This blog will be down for about the next two weeks. My computer conked out (so I'm using my Mom's at the office right now), and the new one will probably be usable two weeks from now. I could, of course, come to my Mom's office everyday and use hers, but it wouldn't be very dignified to do that. :D

I have lots to say and do, and unfortunately, no time to do or say it.

Oh well. 'Til next time, everyone. Sorry about the delays on skins I'm working on, and other things.

p.s. And thanks to everyone who sent comforting words to my sister. She's better now, and her friend was just buried today.



I haven't been around here for a while. Tests, procrastination, and other things got in the way. I have tons of stuff (ok, maybe not literally tons) to talk about, but they're all overshadowed by what happened to one of my sister's best friends this morning.

I guess that's how death is actually: so unexpected and so senseless.

The whole thing was quite a whirl actually. It all started when Daphne got a call from her weeping school advisers at 2 am. They asked her to check the radio for news on her friend's house that caught fire with her friend trapped in it. We turned on the radio to hear her friend's mom hysterically talking about how no one was left, about how her kids were supposed to graduate.

And that's when Daphne started to cry with painful sobs. My parents called the fire brigade and her advisers ran to the scene. Eventually, it was confirmed that yes, her best friend and six other people had died.

I had to cry too. This girl was my seatmate in high school Chinese classes (I was a dropout that was classmates with my sister, LOL.). She had a really sunny disposition, and now she was just gone. And really, when you see your sister curled up into a ball on the bed repeating the words "And we thought we'd all graduate...", you try not to cry.

We ended up sleeping when the sun was practically up with my sister's other friends calling and crying.

The next morning, we were all pretty disoriented from lack of sleep. In fact, I remember waking up this morning after less than two hours of sleep and sitting around in a daze. I then shuffled to my Mom's bathroom, knocked on the door, and asked her what I was supposed to do. She calmly told me to shower.

We then attended their baccalaureate service. Generally, these services are happy with graduates laughing and excited about leaving school. This particular service was filled with teary eyes, wet hankies, and the funniest thing: a quiet peace. Dexter (church friend of mine who is Daphne's classmate) led the congregation as we sang songs, and you could see how on fire he was for everyone to really make our lives worthwhile while we're here. I remember thinking Thank you, God, for helping him. That's not him speaking; it's You. And that's exactly what Dexter told me when we met at the funeral home later.

We were looking at all the practically barbecued bodies waiting to be cremated. It was terrible to see how changed they are, and to realize how trapped they must have felt. I shuddered seeing one of their black hands extending out of the sheet. I didn't even go in the room, but Daphne saw her friend, bones and all. It definitely wasn't pretty.

But somehow, there was still that peace. Daphne mentioned a song sung at church last night and how she just felt it was true for her best friend and everyone else who died.


We remembered how her thin best friend often joked about getting fatter in the future. We figure God might give her a bigger body in heaven. And though it's hard for them right now, though her Mom is still in hysterics, we just know that God has a purpose. Like their teacher said this morning: she's tasting the greatest glory that we can't even dream about. And they're with Him now.



We sang a great song in our Youth Meeting tonight. It's not that I've never heard this song before, but I only really understood the lyrics tonight. Have you ever tried that: when you've heard a song over and over but you only really "get" it much later? Like somehow, the lyrics become your words and you actually mean what you're singing?

Well, anyway, here it is!


It just really hit me that I should love God whether things are good or bad. Circumstances should not change the way I feel, and I should praise Him as much as I can.

Especially these days: it's finals again, people.

I did find the time to revamp my Friendster account with some chickens I drew. :D


I basically drew on paper again, scanned it, and colored it on Photoshop.

I guess that's about it. Back to studying for now... X)



This post will be quick.

I'll have more time to blog next week when most of my finals are over. And then after that... it's summer vacation! Hooray! :)

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, here are some tidbits to tide you over until then.


It's a cute chair display at the mall yesterday! It kinda makes me want to be a kid again. I don't remember having any chairs with different animal designs back then.

Anyway, in preparation for finals (sort-of like the eye before the storm), my friends and I stopped at the mall for lunch and some games in the arcade.


Arn2x also got me into a game of air hockey. All my pictures from this episode were pretty blurred. I was moving too much, I guess. Too busy blocking Arn's shots. :)


Basically, we hung around for about an hour or so. It's funny looking back that a proper trip with high school friends to the mall lasted the whole afternoon or almost the whole day. Now, we get the same amount of enjoyment for barely an hour.

Maybe we're more busy these days?

I just came back from a great dinner with my uncle, my Mom, and my sister. My Dad's out of town but we still had a lot of fun.



It was pretty cool, one of those shabu-shabu places. It's a Filipino term that means you cook your meals before you eat them. In other words, you order raw meat and other stuff, and put them all together in a pot over a stove. I think I've mentioned it before.

This was pretty authentic though. We really grilled the meat on charcoal. Generally, grilling involves a lot of smoke. This time though, the smoke was sucked in a pipe under the charcoal pit, and didn't bother us at all. Cool, huh?

Or maybe I'm only fascinated because I'm an engineering student.



The food was great, so great that I ate it all before remembering to take good pictures of it. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

Anyway, the meat was chewy and great with the sauce provided. You roll it up in some lettuce (or some other green leafy vegetable) before eating it. It meant eating healthy at the same time. I consumed more than one really large plate of leaves though. And I mean really large. It was bigger than a dinner plate.

In short, I'm full now.

My sister asked me to revamp her Friendster profile (nicely reminding me about it everyday haha). Here's the end product:


I worked pretty hard on it (this is my sister, after all). I also submitted a new Relient K skin to my blogskins account.


I was going to submit it last week to coincide with their album release. But I didn't have much time to do it (worked on it for fifteen-to-thirty-minute intervals last week after studying and everything). I've never really done band skins before. It's kind-of grainy and hm... strange. Opinions, anyone?

I guess that's it for now. I'm getting sleepy and class is early tomorrow.

Bye, everyone! Until next time!



The title says it all.

The weekend was a great break from the whole school thing. We were all tired.

Thank God summer vacation's almost coming.

Last Friday night, I went with Judy and Ghe (church friends) to visit other church friends we had not seen in a while. A driver from church usually shuttles us around when we do this but we happened to lack a driver that time. So yours truly drove in my trusty CRV. It was funny how I sometimes got lost and we would circle around until we found some familiar spot.

I am so glad I live in a city that isn't that big. It means that if you get lost, you can keep driving straight and you'll eventually reach some place you know. :D

It was fun. We got to talk and pray with people, and we even ate fries. Ghe had to feed me though since my hands were on the wheel.

Here's a picture we didn't take at the time but still has us in it. Just so people who've never met me (or them) can picture what I'm talking about.


I spent Saturday morning with my Mom surfing the internet. We had a great time just acting silly and doing whatnot. We actually don't do this very often; my Mom usually works 12 hours a day, six days a week. But since she was sick at home, well... :D

She cooked some more, by the way (refer to last post for more on this): cabbage, spare ribs in soup, fried eggs, corned beef, and some other stuff. She's really bored.

I also went out with Judy Saturday afternoon. We ate, walked around, and crashed a youth event that seemed fun. We left the event early though when they started playing games.

And we talked. A lot. It's funny how much girls actually talk. :)

Saturday evening's church meeting was pretty jittery for me. I was going to interpret the speaker for the first time. In other words, he'd speak in Chinese and I'd have to translate it in English for other people to understand, LOL. I was so worried I'd forget the right words or make a lot of mistakes. I kept praying and reciting a lot of Bible verses about faith and being able to do anything. Dexter, a friend, sat behind me and just kept saying "You can do it, Daisy, you can do it!"

And I did do it. It felt so freeing to be doing something scary the right way. Wow. Thank you, God. I occasionally laughed at the front though because I just couldn't believe I was there. Translating. :D

So we had dinner with my cousins after that.


That's what I ate but I'm sorry to say I didn't get very good pictures. I took one of the pie before I opened it, and was going to take another one after I ate the pastry. But I was so hungry that I forgot. X)

Oops.

It was good though. The pastry was so airy and filled with home-cooked goodness, while the chicken mixture inside had tasty spices.

So what else? I made and submitted a new blog design!


I spent about six hours on this skin for a vintage blog design competition. It's out on the internet now for all to see. It was a lot of fun. It would be nice to win the contest, but I don't really have to. :)

By the way, sorry about the really long post. I just don't think I'll be updating in a while so I'm dumping it all out now. Terrible, really.

Oh yes, I'm looking forward to Relient K's new album. I won't be able to get it this March 6 (because it's a fat chance that it'll get here the same day it comes out in the States) but I'm excited!




This is the CD's available single so far. I wonder how the rest of the CD will be like.

Finally, I'm done. I can hear all the readers sighing now.



Just passing by with a few tidbits from my life in general at 1 am. I figured I'd better keep my blog alive through the exams, lab work, blog designs, and utter craziness.

Anyone want to play a game?

Above is a doodly sketch I made of some branches and ferns outside one of my classes. Zyx (one of my classmates) encrypted thirteen names into the drawing: Daisy, Zyx, Arn, Joni, Hazel, Chloe, Teof, Kim, Suy2, Lay, Moses, Fred, & Nice. If you want to try looking for them, just click on the image above to make it bigger. I purposely uploaded a large file for people who feel like playing games because they have nothing better to do.

My name's the easiest to find. :D Comment or tag (or basically get hold of me) if you want the answers.

I'm just contributing some amusement to people who come by to read this blog often. A measly reward, isn't it?

And Adam, if you are reading, yes, there are MORE doodles!

This piece of yellow paper was put to good(?) use by friends during Chemistry class a few days ago. We weren't slacking off though; we really paid attention in class. Arn2x even drew a little illustration on the upper left of said paper of our lesson that day. (Boring students, aren't we? Even our doodles have "school" written all over them.)

On other new things in my life, my parents are both recovering from injuries. My Mom got a little surgery and has to stay at home for about ten days. At first, she enjoyed being at home for a change. She watched a lot of TV, slept, ate, and even surfed the net on my computer. But being the workaholic that she is, it wasn't bound to last. The doctor told her to rest, but is she resting?

I'll let you answer that question for yourself. She did cook two vegetable dishes, some sausages, ground pork, and porkchops while she was here. She also baked an angel food cake, steamed sweet corn, put up some collapsible shelves, and made leche flan. If there had been any pie crusts in the supermarket (they were out of stock), my Mom would have made pies by now.

My father on the other hand has a slightly swollen leg and a pronounced limp. He was playing golf with his friends when they got into their usual pranks. Yup, for those of you who know my father, he plays pranks. Apparently, he threw water at a friend who then chased him around the course with an umbrella. His friend ended up poking him on the leg (LOL) without meaning to. So now, my Dad's recovering and his friend feels guilty. Who says only kids know how to horse around?

Oh yeah, and I hung out with my cousins and some friends this weekend.



It was fun! Some of us watched A Little Princess based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and I cried a lot. It's one of my favorite movies. :)

Oh yes, for those who have time to kill, check out my DeviantArt account. I've been actually submitting things lately, and they're not half-bad.

Until next time, OK? Bye!

This blog will be down for about the next two weeks. My computer conked out (so I'm using my Mom's at the office right now), and the new one will probably be usable two weeks from now. I could, of course, come to my Mom's office everyday and use hers, but it wouldn't be very dignified to do that. :D

I have lots to say and do, and unfortunately, no time to do or say it.

Oh well. 'Til next time, everyone. Sorry about the delays on skins I'm working on, and other things.

p.s. And thanks to everyone who sent comforting words to my sister. She's better now, and her friend was just buried today.



I haven't been around here for a while. Tests, procrastination, and other things got in the way. I have tons of stuff (ok, maybe not literally tons) to talk about, but they're all overshadowed by what happened to one of my sister's best friends this morning.

I guess that's how death is actually: so unexpected and so senseless.

The whole thing was quite a whirl actually. It all started when Daphne got a call from her weeping school advisers at 2 am. They asked her to check the radio for news on her friend's house that caught fire with her friend trapped in it. We turned on the radio to hear her friend's mom hysterically talking about how no one was left, about how her kids were supposed to graduate.

And that's when Daphne started to cry with painful sobs. My parents called the fire brigade and her advisers ran to the scene. Eventually, it was confirmed that yes, her best friend and six other people had died.

I had to cry too. This girl was my seatmate in high school Chinese classes (I was a dropout that was classmates with my sister, LOL.). She had a really sunny disposition, and now she was just gone. And really, when you see your sister curled up into a ball on the bed repeating the words "And we thought we'd all graduate...", you try not to cry.

We ended up sleeping when the sun was practically up with my sister's other friends calling and crying.

The next morning, we were all pretty disoriented from lack of sleep. In fact, I remember waking up this morning after less than two hours of sleep and sitting around in a daze. I then shuffled to my Mom's bathroom, knocked on the door, and asked her what I was supposed to do. She calmly told me to shower.

We then attended their baccalaureate service. Generally, these services are happy with graduates laughing and excited about leaving school. This particular service was filled with teary eyes, wet hankies, and the funniest thing: a quiet peace. Dexter (church friend of mine who is Daphne's classmate) led the congregation as we sang songs, and you could see how on fire he was for everyone to really make our lives worthwhile while we're here. I remember thinking Thank you, God, for helping him. That's not him speaking; it's You. And that's exactly what Dexter told me when we met at the funeral home later.

We were looking at all the practically barbecued bodies waiting to be cremated. It was terrible to see how changed they are, and to realize how trapped they must have felt. I shuddered seeing one of their black hands extending out of the sheet. I didn't even go in the room, but Daphne saw her friend, bones and all. It definitely wasn't pretty.

But somehow, there was still that peace. Daphne mentioned a song sung at church last night and how she just felt it was true for her best friend and everyone else who died.


We remembered how her thin best friend often joked about getting fatter in the future. We figure God might give her a bigger body in heaven. And though it's hard for them right now, though her Mom is still in hysterics, we just know that God has a purpose. Like their teacher said this morning: she's tasting the greatest glory that we can't even dream about. And they're with Him now.



We sang a great song in our Youth Meeting tonight. It's not that I've never heard this song before, but I only really understood the lyrics tonight. Have you ever tried that: when you've heard a song over and over but you only really "get" it much later? Like somehow, the lyrics become your words and you actually mean what you're singing?

Well, anyway, here it is!


It just really hit me that I should love God whether things are good or bad. Circumstances should not change the way I feel, and I should praise Him as much as I can.

Especially these days: it's finals again, people.

I did find the time to revamp my Friendster account with some chickens I drew. :D


I basically drew on paper again, scanned it, and colored it on Photoshop.

I guess that's about it. Back to studying for now... X)



This post will be quick.

I'll have more time to blog next week when most of my finals are over. And then after that... it's summer vacation! Hooray! :)

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, here are some tidbits to tide you over until then.


It's a cute chair display at the mall yesterday! It kinda makes me want to be a kid again. I don't remember having any chairs with different animal designs back then.

Anyway, in preparation for finals (sort-of like the eye before the storm), my friends and I stopped at the mall for lunch and some games in the arcade.


Arn2x also got me into a game of air hockey. All my pictures from this episode were pretty blurred. I was moving too much, I guess. Too busy blocking Arn's shots. :)


Basically, we hung around for about an hour or so. It's funny looking back that a proper trip with high school friends to the mall lasted the whole afternoon or almost the whole day. Now, we get the same amount of enjoyment for barely an hour.

Maybe we're more busy these days?

I just came back from a great dinner with my uncle, my Mom, and my sister. My Dad's out of town but we still had a lot of fun.



It was pretty cool, one of those shabu-shabu places. It's a Filipino term that means you cook your meals before you eat them. In other words, you order raw meat and other stuff, and put them all together in a pot over a stove. I think I've mentioned it before.

This was pretty authentic though. We really grilled the meat on charcoal. Generally, grilling involves a lot of smoke. This time though, the smoke was sucked in a pipe under the charcoal pit, and didn't bother us at all. Cool, huh?

Or maybe I'm only fascinated because I'm an engineering student.



The food was great, so great that I ate it all before remembering to take good pictures of it. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

Anyway, the meat was chewy and great with the sauce provided. You roll it up in some lettuce (or some other green leafy vegetable) before eating it. It meant eating healthy at the same time. I consumed more than one really large plate of leaves though. And I mean really large. It was bigger than a dinner plate.

In short, I'm full now.

My sister asked me to revamp her Friendster profile (nicely reminding me about it everyday haha). Here's the end product:


I worked pretty hard on it (this is my sister, after all). I also submitted a new Relient K skin to my blogskins account.


I was going to submit it last week to coincide with their album release. But I didn't have much time to do it (worked on it for fifteen-to-thirty-minute intervals last week after studying and everything). I've never really done band skins before. It's kind-of grainy and hm... strange. Opinions, anyone?

I guess that's it for now. I'm getting sleepy and class is early tomorrow.

Bye, everyone! Until next time!



The title says it all.

The weekend was a great break from the whole school thing. We were all tired.

Thank God summer vacation's almost coming.

Last Friday night, I went with Judy and Ghe (church friends) to visit other church friends we had not seen in a while. A driver from church usually shuttles us around when we do this but we happened to lack a driver that time. So yours truly drove in my trusty CRV. It was funny how I sometimes got lost and we would circle around until we found some familiar spot.

I am so glad I live in a city that isn't that big. It means that if you get lost, you can keep driving straight and you'll eventually reach some place you know. :D

It was fun. We got to talk and pray with people, and we even ate fries. Ghe had to feed me though since my hands were on the wheel.

Here's a picture we didn't take at the time but still has us in it. Just so people who've never met me (or them) can picture what I'm talking about.


I spent Saturday morning with my Mom surfing the internet. We had a great time just acting silly and doing whatnot. We actually don't do this very often; my Mom usually works 12 hours a day, six days a week. But since she was sick at home, well... :D

She cooked some more, by the way (refer to last post for more on this): cabbage, spare ribs in soup, fried eggs, corned beef, and some other stuff. She's really bored.

I also went out with Judy Saturday afternoon. We ate, walked around, and crashed a youth event that seemed fun. We left the event early though when they started playing games.

And we talked. A lot. It's funny how much girls actually talk. :)

Saturday evening's church meeting was pretty jittery for me. I was going to interpret the speaker for the first time. In other words, he'd speak in Chinese and I'd have to translate it in English for other people to understand, LOL. I was so worried I'd forget the right words or make a lot of mistakes. I kept praying and reciting a lot of Bible verses about faith and being able to do anything. Dexter, a friend, sat behind me and just kept saying "You can do it, Daisy, you can do it!"

And I did do it. It felt so freeing to be doing something scary the right way. Wow. Thank you, God. I occasionally laughed at the front though because I just couldn't believe I was there. Translating. :D

So we had dinner with my cousins after that.


That's what I ate but I'm sorry to say I didn't get very good pictures. I took one of the pie before I opened it, and was going to take another one after I ate the pastry. But I was so hungry that I forgot. X)

Oops.

It was good though. The pastry was so airy and filled with home-cooked goodness, while the chicken mixture inside had tasty spices.

So what else? I made and submitted a new blog design!


I spent about six hours on this skin for a vintage blog design competition. It's out on the internet now for all to see. It was a lot of fun. It would be nice to win the contest, but I don't really have to. :)

By the way, sorry about the really long post. I just don't think I'll be updating in a while so I'm dumping it all out now. Terrible, really.

Oh yes, I'm looking forward to Relient K's new album. I won't be able to get it this March 6 (because it's a fat chance that it'll get here the same day it comes out in the States) but I'm excited!




This is the CD's available single so far. I wonder how the rest of the CD will be like.

Finally, I'm done. I can hear all the readers sighing now.



Just passing by with a few tidbits from my life in general at 1 am. I figured I'd better keep my blog alive through the exams, lab work, blog designs, and utter craziness.

Anyone want to play a game?

Above is a doodly sketch I made of some branches and ferns outside one of my classes. Zyx (one of my classmates) encrypted thirteen names into the drawing: Daisy, Zyx, Arn, Joni, Hazel, Chloe, Teof, Kim, Suy2, Lay, Moses, Fred, & Nice. If you want to try looking for them, just click on the image above to make it bigger. I purposely uploaded a large file for people who feel like playing games because they have nothing better to do.

My name's the easiest to find. :D Comment or tag (or basically get hold of me) if you want the answers.

I'm just contributing some amusement to people who come by to read this blog often. A measly reward, isn't it?

And Adam, if you are reading, yes, there are MORE doodles!

This piece of yellow paper was put to good(?) use by friends during Chemistry class a few days ago. We weren't slacking off though; we really paid attention in class. Arn2x even drew a little illustration on the upper left of said paper of our lesson that day. (Boring students, aren't we? Even our doodles have "school" written all over them.)

On other new things in my life, my parents are both recovering from injuries. My Mom got a little surgery and has to stay at home for about ten days. At first, she enjoyed being at home for a change. She watched a lot of TV, slept, ate, and even surfed the net on my computer. But being the workaholic that she is, it wasn't bound to last. The doctor told her to rest, but is she resting?

I'll let you answer that question for yourself. She did cook two vegetable dishes, some sausages, ground pork, and porkchops while she was here. She also baked an angel food cake, steamed sweet corn, put up some collapsible shelves, and made leche flan. If there had been any pie crusts in the supermarket (they were out of stock), my Mom would have made pies by now.

My father on the other hand has a slightly swollen leg and a pronounced limp. He was playing golf with his friends when they got into their usual pranks. Yup, for those of you who know my father, he plays pranks. Apparently, he threw water at a friend who then chased him around the course with an umbrella. His friend ended up poking him on the leg (LOL) without meaning to. So now, my Dad's recovering and his friend feels guilty. Who says only kids know how to horse around?

Oh yeah, and I hung out with my cousins and some friends this weekend.



It was fun! Some of us watched A Little Princess based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and I cried a lot. It's one of my favorite movies. :)

Oh yes, for those who have time to kill, check out my DeviantArt account. I've been actually submitting things lately, and they're not half-bad.

Until next time, OK? Bye!