image from flickr

Love,
Paolo & Suzette dela Rama

This entry is long overdue. It’s hard to find time to blog when you have a company Christmas party to organize, an MTV-type presentation to choreograph and shoot, gifts for family, friends, and godchildren to wrap, and Christmas get-togethers to attend.

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Paolo and I went to the tiny island of Malapascua last Nov. 28-Dec. 1. This is our first time to dive outside of Anilao (previous attempts to dive in Puerto Galera have been unsuccessful) so we were pretty excited. I was the official organizer for this trip so I took care of all the planning. First thing I did was contact Divelink Cebu. Our contact person, Prima, was very helpful. She was able to accommodate all my requests without any fuss. I just told her how many days we were planning to stay on the island, the resort we wanted to stay in, and the number of dives we wanted to do, and she came up with a package in a matter of minutes. Since there were just two of us, I chose not to take the roundtrip land-sea transfer which would have cost us an extra P8,000. This meant that we had to get from the Mactan airport, to the Maya port, to the island, and vice versa via public transportation. Technically, it’s really not that hard. The thing that made it difficult was the language barrier. No matter how many times we told people that we couldn’t understand them or that we don’t speak their dialect, they just kept right on talking to us in Cebuano. Like what my fabulous ex-manager (who’s from Cebu) told me, it’s not just a different city, it’s a different country.

The first stop for Saturday was Monad Shoal. This is where you usually see thresher sharks and manta rays.  We left the resort at 6am to meet up with our dive group. We were in the water by 6:50am. About 20mins into the dive, we still hadn’t seen anything except for a couple of octopuses. Then suddenly there it was, a thresher! We all just stayed still and watched as it slowly made its way towards us. When we got back to the boat, our dive guide Khen said the body was approximately 3-3.5 meters long. We still had three more dives to do that day (what Paolo called “no bearing dives” hehe!) but we felt that we’d already accomplished our mission. The second dive at lapus-lapus was pretty boring but the third dive at Batingue was awesome. We saw a really huge cuttlefish, banded pipe fish, remora, pygmy seahorse, and a cone snail. Unfortunately for me, I had some trouble maintaining my buoyancy during this dive. I was pumping air into my BC like crazy but I just kept on hitting the ground. As a result, I only had 750 psi left in my tank (I usually end up with 1000+ psi) when we surfaced. When we got to the boat, I checked my BC and lo and behold, the dump valve was broken. Sigh. I had to rent another BC. Our fourth and last dive for the day was at Lighthouse, home of the mandarin fish. At this point, I already had a headache so I really wasn’t in the mood to dive anymore but Paolo and I didn’t want to cut it too close to the 24-hr “no fly” period (by doing 3 dives on Sunday) so we just went ahead. The dive lasted 64mins. I wanted to puke so badly afterward. Hehe! The next day, Sunday, we did 2 more dives at Monad hoping to see a manta ray this time but we had no such luck.

So goes our Malapascua trip. All in all, I think it’s better than Boracay because there aren’t that many people yet. It kind of reminded me of Pandan actually (limited electricity, no tv) and that’s always a good thing. It’s just too bad we didn’t have an underwater camera, no? I do have a few pictures posted in my Multiply site so check that out.

Next stop, Puerto Galera. I just need to borrow Jude’s backplate.

Hubby and I were able to watch Twilight before we went on our Cebu trip. I wasn’t really expecting a lot from this film so I wasn’t extremely disappointed. The flashback scenes were campy, the editing was confusing, and the dialogue made me want to gag once or twice. But Ms. Meyer’s fans will probably have a lot of good things to say about it.

I hear that Summit is already preparing the sequel and that Robert and Kristen are each going to get a nifty $12M paycheck to reprise their roles. I think they should make New Moon and Eclipse into one movie though. Nothing much happens in New Moon except Bella bitchin’ and moanin’ page after page after page. It was really annoying.

By the way, Paolo raised a very valid point when he found out about the movie’s premise. He said, “If I were a 100-yr old vampire, I wouldn’t go for a 17-yr old girl. I’d go for Nicole Kidman!”

You see three words. Suddenly, your life’s heading in a different direction.

Approval notice sent.

And you say,”Be still, my love
Open up your heart
Let the light shine in”
Don’t you understand?
I already have a plan
I’m waiting for my real life to begin
– Colin Hay

I finished my first 5k run today! I decided to join this race because it was for a good cause. I wasn’t sure if my knees would be able to take it but then I figured, if they started to hurt, I can always walk. My target was to finish somewhere between 40-45 minutes. Official time when I crossed the finish line? 39 minutes 45 seconds. I did walk twice though. First time was after the first u-turn/uphill. I tried to run but my HRM started beeping to the tune of 190bpm. Heart attack alert!

Paolo also ran the 10k. His official time (based on his Nike+) is 1hr 9mins which is 2mins less than his KOTR time. That’s including an emergency trip to the CR. Haha!

Update: I did even better than I thought. Official race results here. Paolo and I almost finished with the same rank!