I am a social nomad.

My sister has a best friend since third grade, I don't. But I sort of find solace in never having to invest in a permanent group of friends, and don't get me wrong, I love all my friends anyway. I wonder if it has to do with learning how to leave a set of friends so early in life, a slight remnant of my slight third-culture kid status, and my former years taught me how to cope with creating new peers every time they jumble me into another section every school year.

*
Contrary to popular belief, I do get sad. I just usually deal with it in private.

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Awhile ago, I had to walk going to the Shopping Centre to acquire a service contract (mwahahahaha - book binding lang naman). My timing was impeccable when the rain poured and I was traversing the street near the UP Church. I just had to stop in the middle of the road, clutching my umbrella and pretending how it would have been a very picturesque shot from the back.

*
Harry Potter in two days! I don't feel the hype thou, maybe because the dementors lost their way and decided to go to my school instead of Hogwarts, either that or the entire second year is a bunch of inferi. Can't wait to see Luna in her Gryffindor helmet.

I must admit, I really didn't care much when Michael Jackson died, by the mere fact that the last thing that stuck to me was that he was a paedophile. But then I was JustJared-ing to pass the time procrastinate, and I just saw this tribute by the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre (CPDRC) inmates, who captured YouTube fame in 2007 for their remake of MJ's Thriller. I must say I really love these dancing inmates, and followed pretty much everything byronfgarcia has uploaded, even the ones wherein the audio became classical because of copyright infringement. It just brims with so much hope for the Philippine penal system as a whole, because even if they were convicted criminals (hopefully they weren't wrongfully accused), they still get to do a lot of meaning-making in their lives, and even get world-wide attention for it.

I must say Jai Ho was an absolute hit for me because it just took them a week to practise it. But due to the light of recent events, they had 9-hours non-stop practise for this one, and I must say, they made me care about MJ's death and his greatness:



RIP to the King of Pop
And yes, the fact that he could give inmates post-mortem hope, get on trending topics in twitter and flood RIP messages of facebook news feeds everywhere really goes to show the influence, and how much he has touched the world.

I was talking to "Richard" (originally known as Biboy) and Diana (also known as Di) and looking back the first week, it seemed like Monday was ages ago. It's Friday and I'm home and looking at my Weekend Task List, I really want to die because as I said, I have killer Mondays. It's been an insane week at the Law School (particularly at Blessing's Photocopiers) I haven't even had time to pick up a camera and take a decent photo of myself. Or anyone at that. ( Weekly Highlights )

Yes! Yes! Yes!

facebook.com/celeni

Beat the 66 (IKR) who have Celenis in their names, including a certain Celeni Luna (no joke, di ako gumawa niyan), even if I was technically around 8 hours late. Updating my LJ links now.

You could get yours here.

I thought it was rather unfair that I had a special feature post for Pet Society without having one for Restaurant City. Restaurant City, after all, is my favourite Playfish game between the two (did you know that Playfish is a British company? That's why the updates are always done at 0:00 GMT, and their CEO is an econs major. ♥). Anyway, I visited my newly renovated restaurant when I woke up this morning, the day after the Philippine Independence Day.

Yes, I've reached maximum level, and yet I'm ranked 8th among my friends (9th pa nga because I added a random stranger for ingredients trade who I haven't deleted yet and is currently my "top friend"). But I'm happy for my realistic set-up with a popularity of 50.0! [/end of personal RC indulgence]

( I... I'll bring the music. )

( End of Summer =( )

Agent Casey shaking the trees for coins

It's the most over-used adage in a middle income class and below household: "Money don't grow on trees." or "I'm sorry honey, we can't get you (insert moderately expensive item here) because the money tree just died." Of course in Filipino, the idiomatic expression is "Anak, hindi napupulot ang pera." which is really fallacious because everyone probably experienced coming across a coin or a note. But that's beside the point... most people work hard for money and so do pets (see related entry).

In Pet Society, however, money DOES grow on trees. When I was starting out I had to shake all those trees and I'll make 30 coins because of my large neighbourhood (150 friends, more or less, that time). The trees get "refilled" with coins after I do something like visit a friend or run races. It's tedious, but I've organised a way so I don't shake the same tree twice per round. This is the part where I stop because it will freak out even those who love Pet Society as much as I do.

But a new feature opened this week, and it's all about Gardening. And I love it! ( Here's why... )

It's so sad how I only get to blog if something's wrong with facebook. I swear, facebook can eat me now. The level of addiction is outstanding. My blockmates tell me I'm online on it everytime they are. :O It couldn't be that bad right? Facebook pag gising, facebook bago matulog. Oh well, facebook everything in between, even when I'm validating Form 5s. Yes, I'm RegComm, or was, I have a funny feeling in my respiratory system today. Maybe because of the ice cream after karaoke "unwinding" - Thanks to Lou and Anj for that (they did warn me about the ice cream but I insisted). Worst case, it's swine flu, but I really doubt it.

Enough of me. Last Friday, by Nikko Briguera's suggestion, I went to the ANC Leadership Forum. I don't reserve this blog for political commentary because I don't do political commentary. Of course I'm furious about ConAss among all the misgivings that this administration has enforced in the past four years, and I'm surprised that this issue wasn't tackled in depth during the forum. But that's not what I'm here to do, I'm going to give a comment on each of the potential candidates in the forum and show-off my shiny new set of celebrity photos. Yay me!


( Part II of the ANC Leadership Forum )

I'm still telling myself "Sell-out! Sell-out!" For having a beach-y facebook profile photo. But hey, it's summer, I was cousin-pressured [since they all took profile pix from this day] and I feel a photoblog coming along!

Photos & Edit: Celeni Guinto
Camera: Canon EOS 400D
Software: PS CS3 for Mac
Location: Taal Lake (Batangas) and Anvaya Cove (Bataan)



( Summer Waters )

Right before going home, the Anvaya staff were throwing a disc around, so I made epal for a few minutes. Oo na, mapagpanggap. It does bring back some very fond memories.

Always been my favourite in Pixar, I clearly remembered seeing the first one in 1995 and crying over the Woody/Buzz drama scene when they were trapped in Sid's room. And now, Andy's going off to College! [via FirstShowing.net]

On a similar note, when is Up showing on this side of the planet?

Hello World. Gossip Girl here, your one and only source for the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite.

So it was the season finalé of Gossip Girl and what was the episode main plot? FIND GOSSIP GIRL. The episode's title is not "Goodbye Gossip Girl" for a reason, I honestly don't know what it means. But I have a good idea who Gossip Girl is!


Trying to figure out who Gossip Girl is!
( Heavily laced with spoilers, in fact, you won't get this until you've seen the Goodbye Gossip Girl )

Glee



I just can't get enough of Glee! If you love the songs, I've uploaded them on MediaFire, and you can watch the pilot on May 19th if you're in the US, or now, if you could find the Pilot [or the 20th if you're in my side of the world and you love torrenting]. It's weird how timeslots are messed up in the TV world right now, there are really bad pirated copies of today's Gossip Girl season ender on youtube because they showed it a day earlier in CANADA. I'm slightly spoiled, but I haven't seen the entire thing, so I'm still pretty excited! (=

Download Songs
Don't Stop Believing [Finn, Rachel, Mercedes, Tina, Kurt, Artie, originally by Journey]
Leaving On a Jetplane [Will Schuester, played by Matthew Morrison, originally by John Denver]
Rehab [Vocal Adrenaline, originally by Amy Winehouse]

Taken from the gleeforum. [Although I uploaded it to my own tab]

First of all, thank you to woodycakes who blogged about Pre-Air Pilot of Glee the newest show from Fox. Dimple buzzed me on Facebook a few months ago saying that "she was reminded of me when she saw the teasers of Glee." So I calendared May 19th for the preview. And luckily, I saw it. And my definite, favouritest, character must have to be Rachel Berry.
( More on Glee and Rachel Berry )

I super can't wait for the series to begin! On other news, Chuck is going to be renewed for another half-season! Yay for renewal, boo for half season! But yay! in general.

Links:
Glee Official Website
Glee Club - LJ Community
Facebook Glee Page

I've wanted to watch this film since last year's Academy Awards by virtue of a very interesting premise: a former concert cellist becomes an encoffiner [or in lay terms, a funeral home specialist, only very culturally nuanced]. Very Six Feet Under. However, during that time, I couldn't find a copy among the pirates Online, so I downloaded the other Oscar stuff which sadly, disappointed me very much (this is the 2008 Academy Awards, not the most recent one).


I picked this one up after chuvaness recently blogged the film's trailer. I luckily found it again, and finally, found something worthy of that Academy Awards that didn't put me to sleep.

( More Comments - Non-spoiler )

For most people, I'm probably the happiest, bubbliest person they have ever known, my level of happiness is highly unusual in the stressful environment I have to sustain for the next three years (or if God so permits). Unfortunately, every month, when my hormones start tuning in a different direction, I get these serious attacks of anxiety and depression, and I just spot all the things wrong in my life and cry and mope about it (I know right, it's almost a joke). The slightest trigger will make me cry and mope about how I haven't been living my life to the fullest.

But enough of the drama, that's an isolated circumstance. I realise that the reason I'm happy most of the time, is at the expense of others. When I get depressed, I look at what's missing in my life, when I'm happy, I see what's missing in other's, which eventually leads to the inevitable habit of pangchachaka. Yes, sometimes I do feel guilty of judging people who probably never did anything to me (well, some of them have, especially if they're not artistas), but yes, schadenfreude IS REAL!!!

So yes, I'm broke this week. I had to pay my sister to watch Star Trek with me (yes, she's a science major who hates SciFi, what's wrong with this world???), and it turned out great, so I had to go watch it another time, and the next day it was with my cousin and brother. I had to pay for my brother, so I paid four tickets to watch Star Trek twice, but it was, well, more than worth it! Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto were priceless, to think that this was the first of the franchise I've ever seen in my life! I actually wanted to be a physicist once again! And even if the tickets were at P180 and P194 each, it was just the value of my new jelly sandals, because I'm too poor and unemployed to get Melissas!


Topshop's Hulk Gladiator Jelly Sandals.
[Wuh, they have it clear one on the Online shop, but here they only have it in bright blue, green and hot pink]

So what's the secret to happiness? Continue living this carefree summer until stress comes back to haunt me and challenge my bubbliness again. Cheerios!

No, I was not kidnapped on a summer getaway, nor did I contract the Flu, to explain my blogging hiatus. Raymund Vitorio blames microblogging of robbing him of the opportunity of real blogging [via Plurk]. But what is "real" blogging anyway?

Before I completely digress (it's iBlog today, and it's in school and I have absolutely no intentions of going), two-words to explain my blog inactivity: Playfish (or maybe that's one word, so if that's one, I guess the other word will be Facebook).

I started with Word Challenge, some cutified, competitive version of Text Twist because you see your facebook friends rank and score. But then that became a bore because I was at ~17,000 and the highest amongst my friends was 100,000+. So I decided to move on to all the rage in cute RPG facebook games.



( Pet Society )

( Restaurant City )

Links:
Playfish Official Site [RC Introductory Post]
Pet Society Anonymous
Pet Society Addicts

OH! And a day starts in Pet Society and Restaurant City at 8:00 AM, since they reset it at GMT. ^__^ Which means, back to facebook for me!!!

I was texting one of my blockmates the other day and I told her that law school was such a cultural blackhole! Therefore, I equate summertime to re-connect with pop culture. And here are a few notes:

Films


( Films: 17 Again, He's Just Not That Into You )

( TV: Chuck! ) ♥

( Music: Lily Allen, Lady GaGa )

I was working on Persons/Family Relation reviewer and I can't help but procrastinate by visiting my favourite (and Blessie's as well) wedding photo blog, Paul Vincent.

I love/hate this activity. For a number of strange reasons:
[+] I really love non-commercial high-def photos. Although you pay Paul Vincent to cover your wedding, it's still non-commercial because you paid for his services to preserve memories, not to make profit out of the photos.

[+] Seeing real couples getting married makes the fairy tale illusion of dream weddings a reality.

[+] Like woodycakes does when she checks out marriage banns in their chapel, I love assessing the "aesthetic" compatibility of the couples. At the same time...

[-] I hate being too judgemental about other people. [But! Some are really chaka! Yung kahit anong galing ng photographer, stylist at make-up artist, wala ng magagawa]

[+] Which becomes inspirational because now I know, aesthetics is not a limiting factor of finding "true love" (or something approximate to it, seeing that these people are taking an institutional manifestation of that emotion).

[+] I also love bridal fashion.

[-] But it still makes me desperately want to wear Vera Wang if I'll ever get married. x__X

[+] I also love the pre-nup concept photos.

[+] And veil shots are amazing. *drop jaw*

Photo by: Paul Vincent, 27/01/09, John & Liza (so I guess that's Liza)

[+] It makes me realise that by the looks of these people, average marrying age range is 28 to 38.

[-] It brings out the hopeless romantic in me. *sigh*

[-] And at the same time, I realise that I have this huge fascination for weddings but it ends there, I have nothing but doubts for the institution of marriage, especially the non-bailout-able policy we have in the Philippines.

This is the part where I'm supposed to cram and worry about pre-nups that refer to property regimes, not photo-shoots, because I'm approximately 18 hours delayed from deadline. x__X PIDC finals later!! Yay!

Black Saturday has been kind of a tradition that we go to Tagaytay. Last year, we went to my mom's friend's house with a pineapple garden. Yesterday was a simpler food trip, as in literally taking a trip, with food in the end! But before I forget, let me greet everyone...

Happy Easter! ♥


( Food Trip! )

Currently the fiercest girls on television, Leighton Meester is truly a star. Popularly known as Blair Waldorf in the show everyone absolutely loves without qualification: Gossip Girl. I loved her ever since I saw her on House, M.D. because I absolutely loved her role on being the stubborn teenager who got really creepy stalky over her crush on House. Hahaha. Her two or three episode cameo was really amusing. Anyway, I also love her on Gossip Girl, and don't we all?

And she has a pretty clean reputation. I love how she was born in prison and how she handled it. Oh and she sings too! Late last year, I heard her version of Betty Davies Eyes [download mp3] and that was just smashingly lovely, I couldn't believe it was her. And now, she has a song with Awesome New Republic, called "Birthday" [via sofimi's plurk]. I'm still looking for a downloadable version, but the song totally rocks even if I'm not really crazy about dance music.

[EDIT, thanks to anonymous commenter]
Download Awesome New Republic feat. Leighton Meester "Birthday" [mp3]

It's just so awesome!!! I love her! I can't wait for her CD! Oh and it's her real birthday tomorrow, so advance happy birthday Leighton! She turns 23 this year, yes, we were born the same year. =P

On a totally unrelated note, hello summer! (=

I'm waiting for Earth Hour so I decided to give a short update. (=
Exam Checklist:

• Legal Profession


• Legal Theory


• Constitutional Law II


• Contracts


• Criminal Law II

Me, infront of Quezon Hall after today's exams
I don't know what's up with the geeky girl pose either.
Two down, three to go. But in terms of units, it's four down, thirteen to go, so you get the picture. For the record, Legal Theory was awesome because we got to type down our answers. It is like an econometrics midterm or problem set, only we didn't have the awesome network to pass our papers on, we had to do it manually = USB. It also meant that I got paranoid that mine didn't get saved properly or that I gave the wrong file. I hope not.

And for that, while I was trying my best to study, I ended up shooting a wallpaper. Law school really limits opportunities for creativity, so I had to have a smashing desktop for an in-class paper-making-exams.


Well, that's it really. I'm getting annoyed that my blog entry on NuSkin is a flame war site, and I'm not even part of it. I'll turn off the notifications na, bahala na lang sila. Basta ako, I have my own business to mind. =P