Andie Summerkiss

As per today, 8/8/8, AndieSummerkiss.com will be moving to Unorbit.com. I would like to apologize for the inconvenience of keep on moving for the past year. But, I have grander intention for AndieSummerkiss.com. 

Unorbit will be updated as regularly as possible, and please drop me a line at the new place so I can update your link. 

Peace! 

The Philippines has passed the law that bans all cigarette company’s ad in public. That commemorates with the global campaign on anti smoking. Cigarette advertisements are banned on television, radio and print in accordance with the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003 or Republic Act No. 9211.

This bold act will help health promoters to discourage young generations from smoking and save them from tobacco-related diseases. The tobacco industry has been criticized in the way they conduct their widespread ad campaign. They portrayed how smoking can provide a fun and enjoyable lifestyle.

According to World Health Organization between 80,000 and 100,000 youngsters pick up the nasty habit everyday. Half of the newbies smokers come from Asia, with teens heavily influenced by cigarettes advertisements.

Cigarette companies are among the top 10 advertisers in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma and the Philippines.

Indonesia, with the age demographic of 0-14 years old reaching up to almost 30% of the total 250 million population (est July 2007) has still not found the need to do so. Even when cigarette-related advertising has been banned from sport events, that is still far than enough. 

I still remember vividly visiting one of the public amusement park in Medan, North Sumatra in February 2008. Fun World Amusement Park is located adjacent to one of the biggest residential complex, Perumahan Citra Garden. All rides were splattered with banners and stickers of one of the major tobacco brands. The whole place was surrounded by flags, banners and billboards of the same company. 

I had to express my disgust, almost exclusively at the operator of the amusement park. To let cigarette company becoming major sponsor of an amusement park that targets on young children as the main customers is unspeakable. The children would recognize the certain tobacco as the brand that is closest to their mind. I believe children posses very strong image memory; they could recall easily all the most favorite cartoon characters and their favorite fastfood chain. There is no reason that they would not remember the brand of cigarette fondly as it is right there under their nose when they were riding on their favorite pony at the round-a-bout. All comes right down to the money issues involved. What else is new. 

One in three cigarettes consumed worldwide is smoked in the Western Pacific region and a quarter of its youth population could die from smoking. 

I am going through really tough dry spell for May and June. Maybe it was because of the moving away or something. I couldn’t think of anything interesting or fun to post here. When I received email from Nablopomo about theme for July, I was really excited. It’s about FOOD. Thirty postings on food. That shouldn’t be too hard, huh? 

But I won’t be blogging from here, I will put them in the new Andie’s Blog at Javaa. I have just moved here and there is so much to learn on Filipino cuisine. I now realized that sleeping and lazying around all day long really got boring after a while. LOL. 

So while looking for inspirations, I will be writing more on food. Hope over to Javaa 

There is some kind of weirdness hitting my feed for the past couple of weeks. The usual subscribers are not getting updates in their feed readers. 

I just activated the Feedburner on this site. Please let me know if my updates are not showing in your readers. Or click on the image to start feeding anew. If you have any idea what’s been happening, please share. 

Stir Fried Green Beans with Garlic

I am an on-and-off vegetarian. Never cared much about vegetables, really, but because of my certain health condition, it is best for me to consume as much vegetables as possible. 

In the city where I live now, however, it is almost impossible to find leafy vegetables. Now that is weird. Here are the vegetables found in the local market:

Green beans, pek-chay (chinese cabbage), carrot, cucumber, kangkoong (water spinach), taro, bitter guard, egg plant and string beans.

Even tomatoes are a bit weird looking. They are very tiny and yellowish instead of reddish colour. 

Lettuce is almost non existence. Also other green leafy vegetables like bok choy. That is very odd since the soil is very fertile due to minerals from volcanic ash. Maybe the weather is harsh on vegetable plants.

More on vegetables native and grown in the Philippines can be found here. 

I have new respect for women who stay home when men go out to earn living. After staying home for more than two weeks, I am still struggling to adjust to the very much different lifestyle as I had before. 

I am adjusting to the fact that I no longer have to wake up early and get ready to work. My phone doesn’t ring every five minutes anymore. I am no longer earning my own living. That is a strange feeling. Not to be apart of any other activity outside home. 

There are a lot of other things to do for me, as managing business and going to work have now taken form of cleaning the house, grocery shopping, doing laundry, cooking, washing. As always, I take a more ‘manager’ role of the house works. Supervising the cleaning lady in doing the house chores. 

That was fun too.  

We went to the movie last night after work. He picked the movie that he knew would cheer me up. What happens in Vegas was playing in the local cinema. We got to the mall late, so after grabbing popcorn, chip and a couple of drinks, we stumbled our way into the Cineplex.

The movie has just started for five minute or less, so it was cool. As usual, I giggled my way through the whole movie. Got to be honest that some of it was not that funny and over the top but it was refreshing for me after being home all week.

The funniest part that made me laughed out so loud was when the movie ended and the lights were turned on. We were the only people who watched the movie. Nobody else was in there!

Maybe, the movie was so not good or not worth it, that we were the only two people in the city who were willing to pay 130 peso to watch it! The pirated dvd costs 70 peso a piece, with 20 chick flicks in it.

Oh well. We are so there next week. For Sex and The City the Movie! And I would not care if I were the only person in the room either.

A long overdue of meme from Paris Beaverbanks

I am a fan of

I started blogging October 2007, and Paris’ My Women Stuff and Paris Beaverbanks are some of the earliest blogs I read before starting my own. So I am truly a fan of hers. And Albie’s. And KL Surfer’s, and Momisodes’,  some of my earliest readers.

Fans that keep me airy

For the other fans, I have three exotic ones which I use interchangebly, depending on the outfit and the occassion. (*chuckles*)

I have to admit that the purple lacy one is too frilly for me. I never use that one ..

My fans

My blog stats is a bit too sad to be discussed, so I am going to leave that subject alone. But I am sure I have some fans. The fan tag now goes to Sandy and Giddy Tigress. Fan away, please ..

After all the drama, I am now finally settling down in Legaspi City, Philippines. We will be here for a couple of months, less than originally expected. It is exciting, eventhough it will get a bit lonely without friends and family.

Checklist for the week :

Unpack

Kind of important to do this.

Learn to drive

It is right-side driving. Err .. I tried driving home, it was just too freakish. But something that I will need to master, immediately.

Learn to love doing dishes

We have a girl who helps us with domestic chores. On weekends, we have to manage the tasks ourselves. Not particularly my most favourite activity.

Kill ants and mice

The house we live in is infested with ants and mice! Help!

Find new friends

This can be a bit hard. So if you are near by here, please buzz me

Learn Tagalog

The language is suprisingly quite similar to Indonesian language. Similar pronunciation, even some words are the same and pronounce the same way and have the same meaning. Most people speak English, so it is really not necessary for me to do this. But it would be fun to find out whether anybody talks nasty about me on my back, don’t you think?

The image says it all, doesn’t it. This past week, I have been in a hazed mood. I am moving to the Philippines next week (for a while, I think) and the panic attack is here. For the first time in weeks I actually started packing. It is hard to decide what to bring and what not to bring. So I lined up everything I think I need and just stare at them for the rest of the week, then decide. 

What do you think? How do you decide what to bring when you are moving away? 

Another lighter note, I logged into my admin site first time since Sunday, I noticed there were two searches on google for “andiesummerkiss” and one “andie macdowell” that arrived this week. Does it mean I am getting famous? On the first count, of course. Too bad for anyone who was looking for Miss Macdowell but ended up here. LOL.

I am also glad that David Cook won the American Idol. I love both Davids, but it would be much better for the young David to win. 

I took an express photography lesson this week. Two month worth of sessions cramped into one week. That kinda explains the better shots I did on the Weekly Winner last week. Now I can safely say that I roughly know which button does what in my camera. LOL. 

So I might not be able to update or drop into anybody’s site for a while, maybe till first week of June. Really sorry for that … I will try to catch up as soon as I can. 

H A P P Y     M O T H E R’S  D A Y

T O     

M O M M Y   B L O G G E R S    !

Sweetisu

Momisodes

Giddy Tigers

Jientje

EastCoastLife

Sarcastic Mom

Marilyn

Jenty

Trish

Karen of SillyMonkeez

Maggie’s Mind

JuneCleaverNirvana

Secret Agent Mama

Tiff