My Birthday with the Bloomfields

The BDC gave a birthday party for me ten days before my birthday. The ten-day advance will be explained later in this post. I just can’t help but jump to the cherry of this event, well what could be greater than a great party? For my BCD comrades, it’s making my current favorite local band be a part of it. And so it was done. After my/our other favorite, we feasted on heaps of seafoods at Dampa, we went off to Eastwood to check out the musical stylings of the Bloomfields.

At this point, I am compelled to reveal the persona- lities behind the BCD. It consists of Angela, Phillip, Aldrin, Van, Nathan, Joseph and me. This dynamic group of individuals is united by a single goal to overcome every foreign adversary while upholding principled and diligent work. I leave to your imagination the context of this statement.

Since I am still having a hard time putting my thoughts into words, considering the amount of caution I’ve thrown into the air while I was band-struck, let these photos speak for this post.



As the band members, JJ Lozano and Louie Poco were working the crowds, we had the chance to mingle and have photos taken with them. A humbling experience for me since throughout my conversation with JJ, all I could say was thank you.








the Bloomfields live

The YouTube clip I have posted here last November 2007 does not give justice to the talent of the Bloomfields. The band is steaming with energy and soul, watching them live is like watching a zestful life in action. They performed rock and roll music of the 60’s, mostly songs of the Beatles, the Beachboys and the Ventures.

BCD thank you for this birthday event and for pulling out all the stops, i.e. moving personal schedules to accommodate the gig and hunting the band's manager just to get my name on stage - I choose not to elaborate on this. Let's just say, t'was a blast, a fun memory for me to keep. Long live BCD!

For more information on the Bloomfields, please check their website at The Bloomfields Band. They have a Christmas Album coming up, you might want to check it out.
Photo Sources: Ian Rica Roxas - The Bloomfields Band Website - ; Joseph's BCD photos (Nikon D80)

Life like a Glass House

This is my birthday entry , I am turning 32 this Sept. I don’t know what to label this post though it sort of resembles an assessment report. Whatever it’s worth…I exercise the liberty of posting it. Cheers!

I am a Freethinker who works in a glass office, in one of the most surprising nook and well kept secrets of Makati. Our building though not a skyscraper, is one with sophistication and artistic innovation that friends and visitors used to comment, “Hey your office looks like an Art Museum”. I don’t mind since I love it the way it is. More than just an office, this edifice quite reminds me a lot about life.

I consider my circumstances growing up in the province, was quite a sheltered existence. Thanks to father’s random lectures, despite my cloister, it has been impressed in my mind that there is a big world outside my home and my school. The realities of life, both beauty and harshness, I further gleaned through the pages of the books and magazines I’ve read.

I have been educated through the public school system from grade school to college, except for a brief stint in Chinese kinder school and a private school in the 4th grade. When I turned 10, I’ve given up the outdoor play since there were only 2 girls in the neighborhood where I grew up; Heart, who is busy with her stamp collection and shitsu puppies, and me, who found seclusion a wonderful place, I did have a stamp collection too though not as extensive as Heart’s.

I breeze through high school while undergoing the perfect summation of identity crisis. Like any other teen, I wanted to fit in. I’ve tried taking school seriously which turned out to my advantage. I got excellent grades and great friends, all went well until I succumbed to a nerve disease that almost claimed my life in the summer before junior year. I became a vegetable at the mercy of my neurologist which gave my parents the ultimate fright of their lives. I called this episode in my life – the falling into the dark pit- until I found brilliance and comfort in W.E. Henley’s ”Invictus.”

The recovery period from such a nearly-fatal blow was an arduous process. Not only did I sought refuge in my seclusion castle, which is like a glass house where the only thing that protects it from intrusion is a deadbolt, I also buried myself into reading until further solace came in the form of writing. Once again I retrieved my pen and restarted a journal. Writing is therapeutic. It paved the way for me to find the missing portion of myself after the ordeal.

Through the years, I realized that I have become my own person. As a child, I always wanted to be like my father, a very strong force to contend with. My mother on the other hand is the sensitive soul and that, I can never be a gentle creature like her. Though not a lot like my parents, I carried their values, their strong faith in being a “family” as well as their belief on taking on social responsibility. And for these, I thank them.