Although Andrea and I do not religiously celebrate Valentine’s day, we still try to give each other a little something every year. Most of the time, it would be a card and/or chocolates. Since we both love chocolates, this is usually a safe choice. For this year, maybe I can give her an organic valentine chocolate heart. The chocolate heart is hollow but inside is an assortment of luscious chocolate truffles, Andrea’s favorite. I’m sure we’ll both enjoy devouring this wonderful treat. The chocolate is available in milk chocolate or dark vegan chocolate so even those vegan chocoholics will love it!

Mateo received a small wading pool from some of our co-workers on his birthday. Andrea decided to let him try it earlier today. Unfortunately, I was in school to watch him enjoy the water. According to Andrea, although he preferred to stand while inside the pool he enjoyed splashing around. I hope he grows up to be a water-lover. Andrea and I are not good swimmers and one of our plans for Mateo is to enroll him in swimming lessons in the future so that he grows up to be a better swimmer than us

Andrea has been shooting so much lately. Every little chance would have her pressing the trigger. I’m talking about our point-and-shoot camera. She’s been using it like crazy ever since she started her photoblog. She’s now mentioning thoughts of getting a DSLR. Since we don’t have money for it, she’s trying to cook up some other way to get it like selling some stuff or stay up every night for several months doing paid posts. She’s telling me to use the camera more often too. If I know her any better, she just wants me to want that DSLR as much as her. Hehe!

The weekend is almost here! I feel like a student every time Friday arrives - no worries, no preparations for the next school day, sleeping late, waking up late the next day. We’ll be staying in Antipolo this weekend which means more bonding time between the three of us and of course, less tiring too. Let’s just hope Mateo is a good boy.

I’d seldom get the chance to wash our old car. Most of the time, we’ll just hose it down with water or if it rains hard then that’s it. Today though, the dust on our red Mitsubishi Lancer got too much even for us. Right after getting home, I decided to clean it really well. Andrea and Mateo kept me company outside. I guess it can be therapeutic too!

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Andrea and I have our blogs hosted on our own web host. We initially had a free hosting account which came with the domains we bought. It was okay for a while because we didn’t really need that much space at the start but there was a banner of ads on our sites. The free hosting account is ad-supported so we had to endure seeing those ads on every page of our site. After a few months, we decided to pay for our own web host to be able to get rid of those pesky ads. There are a lot of good web hosts out there and we didn’t really know which one to sign up with. Andrea read and studied the different web hosting choice available to us. I’m happy to say that we were able to get a good one, thanks to webhostingchoice.com

I’ve visited my High School alma mater today and I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic seeing it again after a long time. I think the last time I went there was around 3-5 years ago for the Interbatch basketball competition and the Alumni Homecoming. This time I went there along with my students and other co-teachers.

I was surprised. It felt sadly familiar but strangely ironic. With all the Pisay students there, I could still remember the rush and excitement of deadlines, the terror of project defenses, and the stress of putting up exhibits. Oh no! Just remembering it is giving me hyperacidity! Though it wasn’t all bad.

It was also strangely pleasant seeing old teachers and mentors still teaching there! It felt a little awkward though greeting them as equals now, but at the same time eerily familiar. I can’t help but think that they would always seem like mentors to you no matter how old you get. Even if you’re now teaching other students just like them. Hehehe! (No sucking up intended here ha!)

When I was looking through the front lobby, I could still somehow recall the feeling of agitation for my teachers for all the work load that they gave me back then, but there I was carrying students of my own (who might be harboring their own feelings of agitation towards me now). How ironic is that? All in all, it wasn’t bad - my trip down memory lane.

The high school students, together with some teachers, will be going on a field trip today to Pisay, my HS alma mater. I expect to see some former batchmates who are now also teachers there. I’m also intrigued to see what my old school now looks like. I haven’t been to Pisay in years and I wonder if it’s so much different from when we were the students there. There will be workshops, exhibits, and some of our students will be joining the Math interschool competition.

Shopping on the internet is very convenient. You just sit inside the comforts of your home and you can browse for any product that you want. What can be challenging is finding a good deal online. There are also many promos and discounts online that you wouldn’t know if there’s something better than the one you’re looking at. Good thing that there are sites that does the price comparison for you. Savebuckets.co.uk helps you find the greatest deals on anything. Their front page has a search box that conveniently lets you type what you’re looking for and then they would search shops for you. The search results would list different items with their corresponding prices at different shops. This definitely makes online shopping easier! Another helpful feature is their ‘My Price’ portion. If the items listed are beyond your budget, all you have to do is tell them your budget and they’ll email you if an item becomes available. Sites like these makes online shopping all the more fun and affordable. I’m sure Andrea will be a constant visitor of this site.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, we had a great weekend in Tagaytay. Apart from unwinding and letting Mateo enjoy new sights, sounds, and experiences, we also remembered to take a lot of pictures. It would have been more exciting if we have a DSLR but since we only have our trusty Canon Powershot A570IS, we tried to make the most out of it. Andrea and I were able to try the numerous camera modes of our point-and-shoot, including the manual setting. I think it is a good enough point-and-shoot for those who feel too overwhelmed with a DSLR. This camera lets you play and try out manual modes. Aside from the usual pre-programmed settings like portrait, landscape, etc., it has aperture priority, shutter speed priority, and full manual mode where you have control over all the settings. Though the camera still makes us feel limited somewhat, it made us all the more eager to have our own DSLR. Here are some pictures we took during our weekend.

 For more pictures we took you may check out Andrea’s photo blog