Sunday, November 22, 2015

Designer Blooms Cafe



I realized that it's been a while since the last time I managed to post about a cafe. There have been quite a lot of new ones and a couple of those that I've been to, it's just that I haven't gotten around into taking respectable photos of them. In any case, Designer Blooms Cafe is one of those cafes that have been around for a while and I've been wanting to go to, but the idea of travelling all the way to Alabang has cut my interest short...until my brother managed to convince me during one of his visits to the house he'd be constructing in Calamba. How? Because I like the location of the house and I wanted to see the view again, plus the company car was available to service us. Yey!

Designer Blooms Cafe in an offshoot from the actual Designer Blooms flower shop in Megamall. The charm of the cafe is that they also sell their beautiful flowers in the coffeeshop. The interior of the cafe is bright with mismatched furniture to give it that foreign appeal, especially with the use of rustic decors.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Random Advice on Secrets



It's one of those random moments when your system is longing to let something off your chest but you know it could get you in trouble someday if done unfashionably discrete. My friends would always say, "I just want to go away, scream at the top of my lungs and shout all the frustrations away." There are sentiments that can be shared, but there are certain secrets that should not be kept within the confines of the visible world...and so saying it out loud for the spirit of universe to hear is ultimately safer than keeping it in your blog or journal. What if someday, the world will conspire and reveal it just because you have kept an existing proof of that supposed secret? Will self-loathing and eternal regret be a worthy option?

***

On a side note, the background is a photo I shot on top of the Shwesandaw Pagoda in Bagan, Myanmar. It's one of those things that when I look back in reflection, I still could not believe that I managed to stand in that place sometime in my life. Just one of those items in my bucketlist that seem to have gotten a check sooner than I thought...and to think I only came to know about Bagan last year. It's just a feeling of gratitude and disbelief whenever I stare at the photos I took. 

Thursday, November 19, 2015

I Was Made For Loving You by Madilyn Bailey



It was around last week when I noticed a new-yet-familiar-sounding song being dubsmashed in Kalyeserye...I never got to catch the lyrics during the episodes, yet the melody and the voice of the singer got me curious. After some time spent aimlessly browsing on Twitter yesterday I saw what I was hoping for, the title. It's "I Was Made For Loving You" by Tori Kelly feat. Ed Sheeran...and a whole night of looping the song started from there. 

Tonight's my second night of LSS...and it's wrrraagggghhh! when you listen to the same song a dozen times over but cannot stop that need to repeat it one more time. I was actually on the MRT when the urge to listen to the song came to me that I hurried back home because I don't have it on my cellphone. I know, it's just a temporary addiction. At one point I started to search for covers of the song, and there were some good ones–but this–THIS–gave me goosebumps, like real GOOSEBUMPS that I have to twitch my neck when she reaches certain parts and notes, especially right at the end when she unhumanly belches out the lines, "But I was made for loving you." Urghhh! I feel like the hairs on my arms have been raising and falling in chaotic symphony for the last several minutes now. 

I am forever grateful to YouTube that artists (amazingly non-linear ones) are now being discovered without being screened with repetitious formulas by capitalists industries. The music scene is now immensely diversified as compared to pre-YouTube times. And I am just happy I get to drown myself in their music (original and covers alike) as much as I want to.

Here's the chorus of the song that I love so much by the way:



I was made for loving you
Even though we may be hopeless hearts just passing through
Every bone screaming I don't know what we should do
All I know is, darling, I was made for loving you


Too much feels. So serendipity-driven.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Snippets: A Farewell Shot for Penang



I posted this photo on my Instagram last August 22 as a quick update of our Malaysia-Myanmar trip since I knew uploading other pics will take over a month after our arrival. It's actually the 4th photo I uploaded on my IG account since it took years of convincing before I finally decided to add another social media account. I posted it with no caption, just the hashtag "wanderlust".

The pouch is one of our products under Teacup Ideas. The horse is an original artwork I did for our coloring book. It's one of those few pieces that I'm actually proud to show off and claim as my own. I did a lot of research as reference, but the steampunk idea with an industrial city thriving in its belly is one of those out-of-the-blue moments after a self-pressured brainstorming activity. It took me three days to finish the artwork, and it's actually a full body short of a horse with a blimp chasing after it from behind, but I cropped it down for the layout of the pouch.


The background of Two Kids on a Bicycle is actually one of the more popular murals in Penang. I also have a picture of me on the actual wall getting a back ride with the little boy looking squished by my ass, but that's for another post. I was on the plane and we were about to land back to Kuala Lumpur after staying for three days in Penang when I decided to snap the photo using my cellphone, hence the grainy quality. It's the in flight magazine of Air Asia and they did an article on Penang with the title Appetite for Travel. I can still remember the panic I had when the concept popped into my head only after the captain had made orders to ready ourselves for landing. I had to briskly turn the page, set up the pouch with my passport and ticket peeking out for drama and take a couple of quick shots before the flight attendant could catch me with my table unsecured. 

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Pet Peeve #025



SOME. PEOPLE. JUST. DON'T. GET. IT.

There's an art to sarcasm, and those who don't get it I label as people with dry humor. 

And I'm not even gonna explain myself.

QLC Moment #4



One day, you wake up and start asking the question over and over again...only to do nothing in the end. It's a question that I try to justify with excuses every freakin' time, but at the end of the day, whether I deny the truth or not...the answer is something I have to face at the end of my life. 

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Scary Stuff: Part 1



Since today is Halloween and I’ve had a bit of time to type this down, let me tell you a few personal stories I’ve had with the paranormal. I don’t have a third eye, but I have three friends who do. One of them managed to partly open her third eye because of her best friend who has hers opened…which is why I’m scared to get too clingy with someone who has these abilities because she said they can influence you without you knowing it. The other two they said, sort of was inherited from their family, slowly opening their third eye as they got older whether they liked it or not. I have met other people who claim that they also have their third eye open, but I’m not sure if it’s true…. Some things I learned from hanging out with them are:


-The more you talk and are interested in the paranormal, the more you become a target.
-Those with third eyes are more vulnerable to things when they are tired or in an emotional state.
-When you suddenly smell a stench that resembles garbage out of nowhere, the tendency is that the spirit close to you is that of a rotting corpse, and if you could see them they would be in a state of decomposition.
-When your friend with a third eye suddenly falls silent and uneasy, chances are they are seeing something. (I hate it when they do that!)
-The closer you are to them, the more chances you’ll get of experiencing paranormal activities.
-At some point they will be get used to it, but they will always be afraid when they see one.
-Based on my friends who have their third eye opened, they are more sensitive towards people as they have heightened senses and they can tell your emotions without you telling them.
-Said one of my acquaintances (who I doubt has a real third eye) the church is one of the places that a whole lot of spirits reside in, much more than other places.
-They say some spirits have no faces. If they would describe it to me like looking at the face of a person on TV with bad reception, wherein the faces are blurry and has a warped to zigzag distortions, like static effect or something so you don’t see the details on their faces…
-Every person is vulnerable of having his/her third eye opened.

I’ll cite three top experiences I’ve had of a scary encounter…other than crossing the elliptical road towards Quezon Memorial Circle or that time I almost got bitten by my brother’s then pet snake. I have more stories though…but maybe that’s for another post. Probably one of the memorable ones that I’ll tell in another post is what I experienced staying in an all-girls dorm in Manila for one semester—and was told a few hours before I was about to leave and transfer to my uncle’s townhouse that I had been sleeping in a room where a suicide had occurred. Wahhhhh!!! And it explained a lot of things—but that’s for another time. 

Sleep Paralysis at a Hotel in Iloilo

This happened on the eve of April 28, 2012 (I know the exact date only because I still have the pictures I took that day.) We were on a family trip to Iloilo; basically the whole clan was there to celebrate my aunt’s golden anniversary of being an Assumption nun. If I’m not mistaken, we booked in Amigo Hotel, the room I cannot recall the number though. Since we booked several rooms, one of my aunts asked me to stay with her in her room. The room was a double bed deluxe; she slept on the bed close to the window while I slept on the one close to the bathroom, right in front of a huge full-length mirror. On our first night, everything seemed fine until I woke up in the middle of the night and could not move my body—any part of it! It’s like something was pressing me against the bed, heavy weight and unmoving. I couldn’t even move my fingers and it freaked me out. All I could do was swivel my eyes making sense of the dark room, at some point my eyes landed on the mirror right at my foot—it was positioned right in front of my bed so I was supposed to see my reflection, but it was PITCH BLACK!! The light on the bathroom was left on and I could see that thin line of light reflect on the wall because the bathroom door was slightly open…and I was trying to just stare at the mirror waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light—BUT NO, I found myself staring at a black hole for what seemed like a really long time. It took some minutes before my brain cells started to digest the reality that I was awake enough to be living the nightmare—and the worst part of it I wanted to pee! So yeah, I kept it in and closed my eyes forcing myself to sleep off the situation. The next day I convinced my mom to stay with my aunt for the second night without her telling my experience because I’m a good daughter like that, and went to stay with another aunt that night without much thrill in the room we stayed in. I asked my mom if she was fine with the room, she said it was okay…so I kept mum and spoke the experience with my friends instead, one of whom said his mom experienced the same thing.

He said that it was the same situation, but it was in their house when it occurred some years ago. His mom woke up in the middle of the night, her bed was also facing a full-length mirror. . .but hers was a much scarier thing because while I saw no reflection in the mirror, what she saw the image of a ghastly lady that resembling Sadako staring at her from inside the mirror. He said his mom also could not move any muscle and felt helpless at the situation. The mirror he was referring is no longer there and is already covered in mantle in their storage. I later found out about the term sleep paralysis, and that it should be nothing to be scared about…darn right. It’s that state wherein we are awake but the signals cannot be transmitted to the muscles so we are unable to move, and to which my friend’s mom’s case she was just hallucinating. Yeah, I have been told and have read that mirrors are portals and that positioning it right across your bed makes you vulnerable to other dimensions, my bed in Bacolod has my late lola’s huge round mirror right across it but I never experienced such things in my room…I experienced something else…

Whispers in My Ear

This creepy unexplainable experience happed in my room in Bacolod. So…I think there were only two or three of us in the house that day, we’re usually nine if it’s a complete count. Anyway, I’m not sure how long ago this happened, but that memory still gives me the chills every time I ponder on the memory. Brrrrr! It was afternoon, right after lunch because I was having a much unnecessary siesta that day, when all of a sudden I woke up to a whisper right at my ear. I can’t recall if I was in the middle of a dream or something, but I just remember suddenly opening my eyes because I can feel a breath of air wafting at my ears trying to say some ancient language. Until now, I don’t know what language it was…like a babble of a Gregorian chant, but not specifically sounding exact. It’s like being in a classroom where everyone is mumbling all at random and you can’t make out of one specific word, now imagine that chaotic noise being whispered right at your ear by a collective of male voices and you feel that tingle in your ear when someone whispers right next to your ears that you feel the hairs vibrate. I just remember opening my eyes, scan the room if anyone was there, jumping out of bed wondering if it was a bad joke or something—BUT NO! The maids were also in their rooms asleep far from mine, my parents were not in the house, my lola in another room also sleeping. . .so yeah, that gave me really bad goosebumps when I realized it was not a normal thing to happen to a person. My other lola died in my room back in 1997 and I moved there after she died, and I smell the scent of roses at random times, but at least it’s a comforting feeling…the voices weren’t. The fear was real. It made me uneasy—and on top of that, it ruined my completely beautiful afternoon nap!

When the Chair Moved on Its Own

This happened more recently, like several weeks ago, also in our house in Bacolod. I know, there’s something in our house in Bacolod, but I have to live with it since I live there at certain times of the year. This time, it was in my parents’ room. Since they went out of town for the weekend and I was sick with flu, I decided to vacate my room because my other lola sleeps there now (I’ve accepted the fact that there will come a time when I’ll be staying in a room where both my grandmother died,) and I wanted to be a loner that night. Anyway, four of us were left in the house that night, and roughly a few hours before my bedtime (usually around 12mn-2am) I was on my mom’s bed playing with her iPod, suddenly I heard something fell from her desk, like the sound of a small Tupperware falling. I stared towards its direction and saw the office chair swiveling. It didn’t make a 360 turn, but I saw its seat still moving, ever so slightly turning like someone just tapped it on to one direction. I pretended to be brave and searched for the item that fell, ever hoping that it was big enough to cause the chair to move—BUT NO! I checked everywhere, from her desk to the floor as to what went missing, but everything was in place. Grrrr…I stood up and left the room swiftly deciding that I should sleep with my grandmother. To my luck, the door was locked…so I had to slap myself and make sure that the moment I return to their room my eyelids were at a point of a breakdown. I slept with the lights on that night…but nothing else creepy happened right after. Right now…if I reflect on the incident, it still gives me the creeps.