With a smile.

♥ Jannie, Jhek and Sha ♥

So when people are bored and wanted to kill time as they wait for their frequently late professor, they tend to let vanity take place and there you have the results. lol I was actually just sitting quietly in the corner reading a book while listening to my playlist when my loving friends approached me and lured me in joining their silly picture taking. :D

Do it all over again.

Never believed that things happen for a reason

But how this turned out, removed all my doubts,

So believe, that for you I'd do it all over again

All I went through, led me to you

So do it all over again, for you.

Who ever thought a day gone so wrong

Would turn out so lovely? I'm so glad I found you

Even though the day went so wrong, I wouldn't change a thing.

I was doing my usual random-song-clicking-and-listening in YouTube and yes, I found this treasure just today at 10pm. Sue me for not watching Confessions of a Shopaholic before. ~.~ Anyway, I'm not sure who's the original artist of this lovely song but Bruno and Natasha's voice blends so perfectly that I can feel the emotions pierce through my heart and I just can't help but tear up. I'm supposed to be immune with this kind of music but this one triggered my emotional hormones once again and now I'm back in the melancholy of reminiscing my past misadventures in life. I don't like how it makes me feel but I just can't stop listening. Screw the irony.

Have you ever met that special someone who smiled and swept your feet away during the worst times of your life? The days where you would rather stay home and lock yourself up eating gallons of ice cream while watching a movie than go out and feel like the unluckiest girl living on this planet cause when you finally decided to get out of your comfort zone, everything just goes madly wrong and you're starting to think that fate has some grudges on you. You're thinking of giving up cause nothing ever came the way you wanted it to be. Until you met him.

He gave you the reason to smile on a gloomy day and be hopeful with whatever may come your way. He lightened up your world and made you see the beauty in life. You're not the same girl anymore cause you have found love. Then you realized that putting up with all the misfortunes has finally paid off. Now he's here and you have no regrets cause it led you to his arms. You finally believed that everything happens for a reason and if ever something goes wrong, you're willing to take chances and go through every little thing again if it means just being with him.

Date a guy who writes.

Date a guy who writes. Date that someone who doesn’t concern too much being the best looking man in the world. The guy who doesn’t toil for minutes or hours in front of the mirror. He spends an ample time in his room, or on a solitary bench in a public park, or on train and bus stations with his pen and notebook formulating the perfect words, putting life in his lines through wordplay, writing the loveliest poems. He doesn’t mind being alone on weekend nights in the back-alleys or risking his life climbing the roof just to have an unobstructed view of the sky, to muse with the stars and summon a conversation with the moon. He doesn’t mind battling the cold that bites his skin as long as he tunes the right melody for the song he’s writing for your anniversary,or a guaranteed chapter entry on his book, that he is anticipating to give you on your birthday. Yes, he doesn’t loathe the fact that he is stuck in that place, in that moment in time, squeezing his brain, while his friends are out there, in the open drinking to the high of weekend parties, dancing in smoke-filled bars and drowning to barrels and barrels of liquors.

Find a guy who writes, a walking cliché of kill-you-with-words, and when you do, make no mistakes letting him go. His wit, his spontaneity, rapture and heart for aesthetics will suffice for all those romanticism you have in mind. Date that someone who doesn’t kill himself in gyms, just to have the perfect body, the manly facade and never go for the too neat, too clean— you will discover over time that it is dragging and lame having a partner, a man who spends on shower threefold longer than you do. Date a guy who doesn’t dream having the Brad Pitt’s face, but the one who reads, learns and writes like of John Keats romance’s. The one who seeks for Stephen King’s thrill and the war stories of Ernest Hemingway. Date a guy who doesn’t give you a litany of promises lost in the haze of cheap talk, date that someone who acts, who makes you feel you are special even before you find yourself versed in one of his poems, resembling one of his story characters. Date that someone who stays with you, dream with you and writes random nothing on your palm or on your arms, because he fears that the words won’t come out right when he starts speaking them.

Date a guy who writes, the one who can skim the oceans in your eyes and write a line about it, that someone who can swim in it just to string those lines to make a stanza and can drown there if that’s all it takes to combine those stanzas into a beautiful work of poetry. Date a guy who can translate the amber glow in your face into haiku and sonnets. That someone who never tires scribbling his pen in dire search for muslin haze for streaks of clarity.

When that guy asks for your hand, give a sureshot “yes”. He sees life in a general scheme and weighs all the options from there, the same way he chooses the right words, the best point of view and perspectives just to incorporate beauty in his writing. Jumping into conclusion is not his game, he probably learned that it is not practical from a thousand fictional dilemma he wrote. And you will not live in monotony and routines, he can put colors in your days the same way he resorts figurative languages, the same way he puts flowers and butterflies in his words. And your leisure times will not be spent on themed parks, signature shops and wherever-transatlantic-cruise that is, spending the money you saved for a year in just one day. He will teach you to appreciate God’s creation and find happiness in the most mundane of things— on the sun rising behind the trees, the music of birds chirping and the dance of leaves in graceful sways, the breeze that kisses your cheek, your face, touching your heart with a magical feel, all the way to your bones, sunsets and silhouettes, the placid sea and the story behind a seagull or a fishing canoe that blemishes the scene. This list can go on forever, and the guy who writes is birthed with utmost appreciation to this, with sheer gratitude and he has an innate understanding that this whole divinity is meant to be shared with someone.

He might get lost in conversations, and becomes remote in an instant, but you are willing to make it up, because you know, at the back of your head that you are already transcending the touches of reality, lost in the not-so-distant world of make believe, living in the beauty and power of imagination, the world behind the written words.

--Pseudoperfection

Date a girl who writes.

Date a girl who writes. Date a girl who admires the calligraphy of Ancient China more than the latest fall line. She has ink smudges on her fingers, sometimes on her cheeks. Date a girl who comes with a list of unfinished poems, underdeveloped characters, incomplete plot lines, who has been writing since she could read.

Find a girl who writes. Look for the girl with frazzled hair and a pen behind her ear. She’s the one who spends hours deciding which new notebook to buy, only to cave and buy three, the one who rarely makes a grammatical error. If you were to search her bag, you’d find scraps of paper with incomprehensible notes and pens whose lives have ended a long time ago. That’s the writer.

The girl who writes can be seen anywhere, if you look for her. The girl who writes is always looking at you, and anyone else. She knows inspiration can be found in everything. She’s the girl you’ll find on a park bench, pen behind her ear, another in her hand, jotting down things with great, great concentration, just because coffee shops are loud. She will however be carrying coffee in a travel mug. If you looked inside the mug, you’d notice the coffee was finished – the girl who writes needs caffeine like water. Bum a cigarette off her. Notice her eyes give you a full appraisal before she hands you a cigarette. She’s profiling you.

Say something.

Don’t ever start by asking to see her writing.

Tell her something you’re sure she never knew before. A random fact, even. This will grab her attention. This will make her think, ‘what kind of plot twist is the stranger offering to the protagonist?’ When she brings up e.e. Cummings and Plath, don’t act like you know who they are if you don’t. She will test you. Ask her about them. Ask her about her favorites. Ask her if she’d like to go see a movie with you.

Always surprise her.

In reality, it’s not that difficult to date a girl who writes. Accept that she will not show you anything she’s written until she’s ready. Understand that sometimes her stories aren’t developing the way she wants and she will be angry, bitter. Be patient, be jealous of her love for worlds you can’t even begin to enter. Buy her new books, new pens, new notebooks. Surround her with words. Dedicate songs to her. Leave little notes in her lunch bag. Words, for the writer, are more intimate and personal than a sensual touch. She hears their whispers, feels them, embraces them.

If one day, you walk into the house, and she’s in a foul mood. There are pages scattered everywhere. She’s watching TV, which she never does. Don’t ask. The words got the best of her. They put up a wall and as much as she pleaded, as much as she paced, drank coffee, took a bath, went for a walk, pace some more, as much as she played with synonyms and antonyms, made comparisons, expanded the plotline then brought it back to where it was, she could not get through the block. Don’t bother comforting her. Buy paint and a canvas, let her attack it. Carry her to the bed and let her attack you. The girl who writes does not need soothing and comfort, she needs an outlet to rid herself of the overbearing emotions that are sadness or anger. Before she can write again.

The girl who writes knows exactly when a break is needed in a story. The girl who writes expects a climax. But the girl who writes is also almost never in control of her story. The characters dictate to her what they would like to do next. The story is as thrilling for her, the writer, as it is for her close sister, the reader. She relishes in these surprises, in these sharp turns, in these unforgiving assesments. She dreams of the day when her story, her life story, will be as classic as Poe or as tormented as Brite. This day that she waits for, this will be the day her story will begin.

On the day when she timidly, a deep blush rising on her cheeks, extends a bundle of loose sheets of paper, some old, some new, towards you, you’ll know you’ve successfully captured the heart of the girl who writes. Read everything she has given you, unless she stops you. Recognize, and tell her, about the beauty of her words, the conviction of her prose, the pain behind her poetry. Don’t look at her with pity when she hands you a poem about a broken heart – following it, you’ll read one about you and how maybe her heart was not so broken after all. In any case, the girl who writes does not accept pity. She is the amazon goddess of the writing world. She is the soldier, the fighter, the good guy. She is stronger than a house of bricks and her writing keeps her demons in place, holding them down and releasing her.

Date a girl who writes because she will change your world. She will bring color into your grays. When you propose, she will have known for months that it was coming. She could read your body language from miles away. She will say the simplest phrase you have ever hears her say - yes, I do - and then she will begin to carefully craft the story of your lives. Through ups and downs and births and deaths, through funny family moments and trips to unknown places (in search of new inspiration), through misadventures and inky cheeks, through everything, anything, and all that is not yet written, the girl who writes will be the doe-eyed, love-struck narrator of the story and you, her forever after knight in shining armor.

--Effie Sapuridis

Date a girl who reads.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

--Rosemary Urquico

Research Adventure Part One.

An exhaustingly fun day with my classmates all the way from Antipolo down to Luneta. Our main goal was to do a research for our thesis project but unfortunately, we only found one out of thousands of journals in the National Library that is related to our topic which gave us a little hope but in the end, it turns out that the year of publication was two decades ago.. which, in all our frustrations, means invalid.

So to reward (or whatever you may call it) ourselves for our so-called effort, we went to Rizal Park for the first time, took pictures, rode a kalesa and enjoyed the beauty of nature as the sun gleams on our faces. It was indeed one of the most romantic places that I have ever been to here in the Philippines. You'll see couples everywhere so much that an insecure single man/woman might die due to lovesickness. x))

2012 New Year's Eve.

♥ Happy New Year! ♥

Happy New Year! This year, i'll be more careful with every decisions that I'm going to make. I will take full responsibility with whatever consequences that my actions may uphold. Gonna be more matured and more understanding than before. Do my best with everything I have and live my life to the fullest. No, this is not a resolution. I just simply decided to upgrade my past life towards an exciting and more challenging year of womanhood that i'll be having.

May this year finally be my year. ♥ It doesn't matter how small or how grand your preparations in these events could be or how many people would join you. All that matters is your family being complete and happy everyday. That's more than enough for me to be thankful for. :) And by the way, I made that graham cake! I think the outer surface is cute but trust me, the layers inside were disastrous. x) But hey, I made it with pure love and sweetness. x)