Christmas/New Year

Growing up in the Philippines, I remember going around town visiting families and godparents around Christmas time to visit, do "mano po" and giving our store giveaways while receiving little gifts in return.  Carolings started in September and Christmas in the Philippines officially ends on the 1st Sunday of January which is the Feast of the Three Kings.  Here is another link from Wiki which says that Christmas in the Philippines officially ends on the 3rd Sunday of January which is the Feast of Santo Nino.

We visit our grandma every Sunday but around Christmas time more of the families and some out of town families and friends come to visit and celebrate.  Of course we have the Filipino "lechon" (roasted pig) to gather around and chow down on and other traditional feast food dishes.

As for the Feast of Santo Nino, traditionally called "Sinulog"  it is a big feast in the City of Cebu.  I got the pleasure of celebrating this feast in my college days in Cebu City.  Here is what Wiki  have to say about Sinulog.

As for gifts, we do a lot of gift exchanging in parties or gifts for games in the parties but Santa's gifts under the Christmas tree or the stockings is not the highlight of the season.  I am sure some families have gifts under their trees but we don't have those growing up in my family and we never expected it.  More and more families are adopting the western way of Santa's gifts under the tree these days though. 

New Year is also another family event.  Although we don't go out to celebrate it.  We stayed home to welcome the new year.  That is so we won't have the urge to go out a lot in the coming year.  We make lots of merry noises around the house like banging pots, firecrakers, etc to ward off any bad energy in the house.  I remember having the loudest in our neighborhood.  We jump a few times to grow taller in the new year.  Have 12 fruits, 7 dishes including "pancit" for long life and others.  Most especially my father makes sure nobody goes out or do any shopping on this day.  We wanted to start the year the way we wanted the rest of the year to be.  That is to be together a lot and not be spenders.

Here is wishing everybody a Very Happy and Prosperous 2011!!!

Halloween

The last few days of October is usually just crazy busy in our house.  It starts with the last soccer practice, then the last soccer game, soccer party, the hubby's birthday, halloween party at the school and the real halloween trick or treating day we usually spend with friends.  Our neighborhood is just dark and silent for the night.  So it is more fun to visit with friends who have an active neighborhood.

Halloween this link will send you to WIKI and it explains halloween in detail.  Includes the origin, religious perspective, food, costumes, games and activities.  Growing up in the Philippines, we never celebrate the day.  I remember the grown up being very busy on the 31st but that is because they were getting ready for the days we will be spending at the cemetery for both All Soul's and All Saint's Day.  We visit and light candles on friends' and relatives' love ones who had passed away.  Both days are spent with people in the cemetery, with the living who have loved ones who passed away.  Now, I see that the Philippines have also caught up with how the west celebrate halloween.

Truck on Fire

After the soccer game yesterday, we decided to stop by the pet shop for a replacement fish for our aquarium.  On our way, we saw a smoke coming up from the mall parking lot.  Being the curious beings as we all are, we decided to go nearer.

That looks like a truck!  Is this for real?  We don't see much action in this town and this is something new for us adults as well.  I witnessed a few houses and buildings on fire in the Philippines. The hubby also saw a barn on fire in the town he grew up.  But not cars or trucks.  Only in the movies.

After a few minutes, the engine/hood area was on fire.  Then the front tires were on fire.  Wow, we are really going to see a truck go KA-BOOM!!! Or so we thought...

The fire truck shows up right when we were edging on our seats.  And as you can see more fellow gawkers were showing up.  Not  a good view, right when the action is starting.  It took the firefighters a few seconds to set up and spray foam into the fire and then inside the hood after they were able to crack it open a little.

The after effect of fire and foam.

What a day!

Daydream Blog

If you have been following my blog.  You will remember I shared a blog written by a mom who is on maternity leave in France about her baby's daydreams.  She posted cute, pretty and original pictures about the dream scenes.  She has just posted that she decided to stop publicly posting the pics from now on.  Her blog has reach millions of readers and some are using her baby pictures in advertisings and commercials.  Which are real violations of her copyright and privacy.  She is publishing a book about it which will be release in 2012.  So I guess, her blog has gotten her good and bad publicity.  I have decided to delete her blog from my "favorite blog I want to share" box and remove my post about it to help minimize more exposure of her blog.  If you have seen her blog,  I hope you have enjoyed it as well as I did.
 

Cleaning

Household items great for cleaning.  This is from yahoo:shopping.  Personally if I am not sure of what cleaning agent to use, I just try cleaning the surfaces with "baking soda".  Dirt or spills on stove tops and microwaves are tricky surfaces to clean.  You don't want to use things that might scratch it and destroy the finishes.  My sister-in-law mentioned baking soda and it does clean all the grime off without much effort even.  The link listed a few normal household cleaning stuff and some grocery items which are not too strong and won't cause any harm to anything or anyone.

Finale

The T.V. series I am following are dwindling down.  The links I provide here, will bring you to the networks' websites for you to watch the full episodes or just read about the characters, etc.

White Collar had the season finale last week with Moz being shot.  I thought Mozzie is an integral part of the story.  The series will not be the same without him.  So I hope they will somehow find a way to revive him when the series starts again in January.  Check out the link to watch the full series and to see the comments written by fans.

Covert Affairs ends this week and will be back in the summer of 2011.  I can't wait to see more of their adventures.  I don't want Ben to die since he provide a lot of the mysteries in this season's series.  I will definitely want to see more of this series again.

America's Got Talent got it's winner on Wednesday.  I like watching this because of the variety of acts you get to see.  I liked all of the final four acts and to me all of the 4 are winners.  I was rooting more on Jackie but Michael is deserving as well.  Prince Poppycock also entertains me a lot and am sure the Fighting Gravity will be booked for shows a lot. 

Rizzoli and Isles also finished the season with a lot of  fallen officers.  We will just have to watch what happens next summer. I am reading the books by the writer but am still in the 5th book.  Since I alternate my readings with other writers as well.  Check out Tess Gerritsen's website to see what she thinks about the finale.

I hope all the lead characters are coming back for the next season for Warehouse 13 which is going to have its finale next week.

For now, it is books and blogging time for me.  I will let you guys know when my favorites starts again for this season.

News from Pinas

This week has been crazy with news from the Philippines.   We have the Ms. Universe Pageant and Bb. Pilipinas got in to the top 5 for the first time in 11 years.  But people seem to just remember her "major-major" answer.  Lots of people were talking about how much better their answers would be.  But if put on the spot, as you can see in the link, it is not really easy to admit to ones mistakes and let the whole world know about it as well. 

Then there is another news from the Philippines a Hong Kong tourist bus taken hostage by a former police man.  Lots of people are criticizing about how this situation was handled.  Maybe if they were better trained and better equipt it might end better.  But to generalized that the whole Philippines and Filipinos are bad is to my opinion just too much. 

I am a chinese, born and raised in the Philippines so my heart goes out to the chinese people as well.  But to ban tourist going to the Philippines and Filipino immigrants to Hong Kong where we know also employs lots of Filipinos is just going to make the situation worst.  There will be lots more Filipinos desperate for jobs. 

There are crime everywhere even here in Michigan we have robbers, DUIs and others.  The U.S. has its share of big crimes in big cities as well.  You can read about moms drowning their kids, and kids bringing guns and shooting school mates.  But no countries are banning their people from coming here. 

Maybe if Mendoza had taken hostage a Filipino bus and killed only Filipinos it will be another story that won't even reach anywhere else but only in the Philippines.  But then who knows what went on his brain that day.  Personally, to me it is just an isolated case done by a very desperate individual. 

Here is a letter written by a Filipino teenager to apologize to the whole world about the tragedy.  Here is another post I would like to share about these two controversies.

Kindle or Nook

Since we got home, I have been contemplating on getting myself an e-reader. An e-reader would have save us a lot of storage space in the camper.  Instead of a drawer full of books, we could have use the space for clothes or food.  Nook or Kindle  oh, what a choice.  Here is a comparison on the different e-readers by WIKI.  Although I am leaning more on Nook because we can change the battery and add memory ourselves.   I know though that it would still take me years to fill up the 1500 books memory available.  I am still hesitant to buy one because reviews has been mentioning that e-reader prices will dive soon.  An ipad would sometimes come to mind but then it would defeat the purpose of JUST being a reader.  It would be multi-tasking and with an LCD screen.  Not really something you want to do while camping or watching the kids.  An iphone, blackberry, droid, PDA and others can also be use for reading but would you really like to read books for hours in those screens? Plus, we don't see any advantages in having a mobile phone yet, except for an extra bill to pay.  People walking around with bluetooth and talking on their phones while shopping and walking around is not really what I wanted to look and sound like. Nook also have soduko and chess included which is a very good distraction for me when I get bored of reading or just want to do something else and we can do minimal browsing with it if we want to.  So I guess it is NOOK then!  But when???
By the way, the GPS is a hit with the hubby, he can't drive without it nowadays.  I am glad I did not get him one with the phone or with other extra stuff included.  It was able to guide us to where we wanted to go and direct us to groceries and other places we wanted to go without a problem.  The voice recognition was a plus and the guys are able to play with some of the games included. 
I know most or some of you may think I am so lame for doing this.  Most of you might even have gadgets smaller and with more futuristic tasking toys.  But this is MY blog and as I have posted before, this blog will be about tea, coffee and personal gadgets we are happy with or wish for and of course some personal ramblings as well.  Thank you for dropping by...

Digitized World

Our world has become digitized in a blink of an eye.  My 6 year old received a present from an older cousin (just a few years older).  It includes an old Peter Parker 35 mm camera and guess what, my little guy CAN NOT imagine why he can not see the pictures on the camera.  Why do we have to develop the pictures? - he says.   Although most of my wedding pictures were still taken with the camera that uses films.  We already have the digital cameras when they were born.  This is a pretty old model but it still works very good, so we haven't upgraded yet.  I am wondering if instead of wasting money buying photo albums and even scrap booking that we should just try to digitized our old pictures instead.  I don't think it will be long, especially with e-books being out already, that their generation will still want to physically flip through books (photos or literatures).  It might even be considered incomprehensible to waste trees, money and storage space for these physical photo albums and books.  What do you think?