Happy Lunar New Year

The first day of the new year is always an important event in any country. However, here in Korea, it can be said that they have two New Year's Day. The second one is the first day of the first month of the lunar year. For this year, it fell on February 7, 2008. They call it Seolnal. While January 1 is internationally acknowledged as the first official day, here in Korea (just like old Asian countries - China and Japan), the Lunar New Year's day is more important and more significant. Infact, we had a 5-day holiday just for Seolnal, it started on February 6, 2008 until Febrauary 10 (including Saturday and Sunday). Most of the Koreans travel back to their hometown during this festival and enjoy their families.

However, for me, instead of having a real holiday break, I spent it resting and enjoying my time with my family. Most specially with my little daughter who seemed to grow up every day and does not ceased to amaze me with her new antics. Danielle has started to communicate to us with almost complete sentences now. We decided to teach her english communication first than my native tongue "bisaya". Since Danielle like watching Barney, Barbie, Dora and other kid's shows, it would be better we talk to her in english so that she will eventually catch on understanding the kid's shows. Indeed, just months shy before becoming 3 years old, she confidently talks to us. Ofcourse, some are jibberish and her grammar are sometimes off (Where is going Daddy?) but I am very proud she has started to communicate verbally. Infact, she plays and talks with her Filipino playmates older than her and she likes talking more than some of them. Anyway, I bet she will eventually learn Bisaya (and perhaps Korean too??) as she grows specially through her playmates and friends.

One funny thing about Danielle is also the fact that she already understands the animated movies Shrek, Disney movies and Barbie movies. She particularly likes the Shrek movies and she calls me Daddy Shrek! To my amazement, she told me 'What is your name?' I told her, my name is Daddy. Then, she said, 'No, no, no, no... Daddy Shrek lang.' So, I told her, 'OK, my name is Daddy Shrek. What is your name?' 'Princess Fiona Sisican!' she said. Then, she can already play the online Dora stories and games (Check it out.). She also says she is Dora when she is playing this in our laptop. She is already very patient in moving the arrow through the touchpad of our laptop. Hopefully, this interactive website will enhance her imagination and learn more things.

We really can't help but smile and laugh at her new antics. By the way, she also sometimes calls her Mommy as Princess Fiona, and she becomes Baby Princess Fiona. The funniest thing these days is that whenever she sees tall Condo buildings, she calls them Castles!~ one time, while she and her Mommy where still at the ground about to enter our apartment unit (its a 5 floors-Townhouse type), I called her from our fourth floor, she told her Mommy, 'Let's go, Daddy Shrek is at the Tower!' I just hope she thinks of me as the transformed Shrek in the second movie rather than the original large green Shrek. :)

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!

This is Christmas

All my life, I had celebrated my Christmas in my hometown - Bohol. And now, for the first time, I have celebrated it away from home. Yet, I don't feel as lonely as I thought I would. This is because I am with my new family to spend it with in South Korea. Although, Christmas around here is not as lively as in the Philippines, we still feel the spirit as there are already a lot of Koreans who are Christians.

Actually, we started our Christmas celebration two weeks ago with a Christmas Party with the Filipino community in my new company – Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME). The party atmosphere was definitely Filipino as we had our traditional Exchange Gifts or Manito-Manita and livened up with some parlor games. Of course, we had a sumptuous Filipino meal prepared by host family of the event and some by my fellow officemates. The party started at 7PM but ended up at around 12AM. Then, a week later, we had another Christmas Party with fellow Bisaya's from DSME and SHI (Samsung Heavy Industries). We felt more at home in this party as we were among a few friends who speak the same dialect and each of us contributed our own food which turned out to be a lot. Of course, the traditional Exchange Gifts was still there but no parlor games as we were more content on singing on the magic karaoke and talking with some drinks in hand. This party lasted much longer than the previous one as we started at 5PM and ended at around 1PM. My daughter also enjoyed it more as there were more children she could play with.

Then, on Christmas Eve (December 24), we had a personal dinner party with our friendly neighbors Min & Jeung. We had a Korean meal of samgyopsal (thin slice pork barbecue) and they provided a delicious ice cream cake. They also gave a gift for Danielle. We sang some songs and talked through the night but around 10PM only as Min was obliged to work on Christmas Day.

On Christmas Day, we started the day with a call home and I was very happy to hear the voice of my parents specially Mom who had a minor stroke three months ago. She missed us very much and very happy to hear from us. She also broke the news that she received a wonderful gift from the Lord as she can now walk on her own without the help of a cane. We always pray for her and we always knew she has a strong will and faith that will help her gain strength to recover. Then, we went to Church (yes, they have Catholic Churches here) and prayed for continued guidance in our stay here in Korea and thanking the Lord for the wonderful blessings we received. We went to Home Plus Mall and had some lunch and ice cream for Danielle. We bought some stuffs including one whole chicken and an ice cream cake we plan to eat at home. We cooked the whole chicken as inasal through Microwave Oven (an experiment actually which turned out to be just OK). We had a nice family dinner after which we capped the evening with a call to Gin's family.

Christmas will always be a time with the family and a renewal of Hope for all of us. A blessed Christmas to everyone and may the New Year bring forth blessings for everyone!

Winter Wonderland

As a kid from a tropical country, the Philippines, I have always wondered what winter would be like and how nice it would be to experience snow. As a young single man, I had experienced winter and snow in Japan while on a working trip sponsored by my previous company. However, I was not able to experienced the full snow experience since the place I stayed in Japan didn't had much snow. Now, that I am in South Korea, I am very lucky enough to meet nice Korean friends - Min & Jeung (see my other entry about them) who loved snowboarding so much that they are season ticket holders of one of the premier ski resorts in South Korea, the Muju Resort. They became such good friends with us that they invited us in one of their weekend getaways to Muju Resort.

So, on December 1, 2007, I finally experienced a full white winter with my family. On that weekend day, we all woke up early dawn to prepare for our 3 hours car trip to Muju Resort. It was a miracle that Danielle actually woke up early too, although a bit moody at first but she was soon up and eager to ride the car of her new "Tita" and "Tito". We had to start our journey at around 6am so that we will have enough time to rent our equipments & attire. So, off we went in the cold dawn of South Korean winter. Danielle and my wife Gin slept most of the time throughout the journey. When we arrived in the rental store, Danielle was already in her usual smiling morning mood after having slept an additional 2 hours. As we went through the rental store and got into our snowboard outfits, Danielle wowed the owners of the store so much that they actually gave her ear protectors as present.

After the stopover at the rental store, off we went to Muju Resort. There, for the first time, we saw the amazing snowy white mountain where skiers and boarders zig-zagged their way down the slopes. As we walked towards the resort, a photographer actually ask if he could take a picture of Danielle. After taking the picture, he told us to check out Muju Resort's website where he will post his pictures. True indeed, our picture (link to that page in Muju Website) was posted in the Muju Resort's website.

Now, it was time to have our first lessons in Snowboarding. I went first since we can't go together as children are not allowed to ride the snow lift. So, I went with Min and rode the snow lift up high into the beginner's slope. Seeing videos of snowboarding in the TV, I thought it would probably be easy if I just slide down. However, as I finished putting on my snowboard, Min's first tip is falling down on my butt. True indeed, it was the most important lesson as I actually fell perhaps a dozen times before I actually was able to stand up and balance myself on the snowboard. What made it difficult was the fact that I had to try to balance myself while trying to stop myself from sliding down the slope. As I sat down after a dozen more of butt-falls and a few meters covered, the trip down the slope seemed to be endless. Yet, I forced myself to stand up and slowly ride my board down the slope. Whew! I was finally able to ride for about 50 meters before I fell on my butt again. Well, atleast, its a good start. After about 30 minutes, I was actually able to come down the 3,413 meters slope on my own. I really couldn't believe myself and I felt deeply relieved I got to the bottom of the slope even if my course route may have been a bit ugly and probably deserved a sub-zero in the technical and artistic criteria. Well, atleast I pass my first test of will in the snowboarding, that is to ride your snowboard down a slope. We had lunch before Gin's turn to go. She rode the snow lift together with a new Korean female friend, and she arrived at the bottom an hour later. So, you can probably guess how much more difficult it was for her to come down the beginner's slope.

After some snacks, we rested for a bit while our Korean friends enjoyed the routes going down the Intermediate Slope. Then, we decided to ride the gondola (cable car) and went to the highest peak of Muju Resort. There, we immediately discovered, the wind was more intensely cold. And after a few snapshots, we hurriedly rode back on the gondola back to base. Our Korean friends were already waiting for us as we arrived and it was time for all of us to go to the condominium unit we rented for the night. There we soaked ourselves in the nice warm water of the bathtub. After we all have showered, we had a sumptuous dinner of "samgyopsal" (pork strips barbecue), kimchi, black rice and some fruits. I think we were all very hungry as we almost consumed all the food for the next day. Atleast we were able to leave some for lunch the next day. We slept soundly as we felt our energy drained that day. Even Danielle slept like he had been snowboarding too.

The next morning, we woke up at 10AM but Min & Jeung woke up at 8AM and went snowboarding again. After we showered and readied our things, they went back at 11AM and we had our lunch. At exactly 12noon, we checked out and off we went back to our apartment homes. This experience had been very meaningful for me as I shared it with my family and some really kind new friends.

(You can see more pictures in our friendster profile.)