Milestone

i lost 5 pounds in the last two weeks!

my goal is to lose at least 10 pounds before my NY trip in august . so happy to be half way there! this is my first time to weigh in since starting my (tedious) diet and exercise regimen.

another milestone for me this week is that i did two one-and-a-half-hour muay thai sessions back to back, on wednesday and thursday evening. marlon and i recently upped our muay thai from twice to thrice weekly. muay thai sessions are really grueling, and i felt the only way i could manage them thrice a week was if i did a short, one-hour session followed by a longer, one-and-a-half hour session the next day. it’s great to know that i can take the additional toil! my endurance is improving and my recovery time is getting much, much shorter.

also, robert (the ultra maniacal terminator trainer) told me i had really good form this week and that i was really starting to get the technique. i can really feel my kicks cutting through the bag now, even my left kick which is usually weaker. it is so satisfying to see a dent appearing in the bag, then getting bigger and bigger with each kick!  
i’ve decided that my reward for getting to the 10-pound mark will be makeup shopping at MAC! and marlon promises shopping jaunts at the 20- and 30-pound marks.
so inspired to carry on. happiness! :)

1 Comment
Posted on July 25, 2009
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels:

JAZA, istatue?


dr. kishore mahbubani, dean of the lee kwan yew school of public policy.

in fairness ha.

if you have 11 minutes to spare or are interested in development or public policy, watch the corporate video for the school. i was astounded by how compelling it was, a rarity in the world of corporate videos for the academe. too bad its mother university’s video has all the production value of negosiyete. ateneo’s sesquicentennial video is so much better.

by the way, the illustrious LKY is my neighbor. his house is on the same street as my office. bawal mag-picture sa harap ng bahay niya so no visual aids for the blog, sorry.

2 Comments
Posted on July 20, 2009
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels: ,

That’s the thing

i’m trying to get this guy (who thankfully not represented by a talent agency) to come in and audition for my sports spot. his face is cute but this is really what got me. you could say he had me at “ugat“.


forearms have always been my “thing”. one of my high school crushes was a guitarist who had the most maugat forearms and manly hands i had ever seen in my fourteen years of existence (due to all the guitar playing). kalimutan na lang natin ang fez.

later on, when i got into my first relationship, i developed a thing for butts. di bale na kung malaki, basta nakakagigil. my ex had the most whackable butt in the world. thankfully i married a man who perpetuates my butt fetish to this very day. another ex-generated fetish is my love of plump lips. thin kissers are just not my thing, except if they happen to belong to this guy.


each of us has her own thing about guys. justine and i used to notice very clean batoks in college, which is one of the reasons i love marlon in a very short haircut with a nice clean nape. then there are girls who fall in love with fingernails, go into a tizzy over toenails, swoon over shoulders and go bananas over backs.

what’s your thing?

update: so nakausap ko na siya. akala ko nung una nagmamaganda siya. pero ayaw niya palang sumubok hangga’t conFEERMED na yung petsa ng shoot. may laban daw kasi siya at baka mag-iba ang itsura niya pagkatapos ng laban. oo nga naman.

anyway, gamit ang maikling usapan naming iyon ay nasiyasat ko na siya. at eto siya, mga kaibigan! hindi lang pala braso ang kahanga-hanga sa kanya.

4 Comments
Posted on July 20, 2009
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels: ,

Sales talk fail

marlon and i caught the last full show of harry potter 6 at the lido last week. on the way up, my eagle eyes caught the words “further reductions – SALE” plastered across the window of all dressed up, my favorite local brand. i love this brand, but i just find them waaaay too expensive for me — the only thing i own is a necklace i got on sale. anyway, marlon agreed that i could have a little treat *squee* and left me to try on clothes while he went and got us tickets.

eventually it boiled down to something almost exactly like this blouse, going for 50% off. i was torn between two very pretty colors – a very pale lilac or a brighter coral. with isetan closing shop all around me, i was completely  befuddled and couldn’t choose. i thought about getting both tops, but then that would totally defeat the point of them being on sale.
 
now i have quite a high opinion of local sales staff. since retail is so competitive here, they actually turn out to be very well-trained and knowledgeable about their products. i have actually gotten sales people who have advised me to take a bigger shoe size than my usual because of the cut of a certain shoe, or opt for a classic green christmas tree versus a trendy white tree because it was easier to clean and looked better under regular home lighting. and of course buying electronics here is always great.
so i thought the all dressed up staff could actually help solve my dilemma with some secret nugget of wisdom about skin tones or fabrics known only to sales associates of designer brands. i brought the two blouses to the SA and laid out my dilemma. 
“well,” she started out in a thoughtful, earnest, promisingly hermione-like tone, “this one very bright, lah. and this one… very pale.”
uh, yeah. that’s exactly my problem.
both of us stared at the two blouses, as if waiting for them to whisper the right answer. finally, hearing the isetan closing announcement over the PA, i decided to make an off-the-cuff decision and get the brighter color like i usually do. 
sigh. i wonder if she thought i was blind.

2 Comments
Posted on July 19, 2009
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels:

BOHICA

brainstorming for my latest (and potentially huge) pitch today brings me to the land of military slang and jargon. here are some of the noteworthy nuggets (actually used by militarymen!) i found on my exploration.

catastrophic success - a particularly vivid paradox under the “iraq-specific” category, for obvious reasons. defined as “military victory coming much sooner than the plan anticipates, which throws off the overall strategic plan.”

BAMF – bad ass mother f*cker

CYA – cover your ass

FILTAB – f*ck it, let’s take a break

FUBAR – f*cked up beyond all recognition/repair (so much profanity in the military! i wonder why? :P )

HMFIC – head mother f*cker in charge

motarded – a u.s. marines term for being motivated to the point of being retarded. i guess nobody likes an eager beaver.

snot locker – the nose

SWAG – scientific wild ass guess

and my personal favorite: BOHICA – bend over, here it comes again

drei, that one’s for you! ;)

2 Comments
Posted on July 17, 2009
Category: Uncategorized · Labels:

Pleased with myself :)

i just had to blog this because i am so proud of myself today!

back story: after weeks of sitting through reruns of the biggest loser every day, marlon and i decided to get serious about losing weight. after all, if these 300- and 400-pound juggernauts could literally work their butts off and get even thinner than us, what the hell was our excuse? marlon took some opportune downtime at work to look for online tools that we could use to help us. initially, he found us a calorie counter widget for igoogle on labpixie, but with some more digging he turned up this website called sparkpeople.
it seemed a little confusing and tedious at first, but basically what happens is that you input your current weight and goal weight (it caps your weight loss at a very healthy 2.2lbs per week), and it churns out a recommended calorie/fat/protein/carb intake, plus a meal and exercise plan for you. 
marlon and i opted not to follow their meal plans (which seem like the most boring, white-people meals on the face of the planet) and just input our own meals into their calorie counter. you can search through their database or input the nutritional info of the brands that you like.  
it then tallies up the numbers and helps you see how you’re doing in terms of the recommended calorie/carb/fat/protein range for the day. yep, it helps you get that good old-fashioned balanced diet that you’ve been hearing about but never really believed worked. 
this is where i had all my breakthroughs, because i’ve always just starved myself (which actually forced my body to go into survival mode and cling on to the calories) or cut out carbs (which my body needs to burn calories). and i never even thought about protein (which my body needs to build muscle and pump up my metabolism), a bad habit that which became obvious in my first few days as i was always way below the minimum protein requirement. and fat… hah. it was off the charts.
ANYWAY. i could go on and on and on. but basically yun yung back story. the reason i’m so happy today is that after nearly two weeks of trying to balance my diet (and failing miserably on some days, as the spikes below will show you!), i was finally right on target today! 
the light green area is my recommended range. the out-of-bounds spikes reveal when i had a ton of olive oil in my salad dressing, or when we had a big vietnamese dinner with fried spring rolls and coffee jelly!
not only that, i was actually kulang calories and fat… even after eating a big (for me) breakfast, drinking apple juice (which i don’t normally have) and having lunch with a full tupperware of brown rice. i actually had to rack my brain for a snack that would put me just within the ideal range — and it turned out to be a midnight snack of parmesan cheese and ferrero dark chocolate! 
a diet that “forces” me to have chocolate and cheese? i never thought i would see the day. :)

2 Comments
Posted on July 16, 2009
Category: Uncategorized · Labels: ,

Urquiola preshosha

i was flipping through an issue of home and decor (a local mag that i buy a few times a year) when i came across this gorgeous stand-alone bathtub by patricia urquiola for axor, one of the brands under hansgrohe. every time a bathroom fixture is so pretty/luxurious/unusual that it makes me take a closer look, it turns out to be made by hansgrohe.

the dream home marlon and i are building in our heads most definitely contains a bathtub, and i think this is the one. it’s sleek and pretty, with a slope on which you can rest your head or neck while soaking and a built-in slot for hanging towels. whether both marlon and i will fit in it at the same time is dubious, but if we lose enough weight… who knows?


patricia urquiola is one of the few furniture designers who i actually keep an eye on. i first saw her t-table for kartell in rustans shortly before i got married and i fell in love with it. when i showed it to marlon, he said it gave him the itchies.


it was enough to get me interested in her work. i like a lot of her pieces, like this frilly chair (yes that’s really what it’s called), also for kartell.


i was instantly drawn to her crinoline chairs for b&b italia — they reminded me of those woven rattan peacock chairs that were so popular in the seventies, but reinvented in a cool and modern way.


then i found out that the weaving was actually done in the philippines! how cool is that!


i wonder if i can actually own one of these pieces at some point in my life.


i can just imagine myself breakfasting on this re-trouve chair and table, enjoying a fresh pot of coffee with the crisp morning air and lush greenery from my open-air patio.

ting! truly preshosha!

2 Comments
Posted on July 15, 2009
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: ,

Inspirations for the day

i quickly discovered that one of the most useful survival skills for my job is gathering and maintaining a pool of references. from videos to images and (less often for me) music, sometimes simply pulling the right reference for the right brief is enough to turn a hair-tearing creative drought into hours and hours of writing when your fingers can’t fly fast enough to catch up with your ideas.

i started maintaining a reference folder on my desktop shortly after joining bda. i was both amazed that my boss could so effortlessly cherry-pick and develop ideas from his seemingly bottomless pit of reference, and frustrated that he had had least a fifteen-year headstart collecting them. i figured if i was going to be useful to him, i had better start catching up.

anyway, today i found two videos in my stash that helped me write a pitch for the army (yes the army here is very media-savvy), something i usually detest doing, in the matter of a several hours. while both videos work on the idea of a missing element, a “what if” scenario that i found interesting, i’m happy to report my finished concept turned out to look like neither of the two! and my bosses liked it!

a quiet, mood and thought-provoking ad for fotoprix.

a hilariously vivid and very panicky (!) football promo for sky sports.

2 Comments
Posted on July 13, 2009
Category: Uncategorized · Labels: ,

Getting Gaudior

one last note on the unicorn tattoo.

i had given some thought to what kind of unicorn i wanted on my back. the obvious choice was to get one just like the last unicorn. 
however, google images of unicorn tattoos and most of the ones that will pop up first are exactly like the last unicorn. i love the last unicorn, but the sheer ubiquity of her as a tattoo turned me off. and i knew leon wasn’t the artist to go to if you wanted an exact copy of something — it would be a total waste of his distinctive point of view.
finally i decided that i wanted my unicorn to capture the spirit of gaudior, the unicorn from a swiftly tilted planet by madeleine l’engle — one of my most favorite books ever.
i wanted a unicorn that was powerful enough to travel through time and ride the wind, rear up on its hind legs and fight, yet be gentle enough to sing with the stars and carry a young boy on its back. and while i didn’t tell leon this idea or show him any pictures, that’s exactly what i got anyway — from the strong, thick lines of its body down to the wisps of wind and tiny dotted stars in its tail.

5 Comments
Posted on July 12, 2009
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels: ,

Speaking of tattoos…

i just thought i’d post a tighter shot of my unicorn. it’s been over two weeks since i got it, and it’s healed beautifully. leon told me it would heal much faster than my first tattoo, and he was right. 
what happened with my first is that i barely felt any pain except for the very, very fine lines around my ankle bone. leon compared being tattooed with thick, dark lines to being scraped repeatedly by a large iron nail, and he was right. 
truth be told, after the endorphins kind of died down, i realized that i wasn’t 100% happy with some details — i thought the tail could have been shaped better, and a bit of the shading on the tail wasn’t even. i realized i hadn’t gotten it in the best of conditions: it was the last evening on the last day of the tattoo expo and leon was dead tired. after a few days of obsessing i accepted it for what it was: not the exact picture i had in my mind, but a beautiful and unique artwork nevertheless.
the pain may not have been as bad as expected, but the healing process was much longer and more uncomfortable. it bled for a few hours immediately after, and was red, raised and tender for at least a week. on the second week, it began to peel, with the thickly inked lines falling off in scabs. i know it sounds gross, but it was looked ok — kind of like when you have an old black leather bag and it starts flaking off in your hand or on your arm. 
AND it itched like the devil. i had to keep it constantly moisturized, and lotion was one of the few things that gave temporary relief. i also became a master of precision scratching — using my fingernail to scratch as close to the lines as possible.

with my second tattoo, the lines are so fine that they didn’t bleed at all. but the PAIN. according to leon, finer needles really feel more like cuts than anything and i have to agree. i was expecting the worst pain on the spine (something i had heard about from a former colleague) and received a nasty surprise — it had nothing to do with what part of the body the needle was on, but with how fine the needle was and what it was actually doing. so the parts that hurt the most were the fine lines of the tail and its teeny, tiny stars, as well as the details in and around the hooves. 

but the pain was worth it. leon was at his most focused and relaxed, having a looser schedule and spending a whole week in singapore. we were in a lovely, airy old shophouse with a proper tattoo bed (or bench?), adjustable lamps, enough space to work in and the prospect of beers afterwards. i’m not surprised it turned out as beautifully as it did. of my two pieces of ink, this is the one that i am truly in love with. 
the fineness of the lines has helped with the healing, too. after feeling like a bad sunburn for the first two days, i began to forget that i had just gotten a tattoo. there was barely any swelling, itching and peeling — maybe 10% to 20% of what i felt with the first tattoo. even now that the thicker lines on the body of the unicorn are going through a second round of peeling, i can barely feel it. 

3 Comments
Posted on July 12, 2009
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels: