So I've been trying to fix up my LJ by re-skinning it and making new layouts.... but I just couldn't make it work the way I want it!  I guess LJ is too limiting for me in terms of creative freedom.  Either that or I just couldn't make it work.

Finally I've decided to move back to blogger and use my Nuke site instead since I haven't had the inspiration to play with it lately (how can I in such depressing/ pathetic times...).

So to my LJ friends,  see you on the other side! I'll make sure to post whenever I have updates.

Update your links everyone!  

It's almost close to 8 weeks and counting... and all I've done is wait.... waiting for the Executioner to finally drop the guillotine and he hasn't come yet.

Where is he?  What's taking him so long? 

I remember he called me up through my cellphone to hand me my sentence with a promise that I will have my chance to present my case and defend it.   The chance never came.  And so I willingly put myself at the chopping block.  I had no choice.  I am powerless.  He has the upper hand. 

It's frustrating, sad,  depressing... living this way for the past 56 days. 

How long do I have to wait?  It's all up to him really. 

So I'll just sit here and pray that the Executioner will come.... if not today, maybe the day after or the day after that or....

As promised... click on!

I don't want to sound so profound but given the situation... I just can't help it sometimes.  Here goes...

In some situations words spoken are better than words written.  It's how we say it, how our eyes speak, how our hands move or how our bodies shift that make all the difference in what we want to convey.  Sometimes it's even not enough to just say it.  You need to see and you need feel it.  Like when words are written, it takes so much interpretation that lead to confusion and misunderstanding. 

Sigh.

When will all this end...

I'm back!  Four days worth of Shanghai adventures.  That was quite the experience.  It was fun while it lasted.  I will post pix through my multiply site, which I haven't touched in years (didn't really know what to do with it) but I have yet to go through all 161 photos I took there.  So hang on.

Here are some notable places we visited:

• The Bund- The great divide between the old and new faces of Shanghai, right by the Huangpu river.  It's almost like walking in the streets of Europe with the British Concession in the background.
  
• Shanghai Museum and the Parliement Building- Memorable experience: my ultra reliable Benetton sneakers (which I've used for years) have decided to die right then and there which prompted me to buy new rubber shoes (no this is not an excuse to by a new pair, it really happened!)
• Xintiandi (pronounced Shin-tian-di, get it right folks!)- A.K.A the French Concession.  The great expat hang-out which is littered with European bars and French architecture... its really quite a view.  Memorable experience: Some guy who looked like Big Moose snuck into one of my pix as I stood in front of a German pub.  Yikes!  And get this, the pub had a pinoy band playing songs like Sumayaw Sumunod and Anak much to our surprise.  German Pub, Pinoy band, at the French Concession in Shanghai... go figure!
• Magnolia Theatre to watch the New Shanghai Circus-  This was definitely enjoyable.  I loved the motorcycle stunt where 5 cyclists were traversing a huge metal dome and managed to avoid each other!
• Nanjing Road- Got a taste for high-end brands? This is the place to shop.  Prices are relatively the same as the stores here but they have more choices plus there are more European brands there, some you haven't even heard of.  Just to circle the entire street is amazing especially at night.
• Madame Tussauds Shanghai- So if you have SPARE CASH, this is something you can visit, it's along West Nanjing Road and it has almost the same wax figures you can see in London plus other prominent Chinese figures that we don't necessarily know.  We couldn't resist having our pix taken with the likes of George Clooney, Prince William, Brad Pitt..... well you get the drift :P
• Qi Pu Lu- Bargain heaven.  Think Greenhills.  Put your bargaining powers to the test!
• Oriental Pearl Tower- This huge rocket-like structure is the first thing you see by the Bund... but its not the tallest structure in Shanghai.  We didn't get to climb it since we ran out of cash but it looks interesting from below.
• Jin Mao Building- So we decided to climb this instead.  Its a building 88 stories high and is the fourth tallest in the world.  Spectacular view from above... if you're not afraid of heights that is...
• Super Brand Mall- If you have a lot of spare time because you're waiting for your evening flight, this mall is worth exploring, just because its probably the only mall in Shanghai thats pretty decent and easy to navigate through.

So that's pretty much all the places we visited packed in a 4 day trip.  Of course lots of adventure along the way including overpriced taxi cab rides, the sound of people spitting wherever and whenever, the dirtiest bathrooms in the face of the planet, the great language barrier and some rude folks along the way... I say its an adventure worth repeating.... especially since you're a lot smarter the next time around.

So now that I'm back, reality hits you like a ton of rocks especially when you know you're heart (yes I said it) is on the chopping block.  I'm just trying to enjoy the last few moments I have with it.

Oops sorry about that... I'll let you know when I can post pix soon!

Here's something to look forward to. 

We're going to Shanghai!  That will be me and my best friend Lorena, who found this tour package for a steal in the newspaper.  Her timing is perfect.  It will be my first time to go on vacation not just because I love to travel and see new places because I just wanna DISAPPEAR-- at least for just 4 short days.  We're leaving on Friday.

I've been to Beijing, Shenzhen and of course HK before but never Shanghai, so this is something to look forward to.

And for those who are wondering, I am still in 'limbo' with the 'thing' that has happened to me.  I should be able to report 'something' by next week and I'm still hanging on to my 'Last Stand' lest I fail, either way its something I will write about.  I am still miserable (something you'd feel when you're in limbo) but in the face of all that has happened (and still is) I'm trying to keep my chin up.  Its a grand effort but it must be done in order to survive.

It's Shanghai or bust baby!

I made my last stand today.  I figured since everything is falling apart already, might as well make everything fall apart the right away, if there even were such a thing. 

In worst case scenarios, you try to do the best that you could so in the end, you walk away with a peace of mind. 

But it doesn't stop there unfortunately, sometimes all we can do is wait and hope....

I heart Brandon Boyd and the rest of Incubus for making me forget the depressive pathetic state I am in for 90 minutes straight!

Needless to say the whole concert was a blast!  I can't believe they sang songs from almost every album they made from S.C.I.E.N.C.E, Make Yourself, Morning View, A Crow Left of the Murder and of course their latest Light Grenades! I was totally out of my mind when they sang Drive (my all time college days soundtrack) and then there was Stellar and Wish You Were Here, I was beyond myself right after that.  And of course it did help when Brandon Boyd did a little strip tease... just seeing him bouncing around the stage half-naked is enough to bring out my inner-high-school patootsiness... yeah me and Carlo were practically ogling.

What makes the concert better than their last concert here?  For one its 30 minutes longer plus they sang songs from almost all their albums, that everyone was singing along in every set.   I thought that was pretty cool.

Just one major setback... I still can't believe they didn't sing Dig!!

Ah well.... you can't have everything....

Perfect timing.  Something to get my mind off recent events that have rendered me too depressed to even function.

Incubus is back in Manila!  Watched them the first time and watching them again.  Can't get enough.  Me and my concert buddy, Carlo will be there in our comfy lower box seats. 

Anyone going?  See you guys there!

Space, the final frontier.  

No, that's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about this kind of  S  P  A  C  E.

Space is good.  Space makes you think, it gives you that inner peace.  A place to relax and be alone.  A temporary recluse from the chaos of the world below.

Right now I'm not a big fan of it.  Right now space spells uncertainty, impending doom, a disaster waiting to happen.  It spells THE END of fighting a losing battle... no matter how hard I try.

It sucks that I'm in the middle of all this space.

I'm watching these videos tearing up.

Laughter... it's the best medicine...

I'm fucking Matt Damon



I'm fucking Ben Affleck

Been feeling nostalgic for the last couple of days and its not because I'm becoming terribly sentimental but its MAINLY because I have been looking for these rare MP3s (circa college days 1999 thereabouts). Most unexplainable of all is that I could not seem to find them in torrent or even in Limewire.

Frustrating.

And so, I might just have to content myself in watching them through youtube. Here are two of those nostalgic songs I've been looking for.:

Tinfed-Drop



Fossil-Moon



Share in my nostalgic moment by watching/listening to them. :)

Snoozerville Needs You!

I found this cute little site from Kei that let's you create your own City (and you even get to name it) and all you have to do is ask your friends to visit it and post little messages about it to make the city grow.  Pretty low maintenance if you ask me.

Here's mine.  I hope you guys take the time out to post something when you get to Snoozerville!

Snoozerville welcomes you!



And here's Kei's Far-view City




On other news...

In this jaded universe I live in, seldom do I get those little bursts of moments of surprises that leave me in shock (at least in just a few moments) before I return to my normal state and resolve the issue as just something very trivial.

Two of those moments have happened in the past few weeks, which continue to remind that maybe I'm not as jaded as I think I am.

Hhmm....

Happy New Year folks!  It's the big 08! 

Our creative director says that once I've tried a MAC.... you can never go back (to regula PC)... gasp!  And I would never have found out how true this was until my laptop crashed and the only available computer in the office is a MAC G4 (lovely!).  But I have to admit that at first I kind of dreaded the idea of using the MAC thinking that it wasn't going to be as user-friendly and that I wasn't really a graphic designer.... blah blah blah.  I was dead wrong.  I love it and now I'm having dreams of getting an MacBook (hiyeah right and that's all it's ever gonna be, ugh).  So to all the skeptics out there... just try it... give it just one day and you will be reformed! :P

Okay enough about MACs.

Our New Year's celebration was great, just like our Christmas celebration... especially since we got to spend it with my Dad! Yipee!  Thanks to his great performance the company he works for sponsored him a bonus trip here.  ;)

Here are some of the highlights of the holidays:

• Our grand family reunion was a success (thanks to me of course :P).  It's like planning this big event without being paid for it, haha!
• Got to have a Christmas Dinner with my fab friends at High Street.
• Our SI class reunion at my place was very eventful (to say the least) or else it wouldn't have ended at 3:30 AM.
• Got to have a mini-reunion (Dad's side) at my Tito's in Batangas.
• Kei got to spend New Year's with us again. He was able to get to experience our fireworks tradition which consisted this year of a 5000 Judas Belt that crackled non-stop for 5 minutes straight!

So now its back to the daily grind, trying to start the new year right by trying to be more optimistic and more focused as I can and looking forwad to more and more adventures this year!

So I got bored with my old LJ layout and decided to go on a different direction, less goth more cheery, which explains the orange theme.  I got this from this site, yeah i know I cheated, didn't make my own, hehe.  LJ can be an html nightmare! 

Stuff thats happened to me aside from work? 

My best friend got married (omg still can't get over that, haha!)
I had started on my Christmas shopping and had done 30% of it, more to go! 
I still don't know what to get Kei :P
I'm organizing our family reunion on the 23rd of this month.
There's a Fab Friends Christmas dinner on the 22nd.
It's the SI annual Christmas get-together (shall we say 'gathering') at our house on the 29th.
I'm on leave starting next week for my 5-day mandatory leave. (yahoo!)
Crossing my fingers that Dad comes home for Christmas and New Year's.

So far so good.... looking forward to all these wonderful events and of course to next year!

We won!!!

Our very own Pinoy DVD wins the best E-Commerce site at the 10th Philippine Web Awards! Woohoo! 

And so we wonder where kids get their language these days...
Here's a real Kids show complete with actual language and real conversations between characters.... watch and weep!



In other news... guess what! Inday has a her own blog! Our beloved sosyal na katulong has her own space. Click for more laughs.

Thanks to all of you who have voted.  All four of our wonderful entries to the 10th Philippine Web Awards are now finalists!

There's still time to vote you guys! 

Wahoo!!!

In the whole 28 years of my existence I have never had the experience of having a parent working abroad.  Short trips abroad for business was the most I have ever experienced.  My Dad has always been around whenever and wherever I needed him and being a Daddy's girl that meant-- all the time.  This complete dependency on my Dad will be tested in a few days as he leaves for Vietnam since he was recently assigned there to be a full-time consultant.  Sure he'll come home every 3 months (including Christmas and New Year's) but things are gonna be different around the house as we (my Mom and my brothers) adjust to certain responsibilities that we don't normally do.  (Sigh)

So I guess this means more frequent visits to 'Nam for us... and a few more perks I'm sure.

Friends from the multi-media marketing and advertising world (and for those who want a glimpse of it), read up!  Here's another excellent example of using the Internet to launch and support a marketing campaign.  This one is launching and promoting Coke Zero.... its fantastic... it creates hype, its hilarious and I think it actually works.  Look around their site and there's lots in store for you!