Delineating Des

Friday's Fave Five: A Second Chance Please scroll down for Friday Photo Flashback This week has been a lot better than last week. One significant thing led to another. I'm happy about and grateful for: a second chance It looks like it is and I consider it to be so after a mistake I made on these anti-virus programs wiped out all my pictures. Most of those I label "precious" haven't been sent to email or stored in a flash drive or posted on any social network site. Everything vanished. I tried hard to be cheerful and carried on but the loss was such a nasty cloud over me last week that I grew two canker sores. Then I worked again on restoring them but without expecting anything anymore. Tweaking and hoping I tried these hidden files that warn you not to open them or your other files would be messed up. I had nothing else left to lose anyway so I risked it. Alas! there they were! The saying "you value a thing when you lose it" had never taken a more distin...

Friday's Fave Five: Pack Rat Please scroll down for Friday Photo Flashback Time piece I woke up on Wednesday morning to find my alarm clock registering 8.10 a.m. "Since I'm already late," I acknowledged the verdict as I yawned my way to the shower, "I might as well prepare Cj's breakfast and eat with him before I go." When I arrived in the computer room at work, I got a happy surprise: the time was 7.55, not 8.55. Yes! I wasn't late after all. My clock has served me quite well for more than 7 years, and even in its old and malfunctioning age has done so to my advantage. This must be why sometimes I am a pack rat. Restaurants With Mommyhood, a full-time job and work on PhD applications going full-blast, whatever little time I have left for cooking is all wiped out and I raise my hands up in surrender. I am thankful that restaurants are readily available which means Cj and I do not go hungry. We've been having dinners out the entire week and I...

Picture a six months pregger escorted by a gay friend (not on photo), waiting for a jumbo jet to land and constantly texting and talking on the phone with someone in the US. That's I 1,825 midnights ago . My former college roommate Ying was keeping track of her BF Joseph's arrival in Bangkok where he vacationed for two weeks. Ex-hubster took this photo of us in a garden restaurant. We treated Joseph to dinner before he returned to LA the morning after. ~ Visit Alicia @ More Than Words for more flashbacks ~

Meet my international gradschool group @ Bangkok U. After an arduous 3-hour coursework we took the lift further up for lunch. This photo is less than ten years old, but non-digital and old enough for me to have forgotten a detail or two. Let me see what I can remember: there's Lee, 2nd left (China); Shawn (Canada), Aya at the head of the table (Japan), and myself next to her (PI). The Thai mates are a mix of Europe trotters and long-term US residents whose idea of fun was flying home to do a master's. It was a blast learning how communication theories are applied in negotiations with terrorists or how tobacco industries always manage to operate successfully along international advertising restrictions. But what I miss most was our chatter over after-class dinners. I still smile at how we once piled into G's BMW and slid into a posh coffee shop bickering all the way over acing or flunking exams. ~ Visit Alicia @ More than Words for more flashbacks ~

We're talking sports on Mommy Moments this week. When I dug my archives I found something that serves two purposes: a flashback entry and a reminder that I just don't have a sporty bone in my body. This was during my married days, when I would go along with the then hubster as he played golf. Yummy food and boredom were main motivators in my involvement, not the playing. This was Top Golf Driving Range 9 years ago, before it became a 'licensee of World Golf Systems UK, making it the first in Asia and the third in the world to use microchip embedded in the core of premium golf balls accurately reporting its distance, location and score instantly to personal bay monitors.' ( source ) The range is part of Piyarom Sports Club where Thailand's foremost tennis player, Paradorn Srichaphan sometimes plays. I recognized Paradorn when he beat Andre Agassi in 2002 ~ Visit Alicia @ More Than Words for more flashbacks ~

It's Sunday evening at The Landmark, and I was working . My job? Herding 13-year olds to the ballroom so we could get on with it. Or I could get on with this end-of-term banquet. That white thing in my hand contained guide to glide thru a night of hormones, spicy food and speeches. So much for 3-inch gold shoes matching the gold lace of an evening dress. Let's do the math: 2009 - 1997 = 12 years ago. ~ Visit Alicia of More Than Words for more flashbacks ~

"Memories dating to the third or fourth year, and even occasionally to the second year, are generally given credence; but there is widespread skepticism regarding those attributed to the first year. Is this justifiable scientific caution because of the difficulty of verification, or merely prejudice? How can we decide whether something supposedly remembered really occurred?" ~ Melitta Schmideberg , M.D. on Infant Memories and Constructions , Psychoanalytic Quarterly The year was 1971 . I was a few months old and I remember water dripping gently on my head from the roof of this house we lived in. Bathrooms and comfort rooms were usually separate from the houses back then. My mother said that she was indeed going to give me a bath when someone with a camera passed by. In later years I remember someone called "Auntie Bebot." She was pretty and pleasant. She loved to pop up in our living room or kitchen. She did it when Mama's dashing younger brother, fresh from m...

An aunt in Seattle told me we had this family reunion in December 1999 partly because Uncle J found out that his son's got a crush on a beautiful girl. This girl turned to be a second cousin! So before the crush turned into something romantic, he suggested we all gather for a reunion and get to know new members of the family. Plans were immediately made. Everyone was notified and encouraged to make time for the event. In our case about six generations were involved and showed up so we called it a clan reunion. We are a huge clan I almost didn't notice that another cousin was flying home on the same plane with me. Three great aunts who were widowed for a long time were going senile and were behaving like frustrated spinsters. Uncles talk business-like with great uncles. Another old maid aunt couldn't help implying that she preferred the old Filipino tradition of hand-kissing over "Hi Auntie!" We gladly obliged as she was paying for the eat-all-you-can snacks :-) ...

Can you believe this??? Wait... I'm counting us.... wah! Eight fully-clothed grinning teenagers! All we needed were robes and a minister and we're ready for rebaptism. First glance at this photo after 19 years and I thought there were only 3 of us wearing size L shirts. We seem to have multiplied over the years. This is the same summer in 1990 I reminisced about in a previous FPF post with that Eric . Oh that's him alright; the guy holding the little girl, and that's me with my left hand on his shoulder, not knowing whether I should stay for the photo op or run back to the cottage. Now what were we laughing about? ... recall ... recall ... ok, my guess is our bathing suits. Like most of them, I didn't plan to get wet. But a few bored companions had this goal of having everyone in the water before sunset. Early on I told them I was staying put looking as gravely as I could and hoping they'd spare me. But they were planning an ambush and carried it out by pourin...

Back in the day, it seemed like the English Department always got this errand of hosting school pageants. 1996. Saturday evening. We had to move a few kilometers along Bankerohan River for the venue of this pageant. That's my co-instructor and co-host, a Mr C. We're both employed in this marine academy in Davao, a city in Southern Philippines. Mr C and I we're having a lull in reading sponsors' names and advertisers when this shot was taken. The student wearing blue is one of the campus hunks who girls go crazy over. I've forgotten whether he won or not but I'm guessing he must be out in some ocean now working on a ship. The academy also offers courses in Hotel and Restaurant Management where the hunk-crazy girls come from. This was my last job before I left the country. ~ FPF is brought to you by Alicia of More Than Words ~

"I remember the boy, but I don't remember the feeling anymore." LOL! Pardon me for laughing first before explaining this memory. It's that line of the song that amuses me about this snapshot. He's not my boyfriend. Now I kinda wish he was. Right now it just feels right to say he was, but he wasn't :(. If only he was *kidding* lol! Eric is a Theology major (see I remember his name too, lol). His department and mine used to do social activities together. During the summer of 1990, I fancied going with his group to Tacloban City. I didn't want to go home wearing an atrocious hairstyle like that (so I escaped and joined the circus). My parents wouldn't be amused to see their only girl looking like a boy. Eric's group were student literature evangelists out in the city selling books. I wasn't supposed to be allowed to join them because #1. I am totally useless when it comes to marketing; #2. The group had already reached the maximum number of studen...

~ brought to you by Alicia of More Than Words ~ The month of August has been filled with birthday celebrations of friends and family (read: mine and my canine). As I've already blabbed about people's birthdays, I thought this FPF post would be about Mozart. He's my toy poodle who turned 7 on August 2nd. I had him two years before my biological son arrived. This was taken on his first birthday in 2003, using my ancient Kodak camera. Like they say first baby, first birthday: big deal :D. So Mommy threw this cuddly guy a little party. ~ waiting for his guests ~ Actually there were only two invited guests. One didn't make it to the fun because she overslept. Her name is Dawn, the youngest 'child' of our next door neighbor, a local film actress. Dawn's mom handed a gift. Over the fence. ~ and this is Salapao, the other neighbor's 'baby' and Mozart's partner in ruining my alugbati patch every single week ~ They snobbed the cake, but had fun w...

~ brought to you by Alicia of More Than Words ~ It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and we're elevated 9509 ft; at the summit of Mt. Kitangland. These are former college classmates. I could not remember the exact year this happened. I'm guessing this was around the time I finished my bachelor's degree, so circa 1992 -1993. We hiked up for 7-8 hours, spent two nights at the peak eating, chatting, goofing, and came down on Sunday. It was a blast! My first and last mountaineering experience and one of the best memories I have from college: We also had a bit of serious time. We're actually having some worship when this shot was taken. We were singing what...oh, I've forgotten the darn song. Most probably "O the depths of the riches, the wisdom and knowledge of God..." or something like that. The two guys at the back and the classmate wearing a yellow top on the left are happily married. I have no confirmed updates about the second and the middle girls on ...

Today I join Friday Photo Flashback and give justice to these old photos on yellowing albums. First off I want to thank Alicia of More Than Words for hosting a meme where I join you in looking back and reminiscing the good old days , certain that there is a past and opportunity to be in touch with personal history. I was on the phone with my mother yesterday, asking her how old I was in this photo. She said if she couldn't see it, she couldn't remember. Her guess was 2 years old. The fun part of looking at old photos is sometimes seeing things that (to me at least) are funny, i.e. I burst out laughing at my hairless head. "Your hair was jus t thin, but you weren't bald at all," Mama corrected. "Oh, it's bald to me, I teased, "but I understand you want to euphemize because she's your baby."