PIMPIN' SCRIMPIN' PLAYIN'

So Cara had a dilemma with her ride....


Needless to say her bike, was in need of one major whupass can of WD40. No need to trip YO coz' mackin' CUICIDE BIKE CUSTOMS was gonna fix Cara up with an insane new set of wheels.

"Mad Zac whatyya got for our luckee lady tonight?"

"Well, Mr. McZibit - we all started out with a wicked lime-green/white paint job courtesy of BOYSEN paints to cover the ratty old rust tin covering of olde."

"Yo and check out the slammin' rims provided by BLUE WHEELS INC! We also juiced her up with some cobalt blue steel belted tries just to jazz it up a wee bit!"

"Dawg - THOSE RIMS ARE HYPE!!"

"Yo, but ya gotta check out the back."

"Ka- Ching! - We know that she couldn't walk or drive yet so we added a kick-ass handle that allows her to move on auto-pilot. No need to watch where they heck she goin'. We even added a sick gray standin' plate for when she wants to do some standin' fitness."

"And check out, her kick ass sound system -- yo man - we hooked her up with the newest state of the art mental ALPINE COW Moo system with over 10 gazillion watts of pure pumpin Bass fo' yo face!!"

"Mad Zac, that ride is OFF THE HOOK!!!"

Cara Cui turns ONE!!! by Rosabel

Our little princess turned one yesterday… Happy Birthday CARA!!!

We had been planning Cara’s 1^st birthday for months but it actually seems like I started planning it the day she was born. It signifies such a turning-point for us. Imagine, she made it past the scary 4.12 lb. stage, past the crying-with-no-purpose point, past the sanitize-me-at-every corner point. She’s a beautiful toddler now and we can’t be prouder!

Here’s a few proud-mommy points I’d like to share so everyone can get to know our baby girl a little better:

1. Cara loves to eat! Just about anything too. But just like her brother, she prefers salty food (bad mommy!). Unlike brother, though, Cara eats a lot of fruits (grapes!) and veggies (broccoli!) and good snacks like raisins. She can eat just about anything except for carrots (diaper rash!)
2. Cara looks very sweet and she actually IS very sweet. How nice to have a girl this time around! When she shares her smile, it feels like Christmas!
3. Cara has to sleep often, napping at least twice a day and sleeping from 8 pm to 6 am, or she gets really likot and grouchy.
4. Cara loves Baby Einstein! And we do too!
5. The first thing Cara likes to do in the morning is play with Zachy, and vise-versa. They look for each other first thing, every day. We’re so lucky!

Thanks to all our family and friends who shared Cara’s first year with us and all of you who joined us in our celebrations!

Thanks to Zachy who has been such a terrific brother to Cara this past year. Thank you brother!!!

And thanks to daddy Gabby, Cara’s sleep-mate and early morning nanny. Thank you daddy!!!

via the mommy mouthpiece…

More "CARA TURNS ONE" pics here.

Bita Surprise Bday! - Part 2

Happy 88th Bday Bita!!!

The pic above is truly one for the ages. (Thanks Janlo for the pic!)

She was soooo soooo happy!!

We actually planned a bigger surprise bongga party the week earlier. Sadly however, Typhoon Milenyo made a mess of that one.

It didn't matter though coz' Bita was still surprised!!

We had a grand olde time with the usual tasty Conti's fare, a Beautiful Video Presentation (BVP) by Chiara, a kick-ass HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL - "Breaking Free" song and dance number by the great grandkids - Marga, Fras, Martin, Anton and Zachy, a WEIRD?? song and dance number by yours truly and Andre (B-I-T-A | B-I-T-A) and some really short --- SHORT -- speeches by the brothers - Tito Jojo, Pops, Tito Chiqui and Tito Peque. Save perhaps for Tito Luis' speech which kept referring to the Crazy 88's from Kill Bill. (Don't ask me why.... hehehehe! :) )


The cherry on top was the big screen and Infocus that I "borrowed" from the office over the weekend. (Thanks Boss!)

The oldies ended up watching ENGLEBERT HUMPERDINK's Live Concert DVD for the rest of the afternoon. Man, that guy's pretty good!!

Please ......Release me.............Let me go........

Click here for more pics of "Bita's Surprise 88-Take 2" courtesy of Janlo.

We luv ya Bits!!!

Bagyong Milenyo

Milenyo was a biyatch!!

This was the worst typhoon to hit Metro Manila in such a long time. It caused such widespread damage and destruction.

Usually, the nation's capital is spared from the full brunt of the typhoon season due to the mountain range to the east of Metro Manila.

Once a typhoon hits the range -- it weakens and dissapitates. Most of the time, it gets pushed to a northerly course away from the capital.

But this time, the typhoon was able to find a passage through Lucena, Quezon and was able to score a direct hit.

And man, did it S-C-O-R-E.

It left us without water and electricity for like 4 days and nights. We were pretty lucky. Other households didn't have electricity for like a week!!

Ayala Alabang was pretty hard hit.

Numerous huge trees fell over the place-blocking roads and tearing down electric posts wires etc.


And the South Super highway was a disaster area - full of huge commercial billboards downed by the strong winds of Milenyo.




There's still an ongoing controversy now on whether these billboards should be allowed to continue on with their business considering the amount of damage caused on the neighbouring structures. I mean c'mon.. until now.. a lot of them are still hanging all over the place.

I believe that they should still be continue to exist. What the government needs to do is put some sort of commision to regulate, impose rules on construction design etc to avoid this type of destruction again.

Anyway, I'm sure that everyone has their own Milenyo story. Here's mine for posterity's sake :) :

The night before -- NO CLASSES? But it's not raining outside .... Huh? A super typhoon? What about work????
7am -- Should I go to work? Dang -- I gotta go! Have an important meeting this afternoon -- there's no way that I ca't go.......
8am - "Don't pass through Magallanes! (from Rosabel through the celphone) It's impassable!" Dang, they're not allowing vehicles to exit Buendia ave from the SKYWAY --- after 40 mins of added time -- managed to get through
8-930am -- Time to get some work done ----- OMG the lights out -- - All systems. CPU's unusable. Bosses call off work for today... Call Rosabel .."The winds are so strong!!!!!" - Can't feel it here in Makati... what is she talkin' about?
10am - Heading home on the SKYWAY - What the??? -- the rain is going HORIZONTAL!!!!!! Holy cow!!! I hope the car doesn't turn turtle!! - this is serious!!
1030am - Am still on the highway southbound to Alabang ... I count like around 10 huge bill boards -- downed by the winds... they lay on top of houses, other structures... .some of the billboards tear down power, telephone lines and poles.... people are outside checking the damage the storm has brought. Got into the village and -- DESTRUCTION.... Tree destruction -- actually --- most of the houses are still ok.
11am - Manage to get home but barely. There are 6 routes to my house. And 5 of them are impassable! Am seriously considering of leaving my car on one of the routes and then walking home. However, there was one long winded route without a downed huge tree. Home at last.
1130am - I tell my story to the fam. They're like -- "HUH? It's that bad outside??". Home's ok -- no damage.
12pm - We go out to get something to eat and go to the grocery. Not sure if we should go -- - isn't this the EYE of the TYPHOON? The worse ain't over..... Oh well ..... we gotta eat and get some groceries.... Anyways, we're goin to South Supermarket (North Park) to eat. It should be safe over there.
1230pm -- Yum, as usual ...North Park rocx..And then... the winds start to pick up again .... IT STARTS HOWLING!!!! I tell Rosabel and Zachy (We left Cara at home with Yaya Me-an and Yaya Dalia) to go upstairs and start grocery shopping coz' we were worried that the glass windows might break.
1245pm - Rosabel and Zachy go up to SOUTH SUPERMARKET -- BOOM!! Parts of the roof blow off!! Rosabel and Zachy see the sky for a brief moment... then WHOOSH - Rosabel picks up Zachy and rushes down the walkalator heading the opposite direction...


Downstairs, Pops and I are paying the bill and BLANG -- we see the roof of South Supermarket fall on the street below... HOLY MOLEY COW BATMAN -- I knew we should have stayed at home....I go upstairs to shoot some pics of Milenyo's fury on South Supermarket.


Surreal...

Here's a pic of one of the South guys walking gingerly through the grocery coz' it's all slippery from the "inside" falling rain. Everyone was so scared inside the grocery, the wind was howling, people screaming and shouting, supervisors trying to get the situation under control... 'twas like a disaster flick man!



1pm to 3pm - We wait out Milenyo's fury in South Supermarket .. Lots of worried faces... Some cars in the parking lot are hit and damaged by falling roof pieces....Trees bend almost halfway down due to the force of Milenyo's winds. Thanks goodness that houses here in Manila are made of cement!
3pm - We can't wait here anymore. We're worried about Cara and the yayas left in the house. We gotta go home. We start to head home even though the winds are still kinda strong.
330pm - Manage to get back in the village - there are more trees and electric poles down on the ground now! --- how are we going to get electricity back in the next few days?? Or even weeks?? -- and this time -- all 6 routes to the house are BLOCKED!! Luckily, on one of the routes - the trees blocking are movable... so we got out of the car, wade through the floodwaters and rain to pull them aside. Super worried about live electric wires and such.... am so glad that the electricity is out... phew...
4pm - Finally-- we're home.. the large makopa tree at the back of our house fell gently on the roof and caused no structural damage. A pretty big tree branch fell on the roof of our patio -- no considerable structural damage also. How the heck did that snap off? The trunk was so thick!

The aftermath:

*Made our way directly to Makati Supermarket (South was closed) the next day to stock up on supplies - especially water and TIMBAS!! (Water containers). By late morning all big TIMBAS and big water jugs were out of stock.
*Learned to live without electricity and water for the next 4 days. Which meant - a lot of candles, flashlights and stocking up on water from various sources. It was a good thing that Rosabel's parents still had a little running water left.
*ARG -- NO INTERNET!!! and NO DVD's!!
*Learned to take a bath with black water --- (well- dark brown) -- due to the fact that the reservoir ran out -- the water got "soil/sediment dirty". Nothin' toxic but definitely icky.


After the 4th night, the electricity came back on. (We got so used though to living without lights that we continually forgot to turn on the lights while we were in the bathroom. "Oops! There's light na pala!" Hehehehe!)

Man ...we were so so happy to have light once more..... words just couldn't express how relieved we were......

The water didn't normalize and clear up till like a week after.

Boy, we were so lucky that we were safe.

Thank you God for taking care of our family during Typhoon Milenyo.

Tag Board

Man -- Tagboard got hijacked?? -- here's the quick fix to get it back online:

Tag-Board.com customers,

First, I would like to apologize for Tag-Board.com (and, as a result, your board) being down. We are working to restore normal service, but are having to make some temporary changes for a short time. The domain name "tag-board.com" has been hijacked, and it is controlled by a third party who has taken the site down. We are going through the process of getting the domain name returned to us, but it seems that during this process, the hijacker intends to harm as many of our customers as possible.

As a temporary measure while we await the outcome of the domain resolution, we have registered tag-board.biz. The site will continue to work as normal with this new domain name. You can go into your HTML code and modify the links to change the .com to .biz, or you can login to your Admin Page and get a new block of HTML code.

Once again, we apologize for the difficulty and the problems that you are having right now, and for our part in them. As soon as we have control of the domain name again, you will be able to go back to using tag-board.com, although we will keep tag-board.biz working so that you do not need to make changes if you do not want to.

Thank you for using our service, and please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or problems.

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