Killing Time

I've been messing around Apple’s Final Cut Pro X video editing software since early this morning and I got addicted to it because it's so much better than iMovie, the video editing tool that came with my macbook air. I just downloaded Final Cut Pro X this morning, used what I learned from iMovie as the interface is somewhat the same except FCPX is much more promising because of the wide array of effects to choose from. The only problem is, it cost a hefty ‎US$299.99 (Php14094.28) omg. I know, it’s a professional video editing tool that’s why it cost an effin fortune. Nevertheless, I’d love to have one someday lol. Seriously, video editing is such an enjoyable past time. Now, here’s my cat’s very first indie film I made using Final Cut Pro X.

if you may have noticed my cat has conjunctivitis (swollen right eye) which is currently being treated. I just don’t know why the veterinarian I have consulted can’t seen to make his swollen eye go away. It did during the first few days of his medication, however, the swell in his right eye came back after. It’s kind of a wonder actually. Anyways, I hope they figure something better. Overall, Atari is healthy and immensely loves to play.

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Baking Nostalgia

My temporary little blog space at home--the attic, whilst my cat 

is busy watching the cars passing by the highway.

July is almost over, like it just flew by when you're busy with a lot of things. What kept me busy lately? Cooking and baking.

The advent of YouTube has made everyone's life so much easier. I learned the proper way of face contouring through YouTube, how to blend in those eye shadows, the art of applying under eye concealer, how to make no bake cakes and lately mug cakes. Yes, cakes directly mixed in one of those little coffee cups then baked using a microwave oven.

Cookies n Cream mug cake

Chicken Pesto Pasta served with chilledRed wine
(wine from Bugnay Berries). I cook and bake
alternately.

Baking is such a tedious process and this is what I learned when I was in Junior high, I had baking class and you can't just pop in all the ingredients without properly measuring them. With cooking, you can still alter the taste during the process since you can always grab a spoon to balance the mixture of each and every ingredients. Unlike baking, once the product is done, if you poured in too much salt whilst making the batter you're done, it won't be edible trust me and you have to start over.

Some dessert I made--
sliced apple and dragon fruit
with condensed milk.

My sister and I at one point enjoyed baking during our teens. Our parents even bought us this huge oven to further our passion for baking but we just gave it up as time went on because of the cost of ingredients and the time spent waiting for a finish product. Our oven turned rusty and old until we can no longer use it.

Chocolate mug cakes topped with
Oreo cookies and rainbow sprinkles

As I got older I still had my penchance for cooking but I never thought that I would reconcile my love for baking until recently. I started out with my home made pancakes since the ingredients were simple: eggs, all purpose flour, milk, butter, sugar and you're good to go even without baking powder then top it up with some strawberry jam! My sisters said it was phenomenal so I was encouraged to make other products out of flour such as Japanese cakes, waffle etc.

My steam baked chocolate cake with
rainbow sprinkles.

steam baked cookies n
cream chiffon cake

I got bored and scoured YouTube to try something else until I stumbled upon these mug cakes you can make just by using a microwave oven. I bought some more ingredients such as vanilla extract, baking powder, low fat cocoa and some rainbow sprinkles to begin with then I tried a couple of mug cake flavors: Chocolate and cookies n' cream. I wasn't happy with them although my sissy said it was fine. I found the cake's texture kind of rubbery because I did not follow the instruction which is to cook the cakes in just two minutes since our microwave oven doesn't heat up fast anymore so I extended the cooking time to almost four minutes. I quit making mug cakes and turned to cooking the batter by steaming them. The baking process took kind of long (about 20 minutes or so although you can check it from time to time) but the outcome was better. The chocolate cake I made was moist and no longer rubbery, very fudge cake. I topped it up with rainbow sprinkles afterwards and I was happy.

I found recently that shopping for baking products is my new happiness. It may sound funny but I frenzied over baking supplies and ingredients whilst at the supermarket. I don't know, I guess I'm just nostalgic sometimes.

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New Beginnings

Back to the world again. I was all gloomy over the holidays because I needed to control my diet to avoid the holiday weight gain and yeah I know how ridiculous it sounds but If I don't, I'll freakin' balloon. It sucks to be Hypothyroid for life geez. I am kind of happy though because I felt I lost weight after drinking nothing but fruit smoothies and crackers during my break time at work, salad in a mason jar for lunch. It's a struggle to ignore my cravings but the result is stunning. No sweets for now, no rice except  (brown or red) and to go easy on bread for as much as possible.

New Year, New Life.

I don't normally believe in new years resolution but I guess it won't hurt to at least set some rules to live by. So what's my new year's resolutions then? First,  to lose weight further the healthy way by exercising (walking instead of taking the cab, eat more veggies and fruits and ditch if not totally eradicate those junk food and sugar. Second, travel cheap as it helps enrich my soul and third, find better job opportunities somewhere to sustain my plans of living healthy and travel (i hope). Living healthy is pricey because of the cost of organic buys out there. Brown rice is not cheap and so as the 'non-fat' products, wheat breads and all.

Moving on, It's time to pay off everything I spent during the holiday season so I'm back to working regular hours and counting how much to shell off for my credit card bills. I love to spend yet it's such a pain to pay them all off but whaddaheck I am a responsible person. To start off the year I bought myself this cute rock cat power bank 5000 mah online to address my phone's battery issues. It's really not my phone but my usage, I am online most of the time thus explains why my phone's battery life won't last long. My new power bank is so rad that it seems to be watching me as it charges haha! Let me just share how it works, the light flickers red once it's almost empty, orange when it's close to being empty whilst green once fully charged. So stoked by my new power bank right now.

I also bought this cute cat coin purse (yes I am a cat person) from the same online seller where I got my power bank from and It helps whenever I miss my cat which I only get to see during my rest days from work. My cat is with my parents 'cuz my sister and live in an apartment somewhat close to work. We both own and care for our cat (handles the vet bills, cat food etc) we just don't want our cat unsupervised whilst we are at work especially now he already lost his tail more than a year ago.

"soul brothers" until he started munching...

Artsy Places.

My sissy and I both love hanging out in artsy and not so crowded places. Those wherein you only get to know by research and blogs from people who have been there. Not to mention we are very particular with what's on the menu given the fact that we already both started living healthy years back the place must serve foods that are delectable and healthy at the same time.

We visited Ili-Likha Artist Village few days back after having read it on blogs that the resto serves healthy foods and the idea spawned from the same people behind Oh My Gulay thus explains the eccentric pieces of art adorning the place. My sister and I had their Chia Tea (yes with chia seeds) and their Ches Cake. It really is called Ches cake by the way as it's a cheese cake. It was good. The tea was not too sweet and same goes with the cheese cake.

We met a feline friend, their resident cat who's been begging us for cheese cake (who says cats don't have sweet tooth e?) I gave her a tiny chunk and told her she can't have no more because it's not healthy both humans and animals as its high on calories. She left after getting bored then came back to play with my backpack's key chains! Some cats are playful while some love to sleep wayyy too much than play.

We named her 'Iluya' from the name of the place 'Ili-Likha' and 'Luya' which is a Tagalog for Ginger and orange tabby cats are called 'Ginger.' We'll try their brown rice meals one of these days or whenever we have the time.

posted from Bloggeroid

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Here comes the sun

photo from pinterest

It's been about a couple of weeks since I came back from work. I did not miss anything neither. Still the same shit as it was before I went on leave of absence due to my operation. Been feeling better and it hasn't been for quite a long time since I've been marred by health constraints. Nevertheless, I'm happy back to getting paid as 'no work no pay' is such a pain in the gut.

It rained for a couple of weeks due to the recent typhoon 'Jose' and I've never felt so sad because It felt all gloomy here up north during rainy days. It's so much gloomy because of the fog. I felt like the world lost it's balance, the yin and the yang, the sun and the moon per se. The moon isn't visible neither came night time as the sky was covered by nothing but fog and heavy rains.

I was happy few days ago after seeing the sun peeked. Why? Because I need some sun for all the clothes to dry. It's like watching the movie 'city of ember,' the entire city is powered by generators, no sun, no moon as it was built underground. It felt so much like that. The sky looked like a blanket of gray and white.

It's just sad I guess cuz the Philippines is georgraphically situated close to the ocean with no other country to diffuse the storms like what we do to neighboring countries here in southeast asia. We deal with all the typhoons more often than our neighbors thus big chunk of economic funds aside from going straight to corrupt politicians pockets goes to rehabilitation, to resucitate from calamities.

Moving on, I wish i could change things but I can't so I just suit myself buying makeup and I hate it when I don't have any preferred brand except for revlon and quite a few such as BYS and some in2it. I'd rather think about my own small scale problems such as a perfect travel organizer/kit for my cosmetics to veer away from further stress.

I often envy my cat, all he does is sleep. 'Meow' is his mantra.

posted from Bloggeroid

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what's up with all the jinx?

Atari with his own Elizabeth's collar

The weather gets really gloomy here up north because it's raining all the time. i am not a fan of rainy days/season because my medical condition is making me not very tolerant to the cold.  moving on, back to renting a flat again after my sister and i realized that the cost of gas is so much more pricey than paying the rent.  our new flat is cozy because t'was newly painted although it's an obvious old building. newly painted spaces look good as new most of the time. 

some jinx
just recently my sister was rushed to the ER (emergency room) because she slipped in the bathroom and hit her nose. it wasn't bad actually just a scratch although the bridge of her nose turned quite swollen because of the trauma after it hit the faucet. an x-ray was performed to make sure she did not break a single bone and all was well. few days prior, our cat atari was rushed to this 24hour veterinary clinic after he sustained serious wounds and his long tail is already being infested by maggots. we were told that he's been ran over by a car and he was lucky to be alive amidst the painful wounds he got from the accident except the vet needed to amputate his tail because it won't be of any use anymore. we we're a bit guilty because if we live together with our cat, we could've looked after him. he was confined for 2 days and was released soon. thank god. our mom must've sent him home inch by inch and is still around looking after us. our cat is recuperating well, he's been eating a lot, sleep a lot as usual, meows and purrs a lot.  i am hoping that everything will be normal again and brush off all the jinx there is. i am also praying that all the misfortunes will soon be replaced with positive vibes. 

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moving on

i've been on hiatus again because a lot of things happened after Jack's passing. we moved again because the house we stayed at for five months was no good. it was close to the hospital which made my niece susceptible to sickness.  that house was just a horrible. rodents used to live there thus made us adopt a cat. so, we decided to move and it was such a perfect decision. our new crib is so much better. it's cozy and we can breathe clean air as it's away from the hospital. the unit has 3 bedrooms, nice kitchen and a dining area. the back door leads to the laundry area with enough space to hang our clothes to dry. the house reminds me of our house back in manila except for the fog. i noticed that it's more foggy here than the one we lived before. it's so serene which makes sleeping in the morning not problem. the only beef i have is that, the property isn't pet friendly that we even needed to take our cat to our parent's house. Atari is potty trained so when my parents took him in, they were amazed with his discipline in using his litter. i miss Atari but i think he's better off in our parents house because of the big space for him to move around. moving on, it was such a pain getting our globe wimax service transferred here in our new flat. globe isn't good with anything else but troubles in terms of service requests and stuff. anyways, moving on again, instead of relocation i instead signed up with a new service, our old one is out of contract anyways. sigh, the hassles of moving.




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MOVE-ing on....

after a lot of thinking, i finally said yes and agreed to give up our small space in our 20 year old house which rooms have long turned into bed space units. i was adamant really but my sister convinced me and after a lot of arguments i decided to give it up for my mom's sake. she needs to make money out of it and i realized it's the only way we could share some time with our parents. my mom was very glad i finally agreed so i went home and helped her out vacating our space so we could move our stuff to  our other house in the village. my only concern, our house there  does not have quick access to pretty much everything. 

i have seen our house cat 'moonie' and adopted dog 'kulet' which i haven't seen in ages. animals are good stress reliever. moonie is a bit talkative but my mom said he's not lazy. well, that's a surprise since most male cats are lazy. i was so busy this morning packing our stuff. i don't know how on earth it'll fit the small truck my mom rented. how short is the weekend.

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