welcome visitors

back in the 80’s, there was this tv show with a cult-like following entitled “v”. the show was about aliens “visiting” our world hence the title “v”… as in visitors. we had our own visitors last weekend but they’re certainly not aliens. their good hearts and spirits can be out of this world though. 🙂

they were supposed to visit a couple of weeks ago but that didn’t push through. finally, last sunday, our friends (our should we say, family) from vcf took the long journey from manila to laguna and visited us at our humble abode.

it’s been a while since we last saw the kind-hearted sapuls, the straight-out-of-looney-tunes janice and the always innocent wengi (actually, we just saw wengi a week prior) and we had a blast spending time with them again. the riot actually started the moment they stepped out of mother’s spanking new honda city. 😀



like curious cats, they went straight for our photo albums, exchanging with one another as they finished one album after another. they liked our artbooks the most though, giving constant praise to the quality of work (and giving janice added inspiration to pursue photography). afterwards, they wanted to view our wedding video but it had to be delayed for a while for it was time for them to taste selle’s rachel ray-esque cooking. 🙂



just after a couple of group pictures, these four girls ate like guys as they emptied the whole plate of spaghetti in no time. 🙂 so proud of my wife as they cannot stop giving high praises to her about her cooking. 🙂

then it was wedding video viewing time. they were glued to the video… probably taken aback by all the drama… only to be interrupted from time-to-time by janice’s looney attacks. 😆 all throughout, they marveled at the excellent craftmanship of the finished product (girls, don’t forget the name, ha… bob nicolas. 🙂).

after a few more video watching (we showed them a few of my works) and more exchanges of stories, we thought it was pack-up time but these guys had a surprise for us… as they gave us their very early Christmas presents. 😀

thanks guys for coming. even if the visit was short, we enjoyed every minute of it. i hope you guys did too. next time, we’ll be the one who will do the visiting. pa-handa na din pagkain ha. 😉

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from electronics to cosmetics

after three months of rest and healing, my wife goes back to work… just right across the street from samsung. 🙂 with the economic situation getting worse by the minute, it’s indeed a blessing that she got hired during this period of time.

to my wife, congratulations. 🙂 i just knew that you will nail this application of yours. new work. new environment. new faces. same selle… smart, hardworking, dedicated, wonderful. with the same confidence i had during your application, i just know that you will be treasured by your new employer, avon.

God bless you always, favy…. and be the light that you are meant to be.

congratulations again… and as a prize, we’ll have one of your fashionista shopping-sprees… 🙂

i love you.

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usapang dslr: our share

it’s been almost half-a-year since we got hold of our dslr. never the bookish type, we just gave our d40 manual a quick run through. we then treated photography more like a trial and error, learn-on-the-fly thing for us thereby, making every technique learned a eureka moment. 🙂 after a few thousand clicks, we’ve experienced the high of producing a winner and the low of missing a shot. for each shutter click, whatever the resulting photo may be, photography has been a worthwhile experience… and will continue to be.

this passion and enthusiasm for photography of ours has influenced a few of our friends… resulting in their respective dslr purchases. 😀 immediately after, it was email exchanges of questions and answers. soon we realized that it would be better if we form our very own mini-forum.

a few posts back, we blogged about this mini-photography forum. since that particular blog post showcased shots from members of the forum except ours, friends and readers reacted by demanding for our own shots. so here are a few shots that we have shared in our usapang dslr mini-forum. most of these shots were taken within a one month window… and almost all were taken just outside our house. 😀

(note: these are highly compressed images. for better details, click here and zoom in to see the higher resolution photos.)




my first attempts at panning, a photography technique, and was quite content with the results. i had to cut my panning exercise short though as the guys were giving me weird looks as i click away (as evident by the last photo above. 😀).



rain usually spoil photo sessions but once the rain stops, go out and shoot… and you’ll see that foliage + rain drops do make a great combination. 🙂

one weekend, we tried this photo exercise where we walked around our neighborhood…






…then went back home at shot more just outside our house…






…feeling a bit tired, we went back inside and had a few of these. 😀



these are some of our humble contributions to our mini-forum. definitely more will be shared as we continue to learn more about photography. 🙂

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the world knows she can sing…

…now, they know that she can dance too. 🙂



charice continues to wow the american crowd like what she had been doing in the past few months with this morning show guesting. what’s make it even more amazing is this was an early morning show and yet she can belt it out just as easy.



sobrang natutuwa kaming mag-asawa talaga sa kanya. such a great story. 🙂

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first time patient

selle and i have never been admitted to a hospital. that all changed last week when my wife underwent a couple of procedures and had to stay at asian hospital for a couple of nights.

after resigning from work, selle finally had the time (yes, wala talagang time for anything else but work sa samsung) to consult a doctor regarding a couple of things that have been bothering her for quite a while. a series of consultations after, we were then advised that selle had to undergo several procedures… meaning, she had to be admitted to a hospital. we only had a two-week window for selle to undergo the planned procedures so when that window arrived, we decided to push through with it.

we went to asian hospital the afternoon before selle’s scheduled operation(s). since it’s a hotel-like hospital, we wanted to max out our health card by getting the most expensive room allowed by our hmo. 😆


the 18k per night presidential suite…

unfortunately, none was available (yup, fully-booked. ibang klase, no?). we had to settle for the best among the available rooms. palibhasa first time nga namin ma-admit sa hospital so everything that was happening was a new experience to us. we’re not sure if it was normal or not but checking-in to our room was like checking-in to a hotel… with matching bellboy na taga-karga ng aming gamit at taga-explain ng amenities ng room. 🙂


room 1028… in lomo.

a few visits from various medical personnel (doctors, nurses… etc) occured throughout the night. then at around 10 pm, an hour after official visiting hours, our first visitors arrived. 🙂



it was daldalan galore kasi the next day pa naman operation ni selle eh. plus, the fact that she’ll just have general anesthesia, and not spinal (ang kinakatakutan ni selle) gave her much relief kaya daldal to the max naman. 🙂 an hour later umuwi na din sina geri and paul… kahit na ok na din sa kanila matulog sa room dahil gandang-ganda sila. 😀



we woke up very early the following day. 10 am kasi yung schedule ng operation ni selle and she needed to be brought down to the operating room an hour before. also, darating kasi nanay ni selle w/ her ate (and husband). tapos, kelangan na rin sya lagyan ng iv, yet another first, since pinagbawalan na sya kumain at uminom since midnight. nangyari nga lahat ng ito at maya-maya lang eh sinundo na sya ng mga operating room personnel at binaba na. we accompanied my wife all the way to the door of the operating room. syempre, off limits na kami dun.

afterwards, we waited… and waited… and waited. two-and-a-half hours later, the operation ended. then, around 2 pm, nihatid na si selle sa room. she was groggy pa (akala ko nga tulog pa eh). a few minutes later eh dumating na si dra to explain everything (that later on selle confessed na d na nya matandaan kung ano pinagsasabi ni dra kasi nga groggy pa sya). pagkatapos nun eh natulog na muna si selle.

later the day, visitors started coming. many thanks to you guys for visiting… kahit na sa daldal ni selle eh feeling nyo eh ni-lagnat lang sya. 😛


cris came from makati and brought some cookies (yum! 🙂)… and exciting, exciting news about her. 😉


kathleen drove straight from work and brought fruits (yum din… 🙂)


vena and neriz endured horrendous south super highway traffic to bring us bread (which we ate the following day 🙂 and have their picture taken 😀

btw, we did bring our d40 to the hospital. besides documenting our stay, i took some shots around the room and a few snaps outside. thankfully, i did get a few winners. 🙂








and selle played fashion model for a couple of shots… 😉




the following day we were discharged from the hospital (although it took an extremely long time ha). sayang at late na kami nakaalis at balak pa man din namin manood sana ng sine. 😆 we arrived home and got a couple more visitors there also. 🙂



my wife is doing fine and everything went well. friends dropped by to visit and gave us an enjoyable time. once again, God showed us that He is indeed truly great. 🙂

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