Pamparo in Toronto

We will have a chance of celebrating Christmas and greeting the new year a little earlier than our family & friends here in North America. I will be on my way to the Philippines tonight. My wife and my son are there already about a week ahead of me. And I really, really miss them both. Really, no kidding!

While this is not the first time that I am going back there, this is the first time in 11 years that I will be spending Christmas & New Year in Manila. It’s a little bittersweet for me since my father died early this year. We have been planning this trip since middle of last year and are really looking forward to it. It would have been the first time that my father would have seen his first-ever grandson (my sister has 3 daughters)! Alas, the Lord has other plans. I pray that this trip would be a time to ease my grief a lot more.

Anyway, I hope that you will all have a meaningful Christmas and I pray that you will have a prosperous & blessed new year!

We had a family night-out today to see the Disney animation Bolt. It was a good kid’s movie. There are also plenty of parts that kept even adults laughing. It was fun seeing the characters Bolt (dog), Mitten (cat) & Rhino (hamster) embark in a cross-country journey to find Penny. For some reason, there are too many pigeons in the movie. I think it would have been better if some of the pigeons were seagulls. Oh yeah, Rhino is so much fun!!!

Although I would not give it a 5-star rating, it is still worth seeing it in the theaters just because its 3D. We had a blast, and really, that is what made this night/movie really special and memorable. What a blessing!

I just bought Ambrosia’s album “Ambrosia: Anthology” from iTunes tonight. I have to be honest that I didn’t really know how good this band was since I only heard a couple of their “soft-rock” on the radio when I was growing up. Beside the regular hits like “You’re the Only Woman”, “Biggest Part of Me”, “How Much I Feel” and “I Just Can’t Let Go”, this album is filled with great progressive-rock tracks that I am really enjoying.

I am sure that I am going to have this on my regular rotation of subway-listening playlist! How about you, what have you been listening to lately?