all souls day

When people in the US are busy preparing for Halloween, people in the Philippines are busy preparing for All Saint’s Day/All Souls Day or Araw ng mga Patay. It is a day to commemorate the souls of departed loved ones. Almost everyone troops to the cemetery to bring flowers and offerings. It is also doubles as a time when you see most of your extended families. On the eve of the holiday some even sleep over at the gravesite of their loved ones to start cleaning and decorating them. You also see people go to Dapitan to buy highly affordable flowers to bring to the cemetery. This is also a time for others to go on holidays, especially as aside from the actual day, the eve of the holiday is usually declared a non-working holiday as well.

house hunting

Aside from the wedding itself, I’m sure our brothers are already thinking of after the wedding. Things like where they will live and start their married life. My brother-in-law would most likely continue living overseas but I’m still not sure if they will move into their own flat or continue living with their flatmates. Same goes for my brother. So if and when they do decide on their own flat or house then they would most probably start furnishing them as well. It’s a good thing there are a lot of furnishings (adirondack furniture anyone?) available from low-cost to real fancy ones. It would enable them to be within budget.

weddings

We have two weddings in the family next year. And we are so looking forward to going home and witnessing those special occasions. Especially excited too that the kiddos will be part of the entourage. It’s still a little more that a year to go so we haven’t made any definite plans yet. There are a coiple of events that we’d like to do but we’ll see if we can really make it happen. Back to the weddings, I’m not sure if they (the couples) have looked for their rings, they could certainly look at triton wedding bands. Though I am not sure what type of wedding bands they are looking for. If they do already decide to get the rings than that will be one item off the checklist.

paluwagan?

Whenever I come across the words payday loans, I can’t help but be transported back to when I was working and managing our office’s savings group or group mutual fund. We would pool money and people could take a small loan against it and pay it back with a small interest. And without fail, whenever it’s payday, someone would come up to me for a loan because they already spent their salaries on other things.

manny on jimmy kimmel

Manny on Jimmy Kimmel .. promoting his November 13 fight. After the interview he sings with fellow guest Will Ferrel :

benefits

Hubby was recently telling me that my MIL still hasn’t started receiving her pension from SSS (Philippine Social Security System) even though she has lodged her claim last year. The first time she did they discovered that there were some payment discrepancies but since my MIL still had the paperwork for the payments she submitted the forms to correct the records and then hoped that by doing so she would be able to start receiving her pension. But no, a year later she still hasn’t received a dime though she does have the figures of what she will be receiving it’s just her papers are still somewhere in the bureaucracy. Hopefully she will start to get the money before the year end. Can you just imagine if it was disability insurance that she was claiming? I don’t know if there are companies or organizations in Manila that can help you with the process of claiming from social security but these would probably be helpful in negotiating your way through all the mumbo jumbo they tell you. But then again it shouldn’t be hard to file the papers and get what you’re entitled to right?

Tory and Jason

They’re back in the Philippines and this is the second video they released on you tube. They tried selling taho (sweetened soy bean curd). See how they fared..

libre lang

Here is something I stumbled upon months ago but didn’t get time to blog abut it. These are two Americans (Tory and Jason) in the Philippines trying their hand at being taxi drivers.

I think it’s always a pleasant surprise to see and hear people from other countries speak Tagalog. The video was hilarious I really don’t think they would be getting any passengers what with their getup made only worse when they started shouting ‘libre na’ (free), haha! I found out that they were missionaries before and they’ve been coming and going to the Philippines for the past several years already. They are coming back to the Philippines. I think Tory is already in Manila with Jason following soon. They are planning to do another round of jobs, a lot of people are already tweeting them different suggestions – from selling taho (bean curd),  fish balls, driving passenger jeepneys and buses. Maybe they can be street vendors – the ones that rush to your car during stops and sell a bunch of stuff (like led headlamps, toys, bottled water, food, etc.). Looking forward to what they’ll do. You can follow them on twitter @PIJobexperiment.

A new chapter?

Yesterday, our new President was proclaimed – Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Cojuangco Aquino III. Although I wasn’t able to vote for him in the recent elections, our votes would have gone to him. I’m a little afraid for him though, with the HUGE expectation the people have of him to fix everything at once. So far he seems to be taking the right steps, we still have to see who he’ll put in his cabinet and what he’ll do with Vice-President Binay but I hope he does prove his mettle and bring about change for the next 6 years.

school

Ichi’s cousin recently graduated from UP College of Law. It feels like it was just yesterday when she was preparing for the Law Aptitude Examination to apply for entrance to the college (similar to LSAT preps in the US), now she’s doing Bar Review in preparation for the Philippine Bar Examinations this September. The Bar Exam is held over four Sundays with each day having specific subjects for testing. Good luck Dy!