The Metal Mouth Chronicles

My Brace Experience Diary

Start: August 10, 2013
Day 0: Had my braces at UDC AsiaWorld Dental Clinic. So far, no pain felt other than the sharp wire that was poking my cheeks. Bought Oral-B orthodontic toothbrush and special floss from Watson for 350+ pesos. Too pricey :(

~I will make a review/experience about the clinic perhaps after I got my retainers. I don't want to put my honest thought about them and get blacklisted from their clinic because of it :P

Day 1: Eat like a lola. Lugaw/goto/sopas all day. Can't chew, can't bite. I cant even bite on breads.  So painful T_T

Day 2: Look at all the foods you can't eat! Woody's face on the picture is similar to mine. It was painful to see mama's cooking knowing that you can't eat them. Lomi and goto kept me alive.

Day 3: My colleague is surprised that my braces doesn't get in the way on how I talk. I think that's a good sign. The downside is the pain is getting worse to the point of me seriously considering taking pain meds for the first time in my life. The extra wires on the last bracket of my braces are now slashing my cheeks.

Bohol Countrside Tour - Sandugo Shrine and Baclayon Church

Late post! Really! My blog name should be properly named "Late blog posts 'cause Time doesn't wait for me!"

So yeah, we went to Bohol and availed Kuya Dodong's tour package (click here for my blog entry about Kuya Dodong's Bohol package details). If you're going to Bohol with these places on your itinerary, I suggest that you don't read this entry so you won't be spoiled what you'll find there. But if you're willing, I will eagerly share what we discovered and experienced :)

So here's our Day 1 itinerary of our 3-day Bohol tour. I will write about all of them if I get a chance. The places we went were:

• Sandugo Shrine (Blood Compact Site)
• Baclayon Church
• Xzootic Animal Park
• Flying Colors Butterfly Sanctuary
• Loboc River Cruise and Luncheon
• Tarsier Conservation Area
• Chocolate Hills
• Hanging Bridge

Sandugo Shrine (Blood Compact Site)

Our first stop is Sandugo Shrine which is near the airport in Tagbilaran City. It's a historical site where Datu Sikatuna and Miguel Lopez de Legaspi performed a Filipino tribal ritual as a symbol of friendship badass style: blood compact. There is nothing much exciting in the site though other than its historical significance and the beautiful scenery behind the shrine.

If you're wondering why I don't have photos of the shrine is because I did a mortifying stunt at that time. I was over-excited that I thought I can do anything I want. I was reminded that I am only a visitor and I must respect the people and the place that I visit. For the local people who saw me, I do apologize from the bottom of my heart. I learned my lesson. For the tourists who saw me, please do not imitate what I've shamelessly done.

Baclayon Church
Regarded as the second oldest church in the Philippines (oldest is San Agustin Church in Intramuros so they say), Baclayon Church is a significant part of Bohol. There were a lot of tourists when we got there, most of them are Japanese.

crowded  tourist vehicles. Ours is the blue one. Hehe.

The museum is the church's main attraction. Entrance fee is 25 pesos. Cheap, yes. The only thing is you can't take photos in the museum. But being a hard headed that I am, I still did :P I took a picture of my papa pointing at an antique drumset. The guard saw us and they made us delete the photo so save yourself from embarrassment and don't take photos. Haha.

TEVA Trail Challenge - Why the heck did I signed up??.. kidding :)

July 28, 2013

"Ano ba naman 'tong si Teva, ang hirap! Walang pasabi!"

A guy behind us exclaimed this. I can't blame him. We were trailing an uphill road when he said this and it was only the first hundred meters of the Teva Trail Challenge. So how did I end up there, you ask?

***

Well, my running idol/work colleague won an online raffle that entitled him a free registration for this Teva Trail Challenge. Unfortunately, he is already registered to Milo 42k run and the event is the same day as Teva's. So, he gave this up to another colleague of ours, RJ, whom tagged me to join him in this event. It was so thoughtful of him if it wasn't for the timing, FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE TRAIL RUN!

Apparently, I haven't ran for a very long time. The first, last and longest run that I attended was a 3k fun run of 7Eleven last January. I also don't have proper shoes for a trail run. But, heck yeah! I'm crazy enough to join him! I'm so badass that I purposely didn't do training (not even short runs or stretching) because what for, right? Besides, I decided to join two days before the event. What training can I possibly get with such a short time? I did it just for the experience and the thrill of zero preparedness. Ohhh yeah :)


> The day of the event:

We're at the ROX Bonifacio High Street before 3:00am and the buses are already lined up there to pickup the participants. I want to thank Sir Ian for being very accommodating by the time we got at the pickup place. He is quick to assist us and personally gave us our singlet and other things. My favorite was the Teva shoe USB flash drive. It has only 980MB memory but it was so cute that once he handed it, my day was already complete. I don't know if all the the participants got one. If not, then maybe we got one because we mistakenly took the special "media" bus. Hahhaha.

Teva shoes USB Flash Drive