"Awfully important, buttons - little but strong." - T.L. Stewart

Hi, I'm Ryz. I'm a twenty something engineer. I love food, books, science, art, crafts, gardening, baking, languages, culture, and weird and funny things.

[mylifeandreasons]

My plant has finally yielded this cute little thing. I feel super happy! I've watched it everyday hoping to see something. Ah, the joy of plants.

[mylifeandreasons]

Post Valentine's

I had dinner with my friend today. We meet may be two or three times a year, but we still talk and laugh over the same silly things.

I made her a card.

She went to Japan a few weeks ago and brought me back the following pasalubong.

We had dinner at Toucan Brazilian BBQ Buffet. Unfortunately the food was very disappointing and absolutely not worth coming back to.

After dinner, we bought our all-time favorite flavors of ice cream at DQ. We sat down and talked more then we went home.

It was a nice night.

[mylifeandreasons]

Planting your own vegetables feels so nice. Just look at these super fresh pechay I just harvested from our garden!

I plan on planting a variety of vegetables soon. :)

[mylifeandreasons]

Sundate!

My mom wanted to go to church early today. I haven't been to a catholic church for so long that I've forgotten all the songs and whatnots. I really didn't want to go but I didn't want to have another argument with my mom.

After the mass, which I only half understood (why do they have to use deep Tagalog????), I went straight to Festi to attend Victory with my boyfriend. Miraculously I did not fall asleep this time.

We ate at Bonchon afterwards. I didn't like the flavors this time though. Then we went to Watsons and I ended up buying lipsticks.

We walked around and I decided to go home early. We bough bread at Breadtalk and I tried the Brown Sugar Pearl Oolong Milk Tea at the milk tea shop next to Breadtalk.

I really liked how the pearls were smaller and much easier to chew compared to the pearls of other milk tea shops.

We got home and watched Jurassic Park while eating our bread and some pancit and maja blanca from my neighbor's birthday party.

My boyfriend went home afterwards.

It was a nice and simple day!

[mylifeandreasons]

Lipsticks!

I'm not picky when it comes to brands. I've recently been using the Revlon liquid matte lipsticks. The colors are really nice, but the way the silver coating of the cap peels off and sticks everywhere is really irritating. So today I went to Watsons to try out some new lipsticks.

While looking around, my boyfriend spotted a "buy one get four" lipstick deal by a brand called BYS. I've never heard of this brand, which was fine because I literally don't know much about make up anyway.

I ended up buying their lipstick. I bought one for 299 pesos and got another four lipsticks for free!

They look nice! The only downside is they didn't have any red shades.

I look forward to using and getting some nice blends out of them!

[mylifeandreasons]

Friday night dinner with my boyfriend. We wanted to taste something new and tried the new offers of Tokyo Tokyo.

He ordered the Cheesy Beef Donburi for himself. I couldn't decide what to eat so I just let him surprise me with his choice for my food.

He ordered the Tempura Wagyu Donburi for me. I'm not sure if its the right name though.

Our order took ages to come, but it was worth the wait.

After dinner, we went to National Book Store to look for his 6B pencil since he wanted to start doing artsy stuff. This branch at Greenbelt was way organized than the one in Glorietta so it was easier to search for the pencil.

I wanted to have cake then. We went to Glorietta and ended up in Sugarhouse again. Their cakes are just too delicious and will keep you coming back for more! Plus they have a corner table perfect for if you just want a quiet place to eat your cake.

I let him choose the cake and he bought Midnight and Honey Cake.

Both are absolute heaven!

We ate while we played Monopoly deal. Sadly I lost so now I have to record a happy song with my dog Stacy.

[mylifeandreasons]

Compromised!

I used to get sick at a maximum of once a year. But this year has been flu after flu and headache after headache. I ran out of sick leaves in less than six months. When I went to the doctor about it, he said that, it was obviously because of my job.

Now as much as I would like to resign and take care of my health, I just can't. Unless I'm willing to end up begging in the streets, which I'm not. I have dogs to feed, family members to take care of, buffets to try, and so much more that I could never do without my paycheck.

Sadly, we are slaves for money.

Plus, I can't imagine how boring life will eventually get if I don't have deadlines to stress about. Haha.

[mylifeandreasons]

We went swimming today, but it wasn't even the highlight.

I know how lucky I've been, but today I realized how I never really knew it fully. Reading my boyfriend's diary back from we still weren't together until the present day made me think, "whatever have I done to deserve this?" Well, whatever it is, I am so thankful that he came into my life.

I was late to our agreed time to meet, so in the end it was already noon by the time we got to the resort. We had limited time, so I guess my boyfriend was disappointed. He was also disappointed on the resort's "buffet" (they served us the food on our table... and didn't have any refills. The food was delicious for me though). The sea was so clear and beautiful, unfortunately it was so rocky that it was difficult to walk. So maybe another disappointment for my boyfriend.

The pool's water was incredibly cold so we didn't stay there long. We spent the remaining hour playing Monopoly and eating different snacks. Sadly, I lost.

On the bus ride home I continued to read my boyfriend's diary. He was so embarrassed of himself. Little did he know that it made me all the more in love with him.

Today was filled with lots of travelling and shifting from one vehicle to another, and maybe my boyfriend was filled with disappointments.

For me it was fun and relaxing. It was so lovely to float around the water while having nonesense conversations. It was so, so good to just laugh and laugh over silly things.

I feel my paragraphs are arranged improperly, but I cannot organize my thoughts. I am just so happy with the way things are.

[mylifeandreasons]

Christmas Gift

I asked my boyfriend what he wanted for Christmas, and he said all he wanted was a card. So of course I made him one, and more.

I made this simple black card, to go along with the gold and black themed gift.

The box and the cover are origamis made from black, board papers. I originally used a simple scotch tape to merge the papers to create a bigger box. It looked ugly so I bought a gold washi tape and taped it over the scotch tape. It ended up looking like a black box with gold highlights and I absolutely loved it!

The cover consists of the following:

letters of his name using gold, rub-on stickers

a rose bowl origami made out of gold gift wrapper with gold roses in felt

a "sequins donut" made by cutting a donut-shaped hole on the cover, putting transparent plastic cover on the hole, and pouring gold sequins between the two plastic covers

Inside the box, underneath the Christmas card:

Two sets of Reese's (his favorite)

An accordion-like list of date ideas for 2019

A small Darth Vader plush keychain

Finally, hidden within the folds of the origami box is my letter to him, along with three poems I wrote for him last December 28.

I spent a few nights finishing this gift and I had so much fun doing it!

I'm really very glad that he loved it. <3

[mylifeandreasons]

Bye Bye 2018

All of December and the first week of January came and went, and I didn't even wrote a thing.

It was a great month and overall a great year. I should list down my favorite events:

1. On January, someone I've been talking a lot with for the most part of 2017 confessed his love to me. I giggled a lot while reading his love letter, and he became so embarrassed. He is such an amazing guy and we have been together since. He made my year more amazing than I could ever imagine.

We had numerous adventures together and ate at lots (and I mean lotsss) of buffets and unlimited samgyupsal restaurants. I gained 10 kilos (very sad) though my boyfriend says he loves me no matter what shape I am (very happy). Still, this year we both promised to get back in shape. We need to help one another on this one. :)

2. My long-awaited trip to Switzerland finally materialized last April. Even when I saw the Alps from the plane, even when I set foot on Swiss soil and even when the cold spring air hit my face, I still couldn't believe that my dream of going to Europe finally came true. It was the most fantastic two-week holiday/training of my life so far. I'm just a bit sad that I never wrote anything, but I took loads of photos anyway. I'm still hoping I would get another opportunity like that :)

3. I got a promotion. More pay but more responsibilities. So far it's been alright. I hope I get better at it. Oh and my boyfriend also got promoted :)

4. I turned 25. Twenty. Five. When I was twenty one I told myself that by 25, I should have taken my Master's degree already. Although I am nowhere near this goal, I am still happy about where I am right now. 25 feels so old. It's like I'm midway between youth and that "I'm out of the calendar age". I'm a little afraid of what the future will turn out to be. As an official adult, I hope I can manage the responsibilities coming my way!

My birthday was well spent. I took a leave from work despite the workload. For the last three years, I spent my birthday at work, and even spent the night. This year I just wanted to celebrate. My boyfriend and I went to Sambokojin for a well-deserved feast. By the end of the buffet, we couldn't even move. Haha! We rested for a while until the food settled.

After a few hours, we went to a nearby massage place called Mont Albo. We had originally planned to have the sauna and the massage, unfortunately they needed a 45-minute headstart for the sauna. We couldn't wait that long and just settled for the massage.

I could never sleep during massages, but all the same it was nice.

I guess those are the four main points of my 2018.

Here's to an even more amazing 2019!

[mylifeandreasons]

My mom's present for me was this really soft, gigantic purple pillow. Now I spend even more time sleeping than I thought possible.

[mylifeandreasons]

Hacienda by Barrio Fiesta

I wrote a really long post last night about my boyfriend and I's Wednesday date at this restaurant we just found in Glorietta. Unfortunately the app somehow didn't post it and now the whole thing is gone. Such a bummer! Now I am too lazy to rewrite the whole thing. I really do hope Tumblr listens to its users and bring back the autosave feature.

Anyway, this restaurant offered Ilonggo food, and we were only too happy to try them. I wanted barbecue but I saw that they served smaller Crispy Pata portions, which they called Crispy Patita, so I tried that. My boyfriend ordered the Chicken Inasal, his favourite. We also asked for the Molo soup to compliment our fried food.

When the food came, we were surprised how big the Crispy Patita was, and the Molo soup was served in this gigantic bowl.

We ate everything and our stomachs were so full that it was hard to move. While waiting for the bill, we began practising my boyfriend's pronunciation of "th", like "earth" and "through".

For some reason we ended up putting "th" in every word with a "t" that we could think of. This made us laugh so hard and I was just bending over and down until tears fell from my eyes. It felt so good to laugh like that even though it made breathing difficult.

We went to SM Supermarket afterwards to buy pineapple juice to make up for all the pork that we just ate. My boyfriend then walked me to Park Square, where we again began laughing and laughing until I had to pee. Inside the cubicle, I just couldn't help but laugh in silence at the thought of all the jokes we just made.

We both went home with bellies full of food and hearts full of love. It was a very nice night.

[mylifeandreasons]

Gooone

I made a very long post last night, and when I clicked post, I didn't know that I had ran out of data. Now everything is gone!

Is there really no way to recover this? T_T

[mylifeandreasons]

Today was just...

...so normal. Not that having a normal day is completely bad, but I just thought my December would be full of fun and exciting things. Maybe I feel like these days are boring, since for the last two years, this first week had been the submission of critical projects. I am still doing a huge project now, but for some reason, it's just... so normal and so boring.

The one exciting part was when our team discussed about the Monito Monita and the exchange gift. We were having two weeks of Monito Monita. For this week, we are supposed to give "something for private use" worth 100 pesos. I found this theme in the internet. It was unique!

Our code name for this week is themed for the workplace, so anything related to work. I named myself as "Thermophilic".

The other time I looked forward to was the evening when I finally met my boyfriend.

Tonight we met at the park, where I apparently stunned him after putting my hands on his back as a surprise. We sat there for a while, wondering where to eat. My legs itched so badly for some reason.

Finally we decided to eat at Shakey's. We ordered chicken n mojos and their Texas BBQ Chicken. It turned out to be a really weird pizza, though still quite good.

Afterwards we went to SM to buy his sister's gift certificates. We passed by the children's clothing section and imagined how our kids would dress like (too advanced?).

As we walked on the bridge to Park Square, I told him about this book I've read before, where children were artificially made and can be designed to stay at a certain age depending on what the parents want. I really liked that book.

Then we went home. Another day without a fight :)

[mylifeandreasons]

Went to my colleague's wedding last Saturday at Orchard Valley Resort in Tarlac.

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I'm really loving this mug I bought at Landmark the other night. It's just so me, and I finally get to replace the mug that my ex gave me.

[mylifeandreasons]

Just something different

Today I asked my boyfriend whether he wanted to have lunch at the park and he agreed.

I went there with my packed lunch to meet him. He brought his own lunch and a mat we could sit down on.

I chose a spot in the middle of the trees where the canopies had thrown its shadows. There were certain areas where the grass had refused to grow, but the ground was soft nonetheless.

We sat down and opened our lunchboxes, and it was this moment when a Schnauzer, who had been relaxing nearby with his human, went near us, sat down, and put on his cutest "humans please feed me" face. His human tucked at him but he wouldn't budge. He just sat there, about two meters away from us, staring.

We continued eating anyway. I had roasted chicken with sauce and my boy had chicken afritada. The spice was just right to make the food more exciting. The downside of picnics, as we found out, is that the flies also want to join in on the feast. It was a good thing that the park was relatively clean, so there were no more than three flies bugging us.

We made quite a mess with the sauce. Hence we made it a point to remember to bring tissues next time.

The Schnauzer's human stood up and began to leave. He left while saying to us, "I have to deal with that begging everyday." I have ten dogs, so I feel him.

After cleaning up the mat, there was still time to spare. We decided to play Monopoly briefly. We made it to three rounds, and unfortunately, I scored zero out of three. It was frustrating! Luckily we had not discussed a bet beforehand.

We packed up our things and started our way back to the office. Before entering the building, I asked for ice cream. We went to Ministop and he bought me a cookies and cream cornetto with disc, and he bought matcha cornetto for himself. I've never really recovered from my bad match experience three years ago. It's still on my "never trying again" list.

It was a very different, and very nice lunch break. I remember that we had planned to have a picnic lunch for a long time now. It only came to be, when it wasn't planned.

Until the next dates ❤