I finally got around to writing a welcome note to my blog XD

Hurrah! Let’s celebrate! *hands you some champagne*

But as I entered the counselor’s office, something was different. There was this big blue plastic container in the middle of the room and an entire shelf full of toys and figurines. I thought that the counselor was probably an anime enthusiast or something but I couldn’t stop staring at the shelf.

Well, apparently, he wasn’t an anime enthusiast. He was introducing something new to the routine interview, and this time, by using the value of “playing” to learn more about the person.

And how great is that? The routine interview has always been a very boring, very straightforward Q&A time where the counselor asks you about EVERYTHING from academics to family life to friends to your lovelife, while you awkwardly answer him/her without giving away too much.

Instead of all of that, I was asked to use the box filled with sand as well as all the figurines to create a landscape representing my world out of the stuff available.

The counselor gave me around 5 minutes to fiddle around on my own, and this is what I came up with!

Click to view slideshow.

Now, what is that? While I was making it, I just grabbed a bunch of random stuff without giving it much thought. But I came up with this. A while later, the counselor came back, asked me to explain it to him, and out came all of these observations that actually did reflect what was going on with me in real life! It was still quite awkward, but we spent plenty of time just staring at the box and figuring out what everything meant. It was all very poetic, and I just wanted to share how cool it all was. Here a short explanation of what I did:

• Present-me is represented by the Mulan doll sitting on the swing/bench thing, and the people behind me are my family and friends.
• The bridge over the river represented the path I needed to take in order to get to my future goals, that is, represented by the fancy house, the foreign looking landmark (representing travel), cakes and stuff (actually they were just cute, but I guess they represent the finer things in life), plants (with snow!), and also the corporate attire lady who was supposed to be future -me.

So what did it all mean?

My future is all laid out in front of me, a short distance away, and I know how to get there (by crossing the bridge), but currently, I’m just sitting here, enjoying the view, not really taking any concrete steps toward my goals. Fortunately, I have my family and friends supporting me (that’s why they’re behind me) so that one day, I can get up and start moving forward.

Wow. So deep, right? It’s pretty interesting because even though I myself made that landscape, there were these little details that I didn’t recognize, yet reflected some of my inner thoughts and feelings.

I liked it so much I took photos to share with everyone. If only all guidance interviews were this fun and enlightening!

I just came back from my immersion in Rizal. I was able to spend two days (or actually just around 1 day since we arrived at noon and left at the same time) with a foster family. My family ran a small sari-sari store in Pililla, Rizal, and it was a nice peaceful community with lots of kids running around all the time.

A view of Laguna de Bay

And speaking of kids, the three little girls I stayed with were the sweetest things ever. I’m not really good with kids, but they were so adorable and kept on asking me questions which I didn’t even know how to answer.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 94 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 199 posts. There were 52 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 72mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 11th with 53 views. The most popular post that day was ANOTHER 25 things about me :P.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, mail.yahoo.com, bloglovin.com, and berns24.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ust paskuhan 2010, paskuhan 2010, happy lemon manila, happy lemon philippines, and “happy lemon” promenade.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

ANOTHER 25 things about me :P June 2010
8 comments

Happy Lemon… in Manila? November 2010
3 comments

UST Paskuhan 2010 December 2010
2 comments

Back to school June 2010
9 comments

My Makati Adventure! April 2010
15 comments

Yeahhhhh my sister and I baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies today! Actually, don’t be so amazed, because we bought one of those ready made mixes, haha! And since we don’t have an actual oven, we just used our toaster oven… Still, it was fun, and the cookies ended up slightly burnt but super yummy. :D

As always, I still have tons of schoolwork that have yet to be done. I should be panicking, but I’m having too much fun bumming around the house. Oh, procrastination. When will I ever get rid of you? :(

Yes. And I have a midterm exam tomorrow. Which I have given up studying for. It’s hopeless from the very start.

My Christmas break starts at 10:30am tomorrow!!! I can’t wait! And after that, a flurry of happy things and neverending food~ :D

Also! Am bringing a whole bunch of presents for everyone to school tomorrow since I am going to school in the Danicar (Yeah!), which means none of my lovely wrapped gifts will be opened by stupid security guards at the LRT station. I’m sorry, security guards, I know you are doing it for our safety and wellbeing but it’s just really really annoying. :( My heart breaks every single time a piece of tape is ripped from the wrapping paper by someone other than the recipient.

For some reason, even if it’s so late, I don’t feel so sleepy. Normally at around 1am, my eyes start to droop and I can’t stop yawning, but now I’m just a little tired. Must be the extra sleep I got over the weekend. Yeah! YAY weekends!

Now I really can’t wait for Christmas break. I plan to pay back ALL of my sleep debt. Every single minute of it. :)

P.S. Hey! You know what? If you move your cursor to the left or to the right, the snow follows! Just wasted a minute of my life making the snow dance the hula. ;)

Here are the promised photos! As I said, UST is so brightly decorated with pretty lights this year. According to my friend Abi, there weren’t so many last year so I guess it’s lucky that I got to see it now, right? :)

I didn’t pose any of our many vain shots, because they are embarrassing but I’ll probably put them up on Facebook.

Speaking of pretty Christmas decorations, I’ve been joining the caroling activities of our org, A-Stat, and we’ve visited so many gorgeous houses all decorated and stuff. I’m really excited when I see these things because my own house has absolutely 0 decorations. We’re all too lazy to put them up, clean them daily so they don’t accumulate dust, and also to take them all down at the end of the Christmas celebration.

Have you been anywhere with lots of pretty Christmas decors? Let me know, maybe I’ll go and see them. And maybe take more ugly amateur photos. Haha! :D

SEVEN DAYS??? How come I don’t feel the Christmas vibe at all?

Well, actually I can answer that. School is one of the main reasons, seeing as we’ll still be in school 3 days before Christmas! Insane, right? I even have an exam on Monday. A couple other people have exams this coming Wednesday… night. Dear professors, you probably have nobody to spend Christmas with, right? (I’m being mean, but this is not because I’m becoming a mean person, but because I’m under a lot of stress. (I learned it from a friend who attended a stress management talk in school.) In fact, I’m becoming a lot meaner lately, if externally or even just in my mind. But that’s a topic for another day.)

Today I went to UST with my high school friends for their Paskuhan celebration. Every year, they invite me, and every year, I decline. But this is my last year, so I just went for it. Mainly to meet up with these friends who are pretty much like my family already, and also just to boost the Christmas spirit.

And it was great! UST is super pretty with all the fancy lights and decorations all over the place. I mean, the flimsy parols and little lights in the Zen Garden and Bel Field is NOTHING compared to UST, where the entire campus is brightly lit with all these ornate Christmas lights. It was beautiful. I have pictures, but I’ll upload them later. :)

The entire time we just walked around, bought a lot of food (of course), talked, took plenty of vain shots (which I won’t upload here, for my sake as well as yours), and just laughed a lot. I really needed it, too. The week has been insane, partly because there’s too much work, and partly because I spent the entirety of last weekend playing Starcraft (not even Starcraft 2) and not doing all the school work due this week. Hmm… Maybe I’ll play some more tomorrow.

This week, I have a whole bunch of Christmas parties and dinners all lined up and I’m hoping it will put me in a better mood! There is the problem of lack of resources (ahem, cash, ahem) but I won’t think about that for now.

Oh, and presents! I love wrapping presents while thinking of the person who’ll be receiving these gifts. Sometimes I worry too much about whether these people would actually appreciate the gifts that I’m giving them. I put a lot of thought into it, and because I’m pretty limited in what I can give, I spend a lot of time just planning it out. Wrapping though, is just a stress-relieving activity for me, because I’ve already got everything laid out, and the only worry is how much gift wrapper to cut for each present.

Well, I hope this post didn’t depress you too much! Haha! If you need gift-wrapping lessons, I’m always here. :P I’ll try to write nicer, less negative things next time, but in the meantime, go watch Glee! There is no plot, but the songs and performances will make you happy. :)

Merry Christmas, everyone!