feel good songs

there are times where i wish i could drown myself with feel good songs. the kind where you don't need to be in love to fall in love. like it is the most natural thing to do when you listen to these kind of music.

currently, i'm listening to jason mraz's 'i'm yours'. and yes, there were moments where i really wanted to just surrender sweetly, without hesitation and say, 'baby, i'm yours'. but of course, reason got ahead of me. now is not the time to go collecting stardusts. it is best that i leave these hopes to the wind.

so for the meantime, i'll just put this song on eternal repeat in my ipod.

Well you done done me and you bet I felt it
I tried to be chill but you're so hot that I melted
I fell right through the cracks
and now I'm trying to get back
Before the cool done run out
I'll be giving it my bestest
Nothing's going to stop me but divine intervention
I reckon its again my turn to win some or learn some

I won't hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I'm yours

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you're free
Look into your heart and you'll find love love love
Listen to the music of the moment maybe sing with me
Ah, la peaceful melodys
It's your God-forsaken right to be loved love loved love love

-I'm Yours, Jason Mraz

since life can have its alphabets

since i've been tagged by dee, and i'm not sleepy yet.. let me get on with my life's ABC.

Instructions: Each player starts with 7 random habits/facts about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

Seven facts about me: a nocturnal, coffee addict, worrywart, wanderer, dreamer, stands 157cm (and never getting taller), weighs 50 kgs (and going down.. i hope), bubbly, forgetful ..(i'm supposed to write only seven)

A - Age: 28
B - Band Listening To Right Now: i'm listening to FM music..
C - Career: Software Engineer .. but in search for something else
D - Drink or Smoke: margarita, don't smoke
E - Easiest Friends To Talk To: nats, ri, janeth, mats, felvi, josh
G - Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms: gummy bears!
H - Have a Boyfriend : Soon! (wehehe optimistic!!)
I - In love: with love..definitely!
J- Junk Food You Like: Dorritos Nachos
K - Kids: i'd luv a bunchful of 'em
L - Longest Ride Ever: Seattle - Taipei flight..abt 17 hrs, didn't sleep the whole time
N - Names For Your Future Kids: it depends.. i'd like to name my kids after something/someone significant on their day of birth
O - One Wish You Have Now: to finally find what i'm looking for ..
P - Phobias: to be trapped, snakes
Q - Favorite Quote: Patience is virtue
R - Reasons To Smile: countless, pouring blessings
S - Sleeping Time: 2 am
T - Time You Woke Up: 9:00am
U - Unknown Fact About You: i'm really shy
V - Vegetable You Hate: cabbage
W - Worst Habit: procrastination, tardiness
X - X-rays You’ve Had: chest, back, sinus
Y - Yummy Foods: all yummy food :D
Z - Zodiac Sign: Pisces

i'd like to tag all my friends in my blogroll, who haven't been tagged yet... :)

a busy holiday

there's so much that i want to blog about, but it's almost midnight and i'm beating my deadline for my blog entry for today for the blogging challenge. so, just let me rant about my day.

you see, it's my first busy holiday in my almost two years here in singapore where i didn't have any out of town trips. i usually just spend a very lazy day at home doing nothing. but not anymore.

my friend jan and i hit the movida club at st. james (once again) last night after our therapy yoga class. it was an out of the blue thing, and we were hungry for not having any dinner yet. so we decided to enjoy some groovy latin beat over dinner. however, we were enjoying the music too much that we ended up going home at four a.m. in the morning... oops!

i already woke up at around noon and had a quick brunch with my housemates. afterwhich, i headed back to the gymn for another yoga session. i'm really luvin yoga now. i'm looking forward to every session that i can fit in my schedule. the class today was a bit, err.. tough. there were just three of us, and one girl was really really good at the postures already. our teacher was giving us quite tough positions and she can really get them while i struggled so hard between wobbly knees and elbows. but it's okay, considering it's still my fourth or fifth class :) i even had my first try on headstand positions.. but of course, my teacher was standing beside me so that i won't break my neck! i still even find shoulderstand positions quite tough, but really relaxing.

after yoga class, i met up with my cousin and showed her how to get to china town by train. she is still quite new in singapore so she's not quite confident on how to get around by herself. we didn't get around chinatown much though cuz a friend invited us for dinner and his place is in the land far, far away.. in YewTee. waaah! you see, i live in the east side of singapore and i am so so lazy to even visit my dear friend jan who lives in the west side. any town in singapore's west side is a land far far away for me. :D it's like almost an hour train ride from our place. however, the travel was all worth it as we had a very very delicious dinner.. buti nalang! wehehehe. burp. (excuse me).

my cousin and i got home already at almost ten, and my body's all sore. however, my mind's still quite awake.. so i'd probably be staying up late again.. (oh, i forgot, i just had a cup of coffee) .. it's work day tomorrow, i just hope i won't be late for work :D


okay, happy deepavali everyone! (that's the holiday we're supposed to be celebrating right now)

for vanity's sake

ri wrote about this beauty medicine that is becoming very popular in japan, which according to her "promises to clear the skin from within". (check her blog here) as i am not blessed with really flawless, porcelain-like skin, ri's post really got my interest. though my end goal is not to become a porcelain doll, i don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to have a radiant, glowing skin na parang porcelain narin :D .. okay, i'm lowering my standard. let me rephrase what i said, there's nothing wrong with wanting to have a radiant, glowing skin.. na parang artista! wehehehe.

so, in one of my boring moments in the office, i googled for a similar product that could be found in singapore. lo and behold, i read in a forum that a japanese product which has about the same contents from the product mentioned by ri, can be found in the local drugstores here in singapore! yahoo! and since i trust the recommendations of my friends (ri and idel are using it), i know i'm gonna give this thing a try.

i then rushed to a local drugstore here (it's available in watsons and unity) and browsed through the aisles where the vitamins are, to search for the beauty medicine. the truth is, i forgot the name of the product mentioned on the forum. was it hakubi? or habuki? basta may vitamin c and L-cysteine content, yun na yun. so i scrutinized the ingredients on the different bottles on the aisle that shows vitamin C in a bigger label. it took me a while to locate the product as i was too shy to ask the clerks for help. i'm afraid they might recommend me a very expensive miracle cream that they might think is more convincing to work better on me than the product that i'm looking for. hmmph! (i won't be budged, i'm still sticking with my friends' recommendation.) when i was about to give up, i found in one corner - Hakubi White C. this is it! i checked the contents and read: L-cysteine, vitamin b6, ascorbic acid, and calcium. this is it nga! it's what i am looking for :D

you see, this product is also well-recommended from the forum where i've read about it. i am not sure what its outcome will be on me though as the forums say the result varies on the type of genes you have. i guess we'll find out in a month as soon as i get my radiant and glowing skin.. nyehehehehhee. if there are no visible results after a month, let's wait for another month or two (or three), baka it's really in my genes na mahirap magclear easily ang skin ko. pagwala parin visible results in three or five months, don't worry, i'm not loosing my hope yet, i'll still update you, kahit aabot pa ng one year or one decade (huwag naman century), until na achieve ko na ang radiant, glowing skin na yan.

ewan ko nga ba.. basta, this is simply for vanity's sake. :D

another cooking disaster

ever since i came here in singapore, i have managed to develop some culinary skills so that i would have other better things to eat aside from the local dishes without having to spend too much cash. since i have always loved italian dishes, i have tried cooking different kinds of pastas from cream sauce to marinara sauce with the white wine, of course. i love gourmet food, so if i could chance upon a non-bake and easy to cook gourmet dish, i would always give the dish a shot in my spare time.

however, there's one dish that i always effortlessly fail each time i attempt to cook it. no matter how simple it is, disaster is always the end result. that dish is no other than - pritong isda (fried fish). you might be rolling your eyes with disbelief, but seriously, i can't cook this dish.

my first attempt to cook pritong isda here in singapore was more than a year ago and what happened was i almost got our apartment burned... good thing it was just the range hood that got all damaged. i blogged about it in trembling hands because of the very traumatic experience. but that was more than a year ago, so i thought i must have learned a bit on how to do this very simple dish after a very successful pinakbet (filipino vegetable stew) over the weekend. yes, i know how to cook pinakbet now...and all my other pasta dishes have been quite a success (not to brag, but my housemates all love them, so i take their word.. hehehe they are my only fans :p ).. but i could just not get my pritong isda perfect!! .. ugh! how frustrating can that be?

wondering how i did it? well, i think i got the procedure correctly:

1) soak the fish in salt and pepper

2) put 5 tablespoons of butter on a heated pan (i had 3 pieces of sliced fish, so that would be enough and i didn't use the normal cooking vegetable oil since i want my fish to have more taste)
3) check fire to be very low to avoid burning your kitchen
4) once the butter melts, put in the fish slices slowly and cover
5) check on the fish gradually to see if the part that's dipped in the melted butter gets a bit brown before turning the fish updside down

see, it is pretty simple. i did all the steps above, but i was a bit impatient on the last procedure. it's past midnight already, and i still have work tomorrow...so i kinda rushed things. (you might be wondering what i am doing cooking fish at this time. i'm done with dinner, and i bought this really fresh fish last saturday, and i do not have other time to cook it. if i postpone it more, i would end up a not so fresh fish anymore on my plate. fish meat gets easily spoilt, and it won't taste as good.)

nweyz, back to my fish, i was a bit impatient and turned it upside down a tad bit earlier. well, the butter is all brown already so i guess it was okay. what happened though is i got all the fish meat broken into pieces, or how should it be described? shattered? scattered? shredded? whatever... my fish slices looked more like fish shreds now and i can't turn them upside down anymore. :( instead of a golden brown fried fish, i ended up with burnt fish shreds.. taking a picture of it would make things more heartbreaking, so i decided against it.

i give up. i can't do pritong isda.

p.s. hmmm.. on second thought, i should be thankful i didn't get anything in the kitchen burnt. that's quite a progress then.. so, it could be that i fried the wrong kind of fish. i mean, maybe that kind of fish was not meant for frying.. maybe that fish could have been saved if i had cooked it as tinola, or sinigang... or some other dishes.. i should never loose hope.. maybe i'll fair better on this dish next year with the right kind of fish. :D

good news for mondays

all my petty worries just dissolved into thin air when i got some great news that my teacher, mentor and friend from university gave birth to a very healthy baby girl. you see, mrs. cherry lyn sta. romana, or miss (as we never thought of calling her differently even after she got married), is one of the very few people that i really look up to and admire up to now. she made graduating computer science back then as challenging as she can for all of us, so that we won't give up on it.

Maria Mikaela Sta. Romana

welcome to the world, baby tantin .. i'm sure you will grow up as passionate as your mom in whatever you want to be :) congratulations too to the proud parents.

reminds me, i truly am in need to get rubbed by her passion for computer science once again as i am loosing my reasons why i am at this field of work.. it is always a fond memory to remember how passionate she gets once she talks about automata, computability, and leap-frogging algorithms, to name a few. her excitement was just too catchy, it was difficult to miss it. :)

weekend nights

i didn't intend to miss blogging for two days. but there are weekend nights, and what's a single girl got to do?

met with friends for dinner at 8pm on a friday night, went clubbing from 9pm til the wee hours. reached home at around 4am already. spent the most part saturday morning sleeping. missed yoga classes, too tired to wake up. missed the sfc's prayer assembly, must head to the gym for pilates class at 2pm, and de-stress in the sauna for at least an hour. went home at 5pm and had grocery shopping. cooked dinner for friends. went for a late night movie at 9pm, stayed out again for the second consecutive night, went home at still another unholy hour (forgot to check the time). slept at 6 am already. after such a busy saturday, all what's left for me to do on sunday is catch up on the much needed sleep.

this is the part where you enjoy being single. there's too much freedom in it.