On October 1, 2011, my mom, brother, and I went to eat dinner at the Garden Villa Hotel. That's where the Azkals and other teams participating in the Long Teng cup stayed, so we got some pictures!

 In the buffet dinner where I was chickening out to go to the lobby with my bro and ask the Azkals for a picture. :P As for the guy at the back, I don't know which team he belonged to.

 Still chickening out...so I took this shot.

 At this point, my bro and I have passed the lobby, saw the Azkals lounging around, and kept walking on till the bathroom. Yeah...my bro kept insisting we should go them but whenever we got nearer, he'd keep turning back to me and saying stupid stuff like, "What?" or "What should we do?". -.-

 

Finally, after we approached them, I asked the stupid question, "Hi, are you the Azkals?" (my excuse was that I didn't see the word "Azkals" on their shirt yet and I wasn't that familiar with their names at the time lol). Then Mark Hartmann replies, "No, this guy is the real Azkal (points at Misagh), and this guy is the water boy (points at Jason de Jong). We have a really buff water boy."
Me: "...really...?" while thinking to myself that the Philippines would never send a water boy overseas.
Mark: "Yeah. And I'm the towel boy. I carry the towels."
Me: Riiiight, you guys are just kidding with me! Can we take a picture?
Misagh: Yeah, come sit here with us!
So my bro goes and takes a first shot with them, then I go to take the pic next.
Then Chieffy kindly tells us to go to the couch across them and take a pic with those guys, and we did.

 

We get to the next couch and my bro, again, sits with them and I take their picture. When it was my turn, someone else called them to take a group picture (in which Chieffy very nicely encouraged my brother to join), so I didn't get to take one with the people on that couch. But before leaving for the group picture, Jeffrey Christiaens, who was so cool, actually paid attention to me and told me to hold on. After that group photo, the others excitedly went ahead to the buffet dinner while Jeffrey came back to take a photo with me :D

 

Jeffrey Christiaens and me :) I didn't know how he played yet when we took this picture, but when he debuted in the Philippines vs Taiwan match, I was so amazed! He had a number of scoring opportunities and he did justice to his position of midfielder. I still really want to ask him why he passed the ball to Phil Younghusband instead of taking the shot himself - he was so close! Nonetheless, he's become someone I look forward to watching in future Azkal games. I am so thankful that he stayed to take the picture with me, it left a really good impression :)

 

Then we proceeded to dinner and stopped some players to take more photos. But then we didn't really want to be a disturbance to their pleasant evening, so we weren't able to take some pics with others. But look, it's Chieffy Caligdong!!! What an idol, he is so down to earth and was more than accommodating.

 

Bro and Phil Younghusband

 Me & James Younghusband

 Peek-a-boo! Still in the buffet after finishing eating.

On Sunday, October 2, 2011, I brought 3 of my close friends with me (who are also my soccer buddies [we play in our school team]) to watch the Philippines vs Taiwan game! They enjoyed it so much that they watched it again with me on Tuesday. Here are some pictures:

We arrived 2 hours early thinking that there would be a long line outside. Turns out we were wrong and we just entered right when we got there. We were able to get real good seats though! It also rained that day, so we were holding up our umbrellas while watching. 

After the game. Philippines and Taiwan tied 0-0.

I love that they come near the crowd and acknowledge their fans! It's such an admirable gesture :) They were the only team that did it too!

Jeffrey Christiaens - his debut game. He kinda grew on me since then :)

# 4. I wonder if that's really his preferred number.

And of course, Roland Muller! My friends and I are huuuge fans of him now. He played incredibly in all 3 games, especially in this Taiwan one - he saved so much! Ah, it was wonderful. He did so well!

The Azkal Ending to a Good Week & Month

Today was the first game of the Philippine soccer team (Azkals) against Hong Kong in the Long Teng Cup. LUCKILY the match happened to be in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and in a place that’s soooo near my house & my school! Did I mention they’re staying in the hotel right by my school? FINALLY something’s happening in this city :P Haha! The game was really thrilling since soccer’s way too awesome & our team was pretty good! The game ended with a tie, 3-3. It was really cool seeing a lot of Filipino supporters too(most of them were women & I guess their main purpose was for the looks of the players…haha), however they didn’t really know what was going on and the commentator had to explain some stuff to them. It’s all good though cuz soccer’s a pretty new sport in the Philippines so they’ve got much more to learn. I was pretty much shouting “BETTER DEFENSE!!! MAN-ON, NO TURN, NOTURN!! DON’T KICK IT OFFSIDE!!! HELP HIM OUT, HE’S ALONE WITH THE BALL TRYING TO SCORE A GOAL!! HELP HIIIIIM!!!” hahaha :D
Honestly, it felt really great skipping volleyball practice to see a live soccer game and supporting your own country. Pinoy pride! Seeing this match really wrapped up the end of the school week :)

(My favorite photo of the bunch).

This whole experience was free. All you had to do was hand over 5 receipts you've acquired during the past 2 months, then you can enter the stadium and sit anywhere you want. I hope to be doing this 2 more times!! <3

New layout!

I finally got the time to change the layout! Now people can leave comments! Anyway, here's a doodle I made during Bio class today. I just love that line from "Dancing Through Life" (Wicked).
"Stop studying strife, and learn to live the unexamined life. Dancing through life, skimming the surface; gliding where turf is smooth...Nothing matters, but knowing matters; It's just life, so keep dancing through." 

  If my room had better lighting, the edits of these would be much better. Terribly disappointed with the turn-out, but I'll make it up soon! It's my favorite day tomorrow - Thursday <3 AAND It's also TWIN day (Spirit Week). My twin's gonna be my bff <3 Will blog more soon!

Kendo

Last night I tagged along with a good friend to her Kendo class! It was really cool - the setting was a mix of Japanese, Taiwanese, and British style (that's what the guy said). I took %@$&#%# photos haha! No, this isn't the complete set. :)

That's my friend over there, preparing for class.

 Probably my favorite picture out of all the ones I took. Hehe.

 Through another perspective. Taken from the outside through the window.

Class is over.

There's supposed to be 10 pictures up here but one of them refuses to be uploaded, so I'll just post it up some other time. I'm gonna upload the rest of the others tomorrow, I assume. For now, sleep! I'm beat. Well, when have I not been stressed out and tired ever since school started? The mention of school just made me remember that I have to do homework tomorrow. BOO. I need a longer weekend!!!

Kill nothing but time

It's finally Saturday! This week has been so stressful that I don't even want to give a recap of what happened. There's so much things to prepare for. But anyway, yesterday after school I had to stay in the Student Store to sell P.E. uniforms (in case for you who don't know, the Athletic Council in our school is in charge of everything about the P.E. uniforms/team jerseys...etc). I ended up staying there until it was time to leave, so I was able to organize everything in an orderly manner...and I managed to have time to take pictures of some interesting things there as well!

(Hoooooly smokes, I just realized that these photos look waaay better in black & white after editing this last one!! I'm a bit too tired/lazy to change the others so enjoy this one).
Kill nothing but time. I like that saying. Time has its habits of being instantaneous that it becomes hard to balance - I think that's why we go off track occasionally. Nonetheless, we need to learn how to treasure it during the moments we hope would last longer because truthfully, that's all we're ever gonna get. :)

I'll be back later to post more photos on what I did the rest of the night yesterday! I hope everyone out there is making good use of their time (even if they're doing it blindly) <3 

P.S. First blog post ftw!!!