Family fun

Last weekend was special because my wife and Jo-Lo visited Manila. Jo-Lo's godparents and our friends were also excited to see Jo-Lo, especially Ninang Dessagirl who saw him during his baptism, which now seemed like a long time ago. My wife had a business purpose as well. She bought books for the school where she works at the Book Fair (this I blogged about early on). That time, Jo-Lo had not arrived yet so we had a simple dinner date at Amici di Don Bosco in Makati.

My wife had this...
while I had this.
Mm-mmmm!
We topped it off with Gelato. Yum yum!

And here's some photos with Jo-Lo at Chowking!

It only seemed like yesterday when Jo-Lo sat in his big playpen. Now, it has been set aside because he kept climbing up its walls. And it's no small playpen! Now, he loves to run around and laugh and grab celphones when he sees one pointed at him taking photos!

Then that night, we watched Pretty in Pink, a DVD pasalubong by Princess Em from her recent trip to the US. Uy update naman dyan sa blog mo o! Thanks Emily! I love this movie! 80s galore!
Happy weekend everyone!

Sweating it out with Sudoku

I accompanied my wife to Baguio last Sunday because she had a lot of books that we still bought from the Book Fair from different booths but each order was not bulky enough to request for delivery, so these had to be hand carried. So I was not able to report for work last Monday. Instead, we used the time to renew my passport, and my wife applied for hers and Jo-Lo as well.

The early morning saw us riding a bus enroute to La Union where the nearest Department of Foreign Affairs is. As with other government offices, this place was very modest in terms of facilities, and for instructions you need to ask the help of the security guard, or an occasional employee who were quite burdened with the workload. I rather think workload is inversely proportional to courtesy because the more work being handled by the employee, the more direct with a hint of sarcasm they tend to be with the applicants. Good thing we came dressed rather different from the others, for we did not encounter such a treatment. At any rate, kudos to the employees there who were obviously doing their best to do crowd control and at the same time efficiently serve the most number of applications they can handle.

We also had to drop by the National Statistics Office to have Jo-Lo's birth certificate authenticated. At the counter were signs where you can get certificates for birth, marriage, death, and cenomar. Uh, what's cenomar?

So there we were in this hall with no electric fan or airconditioning. It was a warm day, and we found ourselves sweating in our clothes. My wife whipped out her fan while I fished around in my bag for some books. I took the Kwentong Tambay by BatJay and gave it to my wife while I swapped between Newsweek and Reader's Digest. Yep, I have anticipated the long waits in this kind of transactions.

Soon enough, my wife was giggling as she showed me random parts of the book. That's BatJay for you. Humor in anything under the sun. If you are familiar with his blog, then you know his antics. Humor for mature audience included! We bought the book at the Book Fair and was available only in that event. It's not out in stores yet. It only has limited print so buy one when you do get the chance! It's well worth the 100 pesos.

BatJay adds:
"Karamihan ng material sa book ay galing sa blog ko - in particular, our singapore years. however, the book contains "exclusive entries" that you will not find in my blog."

So, as Manuel L. Quezon III exclaimed: "Buy na! Now na!"

And then I remembered I also brought along the Sudoku book and thought I'd try my hand in it. Basically, it's a grid with 9 squares each side, with these numbers grouped into 9s. Some of the squares are filled. It's up to you to write the missing numbers from 1-9, making sure that the number is not repeated in a row or a column, or in a group of 9. Sounds tricky? Yes it is. But when you get the hang of it, solving the puzzle is fun!

It's rather difficult to concentrate there though, due to the heat, and you have to occasionally leave your chair and join the crowd when they shout the names of those who has passed stage 1. My first set of attempts ended up in erasures and errors. But by Puzzle 5 (we were no longer in DFA), I was finally getting the hang of it and enjoyed Sudoku immensely.

Sudoku is a logic puzzle that has been popular in Japan for about 20 years already but was just introduced in our shores late last year. Sudoku means "single number".

Visit your favorite bookstore and buy a Sudoku puzzle book today. It's inexpensive, and best of all, it's fun! People unfamiliar with this will even wonder what a math genius you are as you go through the grid. But there's no mathematical computation required!

Book Heaven

My wife is currently in Manila to visit the 27th International Book Fair happening in the World Trade Center in Pasay City. It was her second day there yesterday and when I was accompanying her, I kept asking her to get me something from the fair. I would love it if she got me a book on origami. She said she'll try.

She called me up at around lunchtime, and said she has a surprise for me! An origami book? I'll have to find out for myself. So right after work, I rushed off to the World Trade Center to find my surprise and roam around in the few remaining hours (it closed at 8).

I was truly delighted by my wife's surprise. An origami and papercraft book! It's loaded with work I have never tried before, plus it has paper sculpture, ideas for gift wrapping, papier mache, and even how to make your own paper! Can't wait to try my hand at the new origami stuff!

We also bought some books for baby Jo-Lo. I have been reading about this Sudoku craze from Abaniko and Owen FV so I bought a small book (only 50 pesos!) to try my hand as well. We also bought this thick Walt Disney storybook with illustrations at only 50 pesos from A-Z Marketing (distributor of Reader's Digest). We would have loved the hardbound Hans Christian Anderson story book but it retailed at 1,900 pesos.

There were lots of choices though for kid's books ranging from 60 pesos up.

Other specialty booths featured frog and human dissection figures aside from the Medical books. Interesting. Goodwill also featured fiction works at 80% off!

There's this book, City Lights, edited by Adam David (the nephew of BatJay) being sold at the PSIcom booth which my wife also bought a copy of (only 60 pesos!) I have read a couple of articles in it. If you did not read the disclaimer stating that it is fiction, you would believe that the people and events being mentioned therein are true. It's written in Filipino, so it's a pleasant change from my other readings.

My wife said she also saw a book called Kwentong Tambay by Nicanor David. Isn't that BatJay himself? Wow! Wish I can come back to the fair and see for myself. The book apparently sells for 100 pesos.


At the huge Goodwill Bookstore booth, there were these boxes which included tools for the book covering the topic therein. If it was about mixing drinks, for example, the package included a mixer. If it's about gardening, there's a pot with some seeds in it (I think). But what I got interested on was the Zen Garden box. It comes with a rectangular container onto which you put the sand, and it comes with pebbles and perhaps some other small items to have your own portable Zen garden right on your office table. It's a bit pricey, though. 1,080 pesos less 20%.


The hour and a half I stayed there was not enough to visit all the booths! Wish we can go there one last time before. The International Book Fair runs til Sunday, September 3.