More photos from Deedee

Meet the Mascots!!

Well, on top of a kid in the shoppe we also sometimes bring our mascots...Below is Scout and Sydney on the next photo. Both are Aiden's dogs

 

 

 

 

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No, I am not pregnant on the above  photo...I just need to lose some weight..hahahah...

 

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A Writing Exercise

We visited daddy's work..and I found my son writing  in the conference room board..

 

This is what he thinks of the BRONX!!!! Smells like a what??

 

Then he saw me, and he ducked for cover..

 

All's well that ends well..A Hug from Daddy for his good writing!

 

From Deedee

Here is another one to add to that kiddie quotes collection of yours, manong vic...

One day my son asked me how old I am..and I told him that I was 2000 years old....he left and said "ok"....then moments later...he came back and said..."if you were 2000 years old..you would have been dead by now"....he was only 5 years old then..! ..the other day he asked me if I am going to have another baby...I said...only if Daddy gets to carry the baby in his tummy...he replied.."then I will never have a sister..because Daddy is a boy"..hhahahah!
Comment from britishempress -

-oooOOOooo-

Sundries....

Deedee's new advertisement/logo ....

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a feedback from Mike Bartlett...:)

Don't be fooled by the ice cream cones and smiling faces.  They look like a dangerous bunch of rabble-rousers to me.   Like Billy the Kid meets the  Dillinger gang.
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 From the mouths of babes

After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin.  At last she  threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice, "Who was THAT?"

 

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A grandmother was telling her little granddaughter what her own childhood was like: "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods." The little girl was wide-eyed, taking thisin. At last she said, "I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

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My grandson was visiting one day when he asked, "Grandma, do you know how
you and God are alike?" I mentally polished my halo while I asked,"No, how
are we alike?" "You're both old," he replied.

 

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A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather's word processor. She told him she was writing a story. "What's it about?" he asked. "I don't know," she replied. "I can't read."

 

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I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet, so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what color it was. She would tell me, and always she was correct. But it was fun for me, so I continued. At last, she headed for the door, saying sagely, "Grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these yourself!"

 

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When my grandson Billy and I entered our vacation cabin, we kept the lights off until we were inside to keep from attracting pesky insects. Still, a few fireflies followed us in. Noticing them before I did, Billy whispered, "It's no use, Grandpa. The mosquitoes are coming after us with flashlights."

 

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When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, "I'm not sure." "Look in your underwear, Grandma," he advised. "Mine says I'm four to six."

 

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A second grader came home from school and said to her grandmother,
"Grandma, guess what? We learned how to make babies today." The grandmother,
more than a little surprised, tried to keep her cool. "That's interesting," she said, "How do you make babies?" "It's simple," replied the girl. "You just change 'y' to 'i' and add 'es'"

 

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Children's Logic: "Give me a sentence about a public servant," said a teacher The small boy wrote: "The fireman came down the ladder pregnant."  The teacher took the lad aside to correct him. "Don't you know what pregnant means?" she asked. Sure," said the young boy confidently. "It means carrying a child."

  AND THE BEST IS LAST----

A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of kids home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian dog. The children started discussing the dog's duties. They use him to keep crowds back," said one youngster.  "No, said another, "he's just for good luck." A third child ended the argument. "They use the dogs", she said firmly, "to find the fire hydrant."

 

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My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday. He asked
me how old I was, and I told him, "62." He was quiet for a moment, and then
he asked, "Did you start at 1?"

 

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Deedee's treasures....

Dear Manong Vic:

This was the madness that Aiden and I had to go through when we phoned you.  Thank you for keeping us sane that afternoon. Nonetheless my son was never bothered by the traffic..he has his PSP afterall.

 

A  daytime nightmare if there is one!

..sometimes an 8-mile drive can take 4-5 hours...:(

******************

here are my treasures...my true gems in life....Isaac is the greatest father in the world...

 

here we are clowning around my shoppe...:)

 

comments...

....from Efrenmark 39

 A nother fascinating story I can actually relate to, circumcision by the Angalakan river and chewed up guava leaves as antiseptic/antibiotics. Picked on severals, laki Teryong telek, Juan dumorulot due-to-epilepsy, out of ignorance. Grandma's ritual, sprinkling vinegar on every corner of the house right before a big storm, 'am a little confused on this, but didn't get a chance and/or bother to asked.
Father M___lly the six million dollar priest. Ricky you actually covered every inch of those events.......Kudos and many thanks for posting... the unforgettable....

***

Small towns have so many superstitions and beliefs: all are stupid sounding if not funny.Examples...

**Two siblings are not allowed to get married in the same year..Why?..One couple will have a good life, the other will suffer a miserable one..

**Wearing a red dress or shirt on a stormy day will attract the lightning bolt..

**Do not open an umbrella inside a house, esp. the living room..Centipedes will fall off from the ceiling...

**If you pass by an anthill ( believed by some to be the dwelling of a KA-IB-BA-AN )  and you do not say "Bari-bari", the hill dweller  will put rashes and sores all over your body..

**When you hold a party, leave a small plate of your party food in a corner of your house ( for the unseen spirits in there )..

**Before you start eating food ( especially in out door picnics ), toss a pinch of salt over your shoulder...

**When dogs give a blood-curdling howl, they are seeing ghosts. Especially when they do it during midnights..

**The souls of dead people always come back to their houses on the third day after they were buried..

Anything else to add?

****

Rain had a fine time yesterday (?) pm with GF..She's surprised at the kindness of some people  she met in the DC..Of course, some of the pervs and kooks abound in the net also  and we have to be cautious too...But a phone call would tell what's the character of the person on the other end of the line..I guess she will meet more DC friends in Cali when she flies there in a few days...Must be nice to travel solo..!

****

family photo

ALL MY GRANDCHILDREN

hey guys..!

 

the one photo i could photographed them all together..

mom..dad i'll try to send you a disk with

all the photos i took on the weekend.

wish you both were here :(

 

bernadette

 

 

Names and faces:

from the left, on a stroller: Audrey Costes

Chloe Costes Somerville

Dillon C. Somerville

Emma Forbes

Olivia Costes

Mia Costes

 

 more photos when I receive the disk...

 

Asingan memories by Annie cano

REMEMBERING ASINGAN

 our town was no longer a sleepy town,resorts are booming everywhere,trees were all cut down giving more place for houses and quarries,it will be hard to have all of those.I miss those time that either my grandfather or one among my uncles will have to call us in Poblacion( bilin from neighbors) just to go to Sanchez and watched them pull out all of those bundles and bundles of thorny stuff and they had that looking-alike-canoe where they will shake that thorny bundles and there you can watch either ayungin,shrimps (jumping salad)dalag,igat and carpa.Or my grandmother will pick me up and will bring me to the rice fields in Domanpot with her pots of rice and viands for those farmers harvesting their palay.While we were waiting for them to finish their lunch,she will bring me those holes that my grandpa made ahead of time and she will asked me to drain it manually by using "sabot".Upon draining,you can see those dakomos trying to run away from those small circles and my grandma just pick it up and put it on my grandpa's basket with a cover that looks like an imbudo (basket was made from bamboo).I was just a kid but the taste of those fresh foods still made me drool and the last time i had a jumping salad were 15 yrs.ago.Hope there were still jumping salad nowadays and I believed that La Union has the better taste of those.---#

from Ricky!

Family Gathering

By Ricky

Families are wonderful to have aren’t they? Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, grand-nieces, grand-nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and all sorts of in-laws, the lot of them when gathered in the confines of a living room, a dining room, a kitchen - speaking to ten, twenty different people all at once, they are indeed a sight to behold, a sound to reckon with, a gift to treasure. Pangasinan rules. English, Tagalog and Ilocano, they sit in corners somewhere almost sulking and wanting equal time.

The groups are interesting to watch let alone be a part of. Nieces and nephews travel with their own iPods, laptops, PSPs depending on what age level they are. They’ve taken over the living room, slouched, head bent uncomfortably down, and disturbingly quiet. Aunts perfectly made-up are tackling the insurmountable task of cleaning plastic cups, plastic spoons, plastic forks, and anything tin foil. This might explain why they’re the ones wearing the bling-blings. Uncles who decide to brave the outdoor and gather around an oak tree drinking beer with octopus polutan doing their own reminiscing. Grand nieces and nephews (apos) are running around the yard bathing in pine needles supervised by the family dogs and one father-of-the-year. And the in-laws, well, they’re in the TV room. Half are watching TV and the others are taking naps.

Playing the host, I have to be multi-lingual, traipsing from one clique to another, but I’m drawn to the loroyan (jokes), elekan (laughs), sutilan (teasing) coming from my siblings gathered around the kitchen table. "Nanonotan mo nen ogaw ti ni" (do you remember when we were kids) usually starts every other dialogue. We laugh at the most irrelevant stories, like when I used to run around the house sprinkling vinegar in every nooks and cranny right before a big storm. No one can explain exactly why I did this. My excuse, I must have been told to do it. Then there’s the time when my brothers got circumcised by the angalakan (river). They were told to use chewed up leaves for medicinal purposes and walked around the house in skirts. Or the time when it rained stones in our house! Glass windows were later replaced by plywood all because of this psychotic neighbor we had.

Speakingof neighbors, we had plenty who kept us entertained. As politically incorrect as it may sound, and as ignorant as we may seem, we poked fun at Kuya Mario ya doleng, Nana Oping ya bukot saman, Mama Gardo ya pukol (a New Year’s incident), not to mention teachers, priests, yes even the nuns did not escape our unscrupulous sweet bantering down memory lane: Sister Vilma Santos who looked more like Nora Aunor, Father Lee Majors who looked like Six Million Dollar man, Mrs. Baybayin who started all her Pilipino lessons with "Klase, baybayin natin ang wikang …". They all seemed easy targets, but in all likelihood these people also helped us be who we are now.

My mom, too, is part of the discussion. She tells the group about her stories when she was growing up. She accurately names places and her brothers and sisters and what games they played. She is able to describe in details her outfits, or what she said to boys. She laughs, we laugh even harder. She’s one of us, kids remembering what it was like growing up. She doesn’t know us, doesn’t remember us, but it’s okay, we can live with this, for now. Tears spill over not from sadness but from happiness that even for just a glimmer of a minute, we see her growing up, we see the girl who became our mom and is now back in her childhood, eyes squinting trying hard to remember, head tilted questioning, and lips smiling, teasing her audience.

Family is a gift to be treasured forever.---#

When it's springtime in Toronto

Spring is here!

Blue skies above Toronto..people just came out of the woodworks!

 

The Toronto City Hall where they filmed Resident Evil part 2..

 

Rain was here..First week end of February! Poster is still there,

 

The old and the new..Old City Hall  amidst the new architecture of the city...

 

The CN Tower..sandwiched between two massive buildings..The foreground is the skating rink during winter. Now it is just a pool where people wade inspite of the sign that says NO WADING...

Go away!!

 

TABLOID HEADLINE: Elvis is still alive and seen in Toronto!

A bit further up the street is another dummy..perched atop the lobby of CANON theatre,  showing a live performance of  WE WILL ROCK YOU!..It is a musical bio of the group QUEEN..

The SUNRISE RECORDS ( owned by Sunrise?)..It is my favorite music/video store because their collection is awesome and their prices are reasonable..

Across SUNRISE  is the HMV , part of the giant franchise. Their collection is more extensive, but they do not carry the old stuff which I am more familiar with...:)

more photos next time....

Mother Teresa: a movie review

I received this e-mail this morning:

Vic,

Mother Teresa and Cornelia's picture together is a precious one. Mother Teresa is a saint.I kept the Los Angeles Times issue that posted her death  in its headline. I kept that issue in a nicely wrapped plastic and stored it in the attic.I admire her.

Warmest regards.

Van

And it inspired me to write the following review of this movie which I saw on DVD last year..

ONLY ONE

The magic of prosthetics and make up transformed Olivia Hussey into a spitting image of Mother Teresa, the well loved dimunitive nun who devoted her life into helping the poor people of India... Somewhere after the movie started, there was a surrealistic scene where Mother Teresa saw herself in a crowded train station in India, and she focused on a dying beggar unminded by passers-by. She took the unfortunate person in her arms..Thus the over-all summary of her life work began.

ONLY ONE..is the title of a story I heard last night during a speech at the Dinner for Volunteers. One speaker told the story of a girl who was throwing back several star fishes into the ocean. One person could not help but ask her:

"What are you doing?"

The girl simply answered: " I am helping the starfish go back to the ocean so they won't dry up and die.."

"But there are so many starfishes along the beach..Do you think you can make any difference?"

The girl thought for a bit, then she answered: "That's true. I can not make any difference in all of them, but I made a difference in THAT ONE which I have just thrown back into the ocean.."

Mother Teresa did just that..She concentrated on individuals to help rather than the totality of all the world's poor people . Because no one person can change all of them in one shot. You have to help them one by one. Thus she started it, a tough, dirty job, but she did it..Now, she is immortalized when she was canonized as a Saint in just a few years after her death.

The movie, which did not rake in millions of ticket sales or nominated for Oscars was uplifting nevertheless. It did win a Golden Globe award. It showed her doing about her business for God. She looked small and helpless but she was one heaven sent mover and shaker. It is not a complete account of her life, but it highlighted her hardships in fighting red tape, negativism and the uncaring attitude of people when it comes to helping the poor.

One of her real life quotations is: "Our work is for people to know the greatness of the poor..Our work is for people who have forgotten how to smile, forgotten the human touch and have a greater hunger for these than for a plate of rice.."

At the end of her life she won international acclaim, including the Nobel Peace Prize. At the end of this movie you will discover that even without violence and bloodshed a movie is worth keeping to be viewed again, especially during Christmas or Easter, or maybe during a quiet Sunday afternoon.

This DVD deserves a place together with the other titles like THE SONG OF BERNADETTE, BROTHER SUN, SISTER MOON ( the story of St. Francis) and THERESE, a movie about another Saint from the small town of Avila.

All  these movies are  about loving Humanity---#

KIDS!!

kid'z pikturez...:)

from DeeDee

I finally got my little tyke to smile with me for once without looking at his PSP..well at least that was what I thought:)

 had to bribe him to look at the camera...he told me that my showroom is very messy..:)...in that I need some "boy" mannequins!

*****

from annie cano

Marianne, Annie Cano's daughter, in a flower patch

Don't know what Annie's saying: maybe  "There might be a snake in the grass and it might bite you in the...arm..:)"

****

from berna costes somerville

Dillon Somerville, my one and only grandson. Bernadette's firstborn. Berna is my youngest daughter...

Chloe, Dillon's younger sister, carbon copy of her mom..I sometimes call her baby Bee...

 

Dillon after a bath..( or is it having a haircut?)

Nice 'do, Chloe! Is it called SPIKE HEAD?

****

 CORNELIA and MOTHER TERESA

 

Cornelia Soberano is one of my high school students at the Rizal Academy in Asingan a long time ago. She was consistently bright, getting 100% in all of her tests and quizzes..But she did not graduate from Asingan, she left the town for greener pastures..

Then, many years later I heard that she was working at the Toronto City hall. She was also studying Law at the same time. It was then that she met Mother Teresa when this beloved nun visited Toronto. It was a once in a life time experience. Mother Teresa was canonized recently by the Catholic church.

Years later, Cornelia was able to finish her Law Degree and she passed her Board exams. We attended her graduation ceremonies at the Roy Thompson Hall here in Toronto. She and my wife are very close friends.

Cornelia is presently residing in Maui, Hawaii.---#

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from Archie Macanas

Historical House Restoration

is a priceless Art… !

by Archie Macanas

Hello Susie,

Thank you for the acknowledgement and recognition of my hard work re: art and transformation. You are correct about that, 10 years ago, these rotten trashy houses were inexpensive; no one even thought of buying one. Many Americans never have any idea about "Restoration or Preservation" then. That was just 10 years ago I agree that American have little culture and it is a very young country compared to Europe.

Today, where are those rotten cheap houses?  Their value have multiplied 20 times. How much more if it has been restored? I think most of the buyers are Europeans or Americans of European heritage.. These old houses never depreciate or lose  value even though National Real Estate is on the verge of struggle.

Echo Park then (late 80's up to late 90's) was a gangsters' ghetto. Nobody even dared to look at the park. This was common knowledge then.. Five years later it was transformed into a gem of conservative culture.

But presently the Echo Park Community has big problem from Los Angeles Unified School District using the power of eminent domain. According to the news that "the proposal school site will destroy a large chunk of historic resources, such as century-old bungalows, that are part of the neighborhood's historic character." The community have a point to fight the plan…The sharp drop in school enrollment at nearby facilities make it unnecessary to build a new school to relieve overcrowding. Destroying these homes and apartments would further reduce the potential population of students.

I am going to spare my time to attend the Public hearing to support against the school proposal this Thursday, April 19, 2007.

of books and bookstores ( submitted by SS )

F. SIONIL JOSE: PRIDE OF ROSALES, PANGASINAN

I always have a  high admiration for Artists. Without them, life on planet earth would be dry and dreary. That’s why whenever and wherever I have the chance, I pay my respects to them in my own simple way.

One such artist who often received my simple tribute consisting of a short glimpse and a brief memory (as a passenger on board a Padre Faura-bound jeepney coming from San Andres Bukid) is F. Sionil Jose. The object of this tribute was his own bookstore (Solidaridad Book Shop) in Ermita, Manila which was close to Malate where I used to reside. I will always remember the the series of novels and short stories depicting the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society.

Here are some of the praises given to this  citizen from Rosales, Pangasinan:

"... the foremost Filipno novelist in English... his novels deserve a much wider readership than the Philippines can offer. His major work, the Rosales saga, can be read as an allegory for the Filipino in search of an identity..." - Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books" Sionil Jose writes English prose with a passion that, at its best moments, transcends the immediate scene. (He) is a masterful short story writer..." - Christine Chapman, International Herald Tribune, Paris

" ...America has no counterpart to Jose - no one who is simultaneously a prolific novelist, a social and political organizer, and a small scale entrepreneur...Jose's identity has equiped him to be fully sensitive to the nation's miseries without succumbing, like many of his characters to corruption or despair...- James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly"...The reader of his well crafted stories will learn more about the Philippines, its people and its concerns than from any journalistic account or from a holiday trip there. Jose's books takes us to the heart of the Filipino mind and soul, to the strengths and weaknesses of its men, women, and culture. - Lynne Bundesen, Los Angeles Times

While on vacation in Manila last April 9, I decided to give more than what I used to do; venture inside the store. On finding two young salesladies inside, I asked them if they speak Ilocano or Pangasinan. Both of them said neither as it turned out they were not from Pangasinan. To my request, they allowed me to take pictures. The photo above shows books displayed in a showcase inside.

Here are some of the photos I took outside and inside the store:

"Solidaridad Book Shop" on the way to Mabini St., Ermita. A short distance to the left is where Macario Adriatico St. begins.

 

*****

From Vic:

So SS, what title (s) did you buy while you were there?

Collecting Philippine books is also one of my passions: I always find  good titles from  second hand book stores. A few are gifts from friends who took holidays in Manila..

Here are a few titles from my Filipiniana library:

IN THE PRESENCE OF MY ENEMIES-A gripping account of the kidnapping of American missionaries and their year of terror in the Philippine jungle.

 

FOUR DAYS OF COURAGE by Bryan Johnson-The untold story of the Fall of Marcos..

CRISIS IN THE PHILIPPINES ( Edited by John Bresnan )

THE SOCIAL CANCER by Jose Rizal, translated from Spanish by Charles Derbyshire . "This is the novel that started it all," if I am allowed to use a hype popular in promoting the sale of contemporary books. A few Filipino movies were based on this book, the earliest I remember was a black and white film directed by Gerry de Leon ( the grandfather of Christopher de Leon ) . If my memory does not fail me, the actor who played Jose Rizal was Danilo Santos.

THE FIRST FILIPINO - A biography of Jose Rizal by Leon Ma. Guerrero. A copy of this book was given to me by Louena Cruz Untinen, a kind neighbour in Dixon Rd. who visited Manila a few summers ago.

--vic costes