Sunday Rendezvous.

So this is about a gathering that happened yesterday...


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WHAT: Potluck Party/Housewarming; lot's of food, laughter and a little bit of witchcraft ^^;
WHO: Me and my friends Jehan, Tessa and Anne. With the special participation of Gerald (Anne's better half) and Chris.
WHERE: Jehan's fabulous new home in Gimpo.
WHEN: Sunday, June 6th.


My friends and I had been planning to have a potluck party as early as April, but everyone seemed to be swamped with work, part-time jobs and family affairs that we couldn't squeeze a day out of our busy schedules to make it happen. The days and months kept counting, and the pressure from my impending departure got bigger and bigger, so I sent everyone an 'it's-now-or-never' text to meet on Saturday, June 5th. Eventually, it was moved to Sunday to give way to Jehan's pre-natal check-up. With Jehan's pregnancy and her new apartment, we even got bigger reasons to meet and celebrate!

So the Potluck Party/Housewarming was set, and everyone's expected to bring some food. Armed with a heavy paper bag reeking of pineapples and bell peppers from the Sweet and Sour Pork dish I made earlier, I rode the subway to meet Anne and Gerald. All three of us went to find Jehan's new house hidden amongst a sea of beautiful ricefields and farms. Their apartment complex is new so it was a little hard to find. Gerald, being the courteous man that he is, made a quick stop to buy a huge pack of toilet paper for Jehan (it's customary for Koreans to give toilet paper when they visit a house for the first time). Gerald went back home shortly after dropping us there..


Jehan lives in a beautiful place surrounded by ricefields. I can just imagine how beautiful it's gonna be in fall when the ricefields become golden in color.



As soon as we entered the new house, the party got rolling. Our conversation drifted from wallpapers, to curtains, to pregnancy, and to life in general. Coincidentally, it was Jehan's wedding anniversary that day so topics about significant others were also one of the things we talked about. Tessa had a prior engagement so she had go there all by herself. Jehan's house is a grueling 2 hour bus ride from Seoul to Gimpo, but Tessa beat the odds and showed up 2 hours later carrying a cake! Here's the food we had at the party...

My Sweet and Sour Pork with pineapples and slightly discolored bell peppers.




Anne's Galbi and Chapchae...

Tessa brought dessert, delicious White Mocha Cake..

So four hungry and overly energetic girls in a fabulous new house with endless things to talk and laugh about.. It was a riot from then on!







All's good till Chris called saying he's coming to pick me up at 8. It's so hard to leave when the party is as good as that. To make the most out of my one hour left, I decided to try a trick my mom taught me when I was a kid. Some may call it witchcraft, I call it an ingenious trick to know how many babies a woman will have and what genders their babies are going to be. My mom learned it from her Highschool Physics teacher, and from then on she has been performing this trick. She had done it to over a hundred people since she was young, and she never got it wrong. Jehan was the first to try of course. Since it's still early to check her baby's gender thru ultrasound, she has to wait 3 months to know I'm right (that is if the doctor will tell her the sex cause it's illegal to know the gender of the baby here while you're pregnant).

Chris came shortly after that. We convinced him to eat and chat a little before heading home. It was a long drive to Suwon and I was so tired when we came back home. But I couldn't stop smiling and thinking how fun that Sunday afternoon had been!

Friends and Festivities.

I met friends J and A yesterday to attend the Philippine Fiesta event held at Banpo Hanggang Park in Seoul. The journey to go there was already an adventure itself. We crossed where we're not supposed to, walked for hours in a desert-like condition, asked directions from clueless taxi drivers, walkie-talkie carrying police officer, and even a stranger on the street carrying a crying baby. No one seemed to know where that place is. We met a couple of interesting people along the way like the pinoy guy who stopped to ask directions from us and as a result, he too lost his way. There's also the weirdest taxi driver we met who kept on singing "bibidi bobidi boo", who stopped while the meter is running to buy some popsicles, and fulfilled his life-long dream to act as a traffic enforcer while sucking on his chocolate-flavored popsicles (half of which he gave to my friend A). At some point I thought it wouldn't be so bad to miss all the fun at the fiesta if we got to experience those things.

After the long and painful walk, we finally arrived and met my good friend T and her husband. The first part of the program just ended so it was the perfect time take pictures and stuff. Here's how the fiesta looked like.


This is the stage where the pinoy performers did their thing. There were singers singing traditional songs, there were acrobats and contortionists, and a couple different bands who played songs we didn't know.




This group represents the Igorot community.




I'm not sure if these guys were from the Penagbenga group, let's just pretend they are.




Whenever we think of fiesta, there should always be a Santacruzan right?




I've never been to a Santacruzan in my life, so I wanted to know how it feels like to be standing right next to a hunky, umbrella-holding "consorte" (is that word even right?).




With friends A and J.




After all the waiting and walking, we all grew hungry so went some place to eat. What's better to celebrate newfound friendships and rekindling old ones, than to hangout over dinner while drinking good old Hite!





This may not be related to the occasion, but I'd like to thank you guys for cheering me up, and for thinking that I'm cool, energetic, perky, and fun despite all my bitter-sweet hangups. You guys are the most unassuming, unpretentious, down to earth people I've known. My life in Korea will never be the same without you!

Monsters at Fiamma.

Saturday night.. It was drizzling a little, and the ground was perpetually wet from the rain (god I hate June). Like most days, Makati remained a swirl of nightlife with the traffic at crawl, and the streets filled with pedestrians and parked cars. At half past 10, the night was very much a pup for so many people there.

I met 3 of my closest girlfriends at Fiamma for a night of boozing and catching up. I'm scheduled to leave for Korea very soon so the meeting also served as some sort of a 'despedida' for me. I've never been to Fiamma before, I just heard a few things from my friends who frequent the place (heard that the place is brimming with super-hot guys, not that I care). I didn't know that it's a bit isolated, and we had to do a little bit of walking. I made an extra effort to dress up. By this I mean a flowy skirt, a satiny-lacy pink top (which is too girly for everyone's standard), and an ill-fitting but sexy stilletos.

We arrived early so we got one of the best tables in the house. A little after midnight, our tables were filled with endless stream of booze, cigarettes, finger foods, and scandalously-named cocktails. By this time, the club turned smoky and sweltering, packed wall-to-wall with hot and sweaty people, mostly in their twenties. The DJ played a lot of house music which I liked very much...

When the crowd got unbearably rowdy, and my feet was all bloody and screaming for band-aid, we decided to go. We drove aimlessly for sometime to chat inside the car till someone got thirsty, and we headed to Ministop. One went out to buy a few things. I had snapple and a donut, friend A and B had ice cream, and C ate one large siopao. When C accidentally scratched her eyes and lost one of her colored contacts (it aint disposable), she checked herself in the mirror and laughed how unbelievably strange she looks. We each went through our bags in search for mirrors, only to find we all looked ridiculously messed up. I looked raccoon-ish with my mascara clumped and smeared. Friend A still had lipstick on her teeth even after ice cream. Friend B who had her curly hair ironed out earlier turned afro-ish with hair frizzy as hell. Well C, she wore gray contacts and losing one meant she looked straight out of a horror movie!

Friend A pulled us out of the car to take pictures of our freaky faces. You could imagine how scary the picture turned out to be, and there's no way I'm gonna post that here for all the world to see. In the midst of deafening laughs, we all agreed that we now have something that'll bond us forever, and something that we could use to blackmail each other if anyone of us gets famous!

Keeping up.

It's been a week since my last post, so I decided to write some updates about my stay here.. A lot has been happening lately, but somehow I didn't have the creative inspiration to write about them all.

I met my friends last weekend. We were supposed to meet at 8 pm in front of Rembrandt in Quezon City. I arrived around 8:10, but nobody was there yet (I forgot that there's this thing called 'Filipino time').. When everyone arrived, we all went to a Japanese resto called "Jozu". The place is a typical resto which you don't actually pay for the food, but for the dining experience. Let this post serve as a warning to those who are planning to pay the restaurant a visit. The hefty price tag doesn't justify their food, and I would've chosen Yoshinoya in a heartbeat.

Since "Gilligan's Island" is just a couple of meters away, it became our next destination. "Jozu" left us still hungry so we ordered more than the usual "pulutan". Beer was overflowing, and they drank as if beer would no longer be available the next day. I said 'they' cause I stopped with my 3rd bottle. For the longest time, I haven't tasted any form of alcohol, and with an empty stomach, I was a little 'buzzed' after the 3rd one. I ordered bottomless iced tea instead of drinking more beer, which turned out to be quite a hassle especially when two of your newly-single friends are venting about their cute-but-good-for-nothing bf's, and you have to make frequent trips to the restroom. The deafening music was great, but it left us with a bad case of sore throat from shouting just to hear each other. We left the place just before the clock hits 3. They didn't want to end the party just yet (heard some of them say "it's still too early"..), so we went to "Music 21" (a family KTV place) in Timog after that. Everyone was obliged to sing a song or two. When it was my turn to sing, they cajoled me into singing a Korean song. For a second, I thought about singing "So Hot" by Wondergirls which I know they'll like, but the part where I have to rap made me flip the pages quickly. I chose a song by Se7en called "Come back to me" instead. I thought it's a safe song and I know the lyrics by heart.

The song sparked interest in them, and they started throwing questions at me about everything Korean (though mostly, it's about Korean men ^^). The effect of 'Hallyu' is very much evident in them. Most of them showed interest in visiting Korea, learning the Korean language, and meeting Korean men. Collectively, I don't think Korea is that 'great' like what they portray in Koreanovelas. But I admit there are things that I really admire about them... sadly, those are the stuff that'll bore them so I just concentrated on answering their queries about Korean men in general.

It was past sunrise when we went our separate ways. My mom was already out jogging when I came back home. My friends were still surprisingly energetic after a long night, and there I was (I'm gonna use my old phrase again), 'limp like a cookie thrown into a cup of tea'. Just before I slept, they texted about having a night-out again next week, but thinking about crowded places, and suffocating air filled with cigarette smoke, greasy food, and beer, coupled with a hundred different perfume smell makes me wanna fake an illness come Saturday. Somehow, I lack the energy to do those stuff again. I feel so damn old as I can't keep up with my friends. I better listen to my mom and start taking multivitamins or I'd turn into a loner doing stuff that's anything but fun.

Missin every1

I miss my friends... I've been busy... they've been busy. I'll be seeing them soon.

With Jhoie... the no-nonsense gurl who I play billiards with everyday till my 'kili-kili' hurts. Badette who likes freshening up with powder and tinkering with my eyeshadow. Dhon who never fails to laugh at my jokes... KC wearing the blue band, well she's the one I did blood compact with... and Jeannie beanie, she always keep the party rollin.. miss you guys and see you soon.

My friend's wedding (2)

I mentioned in my previous post before that I went to attend a friend's wedding at J's hotel in Daegu. It takes about 4 hours to get to Daegu so I went there one day earlier and I was hoping that I could do some sightseeing and visit some places there. It was 5 pm when I arrived so I couldn't do much except going to Palgong-san peak and see the whole of Daegu. Later that night I had dinner at a Korean traditional restaurant which is rather expensive but I had the most delicious samgyeopsal I've ever tasted! Tired and cold I've decided to retire early so I went on looking for a place to stay for the night but at that moment my friend (the groom) called to say that he and his bride made a reservation for me at the same hotel where the wedding is going to be held the following morning.

Upon entering my hotel room I was surprised to see two beds when I'm all by myself so I called him up and asked why he chose this room, but he said something like there are no other available room at that time. It looks like a typical 4-star hotel but for the very steep price of $170/night, I demand something more.

The following morning I woke up at 9 and hurried to get dressed and ran to the wedding hall where the wedding will take place. The bride looked pretty in her creme-colored cinderella-inspired bridal gown. I didn't recognize the groom at first cause he cleaned-up pretty well. He also wore creme-colored suit. The wedding was over in 30 mins and next came lunch at the reception hall where they served korean, american, italian, and japanese food buffet-style which were all not good except for the salmon sashimi.

Going back home took more than 4 hours but eventhough I was tired as hell I don't regret coming down to Daegu and witness a good friend's wedding. I sincerely wish him all the best.