Moments Vol. 5

Getting made up by a professional makeup artist, getting to call it a day at work while the sun still shines, trying something new, celebrating another year added on to the life of a parent and being with friends - these are my favorite moments this past two weeks.

1. I got to go home early

These days I'm lucky if I get to call it a day at work by 6PM. So when I get to go home early, meaning the sun is still shining, it automatically becomes a real good moment in my life. 

2. My gal pals from work and I got a professional to do our make up for free 

We're all made up and looking absolutely gorgeous! 

Fate gets these event invites from a well known skincare and cosmetics brand, Estee Lauder and she extends the invite to us. I remember that one time she invited us to Rustan's Makati and we ended up taking home a sample of their newest skincare product, the Estee Lauder Night Repair serum. This time, when we attended, we got to listen to the talk of Estee Lauder's international make up artist and then they prepped our skin and applied their make up products on us. I do like their Night Repair serum in all honesty. It seems it truly would do wonders on my face. I also liked their Double Wear Foundation. First time I ever heard of a foundation that won't easily fade with sweat or water. It's perfect for a commuter like me. 

3. I rode the MOA Eye (this is my something new) 

I am holding on for dear life!

Confession: I'm scared of enclosed spaces that moves way way up high. Enclosed spaces alone no problem. Really tall buildings? Sure I can look down, no big deal. But combined... that's something else. You'd think I wouldn't be scared of a ferris wheel right? After all, it moves oh so slow. But I was. I rode anyway despite my fear. I wanted to see the city from way up there while Anerine wanted to see the fireworks by the bay. She was the only one who enjoyed the ride.

4. Mom celebrated her birthday

  

Mom recently turned 60. Officially a senior citizen. Never met anyone so thrilled to be a senior already. But mom was. I supposed I could understand it. It's a real achievement nowadays to reach an old age considering the many sickness one can get in a lifetime. I know because my Dad didn't get that chance. So yeah, I'm very grateful that mom got to reach the ripe old age of 60. 

5. Reunited with an old friend once again

Mark came to the Philippines for a vacation from London a week ago so Jordan and I definitely made time to see him. He's been a friend of mine since high school. He's recovering from a serious illness so this year's meet up is definitely one for the books. I look forward to him recovering completely of course so we can hang out more here in the Philippines and even abroad, in London. 

 

Moments Vol. 4: Series of Firsts

This week actually went by in a blur... probably because I've been going out after work the entire week. And I have to say that despite some real frustrating and downright irritating events at work, I found myself creating new and happy memories this past week with a series of firsts. 

Pamper Me Monday

It's been awhile since I visited a hair salon and treated my hair to some TLC. Since I've been trying to maintain my red hair, my already frizzy and unruly hair is in an even sorrier state and so I decided to make time to drop by Piandre in Greenbelt to get the Macadamia Treatment. It's the first time in a long while I went to the salon on a weekday.  

I love love love that hair treatment! It's not a semi-permanent one that would give me instant smooth and shiny gorgeous locks thanks to some chemicals; rather it's an all natural treatment that makes use of macadamia oil. I tried this treatment before and I loved it so much I bought the products. Sadly, since I wanted to do some lifestyle cost-cutting, I gave it up at the expense of having bad hair days. 

    

My hair looking real nice with volume after the treatment. It's softer to touch and smelled real good too! Bonus: while getting the treatment, I got a real good massage too which is perfect because I've been having some muscle pains from lugging around a heavy bag. 

Note to self: go back and buy the Macadamia Natural Oil products again. 

The whole treatment lasted for about an hour. I only intended to go to the salon and then go home. But Mother Nature had other plans - when I got out of the salon, there was heavy rains. and I got stranded in the mall. So what do I do to pass the time? I went and watched the last full show at the cinemas. 

  

Yep! I finally watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows - the one I didn't get to see over the weekend that past week because I watched Love Me Tomorrow instead with my friends. It was a cute and funny movie. Mikey's my favorite turtle. 

French Film Festival Thursday

 

The annual French Film Festival happened this past week and I've always wanted to watch a French film at the cinema! I've always been interested to learn the language (actually interested to learn other foreign languages) so foreign film festivals definitely interest me. After years of intending to do so, this year, I finally went! I watched Les Souvenirs (Memories) with my friends after work because it was the only French film showing at 8PM in Greenbelt 3 Thursday night. It didn't disappoint. It was surprisingly a good movie to watch - even Ver enjoyed watching it. It was a funny and heartwarming story.        

  

Art and Fashion Saturday

My friend, Jordan whom I don't often see invited me to go visit Silverlens Gallery. He's become fascinated with art recently he says. I've wanted to go to Silverlens ever since I started trying to appreciate art so I went with him on a Saturday morning to the art gallery. 

Jordan loves dressing up and taking OOTDs so this past Saturday meant art and fashion. 

Wearing my For Me dress, Superga white sneakers and Longchamp leather bag which matches my very red hair! 

Me with Jordan hanging out at Greenbelt after our Silverlens and OOTD shoot

This Saturday, I also did another first. First time to watch a scary movie alone just as the Cosmo Commandment says! 

   

I like scary movies! I even turn the lights off my room when I watch at home. I'm scared of course and I sometimes become afraid of the dark after watching a horror flick but I keep watching anyway. I think it's fun! None of my friends wanted to watch The Conjuring 2 though so I went alone. 

It's seriously scarier than the first one. I would have probably screamed too or watched with my eyes partly covered if I was home alone or if I wasn't sitting beside some guy strangers. But I enjoyed watching it even though I was seriously scared! I survived my first solo horror movie flick in the theaters! Yay me! 

   

Movie Review: Love Me Tomorrow

Confession: I had no intention of watching Love Me Tomorrow starring Dawn Zulueta and Piolo Pascual. Like a lot of Pinoy movies, I had every intention of letting this film go by without me seeing it in theaters. I just didn't think it was worth my time and money.

But Ver invited us to watch it. I thought for a minute of throwing in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows as another option but I abandoned that plan since I had a strong feeling it wasn't the kind of movie Mai, Ryan or Ver would want to watch. I wasn't going to win so...

Love Me Tomorrow is a story about a middle aged widow (Dawn Zulueta) who finds that there was actually life even after your husband dies and your kids are all grown up and living their own lives. She meets and falls in love with a younger man played by Piolo Pascual who is a DJ at a high end club in BGC.

I didn't have a high expectation of this movie. In fact, I had no expectations when I watched it. But I ended up finding that I spent my money and my time on a good movie. I laughed, I felt kilig and I found myself somehow relating to some of the characters of the movie (well not with the lead cast but the supporting cast led by Carmi Martin).

Meet the Titas of Manila aka Dawn's friends in the movie, aka the people we could relate to!

Piolo Pascual is still a hottie. To be clear, I am not a fan but there is no denying his appeal. I saw it when I watched Starting Over Again and again, here in this movie. I don't like his character in the movie. An aging DJ who only sleeps around with younger women aka Colleen Garcia and actually didn't have a lot to show for in his life in terms of career goals. I guess that's just me. I like it more when men have direction in life.

Colleen's the beautiful girl who doesn't mind sleeping with JC (Piolo's character) since she's head over heels for him. She's sexy there's no denying that. But I think Colleen needs to start exploring roles that would really give her the chance to showcase her acting chops. I honestly didn't really see that in this movie. My heart should have gone out to her in sympathy when JC fell in love with the older woman. I should have felt compassion for her when she opened up about being the only non-achiever in her family. But I found her acting "mababaw".

Dawn Zulueta is still gorgeous as ever. She's aging gracefully. I have nothing but praises for her. And I like how her character developed in the movie. I noticed the progression in her dialogues. Also her character's success only goes to show that it's never too late to pursue your dreams and make it happen.

This particular scene showing the Titas of Manila admiring the younger women's bodies as they casually undressed right in front of them was a real hoot! They couldn't help but ogle at the hot young bodies in front of them! Good gosh! Just look at those abs of Colleen. It's enviable! I'm not gonna sit here and wonder when I could ever get abs like that because I know, I'm so lazy when it comes to exercise! But yes, I also know that I gotta get up my ass soon and start being more active!

I thought those headphones were cool. Ver thought it too. But other than that, I thought this scene was funny and strange. A silent party at a music festival? Come on.


Overall though it was a nice movie. This film depicts the difference of how millennials are and middle age people trying to prove that age is just a number. There's romance too. Also Piolo has chemistry with Dawn! He usually can be paired with any actress (well maybe except Bea Alonzo. Yes I saw Dreamboy on TV). Although really nothing beats Dawn with Richard Gomez! That's a timeless love team!

Comfort Food: Gorky's Alphaland

About a couple of weeks back, my work friends and I decided we should go and treat ourselves after a very stressful start to our week. And with us, a treat means food. So off we trooped to Alphaland Makati (the one near MRT Magallanes) because when Maila suggested pizza and I suggested Gorky's because it was a new food joint we haven't had the pleasure of trying just yet.

 

The place is always packed at lunch time and I thought hey it looks affordable enough so why not?

Me with Fate (the hoodie-wearing girl) and Maila (in stripes)

These ladies are just some of the people at work who make office life easier to bear especially during the really stressful times and fun to boot!

Interesting wall decor at a pizza joint

We ordered 1 medium Hawaiian pizza and 1 Bolognese pasta. Only cost us about Php600 total. Pretty affordable. And did I mention absolutely delicious? I couldn't get enough of the pasta (I was tempted to order another one just for me except I was on low on funds that week already)  and the pizza which had a big serving. We didn't get to finish the pizza surprisingly considering Fate has insatiable appetite!

Anyway if you ever craved pizza and pasta and you're around Pasong Tamo area, drop by Alphaland to visit Gorky's at the ground floor. I know I would come back.

Moments Vol. 3

What good thing happened to me this past week? Well, for one thing, payday happened! I somehow spent the last two weeks wondering where the heck my money went again! So yey for payday! 

Aside from that however, this week was the week that had a couple of good surprises in store for me as well as fun and laughter.

The twice in a week unexpected hang out 

 

I usually get an invite from Ryan to hang out after work at least one day in the work week. But what was supposed to be just us two hanging out twice this week became a trio with Florian deciding to hang out with us twice this week. Like Ver, Florian's someone I met through Ryan since they were work colleagues about two years ago already I think. Since then though, she's become a work colleague as well (I get her as a freelance writer for work a lot!) and someone I consider a friend as well. She's also left teaching and rejoined the agency world. 

She's as witty as Ryan and Ver are. In fact, this is us discussing a plan for them to share their witty conversations with more people. When you hear their discussions, I'm sure you'll be entertained too! 

A Relaxing Tuesday morning hanging out at Starbucks

I had a really early start to my work day last Tuesday. That's because Nicole and I had assisted a journalist who tried his luck securing a visa at the US Embassy. Well we couldn't go with him all the way inside the embassy so we spent the morning at Starbucks right across. Hanging out at a coffee shop where my food and drinks can be charged to the office? What's not to love? The relaxing morning was capped off with lunch at Sentro 1771 in Greenbelt, Makati. Very good food in that place! Throw in the fact that I was with another work friend and well, this just has to be part of what made my week. 

Delicious and healthy lunch from Juju Eats

 

 

I have to say it's been more than a year since I last set foot inside Juju Eats. It used to be my Tuesday afternoon habit - me buying a pasta salad or a juice after my meeting. But this week, Fate had a craving a for Juju Eats and so we went there for lunch. I ended up trying their new offering, Grilled Panini Pesto Chicken plus a Mango smoothie. It was expensive but it was worth it. 

I got me a couple of designer shades

Maila and I saw this announcement about a designer shades sale at Alphaland last week.My Sunnies shades' broken already and so I had every intention of buying a new one. After our lunch at Juju Eats, we dropped by Alphaland and so I was able to check out the designer shades sale. I ended up having two designer Guess shades for only Php990! It was a buy one, take one bargain deal!   

Windfall  

My cousin, Mark said he wasn't sure he'd be able to drop by this weekend at the house to pay me. He owed me for his share of the Internet (yes, I still ask him to pay even though he's already moved out. It was our agreement) and for buying my old HP laptop so he told me he'd just send me the money through my BPI account. I've had some hard time collecting cash I'm owed to from some people and I didn't want this to add to that. So off I went to BPI near our office to open another BPI account (I used to have two savings account under BPI but I can be so careless with money that I emptied them... or so I thought!)      

I attempted to open another Easy Saver account (just for the sole purpose of collecting money from Mark) but then I was told I still had an active Easy Saver account with them. Wow! Imagine my surprise to find out that I still had some money stashed at BPI and I had completely forgotten about it! So instead of opening a new one, I had my old ATM card replaced, my online banking account reactivated and voila! I now have another reason to be more responsible with my money.  

Capped off Friday with chicken chicken dining 

Actually the place is called Buffalo's Wings 'n' Things and it's located at Glorietta 5. But Ver, Ryan and Florian refer to the place as "chicken, chicken". "Let's eat at Chicken, Chicken" they would always say. And so Friday night, Florian, Ryan and I had dinner there. I think that's a garlic something flavored chicken (Ryan usually orders it for me so I can't really remember what it's called) plus NY dirty rice and fries. I had two dirty rice that night! Yum!!! 

Throw in this view of Glorietta from where we dined in at on a Friday night and it became a favorite moment. 

And lastly, there was the unexpected weekend bonding with friends

I had initially planned on going to the gym with another friend. Unfortunately, I've been suffering from a case of muscle cramps on my right side since Thursday afternoon. I didn't do any strenuous activity so I am blaming it on a bad sitting posture at work since that's when it started. The cramps are now mild but I dare not do anything that might cause it to ache again for now so I skipped the gym and chose to veg out instead. 

My plan was to stay home and spend time watching movies on NetFlix. But Mai invited us to meet up. Since hang outs with this girl are rare, off I went to Glorietta to meet them. And then we had another unplanned meet up with Ver who was at Makati yesterday because of a review class she's teaching. This is us meeting up for dinner at Cafe Mary Grace. We also watched a movie last night per Ver's invite. We watched Love Me Tomorrow starring Piolo Pascual and Dawn Zulueta.