Hello, everyone! Jeez, I know I’m late for my New Year post, today being the fifth day of 2008. Been pretty busy in the house organizing stuff and actualizing one of my plans for the new year - to be more organized and efficient.
I heaved a sigh of relief and gratitude the other day when my neighbor’s househelp brought along with her to my house - someone willing to be under my employ as helper. So for three days now I’ve been enjoying the company of an assistant. She does the dirty work of washing clothes as well as cleaning, mopping and dusting the house according to my directions of course. She can’t cook though, which is okay with me because I prefer that only family members prepare the meals anyway. What’s important is that the house is now being kept clean and hopefully in perfect order in the next few days.
Ah, many nice things have been happening to me from Day One of 2008. I have, surprisingly, been taking definite steps to improve and ease my life. And one of the “bestest” of these moves, I’d like to believe - is my decision (err.. Marco’s decision…hehe) to switch to a new internet service provider. Marco spent almost two weeks here at home, but he had to be online all the time because his work is internet based. And he got so exasperated with the internet connection from our old ISP (Digitel Luzon) which was crawling so slow - even much slower than dial up! Hence, after much prodding from him, I finally called up our cable service provider, to give us a faster internet connection - quick! And lo and behold! in a matter of five hours - we were wired at a maximum speed of 100 kbps. Not bad, huh? It’s been over a week now since we got connected and I have no complaints so far. 
Incidentally, I have wanted to post photographs from last New Year’s celebration in our family home (my parents’ house), but Marco is still busy with work and can’t upload the pictures he took with his camera. Anyhow, I took a few with my cam phone, and I’d like to show them here to at least share with you how we traditionally celebrate Christmas and New Year in the family.
This is John Montemayor, second son of my eldest brother giving his opening remarks before announcing “Our first meal for the new year is served”.
Every Christmas and New Year, we (my parents, siblings and our own families, and other relatives in some occasions) gather around the dining table at my parents’ house and John is always designated to say the grace before the meal. Because of this, we have jokingly given him the nomer “Father John” and sometimes “Pastor John”.
And since John, an entrepreneur, has recently constructed a conference room (for trainings and conferences of his employees) just beside my parents’ house, he offered to host the holiday gatherings this time.
Guess who? That’s my hubby belting out a Beatle song. And to think he only had half a glass of champagne. hehehe.
After the videoke - rat ratan naman! On the drums is Aypee; on guitar is Marco and on the microphone belting out a Pinoy rock number is Dennis, my sister Eva’s first born. Take note at how extremely different my two sons are: Aypee with ’semi-bald’ head and Marco with long hair. There was a time though, when both boys were in their teens - Aypee was the one sporting long hair while Marco went semi-bald. Nonetheless, they have become best buddies now that they are grown.
The band equipment by the way is owned by John who loves tinkering with the drums to shake off corporate stress.
More pics next post. Hope Marco will be a more obedient child to his mom and upload the photos from his cam so I can grab them from his Flickr account.
happy new year too, my blogging friend… let us all hope for a better year for us, for our families, for our country. sige na nga, world peace na din…
Wow! Looks like you and the rest of the clan had a swell time. We had our annual family reunion too, at my aunt’s house. But, being the boring family that we are, everyone was either eating, drinking, or just plain gossiping about the usual stuff when families get together.
wow.. what a nice celebration ! complete with drums and instruments and a projector for Karaoke - that’s one heck of a party
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What a Celebration!! I spent the new year with a very nasty cold due to too much travelling, but it was a swell time spending with the little ones and before we kwow and after few more new years, they’ll be celebrating and also travelling with me, or by themselves..The Best for 2008…
Hi tita! We too had a blast last holiday season. Daming family gatherings. Kailangan may party sa isang uncle, tapos meron the next day sa isa pa. My dad has 9 siblings so you can just imagine how many parties we had to attend hehe…
Happy New Year, tita! God bless!
Wow, it looked really fun! I love family gatherings; it’s often fun with our relatives and cousins!
Hi Tita Rhodora! Happy New Year to you and your family
Very nice family celebration indeed. Our New Year too was the same. Though we celebrate Christmas apart because most of us already have their own families, my mom sees to it that we celebrate new year all together at her house. Ang gulo at ang saya. Again, happy new year Rhodora.
Looks like you kicked off 2008 with a bang. Happy New Year to you and hopefully you’ll show us some of your pics soon. Lalo na at mayroon ka ng mabilis na internet service provider
100 kbps is super slow for me already and I complain to Globe if my speed doesn’t meet up to 1mbps. It must be hard to blog hop and surf. Our ISPs should shape up.
Marco seems to be a good kid. Maybe he is just engrossed with work. your celebration looks so much fun. I love singing in parties. Saya. Happy New Year !
HELLO RHODORA,
the pictures you posted and the blog reminded me of our own reunion last june. we don’t have “family reunions”. i guess tracing our roots from a bigger source, what we have are huge Clan Reunions. Cousins, titos, titas, grandparents, the whole caboodle of people sharing the same family tree are all there.
the oldest surviving matriarch of our clan is a 98-year old first cousin of my grandfather. we have a sort of clan tradition that the position of ‘leadership’ is passed on to the oldest surviving relative. it was once held by my grandfather until he died at a ripe old age of 92. i remember him as the ultimate authority in everything. blessings are sought after from him - from births, deaths, squabbles amongst relatives and even by those who run for the highest political position in our province. his word was deemed final. think of the Godfather. we had our own version.
this year, when we gathered in iloilo, it felt like a mini-united nations conference in the church were we had a family thanksgiving mass. relatives from all over the world came, and with them they brought children and grandchildren spawned from different intermarriages. it was literally a gaggle of weird accents. i even was surprised to have black french cousins who taught the rest of the younger kids the latest hip euro groove and they speak ilonggo. weird no?
all-in-all, it was fun. having a family reunion, or in my family’s case - a clan reunion, confirms in us a sense of belonging to a group where we can develop or derive part of our identity and our history. thus, it makes us whole as individuals facing the complexities of a wide, varied world. it is, in a real sense, having the spirit of kinship being flamed in each and every member of my clan.
so wherever, whenever my family’s members are, there is always a sense of home to come back to.
next december (we have decided on a date for the next clan reunion) it is planned to be bigger. it will to honor the 99th-year of our matriarch and also those in my family who have moved on to God’s place.
Happy New Year!
Mama got it wrong. We signed up for the 1mbps plan. 100KBpS (kilobytes not bits per second) which is the typical transfer speed over those types of plans
Happy new year!
Hi Rhodora. What a great family you have…this kind of tradition makes families closer and stronger. I miss family reunions. Instead of going home to the province during the holidays, some of my relatives came to Manila to spend their Xmas vacation with me and some relatives. We spent time together but unlike the reunions we had in the province where we really had fun. Parang bitin pag dito sa Manila ang reunions. Happy New Year!
Cheers,
Luna
Happy New Year!
Good health and more wealth.
I’m glad to see everything is going well for you. Good luck and happy new year (belated)!
Happy New Year! I wish you all the best for 2008!
Great to hear the New Year started well for you. Keep it up like that !
I am glad you had a blast of a family celebration. Our reunion was fun-fun-fun too. We used to have a ho-hum celebration. But last year I decided i’ve had it with the way we traditionally we partied with the boys drinking and the girls making chika after the buffet. Now we have talent shows, games, raffles, dancing. I may blog about it too. Happy new year Rhoda. May your fondest dreams come true soon!
it’s not too late to say Happy New Year. May you and family be blessed with so many–love, hope, peace in your hearts…
any yes,marco would not have survived your former internet speed. your dsl is kinda slow though. i think baan dsl upgraded mine to 1.2 kbps
hi, rhodora!
happy new year!
nice naman ng celebration. my daughter will enjoy such types of celebration. mahilig din kasi sa banda.
wish you the best of this year!
hayy, sa wakas, nakapag-comment din ako sa site mo!
singing always makes the celebration exciting, i think.
puro pala mahilig sa singing ang family mo, rhodes. did you take a shot at it, too?
have a wonderful 2008 to you and your family
woowwa ayos ng gatherings ah… dito parang wala lang me work pa rin hehe
musician pala family mo ah
hi Tita Rhodes…happy new year. It’s always fun to be with the whole family…sana ganun palagi noh?
ma, click on this link. wait for it to load before watching the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqrfYNCvHSE it’s so funny, the girl in the is a filipina, she was featured in TV Patrol
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