Heartbreak Hotel

One of my sisters in Manila sent me an e-mail a few weeks ago that broke my heart.  She wrote and I am paraphrasing it, "I really want to travel and I don't have anybody to go with.  If you were here, we would've gone everywhere!"

What else could I do but just e-mail her back to ask her why she didn't tell me when I was there and I was working in an airline.  I realized early on that my sisters are growing up without me.  Another price of freedom.

The Plagues of New York

Snow, freezing rain, sleet, hail then back to snow again.

I'm just waiting for the plague right now.  Seems like every other thing is happening all in one night and thankfully, I got home safe and dry.

Of course, I had to go back out in my pajamas to take pictures and this so obviously amateur video to capture the monster snow plower commonly seen in the East Coast.

Snow or Never

It's been snowing every week now and I am going out of my mind to start learning to snowboard.  I have to find something fun about this snow and I'm pretty sure I'll like it better if I go skiing, snowboarding, snow tubing or all of the above.  There are breathtakingly beautiful snowy mountains here just waiting for me to slip and slide on.

Neruda, are you reading this?  Let's go, no excuses, I want you to come with me!!!

My Place

If I'm asked what's the single, most adventurous thing you've ever done in your life, it's packing up and coming to New York City without a plan.

I had a privileged, middle-class existence in the Philippines and it was all very predictable until three years ago.  One trauma was enough to wake me up and do something with my life.  I wasn't happy in Manila anymore.

I'm a city girl and moving to New York was the next logical step to me.  I needed to find my place under the sun and looking for it is a never-ending process apparently.  Just living here from day to day is a challenge.

Niagara's Rainbow

I uploaded this really awesome, though a bit blurry, picture that I took of a rainbow in the middle of Niagara Falls.  This was taken August 1, 2009, just a few days after I arrived in NY.  I just had to stress that I took it.

I'm also adding travel blogs that I've been reading and now I remember why I got so insecure about travel writing in the first place.

Itchy Feet

So I finally did something about making my blog more streamlined.  I certainly hope that the two and a half readers of my other blog will find time to read this too.  It will only take 6 seconds of your day everyday, 15 seconds the most.  Unless you want to read older posts.

I've always loved traveling, even when I was a kid.  Who doesn't, you ask.  My brother, my uncle from my mom's side, an aunt, a college friend.  Just a handful but still.

I would look forward to our yearly outings to the beach in the Philippines and my parents would do their darnedest that we always, always had that summer outing.  Punta Baluarte, Puerto Azul, Marbella Marina, Subic Bay Yacht Club, some random beach in Batangas.  Oh I absolutely loved them!  I remember trying to be the perfect big sister weeks before the trip and even helping out in the preparations, as well as any 7 or 8 year old could.  The detailed travel workhorse and the control freak was showing its promise even at that age.

And I've been writing ever since I can remember.  In notebooks, journals, diaries with lock and key, countless letters to my high school and college friends, table napkins from restaurants, a column in a teen magazine, an article in a Philippine daily and just recently, online.

It's surprising that I've never put two and two together.  I'm really slow like that.  Or maybe in the deepest, most secret crevice of my heart, I've thought of being a travel writer but fear and insecurity struck the dream in the head until it was dead.

Now it's back with a vengeance.  Like the dawn of the dead, this dream just won't die without a fight.