2007 Buglas Festival of Dumaguete, Oriental Negros
2008 Cebu Sinul0g Festival
Dinagyang Festival of Iloilo
2008 Phil. Intl Hot Air Balloon Festival
2008 Panagbenga Baguio Flower Fest

It’s all here

It was sometime last year when I discovered that there exists what many people call as the Sistine Chapel of the Philippines. And what really excites me at that time is that this so called Sistine Chapel of the Philippines is just a few kilometres outside of Metro Manila!

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New Year’s eve celebration in the Philippines is quite different compared to other countries. Filipinos literally start the year with a bang. Just a few days before New Year’s eve, you will see lots of side walk vendors selling different kinds of firecrakers. In spite of the yearly ban on firecrackers, because of a number of accidents caused by firecrackers and pyrotechnic devices that have resulted in the loss of lives, limbs and properties, still many Filipinos see lighting of firecrackers as the traditional means to greet and celebrate the New Year eve.

Continue reading New Year Celebration In The Philippines

Uy kakatapos lang pala ng Pasko. Hindi ko yata naramdaman ang Pasko. Sumilong kasi ako sa loob ng kuweba ng ******** at doon ako nag-hibernate kaya di ko naramadamang dumaan na ang Pasko. Mabuti na nga ring pumasok muna ako sa kuwebang iyon para maiwasan ko ang mga tiyanak… este mga inaanak. Ituloy lang ang pagbabasa para malaman ang nasa asterisk.

“I have given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.”
- Oscar Levant

To enjoy the holiday season more, I amassed some books for reading to pass my time. I also came up with a book wishlist (of which some of the titles can be seen above) and transferred my online list of books to LibraryThing, which are all found in akolibro.blogspot.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

My husband has psoriasis and has been suffering with the affliction for about 12 years now. Lately, it has graduated to psoriasis arthritis, which means it isn’t just an inflammation of the skin, which is the general characteristic of psoriasis, but it has also now inflamed his joints.

It isn’t easy living with the disease. Hubbie has had his moments when the pain would just be too much. A bottle of Advil, Tylenol and every other pain reliever would always be by our bedside table. And somedays, it doesn’t help anymore. So you could just imagine how much we’ve prayed for a relief from the illness.

More at www.manilena.com

I guess you might have read about the 26K Dancing Librarians either from the Filipino Librarian’s blog or heard it discussed on the Philippine Daily Inquirer, but were you able to watch the librarians sing on the CarolFest at UP this year?

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These Study Tips are for any student who would like to stick to a good study regime. You don’t have to be the TOP Brain to do that—anybody can do it by following these simple rules and tips. Its your call !!!

BE ORGANISED

1. Make a homework/study timetable. Work on the important or urgent task first. Give equal time to your least liked subject. Leave until last the things you enjoy most and things that are least urgent. Highlight all the important task to be done.

2. Vary your study. Spending too much time on one task will give you less time for something else which might be just as important.

3. Use your study diary. Keep it handy all the time. It’s a valuable tool to keep you organise yourself.

Continue reading about “How to Study”

This are good sidelines especially if you have spare time in using the Internet.  You get paid by clicking on ads and reading on e-mails.  It’s not meant to make you rich but it’s in dollars so okay na rin, makakatulong sa pambayad ng bills, rents or even pang-shopping na rin…  But you can earn good if you could refer more.

First: You must have a pay-pal account.  Go to paypal.com and register.  It’s free.  It’s a good way to pay and get paid using paypal and it’s currently approved now here in the Philippines which is a good step for us in the web industry.

1. bux.to -minimum pay-out is 10$ use this link to join: http://bux.to/?r=patskydomingo

2. clicksalary.com -weekly pay-out no matter how much you have already earned: use this link to join: http://www.clicksalary.com/pages/index.php?refid=patskydomingo

3. donkeymals- minimum pay-out is $1- use this link to join: 

http://www.donkeymails.com/pages/index.php?refid=patskydomingo

4. deep-c links.com- many ads and emails to read- pay-out is $8.  Use this link to join:

http://deep-c-links.com/pages/index.php?refid=patskydomingo

5. aquamails.com- pay-out is $3. Click here to join:

http://www.aquamails.com/pages/index.php?refid=patskydomingo

Next: click on these ads and register.  It’s completely free.

Last: start earning by reading, and clicking on ads!  It’s fun and a way bit helpful for us pinoys especially those who want extra income on the net!

God bless! Hope you joined the sites! Mabuhay!

I don’t have time to quote all the quotable quotes surrounding issues of common concern in the pinoy blogging community during 2007, but here are some that I personally find memorable.

Julia Campbell:

…

Buhay Pa Tayo

...

(Title of the last entry on Julia’s blog dated January 13 this year. The American peace corps volunteer was killed last April.)

Benj:

…the last time I checked, the Philippine Blog Awards was an event that was supposed to champion Filipino bloggers regardless of creed, affiliation or niche. How it transformed to an exercise to remind bloggers to be steadfast in [our] Christian commitment and help bloggers lead us closer to You [the you being their god] is totally beyond me.

Decent Mother:

You [Sexy Mom] are a disgrace to the Filipino women. We have been trying to change the image of the Filipino women in the internet. Foreigners type “filipina” to search for women to have sex. The same kind of people (pedophiles and perverts) type “sexy mom” and it points to You . You are an embarassment to our country. Stop using SEXY MOM. Filipino mothers are loving caring mothers. Leave the SEX part in your bedroom . Mommy bloggers laugh behind your back because of your pseudonym. Filipino women are too polite to tell you to say that using sexy mom is killing the filipino women. (Posted in Sexy Mom’s blog)

Read more ‘Quotes from the Filipino Blogosphere 2007′>>

Happy Merry Christmas!!!

(sign outside a fastfood restaurant in Phnom Penh)

Read more in Toe’s Kurokuroatbp.

Monday, December 24, 2007
Naga launches festival of shepherds’ tales
By Jujemay G. Awit
Sun.Star Staff Reporter

THE year 2007 is a milestone year for Naga.

Even as it became a city, it also honored its traditions by officially launching its own festival, the Pastores de Naga.

Pastores de Naga depicts the shepherds’ retelling of Joseph and Mary’s journey to find a birthing place for the Savior, according to the Christian tradition.

The story is told through songs and dances. In between songs, the presenters tell the story in a poetic manner.

http://pastoresdenaga.wordpress.com

Below is a copy of our first monthly email newsletter, borne mostly out of boredom but hopefull some of you will find some use for this. If you did not receive a copy of the newsletter and would like to receive it next time, please email newsletter@brubakers.us with SUBSCRIBE either in the subject line or the body of the message. We will gladly add you to the distribution list. I cannot promise that this will be a regular monthly recurrence because there may be times that I will be too busy to send one, but I can promise a similar newsletter at the end of 2008. That’s all I can guarantee for now. Anyway, here is the newsletter that was sent today:

Well, we are snowed in as you can tell from this blog entry. Since I am bored out of my mind, with no homework and no work-work (Thank heavens I’m not on duty this weekend!), I have decided to create a monthly newsletter for our blog. If a monthly newsletter is too frequent for you and you do not really care to receive our updates, please read no further. Respond to this message with REMOVE in the subject and your email address will be promptly removed from this notification list. For the rest of you, welcome!

Since this is the very first email newsletter for our blog I felt a recap of our life together is in order. Before we begin, however, allow me to wish everyone merry Christmas! May you all have a wonderful and blessed holiday season, and a prosperous year ahead!

Though our blog didn’t begin until shortly after our marriage, life with Brian really began in early 2000. That’s when we moved in together. We lived in a two-bedroom townhouse at the northeast side of town with Brian’s brother Kevin. Incidentally, 2000 is also the year my nephew Logan was born.

A year after living together in the townhouse, Brian and I decided to become homeowners. We moved into our house in April 2001. Less than a month later, he proposed. We set the date for August 10, 2002. We chose the date because it is approximately three years into our relationship. You can find other 2001 highlights here.

These are all pre Life After Marriage events. I have been blogging about my life since before the word “blog” entered the vernacular so you could probably still find old journal entries floating around. You can try Google, but here are a couple of places that I was able to find if you’d like to read up:

• Chingay - this has stuff that I salvaged from the old Chingay.com web site. Many things are probably lost at this point. I never was any good at doing archives and backups.
• No. 2305 - a few things from my old Geocities. There was a period after Chingay.com and Chingay.net and Goldensushi.net when I didn’t have a domain and was using free hosting providers.
• I had a XOOM (pre-Chingay.com) and an Angelfire and a Crosswinds and a Scribble and all of those are pretty much gone. Always do your backups!

In 2002, I was laid off from my previous employer. Thankfully, I had another job lined up so I was only without work for a week. Someone up there is looking out for me. To this day, I firmly believe that the closing of the Spiegel call center is the best thing to have ever happened in my life (career-wise, anyway). You get comfortable and without even knowing it you’re stuck in a rut… [more here]

I borrowed Beryl’s copy of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel by the same title for the Christmas vacation today. In exchange, I lent her my brother’s copy of the 6th Harry Potter book (a book I have yet to read).

The nameless autocrat in the book who is crippled with old age reminds me of my country’s very own Ferdinand Marcos and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet who died last year, not without a tinge of irony, on Human Rights Day.

In the New Left Review’s latest issue, Manuel Riesco asks: is Pinochet dead? He discusses how the late Chilean dictator’s legacy lingers on in spite his death and how recent worker and student movements are challenging his terrible shadow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey guys, just want to let you know that I’m raffling a laptop bag on my blog. Raffle date is on Christmas and there’s only one entry so far. There’s really a great chance of winning in this raffle so I encourage you to join.

That first entry, he already won something. So I’m looking for other 5 early entries to win something too.

I swear this is not for link baitING. It’s just my way of giving something this season.

Here’s the link Win a Laptop Bag this Christmas.

Guess like almost all of our readers know about RF Online, one of the most successful games that Level Up! has ever been holding. Yet, despite the rumors that LU! still needs to pay 200,000PHP to the N.E.S.T Winners Ineffable guild from CDO, the ever dying hard Players still continue; to play the game.

Now, we have the 3 races, the Empire Accretia, Holy Alliance Cora and last but not the least, the Federal Bellato Union, all of them residing the so called planet Novus, where it is at war, usually all the time.

Yet, one little Princess, w/ the help of Kevin Paquet, a webmaster and former admin of some great known online pinoy sites have gathered they’re knowledge and wisdom to successfully create one great, website for the Federation, for fellow Bellato Players!

Why not come and check the young site out now?

Pederasyon!

One of the biggest reasons why I bought an ASUS Eee (which I call “MacEnvy” because of its uncanny similarity with a MacBook) is the form factor. I mean, it’s so frigging small and cute that it’s a guaranteed chick magnet. Not unlike using a very cute baby to walk around the mall with, in the hopes of finding an extremely hot lady who’ll go googly-eyed over the kid.

But then if I had a cute baby on me I wouldn’t need to go around hunting for women, and kidnapping a baby to use as woman bait is out of the question (I promise to never do it again), I’d have to make do with this cute and sexy laptop of mine. I can actually imagine myself, hanging out at the Gateway foodcourt, leeching the shit out of their free wi-fi because I’m too cheap to buy a router, with my Eee, surfing the internet, writing a blog entry, and all that. Then, a really hot lady would walk up to me, and the following conversation ensues:

Lady: Excuse me.
Me: Yes?
Lady: I know you’re pretty busy and all but that is like the sexiest laptop I have ever set my eyes on.
Me: Oh, why thank you dear. Would you like to touch my, um, laptop?
Lady: Only on one condition.
Me: And that is?
Lady: I’ll touch your laptop if you touch my desktop. At home.
Me: Deal. Also, secks?
Lady: Yes.

Terrible sexual innuendos aside, though, the Eee is indeed an attention-grabber. I’ve been getting looks from various people whenever I bring it along. But I think it’s more of the “hey, isn’t that the fat guy who’s been looking at us in a perverted way and tried to steal the brownies we’ve been eating? Should we call the cops?” look. Read the rest of this entry »

Every human being has an inner self. No matter how much we deny it, that other side of us is there, lurking in our subconscious, making itself known through Freudian Slips, dreams, mutterings, etc.. How well do we know ourselves? How well do we know our inner selves?

Read more here…

I don’t know if I am the last to know, but there is something new with Fish&Co.

A few months ago, I wrote about how I almost died when I ate the NY Fish and Chips, and the next time I ordered it I wasn’t even able to finish it.

This time, they have introduced several variations to the Fish and Chips dish. The Philadelphia fish and chips is served similarly with cheese filling. In this case though, they used cream cheese. The other choice you have is the one filled with garlic and herb.

Read more…

I was checking my blog stats this morning when I noticed that my blog’s visits this past week was generally lower when compared to the average number of visits that I had during the previous weeks. I bet that this coming week won’t be any different because of the holidays. Yep, people are now taking the opportunity to relax and enjoy the vacation. I’m thinking of doing so too this coming Christmas!

But what if you don’t want to waste your time for the holidays and would rather go online than to go to your Ninong and Ninang’s house for the traditional Pamasko? Or what if you are not Catholic?

I suggest that instead of spending the week posting articles, it is better to concentrate on doing other stuffs that would be a benefit for your blog.

Continue Reading…