Relative State

My cousin LJ had a gig with his band, "Relative State", at the Cat & Fiddle in Balmain. They usually play at the "Basement" in Blacktown, all the way in woop woop! (Blacktown is Filipino town). We've gone a couple of times all the way there and finally, they have come closer to the city, in Balmain. Sounds like they are moving up!

LJ used to have a band in the Philippines (Mush Carnival) and they were even featured on MTV Asia. How cool is that? At one of their gigs here (at Sydney University), they opened for a famous singer from the Philippines (sorry, I'm not up to date on who that famous person would be). But that's good publicity for them.

And here's another cool story:

There is this Spanish looking guy at work and when I finally met him during one of our drinks at a pub near the office, he said, "O! Kamusta?" Nobody in the office would have guessed he's Filipino coz he looks meztiso. Anyway, after talking to him, I found out that he used to be a drummer for a very famous band, Razorback, in the Philippines. Wow, I work with this guy. I told LJ about it and he told me that, yes, he does know him (Miguel Ortigas). LJ used to record at one of Razorback's recording studio. But LJ said there was another band similar to the Razorbacks that he liked better than them. Here's another twist. Miguel told me his wife worked for this company in North Sydney and it happened to be the same company as my friend's. So I immediately text my friend and she did worked with her. What's so funny was when she received my text message, she was on the same elevator as her. What a small world!!!

Ripples Cafe at Luna Park

Since spring has started, I thought we'd try some nice restaurants around Sydney with a view of the city skyline. Located outside the North Sydney Olympic swimming pool by the Luna Park ferry station, Ripples Cafe gave us this option.

Ripples Cafe is an award winning alfreso BYO cafe where diners enjoy the stunning uninterrupted views of the Harbour, Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge (yep, that was our view!!!).

After dining, we ran for the ferry to Darling Harbour and had dessert. There is a Lindt's Cafe but unfortunately, they were already closed for the night (so early!).

Thanks for spending the night with me (Mei, Paul, Cherry, LJ, My). We'll do another one of these soon!

Absentee Voter

I just voted for the US Presidential Election as an absentee voter. First time doing this before everyone else and being part of a historic election. I hope the one I voted for wins.

Cirque du Soleil - Dralion

It took me a while to finally get to see a production of Cirque Du Soleil. I remember one of the first ones, "O", in Vegas. And now, "Dralion". The two performances that I liked were 1) the tiny, skinny girl who did an inexplicable acrobatic performance standing on one hand that didn't even flinch or wobble while her whole body was moving around, and 2) the trampoline guys who made it so easy and fun to jump on a trampoline. I know its not easy because we have a trampoline at home and to control yourself from being flown out of it is a bit tricky. You wouldn't want to jump too high!

S-P-0-R-T-S-C-R-A-F-T Summer Fashion Show

I was invited to watch the Summer Fashion show at our company, which I was so excited about, coz we get to see the new line before everybody else. I usually attend our monthly sales meeting where they show us the best and worst sellers of the month. Of course, I do help out with that reporting!

About a week before the show, our company unveiled its Olympic uniforms at the opening ceremony in Beijing...tracksuit pants. I wasn't really impressed by it but apparently, the New York Times thought it was the best outfit of all the countries.

Our catalogue models were Kristy Hinze and Norbert but unfortunately, they were not the same ones you see in these pictures. I hope to get invited to the next fashion show, for our other label S-A-B-A.

Jason Mraz Concert

This is the 2nd concert I've been to in Australia (I think). I went to see Jason Mraz held at the Enmore Theatre in Newtown. Wasn't really much of a big fan until recently and I'm glad I went.

WYD08 - Sunday Mass

The big and final event of the World Youth Day 2008 is the Papal Mass at Randwick. This is the 4th time I'm seeing the Pope. And I can now cross WYD off my list of things to do.

...next WYD has been announced. To be held in Spain.

WYD08 - Randwick Vigil Mass

We did our pilgrimage walk from Central Station to the Randwick Racecourse. A pretty long walk (we were originally gonna start at North Sydney) but with the huge crowd and walking with friends, the moment just passed by. We also had to carry our own backpacks and sleeping bags for the overnight stay at the racecourse.

Along the walk, we joined an East Timor group in praying the rosary at Centennial Park. We passed by all different groups from different countries carrying different flags. The whole WYD week, these were the flags I've seen: poland, canada, wales, italy, germany, mexico, spain, US, philippines, indonesia, brazil, scotland, korea, japan, malaysia, singapore, india, pakistan, vietnam, new zealand, sudan, south africa, argentina, ireland, england, burma, east timor, australia, tonga, france, puerto rico, guam, lebanon, and more that I didn't recognize.

Then came the Vigil Mass hosted, of course, by the Pope himself. It was a great feeling to be with the Pope with at least 200k pilgrims all together. And a once in a lifetime experience camping at Randwick with the rest of the pilgrims overnight. It was freezing, middle of winter weather, with just a sleeping bag (two for me). I woke up a couple of times during the night. Around 1am, there were still people up chatting and making noises. By around 3am or 4am, I woke up again and I heard silence. It was full moon and there was a halo around the moon. It was amazing!

WYD08 - Domain

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Sydney on Sunday but his official "coming out" was Thursday, July 17th. So I've taken Thurs and Fri off to join in with the rest of the pilgrims for the celebrations.

The Pope arrived in his boat-a-cade (as in motorcade) straight to Barangaroo where he did his opening blessings. We were assigned at the Domain where his pope mobile would pass through. We waited for about 3hours to see his pope mobile pass by so quickly (for safety reasons) and all I got was this shot (I would have had a closer shot if the nuns infront of us didn't take our front view. We had already marked our territory!!!). I did see his torso after clicking the camera. This would actually be the second time I would see the Pope because I was in Rome in 2005 just after Pope JPII passed away.

Xmas in July

Why not? Its cold, we have all-year-round Xmas lights at our house, and we're doing it for a cause. My flatmate wants to raise $1200 AUD to build a well in Africa through an organization (Life Outreach International) and provide water for life. My other flatmate just wants an excuse to party. Hehe! So we appropriately decorated our house with Xmas decors and we dressed up in something red, white, green, gold or silver. Without giving too much detail, we raised close to $500 and hopefully getting close to the goal. Thanks to all of you who donated to the cause! And for my first Xmas celebration in July!

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

Blessed Pier Giorgio is the patron and role model for the young masses. With World Youth Day approaching, the relics of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati was brought to Sydney. And I had a chance to touch and pray to his relics at St Benedict's church. Learning more about Catholicism, touching objects onto a first class relic makes the object a 3rd class relic. This would be the beginning of my pilgrimage to the World Youth Day celebration that ends on July 21st with the Papal mass at Randwick Racecourse.

Pier Giorgio was a vibrant young man born into a wealthy family who dedicated his 24 short years to the needy, to works of social action, charity, prayer and community. He would always say, "Charity is not enough: we need social reform." His father would not give him much spending money but the money he received, he would give to the poor...even if it meant he had to run home to be on time for meals to give up his train fares. When he was a child a poor mother with a boy in tow came begging to the Frassati home. Pier Giorgio answered the door, and seeing the boy's shoeless feet gave him his own shoes. At graduation, given the choice by his father of money or a car he chose the money and gave it to the poor. (To read more: http://www.bettnet.com/frassati/).

And so it became that with his selfless charity work to the needy, when Pier Giorgio passed away, it was the poor that petitioned to begin a cause for canonization. He was beatified in 1990 by Pope John Paul II.

Sample Sale

My new company (I can't seem to spell it out here because the last time I posted about my new job, someone at work searched for the company and my blog showed up. So I had to kill that blog posting. I wouldn't want my coworkers knowing all my stories). Anyway, my new company, being a clothing company, had a sample sale one Friday. The labels we have (there's two of them...damn, I can't say it on here) are pretty high end, with textiles coming from Europe. Normally, a shirt that would cost $130 AUD was being sold for $20. Pants over $100 were also $20. Jackets for $200 were being sold for $50. But of course, since they are samples, you have to be careful what you pick. My coworker almost bought a blouse that was cut at the back or pants that had a big hole on its leg. It was fun but hard to shop and not being able to try it on.

So I got my employee card last week which entitles me to a 35% discount on our clothes. I tried it that same day and went to MYER in the city. After trying on a few things, I was ready to pay...but was totally rejected. The sales lady told me I had to go to a freestanding store to be able to use my employee card. I told our State Manager that if QVB was not an option for me, I would not have bought the stuff. I was trying to help improve our sales!!! Eventually, I did get the stuff I wanted but was given a bit of a hard time. It was an experience!

Guiness Book of Records

...came to Leichhardt. Being the "little Italy" of Sydney, they held the event for the longest line of pizzas (I know its a bit silly). Along Norton St, they set up a long table starting from the street where we live (Macauley St) all the way to about Marion St...221 meters long and 826 pizzas in total.


Its a bit corny. What they should have done is make one long piece of dough with all the ingredients on it and roll it through the oven...then feed it to us (it was basic cheese pizza). But we did make it to the Guiness Book of World Records. I've never seen one happen before or participated on any.


Just to prove this is real, one of the pictures shows a lady representing Guiness Book of World Records. Actually, after she measured it, it was short of the record. So they had to make an additional 3-4 pizzas to cover it. And there were still some leftovers.

"Good News Week"

I had tickets to be part of the studio audience of the TV show, "Good News Week". Its sort of a comedy show/competition where they have a panel of celebrities and they compete to answer current event news. Unfortunately, I didn't really know who the celebrities were (they had Kelly Rowlands from "Destiny's Child" in the morning taping) and I didn't get some of the Aussie jokes. Haha!

There was a lady whose only job is to fix his tie and shrubs off anything that's on his suit. What bug me the whole time was the host's pants sticking inside one of his high cut boot and nobody told him (not that they would put the camera on his feet anyway).

Leichhardt to City

Who would have thought I'd walk (or could walk) from our house to the city (approx 6km far)? Nobody did...and I proved them wrong. I started off at 10am and got to Chinatown at about 11:45am, just in time for their mass. Along the way, I did some short stops (but did not buy anything) to an antique shop, glass shop, art gallery, was asked for directions, pub, checked out the price of a vespa, looked at the menu for a Korean and Japanese restaurants, and withdrew some money at the bank. It was a bit of an adventure.

Western Plains Zoo (Taronga)

Taronga Zoo has a branch in Dubbo which is a safari style drive through around the zoo. You can also rent bikes to look around. The animals are sectioned by continent, some you can have animal contact, and most are fully restricted.

We had too many pictures so I'll just show a few of them that I like. The zoo had animals ranging from kangaroos, emus, tigers, water buffalos, giraffes, zebras, tortoise, koalas, monkeys, elephants, cheetahs, dingos, and a lot more. I recommend checking out this place - not a typical zoo but a safari style zoo.

Dubbo Observatory

This is exactly what we saw at the Dubbo Observatory - I thought they had glued a picture of Saturn on the telescope.

And of course, we had a look at the moon and Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System.

Wellington Caves

The largest stalagmite found in the Southern Hemisphere is located at the Wellington Caves.

Next to these caves we went to was a phosphate mine. I didn't know phosphate was made out of bat poo!

Ready Steady Cook

I was able to get tickets for a TV show on Channel 10...a cooking competition show, similar to the Iron Chef. My first time being in a studio audience (we almost got into the David Letterman show in New York one time).

We were at the audience for about 3hrs for a 30min show to be aired like 6 months later. The double takes and bloopers are what made it take that long. And the audience participation with the applause, oohs and ahhhs when they zoom in on a food. It was soo funny! Anyway, if you get a chance in your hometowns to be part of a studio audience, its an interesting behind-the-scenes experience. Try it!

Meteorite Crater

Do you see that mountain range behind us? That's actually a meteorite crater. Where we are used to be flat. Where we're standing is on top of a hill (among lots of hills) that was formed from that hit.

And without those glasses, that's Doogie Howser on the right (with the red T shirt)