Singles For Christ's outreach day to the victims of typhoon Frank at Jaro..

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Posted on 25th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Hometown |Random |Typhoon Frank

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I have mentioned before that my parents are members of Couples for Christ, Oton Chapter. Well I am a member also of Youth for Christ. I actually joined when I was still in my third year in high school, I was 15 that time. I’m still a member although I’m inactive. My brother-Sev on the other hand is already affiliated with Singles for Christ (I should move on to their organization actually because I’m over the age bracket for YFC.) and they have activities suited for “singles” and young professionals. They’re actually a serious bunch but they also know how to have FUN.

As part of their outreach program, they organized a relief operation to selected residents of Barangay Buntatala last July 13th. This barangay is part of Jaro, Iloilo City. We actually lived here before my parents decided to transfer to Oton 8 years ago. They were greatly affected by typhoon Frank and their houses were all flooded out. Families were staying at the elementary school which has a second floor. When we went there they were still cleaning the school, clearing out the mud and all things that can’t be used anymore.

Here are photos of their outreach day:

This is my Alma Mater. Look at what Frank did!

The Singles for Christ (with Tito Manny, Papang and Mamang):

Photography Tips from Mr. Bob Wong

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Posted on 25th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Arts |Fixations |Photography

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I’m a “budding” photographer and I’ve just started playing with Tim’s camera and editing my photos. Because of this, I browsed blogs here at wordpress that kind of specialize in photography and I found Mr. Bob Wong’s Photography Weblog. It has many beautiful photos of nature, wildlife and their travels which I found very interesting and informative as well that I can’t help but ask him for some tips which he unselfishly gave me. To remember this “lesson” I decided to repost it here in my blog for me to remember everything and also for the benefit of a friend whose also starting to like this hobby. :)

Good to hear from you again MaryJane. At first I thought the easiest way to answer your photo editing needs would be to refer you to some online tutorial. I took a quick look for a suitable candidate and to my dismay found nothing reasonable. Most in my opinion were poor to absolutely wrong. The subject is too involved to discuss here so I will write a post on the subject shortly.

Your choice of GIMP as an editor is good. I have used it before. While I am working on my version of a basic editing tutorial you should read this “Curves” page from the GIMP documentation here. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all. I don’t like the recommendations either but it does tell you about all the capabilities of he “Curves” function. Again don’t worry about understanding it just use it as a reference to guide you as you play with the “Curves” function.

The “Curves” function is the most important tool. Anything that touches your picture performs an Equivalent of a “Curves” function on your picture. You local photo finisher’s printer does a “Curves” when he prints your picture. The monitor that you are reading this post on does a “Curves”. The video card that drives your monitor does a “Curves”. The operating system, Window or whatever running on your computer does a “Curves”. And basic of all your camera does a “Curves”. Each one of these guys is fighting the other and to get it all correct you have to do something called color management which from end to end is usually impossible anyway, so don’t worry about it.

Begin by getting out your GIMP editor and start playing with the “Curves” function and you will get a feel for what it does. The first adjustment to play with is called Gamma. Every device I just mentioned above messes with the Gamma. For you to mess with the Gamma just grab the curve in the middle and move it up and down, that adjustment you just made is a gamma adjustment. The Gamma adjustment will give you some powerful capabilities to sort things out. Play with it on many different pictures.

The next experiment with the curves tool is to introduce an “S” curve, this will give your picture a “Film” look because that is what the old style film actually did. You’re going to grab that “Curves” straight line in two places one near the bottom and one near the top. The bottom one you pull down a bit the top one you pull up a bit. You now will have a sort of Italisized “S” shape in your curves tool. Hence the name “S” curve.

Play around save various versions of the pictures onto disk. Then use a photo viewer (I use Irfanview) to cycle between the pictures so that you get to appreciate the differences in the image that you just created.)

How many have you read?

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Posted on 24th July 2008 by Mary Jane in Books |Fixations

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I found this list at elvisgirl77 and learningagain‘s blog.

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

The premise of this little exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

(Note: I’m a Filipino but I have read some of this books [more than 6] so I joined this little exercise. ;) )

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling- I’ve only read the first one in this series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
7 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So far I’ve read 29 books from this list and planning to read more. Good luck to me.  :)

Protected: Ode to my bebeh…

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Posted on 23rd July 2008 by Mary Jane in Arts |Fixations |Love |My Bebeh

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Why I Love Going To The Spa

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Posted on 22nd July 2008 by Mary Jane in Fixations |Health |Hometown

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Last Saturday Monica and I went to Spa Riviera again to have our monthly body massage and deep cleansing Thai facial. Its our way of rewarding our body for all the hard work in our very stressful jobs. I was kind of hesitant to go to the spa before because I don’t know what happens inside that place or what are its benefits. But after experiencing it, we made it a monthly regimen. Its nice to indulge our bodies once in a while, even for just 3 hours a month. :)

Here are the reasons why I love going to the spa (aside form being treated like a Princess!):

Going to the spa relieves stress, addressing problem areas with the body massage (for me its my lower back with all that sitting) and for that necessary moment of peace and quiet away from the city life. A time to relax and rejuvenate our tired bodies. A good facial also deep cleanses our pores–removing blackheads, acne, whiteheads–and leaves our faces smooth and hydrated.

Spa Riviera offers everything to pamper our body from head to toe at a very comforting and soothing environment. We’re going to try their back scrub and foot scrub next month. The attendants are very courteous and they make sure that we get what we came for. We really get our money’s worth everytime. And we will keep coming back. That’s for sure.