Hypertension

Tapioca was not feeling well this morning. He went to the clinic and got him self checked. The doctor said his blood pressure went up. Uh-oh. I wanted to tell him "I told you so" but he's feeling really bad already knowing what these would lead to. This is serious. This treacherous and silent attacker has killed millions of lives including my father and his siblings.

After shift we went straight home and talked about serious things. We talked about what we should and should not do to prevent this. I mean there's no way to stop this anymore only prevention, right? So we were talking about the situation in serious mode only to find out what worried him the most. His love for meat and all it's fatty evilness. It pissed him off. He hated to say goodbye to the divine glory of beefy goodness, porkyliciousness, hearty chicken and anything meat lovers will die for. I was like, "What the heck?!?!" It pissed me off, too.

So there goes the helluva of the serious mode. I am not liking this. But the battles is not yet over. So help us God.

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The Experiment

Thirdy’s Mom had been telling me how she would like to cook almondigas for her family. And I thought I would love try that too. Being a soup person that I am, I did not hesitate and went to check Connie’s website (my ever reliable Pinoycook.net) for the almondigas recipe.


I listed up all the ingredients on my notepad then Tapioca and I headed to the supermarket. When we got home, we started preparing all the things we needed. But wait, we are not ready to cook yet. From preparation we kept on arguing how things are gonna be done like chopping up all the veggies, setting the meat balls, etc. First, he didn’t want to wash the ground pork because he thought we wouldn’t be able to shape them into balls. But I washed them anyway and still we managed to shape them into balls. Then I added lots of water into the pot. He was not sure about it because we just bought a small pack of tomato paste and he thought that will make the soup diluted. Then the vermicelli noodles. I just wanted to add enough noodles because it will suck out all the water. But he thought otherwise and kept on telling me to put the entire pack of noodles, and it's a huge pack by the way, into the pot. And I did. I threw all the vermicelli noodles into the pot and soon enough all the water was gone. And the end result was a disaster. I'm sorry but I'm not gonna put pictures of the end result. We learned our lesson. We have different cooking techniques and beliefs. Anyhow, there’s always a next time.

See those meal balls on the photo? They looked adorable, noh? and it sparked some ideas on Tapioca. Will post that idea next time.

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Bonding Time With The Girls

Without any reason to celebrate we had setup a potluck sesh at Anjee's place with all the girls. We haven't seen each other in a while and perfect timing that everyone was available over the weekend. And Anjee on the other hand is expecting her 2nd baby (another baby girl) and was on leave for weeks. How I missed them so much. We chatted, and laugh and shared stories for hours.

Vanjee brought this pansit bihon overloaded with cholesterol-laden chicharon.

The pansit looks invisible because of the generous toppings of chicharon

home cooked spaghetti topped with cheese - from anjee

Vanjee, Anjee, Jellybean and Anjee's agar-agar salad

We were surprised with the salad. We thought it was buko salad until she revealed the secret. She said agar-agar is variety of gelatin they use in Ilocos. The gelatin once cooked was then sliced into strips making them looked like shredded coconut meat.


That's still us and beside me is baby Rhian, Anjee's first born. On this photo you can see now my share - a big bilao of puto Biñan.

Rhian is a big girl now. She is adorable and she is getting prettier.

The puto was paired with dinuguan by Ivy (she's our photographer that's why she's not in any of the pics). The dinuguan had a lighter color than the usual because of the coconut cream. I love this dinuguan. This is also the same way my Tatay cooks it. With coconut cream and pig intestine. As I type this I am now craving for puto at dinuguan.


I tell ya, a day is not enough to finish all the chikahan. Hated to say goodbye but we still have work the following day. We went home late (except Anj who's already at her house, of course). That's what happen when you never ran out of things to talk about. Until the next meet up, girls.

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HGSL Kick Off Party 2011

After years of not being able to attend (which I never regret until now) the annual HGSL Kick Off Party with the usually glam (bleh!) theme at a glam (bleh!) venue, I finally was able to convince myself to go. Thanks to Tapioca. Since the presence of their entire team is required, I was compelled to be there, too. Vintage is the theme for this year. Just so you know I am so not willing to spend and buy a new dress for this event. So unto the last minute I was glad I thought of the dress Tapioca and I bought at a bazaar in Eastwood. I was suppose to wear it at Jesselyn's wedding last year but because of Typhoon Ondoy that hit Manila the same date of her wedding, I failed to attend it and the dress got buried in my closet.


Outfit details. From top to bottom all by Dansen except from the necktie by Armando Caruso. All from SM Department Store.


Cocktail dress from Eastwood bazaar, shoes from VNC and accessories from SM Department Store.

Uhm I like the dress but . . . I hate my bod. I looked like I'm pregnant and I haven't eaten yet! Someone even asked how far along I am in my pregnancy. Excuse me?!?! I swear this is going to be the last time I will wear this dress until I get rid of my muffin top. Such an embarrassment. And puh-lease don't get me started with the party. It's the worst party ever. Don't be fooled with all the smiles you see in the pictures. It's all for the camera only. I apologized for all the negativity in this post. Will try to post something happy next time.

Click here to see more pictures from the kick off.

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Taylor Swift's One Night Concert In Manila

While Taylor Swift is performing at her concert today at Araneta, here I am gratifying my self with her songs on my windows media player. As tickets got sold out in days this is the best that I can do.

I just had one wish. Please come back to Manila, Taylor. I love your songs. I want to be in your concert, too.

Your fan, Jellybean.

P.S. You happen to share the same name of my guy from the band Hanson. What a coincidence. I love the both of you!!!

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Another BDAY for Tapioca

Here we are again celebrating Tapioca's birthday. It's amazing how time flies. We did not have any formal plans for his birthday so it's anything goes. Well, we do have plans (and there's a lot) however due to limited funds we went with whatever our budget can afford.


First off to this newly opened spa in J.P. Rizal. Tapioca hates going to spa but I insisted he give it a try at least once. And he did. The name of the place is Mynx Spa. It is situated in some sort of a townhouse-turned-spa so you get this homey and cozy feeling. Here's some pictures of what it looks like . . .




The place looks so inviting, right? You can actually reserve this for you and your friends and hold a party. Perfect for bonding moments :-P


And here's the birthday boy having a massage while waiting for his feet to be pampered.

Then our calves and feet were applied with these salt scrub.

Also with some cream and they covered it with cling wrap. Now we're ready to bake!

They use this lamp as a lighting while doing my nails. It was nice cos it didn't ruin the mood of the place.

After hours spent at the spa, we're finally ready for some serious pigging out. We were craving for crabs and anything seafood. We're blaming the TV series Deadliest Catch for this. We were so hungry that we just chose the nearest place to get a crab fix and ended up at Dampa in Farmer's Market.

We went to our fave stall Sis and let them buy the seafood and meat. We ordered for half a kilo of crab, a quater of a kilo of shrimps and pork. Here they are . . .

. . . a big bowl of pork sinigang

Can't live without soup.

plentiful of shrimp tempura . . .

Mind you, that's just a quarter kilo and we got about more than 10 pieces. And the main event goes to . . .

. . . chili crab in butter and oyster sauce

The crab looks pathetic, I know. There was about 3 pieces of them but the birthday boy can't wait to demolish them hahaha. It wasn't bad nor good but enough to satisfy our cravings.


Happy 8th birthday, Tapioca!!! Ooops, sorry kinulang sa kandila. It should be 28. Don't tell him I told you how old he is. Patay me. Hahahaha!!!

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Nanay's 70th Birthday

It's my mother's birthday and as promised I bought her a cake from Red Ribbon. She just loves their cake. When I got home she was overjoyed when she saw me carrying a huge box of cake. She thought I was kidding. Me was like "of course not!"

. . . Smile. My nanay doesn't look like she's in her 70s na. Uyyyy nambola pa hekhekhek!!!

And her smile got even wider when we lit up the candles and sang her the birthday song. Gosh, should I know she would react this way I should have given her a cake with her picture on it. That would be even nicer, don't you think? But she was very much please with this cake anyway. At least next year I have an idea on how to surprise her. Hahaha!

make a wish before you blow the candles . . .

And her wish . . . more birthdays to come!!! We couldn't agree more. As you know, when you reach that age you should be really thankful and ask for a healthier you so you'll be able to celebrate more birthdays. Amen!

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PBA Championship

Once upon a time in my high school years, I happen to be a fan of basketball especially The San Miguel Beermen. I watched every single night these guys play even on weekdays where I'm suppose to be doing my assignments and not shrieking and screaming in front of the TV as if I was in Araneta Coliseum and not in our living room. The guys in my family, that is my father and brother never understood my liking for basketball. They're more into sports with violence such as boxing and martial arts. But my nephew on the other hand shares my passion.

Fast forward to the present, here I am watching a game this time at the real Araneta Coliseum which earns me all the rights to scream my heart out for my fave team together with my nephew Oler and his cousin Egie and the rest of the crowd. It's SMB and Talk & Text aiming for the title.

. . . Oler and Egie

It's Egie's first time to watch a game in Araneta Coliseum and he was pretty excited. As for me and Oler we used to be regulars here. But things changed you know and I got busy with my life so we haven't been back until now.

I did not bring my camera here for fear they might confiscate it. I used my phone camera instead. For a camera phone, I think it has a good zooming in capability.







This one was bit blurry because I was moving and so the subject which was the white airplane-like balloon. That thing spits out styrofoam balls and if you catch one you will get yourself a price. Too bad we didn't get the change to catch any balls. Also SMB did not win. Sigh.

Just look at my nephew's smile (Kita ba? Cencya na nognog lang ^_^). You bet his team won. Boohoo!!!

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Be Kind Rewind

Hello there. I'm Jellybean and welcome to my almost 3 years old blog. For years I have been trying to keep this blog up to date with no success. Also I've been trying to keep the time line as accurate as possible or at least have the posts in line or if not near the date the event, or activity took place. Because of circumstances (forgetting lots of things due to old age and laziness) I find it now impossible to do so with all the back logs still waiting to be posted. I have so many pictures stored (now some of them are missing) that I still wanted to blog about no matter how aged or considered a history already. So from this post forward, you can expect them to be finally published.


Thank you for being patient and for still reading my silly and nonsense posts ! ! !

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2011: Another Chance To Start The Year Right

Happy New Year everyone. I hope everyone had a happy celebration on the first day of the year since I, on the other hand started unpleasantly. Pardon if I'm gonna make some ramblings here. I know it's such a shame but the start of the year for me was really bad.

First of all, I was really looking forward to our media noche but due to the changing weather we're experiencing I ended up miserable in bed. Our relatives from Bicol were present to celebrate the new year with us. We bought lots of goodies, fruits, chocolates, candies, ya name it and prepared the food.

Then afternoon came I thought I was just sleepy and tired since we headed straight to the grocery right after my night shift. Then came New Year's eve and I was suffering from a terrible headache, a bad case of colds and cough and fever. My family cooked all the food I requested and I was not able to enjoy it. It suck. Big time. I was in bed for days and my boss think I'm being absent on a purpose. :-(

Then second of all, my notebook almost crashed. Damn the ants on our place. They seem to be attracted to the hard drive. Next thing I knew the computer won't boot up. I tried restarting the thing and it worked but it was really sluggish. So slow it took me an hour to open a single application. What's even worse was the pictures stored on the hard drive are now inaccessible. Tapioca has been reminding me to back up my files especially the photos. He even gave me a brand new portable hard drive as a gift so I can have a backup for all my files. Now I felt so bad I never listened to him. We figured because the hard drive got infested by ants there are now bad sectors on it and no way we can retrieve the photos. Another lesson I learned the hard way.


So much for the title of this post, right? Well, this is just the beginning. So far so bad but it ain't the end of the world yet. I still have 360+ days left to be happy about life. I may not have the life I so wanted right now but I have a family who cares deeply for me. And I have a guy who never stop loving me despite all my flaws. And lastly, I have Him up above who gives me hope when all else fails. That's enough reason still to have a happy 2011!!!!

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