way to prevent it was to eat the special mooncakes. This prompted the quick distribution of the mooncakes, which were used to hide a secret message coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month.

Another method of hiding the message was printed in the surface of mooncakes as a simple puzzle or mosaic. In order to read the encrypted message, each of the 4 mooncakes packaged together must be cut into 4 parts each. The 16 pieces of mooncake, must then be pieced together in such a fashion that the secret messages can be read. The pieces of mooncake are then eaten to destroy the message.

Year after year during this time, we buy boxes and boxes of mooncakes and give them out to the kids’ teachers, family members and friends. Even my officemates get to taste these. It is a tradition we happily celebrate. It has become so popular that once, when I gave a couple of boxes of buco pie to a Jesuit priest in one of the kids’ schools, he happily exclaimed that he finally had something DIFFERENT from the mounds of mooncakes he received.

The kids really look forward to these mooncake dice games. Six (6) dice are thrown into a deep bowl and depending on the number combination, you win mooncakes (hopia) starting from the small ones (about 1 inch in diameter) to the humongous grand prize of a hopia which is about 8 inches in diameter.

Not all Chinese observe this game as this is a tradition common to Xiamen in Southern Fujian Province. In fact, C1’s friends from Guangzhou (Guangdong Province) do not know about this! Most Pinoys of Chinese heritage come from Xiamen though, the reason for its popularity over here.

Since the kids’ schools used to hold these games in their classrooms, we thought of doing the same at home. Every year, we would invite different Pinoy friends over to introduce them to the tradition and we would have a whole night of clean fun, laughter and what have you.

For the first 3 years, we would just buy the mooncakes (actually large hopias) from the Chinese store. Later, we decided to change and spice up the game a bit by giving away practical items instead. One year, it was school supplies. Another year, kitchen items. Another year, home items. Once, we had everyone bring white elephant items as prizes.

Circumstances this year may not allow us to host this game. Schedules and concerns about my father-in-law’s health condition may make this a more somber time. But there will be other occasions to do so. And I hope that the kids, when they grow up, will remember this annual tradition and make it a special time in their own families.

September 12, 2008

Concert for Tara Santelices (Sept. 24, 2008)

By now, many of you have heard of, read about, or even blogged about Tara Santelices, the girl who was shot in the head during a jeepney holdup.

I have been remiss in posting this but I hope to make up now because friends and family of Tara are putting up a concert for this brave young lady.

The latest news I gathered from the blog of my friend Cathy is that Tara is now able to open her right eye and yawn. Baby miracles give us hope that one day we may witness THE BIG ONE for Tara. All these are by God’s grace and in His time. Meanwhile, you can do your bit for Tara by supporting the concert.

Tickets are available at the door.

September 8, 2008February 1, 2023

Experiencing WordCamp Philippines 2008

September 6 marked a milestone in blogging history in the Philippines as the first WordCamp in the entire Southeast Asia was hosted by none other than the Philippines (specifically Davao and Manila).

With most of my blogs on the WordPress platform AND with Mr. WordPress himself, Matt Mullenweg coming to the event, there was NO WAY I was going to miss this event! Even the ADMU-DLSU UAAP games took second place (even if only for a few hours!

Mica rode along with me to the venue site, the College of St. Benilde. We exchanged our campers passes for real badges (complete with barcode scanning!). I was excited to meet Ria and Blogie again and met Gwen for the first time (although we had been Plurk buddies already for some time).

Wordcamp 2008 registration — Registration table complete with barcode scanners to record attendance

We opened with a plenary session that had the head of CSB and Blogie welcoming all the campers.While all this was going on, I spotted Matt sitting a few rows behind me and took this shot of Mr. WordPress —

and here —

The morning sessions were breakaway ones, depending on whether you were on the user or developer track. Obviously, I chose the user track.

My first session was Blogging 102 with Jayvee.

Several of us almost did not make it to Jayvee’s talk because we were told to go to Rm. 409. There we were, sitting in this room for over 10 minutes when Shari came dashing into the room to tell us we were in the wrong room! Apparently, there was ANOTHER Rm. 409 in another wing of the building! Yikes…we all half walked, half ran to the right room and thankfully still caught a great part of Jayvee’s talk which was so well prepared and so educational.

My 2nd session was with Ely Apao who spoke on Organizing and Optimizing Your WordPress Blog. A lot of what he spoke about affected those who were on WordPress.org so I could not relate to all of them but I did take down some notes and took pictures of some of his presentation and am filing it away somewhere for future reference.

The 3rd session for the morning was one of the most hilarious but very informative sessions — Video Blogging by Kring Elenzano.

Kring produces videos and took us through the pros and cons of video blogging (vlogging), how to make a vlog “kick-ass” as she called it. Her presentation was done in a very humorous way (combined of course with spiels from Kring that can only come from….Kring — including a not-to-be-named comment that got us laughing because she did not realize she was being live-streamed. But I did take pics of every slide she put up because they were filled with great tips (including where lights should be positioned so the subject comes out as well as how to reduce noise and amplify the subject’s voice). I absolutely did not regret going to this particular session!!

After a Chowking lunch, I made my way back to the auditorium for the afternoon plenary sessions.

Matt was first in line, regaling us first with interesting stats on the use of WordPress in the Philippines. (Trivia: Did you know that the Philippines ranked #24 worldwide in terms of WordPress users?)

He also talked about the future of WordPress including a live demo of WP version 2.7 which is coming out in November. WOW! We were all eyes and ears!

Aileen (aka Ms. Google Philippines) took us next through Google Analytics (very interesting things you can find about your blog, where visitors come from, what converts more visitors to your site, etc). I think I will spend the next few weeks learning more about this one!

A few more sessions followed after this. Matt later came back on for a Q&A portion (a much awaited opportunity for the campers to ask questions of THE MAN OF THE HOUR). Unfortunately, I could not stay long as the car was already coming for me. I missed the photo op with Matt but came away with a WP bag filled with goodies from the sponsors. And had a chance to get Ria (one of the Mindanao bloggers) to myself for this —

Thanks to the Mindanao bloggers who spearheaded this event. You managed to pull this thing off with aplomb! Looking forward to our next WordCamp Philippines!!!

Here’s some link love to people who blogged about WordCamp (I “stole” an initial list from AJ who likewise got it from Jehzlau) and added as I came across other posts:

The Old Media Coverage:
1. WordPress developer previews new version in RP by Inquirer.net
2. WordPress enthusiasts meet for WordCamp by GMANews.tv
3. WordPress Developer lauds RP blogging community by Alexander Villafania
4. WordPress Creator on the future of RP Blogging Community by Inquirer.net

Some WordCamp Photos from WordCampers:
1. WordCamp Philippines 2008 by Jehzeel Laurente
2. WordCamp 2008 Photos by Jayvee Fernandez
3. First WordCamp in Southeast Asia by Hannah Rika Villasis
4. WordCamp Philippines 2008 by Tess Termulo
5. WordCamp Philippines by Ada Lajara
6. WordCamp 2008 by Regnard Raquedan
7. WordCamp Philippines 2008 by AJ Matela
8. WordCamp at Benilde by Normz
9. WordCamp Philippines 2008 by Micaela Rodriguez
10. WordPress Philippines 2008 by Shari
11. WordCamp Philippines by Sofimi
12. WordCamp Philippines 2008 by Andrew Dela Serna
13. WordCamp Candy by Flair Candy

August 26, 2008August 28, 2011

My Life Notebook

An old University notebook. Over 2 decades old. Pages yellow with age. But within those pages are compilations I did while taking my postgraduate degree in the States — topics that were important to me then:

One of my Singaporean school friends, Chew, first introduced me to his calligraphy pens with which he wrote Chinese calligraphy & poems. I was intrigued and fascinated with the pens which had several interchangeable nibs so you could write fine and thicker strokes.

On one shopping trip, I scouted for one, rejoiced when I found exactly what I was looking for, and took it home.

That was the start of a 2-year collection of sayings that I got from books, newspapers, magazines, any source. If the saying struck me, it went into this notebook.

I keep this red notebook close to me these days. In a night table drawer right beside my bed. I took it out earlier tonight and leafed through some pages. As this is a very thick university notebook, there are still many, many blank pages. I think I was meant to have these empty pages left because now, there is a strong desire growing in me to take it out of hibernation and begin writing in its pages once more — this time as a more mature woman.

Will the sayings I collect from now on be different from the ones I used to collect? Which ones will still hold true for me? The idea of putting in ONE place the sayings that struck me in my youth as well as those that have meaning for me now is fascinating!

My only regret is that I did not bring my calligraphy pens home. I would now have to go out and scout around the bookstores once again to see if I can find one to write this part of life with.

Let me share 2 pages from my life notebook with you. I actually have ANOTHER notebook in that night table of mine. But that is a collection of poems I wrote myself in different situations while abroad. But that is for another post….

This is my wish for all of us: that we LIVE life to the fullest, LOVE passionately and unconditionally, and LAUGH heartily.