I always find it a nice surprise when I learn that some traits, idiosyncracies, characteristics that I have come from a certain family member. It makes me go, "Ahhhh! So that's where I got it from."

Like for instance, whenever I eat in a restaurant, I always like to sit facing the door or at least, facing the crowd where I can see everyone. For a while, I thought it was just a quirk I had until I found out that my grandfather and dad are the same way!

I found out that I got my bravery or being "matapang" from my grandmother.

That my uncles, aunt, my sister, cousin Chino and I got our alcoholic tendencies (we sure love to drink when we party though admittedly, my uncles and aunt drink even when they're not partying) from my grandmother's paternal side.

My sisters and I got our creative, artistic side from our mom.

My aunt just discovered one night in Boracay that I freak out like my dad.

And last night, my aunt and my dad had the freaky realization that I laughed out loud like my aunt. We had the same laugh!

So how about you? What traits, characteristics, idiosyncracies did you get from your family?

So I just found out that the Palace declared October 31 and November 2 as regular working days.

Huuuwwwhhhhaaaattt????!!!!!

Apparently, Madam President thought that another long holiday would affect the business sector, which would, in turn, affect our economy... or something to that effect. It's all yiddish to me if you ask me.

Again, huuuwwwhhhaaaattt???!!!

Since when did she care? Is she doing this to improve her ratings? So she could get on the good side of the business sector? I'm so used to her declaring holidays that I can already predict when's the next one and plan my vacation!

Maaaaan!!! I was really looking forward to this supposed long holiday! I really hope she changes her mind!

Before I left for the beautiful, clear, algae free, friendly fish waters of Boracay, I wrote about the war between brothers in a certain part in my extended family.

Imagine my surprise while partying on Friday night, that the "Black Sheep" of the family, the one who caused all this mess, passed away due to a heart attack!

I don't really remember him but I hear stories that he was really a wild child. The youngest son, the one who partied too much, too long. The one who made his secretary his mistress. The secretary who was once (rumored to be) his son's girlfriend. The one who beat up a senator's son and because of that, his family had to secretly ship him out to the US where he stayed for years. Upon his return, his eldest brother who owned a franchising business gave his youngest brother a franchise of the outlet. Years later, said brother becomes ungrateful by suing his older brother by stating he owns the entire franchise business while his brother, the one who gave him business, was merely the franchisee. (At least this is the version I know. I know the details only through bits and pieces I've heard over the lunch table). My aunt feels really sorry for wild child's sons and daughters because as much as they hate that their father for further widening the gap in his practically non existent relationship with his siblings and other relatives, they are caught in the middle because they still love him so much. He is still, after all, their father.

It's sad to know that he died angry and none of this issues with his siblings were resolved. Many of my immediate family states that no matter what, the issue will never be resolved. I guess decades of pent up anger, frustration and nurtured hatred escalated his pride and hardened his heart(Imagine your own brother telling you in front of a court judge that he'll kill you before he dies?)

I never really knew him but I really hope he rests in peace.

My family (including my cousins, aunts and uncles) are very close. 20 grandchildren, 10 uncles and aunts and 2 grandparents spend Christmas together, hold birthday surprises (usually for Lola or Lolo's birthday), Mother's Day/ Father's Day luncheons, and even dress up for Halloween together.

All because of Lola who really holds the family together.

I guess my lola made sure that we were all close because she learned her lesson through example. You see, a certain unit of my extended family are at war with one another. Brothers suing brothers, brothers stealing from brothers, brothers frauding one another. At one point, my lola got entangled in the mess and so she vowed that this will never happen with her family.

So last Sunday, while having lunch, my dad and lola were discussing and updating one another about the lawsuits and hearings on that side of the family. My dad commented, "Buti na lang kami, magkasunod kaming magkakapatid. Di kami nag-aaway. (It's a good thing that we siblings get along with one another. We don't fight.)"

My grandmother calmly states that if her sons fight among each other to the point that they'd sue one another, "Akong unang papatay sa inyo! (I'll be the first to kill you all!)"

And that's why I love my lola.

I totally believe that she would and in that sense, I respect and admire her. Among all the people in this world, it's my lola who I least want to disappoint... because if I do disappoint her, I believe that the Waray in her would kill me!

This was stolen from Toni.

1. Favorite Comfort Food:

Gosh, I really don't know. What exactly is comfort food? Something that makes you feel better after eating it? I guess I'll have to say... CHOCOLATES! (No nuts, please!)

2. Favorite Breakfast Meal:

Hands down, beef tapa dipped in vinegar with rice and atchara! I never eat breakfast unless I'm really, really hungry (and that's when I come home from a night out. I would wait till 7am, when breakfast is cooked) but if we're having tapa for breakfast, I'll come down to eat!

3. Favorite Lunch Meal:

No question about it! Inihaw na Liempo with Ensaladang Mangga, washed down with Coke or Coke Light. Inihaw na Liempo is a staple in my lola's luncheon. Once, she didn't include Inihaw na Liempo in the menu and everybody looked for it.


4. Favorite Dinner Meal:

Beef Steak Tagalog with Ripe Mangoes.


5. Favorite Dessert:

I rarely have dessert after a meal unless there's something in the refrigerator.. like a box of chocolates or ice cream.

6. Favorite Cake:

Decadent Chocolate Cake or Oreo Cheesecake

7. Favorite Pasta:

Lasagna (Beef or Vegetable, doesn't matter!)

8. Favorite Dish That Others Find Weird:

Tuna Spread on Skyflakes topped with Slices of Ripe Mango. My very own creation.

9. Favorite Fruits That You Haven’t Eaten In A While:

Santol! (Santol is my 2nd favorite fruit after Green Mangoes)

10. Favorite Junkfood:

What a difficult question! I love Piknik Ketchup Fries but lately, I'm enjoying Doritos Cooler Ranch and Cheetos Puffs. While working, I like snacking on Happy Peanuts and sometimes, Mr.Chips.

11. Favorite TV Show Related to Food (Cooking show, Travel show with food, etc.):

Anything with Rachel Ray.

12. Favorite Pastries:

I'm not big on pastries.

13. Favorite Way to Eat Potatoes:

Mashed! And if there's sour cream and bacon, I love them baked!

14. Favorite Ice Cream:

Mocha! Although for a time, when I was younger, I loved Cookies and Cream. There was a time Magnolia/ Selecta/ Arce didn't have it yet and I remember my Aunt who studied Hotel Management in Switzerland would make Cookies and Cream ice cream by crushing Oreo cookies and mixing them into softened Vanilla ice cream. I do remember when I was about 3- 4 years old, my favorite ice cream was Coney Island's Bubble gum Ice Cream. My parents, uncles and I would go to the Coney Island in Pasay Road.

15. Favorite Alcoholic Drink When You Really Really Really Want to Party:

Hands down, no doubt about it... TEQUILA!!!

16. Favorite Bar Chow:

Depends on my mood. Beef Salpicao, Salmon or Tuna Sashimi, Beef and Cheese Nachos.

17. Favorite Chicken Dish:

Chicken Teriyaki or KFC Fried Chicken.

18. Favorite Place to Eat with Your Sweetheart or Your Best Friend (Choose 1):

Teriyaki Boy with A.

19. Favorite Place to Eat with your Family:

Underneath the treehouse at my lola's home on a windy, sunny day with all my relatives.

20. Fill in the blanks: I wish I could eat ____ in/at _____ with ______.:

I wish I could eat Rib Eye steak with mashed potatoes and vegetable sidings at Le Souffle with A.
I wish I could eat Prawns in Sweet and Spicy Sauce and Fresh Oysters at Boracay with A.

(Obviously, A and I are an eating couple).

Oy, this is bad!

This is terrible!

The last movie I have seen was The Devil Wears Prada.

What's wrong with that?

A and I used to be updated with the latest movies. Name the latest movie and we've seen it because we'd spend our weekends in the cinema.. or watching art films and any unseen movie on dvd at home.

But now, we have a new way of spending our weekends. Playing Poker.

Damn, I'm getting addicted. Before, I used to be a spectator. Now, I'm a player and even a poker game organizer!

This is bad. Really bad.

Must. Get. Into. Rehab.

We all have our share of horror stories that Milenyo brought about.

How the storm uprooted trees.

How roads with beautiful lined trees are now unpassable.

How seemingly sturdy structures like billboards came crashing down due to the strong wind.

How we all dealt with the lack of electricity and water for days! (thank God, we had a genset on standby. We were very neighborly. We hooked up our next door neighbor with our genset. On our last day, our other neighbor asked if they could hook up too because their meat was getting rotten already. Unfortunately, too much hook ups would cause an explosion (just like what happened to the genset when Zong, Trio and Pasto at the Fort all shared a genset) and so we offered that their food be placed inside our freezer. Imagine my surprise when a crab was staring at me when I opened the refrigerator.

My most memorable experience (wow, I sound like I'm answering a pageant question) during the storm was when, at the eye of the storm, my stepmom arrived home and noticed that all our plants were getting uprooted by the wind. So in her jeans and sweater, she started carrying pots and pots of plants into our garage! Of course, I couldn't just stand there so I called my other sister and we helped our mom. All the maids, my little brothers and my sister and I were soaked to the bone, running into the cold rain and carrying pots of plants! At one moment, I realized that my grandmother who is a horticulturist (is that what you call it? Someone who has a green thumb?) wouldn't even do what we just did!

But anyway, one story about Milenyo amazed me. And it involves my grandmother.

My grandmother lives in Rizal, by the lake. I mentioned before that we call this place, The Island. From the gate of the property, there's a one lane road, the length of which is about from one end of Bldg B of Megamall to another, that leads to a body of land surrounded by water. The fact that it is about 95% surrounded by water makes it seem like an island to us. Anyway, the Island is full of plants and trees. It's got 3 centuries old Acacia trees, coconut trees, palm trees, chico trees, papaya trees, manggo trees, duhat trees and all kinds of flowers. Often times, during the rainy season and when a huge storm arrives, the lake overflows and therefore kills all my grandmother's plants and flowers. But my grandmother, just picks up and replants her plants. My grandmother has experienced many storms that I guess, she's just use to it.

When Milenyo hit the country, my dad and uncles pleaded her to come down and stay with one of her sons so that she'll be safe. In that one hectare of land, she was all alone.. except perhaps, the guard and a staff or two who checks in on her. If you were her, you'd give in to your sons' pleadings, right? Wrong. Stubborn woman that she was, she didn't give in.

In the aftermath of the storm, my uncle tells me that the road from the gate to the main island was unpassable due to the trees that fell. One Acacia tree, which is so huge it would take about 4 people with outstretched arms to circle its trunk, was semi-uprooted, you'd think someone plucked it from the ground and placed it on top of the building structure beside it. As for my grandmother's plants, I think it's safe to say that they are all gone.

Ahhh, but the amazing part is... my grandmother's house is by the edge of the lake and it was completely untouched. My grandmother have paper mache-d angels hanging from her ceiling by a string and not one of them were blown away by the strong gusts of wind. Remember that her house is by the lake so the wind is stronger than what we've experienced here in the city.

I could imagine my grandmother sitting in her room, her eyes closed and hands clasped at her lap in prayer, as the storm brewed around her. A picture of calm and serenity amidst chaos and destruction. It's like a scene from an X-Men movie or something.

My grandmother has a very strong relationship with God (how strong? she once found a lump in her breast and she just prayed over it and it was gone!) so God must really love her. If not God, then it must be the elementals (dwendes and the kapre) living in the island who protected her home.

I had a really unusual weekend and I don't know if it's brought about by Milenyo, the storm that literally ravaged the country.

First, before I go on about how my weekend went, let me paint a picture of how my weekend usually goes.

On Friday nights, I meet up with A. We watch a movie at Greenbelt 3 as it is near his office or we go to his house to watch a dvd on my laptop (depends if we have money or not, actually. =P) I go home at around 3am, log online, sometimes watch tv and occasionally, read a book. I snooze off at 5am. Sometimes, 6am and even pushing it at 7am.

On Saturdays, I wake up at around 2pm- 3pm, depending on the weather. Usually, I go online and wait for A to wake up and then we text each other our plans. Sometimes, we watch a movie in Eastwood because it's nearer my house. Sometimes, we watch movies at my house. Sometimes, we meet up with friends. Lately, Saturday nights are poker nights. What we do actually depends on what we did on Friday night. Like if we watch a movie at the mall on Friday, we wouldn't go to the mall the next day. No matter what we do, A goes to my house and if we do go out, we take my car. He heads home around 3am. Pushing it at 4am.

On Sundays, if I wake up and my family happens to go to my grandma's place, I go with them. Most often than not, they leave me at home and I just lounge the whole day. A and I rarely see each other on Sundays as he uses the time to work at home. So basically, what was once a "family day" for me has become a "Me" day. A day I spend with myself.

Notice that I go to bed when the rest of the country are about to wake up? And it's not just weekends. It's like that EVERYDAY. I don't really have insomnia. I'm just really a night person.. ever since I was a kid.

So how did my weekend go?

Due to the storm and the black out, A was camping out at his office (hey, they've got electricity and water and even internet! I would do the same too! But I didn't because we had a generator at home!) I knew it would be traffic so going to Makati was not even an option. I decided instead to go home. A said he'll follow by taking a cab. But on the way home, the roads were so dark, it was creepy. As I was driving the dark, fallen- trees laden roads of Corinthian and Greenmeadowns, my imagination started playing. I was getting creeped out, half expecting to see some white lady in my backseat or worse, a gang jumping out of nowhere, blocking my car, pointing a gun to my head and asking me to step out of the vehicle. The roads were soooo dark, I told A that I thought it was best that he stayed in the office. Something might happen to him on the way home. Instead, I just watched the first episode of Season 3 of Grey's Anatomy, which I downloaded off the internet.

The next day, I was up at 8am! Say what?! Yes, 8- painful- a.m! 6 hours before my scheduled wake up time. But I woke up for a good reason. A friend was getting married at 10am. In Alabang. Yes, you heard me right. In Alabang. I had to leave my house at 9am to get to the church by 10am. Quezon City to Ayala Alabang. Loooong drive. Thankfully, there was no traffic. (By the way, if you thought that Milenyo did a number on Makati, you should see what it did to Ayala Alabang! The roads were unpassable!!! They had it worst! The storm uprooted huge Acacia trees!) The wedding was a morning wedding. Good thing we didn't have to wear gowns! Imagine the horror because the reception (Palm's Country Club) wasn't airconditioned due to the black out! Poor Anna, the bride, had to endure the heat! Probably the only consolation we had was that it was a cloudy day. The reception ended at around 2pm but I hung out and bonded with a college kabarkada who I haven't talked to in awhile, as we waited for her brother to pick her up. I left Alabang at 4pm and South Super highway welcomed me with open arms through its heavy traffic. This is the reason my family packed up and left our beautiful, prestigious sounding address in Alabang after living there for 3 years. The traffic, the toll, the gas was eating us alive.

I got home at 530pm. A and I didn't go out though cuz we had an argument which was my fault. Actually, my evil twin sister's fault. Things really get ugly when I PMS. I fell asleep by 7pm, woke up at 8pm, went online for awhile and then fell asleep by 10pm!

I woke up at 530am on Sunday! Can you believe it?! I spend the morning reading Judith McNaught's latest book. At 10am, I go down and watch Entertaining at Home with Michelle Simone, a show on the Lifestyle Channel that tells you how you can throw theme party on a budget. They teach you recipes that match with the theme, decorating ideas, arts and crafts, etc and if ever you miss an episode, you can log on online. The show is locally produced so you don't have to worry about finding ingredients or materials. The show is also produced by my biological mom! =)

After the show, I went to Bench Fix It in Katipunan to get a hair spa treatment and a trim. Then I went off to California Nails and Day Spa in Eastwood to get a facial. See? A totally "me" afternoon! As I was about to leave for spa, A texts me that he's heading to the office to work. A brilliant idea hits me and I hied off to Brother's Burger to get a late lunch for A and I. We ate in my car and hung out for a while. It was already 530pm and I remembered I still had to go to Church! A doesn't regularly go to church and so I was happy when he agreed to go with me today.

After mass, I dropped him off in his office and went home.

I do know that the earlier you get up, the more there is to do. But c'mon! It's the weekend! Work doesn't beckon me. I'd rather be in bed, wrapped in my blanket. But admittedly, I did do a lot today and I like it. It just felt really weird to be out of the house by 12nn and the sun is bright and shiny. I'm so not used to it.

So why am I blogging about it? This is for posterity's sake. To remind me that waking up at ungodly hours (in my case) can be done.

Must try again.