Beautiful Award! Cheers!!

Cheers! I’ve recently had the honor of receiving awards from Hira Nazir and Lissa. Thank you so much for this award! truly honoured to receive this award for the first time on this blog! ~Adjusts dang bow tie that just won’t stay on~ SO! now then, the rules for the nominee’s I am about to name are as follows.

1. Display the Award Certificate on your website

2. Announce your win with a post and link to whoever presented your award

3. Present  10 awards to deserving bloggers

4. Drop them a comment to tip them off after you’ve linked them in the post

Wait, 4 rules? (looks at back of flash card) yep! 4 rules! yay!! alright, so the nominees! (Dramatic oscar awards trumpet and all that)

Nominees for award

1. Bluefiadiarries 

2. Deb Adams Art

3. Cookie Momma’s Blog

4. Daisy Never Too Sweet

5. Evil Nymph Stuff

6. All About Lemon

7. Soonie2

8. Jenny Serendipity

9. Rash-Me-Ramble

10. Travel Destination Bucket List

Ta da! congratulations everyone and keep up your awesome posts that brighten everyone’s day!  

 

Yay For Friends!!

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Hello Everyone! I hope you are enjoying your Easter Holiday. I sure am! recently I received the above wonderful awards from wonderful bloggers such as the authors  of the blogs Cold Dead Heart and Living Beautifully. My apologies for taking so long to thank you, It’s been very busy at work and I haven’t had much time. So! without further ado as the saying goes, I will start with the rules of accepting this award.

Rules

1) Nominate 10 fellow bloggers who are relatively new to blogging (or whose blogs you enjoy most)

2) Let them know that you have nominated them.

3) Share 7 random facts about yourself

4) Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you.

5) Add the Versatile Blogger Award picture to your blog post.

10 Nominations In No Particular Order

- http://ellejaysays.wordpress.com/

- http://limeisbetter.wordpress.com/

- http://cafe23.wordpress.com

- http://seriouslyrebecca.wordpress.com/

- http://mygulitypleasures.wordpress.com/

- http://mysterycoachdsi.wordpress.com/

- http://megaworthit.wordpress.com/

- http://larazsita.wordpress.com/

- http://ninalismomtographers365project.wordpress.com/

- http://afm09.blogspot.com

7 Things About Me 

- I am a proud father of a loving daughter

- I listen to music for inspiration to my writing 

- I write my own poetry

- I am very blunt 

- I dislike machine gun blogging (10 posts within the hour drives me nuts sorry)

- I love cupcakes with my daughter

- I love filipino dishes

Congratulations to everyone and thank you so much for your support  

 

Lonsdale Quay

Some of you may know that I am a real health nut. I always enjoy long walks after good meals. So, after dinner at East Side Mario’s with my little lady. We walked around Londsdale Quay for a bit.

 

This is such a welcome sight to me, we’ve had nothing but dreary rain and gray skies for the past month. The place was filled with kids and dogs, I loved it but the photographer in me wanted a different shot. So, with my little lady’s permission we went up a set of stairs to take this picture.

I was going to do a little more panoramic. But my little date isn’t fond of heights, I was the same way when I was her age. Bridges used to scare me, In many ways. She’s the exact copy of me in personality, so we went back down to the area everyone was at. It was getting late and we had plans to watch a movie at home,  so back onto the seabus we went. 

Along the way we saw this massive structure, it took a bit to notice that it was actually a freighter carrying two freighters. Word going around was that some of the ships from Japan were drifting after the devastating quake. These, were apparently two that were salvaged.

 

Upon arriving back at the dock on the other side of the channel, we disembarked the seabus and went for a little extra sightseeing downtown, I figured we were in the area and sun hadn’t set yet. So, why not spend more quality time just her and I right? I’ll post those pictures tomorrow, I hope you will enjoy these pictures  

 

-Andy1076

 

A Beautiful Morning

Yesterday morning, I woke up to my favourite kind of weather. Snow! There’s just something really peaceful and beautiful about it, it comes down really hard sometimes but it doesn’t make any noise and in the process it paints the streets in a beautiful sheet of white. Even the sky too!

 

The best part though, is the squishy feeling and sound you get when you step all over it. Leaving footprints behind, I wanted to make a snowball but there wasn’t really that much snow yet and well. The landscape was so perfect I didn’t want to disturb it so I could take this picture. It’s a good thing I left home earlier than usual too so i could take a picture of this.

 

This is the walk way to the library itself, usually around this time of the hour there would be people walking all over it. Even this early there are people who go to the library’s yard to practice tai chi and other things, so I wanted to beat them to the spot I really wanted to take a picture at. Which picture you ask? why. This one of course!

 

Look familiar? this is the picture of the library’s courtyard that I took towards the apartment I turned into a giant fan, except this time I am looking towards the other way, I apologize for the yellow tint. The surrounding lights get in the way of the true colors, but I am uploading the color corrected version into the iPhone gallery. Just wanted the true looks here on this post. So, anyways! after i took these pictures i started rushing towards the metro system and walked on this path.

Sorry about the blurriness, snow was coming down real hard so it was a little tricky to get a sharp clear shot of the picture. I sure wish we had this kind of snow earlier though! cause then maybe we could of had a real white Christmas! Thank you for joining me and look for the edited picture in the iPhone gallery tab!

 

Tag, you’re It!

Alright, So Cafe23! alright alright. Janice! (chuckle) and Aurora Morealist tagged me yesterday on their blog, Apparently? I’m it! so now I am tagging all of you! Wait, what’s that? there are rules? sigh! ok! what ARE the rules? let’s see shall we?

Rules

1. You must post the rules

2. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then create eleven new

3. Tag eleven people and link them on your post

4. Let them know you’ve tagged them!

Alright, Now with the rules aside I’ve been tagged by two wonderful writers. What shall I do? I know, I’ll pick one from each blog and make it 11 questions!

1. If there was one thing you could tell people about you that might surprise them, what would it be?

A) I tend to not listen to my own advice (insert dramatic gasp sound effect)

2. What is your alcoholic drink of choice?

A) Grey Goose 

3. Have you ever known true love and how did you know?

A) Once in my lifetime, I just knew without a doubt

4. Where would you most like to live?

A) Japan, I love the culture

5. Do you believe in God?

A) Faith is the basis on which a balanced life stands on

6. What one thing do you wish you did when you had the chance?

A) To have made the right decision in my earlier years

7. You have a choice between two questions: a) Which person’s blog do you enjoy reading the most, and why? or b) If you could meet any blogger in person, who would it be and why? (

A) This is from cafe32 by the way lol! I enjoy Anita Mac‘s blog a lot. Why? because I envy how she is travelling all over the world and doing all these amazing things I could only dream of.

8. What will get you angry?

A) Dishonesty and being led on by someone but I think those are the same things right?

9. If a stranger knocked on your door and asked for food or shelter, what would you do?

A) Offer food and shelter for the night or day and find them somewhere more permanent

10. Why did you name your blog the name you named it? =P

A) A good and close friend of mine helped me name it, given I was born in the year of the water dragon and well! It went from there lol! 

11. Are you glad or ticked off that I tagged you?

A) Glad I did by two wonderful bloggers, because now I get to ask the awkward questions lol!  

My Questions:

1) What’s the one thing you have yet to tell your readers?

2) If there was anywhere outside of your country you could be, where would it be?

3) Who do you wish you could meet in person out of all the blogs that you follow?

4) What would be your ideal kind of partner?

5) If you had to do one thing in your life you never imagined you would, what would it be?

6) Why did you name your blog the name you named? (Borrowing this from Cafe)

7) Describe yourself in three words (Borrowing this from Aurora)

8) What is the one thing you would never sacrifice no matter what you would get in return?

9) If there was one movie to describe your life’s hope, what would it be?

10) What is your strongest trait?

11) If you could only choose one fruit or one vegetable on a deserted island, what would it be?

Now that I have set these questions, I shall begin the tagging process! muahaha!

1. All About Lemon

2. Evil Nymph Stuff

3. The Tale Of My Heart

4. Mystery Coach

5. Katie’s Camera Blog

6.Jenny’s Serendipity

7. JayJay’s Favorites

8.Lady With Truck

9. The Braxtyn Files

10. Linda Vernon Humor

11. Pete Armetta

As always, the participation is completely up to you but I thought this would be fun for everyone. Networking, You know? have fun!

 

Christmas Greetings And Presents!

Every year, there are only two things I look forward to. First, is spending my birthdays with my little lady and Christmas eve with her as well. She’s 10 right now, but I do know that she’s going to be a teen very soon. So, this year I have been truly blessed! I spent the second Christmas eve with her!  we had a great time! watching my old childhood favorite movies such as “Honey I shrunk the kids” and “Home alone”. She didn’t understand the whole 80′s and 90′s but! isn’t that what passing on memories is all about? sharing thoughts and stories while having a great time?

Alina preparing gravy! a must have

Turkey! we still have more than half leftover oy!

Baked marshmallow on Yam

Smoked salmon wrapped around cucumber

Greetings from me and my little lady!

Oh by the way, this year we don’t have an actual Christmas tree, we placed my aquarium in the spot that the tree normally seats. So, we bought a mini tree and put decorations on it. In the end though? it looked great! because  all the gifts looked piled up good lol! so! I wanted to share it with all of you, hope you all had a great Christmas too!

 

Midweek 80′s!

 

Wonderful weekend with the sweetest daughter

 

This weekend sure was different, i normally would see my little lady on Saturday morning and we’d have our father ‘n daughter date. The original plan was to go catch Happy Feet 2 but she had to take her OFA Level 1 course at Saint John’s which meant i couldn’t pick her up until the afternoon, well that sure was a lot of fun finally getting to the school. Then finding out that i was out in the wonderful downpour with 6 other parents, i can appreciate the school safeguarding the students inside but yeah it wasn’t fun. Anyways, almost an hour later someone came out from the school to let us in. After i picked up my beautiful little cadet we went to do some shopping at her favorite mall! Aberdeen centre mall in Richmond to do some shopping at Daiso, can’t go wrong with $2 dollar stores that sell quality stuff from Japan including snacks! 

After that, we went to our dinner date at Richmond Sushi (Yeah the link says that it is owned by a group called top gun but believe me, it’s just for the sake of the way it sounds in chinese. There are no Tom Cruise appearences i assure you). It was great! Alina and i got a chance to catch up over the week and discuss her interest in whether or not she wanted to work on her first aid skills or improve on her swimming competition readiness. She’s a natural swimmer, but she’s got a heart of gold that wants to help others so it’s a really difficult choice. Am i not such a blessed dad to have such a wonderful daughter? it was just me, her and the sushi which she absolutely loves! what a way to wrap up a stressful day for her since she was stuck in class for over 7 hours right? on Sunday, we just did some Christmas shopping and it’s pretty cute how she went from a 6 month old toddler i had to push around in a stroller to a 10 year old with wonderful gift ideas what can i say? this was the best weekend to ever ask for below, are some pictures of our hanging out and oh yeah i didn’t take a whole lot of pictures because i was too hungry at the restaurant what? i skipped lunch!

 

Go karting weekend with my little lady

This is the first weekend I’ve spent with my little lady after my vacation, we went out to do some indoor kart racing, unfortunately i couldnt’ take my camera and drive at the same time. I guess certain rules apply even to indoors huh? anyways! we had a great time together! she’s learned a bit about drifting and i don’t have a problem with it, as long as it happens indoors lol!

Later on, we went to Londsdale Quay to do a little shopping for hair clips, we originally bought a pink one which is great because they are magnetic, meaning no teeth on the actual clips and holds on good! for $6 bucks that’s pretty good value

 

 

It was a good weekend!

 

 

This weekend wasn’t as exciting as my daughter and i had imagined it would be, we had to do some errands and look for a new digital camera that both she and i could use. I am going on vacation starting this coming Wednesday and won’t be blogging for about two weeks, so i wanted to take as many pictures as i can while i’m out. So, we celebrated that i’m getting out of town finally after awhile with cupcakes! yups! red velvet , mint , chocolate , cream cheese and sprinkles cupcake to be exact! yum!  

 

Versatile blogger award tag!

It was absolutely awesome receiving this award by super sweet Morgan! her blog can be found at (http://evilnymphstuff.wordpress.com), you will find everything from art to make up tips. She’s the true definition of an amazing and artistic friend

Now let’s see, according to sweet nymph’s rules! she says to link 15 of my favorite bloggers on wordpress, So! here the people who i super enjoyed blogs from!

 

1. (http://puddinggirl.wordpress.com) I love your thoughts on your blogs, you’re right! we do share many parenting thoughts and i really enjoy your blogs, they really get me thinking. More importantly, she always shares really great insight after reading my posts

2. (http://aprilrdenton.wordpress.com/) I recommend her blogs to everyone, she’s got the best stories and her blog is like no other. If there’s a definition of creative writing? her name would be in it.

3. (http://siehm.wordpress.com) If you ever need inspirational and heart touching reading, her blog is exactly what you need to read.

4. (http://werejumpin.wordpress.com) We haven’t known each other long, but you always take the time to read my blog and leave some thoughts. Thank you so much!

5. (http://inpursuitofrealfood.wordpress.com) In pursuit of delicious meal ideas and great stories? look no further, here’s a great blog that has both.

6. (http://nenskeifacestheworld.wordpress.com) Adorable little Nenskei, her posts are too cute specially with her view of everything. Why, just typing that out brings a smile on me

7. (http://seriouslyrebecca.wordpress.com) Among the first people i ever followed since the day i came to wordpress, she always seems to find some really good articles to either discuss or debate about. To date? i have yet to figure out how she does it

8. (http://xzalense.wordpress.com) She’s got really fun stories and really great pictures to tell them with, take a look and you’ll see what i mean

9. (http://ellejaysays.wordpress.com/page/2/) This is someone with really cute pictures of her little fella and sometimes funny stories what? they make me laugh!

10. (http://thatgirlwhit.wordpress.com) She’s got a blog filled with interesting quotes and stories that i can’t get enough of, every time i look at her post i just end up thinking a ton lol keep it up!!

11. (http://blueeyesbutterfly.wordpress.com) She commands words like no other when it comes to her poetry and short stories, i’m always in awe at all her posts..

12. (http://foragingfoodbalance.wordpress.com/page/2/) Be warned, upon entering this delicious blog you may be tempted to enter your kitchen and start following recipes and start trying out some ideas on your own! oh and be ready for some incredible colors from everything she shares!

13. (http://rootbeerjunkie.wordpress.com) To this day, this funny and sweet paintball warrior has shown me how to really live life. She really takes it to the limit! wish i could be enjoying such a fun hobby/ sport myself

14. (http://jonelfernando.com) Here’s the first person who ever followed my blog, he has always left me with really great ideas and opinions for all of my posts. Thank you again Jonel for making my day my friend!

15. (http://sheamacleod.wordpress.com) If you are ever looking for great fantasy books with dragons and reviews about the supernatural? take a look at her work, you will very soon see why i nominated one of the best blog writers

Now! 7 things about me huh? mmmm i’ll share with you a few things and the rest? feel free to ask me

1) I am a single dad to a beautiful 10 year old angel

2) I am attracted to humble and real people

3) I dislike dishonesty and fake people

4) I’m addicted to Chendol Icey desserts and anything with sweets in it

5) My daughter and i always have ice cream when we get together on weekends

6) I absolutely love Filipino dishes specially Palabok!

7) I work at Rogers Arena as contract security, trying to make enough to afford paramedics program at the Justice Institute Of BC

 

 

Where do you do your best thinking?

 

 

I have to admit, I do my best thinking and writing when I’m at the gym running away on the treadmill to do my 2 miles. It distracts me from the chance of getting tired and keeps me fit. It’s not even about replacing one pain for another either, just for some reason it works and I love it! now if only I could apply that to running a marathon I’d be in the best shape of my life lol! how about you? where do you do your best thinking? oh and yes you’ve been tagged

 

Tag! you are it!

Twitter had yet another hashtag called 10 things i would relive. So, given that 140 char limit i figured i may as well type it out here! oh and if you are reading this? consider yourself tagged

Going backwards from the most precious 

1) Holding my baby girl for the first time

2) Watching my daughter try to call me dad for the first time

3) Watching my daughter walk for the very first time

4) Watching my daughter refuse to stop trying to run to me before she could walk right (when she was 1 and a bit)

5) Feeling the certainty of someone before i married (The feeling)

6) Camping out with friends in the woods for 4-5 days roughing it (no electronics)

7) Hanging out with friends from 7am to 7am the next day with crazy parties

8) My childhood in Chile, South America (My home country)

9) My chilean teacher’s love for embracing other cultures

10) Falling for my very first love when i was 8

 

A smile from someone goes a long ways

For the first time today, i actually went onto the skytrain with my daughter and noticed that i was actually looked at by a couple of people. It may sound strange but most of the times the women would shun me for looking at them even once, a lot of people like to assume that i am just another one of those deadbeat fathers who cheat on their wives when out with their daughters. I was actually pretty surprised, didn’t know how to react either so i just gave a polite acknowledgement and continued my conversation with my daughter. They smiled and continued about their business with a stare here and there, later on at the amusement park i got a few more looks from people when they were out with family or their bf’s. At first, i thought maybe i had my fly open or there was something on my head. My daughter sensed this and asked me what was wrong and i told her that people were looking at me, she shrugged and then i had a conversation or two with some of the people going for rides. Both times i was also smiled at and then i realized something, it doesn’t matter how bad your day is going. Even if you got a lot on your plate and things aren’t going the way you hoped, a simple hello will go a long ways to relieving someone of something that’s gnawing away at them. It’s quite something!

 

 

Bittersweet day

The day just got wrapped up after i dropped my angel at her place, it was really a bitter sweet day today. The morning started with a bit of a complicated problem between me and Minnie, she and i hadn’t spoken for an entire day and i guess i was bitter about it. This happened at the same time that i had released a blog i had written last night, somehow Amanda had gotten tangled in this disagreement and it ended up as a nasty misunderstanding. Later, i had seen that Amanda was going to go to the amusement park here in Vancouver called Playland. So my angel saw that post (i never hide anything from her) and wanted to go to, i wanted to resolve this problem that i had with Minnie. Which i did, but at that point Amanda wasn’t talking to me anymore so i had to prioritize my angel first, i always always put her first before anything. Abandoning the issue with Amanda felt like my insides were being twisted upside down, i hate leaving situations like this unresolved so we went anyways. We first went on the wildest ride called Atmosfear which is essentially 128feet up and it spins at 70km/h, it was insane! I never seen my lil one so shocked and excited in her life, she was enjoying it more than even me! later we went to the wooden rollercoaster and my sweet angel was so excited on it that she was speechless, all you had was a face akin to :O :O ! her knuckled were white as sheet and then she screamed “THAT WAS AWESOME!” hah! i could barely get her near that ride when she was 8! through the entire time that we were there i was tweeting the rides we went to just to see if Amanda would see them, she never replied and i was rather bitter about that. But, i was too much in the moment with my angel to really feel it. It was roughly half way through the rides when i saw Amanda sitting on a platform keeling over and texting that i then looked at my phone and realized she wasn’t sending the message for me, that i realized i should just let go of the notion of talking to her. My angel just wanted to spend time with me so we continued all the rides, when i saw the message on twitter about Amanda feeling really bad from motion sickness that i looked around worried, My angel sensed that i was concerned so she too looked around. But at that point Amanda was already gone and so my lil one and i continued on to enjoy our great time! my sweet angel is very receptive to how i feel, she always has been. So she entertained me with stories about her friends and her little bit of drama, the rest of the afternoon i think we went to the hellevator once, atmosfear 4 times and the musical rides once and that itself took up 5 hours minus the time that we took to have lunch and laugh about how people panicked going up the hellevator, later in the day my lil one and i headed home and we both could barely keep our legs straight because we were so dizzy! lol! a great day even if started with a really bitter note. I do feel there’s a hint somewhere there as to why certain things started the way it did, but that’s going to be on another blog.

 

 

Meeting people

I had finished helping with a tour of the building, the guide sometimes gets about 30+ people so they need a little crowd control, Alexis the tour guide makes it very fun here at the arena and I get to meet people from all over the world, even as far as Finland! it’s a fun distraction to get my mind off problems and relationship issues. At the same time I get to know some local people too, every once in a while I chat with them long after the tour is over. It sure would be nice, if every day at work were this fun!

 

Picture memories

There’s a lady who’s got a small mini slr camera (If there’s such a thing) outside the building and the area taking pictures all over, she’s not trying too hard to take a picture. Just taking a few shots here and there and moving on. Maybe she’s making a gallery or scrapbook? it kind of makes me wonder if I should do the same. I don’t remember a lot of the things that happened in my life up to this point, so something to look back on would be nice. It sure would be fun to just spend a day off from work just traveling all over by skytrain and bus and do the same that she’s doing