:: Tears of the Moon ::

:: Sunday, March 13, 2005 ::

Monday morning, woke up at 2am. My normal waking time on the weekends. Promised Stephen and Kim I'd drop by and treat them to lunch - a very belated birthday thing since I owe Stephen two rain checks, and Kim is part of the Europe Pact we made since Freshman year in college.

So. Speaking of the Europe Pact: May. Ahem. ;) A bit of peer pressure from my corner here.

I'm stoked about the notion of seeing Neil Gaiman coming over. If he decides to skip us and head over to Singapore instead, I will literally kill someone.

All in all, had a good weekend. I slept a lot more than usual, which is always always a plus. I watched movies with the siblings and hung out at home (instead of rushing to and fro) - never thought I'd want to stay at home on a weekend. Bought a lot of chips for the movie watching, and gave Mom money to pay the electric bills.

Mom's back! YAY! She's back from the province, and we totally missed her. I'm glad she gets to go there once in a while coz every time she comes home, she looks totally refreshed and revived.

Also excited with the retreat I'm signed up for at the end of this week. I went on leave last year and headed out of town for it, so I'm going out this year to make an annual thing out of it. And Chi's coming too. Nice. I'll be on a loong leave of absence from work, which is an incredible relief.

Will have Lost premiere here on the 17th.

Nothing much to add there.. will be heading to the shower to meet up with Skip and Kim for lunch later.

:: D said @ 4:22 PM [+] ::
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Jars of Clay!
Just came from the Jars of Clay concert. Totally worth it. Chi and I got the cheapest tickets we could've gotten and still be on the main/ground floor level, and by the time the concert started, we rushed to the stage. By the end of it, we were pretty much two meters away from the edge of the stage. I'll post some pictures.

Gave the PalmPilot a test drive to see the video capacity. I got to videotape four songs: Unforgetful You, Show You Love, Fly, and parts of Dear God. The thing froze up at the latter part of the show, so we weren't able to 'tape' Tea and Sympathy, which was their encore.

It wasn't an album tour, I could say that much, because they sang a lot of their old songs, and some from the new album. Got some pictures of Barbie's Cradle, who was their front act. And crap my voice is shot.

One thing I can say about the Pinoy audience is that they're very reserved. I think that's the thing foreign acts find weird about us whenever they perform on a venue with seats glued to the ground. The VIP section is so expensive that normally very rich people get to buy the tickets, or sponsors reserve the entire front area. Some diehard fans may be able to get seats up front, but the moment the band starts to play, the diehards - who want to stand up and dance and yell and cheer - are outnumbered by the stuffy squares. Which is why I'd rather like either small venues, or mid- to large-sized venues with NO seating. Like Plumb, where we watched at the NBC Tent, standing room, two-level tickets only: P700 and P500. It's easier for dancing/jumping/screaming fans (like me) to be able to do our thing. I mean, it's already SO rare to have foreign acts come here and when you DO get to the concert, you just sit there or just sway side to side? I mean, come on!

Good thing the audience this time around - at least the ones on the front/ground floor seats - are peopled by diehards. The moment the lights turned off, Chi and I ran to the aisle/stage, and we never sat back down for the entire two and a half hours the band was there - which was the point, really. There's nothing cornier than wanting to celebrate the performance with a group of people who are just content to stay glued to their seats.

Oh, but they freaking rocked. Really.

I'm glad I took a leave. I think my body was just waiting for Wednesday (oy, Lisa Loeb song!) so that I could do something restful

Death in the Family
Rest in Peace, Lolo Ric.

He passed away last Sunday. It was a restful passing, because he'd been suffering from Alzheimer's for the past couple of years. We don't have institutionalized care here, so instead, Lolo was being taken cared of by the cousins and aunts and uncles over there in the province.

We got Mom a ticket to go there, flight was last Tuesday. She had to exhume Lola's body from Loyola Memorial, Marikina, so that she and lolo would be buried together. Lola has been dead twelve years. I bought some black blouses for the cousins there.

It's in these times that I'm SO grateful to be working, and very grateful that I'm earning as much as I can (more than other people my age, I'd expect - unless they're entrepreneurs, maybe). I'm able to be in a position where I can help out in stuff like these. I can give my mom money for the exhumation.

Ate Donna pooled together some money of her own - probably from her and her husband, and Kuya Bong and his family here (Ate Don, Kuya Bong and Mom are the only ones in that side of the family who live in Manila) - for possible cremation. I think Mom's embarrassed to be asking me for money for the thing, but that's what families do: you pull together to help each other out.

It's not like we're a rich family, mind you. We're average middle class. The family over there couldn't send over the money they had because it'd be used for Lolo's medical and funeral bills. I told Mom not to worry about anything - if the family inquires or insists on paying me back, then I just told them to just manage half of whatever it was, but otherwise, I'm fine. I paid for Mom's plane ticket, and the groceries, Bryan's allowance.. and the maid who's coming over this week for laundry and ironing. Thank God I work where I work, and get paid well for it. Had I gone to a 'normal' day job, I wouldn't have been able to manage anything.

Bryan
We're planning to send Bryan over to meet his cousins maybe this summer. I hope his grades have picked up high enough to recover the dip from last term. The kid is entirely too spoiled. He's a good kid, it's just that it's probably hard to live with a family like ours: we're achievers, but we never were trained to have regulated study time. We managed to get good grades, my sister and I, but I don't recall having a study desk, a study room, or a study hour. It's hard for Bryan, I guess, coz he's living with four grownups who constantly tell him to do better.

And all those four grownups love the kid: so much that he has a gamer phone, gets dressed up like a Ken doll, is exposed to all these grownup perks and stuff. We plan to send him out to CDO because he's never been there, and he desperately wants to meet up with them. I want to send him stuff to the girl cousins and our aunts. I was thinking of saving money to buy from Marks and Spencer, or maybe Body Shop or something to send to the aunts when Mom goes back, but this was a bad time - I mean, our grandfather died.

AND we want Bry to take a short summer cooking course. He said he wanted to learn how to cook main dishes. Oh yeah. Brownie points! Can you imagine what a kick ass crushable guy we're training our brother to be? :) By the time he hits college, he'll learn to carry girl bags, open doors, be comfortable ordering out, be able to carry small talk, be personable, learn how to play an instrument, and COOK! I'm saving up for a car.. probably in two years, by then I'd be able to teach Bry to drive. If only the idiot boy picks up on his classes, dang it!!

:: D said @ 1:26 PM [+] ::
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