Jaws

I don't remember how old I was when we watched the movie Jaws. I don't even know why we watched the movie and who was with me when I watched it. All I remember was that there many of the scenes meant to scare the living daylights out of you (yikes!), while others were there to gross you out with people's body parts getting bitten off left and right, complete with blood and gore (yuck!). And worst of all, I remember having a nightmare that night wherein a big shark attacked through my bedroom window and followed me as I ran through the hall towards our kitchen and dining room.

I can honestly say that I am not a huge shark fan.

In spite all that, the past week has reintroduced me to sharks.

It started with a birthday gift to RD. Mumoffive and family gave him a 3D shark puzzle for his birthday. It was sitting in his room all summer until Z came to visit. They decided it would be a good project to work on while she was here (and not at the library). They looked for a box with a big enough surface to work on and cleared one side of the living room floor. Then out came the puzzle pieces.

They managed to get the sides connected on the first night. After a while, the shark in the middle was formed. Over the next couple of days, the puzzle started to take shape. The pieces were organized by shape and orientation. There were 'verticals,' 'horizontals,' 'standing up people,' 'lying down people,' 'triples,' 'doubles,' and the elusive 'cheese piece.' Since it is a 3D puzzle, the surface had vertical ridges which helped identify which way the puzzle piece was to go.

As the more discernible pieces got fit into the puzzle, the more obscure ones were left. RD was surprised at how I would pick up one puzzle piece and return it with at least four other pieces connected to it. At a certain point, he forbade me from working on the puzzle because he wanted to be sure he was around when the last piece was put in.

What can I say? I have way more experience than he does. And I am a very patient, persistent and persevering person. A 500-piece puzzle, which practically tells you whether the piece is vertical or horizontal, is a piece of cake compared to the ones we've made in the past.

On Sunday, when the puzzle was completed, we had gone off by bus to the Sydney Observatory then walked to Circular Quay and ridden the ferry to Darling Harbour. When we got off, RD saw a huge poster advertising a free exhibit on Sharks: Predator or Prey. He said he wanted to check it out.

We missed passing by the National Maritime Museum that day so when we did the Hop On, Hop Off Sightseeing tour last Tuesday, we made sure to hop off the bus when we reached the Maritime Museum so we could see the exhibit.

I'd be perfectly happy even if I don't see another shark in my life. This shot is enough to last a lifetime.

Bridging the Gap

RD and MyGirl (25 January 2011)

Guess Who Clue

Perry the Platypus plush toy and t-shirt c/o Eldest Sis.

Oh, pardon me, it is not just any Perry Plush Toy,

it's a Transforming Perry.

(Super big THANKS for our care package!!! It arrived yesterday.)

Still can't figure out who these are?

____\">____C"/_____

Click here for the answer.

Guess Who?

____\">____C"/_____

Time to Smell the Sampaguitas

I grew up in a house full of books. Reading was hobby, not a chore. The books in our house could probably surpass that of a small library in terms of the selection as well as the number of books to be found.

Over the years, I bought more books for us, mainly cookbooks and religious books for myself and children's books for the kids. To give you an idea of the number of books we had, aside from the three bookcases (in Makati at one point), there were books stashed away in boxes, plastic crates and drawers both in Makati and Cebu Avenue.

When we moved to Australia, our books were among our prized possessions. I remember that as we were packing, I asked the children to segregate the books they wanted to bring and the books they were willing to give away. I ended up with two tall KEEP piles and two or three books in the GIVE AWAY pile.

Much as I would have wanted to take all our books with us, it was physically impossible and financially challenging to do so. In the end, I packed away many and left a lot. We had at least 4 boxes/crates filled with books that were shipped along with our things. (Yeah, yeah, most of them were mine.)

By the time we'd moved into our rental and our shipping boxes arrived, we were fortunate enough to have inherited one bookshelf. I thought I'd be home all day, so the cookbooks and the Sinag-Tala books got the shelf space.

I have been wanting to take an inventory of the books we have in the house because I honestly don't remember which books we brought and which ones we left behind. Last night, I decided to START taking the inventory. I sat down in front of the linen closet with a small laptop and brought out one of the HP boxes of books stored in there. I pulled out books from the box in mini-piles at a time and started an excel file to get my inventory going.

There were about six low stacks of books inside the box (which once held a CPU). I managed to get four stacks into my excel, reaching seventy records. I guess I got distracted because I found something of special interest to me. Of the 70 books I keyed into the inventory, there was only one book in particular that I felt like reading -- Time to Smell the Sampaguitas.

This is a very special book. You cannot find this book in any bookstore, anywhere in the world. There is a very limited number of copies of this autobiography. I don't even know how many copies of this book exists. But surely, there are at least ten.

I brought the book along with me today and read it on the bus going home. I loved reading it. It brought a lot of smiles and gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I marvel at the author's writing style. She describes her life growing up in the farm (Chapter 1). She uses words and phrases which border on poetic. She manages to document her life and express her thoughts and feelings with such clarity and vividness.

She incorporated stories about her family life which were funny and memorable. She wrote about how she and her future husband were reunited after she came home from the States. She gave a run down of her children, all ten of them, adding a sprinkling of stories about each one. She didn't whitewash her history nor her personality. She said it as she saw it. She wrote it as she felt it.

I can't quite figure out when she wrote this book. (Late 1980's or early 1990's perhaps?) I wish I could because then I would be able to tell her exactly how many years it took before one of her dreams came true.

On page 43 of her book when she talks about the family tradition of circulating a birthday list of needs and wants, she writes what hers would be like -- " a chapter of a book" or "a clean room".

I have to mention that "clean" is relative but "a chapter" is tangible. So it is entirely possible that she got her 'clean' room (not the quote location) early on. The dream come true I am talking about here is the 'chapter of the a book'.

I couldn't help but smile because FINALLY, after possibly 20 years of waiting (asking, reminding, prodding, and anything short of bribing), she was able to get the chapters of her dreams as we her children kept our noses to the grindstone and produced a chapter each, as per request.

The sequel of sorts to Time to Smell the Sampaguitas will be Rainbow Run.

Hope you are practicing what you preach, Mother.

Relax. Relax. Smell the sampaguitas.

Breakfast is Served

MyGirl is making french toast for breakfast. She is seated in front of the electric hot plates with a spatula on hand.

I hear her say, "Oh man. Oh, man! OH, MAN!!" with increasing urgency.

I look up and see that as she is transferring our breakfast from the pan to the platter, her french toast is missing the serving platter.

I tell her that her problem is that she is limited by the distance between her spatula and the platter in the hopes that she will ditch the stool and stand up like regular people cooking breakfast.

She has a mind of her own. She moves the platter closer.

Smart girl.

She finished making breakfast without giving up her seat.

Three - Step French Toast (good for 4 to 5 slices of bread)

1. Whisk together one egg, 1/4 c condensed milk and 1/3 c water.

2. Dip both sides of bread in milk-egg mixture.

3. Fry in hot butter until golden brown, flipping bread once to brown other side.

Our breakfast chef.

(Looking at this picture reminds of London Eye because MyGirl looks like she is seated on a throne.

London Eye played Lucy in one of Christmas plays and she waved to her queendom.)

More O Christmas Tree

While I was looking through some stuff, I found this ...

(aren't my boys adorable?)

which of course, led to this ...

(oh ... still so cute!)

Mind you, I had to WAIT to get this shot.

I grabbed my camera and went downstairs as soon as I found the old photo.

However, GI was in the middle of a PC game.

He promised to call me when he was ready for a photo shoot.

(Humph!)

(Bah! Humbug!)

True to his word, he came up after a couple of minutes

and announced that he was ready.

Ü

O Christmas Tree

The tradition of trimming the Christmas tree was something I loved as a child. We always had a fairly tall Christmas tree set up in one of the corners of the living room at Cebu Avenue. The Christmas tree itself was stored somewhere downstairs while the boxes with our Christmas ornaments were stashed in the cabinet in the study room above our pigeon holes.

Once Mother decreed that the tree was to be set up, the tree would be brought upstairs and the Christmas decor would be brought down.

Assembling the Christmas tree would require sorting the branches by size. The longer ones belong on the lower part of the tree while the shorter ones would go towards the top. These were laid out on the floor of the living room the connected to the tree trunk. (As the years wore on and the plastic got brittle, some of the branches needed slings to keep them up. Eventually the tree looked like a scene from a World War 2 movie and Father decided it was time to get a replacement.)

Over the years, we managed to gather an assortment of Christmas ornaments. There never seemed to be a rhyme or a reason to our decoration but there was always much love that went into decorating the tree. I took a picture of our Christmas tree almost every year. (I just don't know where that set is anymore. Maybe one day I will find those pictures.)

When I got married and moved out of Cebu Avenue, it is quite possible that for our first Christmas we didn't even purchase a tree. GI was only three months old then and we didn't think he'd mind if we didn't have a tree. Besides, most of the Christmas season was spent at Quezon City anyway.

I do remember that when GI was one year old, we purchased Christmas lights because GI loved watching them blink. Eventually we got a small tree to put the lights on. By the time RD arrived, our Christmas tree was in full swing with Christmas lights that played a selection of Christmas carols. What MyGirl remembers is the beautiful star that went on top of our tree.

Growing up, we would find gifts from siblings, parents and Santa under our Christmas tree. For GI, RD and MyGirl, the trees with the most number of gifts for them have always been outside our house. These would be gifts from the grandparents, the uncles and the aunts. In Manila, we would always be at Project 7 (MacGyver's parents' place) on Christmas eve then we'd be at my parents' place at Cebu Avenue for Christmas morning and most of Christmas Day. Now that we are in Australia, Christmas (and similar occasions) are spent at the house of close relations. As a result, the tree at home doesn't have the same impact on the children as it did on me as a child.

Nonetheless, there would be no excuse not to put up a Christmas tree at home. We got a nice hand-me-down tree with some Christmas decor last year after we arrived. I surprised the family about a week before Christmas and set up the tree one evening. I put the Christmas balls we had brought from Manila and added a star I had purchased when I was on leave last November. I let the kids add whatever other decor they wanted.

I have to admit, at times I do wish that I could give the children more, especially on Christmas. But it warms my heart to see that they happily accept the modest gifts we are able to offer them.

Maybe in the years to come I will put more thought into the decorating of the Christmas tree. For now, I will just enjoy the Christmas tree other people put up to see.

This one is at the Queen Victoria Building across my office. The QVB has three floors. At the ground floor, you can only see the base of the tree. You would have to be at the second or third floor of the building to see the star on top of the tree.

Here is the tree from the second floor looking up...
... and looking down.

This is a 'close up' of the top of the tree taken from the third floor.

(08 Jan 2011)

I decided I wanted to take a few extra shots of the Queen Victoria Building Christmas tree just to show how beautiful it is.

This is the base of the tree ...

while this shows the tree from top to bottom.

The Last Day of Christmas

Counting from Christmas, 06 January is the twelfth day. When we were younger, the feast of the Epiphany was celebrated on that day. Somehow, that seemed to mark the end of the Christmas season back then. Perhaps it was usually the time when we would have to go back to school.

Considering we are still within the octave of Christmas, let me share this interesting video from youtube. I know I may be a tad behind watching this youtube video (the view counter had 4,450,940 by the time I got to it) but am posting it here just in case you missed it.

It may seem kind of funny seeing how the nativity would have unfolded in the modern day but the truth is many of the past traditions are changing. I have noticed that not too many people send Christmas cards nowadays. These have largely been replaced by text or email messages in the past years. And now, even text and email messages have been replaced with generic FaceBook greetings.

I must admit that I have never been one to send Christmas cards so I am quite thankful that technology has not only enabled me to send out my Christmas letter on time this year (with a family picture to boot) but it has also given me a chance to receive dozens of greetings from family and friends.

Hope you had a great Christmas.

It's a New Year

Welcome 2011!!

It is our Lady's Feast Day today. It is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. I was able to go to the 8am mass. Apparently, 01 January is not a holy day of obligation here in Australia and different holy days of obligation are observed here.

For info, the holy days of obligation in Australia are:

• the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
• the Epiphany
• the Ascension of Christ
• the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
• the Assumption of Mary the Mother of God

Apparently, when Assumption falls on a Saturday or a Monday, no obligation is attached to the feast for that year. On the other hand, the Feast of the Ascension is transferred to the 7th Sunday of Easter; while the feasts of the Epiphany, the Body and Blood of Christ and the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul are transferred to the following Sunday.

I was surprised that 08 December, which was a big feast day in the home country, is also not a holy day of obligation here. I remember staying home from school on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception for years and years when we were in grade school at St. Scholastica's. This was wonderful for us because 08 December was Father and Mother's anniversary, so there was extra reason to celebrate.

I now realise that the reason why 08 December was so special is because under the title of the Immaculate Conception, Mary is the principal patroness of the Philippines. Australia's patroness is Mary Help of Christians.

I learned today that it was Pope Paul VI (in 1968) who initiated the celebration of the first day of the year to be observed as "The Day of Peace," in connection to New Year's Day and Mary's role as Queen of Peace. Then in 1974, he moved to 01 January the Feast of the Divine Motherhood of Mary, which was formerly celebrated on 11 October.

I was surprised to hear that these changes were done so recently. Imagine, I was alive at that time albeit rather clueless to such things.

I suppose as each New Year begins, everyone is given a fresh start. We can look at things with a different perspective and do our best to make things better.

Happy New Year, everyone.