Lourdes visits Bangkok

Lourdes left a few years ago for Las Vegas, Nevada to migrate and get married. 3 years later she visits Bangkok together with her husband. There were 2 parties where we got together. First was on a Friday evening at Ate Mads house to celebrate her daughter's birthday. The following evening we were attending a pyjama party being thrown by Lourdes' sister Gloria and her husband because it was their anniversary. There were many other guests but all our friends were there. Sonia even flew in from Korea to be together with everyone. Food was good at both parties and everyone had a lot of fun.

FVR comes back to visit






FVR visited Bangkok once again. He was given an award by the Siam University and as always when he visits Bangkok, he arranges to meet members of the Filipino community. He gave a speech touching on the importance in choosing the right candidates for the upcoming elections. He reminded us that we should choose candidates that will help the Philippines to grow rather than just voting for candidates just because they are famous.

After his speech everyone was treated to a dinner arranged by the Philippine Embassy. During his speech, he mentioned that part of the campaign is "Kodakan" where candidates will have their pictures taken with the people. He did mentioned though that his picture has been taken a lot of times and never saw a copy of these. I was happy that I got invited to this dinner because it gave me a chance to give President Ramos a copy of the photograph that I took of him in 2005. He even authographed a photograph of both of us taken during a previous visit.




After dinner then he started going around the embassy ballroom so that everyone will have a chance to have their pictures taken with him. Here are some of the pictures I took during the event starting with my friends Cocoy, Cecille and Ceres. Everyone had a great time.

Day 8- flying back to Bangkok



I must say this trip had gone quite efficiently. However, I am looking forward to getting home to my apartment and having a long nap. Nardo was parked in front of the hotel at the agreed time. The hotel was quite efficient in processing my bill and in 20 minutes time I was at the airport. The flight was pleasant but was quite full. With the exception of the high school girls who kept taking pictures of themselves with their cameras’ flash firing every half second oblivious of how they are irritating other passengers, the flight was quite fine. By afternoon, I was home, in my bed taking a long afternoon nap. No more running around, just restful sleep. Now this is what a vacation should be!

Day 7- Highlands and Bibingka tasting



We took it easy although I took time to take the pictures of Lulu and Louie. The light was diffused so we had to work on slower shutter speeds. In addition, there is the reality that the first pictures taken in portrait sittings are always warm up sessions until the sitter relaxes and let’s their personality come out for the photographer to take. Otherwise the result is stiff, posed and contrived. I must admit a lot of the pictures I take are just like that until I catch them relaxing a little and letting me in to their real selves.






A lot of times, my subjects wonder, I take almost three rolls worth of pictures and in the end I just return to them a few photographs. They do not realize that there was a warm up process involved where most of the pictures might not be useful and there is the editing process where pictures that are less than stellar had been weeded out. After our session, we went to the Highlands where we had the best view of the Taal Volcano. We had lunch at the clubhouse of the Highlands while I took some time to take pictures of the golf course on top of the hill.














After lunch, we headed back to the house and then took the car to go back to Manila. Of course I was looking forward to this because I wanted to see Louie’s new project which is Marciana’s Bibingka. He had been laboring on the recipe for six months before finally introducing the product in two locations last December. I had tasted their bibingkang galapong and it is quite good even if you heat it up the day after. I is packed in a printed box that I was able to put it in one of my carry on bags to Bangkok because I wanted Soon to taste the bibingka as well. Louie eventually plans to be able to franchise Marciana’s bibingka after he has set up his owned outlets around Metro Manila.