Just a pretty post of trees. :)

I visited Seoul, Korea two months ago and spent a day in Nami Island. Such a gorgeous place, with so many different kinds of trees, all with their own spots in the island.

I would love to go back someday.

Last December, I tagged along with Gim on his medical mission trip to Laoag. One of the places we went to was the La Paz sand dunes.

It was my first time to see such massive amounts of sand – on land! I mean, I’m not used to seeing sand without water. This was hills and hills of sand!!!

Closest I’ve ever gotten to a desert! So naturally, Gim and I had to play!

This was the view on our way to La Paz. Big wide river that later melted into the sea.

Along the way there were some people cooking food right beside the road! Looked like lots of fun! They must have been preparing for a big event like a fiesta judging by the size of their woks!

Here comes the sand…

Manong tricycle driver driving uphill…

We had to stop for a bit. To take photos. But of course!

Sand, sun, and beach! What’s not to like???

I totally felt like Anne of the Island in this photo. Hahaha! Maybe I should make this my Facebook profile photo.

Gim couldn’t help it – he climbed up the hill!

And soon after, I followed suit!

How could you be on the top of a hill and not take a jump shot?!? Amiryt???

Oooo… pretty pink flower!

Alas, soon enough we had to go down… those are our footsteps. As you can see they don’t look like steps. They look more like a big butt which slid downhill. Which is just a coincidence, I swear.

We had to pop down and see the beach for a minute. Yeah, this was really just a minute because we got called away as soon as we stepped on the shore.

The entire trip was just a quick 30 to 45 minutes, even though the number of photos doesn’t really seem like it was under less than an hour. But it was.

I want to go back!!!

It isn’t funny how real climate change is. You can feel it in the weirdness of the seasons, how the rains come so much earlier, how hotter than normal it is when it’s the sunny season…

Take the time we went to Baguio, first week of March. Five years ago, same time this year, it was freaking cold!! So cold we were in jackets and still shivering. So cold that we could even see and feel the fog.

This time around, it was warm during the day, though the night brought cool relief. At times, it was downright hot!

And it was hot when we went to the strawberry farm at high noon. Look at those uncomfortable smiles!!

Yep, we were feeling the heat alright! Nevertheless we had fun gawking at the cheap prices of all the vegetables. If I could I would have bought a basketful of vegetables here, but alas I knew I couldn’t carry them all home (from Baguio to Manila is about 6 hours bus trip) so I settled for 3 heads of broccoli (3 enormous heads for P100 what a steal!), a small basket of strawberries (P50) and half a kilo of blueberries (P100).

We had a fun time looking around in the strawberry fields…

Jotie finishing his strawberry taho (or was it the strawberry ice cream?) and Raquel taking photos of the strawberry plants.

Leo telling us about the strawberry farm, that actually this is really more for show as most of the farms aren’t in Baguio but in Benguet. Chris listening intently.

This is a row of potatoes, yes! In the midst of the smaller strawberry plants.

And here is a potato bud, soon it will flower.

And here is a broccoli head! The leaves are so large! I wish I had a garden like this in my backyard, fresh vegetables all the time, yummm!!!

And here we have some lettuce, and in between the lettuce and broccoli are a few onion plants.

It was a fun day, despite the heat. L-R: Me, Brian, Jotie, Raq and Chris.

Want a strawberry?

It was my friend Jotie’s 29th birthday on the first of March, and we celebrated by having dinner in Gerry’s Grill in Baguio City.

(Yes, he’s the youngest in the group and while all of us are turning or have already turned 30 this year, he will stay 29 for all of 2012. Unfair!!! Hahaha, do I sound bitter???)

So, anyway, here’s a rare chance that I was bringing my camera and I took photos of him while we were singing him a happy birthday.

Look at that smile, LOL!!!

Here are some photos of the food:

Tuna belly and grilled chicken.

Cream dory grilled in banana leaves (this was REALLY good), but I forgot to take a picture of it with the leaves off.

Grilled barbecue and grilled squid. Grilled squid is Gerry’s Grill’s specialty – it tastes really really delicious. I think they baste it with pork fat, that’s why it’s extra tasty.

We also got kare-kare but I don’t think I have a photo.

I wanted baked scallops, but they were out. I am so craving for scallops! Last time that I went to Gerry’s in Glorietta 5 they were also out. Hayyy….

L-R: Leo (Jotie’s new friend from his recent travels), Jotie and Brian (chatting with Katrina who couldn’t be with us)

L-R: Raquel, Me, Chris (my bff from high school), Leo, Jotie and Brian

And that’s the gang who went to Baguio! (Why do I look so cold?!?)

A wonderful thing about living in Baguio, aside from the soothing cool climate, is the abundance of flowers. They grow everywhere, anywhere, in Baguio! Even the weeds sprout flowers, amazingly!

That’s why I don’t counter who says Zamboanga isn’t really the “City of Flowers” anymore – because I can see plainly that if there was ever a Philippine city that deserved this title, it would be Baguio. However, that city is already called “The Summer Capital of the Philippines”, and rightly so.

Anyway, my friends and I were there for a couple of days last week and there was a landscaping competition so I took some photos.

Here is the winner, from a landscaping team from La Union (it was an open competition). More photos:

The next photo didn’t win but garnered an honorable mention. I really liked it too, although the styles are a bit similar, just that the winner was more grandiose with the gazebo plus waterfalls. But I liked the garden setup of this one much better.

I would LOVE to have gardens like those in my future home. But alas, I don’t think the flowers would thrive.

A friend of mine told me that a square meter of land in Baguio costs ten thousand pesos. Whoaaaa!!! Oh well. I wasn’t really considering on someday living there, but if I ever want to stay somewhere cool, maybe I will go look at neighboring Benguet instead!

This is possibly the best cake I have ever tasted in my life. Strawberry shortcake.

Let me just say that I am not fond of cakes. So much so that when my friends decided to get a cake for share, I decided to get a slice of strawberry tart instead since I already knew I wasn’t going to like the cake.

Boy was I wrong!!! The cake was so delicious!!! It was a layer of whipped cream over a layer of strawberry-infused cream over strawberry-infused cake over strawberry cream again over strawberry cake, topped with fresh strawberry slices.

My God!!!! Every bite of that cake was scrumptious, melt-in-your-mouth goodness!!!

I love that strawberry shortcake. Yum!

You can get it at Visco’s in Baguio. Strawberry season is short, so go get it as soon as you can!!!

Visco’s Restaurant & Cake Shop
#5C EDT Bldg (Puso ng Baguio Bldg.)
#5 Session Road, Baguio City
Tel# (074) 446-7082

I’m not the type to wear hip hop clothes, but business formal isn’t my thing either. I’m my most comfortable in casual wear. Just a shirt and jeans, or shorts, is me.

So it was a lot of fun being able to go home last Holy Week and just spend leisurely days with my long-time boyfriend, whom I’ve missed so much.

One lazy afternoon we decided to hit the beach and watch the sunset. The tide was pretty low that afternoon, so we were able to sit on the exposed rocks lining the shore.

We drank some beer, sat, reminisced about the old times when we used to do the same thing almost every weekend, and just enjoyed each others presence.

Our main takeaway? We realized our happiest times were the simplest – just being together and enjoying nature. Be it the beach or the river or the mountains, it doesn’t take a whole lot of money to make us happy. For me, it’s just being with Gim. He lights me up, and I do the same for him.

I hope we can be together again really soon. And for good.

Would you need mba management if you could major in cute?

Let me show you two cute things I brought home from Japan.

The above picture is of my cute phone accessory! It’s a squirrel! So kawaii! :) Japan is the home of the cute – I could hardly stand it and I wanted to buy everything I saw. This is one of the tinier pieces I bought, and it’s now hanging from my office mobile. I think I don’t have to mention that my personal phone carries the bigger and cuter pieces. Hahah. :)

Japanese sweets! I found this in Gion. Back in 2005, my mom received a box of sweets exactly like these and I’ve always wanted to find them again. Not because of how they tasted but because they were just too cute. LOL. I wanted to give them as gifts, because the bearer will always have a dilemma of wanting to taste them but at the same time not wanting to eat them because they’re too cute. I wanted to share the dilemma hahaha. Actually they taste like cardboard. So the second option would be better, but curiosity always wins. :)

I had more stuff – but they’re mostly digested by now. :D

There aren’t any Sakura blooms yet in February, but thank goodness for plum blossoms, the earliest trees that signal spring.

While we were in Osaka, my sister and I, with our friend Erlyn, visited the Osaka castle (or Osaka-jo, they call it). My most favorite part was walking through the Bairin plum garden and being surrounded by all the beautiful blooming plum trees. :)

See for yourself! :)

And scroll through my pictures below! :)

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If you’re looking to buy silver coins, I’ve got a whole lot of them!

Just recently, I came back from my 7-day leisure trip to Japan. Shopping around, one tends to accumulate coins. I had intended to use them all up, but in the end I still had about 1 thousand yen’s worth of silver and bronze coins!

They look like the ones below.

The silver ones are the 100 and 50 yen coins, the bronze are 10 and 5 yen coins, and the smallest in the 1 yen coin, though I’m not sure if it’s silver, since it’s very lightweight. There’s another one, the gold coin, which is worth 500 yen, not pictured here.

I also have a 10,000 yen bill and three 1,000 yen bills left. So if anyone is going to Japan anytime soon, I’m selling my yen! :)