Life, Day by Day

It's on!  The Eustaquio Lopez Descendants will have a pot luck merienda cena meet and greet gathering on Saturday, November 6, 2010.  Venue will be in Titil's place in Villa Valderrama.  Of course we will be including the one who started it all, Tito Rollie Espina, whose dream is to keep the legacy of Graciano Lopez y Jaena alive among the descendants of the clan.  I am so excited...maybe we can finally get our Lopez genealogy book going...

I decided to attend a Blogging talk organized by the Negros Bloggers at SM Bacolod today.  I was looking forward to learning more about blogging and I was not disappointed.  The talks were simple but very practical.  I also learned that I did not need a DSLR to get great pictures and that I could actually make some money from blogging...well, I knew that, but I did not know how. In fact, my cluelessness and impulsiveness in the past only made me lose money which I could ill afford. It is still not very clear to me but now, I know who to ask and how to ask for help in making my blog earn for me. Of course, blogging is not going to be a career for me anytime soon...but if I get paid for doing something I enjoy...wouldn't that be like having your cake and eating it all at the same time?

The week-long seminar in Iloilo was a big fiasco...from the venue to the course to the trip home.  But first, my top reasons why I will never go back to Iloilo's premier hotel, at least until they improve their facilities and service. For Php1,800++ (seminar rate), you get these: Poor housekeeping service - dusty rugs, airconditioners delayed delivery of towels and when finally delivered...old towels (dirty white color and thin) bed linens changed every other day but flannel under the bed sheet is changed ONLY WHEN IT GETS DIRTY (whattt????) foam pillows...additional foam pillows cost Php 25, a waste of good money ceiling over the shower/bathtub area was oozing with water droplets shower curtain bottom part...yellowish with mildew   2.  No outside telephone line...you have to dial 0 and pass through the operator...even in their restaurants...AND their front desk hang up on my caller!    3.  TV remote was defective...I was too tired t...

I attended a week long seminar in Iloilo with 3 other co-workers and we were quite excited about it thinking it will be a nice break from work.  Indeed, it was a break from routine but not necessarily a good one :(  The seminar venue was Iloilo's Premier Hotel and the last time I stayed here was in the mid-90's when it was still relatively new.  So I was excited to come back to the hotel which gave me many fun memories.  To my dismay, it has become a shadow of what it was before .  The seminar hall was located on the second floor where a renovation was going on. I could not understand what management was thinking of!  The noise from the hammers, the smell from the paint was terrible. It was also quite warm because the AC's were not strong enough.  The secretariat was trying to stop the carpenters from all that hammering and they did...only to shift to painting which nauseated most of the participants.  By noon, we "asked" to transfer to another...

I am a relatively honest person...what you see is what you get and I have very few secrets, probably because I am not very good at remembering or keeping one.  On the other hand, I would always tell my friends that if they have something to confide, they should make me promise to keep it a secret and I will honor that promise till the end of time. But what about family secrets ? The kind that everyone wants to forget...those that are considered taboo...those which changed lives...or that which was deemed so humiliating and scandalous that to talk about it will mean banishment! (big grin) Well, I think every family has at least one and family secrets have a way of making themselves known...sooner or later. Why?  Oftentimes, simply because the time has come to tell the real story.  Although I personally believe that family secrets are not subjects for bedtime stories, I also believe that there are those because of their very nature, have been the subject of sp...

I remember looking at my grandfather's photo albums as a child and wondering who all those people in the pictures were.  My paternal grandfather was a meticulous man and it was this trait that preserved all those family pictures in several albums.  Those albums are in my aunt's keeping and I hope my cousin would finally find the time to digitalize them all because they contain precious and priceless memories.  These photographs are proof of our family roots and can greatly help in validating family connections. I have always been interested in history and genealogy and I am trying to complete our own family tree.  I was able to buy the genealogy books of three families in my paternal line but I missed getting that of my paternal great grandmother's father's genealogy book.  I should get one during the next reunion (although I rarely attend those things).  I enjoy reading through the list of names...awed with the fact that once we were all connected by one s...

Mornings at Lalimar is breathtaking...you wake up to this... a view of serene water meeting the blue sky... My brother was up early, so he had breakfast with our driver-mechanic at the resto-bar by the pool. My mom, daughter and her nanny were having their breakfast at the cottage veranda and told me to order mine. I wanted bacon and eggs but was told "baconsilog" was not available so I opted for "longsilog" instead, also to be delivered to the cottage of course...I told you, they had great room service...although I think it's also because my mom is a big tipper :) The kids were still asleep so I decided to explore our surroundings while waiting for breakfast. Cottage 1 where we stayed the beautiful eternity pool As you can see from my amateur pictures (taken with a simple digital camera), that this is a beautiful place and I'm very happy that we came.  Although the beach was full of stones, pebbles and corals, they were n...