Singles For Christ’s outreach day to the victims of typhoon Frank at Jaro..

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Posted on 25th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Hometown | Random | Typhoon Frank

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I have mentioned before that my parents are members of Couples for Christ, Oton Chapter. Well I am a member also of Youth for Christ. I actually joined when I was still in my third year in high school, I was 15 that time. I’m still a member although I’m inactive. My brother-Sev on the other hand is already affiliated with Singles for Christ (I should move on to their organization actually because I’m over the age bracket for YFC.) and they have activities suited for “singles” and young professionals. They’re actually a serious bunch but they also know how to have FUN.

As part of their outreach program, they organized a relief operation to selected residents of Barangay Buntatala last July 13th. This barangay is part of Jaro, Iloilo City. We actually lived here before my parents decided to transfer to Oton 8 years ago. They were greatly affected by typhoon Frank and their houses were all flooded out. Families were staying at the elementary school which has a second floor. When we went there they were still cleaning the school, clearing out the mud and all things that can’t be used anymore.

Here are photos of their outreach day:

This is my Alma Mater. Look at what Frank did!

The Singles for Christ (with Tito Manny, Papang and Mamang):

Photography Tips from Mr. Bob Wong

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Posted on 25th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Arts | Fixations | Photography

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I’m a “budding” photographer and I’ve just started playing with Tim’s camera and editing my photos. Because of this, I browsed blogs here at wordpress that kind of specialize in photography and I found Mr. Bob Wong’s Photography Weblog. It has many beautiful photos of nature, wildlife and their travels which I found very interesting and informative as well that I can’t help but ask him for some tips which he unselfishly gave me. To remember this “lesson” I decided to repost it here in my blog for me to remember everything and also for the benefit of a friend whose also starting to like this hobby. :)

Good to hear from you again MaryJane. At first I thought the easiest way to answer your photo editing needs would be to refer you to some online tutorial. I took a quick look for a suitable candidate and to my dismay found nothing reasonable. Most in my opinion were poor to absolutely wrong. The subject is too involved to discuss here so I will write a post on the subject shortly.

Your choice of GIMP as an editor is good. I have used it before. While I am working on my version of a basic editing tutorial you should read this “Curves” page from the GIMP documentation here. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all. I don’t like the recommendations either but it does tell you about all the capabilities of he “Curves” function. Again don’t worry about understanding it just use it as a reference to guide you as you play with the “Curves” function.

The “Curves” function is the most important tool. Anything that touches your picture performs an Equivalent of a “Curves” function on your picture. You local photo finisher’s printer does a “Curves” when he prints your picture. The monitor that you are reading this post on does a “Curves”. The video card that drives your monitor does a “Curves”. The operating system, Window or whatever running on your computer does a “Curves”. And basic of all your camera does a “Curves”. Each one of these guys is fighting the other and to get it all correct you have to do something called color management which from end to end is usually impossible anyway, so don’t worry about it.

Begin by getting out your GIMP editor and start playing with the “Curves” function and you will get a feel for what it does. The first adjustment to play with is called Gamma. Every device I just mentioned above messes with the Gamma. For you to mess with the Gamma just grab the curve in the middle and move it up and down, that adjustment you just made is a gamma adjustment. The Gamma adjustment will give you some powerful capabilities to sort things out. Play with it on many different pictures.

The next experiment with the curves tool is to introduce an “S” curve, this will give your picture a “Film” look because that is what the old style film actually did. You’re going to grab that “Curves” straight line in two places one near the bottom and one near the top. The bottom one you pull down a bit the top one you pull up a bit. You now will have a sort of Italisized “S” shape in your curves tool. Hence the name “S” curve.

Play around save various versions of the pictures onto disk. Then use a photo viewer (I use Irfanview) to cycle between the pictures so that you get to appreciate the differences in the image that you just created.)

How many have you read?

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Posted on 24th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Books | Fixations

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I found this list at elvisgirl77 and learningagain’s blog.

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

The premise of this little exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

(Note: I’m a Filipino but I have read some of this books [more than 6] so I joined this little exercise. ;) )

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling- I’ve only read the first one in this series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
7 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So far I’ve read 29 books from this list and planning to read more. Good luck to me.  :)

Protected: Ode to my bebeh…

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Posted on 23rd July 2008 by Mary Jane in Arts | Fixations | Love | My Bebeh

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Why I Love Going To The Spa

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Posted on 22nd July 2008 by Mary Jane in Fixations | Health | Hometown

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Last Saturday Monica and I went to Spa Riviera again to have our monthly body massage and deep cleansing Thai facial. Its our way of rewarding our body for all the hard work in our very stressful jobs. I was kind of hesitant to go to the spa before because I don’t know what happens inside that place or what are its benefits. But after experiencing it, we made it a monthly regimen. Its nice to indulge our bodies once in a while, even for just 3 hours a month. :)

Here are the reasons why I love going to the spa (aside form being treated like a Princess!):

Going to the spa relieves stress, addressing problem areas with the body massage (for me its my lower back with all that sitting) and for that necessary moment of peace and quiet away from the city life. A time to relax and rejuvenate our tired bodies. A good facial also deep cleanses our pores–removing blackheads, acne, whiteheads–and leaves our faces smooth and hydrated.

Spa Riviera offers everything to pamper our body from head to toe at a very comforting and soothing environment. We’re going to try their back scrub and foot scrub next month. The attendants are very courteous and they make sure that we get what we came for. We really get our money’s worth everytime. And we will keep coming back. That’s for sure.

My Sunday: Faith, School, Mamang, Gloria and E-VAT

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Posted on 22nd July 2008 by Mary Jane in Fixations | Religion

Yesterday was Sunday and it was my parent’s schedule to hold their weekly household prayer meeting at our home. My parents are members of Couples for Christ-Oton Chapter. I had to do a major clean-up of our house especially the living room. I had to get the dust off the furnitures, wax the floor and put everything back to their proper places. Having four younger brothers in the house and all of them going to school, imagine the mess they make. I used to clean the house everyday but these days I do it like once a week. :)

Its not because I’ve become lazy but I work at night right? So I’m already tired when I get home and I only have the strength to take a bath , brush my teeth and head off to bed. That’s why when I do have the time to clean up, its like a tornado went through our house and messed everything up. Its that BAD. :)

Anyway its worth it when I see the satisfaction and smiles on my brothers’ faces when they see the house spotless again. Although it won’t take them two days to turn the house upside down again.

At lunch, my Mamang lectured my three younger brothers about LIFE. She told them, Vinboy in particular, to study hard, finish college and find a job if they want to have their own business and if they want to be their own boss. She told the three of them also that if they want to, they could work abroad. Because the Philippines is just not the country with many opportunities anymore. She said: “Kung gusto niyo mag-asenso, skwela kamo maayo. Pangita kamo sang maayo nga obra sa sagwa sang Pilipinas. Kay hindi kamo magmanggaranon diri, gin-ubos na ni Gloria kawat ang tanan nga manggad sang Pilipinas kag wala na nabilin para sa inyo . Tapos, balik kamo diri patindog negosyo nga kamo ang boss. Para makabulig man kamo sa Pilipinas.” (If you want to succeed in life, study hard. Find a really nice job outside the Philippines because if you want to get rich, you won’t get rich if you just stay here. Because Gloria has stolen all our country’s wealth already and there’s nothing left here for you. After that come back here and put up your own business, be your own boss. In doing that you may be able to help your country too.)

Gloria by the way to those who don’t know is the first name of our president-Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. What probably triggered my Mamang’s untimely lecture is the sudden increase of the prices of everything. From food, clothing, all commodities, especially the FARE. Having 4 children who goes to school, that’s a big blow to our budget.

This is caused by the soaring prices of gasoline in the world market and it has affected everything. It would have been okay if only our salaries increased as well. So its kind of hopeless to stay in this country for my Mamang. I can’t blame her for thinking that way. Gloria should listen to the people and get rid of E-VAT. NOW! It should make things easier for all of us.

I hate to admit this but I regret voting for Gloria. I had high expectations of her. But everything has gotten worse. She still has the time to redeem herself. Please listen to the people and stop thinking only of yourself!

With all of this happening, I’m still being optimistic. I know that this things, the problems our country is facing will be over, if not soon. Filipinos are strong people, we are fighters. We’ll get over this! My friends who know me well knows that as much as possible I don’t want to work abroad. I want to stay here in our country! If I do go to other countries it would be because I’m just traveling, not because I’ll be working there. I love it here. Gloria is giving me reasons to think twice about all of my decisions, my plans. She’s making all our lives suck! I can’t help thinking that Mamang is right. (sigh)

I have to stop ranting now. I should go back to work. Damn Gloria!

I still have the Mamma Mia bug!

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Posted on 19th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Arts | Fixations | My Bebeh

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Yep, I bought myself an ABBA cd and this really cool and cute ear cuff kind of earring like the one that Meryl Streep was wearing on that movie. After my shift yesterday, I met up with my bebeh for breakfast then we went to SM Delgado’s department store and browsed through the CDs on sale. I found this ABBA album which features a compilation of their greatest hits. My bebeh was actually supposed to upload ABBA’s hits on my iPod but too bad his computer chose this time to break down. So because Mary Jane just can’t wait to hear those phenomenal chart-toppers I promptly bought myself a CD. I went home and listened to it before going to bed (which pumped me up instead of mellowing me down..haha) I sang and danced a little to their music (yeah, a “little”). :)

I also bought this cool ear-cuff from Unisilver which is a curved band of metal that is pressed onto the helix of the ear. I have to pinch it hard to make sure that it stays in place (It was kind of painful at first but I got used to it eventually). I actually wanted my ear pierced at the helix and wear a stud or clip-on earrings but Tim won’t let me. He says I will look like a punk and people are going to think that I’m a drug addict or something. It has so many negative connotations.

Oh well, I just have to content myself with a “non-pierce” earring. Anyway its not that bad-looking right? What do you think? ;)

By the way, the butterfly earring I’m wearing was bought by my bebeh about a couple of months ago. Goes well with the ear-cuff. :)

Meet Monica!

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Posted on 19th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Fixations | Friends | My Job

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I don’t know if people have noticed but I’ve been talking about Monica in some of my posts. She’s a very close friend and we’ve been through some ups and downs. She’s a great friend. She’s been there for me whenever I need her and I wish she considers me a good friend too.:)

Love yah Nicay!

Here we are in the hallway of our office building:

We’re going to Spa Riviera again later today after our shift! Yehey!

I really need to pamper my body more often. Need to release the stress. I’m so excited to have that sauna, steam bath, foot spa and body massage! ;)

Fear of Being Alone

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Posted on 16th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Fixations | Random

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Shey shared with me a video of Lori and George Schappell singing ‘Fear of Being Alone’ and I also would like to share it with everyone who stumbles upon my blog.

Just click this link: “Fear of Being Alone”

Lori and George Schappell are conjoined twins born on September 18, 1961. They’re from Reading, Pennsylvania and are American entertainers. George Schappell was born Dori Schapell, and was known for several years as Reba Schapell.

Here’s the lyrics of the song:

Reba Schappell – The Fear Of Being Alone

We ordered up one more bottle of wine
You told me your story I thought about mine
You said when you lost her you lost everything
It all started having a familiar ring

So I asked you to take me some place quiet
We wound up at the river for the rest of the night
Somewhere around the break of day
I could hear it coming from a mile away

So don't say that word
Not the one we both heard too much
You may think you do but you don't
It's just the fear of being alone

Reckless hearts can clear a path
Wider than a hurricane's aftermath
We've both traveled down that road
Where in the name of love anything goes

So don't say that word
Not the one we both heard too much
You may think you do but you don't
It's just the fear of being alone

Like a child in the night
With no one to hold you
And tell you everything's gonna be all right

I must admit it's been fun
But that's no reason to jump the gun
If this is real time will tell
So let me bite my tongue and remind myself

So don't say that word
Not the one we both heard too much
You may think you do but you don't
It's just the fear of being alone

ABBA and the Movie Mamma Mia!

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Posted on 16th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Comedy | Fixations | Movies | Music

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I grew up listening to ABBA’s songs. Actually I grew up listening to the Beatles, the BeeGees, the Carpenters, Eagles, Chicago, Kenny Rogers, Dr. Hook and other popular bands in the 70s and 80s. My parents are big fans of classic country and rock bands, especially my father. The group I particularly like listening to is ABBA. I love their songs. Its not like the songs of today which have mostly ‘shallow’ lyrics. Their songs describe life. They talk about everything we go through everyday. People can “relate” to their songs. And I think that’s the reason why they became so popular during their time, that’s the 1970s and even up until now.

ABBA is a Swedish pop group composed of four members; two guys and two gals. They are Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Bjorn Ulvaeus. What I know about their group I learned from Papang. Benny Andersson actually co-produced the film version of the musical Mamma Mia! Thank God he did! :)

Mamma Mia made me feel good!

And based on Monica and the other movie-goers that watched the movie the same time as we did, they obviously enjoyed it too. And I based it on the reactions that I heard while Monica and I were on our way out.

We watched this movie last evening at SM City before our shift. I was with Monica because Tim’s at Cebu attending one of their company seminars. We opted for the last full show so we can come in on time for our shift which starts at 11 PM (Its 8 AM Pacific Standard Time). Mamma Mia! is a film adaptation of the West End stage musical, based on the songs of ABBA. The title of the film comes from the group’s 1975 chart-topper “Mamma Mia.” It was produced by Universal Pictures in partnership with Playtone and Littlestar.

Meryl Streep heads the cast of the film, playing the role of single mother Donna Sheridan. Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard play the three potential fathers to Donna’s daughter Sophie Amanda Seyfried. Imagine Meryl Streep’s “iciness” at The Devil Wears Prada and then imagine her singing, dancing and playing around. I really admire her versatility. And now imagine Pierce Brosnan’s “coolness” as the secret agent James Bond and doing the same things as Meryl in this movie. Plus Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard also romping around! God you’ll really get your money’s worth. I didn’t even know that these four actors can sing! Amanda Seyfried also did well as Sophie.

Today, I’m campaigning for everyone, particularly my officemates to watch this movie. They had to endure my ranting for the whole day especially Nang Cat and Abert who are both sitting beside me. Call me OA or whatever you like, basta nami guid ya ang Mamma Mia! ;)

You’ve got to watch it too to know what I mean and to know that I’m not over-exaggerating. You’ll miss 1/10 of your life if you won’t! ;)

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