A Matter of Perspective

Oh dear... another Bloxster maintenance bug. Now, I've lost most of my old posts. I'm just left with only nine and that irritates the hell out of me. Sheesh!  

What's next bloxster? I really am seriously considering of transferring our blog to a different host now. Problem is, I have no idea how to retrieve all those previous posts. Ayayay...

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Did the cache thing and was only able to recover a few entries. *Sigh* That's a year's worth of online journal entries down the drain! For those who regularly visit our blog, please be informed that I have decided to temporarily stop posting here at bloxster due to this unfortunate turn of events. However, this does not mean I will stop blogging anymore. You can now update your links to new blog here. I'm still hoping I can retrieve those old posts though. But I'm not entirely optimistic about that at this point.

In a couple of hours from now, J and I will embark on our trip to Manila. First stop, of course, is Sydney. We'll be taking the bus that'll take us from Canberra to Sydney and will be staying there overnight to get some rest. Tomorrow, we're off to Manila. Woohoo!!! 

As a result, this blog will be on hiatus for the entire time we will be on holidays. I can still try though to post a thing or two (whether here or in other bloggers' sites) during this time but I'm not promising anything. We'll be back in Canberra after the New Year. And so, as early as now, we'd like to greet everyone an advance Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hope you guys will enjoy the holiday season as much as we sure will.

With November drawing to a close soon, we are starting to definitely feel the heat here in Oz. Summertime is no doubt here already!

I never imagined I'd ever really get a chance to wear my tank tops and shorts again. These days, I've shelved in my PJs and long-sleeved tees in the closet.

The heat here is nothing like back home. In the Philippines, it can get very hot but at the same time humid. Over here, the heat is so dry that you don't break a sweat even if it's in the mid-30's. It's like being placed in an oven. And the sun really hurts your skin. You'd really need to wear sunblock to protect yourself.

Oh and one more thing, the flies!!! Yes, it's fly season here and they're really terrible because they stick on you like crazy and go for the moist parts of your face. They come in 'bangaw' sizes as well! What a nuisance! I guess there goes any plans for having any picnics outdoors.

ADSL Update:
We're finally back online! Yehey! J came home early today after donating his blood at Red Cross and called up our ISP to follow up on our ADSL connection. A little adjustment in their system here and there, and we now have faster (and better!) access to the net. At least, that's all settled now. Back to surfing... 

Idol Update:
And the winner is...

It must have been a close fight between Jessica and Damien last night but I think it was Damien's maturity and versatility that saw him through the end.

What the hell is wrong with Bloxster?!?!? The blogs that hold my links and contact page are now gone and they did not even have the decency to inform me beforehand about their sudden deletion.  

Unfortunately, I have not saved back-up files of their templates. What irritates me more is that all those bookmarked links (which took me months to accumulate) might have been forever deleted into oblivion. Crap!  

I've already emailed Support to alert them of this 'tragedy' and I am very much hoping they can do something about it fast. Otherwise... I might as well transfer to another site who can host this blog more efficiently.  

As of this writing, it is zero degrees celsius outside. No wonder, we're freezing our butts off! It is the middle of winter after all. I'm just glad I was able to make it this far inspite of the extreme cold weather conditions here (at least as far as I am concerned).

Have you ever seen frost? I've seen frost several times already even when it was still Autumn. From afar, you can see the football fields seemingly dusted with a layer of white powder. Up close, it looks like this.

Looks unreal noh? And these pictures were taken just this morning. Can you imagine what it could have looked like earlier with negative four as the temperature? Fact is, living in Canberra at the moment is almost like being in one gigantic freezer. Hehehe...

I have been in Oz for almost three months now and have majorly been dependent on J for transportation. For some reason (there always seems to be a reason), the weekend is always filled with activities and J cannot teach me how to commute via the buses here in Canberra. Last Saturday, J finally put his foot down and decided to postpone all errands so that he can finally teach me the transportation system here.

It's really quite easy. A big help is the Action website that tells you all you need to know about commuting. You can even buy your bus tickets online. It's that efficient. All you really need to know is the bus schedule and at what time the bus passes the stop nearest you. We actually missed the first bus because we clearly underestimated this schedule. Obviously they were almost always on time so we had to make sure we leave our house at least ten minutes before the time the bus passes. Since it was a weekend, we had to wait another hour for the next bus to come (On weekdays, the bus comes every half hour). Lesson learned!    

The rates are very reasonable as well. They just charge you a flat rate of AU$2.50 per adult. It doesn't matter which part of the route you get off. You can also purchase a prepaid bus ticket and just swipe it everytime you board the bus. This saves you a lot from the hassle of rummaging through your bag for change or waiting for the bus driver to give you your change.

Now I am much more mobile. Going to the malls is so much easier because all bus interchanges are located behind the malls. Hmm.. now, that's a thought. Maybe when I'm really bored, I'll just go to the malls to while the time away.

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J now lets me take the car two blocks away from our house. Woohoo!  Although it isn't too far a distance, it pretty much allows me to practise my stop-look-drive skills. Next week, J promised to let me drive around the suburb for a good two hours. I'm both nervous and excited! 

Yeah, and they say we are poor.

But with the opening of the SM Mall of Asia, malling has definitely been taken to a higher and different level of experience. Ironically, we are the land of malls. Good malls, I might add. And yet our economy is still struggling.

The malls here in Oz, on the other hand, are different -- not as gigantic and as numerous as those in Manila. Stores here close at five in the afternoon, except on Fridays (they close at 9PM). If you're a mallrat, you most probably will not enjoy the malls here.

I miss malling in the Philippines. It is a culture all its own.

I just wanted to share something that was forwarded to me by my aunt thru e-mail. I got a good laugh reading it! Found out why. 

There was once a man and woman who had been married for more than 60 years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

 

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $25,000.

 

He asked her about the contents. "When we were to be married," she said, "my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll."

 

The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness.

 

"Honey," he said, "that explains the dolls, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?"

 

"Oh," she said, "that's the money I made from selling all the dolls..."

Too bad I don't know how to crochet a single darn doll.