Our house is filled with smoke and I can hear the screech of firecrackers in the distance. I took the photo above from the window, a few minutes before the clock struck 12, before we made the big switch from 2013 to 2014. The dogs are tulala, especially Pip who is having his first New Year in Dumaguete. But all is well, I am here with family, and blessed with all the good things that make my heart fat and full. This year has been filled with so much happiness, lessons learned, new experiences, joy, sadness, light and love. I hope you are looking back at the year that was with joyful eyes too.
You were great, 2013!
A big HELLO to you, 2014!!!
It's always a different kind of happy when it's Christmas. Perhaps it's the thought of getting together, of having an excuse to be together and just spend time as a family... Christmas is an extended weekend of sorts, with some gift giving thrown in. I love Christmas because it is a time when looking back is mandatory, so we can reflect on how blessed we have been for the past year, for new additions to families, new memories made, stronger ties forged. I love Christmas which is why I took out our mini Christmas tree and started to deck the halls like I really meant it. Pepito even joined in on the fun (Ok, the dog was coerced into displaying a good amount of Christmas cheer for the camera, but he does look cute, LOL!).
Merry Christmas everyone!
I got an early Christmas gift from Kat, a photographer/graphic designer friend of mine currently based in SG: a new domain name! Couldn't quite believe my ears when she told me that she got me this as an early Christmas gift. With her help, I jumped from a Blogspot subdomain user to having a domain name of my own. I have always wanted to get a domain name of my own, but domains and htmls and the mention of codes and lines of code freak me out and give me a serious case of the hives, so I stayed away. Perhaps this is the Universe's way of telling me that it is finally time to get a domain of my own, and Kat was the person to prod me into taking that important step.
Soooooooooo, welcome to www.joselleamahit.com!!! (still can't believe that I now have a .com after my name. If there's such a thing as a hundred degrees higher than super stoked, that's where I am right now, LOL!)
The holidays is gearing up to be a great one for me, I can feel it! Thanks Kat for such an amazing, wonderful and super thoughtful gift!
I rarely post anything about what goes on behind my blogging but recently I felt confident enough to do a little tweaking with the HTMLs and the foreign-sounding codes that you can find in any Blogger blog and I thought I can do some changes there without hurting my layout. To cut the long story short, I messed stuff up, LOL! My comments were not appearing and this morning my Facebook LIKE button, which is such an easy way for readers to let me know that they visited, didn't show up. I'm glad online tutorials are always around to help me solve my problems. The links below helped me get my LIKE button back up and running in a matter of minutes and helped me solved my missing comments problem.
Don't you just LOOOVEEEE the Internet? I do! Morning everyone!
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Prayers for Leyte, Cebu, Palawan and other places struck by Yolanda |
The devastation that I see on TV is shocking. Although my hometown also braced for the storm, we experienced just a tiny fraction of what the people in Tacloban and other hard-hit areas experienced. The tragic scenes of men crying over dead wives and daughters, lifeless children covered in blankets, evacuation centers drenched and covered in debris-- it is heartbreaking and never something that one could wish on his worst enemy. As the water swelled and entered homes in Tacloban, we were safe, warm and dry inside our homes in Dumaguete, and even wondered if 'this' was it. Little did we know that in other places, people were fighting for and losing their lives. It is sad, the amount of lives lost. Could we have foreseen that the damage would be this great? Looking at how ravaged Tacloban is, the entire city should have been evacuated. Maybe no one saw it coming. We knew it was strong, but strong enough to pummel an entire city to the ground? Maybe not.
I am rambling. There is no emotion but sadness. Sadness for all the lives lost, sadness for the survivors who are hurting for lost loved ones, for the survivors who have slept and will continue to sleep in the rain and cold, with little food, water, or clean clothing.
I really hope that this will be the last, at least until we get on our feet. We are a strong people, after all. But lately I have been feeling like we really deserve a break, a breather from all that's been going on. Suffering through typhoons and earthquakes is not a privilege in my book. An opportunity to learn lessons and test our capacity for kindness and strength, maybe, but to those who lost loved ones in the waves and floods, this is hardly a privilege that they would want to bear.
Contact numbers for those looking to send help or donations can be found
here.