Long Weekend

"What are you going to do during the weekend? Work?" I was asked before we all headed home on Friday night.

For the record, here's a list of how I spent my long weekend.

1. Sleepover with JT which included the usual:

- Gossiped until it's almost dawn

- Watched a movie (Into the Wild) which we only watched towards the end where it got exciting because we were busy chatting (see above)

- Ate junk food - Friday night junk food fest included spicy Korean instant noodles, Chips Ahoy White Fudge Chunky (my current favorite over chewy Chips Ahoy), and Oishi's wasabi potato chips, which I think is really, really good for locally made potato chips (Oishi's doing a great job, especially with their Marty's vegetarian chicharon, yum!)

2. Shopped for a new pair of shoes for work - Terribly boring black faux crocodile skin pumps with rubber soles for comfort. According to Queen J, they're like granny shoes because of the croc skin and rubber soles.

3. JT and I got haircuts - This was very reminiscent of our high school days when we used to get our haircuts together at David's Salon. We don't go there anymore for fear of reliving our bad hair days.

It was a choice between Henri Calayag or Park Jun. Both are tried and tested by friends, but Park Jun got better reviews. Park Jun, a Korean franchise, is pricier than Beauty Brick (Mr. Shin's salon) or Tony and Jackey. Because we were not willing to shell out for the creative director (P 1,200), we both settled for the style director Ms. Katie Kim (P 800). We learned that Ms. Katie just arrived from Korea so she's still having a hard time expressing herself in English. With the help of her colleague, we were able to relay to her most of what we wanted to be done with our hair.

I think I was apprehensive from the beginning about getting a haircut from a new hairdresser. I was also missing Hair-Do's Daisuke-san, who totally understood how to cut my hair which has natural curls in them. I ended up asking for a trim, and a trim was what I got.

After my haircut from Daisuke-san in July (left) and after my haircut from Ms. Katie

4. New Balance Power Run - This is the first fun run I joined since the 10k I ran for my running class in uni, where I did really poorly. I'm quite proud I finished 5k in 36 minutes because at some point within those 36 minutes I could barely feel my legs and thought that my lungs would give out. And I thought that I could finish the race in half an hour or less! Haha

Proud finisher!

5. Work - for half an hour maybe?

6. Movie marathon - and I'm still not halfway through with all the movies I borrowed from everyone

The long weekend is almost over. Tomorrow, I'm back to donning stiff office attire and sitting on an uncomfortable chair. No, the long weekend is never long enough.

Who Is the Groo Grux King?

Christmas is here! I can smell it in the air and taste it in Starbucks' Toffee Nut Latte. Thanks to our office kris kringle with personal wish lists rather than broad categories, I got 2 Starbucks GC's as I, well, wished.

Lately, I've grown tired of shuffling through songs in my iPod and finding a lot of songs that I now hate listening to. So I made a trip to Astrovision without doing any prior research in a quest to find something new. I based my search on the covers and ended up with the following:

Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King by Dave Matthews Band

This looks a little creepy but I liked the saxophone intro and the booklet with more artwork and lyrics, a huge factor in choosing a CD when I was younger. I found out that in Astrovision you can request to listen to a CD just like in HMV! except that Astrovision doesn't provide earphones for your own private listening so I had to ignore the sales person who assisted me as she bopped her head along with the music.

and...

Still Night, Still Light by Au Revoir Simone

This one reminds me of Norah Jones and Yael Naim but their cover is anything but lovey-dovey and optimistic. Is that a werewolf under a full moon???

"one day do you think we'll wake up

in a world on its way to getting better

and if so

can you tell me

how"

- Dive In, DMB

Hello Hmm-Hmm

We are all living in the same city now, but it still takes 6 months for the three of us to get together. Is it because of hmm-hmm, who always seems to be unavailable because of her mountains of readings, busy doctor-to-be schedule, and frequent trips to her home in the province where she always hides out when her nose is not buried in the said readings. For all I know she spends more time FB-ing than actually reading. [Just kidding, you know I'm very supportive of you right? :D] But it doesn't really matter now because last night the three of us were all there, plus one.

I narrowed down our choices last night to Felix, Thai Patio and Usso (the French-Italian resto with no name) in Greenbelt 5. By unanimous decision, we went Thai, but next time, I want to try Felix and Usso, too.

Thai Patio is no authentic Thai food place but I appreciate that it has a lot of vegetarian choices, always a plus for me. I liked the vegetarian pad thai the most--the noodles are firm, the sauce, sweet with a hint of spiciness, and the marinated tofu and sliced mushrooms (fresh and not canned), very tasty. The stir-fried mixed mushrooms with garlic was also yum, but the vegetarian pineapple fried rice, not really.

Afterwards, we looked for a place to play rock band in GB without success so we proceeded to eat some dessert in Manila Peninsula. We, the girls, all said no to Pen Pals. After all, four people should not be forced to eat 20 scoops of ice cream. We shared the yoghurt ice cream, 99% fat free but still incredibly creamy, and Belgian chocolate fondue. It was so dark in the lobby with all the dim lights that it felt like a mini bonfire.

The sun is always shining in Manila Pen. See you all again soon.