The first time I heard of Toro y Moi or Chaz Bundick was when he remixed a song by Tegan and Sara called “Alligator”. It was such a great remix so I wanted to hear more from him. And then I learned that he was coming to Manila, Philippines! Ahhh!

Photos + a video under the cut! They’re watermarked for obvious reasons. Please credit if any of you will be reposting!

Thank goodness the gig was held at Hard Rock Cafe! HRC is probably one of the few places that allow DSLRs in concerts.

Eventually the place was packed and more people went up the balcony.

First opening act was Tarsius!

Next was Techy Romantics! Two of them were high school teachers of my friends. How awesome is that?

They were all so energetic!

Now time for the man we all waited so long for.

My friends and I were so close to the stage. So close that the person beside me fist bumped Chaz!

Sound check and setup!

The guitarist even took pictures of us using his disposable camera! Haha!

Let the show begin!

This was when he asked for a ‘low-five’ from my friend. Ha!

End of the show.

He gave away his setlist to those at the front row. Since we were right in front of him I was able to get it! Here’s a photo of it with a polaroid I took during soundcheck.

One last song for the encore!

“You guys are so wonderful!”

Gino and Fab

After the show the guitarist went out for a meet and greet. I’ve been searching for his name but I can’t find a list of Toro y Moi’s band members!

He was such a nice guy.

Then Chaz went out!

We had some stuff signed and of course took pictures.

My friend had a wallet signed. Look, he drew something! A customized wallet by Chaz. How awesome is that?

I haven’t scanned the polaroids yet but here they are! Chaz signed the other one

I loved every minute of it. From the great opening acts to the meet and greet! I’m so excited to see more great indie bands coming to Manila!

Edit:

“Chaz, can we take a wacky photo?” “Yeah, of course!”

 …But am I good at it? :/ Haha!

We had to practice for our musical theatre workshop until late at night. It was tough trying to choreograph our dance because we were mostly composed of dorky dancers in the group haha!

January 18, 2012

I arrived at school 2 hours before my class for a meeting with the Live United campaign people. Then I went to the caf and found Cielo, Magat and Ced studying for their Español exam! ¡Ay, caramba!

Guys who tie their hair. Dale

and Alba

I think I should get a tip from them! Haha. I just arrived so my hair was still wet and mannnn it was so messy. Embarrassing! Photo by Dale, I think?

Cielo didn’t want her picture taken :c

Ced and Magat

Me with our musical workshop teachers, Pat and Ikey! Ikey’s from the international show, Kitchen Musical! Pretty cool, yeah?They were both just delightful. It was great having them.

With my Theatre Arts professor, the lovely Mrs. Chesie!

All of the groups were entertaining and hilarious! The past 2 meetings of theatre were incredibly fun! By this point I’m already in love with the class even though I made a fool out of myself when I sang a part in my group’s musical. Haha!

Some of my classmates (group 4 of the musical workshop) with the instructors.

For the videos from this day (one features me singing huhuhu) just go to my youtube channel [click this link]

After jamming at Sam’s I went to a mini get together with my high school DNAISIB gang. We all met in first year high school and well, called ourselves DNAISIB and it stands for “Do Not Accept If Seal is Broken” hahaha kids these days aren’t even half as cool as we were back then. *chuckles*

Me and Hershey (Tina’s hotdog dog).

The gang! Without Angeline, and other ‘members’. =)) So much junk food = our normal environment.

We all met at Domino’s to pick up food before walking to Tina’s house. This is little 19-year old Tina stressing over her love life. Harharhar jk ) We also grilled Beau that night. Whoot whoot. I also realized how boring my life is.

Beau and Vhan looking like a couple. Not really. (see Beau not liking female intimacy)

Checked out Tina’s college life!

Her reaction!

After all the drama (Tina’s) we started to dance! Without music because Tina’s TV didn’t work with my xbox for some reason. But it’s okay! You don’t need audio to dance, right…?

Vhan’s really enjoying this game. See Tina looking pretty nervous because it’s her turn next.

Vhan enjoying. Normaaal.

LITTLE T GETTING HER GROOVE ON! (cheesy gif hehehehe)

Looking like KPOP stars, guys!

Tina’s in ecstasy.

With Dani this time!

Little T (Tina) + Asian kid (Beau)

This is the worst gif ever. But I like it ’cause look at Little T looking so happy =))

and oh so slutty. Oh Yeah!

Time for the pro to dance (Pam).

Yeahhh this is how pros dance y’all

Awkward finish =))

Fun fun fun! BUT WE NEED AUDIO NEXT TIME!!!

[some photos shot by Pam]

After months of bugging me to jam with them (ever since they found out that I started to learn the guitar back in October 2011) I finally agreed. I was never a musically talented child unlike my siblings and my dad. I tried so many times to learn years ago but I never really had the ‘passion’ to learn. But my love for Tegan And Sara has driven me to try learning again! I’m still very much a noob but I can play some easy Tegan And Sara, The Postelles, Michelle Branch and Arctic Monkeys songs )

Anyway, on to the jamming. We were short of one guitar so I had to play bass instead of rhythm Thanks Ced and Sam for teaching this newbie!

More pictures and 2 songs under the cut!

We mostly tried to play Ced’s song. Here’s a rough cut of it:

‘mixing’

We also covered Arctic Monkey’s Fake Tales of San Francisco but the external recorder ran out of battery. We’ll make a more polished cover next time!

Part of this series on my Tumblr. 

Chuckie is getting a different hairstyle tomorrow. World, watch out.

It was a very quick shoot (just around 45 minutes) since it was only for a small spot in the magazine. And it was literally tiny (see end of post).

So here are some of the photos I liked from the set in a large resolution. I was very, very rusty because I don’t really do photo shoots because of the amount of school work piling up. Go easy on my photographs )

We had no plans at all. Basically, we just went around the neighborhood looking for interesting places to shoot at.

There was this old house with a rusty gate. It gave this sort of “old rich” vibe. I think it worked with the outfit. Y/N? Leave a comment below!

To top it all off, there was this old car parked just outside the house. We did a lot of sexy poses but I won’t post them here hahaha

With the fabulous Karlo Hernandez! I met him at the 2010 Spring/Summer Philippine Fashion Week. He’s such a character!

Thanks for asking me to do this, Esme! May we have more shoots in the future

January 14, 2012

The reason I asked was because we scheduled a shoot today. It pushed through, thank goodness!

It was a gloomy day. Don’t underestimate Siri.

I went to Ayala Museum first before heading to school. I had to visit the gold collection (for my PhilHis class) that dated even before the Spanish colonization. Our ancestral datus were fiiiiiilthy rich.

There’s this really adorable exhibit on Filipino children’s book illustrations. I just had to take sneaky shots using my 4s to show you guys! So nice!

I felt very nostalgic because these illustrations were part of the children’s books I read growing up :’)

Gloomy day in Ortigas.

It wasn’t a photo shoot but a video shoot for a school-wide campaign.

We headed to the smucket (a designated place in school where students can burn their lungs up haha jk) to schedule the next shoots for the ad. It was my first time in the smucket so I took pictures. I’m a curious girl, I know.

Chuckie is addicted to his ukelele.

Louie recently got hooked on Temple Run. This is his post-Temple Run face:

This is Alba.

Found this written on the bench.

And smoke we did. Ha! I don’t smoke. I’m serious. Can you imagine me, with braces, inhaling the nicotine? Eek.

So I mainly just took pictures while the guys huffed and puffed.

As if I wasn’t broke enough, I got myself three new paperback books.

I haven’t bought a book in ages. My last book purchases were probably these. So naturally….I splurged.

This was the first book I picked up in Powerbooks. I checked out their “new arrivals”/”best seller” section and was surprised to see cool reprints of Penguin Classics books! Apparently it’s a 1962 classic by Shirley Jackson and it has gotten a lot of good reviews, enough to make me interested in reading it (heck, it got so many awards too so I think it is a must-read!). And look, the introduction is by Jonathan Lethem! I’ve been looking for some of his books after reading Sara Quin’s recommendations.

I quickly went to the “Authors – L” section and saw 3 books by him! Not the ones SKQ recommended but those 3 books still had good reviews, especially this one.

The cover instantly reminded me of Berenice Abbott‘s iconic 1939 photograph called “Night View”

  photo from this NPR.ORG article

I was planning on just getting one or two books but I blame my excited geek self for hoping that some other SKQ recommendations would be in the store. Hello, Independence Day by Richard Ford! SKQ also recommended this. It has mixed reviews but I’m a sucker for sad, moving stories so I thought about picking it up.

It was on sale so obviously I just couldn’t let this opportunity pass!

I may be broke and short of lunch money but I am absolutely contented and happy. Hehe.

January 5, 2012

So it’s officially the start of school and people are beginning to use their newly acquired gadgets from the holidays.

Like this fellow who got a Blackberry:

Okay so my classes didn’t really start on a Thursday. It started last Tuesday but for some reason my photos from that day were corrupted. I got a few nice photos from that day with Jamie and Dulaang ROC too! Gah. But it’s okay. Let go of the small things, Iya.

I also went to class last Wednesday for a presentation in Theatre class but I’ll post that separately.

Starting the day with a class that felt longer than usual and then having an early lunch with my friends gave me a sense of comfort. Haha I don’t know why I felt that way but I’ve been stressing so much in the days before. Maybe having friends who are sort of panicking about requirements as well is comforting. Ha!

Oh gawd. There’s a new caf cat. I miss the old one. This one is just too fierce!

Deep fried chicken seasoned with spices and with melted cheese on top?! So sinful but so good.

After eating I also relaxed for a bit, sucking up the ambience –warm breeze, sunlight peeking out of the leaves above the caf, the different aromas from the cafeteria food…It was great to be back in school (but I dreaded the school work).

My relaxed state quickly reverted back to stress/panic mode.

I got my first zero on any essay (in college). Ohmyyyygasfdaalgksjaga!

It’s a good thing I got some perfect scores on the other essay questions. I managed to get a good score in my first long exam for my Philippine History class. Whew. My handwriting is an embarrassment.

Physics lab. See, Mica and the people in the background are using smartphones in class!

We had a lecture instead of doing experiments so it was pretty boring. I was so distracted during class because of my smartphone and the internetz. But thanks Ced, for your occasional spurts of weird but witty jokes.

Mica’s new year’s resolutions. I think I better start working to achieve my goals. 2012, let’s do this!

1. I had a lot of work to take care of.
2. I was in Cebu for a week!
3. It’s summer vacation. Why would I want to be stuck at home?

But anyway, good thing I was able to edit and upload these part 1 photos. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

(and P.S., my photos really dont do justice. The wedding was really beautiful and since I was also helping my sister coordinate, I only had few opportunities to snap pictures.)

March 25, 2011

I went to Fiamma to cover three parties that were happening the night before. I got home at 2 am and woke up at 3.30 am, only an hour and a half of sleep, to pick up the flowers, meet up with my sister’s friends (who are also in my sister’s coordinating company) and drive 2 hours all the way to the outskirts of Tagaytay where Hacienda Isabella (where the reception was held and where the guests stayed) is located. I was supposed to pass the opportunity to see the wedding so I could rest, but my sister said that they won’t be coordinating a grand wedding anytime soon after this one.

Like what usually happens on road trips, we passed by a number interesting things along the way, like this little duck right here who tried to cross the road.

The road nearing the Hacienda was beautiful!

It was a beautiful day so the view of the driveway of the Hacienda looked extra welcoming.

The flowers were blooming prettily too!

This is the way leading to the main guest house.

There’s this big ass mirror so I couldn’t resist a reflection shot! Haha. Also,  I was wearing all black that day to “blend in”.

Plenty of natural sun light will greet you as you enter, thanks to the tall windows.

Here’s the area where the dining tables, washroom and stairs leading to the upper part of the guest house are located.

Hey, you can see the bride and dad going down the stairs while having their picture taken by just one of the top wedding photographers in the Philippines. Yeah. No biggie. Hahaha jk. You can really tell that they saved up for this wedding to get top notch wedding crew!

The other side of the house. Every area is so interesting because of the decorations! I really love wood, bricks and antiques.

“Old” houses > modern houses for me.

One day, I will collect leather suitcases from all the places I’ve travelled to.

The design of the hacienda is actually pretty consistent! Check out the bathroom.

There were also some pretty decorations to make the place even more interesting.

Now we shall go to the main bedroom upstairs!

We organized and labeled the gifts

The bed was in the middle of the room and had curtains around. It looked pretty intimate. Haha

The wedding rings in a very cheesy heart-shaped box lol

The theme was Filipiniana so the Bible, rings, coins, etc were put on top of these uhh…sack-like pillows? Haha sorry I don’t know what they’re called but it really fit the theme!

The gifts were Philippine-made. They even had sungka (Filipino board game) for the children to take home to play with!

The florist did a beautiful job. All the flowers are naturally found in different places in the Philippines.

The sun was shining so high and the winds were cool and strong; it was a beautiful day for a wedding.

[More on the other places in the Hacienda and actual wedding next week!]