coffee break

my blog needs a revamp. really. i’m growing tired of how it looks. even the layout, although it’s simple and clean as i like it. so i’m undertaking this project of redesigning this blog.

for one, i’ve dealt with all the technicalities of it, blog engine update, bandwidth, bandwidth stealing, security, openid, etc. well that’s what i do for a living so this blog must be a shinning beacon of enterprise driven architecture. never mind that this engine is written in php. now that i’ve taken care of all the techy stuff, it’s content. i promise, like my previous ‘new year resolutions’, to blog at least once a week.

so i leave you with this for the mean time…

it’s a shot taken by marius at the legaspi market in makati. he’s one of the couch surfers i hosted during the summer months.

download hi-res image here.

i recently hosted a couch surfer. a lawyer from estonia studying language in japan. a free spirit in all sense. she’s on a 2 month long winter break, with the philippines as her first stop. fortunately it coincided with our company shutdown so dahon, des and i played gracious hostess. we went on a food trip to up village, the first stop was kiss the cook for lunch, chocolate kiss for dessert, isaw behind malcolm hall and then van gogh is bipolar for a light dinner.

she stayed for 4 days and left for puerto galera for a week of scuba diving. some people ask why i did it, why i welcome total strangers into my house. and i say why not. i do get their concerns; a stranger, might be a serial killer,might be a bipolar, obsessive compulsive. and i get it. though we need to be cautious, we also need to open ourselves. how often can you say that you opened yourself to a total stranger? that you help them, not only to have a roof under them for a couple of days, but also to feel safe and feel welcome. it’s like making people experience the experience you want to have when travelling.

tonight, another couch surfer guest is staying with me until thursday, when he is flying back to korea. he’s a filipino-canadian, teaching english. that same night, a married couple from romania will be staying with me until monday next week. now if my social life would be as active as this…