Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Rhythm follows a pattern...

...and for us, that pattern seems to be love.
Music has always touched people emotionally in ways that may seem strange or magical.
This has never been more true than for me than with rOckY.  

Any of you readers who frequent this blog, or mine other blogs, or rOckY's LJ or Geeky Guide would probably be familiar with how much this year has been a special one for us.   But were you aware of how special it also was in a musical level?

Kylie.  Jason Mraz.  In the Heights.  From each of those artists is at least one song that we truly deeply love.  And as fate would have it, we would be able to watch all three of them each in a massive performance for us to enjoy.   Kylie and Jason Mraz would somehow happen to both decide to hold a concert in the Philippines (and just next door to boot!) and within the same year, a local production of In the Heights would be staged almost as if to remind me of the time when one of their songs marked an important moment in our lives.

Most of you might not even be aware of how music was a constant force that helped us remember the love we shared even back in the earlier days before we got together.  I will always cherish the anecdote how one morning, I happened to wake up with a weird last-song-syndrome still in my head.  I vaguely remembered dreaming of the Garfield and Friends song and posted it as a status message, only for rOckY to inform me that morning that he had chosen that song as well for his blog.    Then there those moments that a song we kinda pegged for a time as "our song" kept being played even in a CD-R filled with over 200 mp3 songs worth of music that was set at Random.    I will also recall those times when we'd hear the song play while we were at McDonalds and the like almost out-of-the-blue.   (Maybe we should have a post about our "wavelength" moments too soon.)



Then, there were the smaller moments that I personally still hold special as well.  Such as when Ingrid Michaelson, who song The Way I Am reflected a lot of how I felt for rOckY, held a mini-online concert which I was able to record for him.  Or how Musicals have once again returned to be part of my life, with rOckY sharing that moment with me when he let me finally watch Into The Woods in full in his arms (you can watch it in full here too), or how he introduced me to The Origin of Love from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which has very much made me realize how special our feelings for each other truly are.    There was also him getting me hooked on Spring Awakening, which to our luck had a local staging as well.

And (as of this blog post) we have us finally catching The Lion King at Singapore, Marina Bay Sands for his birthday and tickets for the upcoming musical, Wicked, this January.   We also have DJ Zymon at O Bar Ortigas who always spoils us by playing a few Kylie songs on nights that we are there.   Then there are the O Divas who perform songs we love.  More and more, music wraps around us and reminds us of how magical and special our relationship continues to be.

I must admit, I look forward to how else it will in the many years to come.


Thursday, November 24, 2011

Tobie is a DOG

In previous posts (which ones precisely, I forget), it has been mentioned that I firmly believe that Tobie is in fact a dog. Tobie naturally doesn't want to discuss the reasoning behind this belief and left it to me to finally write about it.


So here I am.

Now as a disclaimer, I do admit I'm quite the animal lover and my family has had a long history of caring for dogs, cats, fish and other pets. So naturally I have a bit of a thing for furry animals and that may color my contextual analysis in relation to Tobie. But at the same time, the theory just works and I've shared it with a few friends and they've laughed about how much sense it makes.

So let's begin.


Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Another level up in BaduyPride!

Pardon my joy for something that others may probably find to be very simple, but I wanted to blog today how I successfully used the oven toaster to cook Banana bread.  While I'm sure many people out there would probably laugh at how happy I am for doing this, I still feel this is quite a feat forward for me considering not too long ago, I wasn't even capable of frying an egg.

 Allow me to present to you pictures of the Banana Bread that I just successfully made with our oven toaster.  Gosh, I know bread always smells great when freshly baked, but man to have created it yourself really adds a new dimension to the delectable smell.

With this tiny victory, Rocky and I were already chatting excitedly about what new directions to take this step.  Maybe an attempt at  Carrot Cake would be one of them?  I'm excited to actually try making my own flatbread and possible even eventually making filling meat pies and the like.

I have to admit, I was pretty surprised at how tall the bread rose. When I was filling the dish earlier, I was thinking I needed to use twice the amount of ingredients in the future to make enough bread.  But man, good thing I didn't do something as stupid as that.


I am excited as well at the prospect of trying to make more herby breads in the future.  Maybe a bread roll with touches of rosemary would be yummy.  Or maybe even an attempt at making stuff like Spanish bread or Mamon in the future?

I do wonder too if this means creating even yummier stuff like cheesecakes and home-made croissants are something to look forward too as well?  If they are, then that means the possibility of baking stuff to give out come Christmas to our friends and family.

Ah, the joys of cooking.
I cannot help but wonder why some people feel it is such a chore.

But enough of that kind of thinking.  All that matters is today is a day for me to celebrate a new step forward.  Within a span of two years, I have gone from being unable to cook at all, to cooking rice in a rice cooker, frying food, making breaded Dory, cooking Kare Kare, learning to make yummy omelets and fluffy scrambled eggs, to making dangerously delicious pork chops, to preparing sashimi as well as rolling my own sushi, to creating a variety of salads including two different vinaigrette and coming up with an oriental chicken salad,  delicious cheesy dip for nachos, learning to make eggplant parmigiana, home-made burger patties, home-made ice cream, Pandesal pizza, turbo roasted chicken and now... banana bread.

Not bad at all.
:-)

And best yet, Rocky loves eating all of them!
(As do many of our friends)

Monday, November 14, 2011

Doggie Apologies

Pardon the delay in new updates.  I had a bunch of photos to post, an entry about Jason Mraz, and another entry about quiet moments with Rocky that I wanted to write but so many other things were just getting in the way.

I'll just take this opportunity to say "Hello!" to all of you readers, both subscribed and non-subscribed ones!  It is really nice and touching to know there are people interested to read the stuff that appear in this little nook of ours.

Cheers to love!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Definitely am.

There's something wonderful about having a partner who ain't afraid to say you are together.
And even more when the word relationship is always used with the word committed.


I wonder when we'd ever be able to legally formalize our union.   Here's looking forward to every single day of our lives together, my love.

A Hair-Raising Experience

While going through our videos from the Jason Mraz concert last Sunday, I realized that there were a few videos that I had not uploaded from past adventures with Tobie. My camera comes with an easy access to its video mode so I've learned to try and take video more and more, especially when the action being captured isn't quite the same when photographed. Thus a lot of activities we do end up getting documented in short clips and what have you.

For those who have been keeping up with the blog, you'd remember that some time back we decided to help sponsor the Mind Museum, a local effort to create a world-class science museum here in Manila. That led to us eventually getting invited to a preview of the Mind Museum and its many exhibits, which was a fun experience indeed.

And the videos below were taken on that preview day, while Tobie and I were goofing around with the Van de Graaff Generator that they had on display. Results varied, but it was still geekily fun.







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