Thursday, October 27, 2011

Let's help someone fight cancer

My orgmate, Ate Cacai, is selling these SHIRTS AGAINST CANCER. She's currently fighting cancer and she has an operation coming up (you can read her story by clicking the link above). She graduated from UP before I joined UP Aggregates (our org) so I didn't get to meet here there but I attended the boards review with her. 

Let's help her out by buying these shirts designed by Kuya Charles Dy. They cost only Php300. Details regarding sizes, payment, delivery, etc are HERE. The date of her operation got moved so she extended the deadline of orders to November 9.


Friday, October 14, 2011

Things I Miss: Alfahkr's and Moonleaf

Before I graduated, I started frequenting Maginhawa Street with friends. Whenever we had long breaks at noon and had budget, we'd eat lunch and drink milk tea. Or if it's a Friday night, we'd eat somewhere and then stay at Moonleaf. It was pretty much mundane.

Recently, of course, I haven't been able to do that. Today, however, I got the chance to hang out with my friends Jijo and Sean.

We ate at Alfahkr's (Persian food place near Friuli and Crazy Katsu). I love that place! For some reason, there's never much people at any time of the day (or night). Perhaps not much people appreciate Persian food? But I really like it!

Pretty friend Sean

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Impulse

Guess who just booked another flight to Taiwan?

Yep. I'm going to Taiwan with four of my ICE co-faculty (who also went to Taiwan last September) on January! This time, for shopping/leisure and not for a competition. Just tonight, after proctoring an exam, we talked about the Taiwan buys that we were wearing today when Sir Harold suddenly checked Cebu Pac's website for promo fares. So impulsive indeed. But what do you expect from a girl who's been depriving herself the fruits of her hard work because she still hasn't gotten her salary? (I'm a government employee, that's why.)

Why not go to another country? Well, the Taipei trip was kinda bitin especially for the graduate teams because, first of all, we went there for a competition.

Actually, my friend Meme, told me before how she loved Taiwan but I never got convinced until I got there myself! Haha. Honestly, I never thought Taiwan was a good an awesome place. Sure it's underrated and there aren't a lot of tourist spots but here are the reasons why I loved Taiwan:

  • I never experienced heavy-traffic! Traffic is always freely-flowing (at least to the places I went to).
  • They have awesome elevated/grade-separated highways.

Traffic at 6am. Traffic where?

Sunday, October 2, 2011

The day I turned 22, I went to Taipei Zoo

I've always wanted to celebrate my birthday. Properly.

I never got to celebrate my birthday during college because it always coincides with hell week! Two years ago, Ondoy came exactly on my birthday. While this year, my birthday coincided with our last day in Taipei.

The night before, I went to Shilin nightmarket with my colleagues but got separated from them. So I ended up walking back to Chientan Youth Activity Center alone past 12 midnight (yes, Shilin nightmarket is a 15-minute walk from where we stayed). It didn't really matter because I don't mind walking alone and Taipei is quite a safe place (I can leave my laptop, camera and phone unattended and no one would take them). When I got back to my room and checked my Facebook, I saw a birthday greeting and I realized that it was my birthday and that I spent the first few minutes walking alone in the streets of Chientan! Haha. How memorable!

Anyway, the morning after, after packing our things, we went to Taipei Zoo (a 40-dollar MRT ride from Chientan Station). The initial plan was to ride the cable car first but on the way to the Maokong Gondola, we saw this...

FAIL

Saturday, October 1, 2011

A Shaking Weekend

Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research in Schools. IDEERS. A competition hosted by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE). Now that's the real reason why I went to Taiwan. We competed with schools from Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Hong Kong and Japan. We create model structures and had them tested on a shaking table. The first day, Saturday, was the day for model-making while the second day, Sunday, was the day for testing and awarding.


Well, our undergraduate teams didn't win but one of our graduate teams won first place! Aside from that, both graduate teams gathered special awards (best in architectural design and best poster).