I want to ride The Cash Cab

At home, there's computer and there's television that keep me company when my girls are out for school. I love watching reality shows. On my daily list : "Keeping- up With the Kardashians" - the sexy siblings still amuse me, "Jersey Shores" - yes, the wild & weird housemates send me to laughing trip,"The world According to Paris" - it's like watching a live barbie doll, "The Rachel Zoe Project" - I have to mention that this one is my favorite ever! big fan of Rachel. 

Ofcourse, they come late here. Sometimes a season or two or more late. But still ok with me. There are other reality shows that I watch but not necessarily follow as I do to the mentioned shows. So when they go on replay cycle I would tune on the other reality shows. 

Oh, there's only one singing contest that I love _ "The Voice"- the blind audition excites me.  

And there's only one game show that I watch. . . . . . . . . . .

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   V   

The Cash Cab. The Asia edition. The one being driven in Singapore. 50% I get entertained by guessing the right answers along with the passenger/player and 50% I love seeing the familiar roads of Singapore.

I miss Sg.




Everytime we rode a taxi there, I was waiting for the driver to turn around and face us to  announce : "this is The Cash Cab"!!! haha. This driver was definitely not Oli Pettigrew, the host/driver of the show. The old man is a Singaporean. Daughter took this photo cos this driver was particularly kind and was remarkably talkative. I remember he kept on offering us candies and other goodies he kept in his taxi for his personal consumption. He was particularly interested when he found out that we were Filipinos. It was because according to him, he had a girlfriend who was a Filipina. Allright.. cut! This is actually nonesense , I just thought I would post a taxi line here cos of the Cash Cab. haha.

I miss Sg.
I miss the safety/ security of every little road there.




 The safety of walking the road at 3pm...




 .. is parallel to the security of walking the road at 3am.

It's boundless by time. So unlike here when my daughter school schedules call for her to walk the road and  commute after 8pm, my worries keep building up not until she reaches home safely.




 I miss Sg. I miss my bff there.

Oh well, as for the The Cash Cab show, needless to say_ Singapore is the best location city in Asia. Imagine if it would be done here in  Manila or Kuala Lumpur??? ..imagine..imagine.. I don't think Oli P. (the host) would  brag the cash inside the taxi to stranger/s who randomly ride his cab. Unless the passengers would be pre-selected.

A Ferry Ride

As ever, my email is full of travel deal offers. Nowadays, very unlikely of me, I proceed to deleting them instead of rummaging over them in search of a fitted deal for my frequent family trips. A huge change  has gone over my family this year, which technically glued my feet inside our home to solely take care of my girls. I'm parenting 24/7. Alright, not fair to claim the credit all by myself. Husband actually, has never gone. He's still very much around. Thu' not so much physical but definitely 100% "around". In all aspect..


 
... virtually.everyday.7/24 during working days and yeah 24/7 on non-working days.

But him not physically around has put limit, if not totally ceased our little family adventures. If before with him around, he had already put limitations to what/where only was allowable, now I don't want to send worries to him by taking the girls on trip without him. If you're a family friend, you should know how oa protected this dad is to us.


 

But malls bored me to death. I don't shop. I mean shopping doesn't amuse me. Buying pricey bags, shoes, clothes would just end my day with heavy heart for slashing my wallet and after all would find no connection at all to these "lonely mom's toys". Long gone are my materialistic years. In my marriage and mom's life , a new matured me has emerged.

Now spot the difference of this photo of me and that of me in the previous one above. short and long hair? erk# haha. Seriously. Nothing has elated me so much as a nature trip. Need I say more?

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But for the meantime, I got to put my favorite activity on hold. While we are still in transition.  
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Meanwhile, traveling through my antiquated photos fill in the gaps.
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Ok, not that old actually. Just a tad over a  year old. Photos I hadn't posted yet but were somehow promised.
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Ready or not, let's go for a boat ride in Mindanao...

I never got bored traveling by water. I hail from a country with 7,107 islands. I practically have no choice but to have fun riding a boat to have reached some of them. # never as  pilot thu', haha. I just took the driver seat while he was still out.

 Mostly, I rode a local version of a boat called a "banca". A passenger boat/ferry  like that in the above photo is a typical boat used to reach a certain island here in our country. You can't simply jump out of an airplane to set foot in an island here. You have to add on a boat ride upon exiting an airport gate.



The interior is usually like this. Open air where passengers could enjoy the view of the sea. This kind is mostly used for short trip to a particular island coming from the mainland. Like a 30minutes to an hour long ride.

Personally, one of my favorite past times while riding a banca is to stare the parts of the boat which are called the "outriggers". I easily get lost in watching them slapping the blue sea water, until it's time to alight.




That.. in the absence of a perfect blue sea and whitish blue cottony sky. This was like less than 30 minutes away from the mainland Davao city.

Passing numerous islets in the middle of the sea  made this boat ride interesting.

More so when we passed near and had  better look of the islets. Look at the slides. It would be fun to make a stop here and swim. I almost forgot, this one wasn't an island hopping ride.I was bound to alight in one of the famous island resorts in the country.

Approaching my destination, resorts here and there were visible already.

However, a sad fact of being a third world country doesn't limit in the streets of the mainlands of our country. Right there in the middle of the sea were the versions of the street children/beggars. Throw a coin and they would swim deep to catch it. I don't know, but instead of getting entertained, my mother heart pitied these kids risking their lives to earn a living. Well, to console myself, I reckoned they must be excellent swimmers anyway.

I knew I was about to alight already when this beautiful facade of the resort appeared right on my very eyes.




How about staying a night or two in one of those pretty stilt cottages..

Well, have I mentioned that it was at The Pearl Farm in Samal Island, Davao? It was. Hop on there.

Flower Power

Just this morning, husband emailed me this postcard perfect photo of flowers he took in the park where he biked around earlier on today. So pretty. Today is the first day of September. Down there where husband is currently based, it's the opening of the season of Spring. Husband said he didn't notice or hadn't seen these flowers the last time he was there which was two weeks ago and winter yet. Then he realized "it's indeed spring already". Then he thought of me and sent me this photo. Fyi : I'm never a flower lady and he knows it well, he never gave me a single flower in the course of our #decades of marriage cos he knew I would never appreciate it.

But this photo? Whose wife is not going to melt by the gesture and the beautiful flowers. I'm enthralled <3. Besides, I'm not really anti-floral through and through. I also get to appreciate and like some flowers. Mostly wild and not as common as roses. Those flowers in the photo are just my type. I also happen to like orchids cos they got lots of character and mostly distinctly exotic.

Hence, I guess I could no longer ignore the piles of orchids photos in my files and just let them get wilted and withered by time_ not posted. Right in this post would be beautiful photos of orchids  I had long ignored in my files. I made a total of 3 posts on SG Botanic Gardens ( here, here & here ), not yet including this one. Not up and until this day that I found the interest to do a post on this beautiful and exclusive part of SGBG which is called V.I.P Orchids. This is one garden there that has entrance fee. Exotic orchids being exhibited inside are named under famous people like presidents of different countries, celebrities even royal families. I have to confess thu' that most names were unknown to me or somehow not of importance to me, hehe. I actually just wanted to see two orchids_ of Princess Diana and Pres. Cory Aquino. I thought I hadn't seen not even one of them but when I checked my photos, I found out that I had Princess D's orchid.



The flower is named Denrobium Memoria Princess Diana. The princess hadn't seen the flowers cos she died before she was able to make the trip to Sg and should have had seen the actual orchid.

In sync, I gathered from the news that Aug. 30, 2012 was the 15th  death anniversary of the Princess and in this regard the Duke and Duchess (Wills & Kate) are coming to Singapore to see Princess D's orchids and also have orchid named after each of them. photo source

I have to warn you thu' that that's the only V.I.P. orchid I'm naming here. Come on, don't make me work on this, haha. I just wanna share you the beautiful images of these exotic orchids. The followings would have no captions but they would surely capture your eyes :

aww, so cute. . well this is a little distraction if you were like me who easily get overwhelmed ( in a negative way) when surrounded by lots of pretty flowers..

forgive me, for not being "so girls love flowers". I'm just like these  little kids by heart. I'd rather have many other things than flowers.

I'm so unlike of my girlfriends who are so girly flowery women. My bestfriend here who has been living in Singapore as expat for decades now, is one flower lover. Whenever I get to visit her in SG, she would always want to take me to Botanic Gardens cos 1}. it's like in the next avenue from her neighborhood, so pretty accessible and 2}. she loves the orchids there! But me would always like, no more Botanic Gardens, I've been there once and that's quite enough. Ofcourse, that's an alibi. You can't tour the whole place in one visit, it's so huge.



Okey, before I end this post, here's another one for you.

Now, if you'll excuse me.. can I go now to some art exhibits? outta here :)))