I Blog, Therefore I Am.

I was really fascinated by Time Magazine's Top 10 of Everything for 2008 and I think that it would be cool to do one for myself as a year-ender. "Ten of everything" would be too much for me so I am just limiting my list to my ultimate "tops" and favorite things.

TOP PEOPLE

Family
In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do us part. Enough said.





Forces Girlfriends + Jako
We've been through a lot this year - travels, dinners, quarrels, success, misunderstandings, profound e-mails, unions, engagements, singleness, happiness and broken hearts. Despite everything we've gone through we realized that we all love each other at the end of the day! :)



My CLRD Angels
The year will not be as sweet if not for my dear Marj and Kathy. We worked very hard and delivered a lot of projects that helped build subscribers' loyalty. I'll miss you, girls! Thanks for all that has been and for all that will be!

Gabsters
Our fondness and support for GDM was the one that introduced us to each other; but we discovered along the way that we have loads in common other than our PBB obsessions. Our BBQ Boy dinners were always riot events!

Ros + John + Eric
A common tragic event early this year made us closer to each other. It was not a "good year" for us but we all believe that it's already time to move on (Binchy would want it that way).

TOP TRAVELS

Boracay Birthday
This is my most traveled year! I'm out each month except in January. The one that stood out is my 30th birthday celebration in Boracay. My friends Tin, Aileen, Charo and Jako went with me last 888 (August 8, 2008) and had the time of our lives. The highlight of the trip? The Paraw Sunset Sailing!

Viva Vigan
My friends and I had a memorable roadtrip to Vigan last May. Aside from the cobblestones, the picturesque Spanish houses, and the yummy delicacies (I'm still craving for Martha's Bibingka until now), the trip was one for the books because we were were stranded in La Union for hours because of Typhoon Cosme. Our trip back home was 17 hours long. Whew!



Beautiful Bohol
Our Team Celebration Program in Bohol last September was great because there were only four (4) of us on the trip and it was my first time in Bohol! I can't wait to go back for more! Bohol is truly a relaxation haven!



Travel To Meet Subs
A huge chunk of my work-related travel this year was because of one of our loyalty programs. I was able to meet various subscribers all over the nation through this activity. They were all fun and enriching events and it gave me also the opportunity to visit Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija and Balanga, Bataan for the first time. I also visited Cebu (twice), Davao (thrice), Baguio and Cagayan de Oro this year.

TOP EVENTS
(These are my non-travel events this year that are memorable. "Memorable" can either be happy or sad and a couple of entries here were unfortunately sad ones.)

My Pond's Beauty Blog
One of my non-work achievements of the year is winning the Pond's 7-day Beauty Blog. The "essay" (as my dad puts it) won me a new iPhone 3G and gift certificates.

Binchy's Passing
My good friend's unexpected death usually trumps the happy events of the year. We are still grieving but we know in our hearts that he's now in a happier place.

NatCon 2008
Customer Care's National Conference 2008 became a memorable one for me because of some unexpected twist of events. It still haunt me at times but I already learned from the experience. Things that doesn't kill you truly makes you stronger! :)

Vince & Eliza's Wedding
Ate finally tied the knot last November! The event was a joyous one and it gave me the opportunity to be reunited with my Real relatives whom some I haven't seen in years.



TOP GADGETS

Canon 1000D
Santa came this year and got me this! Eyeloveit! Definitely the gift of the year (or even the decade).



Nokia E71
Nokia did everything right with this phone. It's perfect (or perfect for me at least!). The slim design allows you to text using one hand, it has WiFi, cool interface, huge LCD screen and its HSDPA! Definitely one of the best Nokias in the market today.

iPhone 3G
Dubbed by most as The Gadget of the Year, it is not on top of my list because it's not the best - for me anyway. It has its greatness, ganda points, Internet anywhere and everywhere, and it's the best iPod ever...but it's far from perfect (jailbroken or otherwise). But I still love it to bits because it's "my trophy".

TOP TV SHOWS

Grey's Anatomy
The plot with Denny coming back to life is beyond absurd and George may be resigning but I still love this show! Nothing can keep me away from it despite the cheesiness of Mer and Der. My only wish? End the dead guy story and let Izzie fall in love with Alex.

Gossip Girl
One of my Twitter buddies thought I was on my early twenties because of my great love for these Upper East Siders. Season 2 made me fall in like with Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass together with the teens and tweens of the world. I still love Serena and Lily but I just can't stand the Humphreys especially Dan, the over-analyzer.



The West Wing
It might have ended a couple of years ago but I am still on Season 3 of this great political drama. I am so fascinated with life at the White House and my week is not complete without hearing the "CJ! CJ! CJ!" of the reporters at the make-believe press room.

Brothers & Sisters
Who doesn't want to be part of the Walker family and their famous dinners? I've decided this season that Kevin is my favorite Walker (aside from Nora of course). Who's your favorite?

TOP MOVIES

Sex and The City Movie
Seeing Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte once again is beyond words! Watching it at Powerplant with great friends after Pepper Lunch was also great.



Twilight
Seeing Bela and The Cullens come to life is more than enough to land this movie on the list despite its crapiness. Sorry, Twitter movie fans.

TOP BOOKS

Twilight Series
It was the much-hyped launch of Breaking Dawn in August which prompted me to read the series. It somehow filled the void that Harry Potter left me. Stephanie's writing was so bad (grammar and punctuation errors, over-plot, under-plot) but her great storytelling skills compensated for it. My favorites are Breaking Dawn, Eclipse and Alice Cullen.

American Wife
Time Magazine agrees with me that this is one of the best reads of 2008. It's a story of a librarian turned First Lady of the United States of America (sounds familiar?).



Remember Me
Another chick-lit of Sophie Kinsella which was patterned after the humor and sweetness of tUndomestic Goddess and Can You Keep A Secret?.

TOP RESTAURANTS
(Funny that everything on this list is a destination restaurant.)

Bigby's
I fell in love with their Grilled Rodeo Chops and Iced Tea! I had it four times this year: Bigby's Davao, Bigby's LimKetKai, Bigby's SM Cebu and Bigby's Ayala Center Terraces. They will open a branch in Manila soon! Yey!

Cyma
This was my "supposed" 30th birthday dinner. The Cyma feast we had in Boracay was one of the best dinners that my friends and I had of late. Greek food is truly love! Best Moussaka I've ever had!



Breakfast at Antonio's
I came back this year to this beloved restaurant that hold so many wonderful memories of yesteryears. Their steak is still tender and I still love it! Yum!

TOP ON-LINE SITES

Twitter
I tried Plurk for a couple of months but I came back to Twitter. If I can't blog then I usually express myself via Twitter's 140 characters. According to TweetStat, my average tweet per day is 7.3 and I usually send them 8:00 pm onwards. My most replied twitter friends are taetin (Tin), rivengodwind (Rodge) and lilacstardust (Aileen), siaz (Mitzi) and charuzee (Charo). No surprises here since they are also my real-life best buds! Twitter is our cheesmux extension.

Facebook
I joined Facebook in mid-2007 but I only realized its full potential early this year. Everyone who's anyone is on Facebook; and it's the best Social Networking Site ever!

Multiply
This has always been my favorite repository site for photos, videos, blog entries and music. Add me up!

iGoogle
A customizable one-stop shop for everything Google (and some more). It's always a joy to see my e-mail, google search tabs, Remember The Milk tasks, Google Reader feeds and various news all in one place. Thanks to Marj for the tip!

Thanks to 2008 for being such a wonderful year!

Credits to Bordoy Viterbo, Charo, Aileen and Marj for the photos.

The word "soonish" is just one of the things I miss on the long hiatus of Grey's Anatomy. But good thing that the writers' strike is finally over so we can now all go back to regular programming.



ABC recently announced that Grey's Anatomy will return on Thursday, April 24 with five (5) new episodes thus giving Season 4 with 16 episodes in total. Shonda Rhimes also confirmed through the official Grey's Anatomy writers blog that they are now back to writing fresh new stories for the remainder of the season.

I miss my favorite TV show so I've been watching past episodes and seasons in the previous days. I cannot wait for the outcome of the cliffhangers of Episode 11 (Lay Your Hands On Me) like Bailey's marriage, Sloan-Hahn, and the Mer-Der-Rose triangle.

I am so happy that the writers' strike is over. Unfortunately, I have no news yet on the comeback of Brothers & Sisters and Gossip Girl. For the meantime, there's American Idol Season 7. :)

Let the countdown begin!

Barely a week before the much-awaited Season Four premiere of Grey's Anatomy, ABC featured this new music video dedicated for it (just like The Fray's How To Save A Life last year). This time it's Mat Kearney's Breathe In, Breathe Out. It's nice, upbeat and very Grey's Anatomy. It's also featured as one of the tracks at Grey's Anatomy Soundtrack, Volume 3 which was released a few days ago. Mat is no stranger to Grey's since it already featured four of his songs on several past episodes. One of them is my favorite, Where We Gonna Go From Here.

Here's the the MTV with some snippets from last season and next week's premiere. Credits to Grey's Anatomy Insider, as usual.



BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUT
Mat Kearney
Grey's Antomy Soundtrack, Volume 3

Breathe in, breathe out
Tell me all of your doubts
Everybody bleeds this way, just the same
Breathe in, breathe out
Move on and break down
If everyone goes away, I will stay
We push and pull
And I fall down sometimes
And I’m not letting go
You hold the other line
Cause there is a light in your eyes, in your eyes

Hold on, hold tight
If I’m out of your sight
And everything keeps moving on, moving on
Hold on, hold tight
Make it through another night
In every day there comes a song with the dawn
We push and pull
And I fall down sometimes
And I’m not letting go
You hold the other line
Cause there is a light in your eyes, in your eyes
There is a light in your eyes, in your eyes

Breathe in and breathe out
Breathe in and breathe out
Breathe in and breathe out
Breathe in and breathe out

Look left, look right
To the moon and the night
Everything under the stars is in your arms

Cause there is a light in your eyes, in your eyes
There is a light in your eyes, in your eyes
There is a light in your eyes, in your eyes

Here's also the primer on Grey's Season Four premiere episode:

A Change is Gonna Come
Thursday, Sep 27 at 9/8c

Having just returned from her honeymoon with Meredith, Cristina searches for Burke, but he's nowhere to be found. Meredith, Cristina, Izzie and Alex spend their first day as residents with their own groups of interns - among the interns are George, repeating his intern year after failing his exams, and Lexie Grey, Meredith's half-sister whom she has never met. Now that Derek's relationship with Meredith has reached an emotional impasse, he looks to his fellow doctors for friendship; Bailey wrestles with her place within the hospital now that her former interns report to new Chief Resident Callie; and Richard resumes his position as Chief of Surgery.

Fall's Premiere Week starts on Monday, September 23. Private Practice, Grey's spin-off with Addison leaving for LA and signing up at her friend's Oceanside Wellness Center, will start on Wednesday but I am already downloading its never-before-aired Pilot episode which I learned from Mindy's site.

Can't wait, can't wait! :)

The fourth season of Grey's Anatomy will premiere on September 27 at ABC. Here's the first promotional video which I got from Mindy and at the Grey's Anatomy Insider site.



I am such a HUGE fan and I cannot wait for Season 4. There's a couple of 'quite real' exciting spoilers that I read from Mindy's site that are absolute bombshells! (think Alex-Callie hooking up!) This will be a different season since main characters Burke (Isaiah Washington) and Addison (Kate Walsh) will not be on it. Burke, as everyone knows, was fired from the program and Addison will lead a new GA spin-off show called Private Practice. Spin-offs usually don't take-off as much as its mother show but let us see what it can offer. It will premiere on September 26.

Here are some things to look forward to:

1. Lexie Grey - to be played by actress Chyler Leigh; she's Meredith's half-sister who was introduced in the penultimate episode last season as 'the girl from the bar' who turned out to be one of Seattle Grace's new interns. Chyler is definitely prettier than Ellen Pompeo!

2. The New Residents - our five favorite Interns are now Residents! Cristina's "don't try sucking up, I hate you already" in the video clip above was Bailey's line to them in the Pilot Episode when they first started at SGH.

3. O'Mizzie / Gizzie - this is one ship that should be put out ASAP! Tsk, tsk, tsk! Very very low, Shonda!

4. Mer-Der - I heard they are breaking up (again!). More dark and twisty Meredith's drama (again!).

Aside from the premiere, GA fans are also excited for the 10 Emmy nominations that the cast and crew of Grey's was able to rake. I really really hope that they will win it this time. Seriously.

This is really a sad, sad news.

ABC Television Studio announced yesterday that Isaiah Washington (Preston Burke) will not be returning next fall for the 4th season of Grey's Anatomy. This is such a great disappointment and letdown for all Burktina (Burke and Cristina) fans like me. I really really love them. I really like the way Burke and Cristina (played by brilliant actress Sandra Oh) relate to each other. The characters were very engaging despite the challenging situations they were in. Both Bruke and Cristina's character bloomed in Season 3. It started with Burke's shaky hands caused by a bullet accident and it ended with their non-wedding. It will surely be a different Grey's Anatomy with one of the world's greatest Cardio-Thoracic Surgeon gone.

Here's the full article of Isaiah's fate taken from the Grey's Anatomy Insider site.

The speculation is over: After a controversial season, Isaiah Washington will not be returning to Grey's Anatomy, his rep and ABC Television Studio have confirmed. Howard Bragman, Washington's publicist, says Washington's option was not renewed, and released this statement from the actor: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." The quote is a reference to the 1976 film Network, but we doubt the actor was joking around. We also can’t imagine what he means, however.

The cast was notified Thursday night of the final decision, which, says a source close to the situation, was a long time coming. In the end, the source says, Washington's behavior made him a liability.

As Grey's Anatomy followers know, rumors ran rampant following the season finale - during which Washington's character, Dr. Preston Burke, broke up with his fiancee, Christina Yang (Sandra Oh), and moved out of their apartment - that Washington would not be returning.

The actor first came under fire last fall after getting into an altercation with Patrick Dempsey (Derek Shepherd), during which he allegedly referred to castmate T.R. Knight (George O'Malley) with a homophobic slur. Washington later apologized, checked into rehab, met with gay leaders and recently released a PSA decrying the use of hate speech.

The title was inspired by Grey's Anatomy's feel-good-after-Meredith-died episode last week. Here's a nice quote on scars which I got from it:

"What's worse, new wounds which are so horribly painful or old wounds that should've healed years ago and never did? Maybe our old wounds teach us something. They remind us where we've been and what we've overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. That's what we like to think. But that's not the way it is, is it? There are just some things we just have to learn over and over and over again."

"People have scars. In all sorts of unexpected places. Like secret roadmaps of their personal histories. Diagrams of all their old wounds. Most of our wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. But some of them don't. Some wounds we carry with us everywhere and though the cut's long gone, the pain still lingers."

~ Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy, 15 March '07

~*oOo*~


There are ten framed photographs in my room. Just want to share.
Here are they:

1. A studio portrait of me in a pink ballet tutu taken when I was eight years old after a ballet recital.
2. A picture taken during my cousin's Keith wedding in late 90s. I was one of the secondary sponsors and was around 17 or 18 years old.
3. My kindergarten graduation picture in a toga.
4. A picture of me and my mom taken during my highschool graduation in 1995.
4. My college graduation picture wearing the Assumption's pearls and lace trademark.
5. My highschool graduation picture in casual shot.
6. An entourage shot of Bim and Olen's wedding in 2003 taken at Baluarte de San Diego by Lito Sy of SmartShot.
7. A black and white photo of me and Marge at Pancake House taken last May.
8. A picture of Charo, me, Aileen and Mitzi at our highschool batch's reunion in 2003.
9. A collage of picture of my "Forces" girls given to us individually by Aileen last Christmas. It was a collection of our photographs from last year.

I still have two new empty frames. I wonder what memories to put on it. Any suggestions?

When I say "I am into something"...I mean "I am really INTO something in a crazy-passionate way". It used to be Sweet Valley High Senior Year books, Eraserheads, The Internet and blogging, cellphones & gadgets, Sidney Sheldon and her novels, my work (yeah, better believe it), US Ivy League colleges, spa & massages, DVD marathons, the one who broke my heart the baddest, MBA applications, Havaianas, and Japanese food.

Guess who's keeping me crazy-happy and passionate lately? None other than Derek-Meredith-Cristina-Burke-Izzie-The Nazi-George-Alex! Life has never been the same since Grey's Anatomy. :) I am so in love!

The vid below is one of the reasons why NOT living in The US is a total letdown! Someone better TiVo and send 'em to me! All Thursdays! :)




Smile Thursdays. Feel Thursdays. Love Thursdays.
Where TV Goes To Feel Better. )

The video is Grey's Anatomy's promo plug for Season 3's premiere on the 21st of September. The scenes and snippets used were taken from last season's explosive finale which was aired last May. The background song is The Fray's "How To Save A Life" which I also like - "I would have stayed up with you all night had I known how to save a life" - simply right.

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through

Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life


P.S.
"Seriously?" is the most abused word in the series. The characters say them at least 20x each episode. Seriously???