Family

Juice Fasting

I can only vaguely remember my mom telling me about this last week. She had mentioned that my Auntie Nellie, had tried it, and it worked wonders for her. She also mentioned that there was a program at St. Theodore’s Hospital in Sagada that administered this to people who were interested.

It didn’t register at that time. Not until I got round to checking my mail, and I found the link she had sent me. 

Reading through the testimonies on the Juice Fasting had me thinking about Joan Joyce, a dear fellow blogger, who had gone on a juice diet as her means to lose weight. She had the discipline to stick to it, and she saw the results. I can’t wait til she reads about this. 🙂

Anyway, so St. Theodore’s seems to have a Wellness and Healing Program, and this Juice Fasting for 30 days is included in the treatments it offers. Apart from my aunt (mom’s cousin) who has followed it, the site features the hospital’s chaplain too. I personally know the Chaplain and his wife, because he used to be the Dean of the Cathedral right here, many years back. Their reasons for undergoing the fasting were not really weight loss, but general healing. Inevitably though, they lost weight too.

So I was thinking. rather than filling my head with thoughts of quick fixes for my weight and health dilemmas, and before I turn to unproven pills like Lesofat and NV diet pills; perhaps I should do this fasting. They say that if it’s done right, I will still have energy to do my day to day duties. It shouldn’t affect my performance at work. There should be no impact on my energy levels.

But I think it’s better done with medical supervision. And well, it’ll at least look scientific if they do tests on me before I go through the fasting, and then again at a specified period.

So I told my parents, we should go up to Sagada and have this. But Sagada is a 12-hour roadtrip away. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to find common time to go, specially with my new rest days. But it won’t hurt to try. Plus I’m pretty sure i’d lunge at any excuse to go up there.

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I had forgotten to mention in my previuos post that I saw this huge poster for the movie version of Confessions of a Shopaholic in the cinema this weekend. Isla Fisher is playing Becky Bloomwood. I’m not sure I totally see her in the role, but I am totally looking forward to the film. 

I am almost tempted to buy the rest of the Shopaholic books at full price because I never see them in my favorite second hand book shops. Only the first in the series ever gets on there. I haven’t read Shopaholic Ties the Not, then the one with the Sister, and then the Baby. Then I wouldn’t know if there are others.

Saturday Shopping Marathon

Wow – Saturday shopping marathon. My feet hurt! 😀

With only a few hours’ sleep, I went out with Alfred to spend some of his money. He’s been wanting to get a new pair of Adidas since last month but things got in the way. Yesterday, we were finally successful. 🙂 And I actually like the pair he got this time. It’s black, with a shell toe. I wish I knew what model it is (Superstar 2, is it?) but I don’t. I’d have dug up a photo on the Net just to show you. Maybe I could convince to take a photo of him wearing it. Hehe.

I got to buy a couple of polo shirts for myself. Two more colors that I don’t have yet. I totally see myself wearing more jeans and shirts again at work. I was actually looking for a yellow shirt to wear to work on Thursday because we have a color coding theme week going on for this busy busy week that’s coming for us. I never wear yellow so I knew I gotta look for a shirt. Good thing Alfred remembered that my new sweater is actually yellow gold. That should do perfectly. 😉

Alfred was supposed to treat me out to lunch or dinner because he’s ranked number for the last pay period (Yay Baby! So proud of you! :)), but we were so hungry when we woke up, we ended up eating before leaving home. And because we only had a few hours’ sleep, our energies were so low, we got tired easily. We decided to cut short our shopping spree and just head back home. 

Now since Ma had just come back from Bangkok, she and dad had plans to shop at the Duty Free Mall and I told them I wanted to come too. When Alfred and I got home, Dad was already dressed while Mom was prepping to go. I got to steal a few minutes of sleep before we left. Alfred got at least a full hour of sleep by staying home – he had to go to work at 8PM. I was so uncomfortable in the car – weird. It didn’t stop me from dozing off though, almost all the way to Duty Free.

There were so many people there shopping because they’ve got a big sale ongoing and the shops were open until midnight. We didn’t buy too much, but I did pick up a bottle of Bailey’s in mint chocolate and two packs of mini Reese cups! These seem to be my favorite items to stock on whenever we go there. Haha. As usual, we picked up some perfume too and this time we got cute freebie cosmetic bags – and I like the one from Esprit!

We didn’t go to the grocery section anymore because Dad was already hungry, and my feet already hurt. Besides, we were sure the lines at the register would be long again, what with the number of people shopping there. It was almost ten o’clock when we got to sit down for dinner. I was so full it got me even more sleepy. I was out the whole drive home. I had thought I’d be up looking at the city lights and Christmas decor along Roxas Blvd, but no, I bet I was snoring my way through them all! 🙂

So there went my Saturday. The sun is up now and another day has dawned. In a few hours I will feel my nerves frazzled again after a long time of having been very relaxed. I am dreading my first day on my new floor (at work). Bless me!

Bazaar?!

Mom is home from her Bangkok trip. She’s been there since Sunday for a conference. 

I haven’t downloaded their pictures from the camera yet, I’m hoping there are nice photos of the river cruise. I went on one the last time I was there in 2000. It was a lovely time. Mom says that Dad complained about not knowing about the night river cruises, haha.

She brought me home a beautiful sarong of black Thai silk. I love Thai silk but I’ve always just found them really expensive. I did buy myself this nice big sling bag made of one, in maroon. Alfred has had it hostage for a long time now, but seeing the sarong reminds me to take it back. Now I don’t know if I’ll wear the sarong as is or have it adjusted to be shorter. I used to wear sarongs a lot when I was still studying. Actually, some of the ones I used weren’t even really designed to be sarongs. They were actually shawls that I’d just fold a certain way, then wrap around me. I’d fasten them with pins and wear shorts under, just in case they unravelled while I was out. Haha!

It’s payday weekend and we got half of our 13th month pay. People are usually very happy, but not today. They are saying that they can’t appreciate the bonus very much because it’s been divided in two. Others argue that the income tax deductions have made the sum really disappointing. 

I wasn’t very happy with my net pay either, but it is what it is. I am just hoping that I’d get a decent sum for the tax refund by the end of the year when they finally recompute using the new tax exemptions for tax witheld since July of this year. If not,  well then, I’ll just be happy I earn enough to be taxed that much!

Now there’s a bazaar at work every pay day. Vendors come to sell food, clothes, shoes, and anything and everything you can imagine. I used to participate there to sell brownies that I made, plus other stuff that my cousin and I could scrounge up. There was a time that we sold shawls, clothes, bags, makeup, accessories including those magnetic bracelets that we found at a very affordable price. When we bought those bracelets, we already thought about marketing them as healing bracelets – we actually sold a piece or two before the actual bazaar.

As Christmas is approaching, more and more of those who still remember those days are asking me about baking/selling again – they ask a lot for the truffles too. I really want to get back to it but thinking of my oven is enough to make me forget about everything. 

I bought a chocolate cupcake with marshmallow icing and a choco mudslide cake this afternoon. The cupcake base tastes a lot like the ones I make but I’d have to say I prefer mine. I’m not a big fan of having that much icing on it (beehive like) but perhaps people may prefer it over the type of icing I used – or not. The cake and its fudge was – uhm, okay. The caramel seemed to have been mixed in with the fudge itself and that doesn’t particularly appeal to me. I remember the fudge that my aunt used to make and I think that’s a lot better. 

So I know I can totally compete with the baked goods that are currently sold at the bazaar, I really just have to commit the time and energy into it. I don’t know if I want to spend on the space, and the person who would man the booth too. 

My days off are changing again starting next week. I’ll have a very short one-day weekend because I’ll be reporting back to work on Sunday night. That means Fridays off moving forward. Perfect for getting ready to sell in time for payday bazaar. Maybe that’s the universe way of nudging me towards where I should be going? Nyaha! 😉

Celebrating Life and Family on All Souls’ Day

Sunday was All Souls’ Day.  On this day, as well as November 1st, Filipinos remember the faithfully departed and flock to cemeteries and columbariums to spend the day with their family and friends. 

It has often been wondered why the living seem to always feast during this festival for the dead. Some people don’t understand the need for a celebration

In truth, I didn’t fully appreciate it either, until recently. 

Since as far back as I could remember, my family and I would go to Caloocan to my paternal grandmother’s house in on November 1st so my Dad could visit his dad’s grave. The next day, we would all go with the rest of the family on my mom’s side, along with other families in our community, to South Cemetery to pray at my older brother’s grave.

My dad never really brought me to the cemetery where my grandfather was buried – it was always packed full of people and it would have been easy to lose kids amidst the chaos that the cemetery was on November 1st. When his remains were moved to my grandmother’s gravesite, I was already in highschool then, that was the only time that I was really able to say I visited his grave. 

The visits to the South Cemetery were always solemn. Since the plot where my older brother (who died when he was just eleven days old) is buried in is leased by the Church, his neighbors there are also other Church members (some of whom are probably distant relatives of ours). We would always have a priest along with us for those visits. The priest would lead the prayers, and we would sing a hymn or two. Some of the families (and probably my Lola too) would bring cold water/juice and light snacks that we all could partake of before we leave and head back home. 

It was an outing definitely, a commemoration of life. (more…)

Scrapbook Saturday #12 and other Halloween night ramblings

Scrapbook Saturday

Here are two layouts I made earlier this week:

[Photos are clickable for the credits but please leave comments about the layouts in this post ;)]

These are still going into the mini-album of my girlfriends’ day out back in August. Hopefully I’ll be done before Christmas! Haha. 🙂

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the Scrapbook Saturday gang, starting at Mammadawg’s place. Also checkout my previous SS posts here if you haven’t seem them yet 🙂

Oh, it is Digital Scrapbooking Day (DSD) in digital scrapbooking land! Visit digiscrapping sites to get a huge fixing of DSD goodness, there are many links in this page, but not all may have goodies up okay. A good place to start though would be the Sunshine Blog for their Halloween Blog Train.

Halloween Night Ramblings

Last night, I logged on thinking of posting about the Halloween Party we had for the kids in this compound (plus some of their friends).  But no matter how much fun we had at the party – both kids and adults alike – the fun isn’t what’s foremost in my mind to blog about. 

(more…)

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