Ibyang
Ibyang

The Married Life

Cheesecake on the 39th Month

It’s always the small things that matter…and today being our special day of the month, My Husband brought home a slice of cheesecake for us to share.

McCafe’s Cheesecake


No fancy-schmancy dinner, no flowers, no chocolates…just cheesecake. One slice of a simple chocolate cheesecake. That’s how we like it and that’s how we roll.

Happy 39th month, dearest sweetest Husband! Thank you for the yummy cheesecake.

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Holy Week and Easter Spent with Family

There are some occasions that I exclusively spend with family and relatives, one of those are Holy Week and Easter, for the simple reason that my clan usually have some activities planned during this time and it is tradition that we celebrate the Easter festivities together.

It is of normal occurrence that my Grandma’s birthday falls on the week of Holy Week. On Holy Monday, we celebrated her 81st birthday . 

On the morning of Good Friday, we were at the airport to pick up my uncle who vacationed in the Phils for a few days.

From the airport, we drove back to their place where my Husband and I spent the whole day catching up with our relatives as we enjoyed eating Baked Salmon, Ginataang Hipon with Kalabasa for lunch and dinner and homemade Turon for afternoon snack.

Black Saturday, since our goal is to have a more relaxing weekend with less household and cooking chores, we decided to have breakfast at one of our favorite cafes. We arrived at the cafe early to avoid the morning crowd and to have a more peaceful breakfast. We just shared a slice of toasted banana bread as we sipped our cups of Choffee.

Back at home for lunch, I cooked half a kilo of Green King Prawns in butter and garlic, dipped in Calamansi sauce. It was fresh and delicious, with a taste of sweetness.
For dinner, we had Blue Swimmer Crabs, again dipped in Calamansi sauce. Another winner. It’s so fat, we were so full after devouring them.

On Easter Sunday, we all trooped down to church to attend mass, then went straight to Prospect Reservoir for our Easter Lunch party.
Every year, someone wears the Easter bunny costume and we have our photos taken with the “bunny”. 

Other than chit chat, laugh and eat, we also played Bingo!

We went home happy and well-spent with lots of chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies in tow.
 

Photos by Chris and Ivy Sanchez, Copyright 2010
Canon 7D with 17-85mm lens and Canon 400D with Fujinon 55mm lens.

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Reflection and Quiet Time

Most true happiness comes from one’s inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline. 

– William L. Shirer

 
image by Chris Sanchez

In celebration of Holy Week, I have decided to spend a lot of quiet time until Easter. My Husband and I will mostly spend a peaceful time at home and will only see relatives if need be.

I will also make myself scarce online for now. I will resume blogging and other online activities I participate in after the Easter festivities.

I wish everyone a safe and spiritually productive Holy Week. Keep happy, kind thoughts!


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He Can’t Live Without Me

One thing about me and my Husband is that we are not much into words. Yes, we have the occassional letters, notes and we always express simple affection towards each other. However, we never liked talking about promises or saying grand statements like “You complete me!” hahaha. When it comes to our relationship as a couple, we believe that love is not love unless manifested in actions. We are a “less talk, more action” kind of couple. We both don’t make promises to each other and we both don’t mind NOT hearing them.


While writing this, I remember the moment we got engaged. His unique way of saying that he wanted to marry me was to show me a family (parents pushing their baby on a stroller) walking past us in a mall and said “I want something like that”. And he was able to convince me to marry him because he never told me promises, instead, he showed me a clear example of what he wanted our life to be in a few years.

No matter how much I share some cheesy stuff we do or say to each other online, that is just that. Mind you, the surprises and our times together are never intended for romance (we are not romantics) but we do those cheesy stuff only for fun and we just like amusing each other. We just like making each other laugh.

And so if you’ll ask me before if my Husband can’t live without me, I’d reply to you, “I don’t know.” Because I really don’t know…because he never said so…and I had never asked. Thinking about it now, that might be kinda weird ‘no? We’ve been together for seven years now (bf-gf for 4 years and married for 3 years) and I never knew the answer to that question.

Until two weeks ago. We were talking about going home to Manila and we had a couple of “what if?” questions one of which was this:

Me: What if you need to vacation in the Philippines without me? Will you still go?
Him: It depends how long my vacation is
Me: What do you mean?
Him: Kung sandali lang pwede
Me: Eh ano naman kung matagal
Him: It wouldn’t be the same without you vacationing with me
Me: How can it not be the same, eh it’s the Philippines? That’s home! If you vaycay without me, you can go wherever you want and see whomever you like…sky’s the limit coz I won’t be sagabal to your gimiks.
Him: I can’t vacation alone for long without you
Me: Aha! Are you saying you can’t live without me now???? (trying not to laugh)
Him: (looking like an embarrassed school boy) *pauses a bit* Yes
**Laughter**

So that’s how I learned that he can’t live without me. 🙂

To my dearest husband, happy 38th wedding monthsary. Thanks for taking me out today and thank you for days that turn out extraordinary just because I learn about things I never knew before. Our marriage is indeed one big adventure 🙂

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Sydney Camera Market

7 March 2010

Organised by the Camera and Image Collectors Society, the Sydney Camera Market is held twice or thrice a year. It is in this event that photographers, hobbyists, enthusiasts and collectors can find vintage cameras and lenses for cheap prices.


Other items that they sell: secondhand digital cameras (Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Sony etc), lenses, flashes, polarizers, lens hoods and caps, bags, tripods, camera straps and magazines.

Other than finding “diamonds in the rough”, this is a place where one can talk to people with the same interest for photography. Most of the stall owners are very accommodating in discussing buyers’ question on gadgets and photography even if you are not buying from them.

The event is held from 10:00am to 3:00pm at one of the halls of the Ultimo Community Centre. The place is not that big so expect little room to move once you’re inside. We arrived before 11am and there was a crowd already.
Our friend Jon was already there. He was the one who told us about this event and I was glad to see him. He helped us try out some vintage lenses via his camera.
Now for our great finds. We were able to buy a vintage Fujinon lens (55mm, f1.8). Haven’t used this yet as I have to buy an M42 mount for my Canon camera. Test shots from this lens produced sharp images. Tag price on this little one was AUD$35.00 but the seller gave me a AUD$5.00 discount.
With the bargain I made from the Fujinon lens, I bought a cute lens hood for the lens only for AUD$3.00.

Our great find that day was a vintage Fujica camera (the grandfather of Fuji cameras) released in the early 1980s. The camera and lens were priced at AUD$42.00. My Husband asked the seller if we can buy it for AUD$35.00 and he gave it to us!!! What great bargain that was.

The next Sydney Camera Market is scheduled on 25 July 2010. Hope to see you there!

Here are some sample shots from our vintage Fujica. We just scanned the photos, no editing done so you can see actual shots.
Here’s a full body shot. Notice the vignette on the side of the photograph.
Here’s a more close-up shot. Notice the beautiful bokeh (eyeloveit!!!).
A silhouette shot. In the real photo (as in hard copy), the outlines are sharp and crisp.
To have this camera is a dream come true. Having to buy it at a very cheap price was a big bonus. No matter how digital everything are these days, using film cameras will always be love. I love the learning that goes with it, I love that you really have to think about settings because there’s no take twos (there is, but you know what i mean), I love the romance of waiting for your photos to get developed (one day wait here in our suburb), the anticipation and wondering (and fear?? hehe) what your photos really look like and the joy of seeing some good photographs when they’ve been handed over to you.
The Husband and I have already bought a couple of coloured films and some black & white films. The Fujica will be one of our cameras when we cover events now.


1st Photo courtesy of Jeanny.
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