Che Che and Elmer's Wedding

Che Che's married!

Che Che is one of my closest friends back when I was in Chicago for the first time in 2005. We were the one-two punch sent by our project to work as liaisons in the windy city. She knew me before I met Jaye. She knew Jaye before Jaye and I fell in love. She knew Jaye and I when we were still friends and now she knows us as a couple. :)

Che Che and Elmer Buan tied the knot on November 26 with a beautiful wedding ceremony at Christ the King church in Pasig and followed it up with a memorable reception at the Shangri La hotel.

They also sent out the most creative invites I've seen to date. The invitation was a passport and a boarding pass. The story behind this is that they both met for the first time in an airport. Pretty neat!

Nov 26 was a Wednesday work day but Jaye and I filed leaves ahead of time so we could leave the office early. Jaye had her hair done at the office right in her office cube with all her officemates watching.



From the office, we dropped by McDonald's for a quick bite then went to her apartment to change clothes. Jaye wore a simple chic brown dress while I was wearing my congressman barong we bought just 2 nights ago.

I'm still not used to wearing barongs. I'm really more of a suit and tie type of guy. I know barongs are meant to get wrinkled one way or another but well, I move like a robot when I'm in a barong. Besides, I look fat in white.

and red, orange, yellow, green, blue, gray, brown...

Jaye and I arrived at the church and sat at the back since we were a tad late. She was checking out the flowers, the dresses and the motif. I was checking out the equipment used by the photographers. After the wedding, it was picture taking time and when it was time for the bride's friends to come on down, we ran to the altar to greet a surprised Che who probably thought we would miss the church wedding. A few pictures and a few hi's and hello's to CeeJay and Gegs and we were on our way back to our seats.





After the wedding, Jaye and I left the church early so we could make our way to Shangri La for the reception. Upon parking the car, we followed the "lift" signs.



We saw another sign "lift" sign and followed it.



at the end... we find stairs. Nice.



The ballroom was big! The decorations were nice and simple. The food was great too as we had so many options - salads, fish, meat, rice, pasta and dessert.





I whipped out the card that Jaye and I bought and she asked me write on it. I wrote "Best wishes and Gob Bless!"

"Gob"?

I was staring at the card thinking how I could misspelled "God" while Jaye was laughing her butt off. I quickly changed b to d and ended up with...



Gold bless? Close enough.

Overall it was a great event and though it lasted for more than three hours, there wasn't a boring part in it. They even had a photo presentation (just like the surprise videos we created in Chicago) with Jaye and me in it (though there was no way you could have recognized me).

Che's sister approached me and asked if I was Arn. I told her yes and she followed it up with "Ah! IKAW pala yun!". Yikes!


Congressman Arn with his beautiful wifey


Jaye, Gegs and CeeJay


Che Che and I had our picture taken then we realized it looked like WE got married. :S


The happy couple

Last comment for the night: Parking was 190 bucks for 4 hours?!?

Of Surveys and Gas Stations

I was on my way to work when I stopped by a nearby gas station to fill up. I was in a hurry because I wanted to beat the morning rush in Pasig and Makati. The attendant did a quick job and he handed my my receipt and something else. He asked me to fill it up.

It was a customer satisfaction survey.

I didn't mean to be rude but I really had to be on my way. I told him I'll pass for now. He told me it was required.

A required survey?

He added that I could win some souveniers. I checked the form and there was no place where I can place my personal details. If I "won", how could they bring me my prize?

I told him no thanks but he was really persistent that I answered his survey.

Fine.

I wrote his name down. I gave him a 0 for courtesy, a 3 for promptness and gave him a 0 for everything else. I handed him his survey and smiled. I hate conflicts during that time of the day but that was an exception.

Back to Blogging

It has been THAT long since my last post? Wow, I never realized I was that overworked the past few months.

Work has been brutal.

Life has been unreasonable.

I learned a lot the past few months. Plenty of things happened and while for most I would start writing, I’d end up saving the draft then delete it afterwards. Like Gwen’s, I intent to keep this a happy blog.

Sure, I could have written about all these but I’d rather talk about it as I’ve learned…

It’s so easy to misquote me. For some reason, people love to take my words out of context. I trusted they won’t, and yet they did. This brings us to lesson number two:

I trusted people, and I got stabbed in the back. Sad isn’t it? The sadder part is the “kick you while you’re down” bit. You do all these great things for them and this is how they pay you back. This sets up the third lesson:

You don’t always fight fire with fire. My instincts tell me to do so but as Jaye taught me, I shouldn’t. This starts a vicious cycle. Violence begets violence. We’ll deal with these things the right way. Some people are just plain jerks.

There were more lessons but you can derive those from these three. I guess that sums up the past what has happened the past few weeks. I’m bouncing back though. I promised myself not to write a lick about these things until I have a plan and until it’s on its way.

I learned that work becomes brutal when life is unreasonable. Life is unreasonable when you stop fighting.

Ladies and gentlemen, the gospel of Arn.