extremely late blog post #10: special delivery

march 7, 2009

we started the search by attending a car show at the world trade center and then at the fort. soon, it was followed by getting a student’s license and learning how to drive. then after a few inquiries here and there… one saturday morning, we finally got what we’ve set out to get since late last year. 🙂






with almost no experience driving (heck, i only took 4 hours out of my 7-hour driving course), we immediately took our ride for a spin by inviting friends for a surprise meet-up at paseo de sta rosa. a couple of our friends showed up and had an inkling that we had some news to tell. 🙂 soon enough, we showed them our new ford focus and then we went straight to tagaytay (actually, papunta na kami dun when we were looking for the mitsubishi showroom (andun yung friends namin eh)… but that’s another story. 😉). after dinner, korean stuff shopping and fruit market picking, we went down tagaytay – this time with francis driving.





our focus have logged a few thousand kilometers since then and we’re more than satisfied with our purchase. funny cause we seem to have started a trend here at the office as new cars have been popping up since we had ours. 🙂

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expanding the collection

if it’s not too obvious yet, i love pampering my wife. 🙂 this season for giving, it took me some time to decide on what to give her. you see, i do not believe in asking would-be-recipients kung ano gusto nilang matanggap na regalo. i think that defeats the purpose of gift-giving. para kasi ang dating eh nagpabili na lang sya sa iyo. part of giving gifts is thinking and deciding on what to give. it can be difficult but that’s part of the beauty of it.

so how does one go about it? there are several ways.

spying is one way. 😀 observing and picking up clues on what the person needs/wants at the moment. one can use close friends of the recipient as accomplices. they are the ones who spend the most time with the recipient hence are the most qualified to give suggestions.

fishing is another way. talk to the person. use indirect queries and questions. simple-han lang. wag yung diretsong, “anong gusto mong matanggap na regalo?” that’s taking the easy way out. 😛

i had to resort to these tactics whenever i feel like giving my wife something… more so this Christmas. initially, i really wanted to give her a wallet because hers need replacing already. then i noticed that she needed a new bag kasi minsan hindi na kasya sa bag nya mga gamit nya. 🙂 since she’s a bag person (and a shoes person… and an accessories person… 😉), i said to myself, “bag it is.”

just a couple of weeks ago, i did get her an extremely chic nine west bag already. we got it from her sister’s friend who got it straight from the usa (kaya relatively mura lang). selle was so excited with her new bag but her excitement quickly died down because, as we got home, we noticed that one the zippers ain’t working right. we decided to return the bag. no new bag. gone is the surprise factor of getting her a bag. we’re back to square one.

just today, we were scouting for exchange gift items for selle. we had no intention of buying anything else as we were devoid of time. while in the mall, we passed by the guess boutique and, like we always do, just had to go in. even if we usually do not buy anything, we do like to window shop… lalo na dito. favorite brand kasi ni selle ang guess, eh, as proven by our cabinet filled of guess items. 😉 (ok, that was a bit of an exaggeration but you get the picture. 🙂)

we wandered around and checked out some bags and some clothes. while doing so, we did notice one extremely swank bag and just had to return to it. selle did like it but was somehow a bit hesitant to voice out her opinion. siguro kasi wala naman sa plano namin ang mamili talaga (or nahihiya lang 😛). since i have learned to read her already, i knew she loved it and this was the bag for her. i decided then to buy it for her right then and there. 🙂

nagulat at tuwang-tuwa si selle. like i said, this was not part of our itinerary for the day. to increase the surprise level even further, i went straight to the wallet section and lo-and-behold the bag we chose had a matching wallet. without hesitation, i decided to give that one to my wife too. 🙂



selle was an extremely happy wife that moment… and i couldn’t be happier. 🙂 that’s two more to her ever expanding guess collection. 😀

merry Christmas, favy… 🙂


a closer look at the details of the bag and the wallet.


before the bag and the wallet, we bought this just a couple of weeks ago. 🙂


my wife’s favorite brand… lomofied 🙂

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new toys

…if you can call them such. 😛

selle loves to cook… and she’s good at it. 🙂 being her husband, i am responsible for catering to this passion of hers. giving her books was a start. then, as an act of encouragement, friends were invited to dine in and relish her cooking. now, she’s got these new “toys” to play with. 🙂

buying these was a product of too much food network tv… or more specifically, too much bobby flay and rachael ray. 😀 these are two of selle’s favorite cooks. this explains why we got the grill (tribute to the grilling savvy of bobby flay) and the sauce pan (tribute to the pasta-cooking of rachael ray).

selle really got excited with these purchases and she immediately started thinking out loud on the cooking possibilities. seeing her this excited is more than enough to justify the purchase. this moments are, sabi nga sa commercial… priceless. 🙂

i remember a discussion we once had at our church leadership group. it was about the responsibilities of a husband to his wife. yah, we we’re still single males back then but our group really dealt about these stuff (the better to prepare maybe? 😉). one of which is the responsibility to cultivate. it is up to us husbands to foster growth in whatever passion or endeavor our wives get into. eto yung topic na tumatak talaga sa akin when we were discussing this, which explains my actions regarding selle’s love for cooking.

so, what’s next? we’re going to get our groceries later this day and we’ll probably stock up on food items. this time, we’ll probably get some more herbs, spices and sauces for more grilling and pasta experimentation. anything to cultivate this passion of my wife. 🙂

my wife has another passion… it’s fashion. but that’s another story altogether… 😆


(left) grilled chicken breast and carrots
(right) penne in the hot tub


tuna pasta in pesto. all together now, yumm-o! 😀

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simply cinematic

we love movies. we love visual arts. as long as it’s captivating, moving and has story to tell, we love it.

just yesterday we were able to watch the movie, the bourne ultimatum. a fantastic movie. the action scenes were crisp and edgy. jason bourne’s journey… surprisingly touching. the storyline… plot twist filled.

but this blog post is not about that movie.

it’s about another movie.

a movie we’ve been eagerly awaiting…

we now have our final wedding video! 😀

we were so excited that upon arriving back home, we immediately popped our hts open, placed our wedding dvd and watched it 2 straight times… and then the raw footages… not withstanding that it was around 2 am already. excited, eh, no? 😆

and our excitement was immediately justified. the initial scene of a 3-dimensional tour of a map of tagaytay was an early indication of how meticulously and excellently done the video was. as that brief introduction raised the bar extremely high, the succeeding scenes did not disappoint.

our wedding video was everything we wanted it to be… and maybe more. bob nicolas did a splendid job of coming up with a video that was visually captivating, emotionally moving and a story well told. WE ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. 🙂

bob’s technical brilliance in video editing was in full display in our video. precision cuts, dissolves, picture in picture, time-lapse… etc. being a video editor myself, i just appreciate usage of such techniques. also, we now appreciate more the power of his dvx camera with its warmer, more saturated colors and its capability of shooting at 24p thereby making our video more film-like.

but beyond technical skills, bob’s ability to capture moments and emotions has always been his strength. his unobtrusive style and strong belief that the day is special in itself helps him achieve this. our bouts of giddiness and excitement, our overflowing happiness, our longing, our anticipation and all the stolen moments were stringed altogether producing our wedding video. a wedding video that only cements bob’s tag line, life really is like a movie.

astonishing cinematogaphy + creative camerawork + sharp editing. cinematic indeed.

what makes things even more amazing is bob had to do with somewhat limited material. we didn’t have the conventional bridal march (ours was different yet bob still managed to make it dramatic. galing talaga. 🙂). we didn’t have a first dance. we didn’t have the usual ceremonies: cake cutting, garter toss, dove release. these are scenes that are critical ingredients in most wedding videos. without such is like asking a coach to go to basketball game without his key players. but it didn’t matter to bob… at least, it seemed like it didn’t. 😉

even the raw footages were commendable. nakaka2wa din panoorin because you get real behind-the-scenes look at how the day transpired. madaming magagandang footages that it seemed like it’s an edited video minus the musical score. i’ll probably toy with these footages and make our own amateur wedding video. 😆


an inside look of the elegant looking dvd case.


embossed label on the parents’ copy dvd case.


our edited dvd’s… and raw footages.



screen captures of the the menu screens. these photos do not truly represent the beauty of the design. the tilted tri-screen previews scenes within the video… and in the case of the scene selection screen, it goes with special effects. superb! 🙂


we never thought that watching credit roll will be this entertaining. galing-galing. 🙂 btw, that’s my sister, brother-in-law and our ring bearer giving their best wishes. 🙂

it’s quite obvious that we are more than satisfied with the final output. aside from the things we’ve said already, we want to point out one last thing.

we gave bob free reign in editing our video… except for one request. we told him, “gus2 namin yung video namin eh yung maiiyak si selle, ha.” astig sa request, no? 😉 but you know what? at very first viewing, we found ourselves holding back tears while watching. just this morning, i was watching alone while my wife sleeps and i was shedding tears also. our wedding video brought us back to our wedding… the height of the emotions, the love that was more than evident and the glory of God.

bob, we can’t thank you enough for what you did. you’re blessed with skills way above everyone else. it’s nice that you get to use it to infuse happiness to people… something they’ll carry for the rest of their lives. we certainly will. to you, let and the kids, we pray for nothing but success in all aspects. salamat. 🙂

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firewire

firewire or ieee1394 is a pc interface standard. unlike the more popular usb, firewire offers high speed communication and isochronous data transmission hence, ideal for transfer large volumes of data. the developer of this technology, apple, called this standard firewire and the tag has remained. other manufacturers have their own tags though like sony, which calls their ieee1394 as i.link.

why blog about firewire?

we finally got one! 🙂

what for? to transfer digital videos to our pc for editing.

despite the proliferation of dvd camcorders and hdd camcorders, mini-dv still gives the best video recording quality. yes, those small tapes do pack a punch. those professional cameras wedding videographers use, they all use mini-dv (well, with the exception of very few like the p2 card of the hvx… but that’s a totally new technology and i only know one who uses it. 😉). because of the quality… and security in archiving. but how do you transfer video from tape to a pc? do you use a usb? years back, i thought that was the way. who can fault me? eh, yun ang kasamang cord ng biniling kong videocam, eh. plus, yun din nasa instruction manual. kaya pala pag transfer ko sa pc, eh sobrang pixelated yung video. because usb cannot handle such vast amount of data at high speeds, continuously. later on, i learned about firewire.

we made sure that our new pc had firewire ports. unlike usb ports, firewire ports does not come standard. now we got a pc with firewire ports. we have a videocam (jurassic as it may be. 😆). all we needed was the firewire cable.

this past weekend, we got hold of one. 🙂

pagkadating sa bahay, we immediately brought out our must-be-replaced-videocam and plugged it into our pc using the newly acquired firewire cable. we have read that there was a problem transferring video files using firewire in vista. kaya naman we were a bit nervous too that all those complaints may be true. but lo-and-behold, we got to transfer the video easily. after transfer, i played it and it had audio (another complaint against vista). opened vegas and started dragging and dropping frames and it worked! woohoo!

ayun lang. time to make a honeymoon video… 😉

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6.9 mm thick… or thin?

samsung has become a major player in the mobile phone market. this has been achieved through aggressive marketing of their feature-filled, stylish phones. the name samsung has been so synonymous to mobiles that whenever someone learns that we work for samsung, more often than not they’ll say,”may discount ba kayo sa mga cellphones?” 😆

to clarify things, samsung is a group of companies and ours, samsung electro-mechanics, is just but one of many. no, we do not produce mobile phones nor do we produce home appliances… that’s all under samsung electronics, yet another samsung company. we just make the smd’s (surface mounted devices) that is inside such items, irregardless of manufacturer (ours can also be found inside sony, apple… etc.). kaya, no, we don’t sell cellphones at wala din mga tv sa amin. 😀

as a priviledge though, managers and, just recently, supervisors are given mobile phones as a benefit. and selle, just got hers. 🙂

the samsung sgh-x820. at 6.9 mm, it’s advertised as the world’s slimmest mobile phone. as you can see in the photo above, we’re not kidding.


being so thin, it’s still packed with features. samsung probably has the best lcd’s in mobile phones with this one having a 1.9″ 263k lcd. it also has 2.0 megapixel camera and by experience, samsung has the finest lens used in mobile phones. add to that an mp3 player and we have an extremely thin yet still loaded phone.


of course, style is important… and samsung is known for their stylish phones. (syempre, extra prenup artbook namin sa background. 😉)

suddenly, my fone looked old. palit na lang kaya kami. 😆

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my wife can shoot too…

it has finally arrived. the latest addition to our “stuff” is now inside the confines of our home. we researched about it… we ordered it… we waited for it… and now, we have it. 🙂

the next thing to do then is… blog about it. 🙂

for awaited moments like these, it is easy to foresee that we we’re gonna blog next. kaya naman nilabas talaga namin ang camera (nahawa na kami kay fol. 😀)namin to document the unpacking and setting up of this new stuff of ours. since i was the one who was doing the setting up, selle took the camera and started clicking away.  a few shots later, she showed me her shots and i was amazed by what i saw. i stopped whatever i was doing at that time to just admire the photos. my wife has got an eye too. 🙂

yes, this post will be about our new stuff. but this post is also a tribute to my wife’s photography skills. 🙂 you’ve seen how good my wife cooks (see rachael ray post), now wallow yourselves on her photography. 🙂 (yah, i love my wife… and i’m proud of her. 🙂)


the use of lines. the contrast of black and white. the placement of the word “dell.” superb photo. 🙂


again, the use of lines… vertical lines to be more specific. the doorway, as plain as it is, even creates a nice background due its lines.


shallow depth-of-focus and the horizontal lines leads the viewer to the subject.


that’s our computer name… and our computer specs. 😆

yes, our new “stuff” is a desktop pc. the first ingredient in a major scheme we are cooking up. since this pc will be used primarily for video editing, photo manipulation, digital layouting and internet surfing, we needed a relatively high-powered pc. it took us quite a while to decide on what specs is enough. through net research, several forums and advice from our trusty videographer, bob, we finally settled on the right specs. now, where to buy? we could’ve easily bought a clone but we needed a reliable machine that would not break the bank. dito na pumasok ang kuya ko. 😀 being in the IT business and having been once assigned in the states, he knows where to get us a pc. 😉

dell is reputable for offering customizable pc’s at low, low rates. and we did get a very good deal with this. it would take a while nga lang for it to be shipped all the way here pero ok lang. it’s cheaper… plus it’s branded. pretty good deal. 🙂


of course, i did take a number of shots also. can’t help it, eh. 😀


our pc looks so majestic, no? 🙂

now we’re still tinkering our pc, installing softwares and manipulating settings. we’ll give our own verdict on vista in a few weeks or so. i did give photoshop and vegas a quick run through and all i can say is this machine of ours flies. that’s good because if we have been productive for years using P4 and 256/512 MB pc, what more with our pc? 😉

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snippets

a series of events occured lately and instead of blogging about each one at a time… we thought it would be best to just collect them all in one single photoblog.  🙂
 
snippet 1: color coordination
half a year ago, we had our prenuptial pictorial at tagaytay with fol & edong.  we were excited with our prenups so much so that we kinda “prepared” for it.  no, we didn’t bring props (though that would’ve been nice) nor did we practice poses (haha) but we did give some thoughts on what we would wear… or what color for that matter. 

prenup photos by fol rana jr (from top to bottom): 1) wearing green & cream pants at bella vista  2) wearing white top & jeans (provides great contrast with the greens)  3) wearing earth/neutral long-sleeved shirts.  note: meron pa kaming pink & black outfit that we didn’t get to use.  hehe.

fast forward to last monday.  we took a stop at atc before going to cavite (selle’s hometown).  sa sobrang wala kaming time lumabas, we have been wearing very old slippers at home.  eh, ako nga, eh pambabae pa yung gamit ko, eh… hehehe.  eh since we were in atc na rin lang, naghanap kami ng tsinelas.  and look what we got.  🙂

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