Goddess, I Am.

• Spent half an hour in a sauna, and another hour having a nice shiatsu massage. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect Sunday. #
• So I decided to join that MTV contest that Nuffnang invited me to, after all. http://bit.ly/37fWu #
• Well, there's nothing in the terms that says I couldn't send a refurbished all piece that I wrote over a year ago. #
• *old piece, I mean. Sheesh. #
• Feeling very organized indeed with Task Coach for Mac: http://www.taskcoach.org/ #
• Ala King Cafe's bola-bola siopao. An oldie but a goodie. Mmmmmm... #
• God must have been very inspired when he created Philippine mangoes. Delish! #
• Learning to create my own DVD with iDVD. Easy in theory, not so easy when your .avi file suddenly balloons to 3x its size. =( #
• Dropping Entrecards and trying to decide whether I should let Twitter tools post a weekly digest of my Tweets on my blog. #
• Will my blog ever go over PR2? I'm stuck - literally. #
• My old Windows laptop is finally, undoubtedly dead. RIP, Oldie. #
• Update: Oldie suddenly came back to life. Lazarus, is that you? #
• I've decided to use Safari more. Firefox is getting a bit too buggy for my taste. #
• It's official. Macbooks are addictive. I am now planning to sell Gaius to my mother to get the new 13" Macbook Pro, Gaius II. I need help. #
• Note to self: You are not rich. Stop mooning over the 13-inch MBP for the time being. #
• First Farrah Fawcett, now Michael Jackson. OMG. #
• I've said it once and I'll say it again. Transformers doesn't need a good plot and good actors to be a great movie. It's visual eye candy! #

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Winning is something that doesn't happen to me very often. I've never won the lottery (but I once dated a guy who has, believe it or not), grocery raffles, or even The Statue Dance. The only things I ever win are arguments, and even those don't really count because The Husband never admits I'm right anyway.

Now, I don't mind losing, as long as I'm losing pounds (as you can probably tell from my numerous almost-diet pill reviews) and not my dignity. But it does feel good to win once in a while - something that I've started to discover as of late.

It all started on the flight to Caticlan. When the flight crew started their silly "show me" game, I was only half paying attention. In fact, so immersed was I in reading The Grass Crown that it was almost complete instinct that made me lift the book up when I heard the word "novel". I was rewarded with a Centrum bag that contained 2 pieces of Centrum, 2 pieces of Advil, and a lemon-flavored Chapstick for my troubles - I say 'troubles' because the book weighs about a kilo, so lifting it above my head was no mean feat!

Six days later, on the flight back to Cebu, I won the same prize, thanks to the same book. This time, I was ready and hell-bent on winning The Husband a Chapstick.

Strangely enough, as I was blog hopping the next day, I found out that I won something again - this time, from Kessa's birthday giveaway. I am currently waiting for a full set of Twilight books and some L'Occitane goodies (if the latter fits the package, according to Kessa) to be delivered from Manila. How cool is that? And how cool is Kessa for giving these away?

And it doesn't end there, mind you. I went to the Sky Cable office to pay our cable bill, and before I knew it, I was the proud (haha) winner of a Sky ZPDee t-shirt.

I am now seriously considering buying a lottery ticket. Before I do that, however, I'm definitely joining this beauty giveaway. The oh-so fabulous Frances is giving away Maybelline products aplenty, and I can't possibly NOT join!

Aaahhhh... Contests are definitely growing on me. Maybe I should do one of my own to celebrate Goddess, I Am.'s first anniversary, albeit belatedly (the anniversary was back on the 16th). I have to put my thinking cap on and figure out what to give away. Who knows? Maybe my little contest will become the start of someone else's winning streak.

We got back from our (late) week-long Boracay honeymoon on Wednesday, and I still haven't recovered from my holiday mood, so I'm blogging (about time, too!), instead of working.

Don't worry. I won't bore you with all the holiday details. More often than not, The Husband and I travel to relax, so we didn't do much in the way of adventure. If anything, it was a fairly uneventful trip, save for a little drama that involved my Macbook, Gaius (more on that later).

We did spend a couple of days sailing and island hopping/snorkeling. The Husband identified not one, not two, but SIX different species of clown fish, which predictably drove him into paroxysms of pleasure. Yes, the man knows his Nemos.

He also made friends with barnacles...

...and a crab that clung to his shorts for dear life. (Sounds a bit wrong, doesn't it? LOL.)

I, on the other hand, spend most of my time lying on the beach, reading The Grass Crown (second book of Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series), drinking milkshakes aplenty, swimming (or more accurately, jumping because the waves were huge), and showing off the effects of my diet pill of choice.

Readers of this blog, be warned! I'm about to strut my stuff.

Day Two (we only managed to catch the sunset on Day One):

This is a bebe loaned to me by my best friend, Aileen. I'm trying to come up with a good excuse not to return it (sorry, Lhen!).

Day Three:

I spent more time in a wrap because we were island hopping. I only ever got to take it off while we snorkeled, only to wear a ludicrous life vest instead. Plus there were 3 Arabs (ick!) in our group who were openly ogling me and getting The Husband a bit worked up.

Day Four:

This definitely isn't the most flattering suit in my wardrobe. I bought it from a seller in Multiply, and I realized that the bottom was much too big for my new frame. What a bummer.

Day Five:

This one here is an interesting one. This was designed and created by none other than my sister, Peachy, who is about to launch her own swimsuit line (Innuendo - watch out for it!) before the month ends. Chin called this The Bondage Suit, and I'm inclined to agree!

If I were to describe this suit in one word, I would use 'precarious' because, well, it is - but in a good way. The top did fall off a couple of times while I was in the water, but it's mostly because the waves were B-R-U-T-A-L! She will, however, change the bandeau design somewhat so that it stays on no matter what.

Here's what it looks like from the back:

It hugs, it flatters, and it's definitely one of a kind!

Day Six:

This, by far, is my absolute favorite suit of all time! Again, this was created and designed by Peachy for Innuendo. Unfortunately, I didn't get enough pictures of the fantastic details (I'm banging my head against the wall right now - truly!), so it'll have to wait until we can get the site set up and the stocks uploaded.

In a nutshell, the right side of the bandeau top is cinched with a biggish O-ring. So are both sides of the bottom (where my hands are conveniently positioned - argh!), so we've got some really bare areas that are downright sexy.

My dear sister also made me a hot pink, skintight dress with the same O-ring detail:

I'm calling it The Naked Dress because it literally felt like I had nothing on the entire time I wore it. This is one dress I can wear over and over and over.

Now enough of this vainglorious posturing.

When I first visited Boracay in 2007, it changed my life. It made me see exactly what an empty, meaningless life I was living. I had a corporate job that I absolutely loathed and absolutely no idea of where I was going.

And so it was that barely three weeks later, I packed my bags and moved to Bangkok with a bit of help from Chin and her Bangkok-based friends. I met Steve on my very first day at my new job, started dating him a month later, and the rest, as they say, is history. It seemed only fitting that I take him to the place that made every single thing that has happened since possible.

We'll be back. And who knows? Maybe we can stay for good.

More pictures here - some quite good, some downright embarrassing.

When I was about 7 years old, my parents split up. They married much too young (she was 16, he was 17). As if that wasn't bad enough, my dad fancied himself as some sort of Don Juan. Throw in a domineering mother-in-law (my dad's mum) and a very dysfunctional family (mum's), and I guess you could say that they had all the odds against them right from the start.

Growing up, I understood that this was the way things were. I grew up as well-adjusted as I could possibly be, considering the circumstances, and never let it bother me. I never expected, therefore, that this would haunt me someday.

I am afraid of a lot of things, but one thing I've found that I'm afraid of most is ending up with a failed marriage like my parents. The Hub and I are both headstrong, opinionated, and stubborn, and neither of us are pushovers. As a result, our fights - and there are plenty - tend to be extremely heated and sometimes quite ugly. I hate it, and I know he does, too. But when you both think - no, believe - that you are right and the other is wrong, it becomes a seemingly endless cycle of hurts and tears and unkind words. Rational thought flies out the window, red is all one sees, and we're left with anger - uncontrollable, burning, and frightening anger.

Because of this, I find myself afraid. Afraid that our marriage is just going to topple over without warning like one of those cardboard displays left outside to face the unforgiving elements for far too long. Afraid that we'll go too far and say too much that we will get to a point where there will be no turning back. Afraid that the next fight will be another fight too many. And most of all, afraid that no amount of love and kisses and gargantuan efforts to be better people will ever be enough to fix whatever flaw we might have that made us like this.

I want our marriage to work more than anything else in the world. I don't ever want to give up like my parents before me and every other couple in the world who has. But how does one fight one's self when one loses control?

One of the things that I missed most when I moved to Thailand was Filipino food. I absolutely loathed the shit that they tried to pass off for food in that country, and after living there for nearly a year and a half, I've had enough. It was no wonder, then, that the moment I set foot in my own country, I attacked Filipino food like it was going out of fashion.

Months later, I was a good 15 pounds heavier and finding it next to impossible to cut down on food. It didn't help that I worked from home and maintained a largely sedentary lifestyle. With my wedding a month away, I decided to take matters into my own hands and started taking fat burners.

This is what I looked like on my birthday back in March (my arms = ick), a few days before I started 'em pills (and yes, that's Chinese food you're seeing - patatim, anyone?):

This is what I looked like - post pills - on my wedding:

This is what I looked like on vacation with the family a few weeks later - and what I still look like now (I slouch and it's bad, I know!):

Whoever said weight isn't everything has never lost any. It feels good!