the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia to be published (or maybe not) on 27 September 2008 This year has brought me the unlikely gift of two summers: one in the Philippines, and another one in the US, where I spent the last two months. If I spend Christmas in Australia (or Chile, or South Africa), I would have three summers--that’s the maximum number of summers anyone can get in one year, unless perhaps you go to the poles. I was just starting to miss warm, languid days heading off to placid Lake Balanan in Siaton, the ice-cold waterfalls of Valencia, the surreal pillars of soft corals in Bacong on a night dive--and of course, twilight walks on Dumaguete’s boulevard--when I was soon face to face with a nurse shark for the first time in my life on another humid night in Florida. That was only the beginning. Soon after, wild alligators in the grassy Everglades, waters more placid and icy in Lake Minnewaska and Niagara Falls in upstate New York, a walk in Central Park in...

7 to 16 September 2008 - Plymouth, UK. The European adventure begins.... photos to complement the saga :)

(if you were wondering whatever happened to the second part of that update i promised to write, well, i accidentally deleted it when i reformatted my computer one frantic week in June before i left the Philippines, in the middle of doing my poster for Florida. in the meantime, life’s been rolling along without waiting for me to catch up, as always.   so i think it’s best if i go straight to what’s been happening lately, before i get overtaken by events again. my apologies to the people i was supposed to meet up with in florida , california and new york :( i was just too busy being with my family to schedule anything else. next time….)   tonight, i skipped the free pizza and traditional british games at the chaplaincy (when i dropped in earlier, it was actually boggle, twister and lottery bingo :P) and quiz night at the student union because finally, all the socializing has worn me down, and i just wanted to be alone and catch up with everyone i’ve left behind. that ...

Working with the warm, fuzzy feeling I got from having everyone on a conference call with Papa on his birthday--him in Davao, me in Queens, Jace in Manhattan, and Josrique in Maryland--I was excited about using simple technology to come up with another remote birthday gift idea, this time for Mama. She had been begging and nagging the three of us to book an hour at the studio during Jo's band practice for us to do our own recording (her longtime dream, she said), but there simply wasn't time, because of our difficult schedules (and actually, because none of us were very keen about being so "showbiz" :P). But her birthday was coming up, and who knew when the three of us would see each other again? So on my last day in New York, a few hours before my flight to London, we managed to all come together to do a secret recording at Jace's apartment (I let my mother assume we were having a last-minute psychotherapy session among ourselves, as this is what she ...