Holiday greetings in Ilonggo…

as seen from the facade of the Provincial Capitol building of Negros Occidental.

Translation: (May you have a) merry Christmas and an abundant new year!

Photos taken by Aileen of Digital View Finder.

Yay! What else can I say? I know I have been neglecting this blog, I’ve been busy with gift shopping just like everyone else. Oh yes!  With more than 15 family members to prepare gifts for, the task of choosing what gifts to give them (men, women, adults and kids) was really time-consuming and tiring.  There is not a day in a week that my sis and I aren’t in the mall.

Ooooohh how time flies!  My brother and his wife from Thailand arrived tonight in Manila and will stay there till the 20th.  Tomorrow my sister and her family from Finland will be arriving already! But they’ll only be here for a day coz the next day, they will go to Boracay.  But it’s okay, they’ll be back anyway after 3-4 days.  I’m not sure how long is their vacation in the famous beach.

And talking about how time flies, M is celebrating his birthday today, again! hehehe Happy birthday hon.  Even if little C and I aren’t there to celebrate with you your special day, you know how much we love and miss you!

December is one of the peak seasons for travelling. In fact, M who’s planning to join us for Christmas is still on the wait list for his trip to PH. We only decided to spend Christmas in PH last October and by then, December flights were already fully booked. Sigh. An agent told us that as early as February, bookings are already starting to fill in for December.

A little tip from our experience, if you see yourself travelling this month, it’s best to make the necessary preparations early. Book your flight, hotel and transportation transfers in advance. For those travelling in New York City and its surrounding suburbs, one transportation service you can trust is GO Airlink Shuttle, a JFK Airport Shuttle. With their affordable, on-time and safe services, you’d be assured of a reliable and comfortable ride from the airport to the hotel and vice versa. If you’re planning to see the sights of the Big Apple, you can also connect with their NYC tours and attractions that will take you around the city for sightseeing on their hop-on, hop-off bus tours.

At any rate, whether it’s a travel to a place within your country or out, I wish everyone a fun and safe vacation!

…comes a bright and sunny day! Today is a total opposite of the past days’ incessant downpour; it rained day and night you’d think there was a storm. Anyway, the rain’s short interlude gave us a few days of cooler days which was great. The month of December should be cooler compared to other months here in PH, but I don’t really feel the difference except at night. But because there’s a minor house maintenance going on, we’re more glad the sun has came back! The rainy days has stalled the work which was quite frustrating as we want the work to be finished this week.

I’m almost done with my Christmas shopping! Whew! As always, it was a brain-racking experience thinking what gifts to give to my loved ones. Do you have a better way to solve this dilemma? I know one, and that is to ask the recipient what gift he or she desires. It’s ideal coz you really know that the recipient will love the gift you gave. The downside about this though is that it eliminates the element of surprise.

Another practical way is to give gifts that are useful such as a watch. Everybody needs a watch and even if he or she already owns one, an extra timepiece is always appreciated. Seiko Watches being one of the most famous brands in timepieces is a great gift for your loved ones. The company has been creating quality, stylish yet affordable watches for over 100 years already making them one of the trusted brands in the industry. You can’t go wrong with this kind of gift. There goes my two cents on Christmas shopping for gifts!

Our internet connection at home has been acting up since last week that’s why I’m not in the mood to blog lately. Being used to the fast internet connection in Prague, it’s very annoying when the internet acts this way - here now, gone in a second; very unpredictable. The Globelines’ technicians already came here yesterday in the afternoon and fixed the problem but later in the evening, we experienced the same erratic connection all over again. Duh!

Today marks the second week of our arrival in the Philippines. We haven’t gone to any beach resorts or any points of interest in the country.  This isn’t a tour-all-around-the-country kind of vacation anyway but more of staying-at-home-to-relax kind of thing, NOT!  Hah!  I wish I get to relax really. Having an energetic toddler makes it impossible.  She has to be watched over more keenly than in Prague coz the house isn’t baby-friendly; there’s a long flight of stairs that she loves to climb, there’s a rock garden which she enjoys picking the stones from and many other things that she’s eyeing to discover and explore.  Thanks to my sis and parents, they sometimes stash little C away to play with her and I get to have a time for myself.  But lately she’s been clingy to me!  Getting a yaya is not an option for me coz I don’t really trust anybody else to take care of little C other than family members.

But, we’ve made several trips to the malls for our Christmas shopping and that’s just about the one deviation activity from my motherhood chores that I get to do. Oops, there’s dining out too whenever we go shopping. Anyway it will be only two weeks more till my other siblings and their family will arrive and it will be a party circus everyday at home with kids running, laughing and playing all over the house.  Little C will have many playmates then!

In the meantime, wherever you go around the city you will be greeted with houses, stores and buildings decked with colorful and bright decors and blinking Christmas lights such as this one:

The Chinatown Square in  Bacolod City.

A couple of weeks ago I got an award from Melissa of Your Fun Family. I wasn’t able to post it sooner, either I was busy or tired. Teehee.  She gave out three awards but I chose only those I didn’t get yet. Now I am displaying it for all to see!

Thanks Melissa!

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It took me a week to finally break the silence in my blog. I have been very tired the days that followed our arrival in the country. That and the problem with jet lag and the sudden shift of (almost) winter temperature to the tropic’s hot and humid. In fact I got sick for a day. Now I feel a lot better and my body clock has slightly adjusted to the local time.

Me and little C at Siam.

Little C and I stayed for a day in Cebu. I was able to meet my friends for lunch at Chika-an, one of the oldest and famous restaurants in Cebu which serves local foods. They’re now conveniently located at the SM North Wing, an extension of the mall which was then under construction when I last visited Cebu two years ago. I feasted on grilled squid, calamares and my fave, the fresh lumpia from Pete’s Kitchenette that my friends bought.

Little C with her cousins.

For dinner with family, we dined at Siam, a Thai restaurant located at Terraces, a newly opened extension of Ayala Center Cebu. Terraces has a circular plan which contains mostly of food joints and coffee shops. In the middle is an open sunken court which was beautifully landscaped into a park with lush vegetation and palm trees. On both sides of the stairs leading to the park, water cascades down like a waterfalls. What a progressive Cebu!

The Terraces, Ayala Center Cebu

The Terraces, Ayala Center Cebu

The next day, we flew to Negros and since then I’ve been busy settling down, resting and going out with the family.

*I don’t have any pictures to share of our inflight travel and also of our long stop-over in Incheon International Airport (Korea) coz I forgot to take the camera from M when we parted at Prague Airport. Way ayo!