Palawan Adventure

I've been wanting to go to Palawan for like forever to experience its beautiful beaches, the pristine nature, to see the world-famous Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (the world's longest navigable underground river which as of date is still ranked #1 on the New 7 Wonders of Nature list. go ahead and vote!), and basically just to experience something new and go to somewhere I've never been to. Finally, I was able to go there with my boyfriend last December 10-12.

The whole experience is totally awesome! The trip was quite short as we only had 1 1/2 days to try to experience everything (we arrived in Puerto Princesa Wednesday night and our return flight is Friday afternoon) but it was great nonetheless. But still, I hope we had more time to experience everything. There's still a lot of places that we weren't able to go to. Le sigh!

Since we arrived Wednesday evening, we decided to start our tour right then and experience Puerto Princesa's nightlife. After checking in at the hotel, we made our way on foot to downtown Puerto Princesa for dinner and some sight-seeing. In the Provincial Capitol, they have this Paskuhan sa Kapitolyo wherein they set up booths and kiosks selling food and souvenirs and put up Christmas decorations and live bands to invite both locals and tourists in. We decided to take our dinner there and some camwhoring. We then proceeded to Puerto Princesa's Baywalk, again on foot, with more sight-seeing along the way. We never thought it was that far. I swear my feet hurt like hell! I like Manila's Baywalk better but at least the bay doesn't smell like trash. Anyways, we took a tricycle going back to the hotel. We had enough of walking!

We woke up early the next day for our tour of the subterranean river that we booked for 1500 bucks per person while we were in the airport. Our tour group consists of 2 vans with only 1 tour guide (at least we had two vans. at first, they want to move all 14 of us in 1 van. fortunately, they decided otherwise). Our van consists of the two of us, two German couple and two cute Danish guys. The 2-hour trip was so exhausting. The roads are zig-zagged, much like driving to Baguio, because we were literally traversing the mountains to get to our destination, plus, half the trip the roads are unpaved. We had a pit stop at the viewing point near Sabang overlooking the South China Sea. It was a great view! We then proceeded to Sabang Bay for our boat ride to the subterranean river. The gruelling trip to the subterranean trip was all worth it! It pretty much lived up to its reputation. We had a great view of it too as we were in the front side of the boat and Jaypee is the one holding the light. The river is 8 kilometers long but the trip was only for 4 kms as it would take us 3 hrs to navigate all 8 kms of it. Jaypee also made friends with some of the monkeys outside the cave. Haha! We headed back to Sabang Bay for a late lunch then made the same 2-hr drive pack to the hotel (the drive back was more gruelling because it was raining, and naturally, the unpaved roads got all muddy which made it more difficult to navigate. we decided to sleep it through). The trip to the subterranean river took 1 day. We were so tired that we just stayed in the hotel the whole evening except to have dinner.

On our last day, we decided to go island-hopping at Honda Bay. We only have half of the day to do it coz we need to go back to Manila that afternoon. We rented a boat for 1300 pesos and snorkeling gear for 200 pesos. That time, we wished we had our friends with us so we could have saved a lot of money. But on the high side, we had the boat all to ourselves. Honda Bay was so serene. There are literally no waves. We went to Pandan Island first. It was nice. Jaypee had a blast snorkeling. As for me, well I did some snorkelling at first, but I was so afraid that the fish would bite me so I decided to just stay near the shore and do some sunbathing. We proceeded next to Snake Island. At first, I thought Snake Island was named as such because there are lots of sea snakes on it, but actually, there were no snakes. It was named Snake Island because it was shaped like a snake. I liked it much better than Pandan Island. It was really beautiful. We snorkeled again, but as with the other island, I was afraid of the fish so I content myself with relaxing near the shore, some swimming and listening to the conversation of two German guys that I cannot even understand. I wished we could have stayed longer on the island. I loved it there. But unfortunately, we had to go back downtown to pack-up and not miss our flight.

Our trip maybe short, but it was really great! Maybe we could go back sometime to see the places we were not able to visit. I can't wait for our next trip. We had already booked our tickets for our Boracay trip this summer. This time though, we would be with two of our friends. It would be FUN! See you in March, Bora!


Meanwhile, here are some pics:

while waiting for the our plane at Terminal 3, our flight was delayed

welcome to Puerto Princesa City, Palawan

at Paskuhan sa Kapitolyo

at the Baywalk

camwhoring at The Legend Hotel Palawan

at the viewpoint, overlooking the South China Sea

at the beautiful Sabang beach

boatride to the subterranean river. it was so windy and the waves are crazy!

at the entrance to the underground river

at the trail to the underground river

Jaypee and one his friends, lol!

picture taking before going inside the cave

Bev love JP =)

we heart Palawan

the serene waters of Honda Bay

island-hopping at Honda Bay

Jaypee feeding the fish at Pandan Island

enough of snorkeling, i'm safer here

the long stretch of Snake Island

See more pics here.

in which I got myself almost knocked out

A couple of minutes ago, I am reading some papers here in the office of this hotel I am auditing when I suddenly fell asleep and I almost got my head bumped in the table (well, almost because I woke up just before my head hit the table. lucky me!). I am so sleepy due to either lack of sleep or the sleepy environment here in the hotel or both. So to spike me up a little, I turned to the PC and just blog. Luckily, blogger is not restricted here unlike Friendster or Multiply. I think I'll go down to the cafeteria later to get my self a cuppa joe.

Anyways, happy weekend everyone!

=)

Random Thingies

- I was anticipating a lousy weekend. It turned out it was a blast! Thanks honey! =)

- Wanna get a free one-day pass at Fitness First worth 550 bucks? Buy a Quaker oatmeal then. Last night, I bought an 800g Quaker oatmeal from the grocery which had a free Propel vitamin water in it. When I was paying for it in the counter, I was surprised to find that it also had an attached free one-day pass at Fitness First. Pretty cool actually. My boyfriend hurriedly went back inside to buy his oatmeal so he could avail of the free pass himself.

- I'm so excited for our Palawan trip this December. This is our first out-of-town trip together. I actually have our itinerary all planned out. Can't wait!

- For those asking who I was at my last post, I am actually Aubrey. Why? I thought it was kinda obvious. Nyaha!

- I'm swamped with work this week... and next week, and the week after, and the week after. Those of you in the accounting profession are probably feeling the same frustration that I am feeling over the amount of work that are needed to be done for this year-end closing period. Goodluck to us all!

conversations over a bucket of KFC

One fine Thursday evening, three friends (a plain but big-headed guy and2 gorgeous gals ;) ) met in a small shop along one of the streets of Metro Manila, to talk about some business and, of course, to keep up with each other's personal lives. Apparently, Lance just broke up with his girlfriend of 7 long years. Aubrey and Diana, both starving already, and thinking that he was such a big jerk for breaking up with her, thought that they need to talk about it over food. And so they went to the nearby KFC and ordered a bucket of original and hot and crispy chicken with four fixins just for the 3 of them. Here's some part of their conversation:

Aubrey: How long did you say your relationship was before you broke-up last month?

Lance: 7 years

Aubrey: Wow! And the nerve of you to be the one to break-up with her considering you're the guy. That hurts! For her, I mean.

Lance: I know. It's just that I woke up one day and thought that I had enough. I got bored. It just doesn't feel right anymore.

Diana: That was it? That's your only reason? That's so shallow!

Aubrey: You said you only see each other twice a week. How could you say that you've had enough?

Lance: Well, 7 years is a long time.

Diana: Exactly! It is a long time. A long time for you to waste.

Aubrey: Is it final? I mean, don't you think you can still get back together?

Lance: I don't know.

Diana: So what do you do nowadays? You go out on dates?

Lance: Yeah. I go out on dates. A friend of mine even gave me a text mate. The girl was texting me but I wasn't replying. And then I looked at her friendster account, it was set on private, so I only saw her primary photo. She was pretty in the picture. But what if she was gay? I mean I only saw her face in the picture besides, a lot of gays out there look pretty. I had to see her in full. So I added her as a friend, she accepted it, and when I saw her pictures, gosh, she's a winner! She's even a contestant at a bikini contest. Plus she have big boobs. Then I frantically started texting her, sending her quotes, but she wasn't replying to me anymore.

Aubrey and Diana: (Laughs) Maybe whe she saw your pictures, she couldn't take it. Nyaha!

Lance: I even told her, "why aren't you texting me anymore?". But she's texting me now once in a while. We'll see.

Aubrey: Did you try to ask for a guilt-free pass from your girlfriend before? My boyfriend's asking me for a guilt-free pass, jokingly, or not. I told him I'll never give him one.

Lance: No. I didn't need to. Because even when we were still together, I'm free. I can do whatever I want. She wasn't prohibiting me from doing anything. She gave me that freedom. But I didn't abuse it. Although right now, I'm sorta having an unlimited guilt-free pass. My friend saw a receipt from Baclaran Apartelle and he asked me how I got it. I told him I just picked it up somewhere, coz I needed receipts for my reimbursements.

(Laughs)

Aubrey: Eeww! Of all places, why do you have to go to Baclaran for a quickie?

Lance: We went to church.

Diana: What, you went to church after to wash away your sins?

Lance: No. I went to church first to ask for forgiveness for the sin that I was about to commit.

(Laughs)

Aubrey: That's how you go on dates?

Lance: Don't be such a manang! That's how things are nowadays. We live in a liberal world.

Diana: Oh, please!

Lance: Anyways, when I remember what happened to us, I still get sad. I feel like I wanna cry. But it's different from our first break-up. This is our second break-up, you see. When we first broke up, I really cried hard. This time though, I'm sad, yes, but things are much easier to bear. She went to my shop one day to talk. She said she want a smooth break-up. She wants closure. And we had it. She told me that even though I'm like this, you know, she was happy when we were together. (teary-eyed)

Aubrey: Wtf! Don't tell me you're crying?

Diana: He is crying. Look at his eyes! Oh, please, stop that. I feel like laughing so hard.

(Laughs)

wake me up when this weekend ends

another bad morning
which means so would the rest of my day
considering that today's friday
wherein i was supposed to be happy
but sadly, i'm not
plus i have this weekend that i am so not looking forward to
funny, but for the first time in my life
i wish tomorrow's monday
and sunday, tuesday
in that case, i would be pre-occupied with work
and i would not be spending the weekend all by myself
with only my books to keep me company
this week was crazy
i feel so burnt-out, i wanna cry
i just wanna be happy
but why is happiness evading me when i needed it the most?
they said happiness is a choice, you should choose to be happy
i'm really trying to find joy in simple things, small things
but i can't find anything to be happy about, it's frustrating
somebody please tell me this ain't happening
please tell me this was all just a bad dream
come to think of it
i think that's what i need to do
i'll just sleep this through
the song said, wake me up when september ends
i say, wake me up when this weekend ends

T_T

Shoot me in the head, why don't you?

My day didn't start right, and so, as a consequence, the rest of my day is proving to be just as awful. Crap! I always try to make it a point to be in a good mood every morning, or at least I try to still be cheerful even if my hormones are telling me to kick someone's ass, coz I learned from my 20-some odd years of existence that my mood in the morning pretty much dictates my mood for the rest of the day. But today is an exception. My patience that I am so trying very hard to control just blew up. No, I'm not PMSing, so all my my hormones should be in check. I was just a tad irritated. Beats the crap out of me! The worst thing about this is that I couldn't take comfort to the one person I always run to during times like these, coz that person is the very reason why I am feeling this crappy in the first place. So instead, I took comfort on the next best remedy... food! I was so hungry on the way to the office so I ordered take-out fastfood breakfast. I am now eating a bar of chocolate. Ha! Take that!

The Philippines Through the Eyes of a Foreigner

I was browsing my email inbox today when I found this email from Yabang Pinoy about an article written by Barth Suretsky, an American, about his observations of the Philippines and the Filipinos. For two years now, I have been an advocate (a rather inactive one, though. shame on me! note to self: buy the abaca band at Powerbooks already) Yabang Pinoy, a campaign to raise awareness and heighten Filipino people's ethos, dignity and pride by advocating the use of braided abaca band that aims to make a statement. The campaign is to constantly remind the Filipino people to take pride of our nationality.

In his article, Suretsky stated that the root of our country's problems is our lack of national pride. However, judging from the positive reception Yabang Pinoy is getting, if pride and respect for our country and our people would be the gauge of the future of the Philippines, I could still see a glimmer of hope. May Yabang tayo!

Below is Suretsy's article.

A Point of View

Inferiority Complex: A Filipino Malady?

by Barth Suretsky

My decision to move to Manila was not a precipitous one. I used to work in New York as an outside agent for PAL, and have been coming to the Philippines since August, 1982. I was so impressed with the country, and with the interesting people I met, some of which have become very close friends to this day, that I asked for and was granted a year's sabbatical from my teaching job in order to live in the Philippines. I arrived here on August 21, 1983, several hours after Ninoy Aquino was shot, and remained here until June of 1984. During that year I visited many parts of the country, from as far north as Laoag to as far south as Zamboanga, and including Palawan. I became deeply immersed in the history and culture of the archipelago, and an avid collector of tribal antiquities from both northern Luzon, and Mindanao.

In subsequent years I visited the Philippines in 1985, 1987, and 1991, before deciding to move here permanently in 1998. I love this country, but not uncritically, and that is the purpose of this article. First, however, I will say that I would not consider living anywhere else in Asia , no matter how attractive certain aspects of other neighboring countries may be. To begin with, and this is most important, with all its faults, the Philippines is still a democracy, more so than any other nation in Southeast Asia. Despite gross corruption, the legal system generally works, and if ever confronted with having to employ it, I would feel much more safe trusting the courts here than in any other place in the surrounding area. The press here is unquestionably the most unfettered and freewheeling in Asia, and I do not believe that is hyperbole in any way! And if any one thing can be used as a yardstick to measure the extent of the democratic process in any given country in the world, it is the extent to which the press is free.

But the Philippines is a flawed democracy nevertheless, and the flaws are deeply rooted in the Philippine psyche. I will elaborate. The basic problem seems to me, after many years of observation, to be a national inferiority complex, a disturbing lack of pride in being Filipino. Toward the end of April I spent eight days in Vietnam, visiting Hanoi, Hue, and Ho Chi Minh City. I am certainly no expert on Vietnam, but what I saw could not be denied: I saw a country ravaged as no other country has been in this century by thirty years of continuous and incredibly barbaric warfare. When the Vietnam War ended in April, 1975, the country was totally devastated. Yet in the past twenty-five years the nation has healed and rebuilt itself almost miraculously! The countryside has been replanted and reforested. Hanoi and HCMC have been beautifully restored. The opera house in Hanoi is a splended restoration of the original, modeled after the Opera in Paris, and the gorgeous Second Empire theater, on the main square of HCMC is as it was when built by the French a century ago. The streets are tree-lined, clean, and conducive for strolling. Cafes in the French style proliferate on the wide boulevards of HCMC. I am not praising the government of Vietnam, which still has a long way to travel on the road to democracy, but I do praise, and praise unstintingly, the pride of the Vietnamese people. It is due to this pride in being Vietnamese that has enabled its citizenry to undertake the miracle of restoration that I have described above.

When I returned to Manila I became so depressed that I was actually physically ill for days thereafter. Why? Well, let's go back to a period when the Philippines resembled the Vietnam of 1975. It was 1945, the end of World War II, and Manila, as well as many other cities, lay in ruins. (As a matter of fact, it may not be generally known, but Manila was the second most destroyed city in the entire war; only Warsaw was more demolished!)

But to compare Manila in 1970, twenty-five years after the end of the war, with HCMC, twenty-five years after the end of its war, is a sad exercise indeed. Far from restoring the city to its former glory, by 1970 Manila was well on its way to being the most tawdry city in Southeast Asia. And since that time the situation has deteriorated alarmingly. We have a city full of street people, beggars, and squatters. We have a city that floods sections whenever there is a rainstorm, and that loses electricity with every clap of thunder.

We have a city full of potholes, and on these unrepaired roads we have a traffic situation second to none in the world for sheer unmanageability. We have rude drivers, taxis that routinely refuse to take passengers because of "many trappic!" The roads are also cursed with pollution-spewing buses in disreputable states of repair, and that ultimate anachronism, the jeepney! We have an educational system that allows children to attend schools without desks or books to accommodate them. Teachers, even college professors, are paid salaries so disgracefully low that it's a wonder that anyone would want to go into the teaching profession in the first place. We have a war in Mindanao that nobody seems to have a clue how to settle. The only policy to deal with the war seems to be to react to what happens daily, with no long range plan whatever. I could go on and on, but it is an endeavor so filled with futility that it hurts me to go on. It hurts me because, in spite of everything, I love the Philippines.

Maybe it will sound simplistic, but to go back to what I said above, it is my unshakable belief that the fundamental thing wrong with this country is a lack of pride in being Filipino. A friend once remarked to me, laconically: "All Filipinos want to be something else. The poor ones want to be American, and the rich ones all want to be Spaniards. Nobody wants to be Filipino." That statement would appear to be a rather simplistic one, and perhaps it is. However, I know one Filipino who refuses to enter a theater until the national anthem has stopped being played because he doesn't want to honor his own country, and I know another one who thinks that history stopped dead in 1898 when the Spaniards departed! While it is certainly true that these represent extreme examples of national denial, the truth is not a pretty picture.

Filipinos tend to worship, almost slavishly, everything foreign. If it comes from Italy or France it has to be better than anything made here. If the idea is American or German it has to be superior to anything that Filipinos can think up for themselves. Foreigners are looked up to and idolized. Foreigners can go anywhere without question. In my own personal experience I remember attending recently an affair at a major museum here. I had forgotten to bring my invitation. But while Filipinos entering the museum were checked for invitations, I was simply waived through. This sort of thing happens so often here that it just accepted routine. All of these things, the illogical respect given to foreigners simply because they are not Filipinos, the distrust and even disrespect shown to any homegrown merchandise, the neglect of anything Philippine, the rudeness of taxi drivers, the ill-manners shown by many Filipinos are all symptomatic of a lack of self-love, of respect for and love of the country in which they were born, and worst of all, a static mind-set in regard to finding ways to improve the situation. Most Filipinos, when confronted with evidence of governmental corruption, political chicanery, or gross exploitation on the part of the business community, simply shrug their shoulders, mutter "bahala na," and let it go at that. It is an oversimplification to say this, but it is not without a grain of truth to say that Filipinos feel downtrodden because they allow themselves to feel downtrodden. No pride.

One of the most egregious examples of this lack of pride, this uncaring attitude to their own past or past culture, is the wretched state of surviving architectural landmarks in Manila and elsewhere. During the American period many beautiful and imposing buildings were built, in what we now call the "art deco" style (although, incidentally, that was not a contemporary term; it was coined only in the 1960s). These were beautiful edifices, mostly erected during, or just before, the Commonwealth period. Three, which are still standing, are the Jai Alai Building, the Metropolitan Theater, and the Rizal Stadium. Fortunately, due to the truly noble efforts of my friend John Silva, the Jai Alai Building will now be saved. But unless something is done to the most beautiful and original of these three masterpieces of pre-war Philippine architecture, the Metropolitan Theater, it will disintegrate. The Rizal Stadium is in equally wretched shape. When the wreckers' ball destroyed Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and New York City's most magnificent building, Pennsylvania Station, both in 1963, Ada Louise Huxtable, then the architectural critic of The New York Times, wrote: "A disposable culture loses the right to call itself a civilization at all!" How right she was! (Fortunately, the destruction of Pennsylvania Station proved to be the sacrificial catalyst that resulted in the creation of New York's Landmark Commission. Would that such a commission be created for Manila...)

Are there historical reasons for this lack of national pride? We can say that until the arrival of the Spaniards there was no sense of a unified archipelago constituted as one country. True. We can also say that the high cultures of other nations in the region seemed, unfortunately, to have bypassed the Philippines; there are no Angkors, no Ayuttayas, no Borobudurs.True. Centuries of contact with the "high cultures" of the Khmers and the Chinese had, except for the proliferation of Song dynasty pottery found throughout the archipelago, no noticeable effect. True. But all that aside, what was here? To begin with, the ancient rice terraces, now threatened with disintegration, incidentally, was an incredible feat of engineering for so-called "primitive" people. As a matter of fact, when I first saw them in 1984, I was almost as awe-stricken as I was when I first laid eyes on the astonishing Inca city of Machu Picchu, high in the Peruvian Andes. The degree of artistry exhibited by the various tribes of the cordillera of Luzon is testimony to a remarkable culture, second to none in the Southeast Asian region. As for Mindanao, at the other end of the archipelago, an equally high degree of artistry has been manifest for centuries in woodcarving, weaving and metalwork.

However, the most shocking aspect of this lack of national pride, even identity, endemic in the average Filipino, is the appalling ignorance of the history of the archipelago since unified by Spain and named Filipinas. The remarkable stories concerning the Galleon de Manila, the courageous repulsion of Dutch and British invaders from the 16th through the 18th centuries, even the origins of the independence movement of the late 19th century, are hardly known by the average Filipino in any meaningful way. And thanks to fifty years of American brainwashing, it is few and far between the number of Filipinos who really know - or even care - about the duplicity employed by the Americans and Spaniards to sell out and make meaningless the very independent state that Aguinaldo declared on June 12, 1898. A people without a sense of history is a people doomed to be unaware of their own identity. It is sad to say, but true, that the vast majority of Filipinos fall into this lamentable category. Without a sense of who you are how can you possibly take any pride in who you are?

These are not oversimplifications. On the contrary, these are the root problems of the Philippine inferiority complex referred to above. Until the Filipino takes pride in being Filipino these ills of the soul will never be cured. If what I have written here can help, even in the smallest way, to make the Filipino aware of just who he is, who he was, and who he can be, I will be one happy expat indeed!

Dreams and Reality

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard
way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning,
middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment
and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.

2 nights ago, I had this weird dream about my dad. I woke up in the middle of the night, teary-eyed, before I finally realized that it was all just a bad dream and that it ain't true, and hopefully, it ain't gonna happen.

In my dream, I was being scolded by my aunt for not coming home to Tarlac on November 1st, All Saint's Day, to visit my father's grave. I was crying as she was telling me this and I was so furious with myself for not even remembering to visit the grave of my own father. When I woke up, I kept thinking it over and over if my dad was really dead until it finally dawned on me that my father's still alive, not 100% well and healthy, but alive, nevertheless.

But eventhough I know that it was just a bad dream, I still felt scared and uneasy afterwards, I had a hard time going back to sleep. You see, last year, I also had a bad dream concerning my dad. In my dream, I was told that my dad was in the hospital again (he was hospitalized that same year for his first stroke, a complication of his diabetes and high-blood pressure) and that he was critical. A few hours later, I received an sms from my mom saying that my dad was indeed in the hospital, he suffered a second stroke and was having internal hemorrhage on his head. I was so horrified to learn that my dream was real. Fortunately, my dad recovered from the stroke. He could not speak and walk properly, and he would be on lifetime medication, but he's still with us and it's all that matters to me.

My latest dream about him didn't come true. Thank God. I don't know what I would do if ever that happens. I love my father so much. Although we may not have the same relationship as before and he may not be, in certain ways, the same father I grew up knowing and loving, he's still my father. He gave me life. He raised me to become what I am now. And no matter what other people might say, he was a good father to us. He might have changed, but I know, we know, that in his heart, he still loves us so much. And for that, I will forever be grateful to him and will love him for all my life.

The Lesson of the Five Balls

An excerpt from the book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson.

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls.
The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're
keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that
work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four
balls— family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of
these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once
you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings
of balance in your life.

Rainy Days and Mondays

It's raining again here in the Metro. Plus, it's Monday again. Crap! What a day this will gonna be! Is it just me or are there other people who hate rainy days and Mondays as much as I do? Sigh!

Anyways, enough of the ranting. I've recently spent a quiet, laid-back but otherwise great weekend with my honey. We didn't go anywhere nor did anything special that will qualify as "a great weekend" to other people's standards (we just spent it watching movies, cooking, him teaching me how to cook, listening to some music, watching CSI, doing the laundry, etc.), but any QT spent with my honey will always be "great" to me.

Friday afternoon saw the start of our movie marathon weekend. After going to the cemetery to visit my uncle and grandparent's graves in celebration of All Saint's Day, we went to Trinoma afterwards to watch Nights in Rodanthe starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane. It was a good movie. The beach house was divine. And it really showed that "it's never too late for a second chance". The only thing I hated about the movie was the ending wherein Richard Gere's character died in an accident. Well, I was looking for a happy ending.

After Nights in Rodanthe, we decided to watch another movie adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, Message in a Bottle. Another good movie but sadly, Kevin Costner's character also died in the end. It didn't pass my notice that all three movie adaptations of Nicholas Sparks' books that I have so far watched (Nights in Rodanthe, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember), the lead characters died at the end of the movie. I don't really have a problem with it, it's just that I'm really a sucker for happy endings.

Anyways, the rest of the movies we watched are Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Sakal Sakali Saklolo. I'm a Harry Potter fan and I can say I had him converted. He'd already watched all five movies and he's borrowing my books for him to read. Ha!

I can't wait for the next weekend. We'll try to do something new, for a change. We'll see.