christmas break

this is the last day of work and we will be starting our week-long break tomorrow.

finally some time to really spend at home and lounge all day. so i will be blogging again at the start of the new year...this is perhaps my last entry for the year.

yesterday, we had an advent recollection and one of the reflection questions was about blessings received for the past year. i can think of a lot but what i am really thankful for this year is having my family. seeing our little girl develop from her 1st month with us upto now when she is almost turning a year old. seeing how happy her mother is everytime she holds her. seeing them both every time i wake up is one of my greatest joys....sets me up for a bright day everytime. i love you both, momee and gabby! may all of us have merry christmas and a happy new year.

agony of defeat

i've been trying to come up with this ever since our first loss at the just concluded gs cup came. it was really hard to accept that we were defeated then.
we braced for another meeting with them having to win all of our remaining game assignments to be able to get back at them. we did sin with ease, sweeping all our remaining games. that winning streak came at a halt during the first game of the title series. we almost won..."almost" being the operative word. our opponents literally took game one away from us just like the way they took our victory during the first meeting.


blame it on inexperience, blame it on sloppy calls and officiating, blame it on anybody and anything under the sun....the fact remains...the opponents swept us in the title series 2-0.


in a basketball game, there are winners and losers...we were the latter. after 7 straight years as the champion, we finally got our first 1st runner up finish and trophy.


i was not able to get the championship i worked hard for this year...maybe next year i'll get a chance at redemption but for now, i must still endure the agony of defeat.

yoxx's wishlist

19 more days till christmas. as usual, we have our wishlists every christmas time and just as everybody does i have my own wishlist.

yoxx's christmas wishlist

1. a sony psp-i would really like one since it is not only a game device but also a wifi gadget. i'm lusting over it because of it's wifi capabilities more than anything else.

2. a set of 25th anniversary joes-this will be a nice addition to my growing collection of toys.

3. a new cellphone-not for me but for wifey, a nokia n-series perhaps.

thinking about it, these are things that can be had even if its not christmas time. what i really want this christmas is to win the gs south cup championship. it will really be a merry christmas if this holds true after all the trials we had to endure for the entire school year.

winning the championship can be the icing on the cake of my coaching this year. after all, i have gabby and wifey, there is nothing more i could ask for.

dravenworkz joeverse

i have finally uploaded "reincarnations" the first part of my gi joe fanfic based on the action figures i have. i really don't know how many parts my fanfic will cover but as long as i can purchase my action figures, the stories will continue on.

joes

update below.

these are my new joe's from the comic 3-packs general abernathy, tunnel rat and flint.

update: a pix of the cards of my joe's. the last card is my recent haul, a dtc major bludd figure. i'm looking forward to this weekend when i can hopefully purchase my dreadnoks.

family day

after i arrived from iloilo, i spent the following day resting at home. fatigue brought about by the delayed flight from cebu to davao has really caught up on me. i was with gabby the whole day and all we did (when i was not asleep) was to take pictures. here are some of our pictures from our "mini-house".

in the afternoon, we went to sm since i promised them that when i get back from iloilo, we will go malling. these are some pictures of them eating at shakey's and riding the carousel.

dethroned

our team has been dethroned as the national champions. ateneo de manila university succedeed us as the national champions for this years national tournament. we got the third place and the most coveted award which is the sportsmanship award.

we had no luck in gaining the ntaional title for the second time but we won something more valuable that the national title and it is the value of sportsmanship. regardless of who we meet in any tournament, we have proven that we can be competitive and fair in competition.

for all our efforts, animo ateneo!

new toys and our trip

shopped for my fbl win toy trophy yesterday. after 2 weeks i was finally able to buy my first comic 3 pack joes. i bought the pack with general abernathy, flint and tunnel rat. i almost missed on them because the last time i checked, i couldn't find the set, luckily last night, i saw one set so i decided to really buy it even if it would cost me some money....(it did cost me money.but i'm happy with my growing joe collection...it also cost me a lot because i was able to buy a loose fully poseable degeneration x triple h figure. now i'm in the look out for a fully poseable dx shawn...damn toys.so hard to find.hehehe.)

tomorow, we'll be leaving for iloilo for the milo-sbp national tournament. we are the defending champs in the sbp division so we will be defending our national title. hopefully, after this tournament, i will be able to buy another set of trophy toys. i plan on buying something from my allowance and i might end up buying the remaining comic 3 packs. (the one with zartan, fred and zarana, the dreadnoks and breaker, scarlett and hologam cobra commander. it's just a shame that these toys arrive here in our city late. all the good stuff are already sold out before we can get our hands on them. but this fact will not dampen my hopes of giving my joe collection another try. with all the figures available, i can more or less come up with close to 30 joe pcs both from the comics packs and the dtc's they've already released.)

will just post pictures of my new toys, hopefully with the other set i can buy when we arrive from iloilo. will also update on what happened there in the tournament once i get back.

the time of year

it is the time of year again wherein new titles for the different computer game consoles are being released week after week. one of my awaited titles this year is the annual smackdown vs.raw 2008. i've been reading about it since information about the game was released after wrestlemania 23 last march.

can't wait to get my hands on them.

update: finally got my copy yesterday (november 14, 2007) just had little time to try it out but it is really worth it.

ching2's birthday

yesterday, ate celebrated her birthday. mommy treated us all to dinner at buffet palace. of course, the scene stealer was gabby. here are pix of her taken at buffet palace yesterday.

sembreak

we spent the semestral break packing our things for our transfer to wifey's place. we are currently occupying the 2nd floor of their house...it seems that we are living in a condominium unit...:)

this is gabby's picture at our "new place". she is leaning at our bed.

part of my sembreak was buying my "trophy toys"....we recently won the regionals in the milo sbp and wifey granted me two new toys as my "trophy". i bought a spiderman figure, and my 2nd dtc gi joe footloose. i already have two joe's to my collection.(i started buying toys as trophy's when we won the championship for the basketball summer league in 2006. i bought my wolverine figure and from that time i began buying toys as trophies to help me remember the championships we won. i still haven't bought something from our recent fbl win.....have to go and check the mall for more joe's this weekend.)

back to back

this basketball year for us is all about defending titles. and we have been doing good at it.

recently, we bagged our 3rd championship in three weeks. our fbl boys successfully defended our championship from last year making us back to back fbl champions in the mini category. the boys defeated the uic team 52-38 to get our second fbl championship.

these are new boys that are playing for the fbl because they changed the age bracketing. we had grade 4, grade 3 and grade 2 kids playing this year unlike last year when we won our first championship, we had grade 5, grade 4 and grade 3 boys playing for the team.

the team also bagged two of the three individual awards. miguel belen of grade 3 got the mvp award for the 9 year old category and jeremiah aguilon for the 10 year old category.

congratulations!

champions....again

we are once again representing mindanao in the milo sbp-pasarelle national tournament. it's a third straight nationals appearance for our school, also the third nationals appearance for coach ice gravador and this is my second tour of duty for the nationals. the road to the nationals wasn't that easy for us. we had to escape defeat narrowly against sacred heart of jesus montessori from cagayan de oro. believe it or not, the final tally came at 35-33. that was how close we came to being denied an entry to the nationals for the third straight time. in fairness to the sacred heart boys, they really played a very good game...it was a game you really dread seeing one team lose...unfortunately for them, we escaped with the "w" and will be heading back to the nationals again.

we will be leaving for iloilo on the 16th of november for the national tournament and hopefully bag a second straight national title. it will be a tall order for us since one of the teams we will be going against is ateneo de manila university. as coach ice would say, " we go to the nationals and try to get the title...if we will be given the chance to get it, we try."

and so we begin the defense of our national title.....animo ateneo!

new old place

we are back to living at wifey's place. can't afford to pay two rental dues in a month's time so we had to give up the comfort of staying in our own rented place. we started moving back last friday and hopefully, we can finish all the moving about today so that everything will be settled before the week ends. it's actually a "new old place". "new " for me since i get to live at wifey's house together with mama & papa (my in-laws). "old" because it's wifey's place and she literally spent her entire lifetime there. after a year of living away from them, here we are going back to their place while our own place in pequeño is still waiting to be finished. (we really can't make it their by december. have to put plans of moving there onhold for a few more months.) hopefully, we can start occupying the new house by summer of next year.

toys and gadget

wifey and i recently purchased our very 1st television set.(our early christmas gift to ourselves since our old set won't turn on anymore....thanks tita sev for the old unit. :)) a samsung flat (reviews of the brand which states that they are the best producers of screens in the market today made us decide to go with the brand.)
because of this, my toys were displaced...the toys were previously atop the old unit but now, the new unit cannot accomodate them anymore that's why they were displaced. i took the liberty of arranging them on top of the divider and took a picture of them until i find a more suitable place for them. hopefully, when we transfer to the new house, i can place them on a nice display case.( a display case where gabby cannot reach them.)

(picture summary: pix 1-wolverine, cpt.america and eric draven action figures, pix 2 (l-r)-tallgeese gundam, elite forces figure, voltron, sandrock gundam, pix 3 gabby's mr. potato head, rasta man figurine, astroboy)

last saturday, i purchased my fist g.i.joe to start my new joe collection. i bought the spirit dtc which is from the wave 1 set of the g.i. joe dtc. only a few of the wave 1 figures is available here. i will just buy all the figures available for my collection. unfortunately, i was not able to take a picture of it. i will just update this post with the pix of my new joe. (wifey allowed me to collect them. she promised to buy me another figure at month's end. can't wait for that time to buy my new figures.) together with my joe, i bought gabby two new plush toys, tom & jerry. they will join gabby's other plush toys. (will just create a post of all of gabby's plush toys one of these days.)

as promised, here are the update of the pics of my spirit joe:

going back

the provincial campaign for our milo-sbp team has just been concluded and we are going back to the regional competetion to start our campaign for the national tournament. our boys won against assumption school of davao by a large margin. the game was played yesterday at the montaña gym here. one of our boy was named mvp. congratulations josh and to all of the sbp players...animo ateneo!

proudly pinoy

stumbled upon this logo in one of the blogs i have read. being a pinoy makes me proud to have this logo displayed on my blog.

another surprise

received another surprise yesterday. our house is already ready for take out according to our developer. well, surprise, surprise..we can really move in the new house before christmas. this just means that we have to postpone decorating our current place to save us the tiresome job of taking them apart before we move in. wifey thinks of moving in on the 8th of december...hopefully, no glitches arise in our application of light and water for our new house so that we can really move in on that date. here's an updated picture of our house i took when we visited it some two weeks ago.

yo joe

went to the local mall yesterday with wifey. everytime we go to the mall, i would always frequent the toy department to check for new action figures. something caught me unaware yesterday at the toy section, these action figues are all for sale....the toys of my childhood are once again finding their way to the local shores....i'm a child of the 80's and these action figures are very much a part of my childhood. can't resist to look at them figures and see if they are really real. (backstory: i've been searching for this line of toys for years after i misplaced the last figures i had at my own room...that was before i got married. upto now, whenever i go home, i still try to look for those toys i lost....i never really got over them afterall. i tried the other soldier action figure line created by bbi, the elite forces line but they didn't live up to the experience of having a gi joe.) now, with my discovery, i can't wait for the next payday to buy me at least one action figure i can play with. i'm planning on buying the major bludd figure i posted above. then slowly build up on my collection again. (i have thought about my early christmas wishlist but i guess, i don't need one. i just want my gi joe.) this time with the new releases from hasbro which they say will run upto 2008. this year really is a tribute to all things about my childhood and all the children of the 80's. (i just hope that wifey allows me to indulge on this....hehe)

portability

the tech bug just bit me.


i've been trying my best to customize my office pc for quite sometime now and make it run as fast as it can. i've tried all the tweaks in all the places and the all softwares that lets me do it. this has been a personal project of mine....come up with a pc that works with limited resources. i've chanced upon portableapps. these are a set of pc apps in portable editions.......as the site would say...."runs comfortably from a 512 drive" these apps really do work and it does use minimum resources of my pc.

i've downloaded all the necessary apps i need and installed them individually on my pc. (i downloaded the suite but it won't work so i started downloading the individual apps contained in the suite.)

i was able to get the following portable apps to work:

a. clamwin portable

b. gaim portable

c. openoffice portable

d. firefox portable

e. vlc portable

the other apps i plan on installing perhaps some other time. hopefully by then, i will have a fully functional pc working on portable apps. (by the way, i was able to free up close to 10 GB of my 40 GB hard drive just by using the said apps....and still counting...cheers to portability

little joys

went malling with wifey and gabby. this is our first time to go out as a family now that gabby has already turned seven months old. the picture here is taken at KFC while we had our dinner.

going to the mall with them is one of my little joys. i always look forward to days like this. no basketball game to coach, no school activities to attend. just strolling at the mall with them can account for a truly great day.

seeing gabby like this is also one little joy i always look forward to.

"happy-sad"

haven't blogged in a while due to a lot of things that has kept me pre-occupied for several days until this very day. to sum up the events that has kept me busy, i have tought of categorizong them into the title that i have for this entry: "happy-sad".

happy- had the chance to emcee our celebration of "buwan ng wika"
sad- my team b lost to holy child last saturday during the sbp games
happy- wifey and i celebrated 1 year of married life. she even got me a new fone for our anniversary.
sad- one of our players got hospitalized because of dengue
sad- my former teacher and now, co-teacher passed away today.( gracias, sir tony)
happy- finally finished all of my grades which are loooong over due.

life really can be so short....we have to enjoy every minute of our existence. we need not fret about things that come our way. basically, only there are only to things we can experience in our whole lifetime...."happy and sad".

what's up?

between the last post i had and today, wifey and i have been very busy preparing paper works for our new home....yes we are finally getting our own place. the new place is at wellsprings highlands, a new subdivision at catalunan pequeño. it will be a 90 sq.m. lot we will ultimately call home. we finally completed all the necessary requirements yesterday.

this afternoon, wifey and i will go to the area and start the layout of our house. this is the developers proposed layout for our house model:

as i frequent the web, i chanced upon this site, floorplanner.com. wanting to fulfill my architectural frustrations, i instantly signed up and put my architectural frustraions to work. this is what i came up with:

this is a floorplan roughly based on the floorplan provided by the developers. of course, there can be slight differences because i just tried doing things by myself. hopefully, the layout i made and theirs will match more or less. excitement really is mounting as i think of living there a few mnths from now. when that time comes, all the home magazines i've been collecting will be ultimately put to good use.

the truth is, wifey and i are both happy that we are able to provide a nice home for our little princess. after today, construction of our home will start. we'll try to post pictures of the progress of our home monthly.

what i got for my birthday

celebrated my birthday 2 weeks ago. got a surprise present from wifey to add to my toys...she got me a cpt. america action figure...thanks hon. now cpt. america stands proud together with wolverine and eric draven on top of our tv set.

( cpt. america with wolverine and eric draven (both partly hidden))

( cap w/ wolverine and my discman)

Life and Coffee

Found this in my webmail inbox. This came from a friend, a former co-worker. Jsut like to share it.

Life and Coffee

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to
visit their old university lecturer. Conversation soon turned into
complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the
lecturer went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and
an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some
expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said: "If
you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving
behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want
only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.
What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously
went for the better cups and are eyeing each other's cups."

Now, if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are
the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, but the quality of
life doesn't change.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee
in it.

Don't let the cups drive you...enjoy the coffee.

reset

it has only been a month since classes started yet i feel like i'm so exhausted already. why? perhaps a lot of this has to do with adjustments. i am undergoing a lot of adjustments as of late. work related, family life related, financially related, even adjustments i can't seem to figure out until now.

however, slowly i am coping with the changes. with work, i just look forward to the weekend and everything turns out fine already. with family life changes, i just don't complain anymore....i just do things as they present themselves...like bathing gabby even if it's not a weekend and preparing meals in the weekend which i rarely do now (i just came up with a new recipe yesterday but that is for another blog.) with our finances, well...still coping...i got back my car i had to give up a few weeks ago because of....yes, our current financial scenario.
everything seems to be coming back to its original state now and i vow never to let these things happen again. (still i can't use my cellphone because i have t leave it with gabby so wifey can contact them, technology not working at its fullest that's why. our helper's fone can't get any signal from our place. this still has not returned to its original state).

it's a monday, hectic and manic yet a few days from now, it's the weekend already, time for myself and my family. can't wait for the weekend to arrive.

my first father's day

last sunday was father's day. together with a lot of firsts for me this year, i celebrated it for the first time with wifey and gabby. this is my recolletion of my father's day.

i woke up early and played with gabby while wifey prepared her bath. ( i volunteered that i will take care of bathing gabby during weekends but she still has to prepare the things needed..hehe.) after bathing gabby, we both slept....i guess wifey allowed me to doze off because it was father's day, had it been not father's day, i wouldn't have had the time to doze off like that. i prepared our lunch because i wanted to eat kinilaw and i was surprised when wifey said that she'll be the one to go out and buy liempo. i really wanted to eat liempo for a long time and i kept on bugging her about it she finally brought me one last sunday.

that was the best father's day gift i recieved from her. thanks hon!

to wifey on your birthday

there were bells on a hill

but i never heard them ringing

no, i never heard them at all

till there was you

there were birds in the sky

but i never saw them winging

no, i never saw them at all

till there was you

then there was music

and wonderful roses they tell me

in in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and dew

there was love all around

but i never heard it singing

no i never heard it at all

till there was you

happy birthday, hon!

what's up

it has been quite a long time since i last placed an entry. i owe it to the summer vacation. no work, just stayed at home, went to basketball practice, coached a few games, took care of wifey and our bundle of joy, gabby. the recent vacation was a really looked forward event this time of year since it is the first summer vacation wifey and i would have after 4 years in work. this is our real "summer off", not the two weeks they normally would give starting employees here. a month of just lounging at home, watch tv, watch movies, play videogames.....all i can say is, that was life.

anyway, it was also during this summer that we had gabby baptized. pictures are already at my picasa web album.

it was also during her baptism that we had the chance to have our first family photo.next week, wifey will be celebrating her birthday and perhaps we will have a new family picture by then. but till that day, enjoy the pix of our baby's baptism. ( i have also uploaded pix on her own picture page.)

lifes lessons i learned from the movies

movies are meant to entertain us, cheer us up and let us forget about our daily worries and anxieties. since i've married, i haven't had the time to go to the movies however, if i have time, i visit my firendly neighborhood movie retailer (read: dvd, dvd) and buy some movies i may have missed. lately, i have been watching films that have been memorable for me. i really can't understand how i feel about the movies i've watched lately but i've been getting life lessons from them. ( this may be a sign of old age already, but nonetheless, i enjoy it.) i just like to share the latest i've learned while watching a movie.

watched "click" yesterday at home. a really entertaining film but is really different from past adam sandler movies i've seen.( we're big adam sandler fans so with will smith, so me and wifey never miss their movies. we also saw " the pursuit of happyness,but that may be for another entry.) what made it interesting was the fact that since it deals with the dilemma of attending to one's career and family life, i can somehow relate to the premise of the film. the lines " .....family, family, family,...." uttered when he was dying really had a strong message i could still feel radiate in me up to now.

perhaps, it made such an impact on me because there are times when i want to focus on my work and tell wifey that the work i'm doing is part of my responsibility as the coach, as the teacher or whatever...come to think of it, where should my biggest responsibility lie, on my work or to my family?

i guess a large portion of ones responsibility should be with his family or at least it was what i got from the film. the common adage " don't take things for granted" should really apply to families. of course its very tempting to say that my family will always be here for me so i attend to things that are of the minute, but we have to remember that we may also miss out on the little memorable moments of our family.

- you may never be able to tast your wifeys home cooked meals again. (she may only dare once.)

- you may miss out on the laughter shared by your relatives, (they may stop visiting you.)

- you may miss out on all the first things your baby will do. (first steps, first words uttered, etc.)

enjoy every minute we shall spend with our families. don't be tempted to push the "fast forward button" that life just passes us by without us even noticing it. the next thing we know, we have already skipped a chapter of our lives, our families lives.

these are the life lessons i learned from this movie and this experience really makes me change the way i watch films.

(this part is for my friend who is finding it difficult to face the world: watch this film, and enjoy every moment of the film. don't push the chapter select and skip on the great parts of the film. you know where to find me in this part of cyberspace.)

the week that was

it's the end of the week.it is quite fitting that i end this week with a new photoblog consiting of the events that transpired last week. (luckily, i have pictures of those events...:))

with yve @ paradise island last saturday during our planning & evaluation

gabby's picture @ church last sunday

one of ching2's wacky look (taken @ gmall)

gabby, mami & dady lo (@ gmall)

finally

finally, i'm done with all the things that has kept me preoccupied for the past few days.
i can finally attend to blogging. i can finally sit back and relax in my workstation. finally, i can post the images i've been wanting to post.finally, everything returns to normal.....:)

the week and the week before this.....

it has been a very busy week right after we spent holy week.

the holy week, we spent with my family. we had to go to my mom and dad's place because gabby was getting restless because of the summer heat at our house. no choice on our part but to bring her there where the use of electricity is free, so with the water, cooking...so basically, we had a "free" holy week. ( it did save us from buying our food ration for a few days.) while we were there, i prepared some of my homecooked meals of which i am going to post @ dravenworkz cookbook one of these days. (I'm still very busy with work. don't have time to squeeze my brain for the directions on how i came up with my recipes.)

as i've mentioned in this entry a couple of times already, i've been quite busy for some time now. and yes, upto now, i'm stil busy....busy preparing work materials long overdue.( this is what one gets when one procastinates...but i think i'm better when i'm feeling the pressure to deliver. (i'm just trying to justify my procastination.........:)) however, we had a grand time over the weekend because we had our office outing at paradise island, samal...pictures from that activity will be posted within the week. (here i go procastinating again....) the weekend really was remarkable for me perhaps due to the fact that we went to mass as a family again, yve, gabby and myself. what made it even remarkable is that gabby had the chance to go strolling at the mall with us. (it is really one of the things i looked forward when i began this family.) (there are pictures of that strolling but.....you know, i opt to procastinate again.)

this has been my week and the week before this...and this is yoxx signing out.

holy week

its already the holy week. vacation time for some, for others, a time to spend for themselves and their loved ones. nonetheless, it is also a time to thank the lord for the year. personally, holy week is the start of my year. it is during this time that i renew all my commitments to our Lord. unlike my previous holy weeks, this coming holy week is quite different.

what makes this holy week different from the other holy weeks i had before?

1. this is my first holy week with my young family. we plan to spend the holy week at home. enjoy each others company (yve, gabby and i ) for the duration of the holy week. we cannot join the usual religious services we normally attend since gabby is still to small to bring along for the services;

2. i cannot do my yearly "panata" of going up the shrine hills during good friday. again, i want to spend our first holy week as a family. next year perhaps when gabby can walk , maybe we can bring her with us to the shrine;

these are just two reasons why i will be having a different holy week this year but these are very special reasons why i won't be having the same holy week i've been having for years.

before i go on spending my holy week with my family, here are some new pictures of gabby with us. enjoy.

new recipe

new recipe at dravenworkz cookbook.

our toys

these are pictures of our toys. i say "ours" because i have also uploaded gabby's new toy, a mr. potato head. the first two pictures are some of my toys, the crow and a stuffed toy keychain of crayon shin chan.

the crow

crayon shin chan

this is gabby's mr. potato head.

got this as our present to her during her 2nd month of birth.

gabby with her mr. potato head (look at their smiles.)

gabby's own picture page

a friend sent me a link in my e-mail and it directed me to the invitation page of ringo. it was a photosharing web app similar to multiply. i have thought about creating one for gabby for a long time but i was not sure what web app to use, so this afternoon, i checked back the site and decided to use it since i was signed up automatically when i clicked on the invitation earlier.

i uploaded gabby's pictures and named it after her so it becomes her own. (visitors need not fret because, i did it purposely because i plan on putting pictures of her only. if you want to check other pictures, check on my albums link on this page.)

this is the link to gabby's own picture page: http://www.ringo.com/profile/yoxx_sam.html

yve and gabby

mommy and daughter sharing special moments
(pictures taken here were before gabby turns another month older)

yve and gabby smiling.("magkamukha ba kami?")

while they were sleeping......(took this when they were still asleep.)

there are still new pictures of gabby in her web album. please do check them out.