I can't believe it's been almost half a year since I last updated this blog! NOT. I'm on blogging hiatus most of the time so I don't know why I'm feeling obliged to blog now...must be the PMS/hormones. Hihi. 

So anyway, I'm loving how 2014 is turning up so far! There are a lot less travels but much more reconnecting sessions with family and longtime friends. And oh, a lot of pigging out, too! Ah, good times.

Toto and I celebrated our 9th anniversary of being together (OMG, I feel so old) in this bed and breakfast a couple of hours away from Manila. It is not the best we've been to, the food is mediocre (and expensive), the place is not well maintained, and the massage is overpriced (!!) but we enjoyed our stay just by hanging around and doing nothing. LOL. I will blog about Abe's Farm in detail soon. I promise :D

Excuse me for the overused blog title but I can only think of 'romantic' as the perfect word to describe the weekend we spent in Moon Garden, Tagaytay. I was scouring the web for accommodations in Tagaytay that are not too mainstream but are still accessible for a quick birthday getaway and Moon Garden seemed to be the best choice. 

A 1.5-hour bus ride from Buendia to Balibago, a 45-minute jeep ride from Balibago to Olivarez Plaza, and a quick jeepney ride from Olivarez to SVD road were all it took for us to reach Moon Garden. Sure, it may seem like it was one hell of a journey just to get to this place but going as early as 5am saved us from the weekend traffic. 

If there's one thing that'll definitely test the patience of whiny tourists like moi, it has got to be an overnight camping trip in a place 4 hours away from Metro Manila and where there is no electricity, no cellphone signal, and no comfortable rooms to spend the night in (duh, it's camping! Silly me). Yiz, I'm talking about Nagsasa Cove (slash the alternative to the more popular Anawangin cove).

This is a commentary. (In other words, ramblings/rants/musings)

I never thought it was necessary to create a Twitter account until recently when I decided that monitoring the horrendous traffic situation in EDSA every single workday was a burning need that I just couldn’t shrug off (read: commuter problems). Facebook was already too much to handle for me but I figured it’s a bit slow when it comes to real-time updates especially when it rains really hard, which happens, like, half of the year in the Philippines.

So anyway, speaking of rains, my first ever legit ‘introduction’ to Twitterverse was when Yolanda island-hopped her way through my beloved country. It was a devastating catastrophe (Yolanda deserves some redundancy here, folks) and the days that followed certainly felt like a nightmare for our fellow Filipinos living in the hardest-hit areas in Central Visayas.

If there’s anything that I observed from reading thousands of #YolandaPH tweets on the social media site aside from the fact that Twitter is, indeed, a powerful tool, it’s this thing about some Filipinos being emotional. Not emotional ‘emotional’ as in mega-crayola-sa-isang-tabi kind of emotional. No, scratch that assumption of us being too emotional – it’s actually more like Yolanda bringing out the best and worst social media behaviors in Filipino netizens (besides creating a venue where commoners with good hearts shone and where selfish politicians still found time for ugly word wars while the whole world was watching).

And yes, I had so much time in my hands to actually take screenshots of tweets that I know will surely make one feel all sorts of things, like:


1. This guy who was either ignorant or apathetic.

Coke and this guy were either not aware that Yolanda just made her first landfall in Guian or just did not care enough to actually post about the nearing Coke Caravan in Davao or did not foresee the extent of damages that a super typhoon could bring (who could foresee things, anyway?).

Me during Yolanda: WTF?! May super bagyo na’t lahat caravan pa rin iniintindi ninyo?! Be sensitive naman!

In retrospect: Life goes on. Businesses need to operate as usual.

But: The timing was a bit off, IMO.

While everyone was busy shopping in SM North, Trinoma and Divi ten days before Christmas, Toto and I decided to hang out at R20 Lifestyle Hub (I know, it sounds so fancy). It's a new place located in the intersection of Road 20 and Mindanao Avenue in Project 8, Quezon City (scroll down for the map!).

It was a laid-back kind of Sunday for the two of us who decided it was best to avoid the holiday rush in the malls but wanted to get out of the house. I thought I could do a bit of shopping in their bazaar but nothing really caught my attention. Everything was just super marked-up Divisoria stuff anyway. But hey, at least the bazaar venue was air-conditioned! And the entrance was (and still is) free.

There were more or less ten food stalls and a beer station in the 'hub' so it's not exactly what foodies would call a food heaven, but the choices were more than enough for us who just wanted to chill. Besides, a beer station is always more than enough ;-)

We spent two hours eating overpriced isaw, listening to aspiring rock bands, criticizing their voices, and talking about random things. R20 Lifestyle Hub, although not as bongacious as Noel Bazaar nor as popular as Banchetto / Mercato Centrale / Mezza Norte, is a good alternative for people who just want a relaxed venue to drink a couple of bottles of beer and chat the night away with good friends :)