These Days

I got this book from Booksale for less than P100.  It's by Jostein Gaarder, the author of Sophie's World.  Over the years, I have read quite a few of Gaarder's books so this one needed to come home with me.  Like most of Gaarder's books, this is also a philosophical mystery but geared towards kids.  It's wonderfully illustrated but quite reminiscent of The Little Prince. This is a very well-written book.  Simple enough for young readers to understand but also has a lot of depth to encourage critical thinking.  I highly recommend it, for children and adults alike.

Last Monday, Richard and I were guests at Neil's school.  It's Parents' Week and the school invited parents into the classroom to tell stories, talk about their work, sports, anything!  Even without having a solid idea about what to do, Richard and I signed up.  And I was really excited! =) We were going back and forth about what to do.  Badminton came up.  We thought of wearing sports attire, bringing the gear and doing a quick demo of the game.  It sounded too complicated.  Then I thought we can use the Veggietales book I bought at the Atlanta airport (bought just to get change for the taxi).  It's entitled 'God Made You Special.' We wanted to bring the real vegetables and then introduce them to the kids (Rich's part) before going into the story (my part).  A few of the veggies were quite easy to find like asparagus, carrot, cucumber, tomato, grape and blueberry.  The gourd was the most challenging and there were 3 of them in the s...

On this trip, we had three changes in lodging - Staybridge Suites, Black Bear Lodge and Crowne Plaza.  In previous trips to Atlanta, I stayed at the InterContinental and another Staybridge so it was my first time on all three properties. We stayed a couple of nights at Staybridge, my favorite brand in the portfolio. The housing highlight of this trip would be Black Bear Lodge.  I was assigned to a very large room with 2 big beds.  There's a jacuzzi which I was able to enjoy just once. This is not in my room but in one of the meeting halls.  That moose head is huge! After a week of living in the country, we were back in Atlanta.  I stayed one night at the Crowne Plaza before taking my flight back to the Philippines. My view. There's no place like home. =)

For the trip to Helen, GA, we chose to fly Korean Air over Delta.  It's my first time on KA and I really liked it because the departure times are not too early, total travel time is shorter, the seats are roomier and service was excellent.  Asian hospitality is still the best.=) On the 2 flights going to the US, the seats beside mine were empty, which made the flight more comfortable.  The only drawbacks are: the TV screens are on the back of the seat in front of you and not pull-outs from your own seat so those next to you can see what you're watching (gross scenes from Prometheus on my screen while food was being served, sorry).  Also, fewer points are awarded.  I had my KA flight credited to my Delta Skymiles account since they are affiliated.  But overall, KA is really great.=) The layover is in Korea, also a first for me.  On the way to the US, we only had 45 minutes of layover so there was no opportunity to linger and look around.  We...

I was in the US on September 8 - 15 to attend our department's all-team meeting.  The venue for the meeting was Helen, Georgia , less than 2 hrs away from the Atlanta office.  We stayed 2 nights at a hotel then took the shuttle with everyone from the office on Monday, Sept. 10. We were billeted at the Black Bear Lodge , surrounded by trees and wildlife.  During one of the meetings, my boss who was presenting suddenly paused and said "there's a bear."  True enough, there was a juvenile black bear outside the meeting hall.  It sat on a rock for a few seconds then walked away.  So cool!  The place is aptly named, after all. Like how these meetings typically go, everyday we have a mix of working sessions (presentations, brainstorming) and fun teambuilding activities.  Everyday is packed but there was a good balance of serious and non-work tasks.  Here's a run-down of the more interesting stuff, mostly non-work. =) On Monday a...

The Year of Less ' challenge for the month of October is to read the Sermon on the Mount everyday.  I am in.  Please read the reasons here and I hope you are also compelled to participate. My sister introduced me to this blog and it has become one of my favorites.  Her family is embarking on a year-long challenge to live on less, something I also want to do.  There are just too many stuff that clutter our lives and letting go of them means we focus on the more important things.

I took a business trip to the Atlanta from September 8-15 to attend the our department's meeting.  Before I blog about the fun details of that trip, here's a round-up of all the movies I saw on the plane.  I believe this is a personal record for a round trip - 9 movies in all! I do not watch a lot of movies on land =) -- the movies passes I received months ago remain unused --  so I took advantage of being sequestered by Korean Air to improve my very poor 2012 movie count.  Here's the list! I was really excited to see this on the list.  I saw the trailer months ago and I got really interested but also resigned myself to the reality that I may not be able to see it.  I'm not even sure if this was shown in Manila.  Charming, like most British movies of this genre. An unlikely Disney story with excellent animation. Another collaboration between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. A classic added into the mix of recent favorites.  Chariots...