Bottled Sky

I seem to have the worst luck in going to the beach and getting a tan. I vacationed in Pagudpud with my family a few summers ago, and it stormed for the bulk of our stay. Then a couple of summers after that my high school friends and I went to Punta Fuego. Sure it didn’t rain, but the sun didn’t bother to make an appearance the whole time we were there either. Only a couple weeks ago I traveled to Subic with some college friends, and — you guessed it — a typhoon tagged along.

While it was undoubtedly interesting to swim in the ocean amid strong winds and cold rain, I’m starting to lose the hope of ever seeing a sunny beach again. I should probably give up on that natural tan I’ve been coveting for the past several years and be content with being pale. At least I won’t have to worry about skin cancer.

You’re going to have to excuse the whiny tone of this post. I normally make an effort to keep my entries light and entertaining, but these past few days I haven’t been feeling good enough about myself to be perky. Let’s just say it hasn’t been the best of weeks. Several recent incidents have shown me that I can be a bit of a self-absorbed bitch at times. Though I don’t really believe I’m completely to blame for the said incidents, it is obvious that I need a little attitude adjustment.

Ick. I feel weird posting semi-serious stuff here–clearly I’ve had more practice writing about the quirky and the silly–but I didn’t want to censor myself too much either, so I just let the words flow. Sometimes I do need to purge. Don’t worry about this becoming a trend, though. My life is cushy and uncomplicated; I have neither an excuse nor a desire to go all “tortured soul” on you. We’ll be back to regular programming by next post, I promise!

If you have an abundance of positive energy today, send some over to my mom and my dogs, Oreo and TJ. They’re celebrating their birthdays this week.

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.