Archive for May, 2008

I’m going home, after all

May 19th, 2008
{ 31 Comments }

It’s almost 6:00AM and I still can’t sleep. Yes, I am going home to the Philippines after a couple of years, but not to have a grand vacation. How I wish that’s the case…

It’s been a few hours since I received the news about my father. At about 10:00PM (Philippine Time) last night, my father had a cardiac arrest and he didn’t make it to the hospital. I just talked to him on the phone yesterday morning… How I wish God allowed my father to live until my planned vacation on October. How I wish my father waited until I could treat him and my mother to a vacation here in Japan. How I wish I could take him to Australia, the U.S., to anywhere God sends me to. We haven’t had a Christmas for years when we’re all together. We haven’t even taken another family picture since I was 5 years old. I wish…

We couldn’t do anything but weep and endure this numbing pain. There’s nothing we can do but have faith and believe that we are all in God’s hands.

Dear friends, thank you for extending your condolences. Thank you all for your comforting words and for the prayers.

In honor of the greatest father in the whole world, here’s his life story:
My Father, Our Hero

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Family

Photohunt: Candy

May 17th, 2008
{ 14 Comments }

Here’s my usual junk food supply. I make sure that I have salty and sweet ones. (cheese sticks, curry-flavored Pringles, KitKat, chewing gum, and mochi candies).

A closer look at Japanese (mochi) candies:
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Cute Bacteria?

May 16th, 2008
{ 3 Comments }

A colleague told me about the anime Moyashimon (??????. Tadayasu Sawaki, the main character, is a freshman at an agricultural university. Tadayasu can see and communicate with microorganisms. The anime is really funny and educational as well. In here, you can see the cutest bacteria ever:


The opening theme is very cute, too. I am actually planning to buy one of those stuffed microbes. :D
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Anime ,

Thursday Thirteen #17

May 15th, 2008
{ 10 Comments }

It’s been more than a month since I’ve posted my last Thursday Thirteen. I’m glad I’ve got the mood to write my list again. :)

I’ll reveal some of the steps I’ve taken to battle off an enemy for over a decade: acne. I was so desperate (and still am), that I even did some idiotic unique things just to get rid of it.

(1) I’ve been using Shiseido’s Pimplit for a few months. So far, so good.

(2) I heard from a friend that Cutina, an over-the-counter medication here in Japan, is effective. But I guess it really depends on some physical factors, because I think it made my acne worse.

(3) When my father was still working in Saudi Arabia, he often brought home Magic Cream. But my father’s now retired, I ran out of supply, and it became hard to find that certain brand (I forgot the brand name).

(4) Natural Living’s Aloe Vera Jelly was also effective and I can’t remember why I stopped using it.

(5) A friend from college used Chin Chun Su beauty cream. In a way, it helped minimize the pimples but it made my face and my neck skin abnormally lighter than my arms’ and it felt weird so I stopped using it.

(6) San-ing Cream also had the same effects as the Chin Chun Su.

High school days…
(7) I also tried applying aloe vera THE plant. I can’t remember if that was effective, but growing aloe vera wasn’t easy.

(8) Of course I sought the help of the dermatologists but no medication seemed to work!

(9) I think I’ve tried scrubbing my face with every kind of Eskinol. It helped only a little. After all, it’s only a cleanser.

(10) Queens bathe in milk, you say? So I’ve tried washing my face with fresh milk, then leaving it on overnight. It made no difference, aside from the unpleasant smell and the sticky feeling.

(11) Perla soap. To those who are not from the Philippines, Perla is a laundry soap. Many claimed that washing your face with it then leaving it on overnight could eliminate those uglies. But all I got was the burning sensation in my face, sometimes in my eyes!

(12) Face mask from egg whites, then leave them on overnight. How I hated the smell and my scary look when I wake up.

(13) The craziest of all: my mother brought me to an albularyo/folk healer! I was 13 years old at that time and I was made to believe that “curses” might have caused my pimple outbreak! To prevent more outbreaks, I had to wear an amulet! Yep, wear an amulet to prevent pimples. haha! (This is really embarrassing but I can’t help laughing at my stupidity when I think about it. All for acne’s sake!)

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Wordless Wednesday #16

May 14th, 2008
{ 10 Comments }

Taken near Coogee Beach in Sydney, Australia, in March 2006

Check out the Wordless Wednesday HQ
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Friends, Travels

Shall I Celebrate, too?

May 11th, 2008
{ 13 Comments }

Every mother out there knows how hard it is to try to live “normally” far from her child. Believe me, it’s really hard. I’ve been away from my precious Shaynna for almost two years, so I don’t feel at all deserving to be called a mother. Well, technically, I am. But…

Sentiments aside, I just want to greet all of the mothers out there, a Happy Mothers Day!

To Mama Conching, we love you!

Here’s a rare photo of me as a “mom in action” – one of those precious moments when I felt I was really a mother. Shaynna was about 5 months old, and that lovely lady beside me is my mother.


I’ll be in trouble if she finds out about this. If you look closely, she didn’t have her dentures when this was taken.
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Family, Sentiments

Photohunt: Coffee Buddies

May 10th, 2008
{ 11 Comments }

When you’re far from home, it would help a lot if you have someone you can talk to about just anything, over a cup of coffee. But do you know that it’s hard to find a coffee shop here in Osaka that’s open 24 hours? Even the Starbucks cafe in Umeda, Osaka’s main northern railway terminus, is open only up to 2:00AM. The Starbucks cafe closest to my apartment and to the Shin-Osaka station is open only up to 10:00PM! We’re glad to have found this cafe (Travel Cafe) because it closes later than Starbucks. It closes at 11:00PM. :D
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Friends, Photohunt

Inuyasha Genius

May 9th, 2008
{ 5 Comments }
I’ve taken an Inuyasha quiz and here’s what it said:

The inuyasha Test -- Make and Take a Fun Test @ NerdTests.com's User Tests!

I know that cute giant dog beside me is not from Inuyasha. At least it’s a character from the anime I am currently watching. Do you know him? Yep, he’s Sadaharu from Gintama.
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Inuyasha

May 8th, 2008
{ 2 Comments }

One of the main reasons for my absences from the blogging world is Inuyasha (???). Yes, I’m gaga over this anime. The story’s not yet finished but I’m done watching all of the 167 episodes and the 4 movies.

Inuyasha, the main character of this anime, is a hanyou (half-demon, half human). His father was a great warrior and a human-loving demon who died when Inuyasha was still a baby. Later, Inuyasha’s mother died also. As a hanyou, Inuyasha was subjected to discrimination, both from the humans and demons. With the longing to find his place in the world, he sought to be as great as his father.

Then he met and fell in love with Kikyo, a powerful miko (priestess) who guarded the Shikon no Tama (Jewel of the Four Souls/Sacred Jewel). However, Onigumo, who was a paralyzed criminal who was in the care of Kikyo, wanted the Sacred Jewel for himself so he offered his body to a horde of demons. That horde of demons became one and formed Naraku, the main villain of this anime. Naraku then deceived Inuyasha and Kikyo. At that time, Inuyasha and Kikyo agreed to use the Sacred Jewel to turn Inuyasha into human. Naraku took in the form of Inuyasha and tried to kill Kikyo. Because of this, Kikyo went after Inuyasha and fought with him. Inuyasha felt betrayed so he tried to steal the Sacred Jewel. Unfortunately, Kikyo caught up with Inuyasha and sealed him by pinning him with a sacred arrow into the Goshinboku, a tree believed to withstand time. With the fatal injury she got from Naraku, Kikyo died. Before her death, Kikyo ordered Kaede, her younger sister, to burn the Sacred Jewel together with her body.

In the present time (500 years later since Kikyo’s death) , Kagome lived an ordinary 15 year-old schoolgirl life. Her family takes care of the old shrine where the Goshinbuko still stands, and where the Bone Eater’s Well is located. The Bone Eater’s Well connects the present time and the Sengoku period (Inuyasha’s time). One time, Kagome and her brother followed a cat near the Bone Eater’s Well. Kagome fell into the well where a centipede demon attacked her and tried to take the Sacred Jewel which was inside her, while dragging her to the Sengoku period. Trying to escape from the centipede, she came across Inuyasha who had been pinned into the same tree for 50 years. To defeat the centipede, Kagome was left with no choice but to free Inuyasha.

Inuyasha was still determined to get hold of the Sacred Jewel, so to keep him from doing mischiefs, Kaede magically put in the Beads of Subjugation into his neck. With Kagome’s “osuwari” (sit) command, Inuyasha plunges to the ground, pretty much like a dog being forced to sit down.

Then a bird (kind of) demon stole the Sacred Jewel. Trying to retrieve it, Kagome shoot the demon with arrow, killed it, but at the same breaking the Sacred Jewel. Sacred Jewel shards were then scattered, even into the place of the dead. Kagome has the ability to sense a Jewel shard and Inuyasha has the strength to fight, so they teamed up to gather again the jewel shards. In their journey, they met Shippo, a fox demon, Miroku, a cursed monk, and Sango, a demon slayer whose brother was possessed by Naraku. They all have one aim: to find and eliminate Naraku.

I want to enumerate why I love this anime but I think I babbled a lot already. :)

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The New Wave

May 8th, 2008
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I enjoy blogging but it is more rewarding if I make money again from my blog. It’s been quite sometime since I did a paid post opportunity, not because I didn’t want to get paid. It was just a bit difficult to grab an opportunity with my ranking plunging to zero since I moved to this new domain. Then I stumbled upon Bloggerwave. I immediately signed up and had my blog approved in just a few days. If you’re a blogger, don’t let this opportunity pass and sign up for Bloggerwave now! :)

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Reviews

Wordless Wednesday #15: Red, Juicy, and Sweet

May 7th, 2008
{ 9 Comments }

Check out the Wordless Wednesday HQ
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Food, Wordless Wednesday , , , ,

Sushi in Awaji

May 3rd, 2008
{ 6 Comments }

Some friends were craving for sushi (I have always been crazy about sushi) so I tagged along. There’s no cheap sushi restaurant near our apartment so we had to go to Awaji and it took us about 20 minutes by bicycle to get there.

The sushi comes around on a conveyor belt type counter so be sure to watch out for your favorites and grab them immediately when they pass by your table. Of course, you could place an order but I’d rather wait than stress myself over trying to understand the waitress. And the sushi names were written mostly in Kanji (Chinese characters)!

The sushi lovers:
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Food, Things I love
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