home is where the heart (and soul) is.

when i first stepped into baby's abode i was gobsmacked, by its character and warmth. it was a piece of her soul laid bare, in all its quirky and unique beauty. i already had a crush on her, and seeing her home and she in it, i knew i was going to fall in love with this lovely soul whose home and its tastefully kitsch furnishing reflected her sentimental attachment to the simple beauty of her childhood memories.

pieces of her:

it's like stepping into a time-machine, in a good grandma's home way!

and that is why i insist we capture parts of this in our wedding shots.

love language

what are your expressions of love? i realise i have been misguided too long that it's about gifts. i spent a large part of my life romancing previous partners that way and i suppose it all amounted to probably a wastage to the environment haha

these days i've learned that it's as simple as a touch, a gentle kiss, a kind word. or sometimes the simple gestures of assistance on a busy day, the thoughtful deed of sending someone home, or even just the time spent at dinner with loved ones. they all have longstanding mileage to flowers which die or jewelery which gets boring. of course diamonds we know are forever, so said the blood diamond cartels in south africa haha

i just know that as time passes i've mellowed with my grand gestures because much as they may blow your intended away, they don't touch so deeply as a sensitive acknowledgement of your partner's needs or even whims. and listening, and retaining info,..i think that one could've said a million marriages!

i loaf you

when i think about the painstaking effort she takes to make bread for me and her friends, my heart beats and bleeds for her. she is such a lovely soul.


and then some!



haha at this rate i'm going to be a fatty at our wedding shoot!

how many ways can you say 'i love you'?

too many =]

had a perfect weekend with the family. met up with the cousins for ray's engagement ceremony where they promptly addressed baby as 'cousin-in-law'. had an array of chef offerings from chris' restaurant at the Disgruntled Chef where duckie had her first taste of foei gras and champagne haha. she thought it was quite fruity. i can already see her as the potential barfly with cigar in hand.


she even decided to take home a souvenir of his piece de resistance, the suckling pig done perfectly crisp and went on to name it henry while our new guest joined us for dinner later hahaha

baby indulged her with a photo series (note pedicure of some awful glittery blue)

i guess the best parts for me is observing them alone with her, like outside the window while i grabbed a fag looking in at bunny and her in amusing convo, or how she was always sensitive to duckie's awkwardness by keeping her company during ray's gathering, or just looking at both of them ramble while she gives them patient audience while indulging them with her artless guffaws. i love watching them all get along like that. it warms my heart that we've come such a long way as a family. we address each other as baby in their presenece and unself-consciously sayang or hug. it's progress and definitely in the right direction.

more importantly i can see the trust between them build, them confiding in her, allowing her to take pictures (they don't even let me anymore!) or simply sharing their silly anecdotes with her. i can see how much this, and  they mean to her.

ingenie-ty

last year around this time i lay on my bed, tired drained and resigned. i said to the man upstairs, is it so hard to find someone who is kind, sexy and tall? was that too ambitious a list? if you're wondering why i have such  unusual criteria, i can't really explain except i've acknowledged long ago that i'm an unapologetic lookist. from young i'd only choose the perfect shaped cookies and cutest looking toys. perhaps the media shaped a part of this with incessant images of buxomy women in varied states of undress, well in the black and white era it was mostly sexploitative movies of caveman / sword& sandal features (think raquel welch,bridgette bardour) oh wait i think i'm drawn to female beauty coz i don't recall noticing the hotness of a man until maybe the pre-pubescent years of james dean and later sting. haha perhaps i was inclined to be a lesbian all along.

ok back to the point of this entry. cut a year later and i was granted those three wishes, plus a bonus coz she also cooks! haha i'm grateful for everything she is.


i especially love our dynamics, best captured here

it's like im the impish kid and she's all proper although i'm older by a full 4.5 years, or in her words, 'you are a naughty and cheeky baby'. sometimes it feels like she's the mommy /big sis i always wanted, and perhaps that is what i've searched for my entire life. and yes, i think he heard me repeat sexy on my list too often!

those car rides

baby once mentioned her mom didn't mind sending her home pan island because it was the only real mother-daughter time to catch up. i get that now everytime i pick and send the shrubs. we have the best convos involving the inane to the intimate, well at least what they feel comfortable sharing at their adolescence. today we were riproaring in the car with assorted antics borne of our shared wavelengths and extensive imagination.

exhibit a:

the hooha over these china-imports which i added were nothing new considering 1345676 have already pervaded our shores.

more interestingly why jia jia (add) and kai kai (open?), whose names i chose to interpret as not too subtle hopes of procreation while the other spreads herself open hence kai1kai1 wahahaha! so we played out a scene to our amusement about how jiajia would one day seduce kaikai only for her to retort, 'maimai' (hokkien for dowan la) hahahhahaha hence ending a sgd 2 million investment ending in well, eats shoots and leaves hehe. ah i think i amused myself more than anyone else in the car but hey that's the really fun part about my hapless audience whom you gave birth to and they have no option but chuckle. well i did help jil expel her gunky throat at some point. the poor kid was nursing the cough of the century.

and then i told jo to try and graphically represent lexi as princess leia complete with her ears in buns while a squirrel stands on her with darth vader headmask going, who's your daddy? haha ok another one of those wild lateral ideas inspired from jil's disgruntledly being walked by the dog that morning everytime lexi spotted one of her arch nemeses.

exhibit b:

an unlikely scenario hahah

yup anyways, im really looking forward to more time with them. we're meeting ray and his fiancee for lunch next weekend and it's great that he approves of all types of families. god knows support from kin is imperative in such bigoted times.

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speaking of cars, this chrysler is sucha thing of beauty and a joy forever haha




only deal-breaker is the auto-shift. peeps who drive auto are just wussies imo

vacation lalala

it has been nothing short of a blast doing nothing with baby haha how illogical is that. probably a side effect of too much sun, chlorine and pinoy offerings on the island of cebu.

the beach wasn't much to scream about but its exclusivity and locale was really perfect to chill and suspend all thoughts. it was a much needed respite after 10 weeks of a gruelling term (and more to come).

it's our 2nd time away together but the difference is we are so much more attune to each other, reading our mutual moods, needs and tastes. it feels like we're married, in a good way of course, this coming from a divorcee haha. anyway i know how safe and loved being with her. we got all kinds of stares from locals and tourists but i think it wasn't so much our pairing but her supermodel stature and my pai-kia genderbender. was sirred quite often so that must be something.

we had great laze by beach/pool time, chucked out for shopping and meals, complete with the crash indoors with cable and room service. 5 days of really being lazy. great couple-time catch up without  the distractions of work/online/annoying little things. she wants to bring me to an exclusive villa next bd and i'm sure it'll be even better in appreciating each other's quirks and loving each other more for them. haha i am well-rested and ready to face another tsunami of prelims. but first a great guzzle of grog!


yummay






the purty courtyard bath with pebble-stoned path, or as baby says, 'pretty to look at, painful to get to for a shower.' haha. but we were so glad to be bumped up from a garden to poolside delux with much bigger square-area. good times.

Most memorable moments, beside baby’s ecstasy in dissovering krespy kremes where she was asked also at starbucks if she were a model (an angle i was plotting to exploit for endorsement freebies haha), we had the most horrendous ride back from cebu city involving an incarnation of homer simpson burping every mile over ill-constructed roads. It made me wonder where one could procure such an off-road sedan taking abuse at every turn on the bumpiest ride from hell. He had taken a short cut to avoid the peak traffic only to be stuck behind a massive jam which was inevitably caused by a bona fide pagan-catholic procession. So well we ultimately got a true holiday native experience unintentionally. Am just glad to be back to consumable tap water, working wifi and people who don’t try to swindle you every turn. But to the hotel’s credit, they are by far the nicest service peeps I’ve ever encountered on my travels to third world throwbacks.

 

pinoy fare -- where everything taste and look the same, like the salt of cebu and countless street urchins

oh and who can forget our couple's massage at a dodgy spa where she had the masseuse the strength of a gnat while i had something close to a baby elephant literally kneeling on my kidneys! haha omgg at some point i wanted her to alert my next of kin should i fall completely unconscious from the abuse. but i do feel like my body has gone through a thorough cleansing and my skin rejuvenated. so i guess i'm more or less ready for the world! rawr


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td gift from my lovely and thoughtful pd class 3611