our Knights Templar comrade, Fred Chen, suffered a stroke this morning. he's admitted at the Chinese General Hospital; he's still comatose.

please pray for him. thanks.

i'm in the market for a new mobile phone. i'm looking for something not too complicated or expensive, but still fun to play around with. an mp3 player on the phone would be nice. but basically i just want something that i can use for calls and SMS. XD

i'm looking at these three models:

Nokia 3110 Classic - i'm actually sick and tired of nokia (been using a toshiba vodafone for the past 2 years), but i saw this phone from a friend and it looks feature-packed for a good price. looks durable too.

Sony Ericsson W350 - this looks reeeeaaaally nice and i like the features. and it's not nokia. but it looks a bit fragile. browsing through the user feedback, a lot of people keep saying the flap (?) easily breaks.

Sony Ericsson K330 - this looks much more durable than the one above. AND it's not nokia (this is somewhat important to me, lol). but i'm not too sure about the features.

all these models cost around php5000 only.

feedback? any other recommendations aside from the ones listed? ^^

i kind of felt sorry for my mother when she arrived last april 5. she's gotten used to cold san francisco - and then she comes home to the philippines at the peak of summer heat. >.>

was worth it though, she said. she came home for kuya mox's graduation, and took enough pictures and videos of the event to provide as evidence to our relatives in the US that yes, it really has finally happened! rofl.

we all fooled around taking turns wearing kuya's toga (yes, including my mom O_O) and taking pictures, which i will not post because we all looked so silly. >.> when it was my turn, i tried to pose seriously, but then my mom took a whole-body shot, and you could see my slippers under the toga. o_o

( but here's one picture, during the graduation itself, just to mark this joyous event (and in which i think i look fairly decent). )

the day after the graduation, we went to the beach at real, quezon. the sea was amazing. it was cloudy so the sun wasn't searing hot. kaida absolutely enjoyed building a huge sand structure (which could either be a fairy castle or Minas Morgul, one can't be entirely sure) and splashing about the shallow waves.

the next day, we held a small dinner party in celebration of the graduation. thanks to all who came, even with such short notice! the text on the cake read, "way to go.. at last!" rofl.

my mom's flight back to the US was april 18, the day after the party. the two weeks she was here just flew by, it was depressing she already had to go.

it was particularly heartbreaking for me to see her off at the airport. she's been burnt out with work in the US and really needed this vacation. i can tell from her body language that she didn't want to go back yet. it was what made me cry when we got back home from the airport.

but i'm sure the next months will zoom by, and it will be december, and not only ina will be coming home to the philippines but ama and abram as well. i'm really looking forward to all of us being together again.

i actually got a lot of rants/worries to spew out, but at the moment i want to focus on the good things.

my mom's coming home from the US first week of april. this wasn't really planned, but i guess she wants to come home to see the first of her children graduate (not me). lol.

she's bringing the graveyard book with her, yay. abram got a secondhand hardcover copy on ebay for only $9.00, which is really great. i don't mind secondhand copies as long as they're in good condition, and abram showed me the book via webcam this morning, and it looks mighty fine. ^^

ah, the weekend is here, thankfully. i can rest properly. i'll need all the rest i can get before my mom arrives - there'll be mad shopping sprees during her first few days here, i'm sure. ^^;;

oh hi i'm back as kmja. lolwat.

i filed an LJ customer support ticket earlier today because i was worried that my rename token might expire or something. i got a response a couple of hours ago that they manually changed my account name, instead of making me wait for 30 days. the one who contacted me assured me, though, that i would have been able to use the rename token after 30 days, but she just changed it manually in any case.

great service. ^^ shout-out to Erica of LJ Community Care for the prompt response. ^^


previous entries regarding the whole mishap:

• name revert
• name change

i don't know why i'm expending so much effort to try and get into eraserhead's guest list for their final concert on saturday.

i don't even know the band personally, and the closest contact i've had with them was an introduction to buddy zabala during the time he was playing bass for ASIN's last album way back in 2000. he would know my father well, and i have heard that the band respects his music, but other than that, i would have no other merit in getting into their guest list. XD i would imagine there would be other people more qualified to be in that list, whether they be the band's family members or closest friends, maybe even a daughter of an "influential" person who held someone from the production at gunpoint to get her on the list. lol! just kidding. XD

i thought it would be worth a try, though. after all, it would be such a waste if indeed there was some chance we could watch the concert.

but the downside is, as with most situations in which i try to insinuate myself, i usually just end up horribly embarrassing myself. XD

whether or not i am successful in my attempts, well, i don't know. chances really are very slim - minute, even - but who knows. ^^;;

ROFL! i'm back to being losethesmog. XD

( the whole hilarious story! )

oh hi.

in case you were wondering how the hell i got into your flists, i used to be losethesmog. XD

i just wanted a shorter username, that's all. i wanted to have my full first name as a username, but someone took it and I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHY.

but a 4-letter username is fine by me.

i used my younger brother abram's (ILUSM ♥) paypal account to buy the rename token. i convinced him to apply for a paypal account for his credit card because it's safer for online purchases, and recently he's been buying more on ebay and amazon. i helped him with his paypal registration and he went directly to ebay afterwards to look at more stuff. XD

i tried to save face (BECAUSE I SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF MYSELF BEING THE OLDER SIBLING HAVING TO USE MY YOUNGER BRO'S CREDIT CARD) and did the sisterly thing: warn him from getting too tempted to buy lots of stuff online.

..a warning which i'm not really listening to myself, going and buying a rename token, of all things. =_=

addendum: abram's also buying a hardcover copy of the graveyard book for us, in time to put into a balikbayan box they're sending next week. he should be sainted, really. ♥

i am ridiculously pleased with the fact that my 3-year-old daughter now knows how to manipulate a mouse and play dress-up flash games on the PC.

but now she wants to always play on my laptop, and is exercising another newfound skill: using emotional blackmail. O_O

she's past the stage of throwing tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants, now she'll just look at you and say, "mommy.. laro ako mouse sa computer.. (let me play with mouse on the computer..) pwease.. *sniff*"

hahahaha ..huhu. T_T

i have mixed feelings about 2009.

i am not too pleased that the first thing i hear is that year of the ox is bad for both year of the pig (me) and year of the sheep (aru), so for us it's like, prepare for double whammy. >.>

i want to feel optimistic, because 2008 had its lows, but they're definitely outweighed by the blessings.

yeah, okay, it doesn't hurt to be extra careful and save as much as we can and just amble along 2009 with a steady mind and steady heart, etc. etc., but damn it's disheartening to hear bad things right off the bat.

anyway.

on to a more important matter: my 2009 planner. XD

i got a starbucks planner (red, of course) late last december for the sheer sake of getting one, but i found that it still has day-view pages, and i want my month-view planner. and not just any month-view planner - it has to have hard covers and it must fit my bag. >.>

i was about to give up and use the starbucks planner, but i finally found a month-view planner similar to my planner last year, only this time it's red and not black, which is fine by me. took me a long time scouring four different bookstores for it. >.>

so, having found my ideal planner, i don't need the starbucks one anymore. and in light of the so-called "hard times" that are coming for us pigs and sheep, it would be a shame for the starbucks planner to go to complete waste.

tl;dr: S> 1 Starbucks Planner 2009 (Red), php 1000. ^^;;;; price is negotiable. payment/delivery depends on how you want it, but i would suggest a meet-up somewhere.