here's the recap on my end-of-2003 holidays (aka Xmas)

12.25// Christmas morning... we were waiting for chris & ed to arrive so we could go to West hill for Xmas lunch and when they did we did the usual gift exchanging. now, i understand the whole 'it is better to give than to receive' morality but sometimes giving/receiving gifts to/from my sisters seems pointless since we either a) give an amount of $ that we end up receiving also; b) give a list that we're surely going to receive at least something from it; c) or in my case, not have time to go buy specific items so i ended up buying gift cards majority-wise; and d) we're all adults and xmas gift-giving is really for kids; and perhaps e) i'm thinking i'm old too soon and not in the holiday spirit. The biggest gift was a baby picture frame for my parents as a surprise indicating that chris is 4 mo's pregnant! call me tito edgar in May i guess haha... the happy news was THE topic in west hill - particularly since many of our cousins there brought their children and so it was a great time for everyone

for dinner we went to chris & ed's new home and yeah, their bronte rd. townhouse is far from my uncle's place (let alone ours)... i got to play ed's arcade racing game in their basement and that's a tough game to play - but he's definitely a pro at it w/o a doubt

12.26// Boxing Day morning... martin & restie came by around 9am and we picked up thomas to head to the Heartland Town Centre - similar to the Eglinton Town Centre but much bigger and better - hoping to spend some xmas ca$h on BD deals... i thought i was going to buy a couple of Harry Rosen suits but it didn't seem right to buy them on impulse nor do i really know how to buy them. "next time," i said since the 'sale' looked to be year-round at the outlet store anyway... future shop and best buy were pure madness as all these ppl were looking to buy shit b/c everyone else was buying shit! we didn't buy anything all day - except for some chinese fast food lunch... how sad - maybe we should have just gone to STC instead? make it next year...

for dinner my family met up at my other uncle's, in oakville, and had a good family function there

12.27// My dad and i went to oakville for some afternoon poker - make that Texas Hold'Em Poker - to play with ed and his buddies for $50 entry... there were 8 of us so winner gets $250 and runner-up gets $100 while 3rd place gets back his $50... the tourney ended up taking about 4 hours and with no limit betting, those on his last set of chips had to go "all-in!" as we enjoyed hearing & saying thru-out... ed's brother ended up winning the pot - but fortunately i ended up breaking even by finishing 3rd! it was definitely fun gambling and enjoying the food&drink that's for sure - so it was worth it - next time tho, i'll play smarter to hopefully end up winning heh

on friday night my buddies and i saw LOTR: ROTK - man that's a long movie. i think the longest i've seen in a theatre ever and it sure felt it - i really think the last ~30 mins were unncessary and just dragged on trying to give closure to the whole story... and what's with the giant eagles and spiders? seriously.

then on sat. night i went to a wedding reception for one of my dad's childhood friends' daughter's wedding. (that's right). my dad still can't drive so i pretty much had no choice - but hey, free food right? it was a generally all-filipino reception minus the filipino food surprisingly! it was at this restaurant/banquet hall called "Gramma's Place" over on dundas west in mississauga - the inside was much better than the outside considering it's part of a small retail plaza... thankfully they had an open bar - unfortunately i was driving so i limited myself to 2 smirnoff ice and whatever champagne (spumante) they had for the toast... i learned that most of the guests were pretty much w/ the groom - the bride only knew her sister, my dad, and some other guest - rest of her family is back home and apparently her grandparents don't approve of the marriage b/c her father (my dad's friend) had died in the summer and aren't giving some time to grieve presumably... apparently filipinos are supposed to be talented and really like to sing in front of audiences as many ppl sang karaoke during dinner and what-not... the MC was a 20-yo girl who was quite loud and became annoying as she didn't know what to say at times (not to mention her shrieks and 'rrrr's whenever the newlyweds kissed - how about nothing at all? - let the DJ play some music for a change!
after the usual speeches, bachelor/ette throwings, first dance, and pin-the-money-on-the-couple dancing, it was almost 10:30 and that's when it officially ended and dancing began... of note, before the MC had made the 'ending announcment' she was handing out pins for that and she saw me sitting down (probably not looking all that excited/happy) and sat next to me, intro'd herself and asked how she was doing as an MC and if i was having a good time - now she obviously was as she was definitely buzzed thanks to some smirnoffs... now i'm not a great dancer esp. w/ total strangers but when an attractive woman urges you to dance you feel stupid not to. i think it was the MC's older sister and i then found myself dancing w/ this other filipina who had just come here from the 'pines and was clearly out of it but enjoying herself. bad thing is when these girls are obviously drunk and can't remember what you just said to them... b/c of them i did a tequila shot clearly telling them i'm not drinking b/c i have to drive home - hey, we all have weaknesses i guess... i had some cake and more water and we left by 11p - thankfully no RIDE or whatever on the way home

thanks to "project mosaic" at work, i went in to work for some overtime early in the morning... the PMs had set monday to be a deadline for all bug fixes and implementations to be ready then - so i had to finish my tasks before my coworker was going to deploy the apps onto the 3 server environments they will use... i left home before 7:40 and got in the office by 8am - sweeet drive in @ a nearly steady 120... a few other coworkers came in later in the morning and my coworker doing the deployments and another - we went for some fast chinese food - and i finally got to ride in her G35 - a sweet car that's for sure and that bose stereo sounded really nice... too bad it wasn't the coupe

went to Unisen's xmas party tonight - it was held a few mins away from the office @ the Toronto Congress Centre - buffet and cocktails and no charge to the employees! It was a great evening and I came away impressed with the event, the enthusiasm of everyone, and that it was a really nice party on the company. After the coat check we headed into the main banquet hall to discover it was "Chicago" (the movie) theme night - with evidence from the beautiful scantily-clad women handing out (chocolate) cigars and the huge sign by the 'sign-in' gate, of course. Raffle tix were handed out along with 2 drink tix which myself and fellow team members gladly used at the bar. Formal business attire was the dresscode so i wore my interview 'suit' minus the tie. The types of food available were diverse and smartly located throughout the hall - i had the roast beef, the risotto, pasta, sushi, ice cream & crepe for dessert. In another section of the divided hall was a mock casino with blackjack, roulette and poker tables. i grabbed some food and afterwards settled in the texas hold 'em poker table where the pot was always BIG - luckily 2 team members were playing and when they left they gave me their chips - i eventually 'cashed' in whatever i had left for more raffle tix. i received ~25 tix from the dealer's roll and so it was a fairly good range of consecutive #s - good b/c a few mins later, i would win 2 prizes from that set of tix! actually, i only went up to receive the first prize as i let my coworker claim the 2nd one (someone else had gone up a 2nd time to claim, but ppl boo-ed and they drew another #). there were 20 prizes starting from Unisen branded clothing all the way to the last 3 prizes - the good shit - raptors tix were third last, a digital camera was the penultimate, and finally a 10GB Apple iPod. DAMN. i almost won the iPod too with another ticket i had being off by 1 on the last digit... all in all, it was fun and well worth going to!

the hiatus is over - until the next one!

let's see now... earlier this week i received a contract for a room @ UW Place after someone cancelled. so on wed. i used Priority Courier for next-day-by-noon delivery expecting (the signed contract w/ deposit) to be received by UW's housing admin before the fri. 4:30pm deadline. i checked all day y'day and today it says it's back in some mississauga location - WTF, WTF?!

about that Raptors trade - great stuff - i liked getting Donyell as i think he's very underrated and his 1st 3 games so far just prove how good he is given the opp. poor T-mac tho - that's #18 in a row and counting - i read earlier that he wouldn't mind coming back to play w/ his second cousin here in TO and w/ jalen's fat contract, a trade is possible... hey, it's a dream all right

watched Last Samurai last night and it was a good movie; it would've been better if it didn't have the usual hollywood ending to it and there was a lot of blue screen and CG f/x in the movie which IMO degraded the film's quality... also saw Timeline and Matrix Revolutions (finally) tonight - the former was another terrible medieval film on par w/ the Musketeer; the latter was all right until the ending

last Sat. i went to a "Pinoy Christmas Party" for coworkers and it was held at a coworker's new duplex home way over in mississauga - the filipino food was great and it was interesting seeing my coworkers being more relaxed & not being "at work" - overall it was a decent gathering consisting of food&drink, laughs, karaoke (not me!), and talking - just wish i had brought a smaller bottle of Kahlua or just wine instead