3.12.2010
A very pretty day

On Valentine's Day, Juliana and I woke up to a bouquet each of roses being nuzzled on our cheeks, hers smaller than mine.  Still so sleepy, I forgot to take a photo so these are all I have left to share with you.




We had a full day ahead, starting with lunch somewhere in Serendra.  It was good, but dessert was better.  How can it not be?  Cupcakes by Sonja always makes me happy --- just being there, more so eating there.  Even if they had ran out of my forever-favorite Red Velvet Cupcakes.
In my great disappointment we settled for other flavors, each one holding as much promise as the next.

These are but three of the almost dozen we got to share among us.




And then we sat outside, under the terrible heat of the sun.  Oh, how it bit.  But that was something I was willing to endure because the Cath Kidston umbrellas and table covers were way too pretty, the way every Valentine's Day should be.  This was the print, something both a homely housewife and a pin-up girl from the 60's would most likely have in her linen closet.




Even the teacups were sweet.  They can make even plain hot water taste special.




If I were a cupcake I would definitely want to languish in Sonja's pretty store.  Looking at all the cupcakes sitting cheerily sitting side by side took away some of my why-is-Red-Velvet-not-available grief. I looked at them and could not help but think fondly of young ladies of the old world, charming and beautiful but decisively bashful.

It did not take long before I realized that disappointments can really be blessings in disguise. I discovered that the Pistachio cupcakes, which Juliana got,  are quite the dream, too.  The next time I go there I will get this alongside my usual Red Velvets.  Oh dear, so bad for the hips but real heaven on the lips!



It was moist and wonderful and rich --- all that many, many times over, in that way that makes you close your eyes and squeeze your shoulders closer to your neck.  God bless whoever first made cupcakes also so pretty aside from being just delicious.  That being so just doubles the pleasure.  In my dreams, I would love to have a cupcake store, right beside a gift-wrapping shop with the nicest paper and ribbons.

We walked around High Street some more, there was a helicopter showering rose petals on the shoppers.  (I'm sorry, I could not get a good shot of that one.)  It truly felt like a special day, everyone seemed happy and smiling and love-filled.  We then drifted into my favorite haunt at Bonifacio High Street, Dimensione, and went up the third floor where there was a Bench Pinoy Lab exhibit.
This was what met us right by the entrance.  How apt.



One of my favorite childhood games.




I was a master at 'biko-biko', as we called it in our province.  You call it 'piko' here in Manila.  My playmates and I would hunt for scraps of pretty tiles to use as our tipan, something you call pato here in Manila.  Happy childhood memories blow through my mind ever so gently when I think of the street games that made up a lot of my afternoons back then, games that required little more than just energy, playmates, and imagination.


I fell in love with this artwork.  It reminds me of the beauty, and folly, of youth.



I really wanted to take it home.  It speaks to me.  I still think about it now, almost a month after I first saw it.  Maybe I will go back for it, maybe I won't.  Who knows.  Even I don't know.  But what if it is no longer there? I don't want o find out just yet. I look at it again now, she looks like a woman in love, waiting.  For what, I wonder.  She could also be thinking.  About what?  Another cigarette maybe, or a light, or her love............
I like paintings that allow me to make my own story about it.  


Hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day celebration.  I did.  I have this wonderful, wonderful man to hold hands with.

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