I’m so proud of him!!

Imagine my surprise when I got a text from my sister inviting us to watch her show.

Come and join us for an evening of good music with Agot’s Back to Basics concert on Feb. 7 and 8 at the Music Museum.

Show starts at 8:30p.m. Tickets are available at UMPI office.
Just call Ronald at 412-3403 or 415-8085.
Tickets priced at P1,200.00 orchestra center, P1,000.00 orchestra side and P800.00 balcony. Thanks so much for your support!!! See you there!!!!

So there…..Des and I are gonna watch the Feb 7 show along with a couple of other friends, do let us know if you want to join us. You know where to reach me.

As 2007 was eagerly anticipated and happily entered into our lives this week, a very close and dear Uncle and friend passed on too.

Gilbert Isidro, or Tito Ato to us nephews and nieces or Ninong to Des and I, passed away yesterday from cancer. He has not been well the past couple of years due to a massive stroke he suffered. It was painful to see him then, frail and almost helpless. Specially for us who knew him. He was a very energetic and funny man. A real joker whose pastime was to tell funny stories of his youth, and there where many of those. He would regularly drop by Luigi’s Restaurant along Tomas Morato, where I worked for a good part of my early professional life, to have his favorite Sheperd’s Pie and share a cup of coffee plus a stick of his ever presen Champion cigarettes with me. He would offer me advise, mostly good, about life and living. He had lived the life, and it was he who I first heard say “We’ve lived our live, your Dad and I, anything after where we are now is overtime”.

So Bon Voyage, Tito Ato. I am sure your entire family, Tita Cherry, Yvonne, Monique, Isko and Louie will be missing you as much as I will. Rest yourself, because we’re gonna see each other again, and the next time we do, I’m pretty sure you’ll have more stories ready for me. Better have the Sheperd’s Pie, Brewed Coffee and Champion Cigarettes ready, this time it’s your treat.

A chip off the old block hehe.

We’ll be off to Dumaguete in around 3 hours time.

This is part of our office’s annual outing, to de-stress us or just to purely act silly.
We’ll be staying in a lovely resort, Antulang. Des is asleep, the kids are asleep as should I.

We’ll be back on Monday!!

These next few weeks will be choc-ful-o-work for me.

Ever since I started managing the huge site, the workload also doubled in the office.
So I guess my blogging will slow down seriously, as if it hasn’t already.

I will try to post some updates about how my everyday turns out when I can steal some free time from all this.

Till then.

Marco and I enjoying Mama Olives’ delicious chocolate cake!
Happy Birthday Ate Olive!

Last night, we watched Side Aid, a benefit concert featuring Side A for PAGES (Philippine American Group(?) of Educators and Surgeons) foundation. Now PAGES has been coming to the country for the past 17 years helping Filipino children suffering from cleft pallates.

My sister was one of the guests and she called me up and asked me if I wanted to watch it, then she mentioned Basil Valdez and it was an immediate no brainer.

The show in itself was ok, thought the sound system was terrible, which dumbfounded me because Rene Cruz od EFX was personally handling the system, anyway that’s for another day. Side A was their usual self, same songs, same routine but same crowd reaction, amazing really, after all these years these guys are still truly a major draw, just ask my wife, she refuses to watch any other band but them.

Rachelle Ann Go was good in her belter ways except when she snagged a few of the really high notes of her opening number. Agot, was well, Agot hehe. Still carrying herself majestically on stage. With a much more powerful voice now since she’s been doing stage for the past coupl of years. In all honesty? She needs practice .

Basil at Aliw (pathetic photo)

Basil was really something else. The last time I caught Basil was in a show in Mandarin Oriental’s Captains Bar. His voice then was rather shaky and unsure, which I really didn’t mind since we were watching a legend. But last night, it was vintage Basil Valdez, hitting the high notes on Ngayon at Kailanman, Kastilyong Buhangin plus doing a duet with Agot of 2 songs near and dear to every original Metro Pop fan, the Bambi Bonus/Richard Tann opus “Kailangan Ko, Kailangan Mo” and the every popular “Umagang Kay Ganda” by Tillie Moreno and Ray-An Fuentes.

That in itself was worth the trouble of going through traffic.

Safe to say, Basil’s back.

Woot woot!

Me and Dino inside the Aliw theater

Let me take this opportunity to pimp my sisters’ small business in my blog.

I’m reprinting her email which doubles as her brochure. I hope to get her more clients by posting it here. Trust me her cakes are really good.

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