Bitch red blog


Currently updating while my lips are stained bitch red. No apparent reason really, except for the fact that I am a big kid and find no greater thrill than playing with newly acquired things! I love me some new red lipstick, yo!

I'm in Manila, and have been for the past week and a half. I came here with the sole purpose of nursing my grandfather back to health, and it is for that reason that I tiptoed quietly into this country and told no friends of mine of my arrival. Scummy or wise? You decide.

No, but really, I love my pals here. I love the thrill of perpetual socialisation, the constant menagerie of faces faces faces, but I didn't want any distractions... save for seeing my papa and hitting my local fatness first.

Lolo has been doing much better. When I first arrived here, he was thin and frail (having lost 10lbs since the last of his surgeries), doused in black bruises (around the neck, chest, arms and thighs) from where he was operated on, sleepy all the time, and generally grumpy. He didn't speak much, on account of losing his voice from being operated on there, and he refused to eat, having lost his tastebuds, and subsequently his appetite.

I can happily say that after a week of constantly massaging his bruises and applying some trusty Arnica cream, they've disappeared for the most part. We've been fixing him his meal-replacement drink as well as attempting to coerce him to eat, and his appetite is slowly coming back, along with his voice and a jolly disposition. Today we went through his second cardio rehab session, and I am grateful to see the progress.

Anyhow, it's one in the morning. Gotta wake up in a few hours for a photographic adventure via Manila's rail stations tomorrow, so I leave with, you guessed it, a (nostalgic) picture dump.

I've just counted; I was in Manila four months ago, and it was a completely different experience then. Without further ado, here is a picture dump of Manila shennanigans from November 2009:














Yeah, not gonna lie, I had a blast and a ridiculously full three weeks. But I am enjoying my time here right now just the same, if not more so. I feel like I have a genuine purpose this time and its a worthwhile experience (:

Oh, and the following is completely irrelevant, but a little humour never hurt!

Why rainy days and Monday's don't really get me down.


Recuperation and reflection

I logged on to blogger and realised that I started crafting a post on Saturday morning. It went something like this:

Aside from regular binge-eating and admiring men with neat chin straps, there's not much I love more than my 9:30 am Saturday morning body pump class. 

Yep. That's all I had. Had I gotten around to completing the post, it would've eventuated into a tirade about the disgusting abundance of fit people in my district, which means a ridiculous lack of Saturday morning gym parking, which means I ended up missing body pump, which means I was severely cranky. So I drowned my sorrows in a large kebab and thirty falafels from the kebab shop on the corner... No, not really.

Anyway, my mother arrived back home yesterday. Not that you even knew she was gone. But she came bearing gifts for me, and oh, the inner child doth not protest! No, but the best gift was in the implication of the arrival - her being back home meant that Lolo was in a stable enough condition to leave behind. She and my aunt spent the past two weeks in Manila, with the majority of those nights sleeping in hospital, while Lolo underwent his surgeries. It's heartbreaking, seeing pictures of him so frail and so weak, black and blue from the operation and surrounded by unfriendly tubes. The important thing is he's stable now, but still so much weaker than when he first went into surgery. The period after his stent surgery was concerning - I'd receive txt updates from my mother talking of fevers and how his platelets kept dropping, but I am so relieved and thankful that he can rest at home now. And this is now my cue to board a plane, and take care of him and attempt to raise his spirits for the next few weeks until I start work. Hopefully by Wednesday I'm out of here.

Not gonna lie, I've been distracted and I've left this space for a solid half hour in an attempt to locate a picture of him from a happier time. I got carried away with looking through the entirety of Lolo's first-and-last-son, Paul's, wedding from July 2008.

Here is Lolo, beaming at his son, who is my uncle, but who I more fondly think of as a smelly older brother. 


And because I a) like to get nostalgic, b) never shared pictures from when the wedding back in June of 2008, and c) am a huge sucker for pretty visuals, without further ado, here are some snaps from beautiful Paulynn and handsome (just this once) Paul's wedding:






Spot my handsome grandfather lurking among the groomsmen :j


The next few are like a silent story:






My beautiful mother


Lolo and Lola


Sullen girl, bahaha


Mom's younger sister - my Aunt Arlene with Uncle Allan


Cooties, and the glorified sharing of :P




Familia!


And my favourite picture... Mama!


Whew, I feel good now. Perusing pretty pictures is therapeutic for me, all the more when I have good memories associated with them. 

I guess in short, much has happened since I last blogged. Nothing entirely dramatic like selling my sister to gypsies or realising I have cankles (I don't)... but I have been seeing lots of friendly faces, driving driving driving to undiscovered corners, and attending a fair share of twenty-firsts. I just didn't feel right about e-immortalising (emortalising?) the mirth these certain things have brought me, when there was a much more significant, much more real facet of my life surrounded by looming concern.

Anyhow, I will proceed to dump some imagery from small moments that brought a smile on my dial as of late.

Local pub merryment with the myspace crew. Not even gonna lie to you, Hilary and I were myspace pals from 5 years ago, and have been close ever since. Shaun also added me around that time, but we didn't meet IRL until a party of a mutual friend last year, and have become tight since. Oh, and Hil and Shaun were also myspace pals five years ago... The internets is epic.




THE BEST FUSH N CHUPS PLACE IN SYD, APPARENTLY:




Some great examples of why my sister is not blessed with the graces of handling a dslr. The man who is not me or Ross is the focus. Travesty, obvs.



Eh, slightly better.


So there. We have come to the completion of a sporadic entry. We've also come to the completion of another day... It's currently 11pm on Monday now. You see my commitment to blogging? I slave over an entry for a solid twelve hours. 

No, I am full of lies, filthy lies. 
I had important things to do today. By that I mean grocery shopping. And picking up Isabelle from school and driving her halfway across Sydney to her dance school because I am an amazing sibling, crafted only from the finest spandex.

Oh, don't worry. I didn't spend the next three hours curled into the foetal position in the car. Rossco is a fine sport and keeps me entertained / allows me to leech devastatingly on to his time during these Monday drives. Today we found ourselves in a bay, strumming along to French gypsy music and, you guessed it, camwhoring. But don't worry, I know what kind of fickle audience I have... a fickle audience who tires of my dumps (both image-wise and bowel-wise), so I wont share them now.

Perhaps tomorrow. But I think a '21st special' post is in order. Just so the rest of my friendly friends don't think I have something against validating them to the e-world.

Ciao!