Sunday, March 21, 2010

What Tagaytay's 8 Suites is like

For Nikki's wedding a few weeks ago, Vince and I stayed at a little boutique hotel with a quite prosaic name, 8 Suites.
The back of the hotel (the front view looked kinda ordinary). 
Can you see Vince waving?

We were supposed to stay in a hotel in Tagaytay Highlands (the wedding guests get discounts) but one look at the rustic-looking hotel and I looked somewhere else. Nothing against log furniture really but I prefer clean and elegant to organic and shabby.

The hotel sits on the edge of a steep hill that slopes down to Taal Lake. We can see the lake from our room but you have to climb down to the garden if you want to see the volcano.

Vince and me at the garden

And here's our room--all done up in chocolate hues. The rooms are large, with big beds and really fabulous pillows that I wanted to stuff into my suitcase and bring home. No worries--I'm no thief! I never could bring anything from the hotels I've stayed in. And I always fix the room before I leave--fluff up the pillows, fix the sheets, wipe down the bathroom. I know the staff cleans up after every guest leaves but I just can't bear the thought of people thinking, "What a messy bitch!" while I'm on my way home!

Here's breakfast! Quite good but nothing special. What made it great was the fact that we ate it just outside our room, with the fresh breeze and sunshine seasoning our food with extra yumminess. When you live in the middle of Manila, fresh air and sunshine are pure luxury.

I wanted to show you a photo of Vince enjoying his breakfast but the background was bad—the room next to ours had an extremely loud party the night before and they left an awful mess outside their room (you can just see the soda can past Vince's left thumb). So I had to crop out most of the mess.

Aside from the fact you share balconies with other guests, what I didn't like about the hotel was the noise level. You can hear everything--doors slamming, people walking by, the staff talking to each other, and, worse, people partying! I was so angry, I called the front desk to complain only to be told that the offending party was the owner's kid and his/her friends. This, of course, made me angrier! As the owner's kid, he/she should be even more considerate of the hotel's guests. I definitely gave them a piece of my mind and soon enough, the party toned down. Yup, I'm a huge killjoy, folks.

So. much as I liked 8 Suites (the design, the food and the view, although the last isn't their doing), I think that's the last time I'll stay there. They really should fix the noise problem!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Plans to save the planet just went down the drain

Remember we sold our truck last year so that we can lessen our carbon footprint? Well, so much for saving the environment. With a baby coming soon, we're looking to buy a new car... and a truckload of new things.

The only mom in our staff, Joanna, advised that we'll need to buy a huge car. For the stroller, the car seat, the bottles, the milk, the diapers, the sterilizer, the everything a little person needs. My goodness, for such a tiny thing, it sure contributes to a lot of environmental waste!

Nikki, Joanna and her little Paolo, Coni, me, Kabbie and Lana

Joanna says that that baby carrier is the best thing ever. Well, I guess we gotta add that to the list of things to buy for the baby then. To be honest, there's no existing list yet. Even now, as people giddily ask what we're buying for the nursery and the baby, Vince and I just say, "Huh?" Nope, we haven't bought anything for the baby, except the camera—and that was on the to-buy list even before we got pregnant, so the Olympus EPL-1 is really for us not Jelly Bean.

But today we were at a car showroom and almost bought a car! At the last minute, we stopped ourselves and said, "We'll think about it," but we know we'll be back soon to buy anyway. I guess we're still fooling ourselves that we don't need a car for the baby.

Nope, not this one! That's a crazy car so we had to get a pic!

We're thinking of the new Mazda 2—cute like the Jelly Bean, but in green!

It's kinda weird really, having to swallow all our drivel about being enviro-conscious: "The earth is overpopulated! Save energy! Stop using cars! Walk! Commute!" We really tried, folks. But we'll still try by breastfeeding, accepting hand-me-downs from my sisters-in-law, trying out cloth diapers, etc. And we really don't want to get the baby stuff—I think it can be done; after all, both of us grew up with few clothes, toys and stuff. And we turned out okay.

While we are not interested in getting anything for the baby yet, we have been talking about other things, like how I'm so excited to teach it to read and Vince is excited to introduce the kid to music and sports. I've also been concerned about our health care so I'd browse medical and term life insurance quotes online sometimes. Vince, on the other hand, has begun wondering about good schools and tuition. We're very keen on the baby's education and welfare. But shopping for it? Not yet.

We figured we'd buy as we need, and I know every parent reading this is shaking their head and snickering, but if our parents were able to raise us with no strollers and fancy clothes and fab toys, I guess we can do the same with Jelly Bean, too. After all, Vince and I are very smart and sensible people. And we've gotten quite far using our heads. Right now, our heads tell us the baby shopping can wait.

Well, maybe we'll get the car anyway.  

UPDATE: We did buy the car, but we got the blue one because we had a boy!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Have you read "Vince's Life: The Wedding"?!


Weddings have been filling up my world lately, even in the books I'm reading! I just finished Vince's Life: The Wedding. It's the last book of the Vince's Life trilogy and, OMG, guys, you gotta gotta read it! I am sooooo in love right now. I am sooooo happy with how the story turned out.

Actually, I didn't know how the story was going to turn out because things were happening so fast and you never really know what's going to happen next and you're just sitting on the edge of your seat, turning the page as fast as you can because you're just dying to know how it's going to end! Ahhh, that Vince Teves, he really knows how to make girls hang on to his every word!

Get your copy of Vince's Life: The Wedding now. Available at all bookstores nationwide. I'm trying to get an interview with Vince, by the way! He's just very shy right now. Maybe if y'all buy his book and The Wedding makes it to Powerbooks' Best Seller list again, he'll grant us all a chat!

SPOILER ALERT IN COMMENTS SECTION. DO NOT LEAVE A COMMENT UNLESS YOU'VE READ THE FINAL BOOK!

Thanks for the blog love!

I've been telling you guys about my house in the newly revamped Female Network but I failed to mention that FN has included Topaz Horizon in its list of Blogs We Love! I know my screen cap is tiny but I swear to you that my blog is the very last on its list (it's alphabetical!) so do visit FN if you need convincing!

This blog also made it to All Women Stalk's list of 7 Best Blogs By Women. Wow! And I'm the only Filipina there! I feel like it's my birthday, people!

Thanks for the love. Now I have to make sure this blog gets better so your acknowledgment won't go to waste!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

We bought these instead

The home plan this year was to buy a new sofa. The sofa we have is from Vince's days as a bachelor. When we got married, I had it reupholstered and it now looks like this:


Thing is, when Vince bought the sofa from Our Home in 2002, it cost him just P10,000. When I had it reupholstered in 2007, it cost me P12,000. Vince thought that was ridiculous (but, hey, it looks much better!) so he's been bugging me to approve the purchase of a new sofa. The problem with the current situation is my husband's taste has vastly improved--Our Home just doesn't cut it anymore so he's been lusting for the contemporary sofas in BoConcept. Starting price for sofas in Bo's? P120,000! So I've been saying, "No, no, no!"


But the last time we visited Bo's, he fell in love--and I kinda did, too--with the Largo sofa above (the one we saw was a dark gold). It's this plush comfy sink-in-heaven sofa that also came with a price tag that was just unbelievable. Unbelievable! But... we decided to buy it anyway! Then the rising costs of my pregnancy and the realization that the baby will be one expensive critter made us rethink the sofa. So... good-bye perfect sofa!

Feeling very deprived is not a good feeling, however. So we logged onto Amazon and bought these instead:

Olympus PEN EPL-1--the camera Vince has been wanting to buy since we found out about Jelly Bean!

We bought it with the Panasonic LUMIX pancake lens, too.

Then Vince just had to buy this horrible thing: the BioShock 2 Big Daddy plush doll. It really gives me the creeps!

And I just had to buy these fantastic books:



I'm so excited for my books! They're all hardcover editions--and they're huge books! I can't wait! And, yes, they're for me, not for the Jelly Bean. Not to worry, if the Bean is anything like us, it will be devouring the books in the library in no time!

We used Johnny Air to have the stuff shipped here. We bought from Amazon before, you see, and the package of books Vince bought ended up in the post office some 20 weeks later. When we got it, the package had been tampered with and the books had been definitely looked through. So much for security.

But when I used Johnny Air to buy a few pairs of shoes, the shoes were delivered to the New York office in 3 days then to the Megamall office in 12 days, totaling 15 days from purchase to delivery. My package was also untouched. Fast and secure!

I'll give a report as soon as the stuff arrives--I'll tell you guys if the gadgets especially arrived safe and sound. Chuvaness told me that Johnny Air can be trusted absolutely (she buys her cameras from Amazon and uses Johnny Air, too!) so we're really keeping our fingers crossed that things will go well with our delivery. If so, then good-bye shopping malls!