QC Circle's Improvised Gym

Few weeks ago, my class in grad school had a "field trip" in National Anti-Poverty Commission and in University of the Philippines, Diliman. 

But that's not what this entry is all about.

While we were waiting for the rest of our classmates, my grad school friends and I decided to walk around the Quezon City Circle Park to kill time.

Then, we saw these improvised gym equipment for the public:

Not really sure what this is called,all I know is these are for the arms.

Aya testing it out

I assume these are for the arms again

Ness trying it out

These are for the arms again

For the legs (?)

Pearl trying it out

Stretch

And fold!

What is this for?

This is for bending it like Beckham

Close

Open

What the equipment looked like when "un"-painted

Aint Tetanus-free!

QC People like to exercise here

Almost all apparatus are "booked"

I just couldn't resist taking a pic of this fashionista lola who's taking the early morning dancing lessons

I wish we have this in UPLB freedom park. Paging Chanci?

Nikole Calimbas-Maligalig's Maternity Photo Shoot

Just as promised from my last entry here are my favorite shots from last week's Maternity Shoot

Happy Expecting Couple

Baby will be named Marcus Nikolai, derived from his parents' names

Mommy Nikki

Jersey Mommy

Boss Mommy

We didn't really have any problems with shooting Nikki because she was so game to pose and change outfits underneath the umbrella. Admittedly, we could've produced more good shots if not for the rain who seems to be fond of playing hide-and-seek with us.

We're hoping to shoot the baby once he comes out! <3

Behind the Scenes: Nikki's Maternity Shoot

We were already planning on shooting Nikki's Maternity pictorial since last year, so weeks before her due date, her hubby Marc decided to give it a go!

We were planning initially to do a combination of indoor/outdoor pictorial. We were just planning to play around Marc's location (Beestro Kase) but then we decided to go to Caliraya to do a full outdoors pictorial since Marc mentioned that Nikki's never been to Caliraya. We decided to kidnap Erna on our way to Japanese Garden, Caliraya. 

Photographer: Henry James Botengan

Asst. Photographer: Marc Maligalig

Lightsman: Dhoddie Morales

Creative Director: Kristine Araguas

Mommy Model: Nikole Calimbas-Maligalig

We dressed up Mommy Nikki in "Man" Outfits since they are expecting a Baby Boy next month. It would've been a really great shooting day if not for the heavy rain showers that seems to be playing hide and seek with us during the entire shoot.

Here are the behind the scene photos from last night:

First Shot: Under this tree

It was still raining in Japanese Garden when we left

The edited pics are still being processed. Will upload my top favorites soon!

“You Should Date An Illiterate Girl”

by  Charles Warnke (Jan. 19, 2011)

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Herb Republic became Hmpft Republic

Never mind the menu folder given by the waiters. First thing to ask when you go to this resto: What do you have left?

Saturday. After a friend's baby shower we decided to hit the salon for mani-pedi session then have dinner. We were planning to have some serious heart-to-heart masinsinan talk with my girlfriend so we decided to have it in a place that it not usually within the vicinity of UPLB campus.

We decided to go to : HERB REPUBLIC

It wasn't really my first time there, because the first time I was there I was just checkin out the place with the Boys (yep, I'm the only girl) and we just ordered tea and coffee and enjoyed their free wifi. This time, I came with the girls and hoped for something good to eat.

I like their motto: From Seed to Table. Very Sonya's Garden-ish.

We arrived at around seven in the evening on a Saturday night and  was disappointed that 3 meals and categories were no longer available. Here are the disappointing reasons:

• No available chicken - it still hasn't grown yet. ( For real! That's the reason we got why they didn't have Chicken even though its on the menu. There's no note in the menu that it's temporarily not available!)
• No Desserts - at seven in the evening no available desserts anymore. And you only have two options there and both of them are not available.
• Out of the list of what they call appetizers, only 1 is available good thing it's the Mushroom Tempura.

I'm not really a fan of salads and all, I just went with the girls and here are the stuff that we ordered.

Our orders a.k.a. What they have left

Mushroom Tempura

The salad.

OMG I was not able to get the name of the salad because I still can't get over the shock that majority of what we wanted to order was not available.

OMG I even forgot the name of the soup.

Though the availability of the food is  disappointing, here are some positive points about this resto:

• They have free wifi!
• The waiters (or at least the one who served us) is very nice
• Cozy, earth-y, zen-ish kind of place
• They provide electric fans for potential places/cottages that might have  mosquitoes
• Lemon Grass Tea is good.
• The Salad that we ordered makes you feel full and it's pretty good. My friend joy ate it Dear Darla style ( Yellow Cab Pizza's Dear Darla)
• The Mushroom Tempura is good - I really would have loved it if not only for my brain dictating me that it's mushroom and not meat.

You can check their facebook page: Here 

Upsilon Sigma Phi's Bathala & Bakunawa

Last thursday, my friends and I went to support our friend and gradschool classmate, Sam Pasia (who's the resident Upsilon's Boss Man as we speak) and his fraternity's play.

You can check out their official facebook page:

Upsilon Sigma Phi presents Layeta Bucoy's Bathala at Bakunawa

My apologies for the low res shots. These were taken from my 2MP camera phone. Forgot to bring my point and shoot. Here are the photos:

Not bad for stage production

Act One

I love the 'Babaylan' and 'Unggoy' Love Team

The Late wife of the Bathala is (accdg to rumors) model of Oil of Olay

Bathala and Wife Emo Scenes

Struggles

Curtain Call

After Show

Upsilon Pride or what Nina calls it "Bro-mance"

See the boys in a circle? They're actually singing what I assume their frat song! Lovin' the Upsilon frat pride. Kulet lang.

Act One is pretty good and amusing. Somehow,I literally fell asleep somewhere in Act Two. There are just some parts of the play that is quite dragging because of so many narratives and in spite of the lapel mics, some words were not really enunciated.  Maybe it's because it's their last show and they were pretty tired, but still.

Anyway, this is not really a review or something but just to give feedback here are some of the stuff that I have observed and learned in this play.

1. Worth it to pay Php120 for this play.

2. This is an "original".

3. First time to see a lead male role "Bathala" to have a weak Character.

4. First time to see a villain's acting far better than the lead.

5. First time to see really great actors in minor roles.

6. The play has a political undertone.

I still enjoyed the experience and I am hoping to watch more plays during my residency in UPLB.