Bottled Sky

I was finally able to go on a vacation with my high school barkada this weekend. And it was the best vacation we’ve taken together so far. Here are some photos from the trip. It was shorter than our usual trips (just three days this time), but we were able to do so many things. Not all of us were able to come, though. A couple of the others had internships that they couldn’t get out of

On Friday morning Fatz, Aggie, Liz, Jo-Anne, Jess, and I drove up to Tagaytay. We headed straight to Fatz’s condo at the Highlands, a country club in Tagaytay, where we were going to be staying for all three days. After we had lunch we got a call from Bern, another friend of ours, who was at Punta Fuego with her family. She invited us to spend the afternoon there. So we immediately jumped in the car and drove to Batangas.

The resort they were staying in was beautiful, and there weren’t that many other people. I hadn’t been to the beach in years, so I was pretty psyched. We spent quite a bit of time frolicking in the waves, shrieking and trying our best to hold on to our suits hehe I did get knocked down a couple of times by some strong waves, but I managed not to ingest too much sand and saltwater. We also got messy in the sand, trying to build the cities of Troy and ancient Egypt. As you will see from the photos, we are very far from being competent sandcastle builders. We headed off to the pool afterwards to splash around with Bern’s little brother Cosco. After a late dinner, we kidnapped Bern from her family to spend the night with us in Tagaytay.

On Saturday morning we went on a mini road trip around Tagaytay with Fatz acting as our driver and tour guide. She spends every weekend there, so she knows her way around pretty well. In the afternoon we went back to the Highlands and swam at the sports club, where Fatz lost both her contact lenses in the pool. Jess was miraculously able to find one of her lenses. How she was able to find an itty-bitty contact lens in a swimming pool is beyond me! We then spent a couple of hours relaxing in the locker room, taking advantage of the Jacuzzi, sauna, and steam bath. We got so relaxed that most of us were out cold before midnight, falling asleep right in the middle of a DVD.

On Sunday we just kicked back at the condo, watching more DVDs while chomping through bag after bag of chips. Liz and Jess cooked an excellent lunch of pesto and garlic bread, so we were able to stuff ourselves full for the trip home.

Last night was one of the best nights of my entire life. I got to see Incubus live in concert…and how! I didn’t even know that I’d be going until my friend Tin won two tickets the day before the concert and decided to take me. (I love Tin!) And I definitely never imagined that I’d somehow end up practically right in front of the stage almost for free. To tell you the truth, I’m still in disbelief and completely on a high until now.

The tickets Tin won were only for the SRO Patron section so we weren’t that happy at first. We were with Niña and Zsha-zsha who happened to have tickets for the same section. We started lamenting about how we were not going to be able to see anything when two guys who were part of the concert’s crew approached us and offered to lend us some IDs and smuggle us into the Premiere section for 200 pesos each. We decided to take the chance, and we did get in. However as soon as the band got on stage, people started standing on their seats, completely blocking our view. I grabbed Tin and dragged her to the front. The bouncers tried to stop people from rushing to the barricade in front of the stage, but they eventually relented. And that’s how we ended up right up front, screaming our lungs out, just meters away from the hotness that is Brandon Boyd.

It was so amazing! Incubus gave such a wonderful performance, and the show lasted for nearly 2 hours. And I have to say this…Brandon Boyd is one of the most beautiful creatures ever to walk this earth. Believe me when I say that Brandon Boyd is a god, or at the very least living proof that there is one.

The area in front of the stage was this close to being a full-on mosh pit. It was so crazy, so sweaty, and strangely enough, so much fun! Despite the fact that the little toe on my left foot got jumped on several times by what felt like a stacked-heeled boot (it still hurts when I walk) and the fact that I won’t be able to speak normally for the next couple of days, the experience was definitely worth all the money I didn’t have to pay!

We hung around at the concert venue for a while after the show to meet up with other friends and have our pictures taken. After we’d had enough…well, actually after the bouncers had started asking people to leave…Tin drove (how she was still able to drive after that is beyond me) Niña and Zsha-zsha home. Then she dropped me off at Chrissa’s condo, where my other college friends were having an overnight review session. I of course proceeded to disrupt their studying with my giddiness hehe By 4 a.m. I finally managed to fall asleep. Tin joined us again in the morning for breakfast and straight on till lunch.

I finally got home this afternoon, and right now I’m seriously considering never having the clothes I wore last night washed ever again due to the slimmest of chances that even a molecule of Brandon Boyd’s sweat somehow landed on them. Yeah, call me crazy

School has been crazy like you would not believe. My sleep-meter sunk to an all-time low two weeks ago when I clocked in an average of 3 hours for the first few days and actually didn’t sleep at all on Thursday. They say that lack of sleep can literally make a person crazy…but then again, I’ve always been a little insane

Last week was actually a slow week (the first week following a hell week always is), so I used my free time to do some non-school activities. During the first couple of days I came up with an acceptable number of e-cards for the site. Skylight Greetings should have been up by now, but I’ve been getting a server error every time I try to run the script and I don’t have a clue on how to fix it. Needless to say, the e-cards are on hold for now.

I went malling with some friends on Thursday, then I went to see “Lilo & Stitch” on Friday. I had been waiting so long for that movie to show here and I was so psyched to have finally gotten to see it. I loved it! Stitch is cute beyond words (although my mom and my friend Aggie vehemently disagree) and Lilo’s adorable, too. It’s definitely one of my favorites now

And during the weekend, I tried to teach myself the basics of JavaScript via online tutorials. It’s a lot like C so it was pretty easy to understand. I used my newfound JavaScript skills to code a simple guessing game for my little cousin. I might add it to the site one of these days, but I’ll probably just make something else for the site.

Well, happy days over. This week has some semi-hellish potential itself and the week after this (with all its exams and deadlines) will definitely be a contender for the annual “The Worst Week of Nikki’s Year” contest. Wish me luck and try not to have too much fun without me