If you're going to Boracay this summer...

Okay, shameless plugging na ito… Kapag nasa Boracay kayo, please visit our outlet/eatery there. It’s called Tsikiting, located in D’Mall Rotonda, Station 2. We serve our products (longaniza, tocino, tapa, etc.) with rice and atsara. We also sell our products there so once you’ve tasted our yummy longaniza and tocino and tapa, etc, you might want to bring some home as pasalubong to your family and friends.

Just don’t expect five-star hotel-ish surroundings, okay? It’s not a big place so sometimes you might have to sit outside. Pero that’s the point of going to the beach naman, di ba? Besides, the prices are very affordable and the servers are very friendly, so it’s all worth it.

Hope to see you there! :)

more on oscar's finest

have you seen rachel weisz? man, she's gorgeous. pregnancy becomes her. i've loved her ever since i saw her in the mummy. i so wanna watch the constant gardener. i mean, rachel and ralph fiennes in one movie? that's a great bargain.

i read she's burberry's newest endorser. damn. that's way out of my budget. :P

happy days are here again

I’m so happy. Last Friday, an aunt dropped in and gave me the puppies she promised me. She owns Tiny’s mother, and fortunately the bitch (Tiny’s mother, not my aunt) gave birth to four puppies last January. So when she (my aunt, not the bitch) found out that Tiny passed away (*sniff*), she told me she’ll give me two puppies. Para may spare in case something bad happens again. (Maybe I should just ask for the mother, so I’ll have a puppy factory.)

The puppies are so cute! And they still have puppy breath! Isn’t that adorable? They’re still a month and a half, and I had thought of returning them to their mother so they could drink breast milk for at least a few more weeks. But my uncle dissuaded me, saying that the mother probably wouldn’t recognize them as her pups anymore. So I feed them with milk na lang. I was tempted to buy them Pedigree, but the humans in this house would surely kill me.

I christened the puppies Lulu and Chino. Lulu is female and has the same coloring as Tiny: white, with a brown head and brown spots at the back. I named the male Chino because he’s like a cappuccino upside down: brown body with white underbelly. Lulu is chubbier and big-boned while Chino is thinner and has longer legs.

Lulu’s feisty and the friskier of the two. And she’s fearless. I read somewhere that if you want to nip bad behavior at the bud, you should scare them with loud noises when you catch them in the act. Well, I saw Lulu enter the garage (it’s a forbidden zone) so I made loud noises to make her go out, but she wasn’t even startled. After one glance at me, she continued sniffing the floor so I had to carry her out.

I also caught Chino chewing a slipper and made loud noises again. He got scared and fled the scene. I doubt if he’ll ever chew another footwear again. He’s also the more laidback and subdued of the two. He toddles around slowly and cautiously, while Lulu would scamper about.

Lulu is more frolicsome than Chino when it comes to playing with humans. But when they’re playing with each other, I can’t make a generalization. Sometimes, Chino would just lie there and let Lulu “attack” his ears or tail. Other times, it’s the other way around. Most of the time, though, when both are in playful moods, they’ll attack each other with gusto.

They take their naps after playing, and I think it’s reflex that they curl against each other for warmth. And the positions they get into! One time, I saw them in what I call the yin and yang. Lulu’s head (or cheek) was on Chino’s hind leg, and Chino’s on Lulu’s. I so wanted to take their picture then and there, but I’ve become superstitious na. I don’t want to take a picture of them. I took gazillions of pictures of my three other dogs, and look what happened to them. I’ll probably take their picture when they’re five (human) years old already. :P

And for the nth time, they’re so cute! :D

P. S.

Our older puppy, Chico, is insanely jealous and absolutely terrified of the two. It's so amusing to watch him squirm and then later run for his life as the two curios little devils attack him.

To set the record straight...

I never had a bad ____friend (boy or girl, take your pick, both applies to me). Ever.

But I never had a good one either.

Have you seen McDonald’s McJelly commercial? The girl eating McJelly is so pretty and she looks like an angel. Truly an eye candy. Or, if the advertising people had their way, an eye McJelly.

I think the commercial was shot in McDo Katipunan. It’s a pity I wasn’t there. I might have been able to catch them shooting, and stared at the girl for as long as I want.

***

I was supposed to tell you to tune in to StarWorld this week because they’re airing reruns of Friends Season 10 every 7:30pm. But, alas, it’s too late. They aired the season (and show) finale last Monday night.

It was so bitin! First of all, I was under the impression that the show would last until Friday because in their farewell interview with Oprah (which they aired during the Friends timeslot last Thursday and Friday), they kept saying “This is the final week.” So I was anticipating a whole week of Friends. I even set an alarm in my cellphone to ring at 7:15 pm from Monday to Friday to remind me to “watch Friends in StarWorld.” So imagine my surprise at the end of the show when I realized I had just watched the last two episodes (they aired double episodes that night).

Second, I would never see how Monica and Chandler struggle through parenthood. I mean, it’s kinda unfair because they were the first couple to actually get married on the show itself and we never get to see them with kids of their own. Well, Ross and Rachel did get married in Las Vegas, but they were drunk and had to divorce later, so they don’t count. (And Ross’s other marriages don’t count, too. Like, duh.) I mean, we got to see Rachel as a single mom to Emma, so why didn’t the writers let Monica and Chandler adopt sooner? Why did they have to wait for nine months to get their baby and not go to an orphanage or adopt an Asian kid instead?

Third, the other episodes were kinda slow and didn’t add much to the whole story or the characters. They just showed ordinary things in the Friends’ lives (with a funny twist, of course). But in the last episodes, there were a lot of big changes in their lives that I can’t help but think “Boy, that was fast.”

In their interview with Oprah, the writers said that they wanted the audience to see that the Friends were going to be all right. I find it strange that their idea of “all right” is settling down and raising a family. I guess I’m in a stage in my life where getting married and having kids aren’t in my priorities.

Anyway, I was expecting a very funny, if not the funniest, episode, but I was disappointed. Though it was still funny, it was also sad, almost bittersweet. I mean, in the final scene, Rachel was the most teary-eyed of all. I was thinking, is that really part of the script or was Jennifer Aniston that emotional because it was their last shoot ever?

But I found it amusing that there were allusions (for the lack of a better term) to past incidents in other seasons in the last two episodes. It’s as if they were bringing the whole show to full circle. Phoebe’s taxi, Ross and Rachel’s “break”, a chick and a duck. Monica even says that all of them has lived in that apartment one time or another. It was cute. Hehe.

So what do I plan to do every night now that I’m bereft of my Friends? Probably play The Sims and build houses similar to the apartments in the show. Crazy, huh?

I just saw Keira Knightley in her Oscar’s finest in the newspaper kanina, and she looked stunning. She didn’t get the Best Actress trophy, though, and I don’t think Pride and Prejudice won any awards that night, but I’m not surprised. I mean, look at the other movies (and their cast) nominated this year. They tackled significant issues (homosexuality and women’s rights, to name a few) and were original. P&P is just a film adaptation, and it’s not even the first one. Film adaptations rarely do well in the Oscars, if they ever get nominated at all (with the exception, of course, of Lord of the Rings, partly because it was done differently, and had the talented and dedicated Peter Jackson for its director).

Anyway, I haven’t seen P&P yet, although I’ve read the book and was charmed by Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy’s love story. I hope I could catch the movie when I get back to Manila, partly because I suddenly had this thing about Keira being a brunette. I first saw her in Love Actually and liked her despite her blonde hair. And I liked their story, that weird love triangle. I initially thought that camera-toting guy was in love with his newly-married best friend, and didn’t get along with Keira’s character because he was jealous. I was like, OMG, please don't let this be a gay love story. But it turned out that the guy was actually in love with her. And that placard scene during the Christmas Eve just melted my heart.

Back to P&P. The reviews of the film are good, although I came across one that said Keira might have been too pretty for the character of Elizabeth who won Mr. Darcy over through her intelligence and not her beauty. Keira colored her hair dark brown for the film, probably to downplay her looks, but she was still more beautiful than the blonde Rosamund Pike who played Elizabeth’s eldest sister Jane, the supposedly celebrated beauty in Hertfordshire.

The review also said there was too much restrained emotions in the film that you would think you were in Bronte country rather than Austenland. I’ve seen trailers of the film and I see what the writer meant. There was a scene showing this field with a lone tree against the backdrop of a late afternoon sky, and the background music was so sad and almost mournful; I thought I was watching Wuthering Heights. They said it was more dark and gothic than lively and romantic. Oh well. Maybe I shouldn't watch it at all. Hmm...

http://mimingkuting.multiply.com/photos/album/15

I just realized we have lost three dogs in four months. Four, if you count the one we lost in the middle of last year. And our cats are getting older, too. I think they’ve hit menopause (or a dry spell in the mating season) because they haven’t been pregnant for a long time. Oh well.

Obvious ba na pets lang and inaatupag ko dito sa bahay? :P