I Blog. Therefore I am.

Sharing my life one blog post at a time

Category Archives: As I Live It

10 years

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Today, 5 January 2012 marks my 10th year in New Zealand.

There were days when it felt like it was yesterday that I arrived in this country excited to spend my married life with MrG. And then there were days when I felt like I’ve been here too long.

So much has happened in those 10 years. They weren’t all happy memories. Some experiences were awful that I’d rather not to dwell on them. Truth be told, there were more good days than bad.

I followed my heart. I followed my man.

I have no regrets :)

Here’s to the next 50 summers, New Zealand.

Thank you!

Paradise

Philippines will always be my home. I know that in my heart.

But New Zealand (especially the South Island) has captured my heart in more ways than one.

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Lake Dunstan in Cromwell has been witness to many a summer family holiday over the years. This is where Ms14 and her cousins have spent lazy summer days biscuiting.

Can’t imagine living anywhere else now. How lucky am I to be living in a country like New Zealand?

My new ‘normal’ post-Christchurch Earthquake

This is where I spend half of my work week now:

Our new "normal" post-earthquake

I commandeered a small section of our lounge/living room as my ‘work area’ away from our temporary HQ in Harewood.

My messy work station

This is where I worked prior to the 22 Feb earthquake.

So many things have changed since Christchurch was shaken, rattled and rolled last year. After the September 2010 Mag 7.1 earthquake, we couldn’t access our office building in Victoria St for close to two weeks and the months that followed were a series of interruptions at work as our landlord began repairing internal walls in our building.

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CHRISTCHURCH: Should we stay or leave?

So this has been playing on my mind for the last week since having not one but two major earthquakes (a mag 5.7 and 6.3 all within a span of an hour and a half) on 13 June, Monday.

Christchurch earthquake damage in Central City

Christchurch earthquake damage in Central City. Taken on 19 June 2011

You would think that after having 2 rounds of major earthquakes in the past 9 months, Mother Nature would leave Christchurch alone for the next 600 hundred years or so.

To be honest, when the 2 quakes struck Monday last week, I was frightened, yes. But more than that, I was overwhelmingly over the whole tremor thing.

We’ve been extremely lucky that in the last 3 major earthquakes we’ve had since September 2010, our house survived it virtually unscathed (we had very minor damage to our property), our little street free from liquefaction of any kind but the emotional and mental stress borne from these quakes are finally taking their toll.

On me at least.

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Day 6 of #30DaysOfMe – Favourite super hero and why

I know the #30DaysofMe meme is so 2010 but I just need to finish this blog project for my own satisfaction. Quite sad that I only got to Day 5!

So who’s my favourite super hero?

wonder woman

I had a number of super heroes that I admired. Growing up, the one that left a deep impression on me was Wonder Woman.

I like it because it debunks the myth about damsels in distress. You can look feminine without being fragile. You can look hot and sexy while being brainy.

Wonder Woman is my kind of woman.

<3

Our blog is not all about Recipes and Earthquakes

If you have been visiting our blog for the last 6 months or so, you’d notice an avalanche of blog posts about recipes and the Christchurch earthquakes.

Our life is not just about my baking experiments and disaster nor are they about the earthquakes that hit Christchurch HARD. TWICE. In the last 6 months.

Ramblings about the 2 earthquakes and their aftermath are quite obvious given what’s happened recently.

But what about all these recipes? Is our family blog morphing into a baking and cooking blog?

No, it’s not. It’s just that in these challenging times, I have found solace and comfort in my baking. When I’m baking, it’s all about measurements and ensuring my cakes don’t sink in the middle! It’s the only time I DON’T THINK about the earthquakes and its impact on our lives.

I contemplated creating a new blog just to ‘house’ all my baking and cooking experiments but I decided against it. Why? Well, I could hardly give this blog the attention that it deserves, why create another one?

All this sharing of baking and cooking stuff will continue on this blog I reckon. But hopefully, they won’t be the main content and if it does, well, maybe that’s how our family blog is meant to morph into.

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