Awesome Sunday

Joined for the first time in a fun run last Sunday.  Nat Geo Earth Day Run in 2012 in BGC was full pack of people from different categories: 3K, 5K, 10K and 21K...  me and my boyfriend took the 5Km which started from 7th street going down to the Upper Mckinley Hill thru Mckinley Pkwy, U-turned to the stop light, straight through the 5th street, right turn to the 32nd street and finally right turn the 9th street and sprinted to the finish line.  It's already tiring just typing all these streets... whew!

There are few things we learned from this event.  

1) Be early and as much as possible stay in front before the starting line.

          Since we were at the back and basically the last people behind all the runners, even if we wanted to run, we just can't pass through the people walking and some are even holding hands as if they are walking in a beach.  We weren't able to get our momentum until halfway to the finish line.

2) Bring your own hydration

          We stopped for several minutes just to get a small amount of water, there are total of 2 hydration stations for 5K route.  Imagine how much time was wasted... If only we have bought the hydration bottles, we should have lesser time, probably 40 mins or so.

It took me 45 minutes and 19 seconds to finish the 5K and boyfriend finished a minute earlier than me.

Normally, fun runs have the what they call "Finisher's Kit" for all runners who finished the race and lots of freebies.  The Nat Geo event surprisingly did not provide any finisher's kit, and the freebies? You need to fall in a very long line just to get small stuffs like baller ids, note pads, etc.  Of course we didn't had the patience to get those freebies and just left early since the sun was already striking hard to our skin.

My face all flush from the sun's heat.

It was kind of tiring but was worth it because we haven't practiced for that route yet.  We have ran 5K around the Bonifacio High Street but we never experienced the uphill/downhill.  It was truly a very fulfilling moment for us.

Anyway, it was still a very awesome Sunday and it was indeed our unforgettable first run. :D

Ironic

Do you know the song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette?  Well, it sometimes happen to everyone and I am not exempted.

When I was on my way to General Trias, Cavite for a very early customer meeting yesterday, I got into a heavy traffic jam... i was running out of time then, so I was kind of irritated.  Then, I saw the culprits, cars are slowing down and stopping to give way to these pedestrians... This made me laugh so hard and surely made my day.  I was late for few minutes but this made a good topic to start the meeting. :D

Left behind by the technology

I can still recall when I was in 1st year college, my classmates already had their own cellphones, Nokia 5110 and 3210, but my dad didn't allow my mom to buy us one.  He has a valid reason though for not letting us have one because the son of his workmate was killed after the held-up incident and the trigger point was the cellphone.  But my sister and I were so envy with our friends playing the snake in their cellphones, change the ring tones and housing every time, and of course the easy communication wherever we may be...so we bullied our mom to secretly buy us cellphones and she bought us each with the latest model 3310.  When my dad arrived, we were secretly using them but later on found out about it... can you believe that he allowed us to use our cellphones but leave it when we leave for school.. it's really ridiculous I know, but later on he got tired of it and just reminded us to turn it off during travelling, he didn't know that you can set it in silent mode or in vibrate mode.

My dad, he's turning 60 this year is about to finish his contract for work.  He's here in the Philippines now for a month vacation and recently, his company required them to have their cellphones instead of their wives taking the calls.  So my dad had no choice but to buy one.  Early this morning, my mom and dad were in the sala and were so busy exploring my dad's cellphone.  She's teaching him how to operate, how to call, how to send text messages  and it's really cute hearing my dad struggling composing an SMS.  He's telling my mom, why do I need to text everytime? can I just call?  hahaha!

High School Reunion - Batch 2000

12 years after we threw our graduation caps in the air, we finally had our mini reunion for all those who are here in Manila.  We graduated in MABA Computer Oriented High School in Legazpi City.  MABA is an acronym of the founder and directress of this school Myrna Alvarado Biraquit Andes and we were the 3rd batch of graduates ever since the school was founded.

I never forget that I was the Senior President and I am the one responsible for organizing our reunion, but given my very busy schedule, I never had the chance to find all their contacts.  Thankfully, Shaw, my ever best friend since we were kids took the initiative to create a group in Facebook and organized this mini-reunion.  We were actually not even 10% of the whole batch but I am glad that we had this.

It's funny re-living the moments and sharing stories of all the "kalokohan" back then.  Shaw and I were laughing hard with all their stories and we both thought that if given a chance to go back to high school, we will surely enjoy every moment of it like they did, how we missed all those fun things before because we were serious representing the school and competing for the top spot.  There's kind of regret from our side for missing so much in high school but we are somehow grateful that we did.

It's cool to see our matured looks over our looks from the last time we saw each other.  We had took different paths and experienced different difficulties in life and this shaped us to become better persons.
Some already have their own family, some have struggles in their love stories and some are happy because they are still single.

Some of those who were really "pasaway" now have their own family and they started to realize how rude they were to their parents.  They learned and understand their parents now because they are also now parents.  It's a lesson in life that we learn when we experience it.

I'll be sharing some of their stories in my next post, hopefully I'll have a time to compose more blogs this week.

 Arimado, Jess, Ann, Shaw, Linn, Mel, Richard, Connie, Lolo, Salve

 Arimado, Windsor, Jess, Ann, Shaw, Linn, Mel, Richard, Connie, Lolo, Salve

 Match making for Richard who has a long time crush with Linn, they are both still single, but Richard is so "TORPE" and can't even say that he likes Linn a lot. :P

Girls: Mel, Linn, Ann, Connie and Salve

Lenten Special - Good Friday

After the Visita Iglesia for the Maundy Thursday, we went home tired from the heavy traffic and slept early to prepare for the next day's activity.  Good Friday, this is the day we commemorate the crucifixion and death of Christ, his sufferings to pay for our sins.  Our way of thanking Him is to offer prayers.  We went to Regina Rica for a pilgrimage and a prayer vigil located in Tanay Rizal, 70 Km away from Manila.  We started from my boyfriend's place in Antipolo and it took us an hour and a half ride before reaching the place, checking the odometer it's 47 Km from Sumulong Highway.

Woke up at 4am and prepared to leave at 5:30am.  Our route were from the Sumulong Highway, Cogeo, Baras, Boso-boso, Tanay.  It was an exciting ride with 45 minutes zigzag road purely uphill.

It was still foggy then and the wind froze my face as I rolled down the windows and tried to capture the views, they were really breathtaking:

It was like we are in a different world, the views were really beautiful, imagine how God created this kind of place, truly amazing!

And finally we reached our destination.  Regina Rica is a 13.5 hectares land located in heart of Sitio Remigio in Tanay Rizal which is administered by the Camillian Sisters.  This place offers the people peace, serenity and stillness. The rules in this area were very strict and those who came in shorts and sleeveless/spaghetti straps or not in proper outfit for the place where given piece of cloth the wrap in their body while inside the vicinity.  The area is open from 8am to 5pm everyday except for Tuesday as the Sisters have a service schedule in Quezon City.  We prayed in each of the cross, and as we walk in every station, the sun's heat became extreme as if there's no air within the area although it was very open and there were lots of trees in the surrounding.  When we reached the top of the hill and offered our thanksgiving, the breeze became cooler and it relieved our tiredness.

The place also offers some refreshments.  All food are vegetarian coming from the farm cultivated by the nuns.

And the best of all the food they serve was the Pan de Rica for 50 pesos each, a baked organic bread freshly made by the nuns.  We can't get over with the bread so we had to buy another 10 pieces for take out. 

The visit was really worthwhile, we had our time for our reflection and we had our own ways of thanking the Lord.   This is our second year of visit and will probably come back by next year.

Lenten Special - Maundy Thursday

It is the Roman Catholic's culture to celebrate the Lenten season and it starts with the Ash Wednesday in which everyone gets a cross in our forehead during this day, from then, we are to start observing the lent season and one of this is by not eating meat during Fridays.  Holy week comes afterwards and normally, offices still have work until Holy Wednesday, so we are only about to start our penance on Maundy Thursday.  I can say that it's still better to spend the holy week in the province as you can really experience the silence where you can do solemn prayers and reflections.  Unfortunately, we are not given a chance to go home to the province as the tickets from all means of transportation were all sold out.... and it is very unfortunate for my brother and sisters that they are required to report to work during these days and they have no choice though as their line of works are in hotels and in an airline.  So, I am spending my holy week with my boyfriend's family.

For Maundy Thursday, we did the Visita Iglesia to different churches within Metro Manila.  Visita Iglesia are the latin words which mean to visit churches.  Celebration of mass is forbidden on this day, so some of the churches are closed and just have the stations of the cross prepared outside the church. We are supposed to visit 14 churches where we can do 1 station of the cross for each but with the heavy traffic around the metro, we were only able to visit 7 churches and did 2 stations of the cross for each churches.  Here are the churches we visited: 1) Our Lady of Abandoned Parish - Marikina, 2) Immaculate Concepcion Parish - Concepcion, Marikina 3) St. Peter Parish: Shrine of Leaders - Commonwealth, Quezon City; 4) Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish - Quezon City 5) Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish - Project 6, Quezon City, 6) Our Lady of Assumption Parish - Tandan Sora, Quezon City; 7) Sto Nino Parish - Bago Bantay, Quezon City.

There were lots of people in every church so praying solemnly is kind of hard.  So I just took the night to say my own prayer before finally giving up to my dropping eyes.

A dance with so much love

I was browsing my diary a while ago while waiting for the time for my next run when I landed to this part of my diary.  Earlier this year, I posted something about the Junior and Senior prom and mentioned how slow dance became so important to me.  So I think I owe you in sharing one of my recent slow dance experience this year.  Here it is:

...An unexpected dance in the morning with "A thousand years" in the background.  A playlist that is continuously playing, songs that are compiled especially for me.  Taking slow steps, "Marry Me" song played next on the background.  I am in tears again, held him tightly to hide my tears.  It was a dance that felt so much love....

Maybe I am the only one who can relate to this, but let me give you an overview so you can somehow relate to this post.  For those who missed my post about myself, I am in a relationship for 11 years by next month... an anticipation of a wedding proposal has been a very sensitive thing for me and everything that is related to wedding and proposals really affect me.  So then, there were hints from my boyfriend or maybe I was expecting too much, that's why my heart is so much emotional.  That dance I mentioned above happened one morning and woke me up with those songs on the background, who would guess that waking up from bed, with the messy look from sleep would be dancing for no reason at all?  Of course if you are in that situation you would be expecting something is about to happen... but nothing has happened... but then, I really felt the love in that dance. For that time, I was still expecting too much...  But now, we are honestly enjoying each others company and I no longer expect much of the proposal.  I know it will happen someday, in God's time.

RUN Mel... RUN!

A month ago, I experienced a struggle in my personal life and thought I would give up and never recover.   I wanted to clear my mind so I looked for something to do to somehow relieve my heavy heart... that's when I started running.  I can't really say that that's the only time I discovered running since my old partner Arman was an "obsessed" runner.  He used to run more than 100 KM and when he's still with 3M, he encouraged me to also explore running.  Of course, I always had my reasons... and my most convincing alibi is this: "oh, I have an asthma so I can't really stress myself." :P

Good thing I can still recall some of his tips and one of his most important reminder to me was to invest in running shoes and socks.  So I went to Bonifacio High Street and looked for stores which offer footworx fitting process.    Although there are several sports stores available in the area like R.O.X. and Nike, only RUNNR Store have this facility.  Footworx fitting analysis is important to prevent injuries that you can get from running due to wrong running styles and strikes.  I'm not familiar much on the terms so bear with me as I try to explain the process of the analysis they've done to my feet.  First, they assisted me to step on to a foot morphology for several minutes to identify my foot type, it left a mark and known that mine is Normal Arch.  Second, they let me run in a treadmill for a certain speed and recorded a video of my foot strikes and alignment, it turned out that my left and right foot strikes are not similar and there's an angle on my ankle during strikes in which if I ignore, might cause injury after doing some series of runs.  I found that I needed more stability while running, therefore I got the stability shoe from Nike not only because they have the right fit for what I need to correct my foot strikes and alignment but also the because of fashion and design, I know that the design is the least important, but since I am already investing in it, why not get the latest model.   I got the Lunar Glide3 for ~6K Php.

I've been running for a month now and will tell you more of the things I discovered on my next posts.  Stay tuned...