Future Home – Riverfront Residences, Pasig (Part 1-The Story)

“For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD…”

About half a year ago, Nina and I saw this flyer about a 5-storey condominium complex in Pasig. It was right smack where we were planning to live – halfway between my work and the Ateneo, where we plan Matt to go to school in the future. It had nice floor plans. I particularly liked it that every unit had a balcony.

A balcony! I always wanted us to have a condo unit with a balcony. I typically imagine lazy afternoons just putting up your feet on a chair, the calm winds blowing through, me having a book to read or just plain lounging around with Nina and Matt by my side, themselves enjoying the afternoon at the balcony. And of course, the view! (Well, the unit has to be well-situated for that.)

But early on, we though that that place was inaccessible – where you need to have a car since it would be far off from public transportation. And back then, I didn’t think I’d be able to afford the down payment.

So, whenever we would see the same flyer, I’d just kid about it and be excited and just dream that we find a similar property when finances would be manageable.

“…plans for your welfare…”

December 2007 entered so unexpectedly. Everything was in a rush! But, there was good news to be had for the Christmas season. My mom in Australia decided to give me a little financial boost. This paved the way for me and Nina to think whether to buy a car or to look for our own little place.

We were so sold into getting a new car for our little family to move around the city more freely when…

“…not for woe…”

It’s funny how God chooses to speak to you through other people. We were at a business lunch meeting at a restaurant near the Domestic Airport when I got to discuss plans with a young father (who happened to be a schoolmate, but belonged to a much younger batch).I asked him if he was also thinking of getting his own car. He said no, and that his priorities are to get his family their own place (they live with parents like me and my family.

Nina was right all along. She had also been expressing her frustration in living in her mom’s house for long and that we needed our own place so that we have control over everything in the house. Besides, a car’s value would only diminish through time, and it will be a source of regular expenses due to maintenance and gasoline.

But where do we go from here?…

“…Plans to give you a future…”

God also chose to guide us in a chance encounter between Nina and our would-be agent, Jhen. Nina and Matt were about to go home from a trip to SM Sucat when they saw the small selling space of DMCI Homes. Jhen was also about to leave, but decided to stay, or for some reason, was kept from leaving about an hour earlier. There, Nina saw Riverfront Residences, the condo community we were drooling over for months and almost gave up on!

The clincher? Remember we thought it to be inaccessible? Nina asked about it from Jhen and Jhen said that right outside the gate, a jeepney passes by! Turns out this jeep will lead you towards the main road where you can ride up to Quiapo! I can take it to ride the MRT at Shaw station or take a cab at C-5.

That chance encounter turned into a tripping on a Saturday, just after our wedding anniversary.

“…full of hope. – Jer 29:11″

Needless to say, we liked what we saw:

We reserved a 2-bedroom unit on the third floor of the Rhine* Building, with a balcony looking out into the narrow space between 2 buildings and glimpses the clubhouse and amenities area.

*all the buildings are named after rivers, funny how our unit turned out to be in the building of a German river!

And we trust DMCI Homes in the way that they’ve packaged and presented this community. In this development, they expect families to live in all the units, not merely rented out for investment. So we knew then and there that this will be a family-friendly place.

On our way back from the tripping to the site (looking for an ATM to pay the reservation fee because it IS selling like hotcakes!), we saw the verse on top of the gate of Rizal High School:

“For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe! Plans to give you a future full of hope. – Jeremiah 29:11″

We knew God is calling us out of our Egypt and into a Promised Land!

(that’s why we can never get a unit in the Nile building… wink wink)

Three Years Young

April 3 – that’s when our ‘baby’ turned three! Yes, he’s no longer a baby. He’s growing up to become a little boy. Matt never ceases to amaze Nina and me with new words he’s just picked up from Playhouse Disney. What’s surprising is, he knows how to use them!The first time he knew the word ‘again’, we somehow knew that he’d be very makulit. And yes, he has been…

I managed to buy him a birthday cake the day before. It’s the traditional chocolate cake from Red Ribbon (Mmmmm….mmmm), with a ‘3′ candle on top. So when I got off from work early (thanks to the understanding of my superiors although I wished i could have taken the day off), we had a short photoshoot with his birthday cake before having some fun.

We had a simple celebration at Mall of Asia, at his favorite tambayan – TimeZone. He wanted to ‘roll the ball (bowling)e ball (basketball)’. Here he is in action….

And he had fun banging the heads of the mice at this game…

After that, we discovered that he loves the four-cheese pizza baguette at Delifrance, so we headed over there to treat him. The boy just loves cheese!

We also decided to visit Toy Kingdom and get him something to play with. He wanted a golf club set again (we jsut bought him a set the weekend before as a birthday present). But, Nina found Matt something interesting to play with. It’s a pachinko-like game but instead of chips,there are balls. It’s like a pinball too, and Matt is always interested whenever I play the Lord of the Rings pinball at Time Zone.

We went home earlier than usual. It seems that it was time well spent since we didn’t feel that there was so little time going around the huge mall. It was time well spent in having fun.

…. Oh and when we got home, we had our fill of cake and ice cream! (it wouldn’t be a complete birthday celebration without those).

Expensive Lights; Downloads, Downloads; and New Pages!

Light Expo 2007 

Remember my post last Chinese New Year? Well, we did plan to visit and enter the 2007 Light Expo… But we were a bit disappointed at the price. To enter the light exhibit, you’ve gotta shellout P300.00 per adult and P200.00 per child! And what do you get inside? Just the exhibit – no rides or anything. No wonder there aren’t that much visitors to the event. For your average Filipino, P300 can go a long way. I wish it was cheaper… but Nina and I thought that they do have to pay for the electricity.

If you have extra cash, you may want to visit. But I hope they lower the entrance fee to a more ‘acceptable’ level.

Downloading…

Nina and I haven’t unleashed the full potential of having a DSL yet, but now, I’m trying to do more than just browse and tinker with my blog…. I’m actually downloading stuff! No illegal stuff, just some programs to test. Here are some of my (ongoing) downloads:

• 3dMark06 (basic, limited), 579 MB - for my review of Gizmo (check out my last post)
• Europa Universalis 3 Game Demo, 126 MB – a game where you get to tinker with history from the Age of Discovery to the Early Modern Era (Yes, I’m a history freak!)

My average download speed now is at 50 kbps for both runiing parallel. I know that’s a bit slow. But, it’s way way better than dial-up!

New Pages

Wow! This is what I like about WordPress – you get to create pages! I’ve recently formed the backbone of some of the pages I plan to populate with my stuff.

Checkout the NavBar just below the header (the Buster Eagle Zoids picture) or “Coherent Visions” in the sidebar to the right.

Oh, and I changed themes too.

This is not just a blog now, it’s my Webpage! Now i wonder what else I can do with it…

UP Fair 2007, Part 2 – The ‘Eerie’ Experience

OK, as promised, I’m going to tell the rest of our UP Fair 2007 experience.

After beeing spooked out by the power outage during the fair and the delay that the stage went ‘on-line’ again, Nina, me, and her friend decided to call it a night and go home. We didn’t know if we can still catch a jeep to the outside world, so all of us decided to walk from the fair grounds to Philcoa, where we plan to take a cab, get Matt from her lola, and head to the south.

There were very few souls who dared wander about, but the three of us didn’t mind the stillness of the night. We even stumbled upon strange, eerie things near the Carillion:

What’s that thing called in tagalog?…. I remeber watching how you make one on Batibot

A Sarimanok…. that’s distinctly….

Engineering! (a collaboration with Mech Engrs and Elec Engrs!

The rest of the walk to Philcoa was long and arduous… I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. But we made it safely – a rather uneventful walk at that.

So we took Matt, who was asleep then, and headed home. Since it was late, Nina’s friend stayed over for the night.

This was a early Saturday, and I have work a couple of hours ahead! (good thing I wasn’t late that day – I still hate Saturday duty).

OK, so a couple of days, I download the pictures from the point-and-shoot camera to prepare for these blog entries. Then, I started getting the creeps. I’ve already deleted the picture from the computer. I’m loading up the sane photos here, but it’s related to the shots of the Ferris Wheel.

One…

Two…

The third shot featured a guy staring directly into the camera shot. He was the only clear image. Everybody…E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y was looking elsewhere. The guy was holding a baby in fatigues and a blue cap… even the baby was looking at the direction of the ferris wheel. The guy had that strange look. Why would he look into my camera? When I showed Nina the pictures, she recalled that it wasn’t until later did we notice babies in the fair (since it reminded us of Matt). Then, we particularly remember that we took notice of the baby in fatigues and he was crying when we saw him. The baby was being carried by the mother…

It gave us the creeps… so we deleted it.

Of course, there may be a more sane and rational explanation. There could have been a father and son there… but still…

We offered a short prayer for the baby and the guy (whom we presume is the father).

Anyway, UP Fair 2007 was worth the effort. It’s now stamped on me and in this blog, so that I and other people won’t forget about it.

UP Fair 2007, Part 1 – The ‘Normal’ Experience

Nina and I knew that it’s UP Fair Week. It was always UP Fair Week during V-Day. But we never intended to go… Until that Friday morning when Nina got a call from her college friend, Sarah, who invited us to go with her.

How can we resist?! (Turns out both Nina and I were just waiting for the perfect ‘excuse’ to go to the 2007 UP Fair! hehehe)

And so my wife made arrangements with her mother to leave our son with her while we visited the fair. From work, I went to Speaker Perez to meet up with them. We had to sneak out the house in order for Matt not to notice that we’re about to leave him, but he couldn’t care less since he’s happy playing with his cousin, Kiana.

We arrived at Philcoa by 8:30pm to meet up with Sarah. We were able to enter the fair by around 9:00pm.

Um….I don’t know how to put this…. but it’s just my 2nd time to be inside the actual fair… (Oh wait, I have a completely valid excuse – I’m an engineering student! Cursed, evil overlords at Melchor Hall ususally schedule midterm exams during this week!)

After getting in with our P 85.00 tickets, we headed to a delectable UP cuisine – isaw! There were lotsa isaw vendors and we decided that we’ll try all, if not most.

[A blurry scene at the ihawan]

[at last! f-o-o-o-d!]

After our first helping of isaw (P 2.00 for about an inch and a half of it), we went around to explore the various booths. We were all particularly drawn to abubot shops – those that sell trinkets, rings, necklaces, and other curiosities.

To sum up all our wanderings, here’s what we ended up buying / eating / seeing:

• isaw, longer isaw (we liked the smaller isaw), Yellow Cab pizza, shawarma, mango shake
• Nina’s ethnic journal, my ethnic ring, an igorot/ifugao musical instrument (a piece of flat bamboo, about 8 inches), Nina’s unicorn earings (which she will use in her scrapbooking!)

[The 2007 Rockestra stage is lit, with a gigantic lightsaber!]

• There was one time when i looked out the fair walls and saw the crowds in black and i told Nina “so this is how it feels like in the ancient days, when you’re inside a walled city and see the barbarian hordes ready to burst through the gates!…”
•  The lights went out in the ferris wheel and on the stage for about 15 minutes and we laughed at the people stuck at at the ride. They had to manually pull down each carriage for people to disembark. But we didn’t think it was funny when there was no music coming from the stage, even if we didn’t know it. The ambiance of the UP fair was shattered in those 15 minutes without the noise, er, music.

There was, however, something eerie that happened that night, as we decided to go home and walk all the way to Philcoa. And one other ‘thing’ that we wouldn’t discover… until we were able to download the pictures from the digital camera…

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Oh, if you want to experience something  unique this Chinese New Year season, there’s the 2007 Light Expo along Coastal Road/Roxas Blvd, fronting Uniwide Coastal Mall. Nina and I plan to visit it with Matt sometime this week. I’ll post an entry once we get to see it and have some lovely looking photos.

You won’t miss it at night…   

 ;-D