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How I see my future

It has been a tough week since I got back from my holiday. Everyday seems to be a struggle to get up. I had been wanting to get back to running just to shake everything off. It has been raining and it is impossible to get out and run.

I don't want to sound negative but everything at work is just black now. I am starting to question myself if I made the right decision of leaving my life abroad. Turning back on my independence and freedom in exchange to the life I am living now with my family.

I honestly don't want to think that I made the wrong move. The decision of coming back home was a move that I thought over and over. But in this negative situation, I cannot help but ask myself of the things that matter and how I see my future with regards to how I am working to achieve that future that I long for.

After job hopping and some traveling, I have come to realize that I don't want to be rich and live in an expensive lifestyle. I just want a comfortable laid back and secure future.

For now, I wanted my future to be related to traveling. And to realize this, I want to open a guest house or a hostel in a foreign land where backpackers often visit.

This is not so much of an income generating business but meeting people and exchanging travel stories is one thing that I enjoy most.

Running a hostel does not require high maintenance compared to running a hotel.

I once stayed in a hostel in Seoul where the owners clean the house themselves and leaves the house in the evening, meaning only guest remains in the house during night time. They just leave a note and number to call incase of emergency.

The couple treat everyone as family. People just come and go in the hostel.

(common living room of stay korea in Seoul)

(one of the hippest hostels i have stayed)

Ideally, aside from running a hostel in a far away country, I would like to be a part time college professor. Running the hostel in the mornings and do teaching in the evenings. I would like to teach a business related subject in the University. I have not tried formal teaching, but I have a strong feeling that teaching in the University is something that I would enjoy doing.

Now coming back to reality, None of the present things I am doing can lead me to achieve this goal for the future. That is why I am burned out easily.

To my friends who reads this blog, kindly get in touch with me and tell me what you think about how I see my future. Do you think it fits me? I need your thoughts

East Africa

A small presentation to sum it all up

East africa Slideshow: JP’s trip from Manila to 6 cities Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, Kisumu, Nakuru and Narok was created by TripAdvisor. See another Kenya slideshow. Take your travel photos and make a slideshow for free.

I am not a bag

It's a rainy wednesday afternoon. I took a break from work and opened my facebook account. At the home screen, I saw that my sister was tagged in an album.

Note: Once you are tagged in a photo, when people look at your pictures, the photo that you were tagged will appear in your "photos" .

I scanned through the albums, and there wasn't a single photo of her. It was an album of signature branded bags for sale.

Looking at it, It got me into thinking the reasons why we create our facebook profile and how it became a universal website (except in china, where facebook is banned).

Facebook is use to connect with other people.

Facebook is to tell other people of what is happening with our lives now

Facebook is boast to other people of our latest travel pics, to boast to other people of pictures that we look good in. ( most of us even have different albums to arrange our photos).

Now as I scanned through the album where my sister was tagged into. It was purely 127 pictures of different overpriced bags.

When I checked into my sister's profile page, It says that she has 200 photos. When I clicked the photos, they were different photo collections of travel pictures, family pictures and some beach pictures. Since she was tagged in an album full of bags, there were at least 13 pictures of different bags included in her photos.

I wondered if she is okay that she became an overpriced ordinary looking bag in 13 pictures in her profile.

What's worse is that because of a lot of fake designer bags being sold. These albums want to make sure that their bags are "authentic" they also post pictures of the receipts and some helpful logos to attest to the bag's "authenticity".

Now check your profile pictures, you might be a designer bag now, or maybe a korean fashion dress!!!

Just thinking aloud

(This is my sister, turned into Ferragamo)

(she is not fake. Check the logo)

(still not convinced? she was bought in a ferragamo store. look at her receipts)

It's sunday and It's Complicated

It's sunday.

The first Sunday I challenged myself to update more often.

Nothing much really happened this week. Though there were occasional mood highs and lows during the week, but nothing really significant worth noting down.

Right now, I am just trying my best to let the feeling of excitement of going to Africa sink into me. Last night I printed my Tickets and Visas just to let it all in, but it didn't really do much.

Today I booked my accommodation for my first night in Kenya. ( I normally just book an overnight accommodation and feel the place and see things from there.)

For this trip, I am planning to try some homestays, wherein in locals would open their house for travelers to stay for a minimal fee. I got an account via www.homestayweb.com for me to contact families willing to accept me in their house. This for me is a good way to experience the local's culture and way of life.

After I paid for my accommodation I got a confirmation email and a follow thru mail offering for an airport pick up.

Hi JP

Thank you for booking accommodation with us. Your reservation for a double garden tent, arriving on SATURDAY, 3 JULY, for 1 night has been confirmed.

If you would like to book an airport pick to bring you to our camp, this will cost 1,700 Kenya Shillings (for a saloon car) from the International Airport . To arrange this all we need is your flight details (flight arrival time and number). If you plan to make your own way to our camp, please advise of your arrival time, as all rooms, even if previously confirmed or paid for in full, will only be held until 16:00 hours. If your plans change, and you no longer require this reservation, please let us know via the contact details below.

Dinner is served (buffet style) at the camp at 19:00 each evening. If you would like dinner, please advise in advance. For guests arriving in Nairobi after 20:00, it can be difficult to buy meals, even takeaway, so it is good to plan in advance if you think you might like something to eat on arrival.

Accommodation, camp, and travel services can be paid for with cash (Kenyan Shillings, Euro, British Pounds, US Dollars), credit or debit card (visa and mastercard only), or bank transfer prior to arrival. If you plan to use your credit or debit card here in Africa , don’t forget to advise your bank before you leave home. If you are bringing US Dollars, ensure that the ‘series date’ printed on them is 2000 or newer (notes printed in the 1990s are not accepted in East Africa – even by banks).

We have a travel office at the camp which can assist with booking day tours, safaris, trekking, beach accommodation, bus and train tickets and much more. Please visit our website below or email us for further details.

Thank you again for your booking and we look forward to welcoming you to Wildebeest Camp.

Kind regards
Daniel

I am not so keen on getting picked up in the airport. For one, I am not comfortable of someone waiting for me specially if there are flight delays. Secondly, 1,700 kenya shillings is too much! The site says that they are located about 2 km from the airport, and there are reviews saying that the camp's airport pick up is a ripped off money! With this, I am going to brace myself with my bargaining skills to take a cab to bring me to the camp, anyway I am expecting to arrive at 2:24 in the afternoon.

I want to share some photos of the camp I will be staying, which I got from www.hostelbookers.com

(Indoor accommodations are inside the house)

(outdoor accommodations which I will be staying by the garden)

With that, I am starting to feel the excitement build up now!

It's complicated

This morning I got hold of a movie titled It's complicated.

It is an entertaining film. More of a mature sex and the city style. A break also from the usual teens to 20's 30's cast in a romantic comedy which is we commonly see in the movies.

The story tackles 50 year old divorcee Jane and how the romance with his husband rekindled after being separated for 10 years.

I got the notion that hot steamy sex are just good on the first few years of being married. But this story got me to thinking. Does sex actually still exist at 50?

A funny scene was when the divorced couple had sex for the first time after 10 years. After they orgasm, the panting husband touched the groin of the wife, who was also still catching her breath saying " home sweet home!"

Here is the link to the official trailer of the movie

Have a good week ahead

Need to write more

This is it.

I am challenging myself to write more.

I will try to set a day, or every sunday of the week to update this blog. Be it something new that I experienced during the week or something that would just spark an interest in me.

Let me share an interesting email I got a few weeks back.

Here goes:

Dear Jp,

I am the Dallas artist who about a year ago contacted you for permission to paint from your photos. I finally got around to posting some paintings on my Facebook page. You can see it in my "Painterly Musings" album. I hope you like it. It is hanging in a Dallas gallery I co-own! I get many nice comments on it, too. I used to do portraits in oils about 25 yrs. ago and this is the first watercolor portrait I've attempted and I hope to do more.

Thank you for allowing me to be inspired by your talents! I also hope you pursue your gifts. You have such sensitivity in your photography!

Sincerely,
Marianne Phelps

(unedited photo taken 2009)

(painting inspired from photo above)

I hope she did justice to my picture. You guys be the judge.

I have added a small feature on this blog called "fishes" . Please take time to feed the fishes, specially the black one. That is ME.

This made my day

My Friend E, an ex addict, HIV positive, gave light to me today.

I have been feeling down the past few days.

While chatting with E, I asked for an inspiration. I told E to recommend a song for me to listen and to get inspired.

He gave me a youtube link which directed me to this song.

By coincidence, I have this song in my ipod already, but I have been figuring out the song's title for almost a year now. The lyrics are in foreign language, and it is hard to hum the song and ask people if they are familiar with the song.

Thus I named the song "unknown song" in my ipod.

(my ipod with a picture of me and the unknown song)

This song made my day. Specially in times like this, that I feel stuck and contained. It just gives me hope that whatever situation we are now, we can make things happen.

With this, I am telling myself. One day I will resume flying again... And when that time comes. I gonna be flying for good

Cheers everyone

Captured Highlights of my Sem Sem trip

Last Month I went a place I want to call "Sem Sem".

Sem sem is close to my heart because, this is the country where my "itchy travel foot" started to itch. My traveling senses awakened in this country as I saw many backpackers in this hub.

This country started it all.

I wanna share some of the highlights of my short, much needed and enjoyable trip to the land of "sem sem".

1. Airplane food

I would have to say the Philippines has lost it's glory of carrying the first airline in Asia. With the steep competition of cheap airfares in our country, one could not expect the royal treatment that we use to experience on our glory days. Aside from flight attendants are getting dumber and uglier each flight. It is only in our land that cabin food are sold at a whooping price.

It has been almost a year since I took a decent (my standard of decent) flight. I miss the times when I was traveling like crazy and taking pictures of airplane food for me to blog about.

I booked my flight thru Kuwait Airways, that flies from Manila to Kuwait with stop over at sem sem.

Over my excitement I made sure to take a photo of my airplane food, no matter how blunt the food taste. It is still airplane food and I love airplane food.

(I'm loving my blunt airplane food)

2. In flight entertainment

No. not the typical "show me" game our local airlines use as their inflight entertainment.

But real inflight entertainment which shows movies and plays games and music while flying.

Even if the screen was small it was ok. I watched 2012 during the flight.

(can u see me at the screen's reflection?)

3. My name's new spelling

While I was waiting for my flight, I decided to kill time and kill myself with a single serving of Yellow cab's hotwings.

Having nicknamed JP. I am use to people from starbucks writing JT or Jaypee in my coffee cup. My eyes widened when I saw the name written on my receipt. This was the first time a person misspelled my name this way. I wish I can commend her for being different, or in our local dialect "iba ka"!

(I can't believe my name can be spelled this way)

4. The Sex show

Sem sem is known for it's red light district. The 1st time I was there, I went to a ping pong show, where unbelievable objects came out from unexpected parts of a woman's body.

This trip I went to Pattaya, the sin city of asia. My friend and I booked a ticket for their famous sex show. After seeing the show, I can say that the ping pong show is nothing, I mean NOTHING compared to the sex show. I was corrupted that night. Dang it!

Sorry no cameras allowed.

5. Jetski

I know it sounds so lame, but it was my first time to try riding a jetski. As lame as it sounds at least I had my first jetski in semsem.

After my Sem sem trip. I am now in saving mode again for my holiday this July.

I am studying interesting places to go in Nairobi, Kampala and Kigali and Dubai

I am going to try my best to squeeze in 4 countries in 2 weeks. Goodluck to me

(thanks to ronell for buying latest addition to my collections)

turning japanese

As promised I just finished changing my room's floor from hard marble to wood. I took this photo 10 minutes ago..

Finally I can say my room is turning japanese!

Konichiwa everyone! Hai!

I am now debating whether I would need a headboard or not. I am also contemplating if it would be nice to put some of travel pictures I took and mount them in my wall.

What do you think?

Yoville

When we we're young, I shared a room with my 2 brothers. It's a blue room with 3 beds. Here in our house we call it the boy's room.

As we grew older we need more privacy, especially for a person like me, who does not follow a routinary body clock. There are days when I would sleep at 11 pm and there would be times that I would be taking a shower at 1 am and would sometimes play my music at a high volume.

This has cause my brothers, whom I shared my room with to complain because I would be making noise at an unholy hour.

When I came back from China, having adopted to living alone, I asked for my own room.

I was granted to use our spare room to be my own room. My parents thought moving in to my new room would be smooth and breezy as just transferring all my things.

They were shocked when I told them that I have to re do the room and make it at my own design.

First I did was the shower. From the yellow and white tiles, I changed everything to "black and white only" . No other colors can be seen inside my shower except for black and white.

After doing my shower for almost 3 weeks, I started with my room. I wanted my room to have asian and japanese concept. From the original white and grey color with a king size bed, I got rid of the massive bed and changed the room color to red and black.

I modified the bed and made it as a japanese bed, which is typically close to the floor.

I also got rid of most of the stuffs inside the room to have it minimalist concept.

I just want basic things inside my room.

After a month, I was ready to move in to my very own "yoville"

As of this writing, I just finished changing the floors from cold marble to wooden floors to add japanese accent to my room.

Photos will be uploaded next post.

3.10.10

3.10 my birthday

I don't know if its just me or its the same with everyone, I always feel sentimental on my birthday.

Growing up, kids always look forward to birthdays. I was also like that.

Our birthdays makes us special. We are to believe that the day belongs to us and nothing can go wrong. We own the whole 24 hours.. It's our day.

I wanna share my thoughts about my birthday.

When I was young, I was studying away from home. Me and my siblings were staying in my aunts house with our nanny. For students, march in the Philippines is quite a busy month since its the last month of the school year. It is the month when most final examinations are given to students before having the summer vacation. Because of this I spent most of my birthdays away from home since we were not allowed to return to our hometown because it is supposed to be the study time. I have gotten accustomed to it already. But despite that, I was made to feel special during my birthday. It maybe because of the special treatment each kid gets in school during their birthdays. Because of this, I always look forward to that day in a year when I feel special.

When I was working as an Investment banker, I took time off to make my birthday special by availing of the company's "birthday leave" . As much as I can, I try to turn off my mobile phone so I wont get calls from my clients. I just want to own that special day. I either spend it by getting myself a good massage or indulging a good food in a fancy restaurant. Thinking about it now, I have come to realized, maybe I don't really need the pampering massage, but I just indulged myself to pampering just to make me special on my day.

Things started to change when I leave alone abroad, Since I was alone, I kept my special day to myself. I did my thing at work as if it is a normal day. But I bought wine for me to celebrate in my own way.

Last Year, I felt bad during my birthday... so bad that I kept it to myself.. Last year 3.10.09 I was in Agra taking some photos that my guide took me to a secluded area to have a good view of the Taj Mahal when a stranger approached me and robbed my money.. I was terrified.

It was scary to robbed in a secluded place in another country, I was thinking that I might get killed if I fight back. It felt more depressing because I was used to think that nothing could go wrong if it is my birthday. When that incident happened, part of me wants to tell the bad guy to postpone the robbery the next day because today is my day and nothing should go wrong. But well it was a wake up call to me that...

Our birthdays are our own and the whole world continues and would not stop to make it special for us.

Today 3.10.10 I was busy visiting my customers at the same time getting messages in my phone from other customers either placing orders or following up orders or worse complaining. Just tonight I was on the phone for 25 minutes with a customer haggling for an extension for price increase. As she was haggling to death I am so tempted to cut her and tell her "please stop haggling I have been on the phone for too long and spare me its my birthday". Luckily I was able to control myself.

As I grow older, I am starting to realize that birthdays are not as special as before. And learning to accept that thought, I can say I am wiser.

The irony, despite the hectic schedule, and the toxic day ahead of me tomorrow, I am still anticipating to see the many many notifications in my facebook that uniformly states " XXX posted something on your wall"

Maybe I am looking for things to make me feel special on this not so special day ;)

Let me share a photo of a homemade cake I got from an old classmate

(cake made by kelly)

Lastly, relating to my previous post. I got myself a present.

Maybe my slippers of 3 years needs to rest. I am way too late of the crocs fad... but never the less, I am joining in the bandwagon.

(new pair of footwear)

My slippers

While I was taking a shower, a thought came into me. What is one thing that I always bring with me every time I travel?

Aside from the basic necessities like toothbrush and all the toiletries. I realized it should be my slippers.

Being a person who casually loves to wear slippers everywhere I go, I want to share a simple slipper that has journeyed with me along the way.

2007.

There was a "hype" of the havaianas flip flops in the Philippines. Everyone was just wearing havaianas.

They are brightly colored simple looking flip flops that made an impression to a lot of Filipinos. Because it was very famous, havaianas launched a promotion they call "make your own havaianas" , where buyers can actually create and match different colors of the slippers.

Being hyped up as well, I lined up and match my own havaianas.

I chose an orange sole and a green strap and added a pin of the Philippine flag in the green straps.

That was 3 years ago. Currently there are a lot of flip flops that are available in the market. Havianas are not as famous as they were before.

But despite that, I realized that my designed havaianas has been with me for 3 years and has kept me company a long the way.

Some pictures of my slippers through the years

(my very own slippers lounging the beaches of white island camiguin)

(My slippers was not so useful during the winter 2009 in Korea, and it was not allowed to get inside the house as part of korean culture of leaving slippers outside the house)

(my slippers hanged in my bag for a rough adventure in laos)

( I was not wearing slippers in snowy china, but I kept them handy in my apartment)

(my slippers jumping with me in the angkors of cambodia)

(my slippers getting drunk and tried a pole dance in Pattaya thailand)

(my slippers and I are amazed of our 1st desert experience in Jaisalmer)

Yes. It has been 3 years, my slippers and I are still inseparable. I wear them everyday to work....

Thanks for keeping me company....

Something to look forward to...

It is almost a year since I got back home. How time flies. I can't believe it's a year of a complete turn around of my lifestyle.

I was traveling like crazy when I was away from home. October 08 I was in Hongkong. Spent Christmas in China (dec 08), Spent New Year in Seoul(jan 09). Had chinese New year in Xi'an (jan 09). Did India (feb 09 to March 09). Went back to China (mar 09) Got back in Philippines (apr 09).

And now I am in my hometown. It's amazing how I managed to change my nomadic lifestyle to a simple rural laid back setting.

I have to admit that there are times when I miss the crazy parties and the fast pace life I once had. It was at those times, when booking a ticket and planing a trip abroad is as easy as facebooking. Now my lifestyle is more structured and going on a trip should be planned ahead of time.

After devoting myself with helping my family at work. I need to give myself a pat in the back and to treat myself with a trip again.

I am counting the days of February and I am sure March would run fast as March 31 I am heading to the land of "same same but different" THAILAND.

It was July 08 when I planned to stop over Thailand for 4 days before heading back to Shanghai that I became fascinated with Thailand and stayed there for a month! And now I going back to Thailand again... Wooohoo

Memories of my Thailand trip came back to me as I looked at the pictures of my trip.

And I promised myself to go crazy, and get wasted during my trip next month.

I am excited to.........

Drink and meet other travelers again

(me and keith sharing a shot at 4am in some random bar)

Drink at their side walk booze

(side walk booze in Soi Rambutri)

Walk in the world famous backpacker's haven Khao san road

(the partyplace-- Khao san)

Carry my backpack again

(a common sight in Thailand)

These are the things that I am looking forward to...

While I am dreaming and excited about this trip, I can't help remembering good times also when I was working in a bank and me and my friends are looking forward friday nights for us to get wasted and party in some clubs and bars...

I wish I could be drunk right now and dancing to this music.

Since I am looking forward, for this year I am looking forward my grand vacation of going to Africa. I am planning to explore Kenya this July.

Next Stop..... Kenya

Huge thanks to E for helping me get hold of the Kenya Consulate's number for me to inquire the requirements for Kenyan Visa.

Despite some loneliness of staying in an uber laid back place.... At least I have something GREAT to look forward too