Think Out Loud

It was a battle between Johnny English and The Horrible Bosses.

After casting a quick vote, Johnny English won the night.
Boy, we were in for a major laugh trip that I hadn't felt in months.

Settling for the last full show while munching pop corn, burger, and french fries, I was glad I glomped down all of the food before the trailers ended. The first few scenes already had the whole theater erupting in laughter and we found ourselves out of breath. There's just something about Rowan Atkinson that's so funny even though he hasn't really done anything yet.

Johnny English Reborn is about an ousted British agent who was reinstated in the MI7, a special spy group, to stop an assassination attempt on the leader of China. He was asked to fly to Hongkong with his assigned partner, Tucker, to stop the crime. Unfortunately, Johnny's over-confidence and refusal to listen to rookie agent Tucker made him lose the evidence that would have stopped the assassination. He ended up being framed as the "mole of MI7."

Johnny's adventures were silly and extremely hilarious. For a while, you might get a glimpse of the signature "Mr. Bean moves" and it'll make you laugh even harder. There were serious moments when the story picks up but expect to crack up soon. It's a nice movie to watch with a group of friends. After the movie, all of you will certainly have fun remembering the funny bits and pieces of the story.

And for that, I give Johnny English 4 out of 5 stars.

My friend just dedicated a blog entry to me. Haha. Insane guy. You can read his blog entry here .

Thank you for this, friend. You just encouraged me to be more random. HAHA

This should have been posted last week ^_^

It's been almost a week since my 2-week getaway/adventure in Antique and Aklan. Until now, I'm still floating in the air with the memories of the good times and the hard times we all conquered. It's not easy to decide where to begin. Living in those 2 weeks felt like 2 years. But now that's over, I feel that the experience ended too fast and I wanted more.

The memories are still fresh, the feeling of nostalgia still very vivid. Such a remarkable experience.

So before the euphoria dies down, here's my top 15 photos that would best describe my Antique-Aklan experience:

I lived the dream! I went as a writer and I was the first one to use our brand new Nikon 5100 DSLR. There's nothing more exciting than going on field armed with a camera and a pen. In fact, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I was overwhelmed with so many firsts. But this one tops it all. Because of this experience, I'm starting to consider doing freelance travel writing when the right time comes.

I met my two mentors: one in photography and one in writing. I learned how to tinker the camera, shoot with the right angle, and ask the right questions to the right people in order to put substance in my story. One thing that made these mentoring sessions even better was that I was able to apply the things I learned right away. Talk about practical exam!

I sailed the rough seas of Aklan aboard this small, humble fisherman's boat. Thankfully, the waters were not as rough as it was the following day. We sailed late afternoon (this was part of our visit to one of our livelihood beneficiaries 3 years ago. It's a success story that I'm gonna right about soon). With this once in a lifetime experience, I can say that I was able to live a fisherman's life for at most 30 minutes, even though we didn't really do any catching or fishing.

If you think 9pm is early, then the province life is not for you. In Antique, all shops are closed by 8pm. So if you take a nap, don't allow yourself to sleep in after 7pm or else you won't find any place for dinner. And we learned it the hard way. Thankfully, the caretaker of the guest house and his friend knew a restaurant about 20 minutes away that is open until 12 midnight.


Welcome to THE Guest House, the place we considered home for more than a week. This was where we slept, ate, worked, and feverishly assembled the wheelchairs. This used to be a safe house for families caught in the middle of Antique's political wars. And it so happened that Paul's family, the caretaker, used to one of those. One night  (while I was doing my laundry) he suddenly said that he never thought he would be back to this place. It is now bearing very little marks of what his family went through when he was still a small boy. Wearing my investigative journalist's hat, I found out that his father used to be a political player in the barangay level and was caught in the political mayhem. If I remember it right, that was prior to the Martial Law up to the transition of power to the late Cory Aquino's government. The late Evilio Javier, an avid Aquino supporter who was assassinated during the snap elections, was one of the people who took care of his family.

NOW, if you're wondering if we encountered half bodies flying around or small monsters running in circles around this fairly huge guest house (after all, this is Antique), sorry to disappoint you but we didn't. And it's not as if such weirdness was welcomed. The only annoying creatures we dealt with were dozens of jumping frogs and hundreds of flying gamo-gamo.

And FYI, we were the first ones to use this freshly-renovated guest house.

Stingy with the overloading law? Well, this is how they do it in Antique. As long as you can fit in and the tricycle can run, feel free to hitch. With pay, of course. This happened to us when we went home from Gaisano Mall. They fit all 8 of us in one tricycle. How that happened? I'll leave it to your creative imagination.

1. We have a radio partner now in Antique,
2. It's fun to build rapport with radio hosts, and
3. I can now scratch and scribble an OB script in 2 minutes 

I hope I can do the third part for our TWR scripts.


I got inked! Thanks to Mark, he pressured me into getting a henna at Boracay. I guess that's what they call peer pressure. But I didn't go off without a fight. I bribed him to pay half of the charge or else I wouldn't get a henna with him. Ha! Worked like a charm.

Last February, I prayed for a road trip vacation. But I didn't expect it would be in this form - and it was waaaay better than what I expected! A road trip it was, all right. We went back and forth to Antique (which, FYI, is a four hour drive) and then, the adventures in this mini-elf! The team started telling me to be careful with my prayers because God is answering them in extraordinary ways and it's getting them involved too. HAHA. But I know you had fun, guys. Don't deny it. So I'll pray some more! ^_^

The best and the highlight of this whole trip was that we were able to minister to people who were in desperate need of Christ. We were able to talk to them, encourage them, pray for them, touch their hands, and simply pat their shoulders. Oftentimes, these simple actions bring loads of comfort to people who are on the verge of giving up. It was a great opportunity to extend the love and care of Jesus. This made the whole trip a million times fulfilling.

I can't wait for my next adventures! Stay tuned!

I just came back from my 2-week trip in Antique and Aklan. Right now, I can say I'm experiencing slight symptoms of separation anxiety. I kinda got attached to the people i've been with.

Who would have thought that I would gain too much (not weight) in just two weeks? It was like I gained a whole lifetime and the feeling is ridiculously overwhelming.

To start with, this is what God welcomed us with on our arrival (by roadtrip from Aklan) at Antique:



Prior to my being a part of this mission, I was overwhelmed with so many "firsts". It was my first time to:

1. be a part of the Wheelchair Distribution Team
2. go to Visayas as a staff of Operation Blessing
3. go to Antique and Aklan
4. use a (brand new) DSLR during field work
5. be on the field for 2 weeks
6. spend my 2nd anniversary on field as an OB staff
7. work with the people I've been with (except Elvie because we're the only staff who were there)

And more than that, I was able to bond with these excellent, competent, and uberly crazy people who made my two weeks full of color and life.

Since Zek isn't in the picture above, he gets a special photo here. With me, of course, since I'm also part of the team.

Well, well, well... Love is in the air and it's not even February!

I just found out (from the ever-reliable Facebook) that one of my high school classmates is getting married tomorrow and one of my closest friends in college will have her wedding on Saturday.

Am I reaching the age where friends and people around me are getting married while I'm stuck on being single - without even one manliligaw? Oh, well. Shrug. Guess it is that time of the year.

Anyway, I'm off on a two-week trip starting next week. So no internet-pleasure for me. But it's okay. Field work's better. It makes my life very productive. And I'm going off as a writer! That's an added excitement for me. Hadn't been a feature writer for quite some time. I just hope I could bring our new DSLR, if we get the order on time. I think we're headed to the beach after all the work is done. Cool.

 But, I'm still praying for my own DSLR. At least now I know where to buy one.

It's almost midnight (at least in an hour) and Cyril and I are still chatting, which is turning weirder and crazier every second. Well, that's not really surprising because this is us we're taking about. It's just not us when we're not insane. Anyway, I didn't know it was his birthday today so he was screaming for attention (KSP if you ask me: meaning kuland sa pansin) in Facebook. I thought it was a spam because Facebook is streaming with annoying spams lately, but it ended up being legitimate and a real person. And that's where all this randomness and craziness started. It went from my poor memory of birthdays to cartoons to larry king and anderson cooper to his white hair to dogs and cats and then to the azkals. I couldn't help blurting out how p*ssed I am for missing the Azkals, most especially James Younghusband, in UPLB today.  I told him (more like demanded him) to make it his birthday wish that James YHusband and I meet. And he did. He wished JYhusband would crash land in my dorm.

Forgive my friend. He's got a really violent imagination. Watched too many looney toons back in the days (probably ages ago, when I was still a newborn infant. Ha!). Anyway, he's probably reading this right now and thinking of ways on how to exact revenge on my story and he'll end up writing a blog entry.

Then mission accomplished. It's high time he start updating that standstill blog of his. (If it was a notebook, it's probably all dusty and old by now.)

So hey, you're welcome. Don't mention it.
:-)

While last week has been my most stressful week to date, this week has been the happiest, saddest, coolest, and most aggravating week I've ever had - and it hasn't even ended yet.

Happiest because I was chosen as the Employee of the Month for April. It was totally unexpected. I never dreamed I would ever achieve that. But it happened and I'm greatly thankful to the Lord. It was really a  surprise. An unexpected favor from God. Though I know in my heart that there are still many things I need to improve on, I am glad that I felt God's loving assurance that He is pleased with my work. All glory to Him alone!

Coolest because for the first time in weeks, Angel and I went out for some fun. I brought her to the OMF bookstore to show her the biggest OMF store (so far) in the country. We bought some things (a book and a Bible cover for me, while a set of memory card verses for her) then we went to Shangri La for dinner. We ate in the foodcourt because Angel wanted to try out some food joints that could not be found in Davao. So fast food chains like McDo and KFC were quickly disqualified from our list. There's no dull moment when you're with Angel. Her stories are really one of a kind - funny and there's-no-way-you-could-have-done-it kind of way. Well, the idea of the whole thing, really, was just to hang out, bond and have fun instead of being stuck the whole night in our microwave dorm.

Next, aggravating because I had a rough time with 2 co-workers. I think I got into their nerves which I never intended to do. So now they got on my nerves. But I don't want to talk about it because it's not worth a blog entry. I just surrendered it to God and begged Him to help me get over my feeling of discouragement and negativity and just move on without sinning.

And finally, saddest because one of my closest co-worker, VJ, is resigning. She has become more than a co-worker the past two years and she has been a close friend, constant companion, mischief-partner, and confidante. CCRD will never be the same again without her. She is truly someone irreplaceable. But I am happy for her because she can now stretch out her wings freely and start working on the new things God wants her to do. She has new job assignments from the Lord now. I am really excited to see her bloom into the woman God wants her to be. I will truly miss our crazy antics and the simple sharing moments we had. But most of all, I will miss her everyday presence. I am truly grateful to God for the friendship we had and for sending her into my life - and into my first ever workplace at that! She is one of the few people who showed genuine sisterly care, not because she's obliged to, but because she simply wanted to. I felt God's unconditional love through her.


But, we still have at least two weeks to be together. So it's time to get rid of all the loneliness and just enjoy the moments we will have with her. It's not like the friendship is ending, right?

Thank you, Lord, for this precious gift of friendship that You have blessed me with. 

It's telethon week again! This time, our telethon is entitled:


Yes, Ikaw ang Bida! For the whole week, segments about kids will be featured on the 700 Club Asia.

As always, we were assigned to lead the praise and worship for the first day. After that, we spent the whole night praying for the show and watching it. Compared to the other telethons I have watched, this is probably the lightest, less tensed telethon I've ever been to. So I strongly recommend that you watch the show tonight until Friday at 11PM on Qtv. You'll enjoy hearing compelling stories of kids and how their faith in God amazed even the well-experienced adults.

Here are some pictures from last night while waiting for the show. Thanks to Ate Yahon for thinking of bringing a camera that even I (insanely crazy about cameras) forgot to do.

Nag-a-arm wrestling habang may klase

Tuma-tambay at nagcu-cutting classes

Nahuli ng teacher!

Nagulat!

Nung lumapit, mas lalong nagulat!

Nagsisihan. Pinapunta tuloy sa Principal's office

Scared of what awaits them.... mwhahahahahahahaha (monster laugh) THE END

Have I mentioned our office already moved to a new location? Well, OUR OFFICE MOVED TO A NEW LOCATION! Yesterday, it was dedicated and members of the Mancom and Board of Trustees graced us with their presence. It started around 11:30AM and ended fairly quick. But because we decided to have photo sprees around the office (which I will upload later on), we ate lunch at half past one. But eating with co-workers is always a great thing and in my case, it's one of the best so it assuaged hunger attitudes. It's like having lunch with the whole family. We usually spend the time cracking jokes and poking fun at each other so snorted water and flying grains of rice is a usual thing in our "household".

It's like living in a sitcom everyday.

But yesterday was extra special. For the first time since this year entered and since our move to the new office, our department staff was complete. So yesterday we took a "family" photo. And once again, the three amigas, with Kuya Ben as the photographer, joined forces in creating chaos and craziness in our everyday sitcom.