Henry in a New Home

Henry is the dog loved so much by me and my husband and our three children. We adopted him from another family who are originally from Canada. Their old condo no longer allowed dogs of his size and breed to live with their owners. That surely sucked for Henry (his old Mom Shelley cried buckets) but he was such a good dog he only needed a little time to adjust with us. For a little while he stayed with us in Manila, he had a garage and a huge field to run around, and the neighborhood where my dad and brothers took him jogging, but it still didn't make the cut. He would break his iron chains and whenever he does that, he goes crazy like he wants us to chase after him. Really, Henry?! On the record he has broken around a dozen chains.



Solution is to bring him where he can be more free. More cooties, I'm sure. Far from the condo dog he used to be. This is where he is now. Right now he has more caregivers than before. He runs the fields, fetches sticks we throw into the water in the nearby river, and he now knows how to fetch and bring the stick/bottle/ball back to me. I, of course, cried buckets when I left for Manila, but we'll see each other again, in time. 

Henry and his doghouse. He stays inside the house at night.

This Heat is CRAZY

How's the Heat Treatin' Ya?

I've been getting more headaches than the five years COMBINED because of this insufferable heat. 35 degrees Celsius EVERYDAY is just crazy. I stay outdoors to keep cool, try to find shade under trees because it's like a heat trap inside the house, the ceiling isn't enough to fight off the heat from the roof.

But we gotta hand it out to our carpenter who's fixing our roof here in my parent's bungalow. He's working on a stove yet he keeps at it. Amazing.

Please, somebody hear my prayers and take me to the beach.

My youngest with his anti-init nito hat and abaca fan

Just imagine how much beating our skin gets from such intense sunlight. Wear your sunnies, lessen skin aging around the sensitive skin of your eyes. Be sure to slather on generous sunscreen to protect yourself from the sun. For myself, I use:

You can tell how used it is. :)

Belo Essentials Sun Expert SPF PA+++ 40 for face and 60 for body. Non-greasy, non-comogenic, hypoallergenic. You can use this sunblock whether in wet and dry conditions, as daily protection, and under your make-up. It's that cool. 

Nivea Sun Kids Swim & Play. Php 491. This definitely kept the sunburn at bay, no crying children because of sunburn for over 14 days of extreme sun exposure at the beach and travelling. 

Sulit.com.ph Launches "Ano Hanap Mo?"

Sulit.com.ph has truly "made it" with the announcement of their TV ad campaign "Ano Hanap Mo?" Who would have thought that in just 5 years, this small home-based venture with a starting capital of P2,900 will boom to become the no.1 classified ads website in the Philippines? Four million page views and 450,000 unique visitors daily, their online ads platform reaches out to thousands of sellers and interested buyers.

The average Juan no longer has to spend thousands just to get the word out there of what he has to offer. In just one click, Sulit.com.ph presents you the best options at the best price. Sulit remains committed to become a service managed by Filipinos to answer to the needs of Filipinos.

With the launch of their TV commercial (voiced by no other than The Lourd de Veyra), it almost seems that there's no stopping Sulit.com.ph and will only evolve over time.

Husband and wife tandem RJ and Arianne David (far left), host Jenny Victor (in yellow) and Mary Anne Bundalian, Marketing Manager of Sulit.com.ph

Sulit.com.ph redefines the typical buy and sell, with their catchy phrase, "Hanap. Usap. Deal."

Whatever  it is that you have in mind, whether you want to buy, hire, rent, lease or swap items or services, Sulit has it. I have had condos rented successfully and just within a short waiting period. The user-friendly messaging system allows a buyer to communicate with me right there and then, while viewing my ad. That's how quick Sulit can expedite a transaction that would otherwise cost me a lot of time, energy and money. As a seller myself, I don't have to lift a finger because their strong web presence gives instant results. How convenient!

Arpee Lazaro of Pinoy Life at Large (arpeelazaro.com), RJ David and Noemi Lardizabal-Dado of blogwatch.com

More than anything, Sulit.com.ph is a community. Members can share discuss and share topics of interest with each other. You can give feedback to trusted sellers and beware of those who are not.

Newfound online media friends: Helen Blas of luckycitrine.blogspot.com, Josephine Bonsol of jobonsol.net, Marj Pineda of livingmarjorney.com, Russell and Lei proud winners of the Samsung Galaxy Note raffled off that evening 

To share the tricks of the trade among aspiring entrepreneurs, Sulit has Sulit Netrepreneur Academy. I've seen some of their seminars posted on the site, and those aren't expensive at all (P500-700 pesos, some are free) It is only a matter of time before online shopping becomes the norm for every Filipino. Just imagine if our cottage industry from far-flung areas had access to a global audience to sell their products, how exciting that would be!

Sulit.com.ph representatives made rounds entertaining the guests and answering little questions from  the media in attendance

Spent the afternoon with these lovely girls 

Pixie Cut Red Hair

We are at the peak of the summer season, and everyday it seems everybody just want to escape the heat. Since we're already done with the travelling part, and we have an ongoing summer classes for one of my youngsters, here we are stuck in the hot, humid and dizzying temperatures. So bye-bye long hair!

I think my hair is very Alice of Twilight. Or very Korean if you look at it another way.
What do you think of my new 'do?

I should have paid more attention to my Sci-Fi writing class

Once upon a time I took up science fiction writing in college. I took the course as an elective, while everyone scrambled to get slots for European Languages, Photography, Film and other savvy shiz, it was the only class that had no pre-rog, only 7 people on the list, and the prospect of knocking around departments for what felt like the thousandth time was not very attractive. I signed up right away.

The class was a real tight group --- of nerds talking elf and the whole fracking Star Wars franchise down to the spinoff comics, to the whole goddamn Marvel universe that they can crack wise-ass jokes about them like they exist in real life. The only time I got to actively participate was when we got to the part where we talked about two generations worth of the Bioman epic before it bred the Turbo Rangers and the Power Rangers and a whole lot of Rangers. And all the Japanese costumed heros like The Masked Rider, Shaider, Ultraman Tiga, Giga, etc. That actually marked the end of my childhood as I was programmed to be an adult after that-- meaning no more cartoons for me. No Kenshin, Sakura, One Piece, Recca, Ghostfighter and Dragon Ball Z. i simply did not exist as a child in that era. And up to this day I have my parents to blame that the only pokemons I know is Pikachu, Charmander, Meowth and Raichu. I look at people in cosplays and I sometimes wish I can recognize a character or two instead of poking fun at them walking around the mall holding some stupid bladed weapon made of cardboard.

So after a sem of discussing time travel, super-corporations and alternative universes, we wrote our own short stories as an output of what we learned. My classmates wrote about breeding people from embryos for the sole purpose of harvesting organs (awesome because her idea existed before The Island was produced), some war in space where we actually won and conquered other planets (before Avatar, which means UP students definitely are "the goods"), while I must have written the most implausible science fiction story  that I cant even remember what it was about. I'm sure I wrote something about some fantastic Hobbit-like world that I could have picked up while I was dreaming. 

Now, science fiction films outsells every film genre there is in Hollywood. It is most watched genre of all. The cinemas has to have a new science-fiction related movie every 3 Wednesdays. The highest grossing movie of all time is, guess what, a really special science fiction film named Avatar.

I should have paid more attention to the actual work being done at our science fiction writing class than oogling at our cool, smart professor. :D

Hiatus

I apologize for the lack of updates for the past couple of weeks. There's too much happening in the Diesta household that I simply did not have the time to actually sit down and blog. And when I do sit down the evil corporation aka Facebook aka twitter completely holds me hostage with no chance of escape. My blog has had good days and sometimes 2000 views a day (it's a terrible number for serious bloggers but knowing I'm not talking in the dark is good enough for me) and sometimes I wonder if it's worth it. At the end of the day, I still do it because I love it. A life lived without passion is not a life.

I'll be back!