on cake toppers and kokeshi dolls

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Marjorie

Our wedding cake toppers weren’t really the type that could last a long-distance flight, much less last months after the wedding. Yet hubs was so patient in putting the pieces back together, thinking of a better glue that would last longer than the last one he used. And every time he fixes the cake dolls, something in my chest twitches, my eyes burn a bit, and I am reminded of the many reasons why I married this man.

Hence when I saw Jen’s post in w@w about her kokeshi dolls, I didn’t hesitate to contact Khristine, the kokeshi dolls designer, to have our personalized kokeshi dolls, as my anniversary gift to hubby. By personalized, we mean the dolls will be designed to look like us, wearing clothes that looked like the gown and barong we wore during the wedding.

Turned out it was a great decision. For at least two major reasons. One, I didn’t just get to know a great supplier, I also earned a new friend who’s so amazingly creative. Secondly, I made hubby emotional with the surprise I had for him; he was full of questions on how I made it possible, especially since his doll look a lot like him. Happy me.

Couldn’t count anymore the number of email exchanges Khristine and I had. Being an OC myself, I appreciated her being a stickler for detail as I sent her a number of pictures of me and atsushi and of what we wore during the wedding. Seeing her creations, you’ll understand why. Such detail! Ours were no less different.

Khristine is also one really thoughtful person. A colleague of mine has been very nice to carry the dolls from Manila to Japan. Khristine was so thoughtful in that she left my colleague a note of thanks for carrying the dolls and gave Kristine (my colleague) a cute pair of guy and girl earrings. 🙂

Since the dolls are due to travel some long distance, Khristine promised she’ll pack the dolls in such a way that they’ll still be intact even after a long flight and that Kristine,my colleague, will not have difficulty in carrying the dolls. True to her promise, the dolls were well packed indeed.

The dolls’ bed. And yes, I also have my cute boy and girl earrings. 🙂

The bride aka Marj.

The groom aka atsushi.

I giggle whenever I look at the doll. He looks so very atsushi!

Told Khristine as well about our passions – music and books. She then thoughtfully included it in her package for us. The guitar has real strings!

And the books has both front and back covers.

Khristine also added in the speaker hubs always carry with him whenever he travels.

Dolls are now happily tucked in one of the shelves in the dining room.

Khristine promised she’ll give us something extra special as well. And indeed she gave us something really special. Bookmarks. With our dolls in it. Mind you the photography was really good! We almost hesitated to use them lest we loose them. But then that would defeat the purpose of Khristine giving us the bookmark and so use them, we did.

Thank you SO MUCH Khristine! 🙂 I think you’ll be hearing more from me. 🙂

Do visit her site.

the dolls we brought home from Eastern Europe

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Marjorie

I’m a doll collector. Wanted to be one ever since I was six when my parents (or was it my grandmother?) bought me a very pretty and dainty Filipina porcelain doll wearing the Philippine national costume. Wanted to be one ever since I was six when I played with my cheap but really cute United Nations dolls – they were dolls wearing different national costumes (I wonder what happened to them….). And as it happens, when you grow old, you forget about your childhood dreams. Until something reminds you of them.

I worked in a Japanese company hence it was but natural that we have displays of Japanese dolls in the visitors lounge in the office. Seeing the dolls, there came remembrance. One of my best friends, Dhonna gave me my first doll, an omiyage (present) after her first assignment from Japan. And it went rolling from then on. Whenever I travel, I buy the doll of that country. Friends have been very generous as well with their gifts in that whenever they travel to some countries, they also think of me and my collection and buy me a doll. Most of my collection are in my parents’ home in Davao now. With the exception of this exquisite Belgian porcelain lady which my manager in my previous company thoughtfully asked her brother to buy for me. I had it with me because it was the latest doll that was given to me and I wasn’t able to bring her to Davao before I moved to Japan. Customs check ruined her hair and hat and necklace though. 🙁 Seeing her not in her perfect state just breaks my heart. 🙁 Sorry, she’s surrounded by neighbors who can’t be posted here hence I can only share her bust. 🙂

It was but natural therefore for us to buy dolls during our recent trip to Eastern Europe. I’m having regrets now though that I didn’t buy a porcelain one. Albeit I’m still mighty happy with these new addition to our collection.

Magnet couple dolls we bought in Vienna.

Rustic mother and daughter doll we bought in Cesky Krumlov. Rustic – very Bohemian.

And of course, a marionette that we bought in Prague. It was only during this travel that I learned marionettes originated in Czechoslovakia. It took me a long time to decide which marionette to buy though because most of the original design ones are scary looking and reminds me of witches. Hence I ended up buying this wooden Czech boy.

Friends, hope you remember me during your travels. 🙂

new neighbor, more Ziploc

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Marjorie

A new neighbor is building a house nearby hence us neighbors got in our mailboxes some sort of construction schedule from the (we suppose) builders of the house – Asahi Kasei.

The owner’s name and exact address of the house was indicated on the flyer. Construction milestones for the next few months were also shown in that I can just imagine the excitement the owner-family has with even just looking at this milestone forecast. And really, Japanese houses get finished in no time at all; only six months based on this plan. Six months of building built-for-earthquake, built-for-winter house. Amazing, especially if you compare it to how fast, or rather how slow, houses are built in Pinas. Mind you though, these houses doesn’t come cheap. Around our area, you need around 60million yen for your house. And that’s just the house. It’s sans interior stuff pa.

Anyways, true to the considerate nature of the Japanese, included in this pamphlet is a notice that should we have questions or complaints as they build in the area, we shouldn’t hesitate to contact Asahi Kasei.

It came with a packet of ziploc which I am happy to get for free.

This is actually our second time to receive this; the first being a couple of days just before we flew to Europe. The packet arrived just in time. They proved really helpful as keepers for toiletries that might later get wet and messy.

Hopefully though, someday, our surname would be in that flyer.

Eye-fi

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Marjorie

Ever thought of wanting your camera to instantly share your pictures on the web? And I don’t mean through your phone camera/iPhone/iPad. I mean with your digital cameras or probably your SLRs. Like this point and shoot Canon G12.

Segue. Oh yes, finally we have a decent camera. Yey! I originally wanted the pretty white Olympus PEN E-P3 but Hubs and I are really not photography enthusiasts and it’d take us more time to take full advantage of this camera’s feature. And both Hubs and I really don’t want to bring a heavy camera with us as we travel. Hence, I followed the advice of my photography enthusiast friend, Russell, and bought a compact point and shoot with excellent quality – Canon G-12.

I love it’s case! Although it would have been perfect had it been white (I just have this penchant on having white for any techie related stuff).

Ok I digressed enough. Back to eye-fi.
Yep, with the Eye-fi SD card, you can have the convenience to upload your photo from your camera to your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, android) and post it immediately in Facebook, Picasa, Kodakgallery, Evernote, und so weiter. Sans the cables. Sans removing your SD from your camera.

Perfect when you’re on the go. Swell isn’t it? 🙂

Of course, we had to try a photo to post here. Photo got synched with our computer a second after the shot was taken. Hubs also synched it with the Dropbox cloud hence all photos will be automatically saved and organized even when you’re still busy clicking away.

There’s also an iPhone/iPad app wherein you can automatically synched your photo even sans wifi router or wife hotspot. But so far I’m not successful with it yet. Tomorrow I’ll figure it out.

Oh yeah, here you go. Uploaded! A second after.

My translation in TED is out!

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Marjorie

So happy and giddy! My first TED translation is finally out!!!

Flashback about a year ago.
I was somewhere in Quezon City doing errands for the wedding. I was wondering why in that day alone, I came along a lot of proof on how the English language is so dominant in our country and how the Filipino language comes in second.

I was inside the train and the announcement I hear was in pure English, no announcement in Filipino at all even after the English one. Segue: it’s really nice to know that when I took the train again early this year, again for the preps, they had the announcements already in Filipino. I’m at peace.

When I got out the train (flashback again), the announcement on the platform is again in English. I looked around me and all I can see are Filipinos. Nary a foreigner around. But why in English?

And then I signed contracts with suppliers, again, it was in English.

For a few days I think I complained about it with my friends so much so that my friends teased me on how nationalistic i am.

Then I came across an article about top websites for the year and TED was among it and among the highlighted talks in the feature about TED was one of my favorite TED talks – Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity. Of course seeing the talk mentioned made me look up the talk again. I saw the talk when it didn’t have any subtitles yet. But when I visited then, the talk had already 42 translations!! But no Filipino translations on it. Now, did I mention how passionate I was about promoting Pilipino days prior to this discovery? Hehe.

So yes, the inevitable happened. I applied as translator.

Two things.

I was VERY busy at that time what with wedding preps just getting started and that I was due to fly to Japan in a week or so for our civil wedding and the paperworks is almost like a nightmare.
But I had LOTS of extra energy as well. I was feverish about almost everything. So much adrenaline was rushing inside me I had to have some outlet. And the adrenaline includes the worries I have for our wedding and migration paperworks. Ergo, I have to have an outlet.

Second. Being a translator is not as easy as just picking out the video you want to translate and voila, it’d be out in public already. No siree. Upon application and upon signing on in dot subs, TED will send you a questionnaire which poses as an interview of sorts to gauge if you are really determined with the task at hand and if you are capable to do so. It took a week before I got the affirmative reply. Yes, needless to say, I was in tenterhooks while waiting for the result. But I passed, yey!

But. I need to finish the translation in a month. Gulp. I haven’t written a full article in Filipino since university, some 10 years ago. And I was really busy. Buy I really want to prove my mettle with my national language and I want Filipino to be in the roster of subtitles for this amazing talk. Hence, I pursued.

I finished it a day before the deadline. O LE! But in order for the translation to be published, somebody else has to review it. It’s like the deliverables we have in the office – somebody prepares it, another reviews it (although in TED the reviewer need not be older in experience than you, as compared to how it is in the office) and finally TED approves it. It took a year for someone to have the time to review it. Thankful still.

And so here now is the talk. Please don’t forget to select the Pilipino subtitle! 🙂

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

autumn fashion – kids edition

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Marjorie

I’m a married woman. But I still have the penchant to shop around in the kids section – for my clothing needs. T_T
If truth be told, the boots I’m using now is actually for kids.

But who can blame me? Kids clothing are just so cute! And recently, young girls’ dresses somehow seem to have that mature edge already.

Take for one this mannequin of a girl in Zara in front of the office.

Mid-thigh high boots. Knee-length socks. Dress just right above the knee. Coat just long enough to show the dress. Coat opened to show the muffler that’s wrapped around the neck in a fashionable way.

Can pass for an adult fashion, right? Right? Right. Hehe. Now off to look for knee-high socks. 🙂

On Chocolate Hill

A chocolatey journey, with Yui!

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