World's Time

I accidentally found this cool website www.clocklink.com which features cool clocks that can be pasted into your blogs or websites. Try it.

My Artist Brother

(Please check out my brother's blogsite: http://inkoarts.blogspot.com and website: http://www.artmajeur.com/ingkosisican)

I always thought of myself as an artist. Well, sort of as I have always been fascinated with images captured by the works of artists. Personally, I would like to someday learn to paint as a hobby but it seems I haven't gotten the real itch to do so. Actually, I have experienced painting as a project in my last year in elementary grade. Well, its not much of a painting, I have a slight memory of it as a landscape painting with a tree as the major point of image. In my opinion it was a wee bit above average painting for a 12-year old. I think I got a bit of a nice grade for that one.

Anyways, I won't dwell much of my talent in painting as I definitely haven't discovered it yet. However, I would like to share the talent of my older brother Jeffrey. We fondly call him Ingko (in our dialect, this is is mainly used to call for respect by younger brothers to their middle elder brothers). Actually, he is exactly the middle brother being the 4th child of seven brothers. For me, I call him InkO because of his talent in the arts, hence, the ink + o. Particularly, he is talented in visual arts and fine arts having graduated Fine Arts from no less than the University of the Philippines (the top university in my country, the Philippines). I think his influences in painting are surrealism, symbolism, expressionalism, impressionalism and embedding it into local themes (just like the painting images in this post which are some of his recent artworks). Personally, I think he has a great talent and I only hope he will have a chance to show it to more audiences. Like most artists, he hasn't cashed in much of his talent but slowly he is making ends meet in his personal goals. He has so far done commissioning jobs to paint as well as done lots of personal exhibits. His enthusiasm in his art has not really wavered despite some setbacks. As a brother, he is great to talk with since he has really nice ideas. We can easily relate with each other together as he is also fond with computers and he is my no.1 adviser when I had some creative projects such as banners and posters. As an uncle, he is probably one of the coolest uncles as he is very patient in dealing with his nephews and nieces and he is well liked by children. As a son, he has deep connection specially with our Mom who he is trying to help take care in this stage of Mom's recovery from a minor stroke last year.

InkO, hope you will have a better year this 2008 and keep on showing your creative spirit. Good luck!

Please check out my brother's blogsite: http://inkoarts.blogspot.com/

Funny e-videos

A New Year 2008

This new year means a new beginning for me and my family. Just like Christmas, this is our first time to celebrate it away from Philippines. It’s now the third day of the year and this is my first entry on our blog. I didn’t write anything the first two days because these were holidays in Korea which I spent wholly with my family.

Well, new year’s midnight countdown has always been the custom we are used in the Philippines and so we celebrated it the same way but essentially without the fun part of firecrackers (atleast, its definitely safer) and the company of our extended famiies as we wait for the first hour of 2008. On the last day of the year 2007 (December 31), I went to work but we were sent home an hour earlier than usual. Well, it was still the same as the traffic was simply extra slow as almost everyone went home to their hometown for the two days holiday given by DSME. Thus, my usual 15minute ride home became a 45minute slow drive. Well, atleast I get to go home for dinner for which my wife Gin prepared a sumptuous chicken ‘inasal’ and wine. Afterwhich, we decided to buy some fruits, chocolates, ice cream and drinks to add to our small cake as noche buena. Besides, we needed the walk as we had quite heavy dinner. The night had been relatively quiet until we had our own special moment with our small party poppers and Danielle blowing the candles of the new years cake at exactly midnight. We stayed up late until 2AM and woke up around 10AM for which the sun had already risen. I actually thought I could wake up earlier to witness the first sunrise of the year 2008 as is custom in Korea. Well, perhaps some other new year I will be able to witness the first sunrise. Besides, the first day of the new year had been the coldest day we had experience so far here in our place. Thus, we spent it together in the apartment as family bonding experience. That basically means, Danielle played with us almost the whole day. The second day of the year had been a bit more accommodating as the temperature had slightly improved and we were able to go to the city’s business district and bought some fresh fish, octopus, shells and vegatables for a different theme of seafood dinner (just don’t ask the price as seafood is generally expensive than meat here in Korea). Despite not going to a sight-seeing tour or some other activity in this two-day holiday, I felt more renewed and reinvigorated spending it with my loved ones here.

Here’s wishing everyone a prosperous new year and bountiful blessings from the Lord!