Ho Chi Minh's Central Post Office

After Baguio, I again found myself getting caught up with rain showers in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Roughly two months after. The rain must be persistent in trying to test my will. But I could only respond with giddiness and spontaneous glee as I ran around under the rain, with my hand nestled in somebody else's.

The only concern that surfaced was for the circumstantial things we had, namely my camera and our phones. Otherwise, we could have easily soaked up the rain, both literally and figuratively.

But I may be the only one who's truthfully up for it, I suppose. So when the threat of rain was a matter to be reckoned, Breinn and I dashed towards the Central Post Office, joining the crowd that's already gathering there.

Pondering on the Into the Wild Movie

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more..."
- Lord Byron

I am doing this for the very first time, where "this" means I am writing my thoughts about a movie. However, it doesn't mean I am shifting the course of this blog into something else. For truth be told, I want to keep the majority of things from going haywire as much as possible, because it's the very least I can do to myself amid life's perpetual anomalies.

Into the Wild is my random pick one fine day, when I gave Google these search keywords, "2007 movies". I scanned through the movie thumbnails of what I presumed too mainstream and then, this particular movie caught my interest.

Honestly, I didn't expect much anything from this movie. I gravely thought of it, as a notch higher than Euro Trip's plot. That bad. But I was dead wrong. Like shamefully wrong. That worse. 

Is there ever a quote, Don't judge a movie by its title? Because certainly that's what I had in mind as the movie progressed. I don't read movie reviews, by the way. I believe it ruins the randomness of it all.

Movie cover from Wikipedia

My Travel Notes: Baguio City

My little nook for a second in PMA Baguio

I wish my family and I could have spent more days in Baguio. With this trip, we were only able to do a few things, at our leisurely pace, of course. We have allotted 4 days in this trip but since Baguio is far from where we are, the commute each way can easily eat up one day.

But before I continue on this woeful afterthought, let me share a summary of our brief experience in the summer capital of the Philippines. It won't be a string of disappointments and regrets, I promise. Because even if we were hard pressed with time, it was one of those few instances in our lives, that we get to bond as a family outside the comforts of home.

Our Brief Affair with Baguio's Food

A sensory overload salad in Cafe by the Ruins

I have this high expectation set for the food scene in Baguio. The excitement I have for their local dishes. Ingredients, fresh as they can be. Baguio is near the source after all. If I can find Baguio's produce in Cebu's markets quite decent enough. How much more there? For vegetables that can only survive in cold places, the rest of the country mainly rely on the farms in the highlands. Don't get me started with fruits! Strawberries and oranges anyone?

But when I was actually there, it didn't exactly pan out the way I have imagined. It was like there's this needle pinching my bubble of ideal fantasies. But hey, nothing works out perfectly all the time right? Fantasies are in fact, only fantasies to begin with.

What am I talking about, really? The above salad is a total disconnect from this feeble issue.

Super Typhoon Haiyan, The Aftermath

Sunrise at home, 2 weeks after Haiyan.

My family lives in a quiet and very parochial town in the Northern part of Cebu. Oftentimes, people don't recognize the town's name and oftentimes consequently, I resort to mention that my town is located before the city of Bogo. Not to drag on one's confusion, he or she may just nod and feign or otherwise, that he or she totally gets me. I don't get offended by this, really. Somehow, it comforts me to know that I can still detach myself from the chaos and cocoon to this secret place where nobody seems to know.

With the recent super typhoon however, Tabogon has made its way to the news, though it is collectively mentioned as part of Northern Cebu. Not that it even matters. I'd rather have my town retain its unpopularity in this case.

Two weeks into the recovery from Haiyan, I flew from Singapore to my hometown. Given that it was only for the weekend, I knew I won't be doing much but I felt that I just had to be there. To be home with my family.

Itinerary: Western Europe in 15 Days

High up in the Monserrat Monastery in Spain

I've been meaning to pick up where I left off eons ago, with my previous series of posts. But it dawned on me that the relevant photos are in my external hard drive and there's no way I can read it using my tablet. Before I can settle this predicament, hopefully in a matter of days, I'm starting a kick off post about my fleeting Euro trip that I wish, had lasted forever. You know what they say. All good things come to an end.

Anyway. I seriously have no idea how to go about this because I could write forever, detailing even to the tiniest bit. But I guess that would be a little too much. Even my old self someday, would not appreciate.

So here it goes.