I could be the 'biggest loser'!

Want to lose weight fast? These are the things that I would suggest you to do:

Live overseas.

Get pregnant and have fussy baby.

Make sure to breastfeed, if possible 100% of the time.

By fussy baby I mean no decent sleep, continuous for at least six months.

Don't forget to do all the household chores as well.

It worked for me! :P I am now down to 50 kilos which is even less than my pre-pregnancy weight (I was 54 Kilos when we found out we were expecting Erin.) so I can fit into my old jeans once again. By the way, 50 Kilos was my weight when I was a fresh college graduate. And no matter how much food I eat now, I can't seem to put on any weight back on.

The sad part about all this is that my wedding ring keeps falling off from my ring finger especially when my hands are wet. I have to wear it now on my middle finger to keep it from slipping off and eventually losing it. Sometimes, I just leave it to J when I'm about to take a shower for safe-keeping. Occasionally I forget to get the ring back from him and he has two wedding rings on his hand! :)

Alright, wanna try out my weight loss program? Let me know if it works out the same way for you as it did for me. Good luck! ;)

The Hate Tag

1. Food you hate - Hmm... I can't really hate food. But I'm not so keen about eating lamb, liver (except liver spread).

2. Fruits that you hate - For some reason, I'm not a fan of the caimito or star apple. It's flesh is slimy and that's what I don't like.

3. Veggies that you hate - Mostly ones that are slimy. (Do you see the trend here? :P ) A great example of this is the okra.

4. Celebrities or people that you hate - Celebrities? Naku, a lot.. especially those former child stars gone wild. Tsk, tsk.

As for people in general, I hate hypocrites, pretentious, proud, snobby, holier-than-thou individuals. These are just to name a few. :D

5. Situations you hate - I hate waiting.. I also hate having to go to a party where I hardly know the other people who are also attending it. This is because I hardly make the first move to socialize. :P

6. TV Shows or Movies that you hate - I see a lot of mystery/investigation type of series on TV. I am definitely not a fan of them. They were 'cool' at the beginning but I eventually lost interest in them.

7. Type of Music that you hate - Rock is not music to my ears anymore. They were the 'in' thing back in high school. But these days, I prefer more mellow sounds.

8. Household chore that you hate - Cleaning the bathroom. All the rest, I don't mind doing.

9. Things you hate about the world - Violence and how people these days do try to take advantage of the less fortunate. That's sad. :(

10. Things that you hate about yourself - I can't help but be so O-C. Sometimes, it is the cause of some of J and I's arguments. Everything must be done in a specific and exact order.

I'm back!

Yes, you heard me right. I am reviving this old blog of ours for no particular reason really. I figured it would be such a waste to leave it in one corner when it has a really good pagerank at a time like this. I may be enrolling this in those paid posting schemes so beware! :) In the meantime, please do visit the rest of our sites on the web. Check out the links on the sidebar.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

by Mark Haddon

Done! It was a fast and very refreshing read as compared to the last novel I took up. As it is categorized under Young Adult Fiction, the narration was quite straight-forward yet highly entertaining. I guess I could blame my sleepless nights on this piece of lit because I had a difficult time putting it down. Haddon is truly a gifted writer!

Related link: Random House's audio excerpt

The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

Oh boy... I don't know what to make of this book. To tell you the truth, it took me months (4 months to be exact) to finish it.

Maybe it's because of her writing style. She commonly used all these flashbacks in her novel which made it quite confusing for me to keep track of the story. In fact, in the early stages of reading it, I had to go back to the beginning maybe two to three times just to refresh my memory of what she had earlier written. The unusual names of the characters in the book were also a struggle for me to recall.

With that said, I am just glad I'm done and definitely over with it. On to the next...

The Namesake

By Jhumpa Lahiri

What an wonderful read! This has got to be my favorite literary piece so far. Lahiri is an exemplary story-teller.

It tells about the life of Gogol, an American of Bengali descent. His family migrated to the States from India and the novel relates how migrating to a foreign land is never really an easy task.

There are several lines from the book which I can so very well relate to:

But nothing feels normal to Ashima. For the past eighteen months, ever since she's arrived in Cambridge, nothing has felt normal at all. It's not so much the pain, which she knows, somehow, she will survive. It's the consequence: motherhood in a foreign land. For it was one thing to be pregnant, to suffer the queasy mornings in bed, the sleepless nights, the dull throbbing in her back, the countless visits to the bathroom. Throughout the experience, in spite of her growing disconfort, she'd been astonished by her body's ability to make life, exactly as her mother and grandmother and all her great-grandmothers had done. That it was happening so far from home, unmonitored and unobserved by those she loved, had made it more miraculous still. But she is terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare.

...

UPDATE (09 March 2007):

I just found out that The Namesake has been made into a film with Kal Penn as the lead actor and Mira Nair as director. It starts showing in the States today. I can't wait to see it here in Oz. The trailer looks quite promising so I'm pretty excited to see if the movie is as well made as the book.

The Time Traveller's Wife

By Audrey Niffenegger

This takes love stories to a whole new different level and approach. All the time travels may seem too science fiction-ish to be believable but Niffenegger sure does an amazing job of pulling it off with ease.

I loved how simple it was written. Definitely not a single boring/dragging part. Needless to say, I was up all night, trying to find out how the story ended. I was not disappointed whatsoever.

Letting Go

I got this one from dear friend, Iris, who's having THE time of her life. I wished I had stumbled into this sooner so it could have made things easier for me then. But come to think of it, sometimes, I realise, you just need to learn the hard way.

To let go does not mean to stop caring,
it means I can't do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off,
it's the realization I can't control another.
To let go is not to enable,
but allow learning from natural consequences.
To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means
the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try to change or blame another,
it's to make the most of myself.
To let go is not to care for,
but to care about.
To let go is not to fix,
but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their destinies.
To let go is not to be protective,
it's to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny,
but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
To let go is not to criticize or regulate anybody,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.

Fresh Starts

I'd just like to inform you regular visitors to the Abstract Musings that we are transferring to a new site. Now i bid adieu to blogspot and head for a refreshing start. check out our new site by clicking here.

From the Land Down Under...

Finally, I have found the time to post. i know i've been offline for almost a week and probably you guys are wondering what has happened to me. not to worry as i am very much alright and pretty happy now that i am with J. :)

i arrived in Sydney last march 8. it was quite a bumpy ride, but i didn't get any motion sickness. my agent checked me in on a good seat -- one that's near the toilet! hehe... Qantas served us two full meals and the food was great. I didn't get much sleep though. I guess all that excitement and anxiousness kept me from dozing off.

when we landed in Sydney, there were lots of foreigners who also arrived at the same time as our trip. to my disappointment, the immigration department was packed with Europeans. Halos mahimatay ako sa amoy! Ack! LOL! it's a good thing it took me only 10-15 minutes to get them to put a stamp on my passport. otherwise, i'm sure i would have had a sneezing fit. hehe...

At the customs area, i really had nothing to declare. but since i had some valuables and gifts from our wedding with me, i didn't want to take the risk so i queued up at the 'something to declare' area. the lady just asked me what i wanted to declare and i told her the details. she then asked me to bring my luggages to the x-ray machine. i thought they were going to go through my stuff (which, by the way, i was afraid of because i had so carefully packed my clothes), but to my surprise, the guy there just placed my bags back on the cart after going through the x-ray machine and told me that i was free to go. phew! :)


when i came out, J was already there with his videocam. Kala mo artista! LOL! :D

We checked in at the Medina, near the central station. The two days were spent sightseeing. We were able to visit Darling Harbour, The Sydney Opera House, The Rocks, Manly Beach, Sydney Tower, Chinatown and downtown Sydney.

As of this writing, am now in Canberra, still trying to settle in. I have yet to get my clothes out of my luggages and put them in the closet. the weekend was pretty busy since we arrived. we had to get my medicare number and open a bank account for me. the welcome parties are killers! mukhang tataba ako dito. LOL! the filipino community here is very big and close-knit so, it isn't that lonely here.

More kwento to come...