My love affair with Issey Miyake

It's love at first sight.

The striking blue bottles of L’Eau Bleue D’Issey Pour Homme that are neatly displayed at the counters of Duty free shops in Suvarnabhumi heaved my attention…until the petite Thai sales lady spritzed the tester on my wrist…and I climaxed!

Issey Miyake’s perfumes are the unusual mélange of mandarin orange, lemongrass, rosemary, ginger absolute, patchouli, sandalwood, and musk mallow. Yeah, they could be mistaken as a concoction of your local thai dish that gives the sniff of a delicious, herbaceous, sharp aquatic fragrance.

L’Eau Bleue’s smell for example is similar to the effect of standing right in front of an oil essential display showroom. What I love most in this perfume is the earthy yet subtle patchouli blend with sandalwood aroma that begins to emerge as the tang of the mandarin smell quickly dissipates!

And then the Intense arrived followed by the limited concrete edition of L’eau D’Issey Pour Homme in the spring of 2009 targeting the executive travelers.

Again I was completely bowled over with their creative innovations by adorning the bottles and the tops in real concrete. The wordings on the bottle are in the same style to that of a graffitis…and the scent! It just can’t stop penetrating your skin deeply…beautifully hour after hour. Its sexy and unabashedly masculine. A real must have!

I'm 250,000 rupees poorer! Thank you very much!

And god is playing joke with me...

After getting bombarded with notices, calls and warnings of my mounting debts from banks, credit cards, Pag Ibig and what not, upgrading my ABN AMRO gold card to titanium is the least thing I am interested of…

And then the platinum from HFDC came. I mean hell yeah! With all the perks and benefits attaches to it and that pseudo feeling of demarcation from the haves and the haves not, the inevitable happens.

Don’t be surprised if one of these days you’ll see me begging on the streets of Chennai and Bangalore.

And i was outed...officially!

We were off for lunch at the company’s Thai canteen yesterday…and instead of queuing for my plate, I put my wallet and cell phone to the table where the Accounts Senior VP always seat. I unknowingly left my stuff there so I can play with my boss’s adorable daughter who was playing then at the TV room while waiting for the long queue to settle.



Bewildered with the presence of the unknown wallet, he gave a shout-out, trying to trace the owner but to no avail! He then proceeded to open the wallet searching for further identification and voila, this is what he found:



Everybody in the office, (at least the expats anyways) knew that I’m “different” and they are pretty ok with that! I am not wearing my sexuality on my sleeve but they kinda feel that my taste, my fashion style, my personality is quite special. And yes, they have an inkling too that the gorgeous boy who comes and visits me quite often in the office…that the gorgeous boy who I have introduced them as my friend is actually my boyfriend.

So when he saw the picture inside my wallet, he right away guessed that its mine without venturing further to check out my Ids and credit cards!

And then he exclaimed: “whoa Joseph, you’ve got a very handsome boyfriend there”…and that’s when everybody laughed and clapped with exultant happiness :)

Ours, but ain't the owners...yet :)

It’s funny how AJ and I ended up buying/building houses of our own and yet WE just couldn’t term it our OWN.

Because when I say OWN, both of us should be together living on it…make love wherever, whichever place we want to, be it in the kitchen, in the sofa, on the stairs etc :) but then that still not the case…at least not yet.

The apartment he recently bought (through the help of a bank loan of course) cost a whooping Rs 3.4 million excluding the interiors. He still needs to shell out a minimum Rs 300,000 for the carpentry work not to mention other accessories like lightings, draping etc. The apartment is impulsively bought, after realizing that renting an apartment in Bangalore just doesn’t make sense at all.


AJ's brand new apartment soon to be ready in two months time

In my case, the house I am currently constructing is a gift to my graying parents. It’s a long, overdue promise that needs to be completed before their golden anniversary on May 2011. In another three months time, the house should be well furnished and must be ready for occupancy.

It’s my elder engineer brother who is in charge of the structure and design while I takes care the interior, mostly copied from the interior magazines of India.


my humble abode

It is quite a huge house with 4 bedrooms upstairs and a master bedroom below with your typical hall and a kitchen. But the main highlight of the house will be the sprawling garden right at the back of our dining hall where it is made open with see-through sliding doors to give you that airy outdoor feeling while nibbling your grub :)…although it still remained to be seen how the landscaper could execute the garden that is brimming on my head :)

I dread the day...

The feeling was indescribable. And that’s exactly what I felt when I had this sumptuous lunch with my bf’s entire family at Tandoor recently. The occasion was actually a post birthday celebration of his adorable and naughty nephew Sid, who had just turned 3 but gifted with an intelligence of a grade 1 pupil!

Laughs…candid talk…and more laughs were being exchanged across the table while we dissected and devoured all the biryanis and tandoori chickens with so much gusto!

But reality hit me hard!

Will there be still the same joyous smiles, the infectious laughter, the unadulterated fondness and care, the perpetual love they have genuinely demonstrated in front of me…of us when later on they would come to know that the cute boy they are sharing table with…that the cute boy who regularly visits and sleeps at their house…that the cute boy who have no qualms of calling them mom and dad is actually their son’s boyfriend!!!

I hope…

For I dread the day, when I will be introduced as their son’s boyfriend and I see nothing in their eyes except contempt, betrayal, disgust and hatred!!!!

Thanks to you Ash!

When my dearest friend Ash commented on my FB: ‘pepe this is screaming for attention’ …which she of course is referring to my blog, I was floored! I mean here is a very intelligent and witty author who, in the name of god is also a follower of this mediocre blog…gosh, isn’t that a huge deal when friends (or virtual friends) started missing you despite the superficiality of your entries???

Thank you Ash. Thank you.

hello there!

Damn, i relaized that I didn't have any entry at all since last month?

Well, its not that I'm suffering from a mental block out or something coz there's barely on my head anyways... :)

It's just that I have lost my razzmatazz to blog and found myself struggling to scribble again...

Anyways, guys my official entry will come soon...

I am missing you so much...

4 beautiful years...and counting

AJ was here last weekend.

My gorgeous bf came all the way from Bangalore to celebrate our 4 years of torrid, steamy, beautiful and oscillating love affair.

It was actually on the 18th this month we turned 4 but knowing how demanding and cruel our executive jobs can get, we decided to celebrate it instead on the weekend that followed.

And this time, when I thought nothing could beat the romantic dinner we had last year at ibar, we completely went overboard, indulge and got insane at Absolute restaurant at the POD boutique hotel.






Dinning at the hotel is truly an experience. With their contemporary cuisines that combine the ‘flavors of Thai and Indian ingredients with a pinch of Japanese aesthetic with a French accent’ you will be surprise to ask the menu card once again and beg for more…

And that’s when I heard this beautiful south Indian actress whispered foy grasssssssss (foie gras) after giving her orders to the equally delectable waiter :)


pork belly topped with tiger prawn all devoured by AJ


and my delicioso roast duck

**************************************
I so love the watch my bf gave me on our anniversary. It’s a funky POLICE with yellow strap that could just go with my Friday dressing and casual Saturday in the office.




While this is what I gave to motivate him more in flexing those muscles at the gym.





Thank you baby…

And thank you for the love and happiness you bring into my life.

The Hollywood studio of India

Experiencing Ramoji Fim City in the outskirt of Hyderabad should always be a part of every tourist's intineraries. Named as the hollywood studio of India, it is dream world created for the celluloid on a sprawling 2,000 hactares, with every imaginable set and location, that offers facilities to produce any kind of movies...

This is a 'city' that blends with the man made wonders and nature's pristine beauty...

more photos here

Look who is on GQ!

guys, go grab your February issue of GQ now...the very delectable John Abraham is on the cover...what gorgeous pictures without Bipasha Basu clinging on his side :)

The glorious Hyderabad

After arriving fresh and thrilled from my holidays in the Philippines, little did I know that I would be catching my flight to Hyderabad for an extended holiday, AGAIN…and ALONE!!! Thanks to the 3 days red-marked holidays of January – the Pongal, Thiruvallur Day (I absolutely have no idea what’s this) and the Uzhavar Thirunal ( a festival to honor the Indian farmers).

And yes, you heard it right, ALONE!!!

The worst part of having a bf employed to these huge advertising houses is their fucked-up erratic schedules! They have the pitch, the presentation, the photo shoot, the multitude of editing and photoshopping, all clubbed in a one- fucked-up week!!! And voila! You will end up alone nursing your frustrations…I wonder though, did my bf recognize my fantabulous zara shirt I recently bought??? And when was my last multiple orgasms by the way???

Anyways, he begged not join me and instead dug his head on his Allen Solly campaign and spent precious amount of time coaxing his client to concur with his idea…

So there.

Hyderabad has its own charm and is as unique as Chennai or Bangalore. It’s predominantly a Muslim-occupied city with lots of gorgeous looking people… (yeah I have a thing to these young- toned-stubble-looking muslims down from the construction worker to the bar tenders). The city is not so chaotic with a third world infrastructure just like any other cities in India but the crowd is not so pretencious.

The allure that permeates the atmosphere is maybe because of that feel of royalty when the state was ruled by Mughals. Some of the astounding monument of those kingdom like the Golconda fort is still intact and offers a great pleasure for the us the tourist to see…

more photos here

Talibanazing India!

This post by whippy is a classic winner to describe the shameful ruckus done by the "moral police" of Mangalore to thwart their so called "pub culture" in the city...these roaches deserve to be annhilated!!!

This post would have gotten beaten up if it had ever gone to a pub

So almost every politican and their hooch drinking uncle seems to have come out against "pub culture". Yesterday, our most exalted Health Minister said that he is coming up with a policy which will put an end to "pub culture". Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is all part of the government's plan to protect us from the terrorists. If we adopt the same laws as the taliban, maybe they wouldn't train people to come and kill us and all?

But why does everybody seem to change their mind suddenly? Not because pubs haven't existed in our country. They have been here for decades. The real wink,wink nudge, nudge reason why such a large number of people in power have been feigning this outrage is because they seem to have just discovered that young, "impressionable" woman are now regular visitors to these places which dare to serve decadent western values along with each portion of chicken wings. Our esteemed leaders were under the impression that only lose woman who failed their medical examination and had no choice but to marry a man with a regular source of income, who could only be found drowning his sorrows in a city pub, were the ones who frequented pubs, and not those young teenage women who are of marriageable age and who nowadays, because of "pub culture" know more about different types of Tequila than about different ways to cook eggplant.

Suddenly these people seem to have discovered that it's the twenty first century and that women refused to be treated as free vending machines who alternate between turning out food and popping out children.

Many of these "leaders" might not agree with the methods of the goatfuckers who attacked those women at the bar in Mangalore, but they all agree with the sentiments. Of course, now the horrendous act will be justified using crazy right wing nut job logic according to which the woman were asking for it because of dressing "to provoke" and stepping outside their house without the company of a minimum of three male relatives.

These people think that by just putting a girl and a boy in a room together means that they would end up having sex. Just because most of these people were born centuries before us (some of them literally. I mean how old do you think Arjun Singh is? Multiply it by a hundred. That's his approximate age.) does not mean they know better.

We "youngsters" (they say it like we're smug little assholes) can decide which jackass politician to vote for, we can decide which brokerage firm loses our money in the stock market, we can decide which pious neighborhood we would like to desecrate with our unholy presence. In fact we can even decide how many children NOT to have (unless of course we're living in a joint family. Then it's the decision of the joint family council. Just like they show in Survivor.) So, I think we can pretty much decide how much alcohol we require so that foreplay is minimized. I mean we're Indian. The sooner we "close the deal" the sooner we can go back to praying to God for forgiving us for having sex without the intent of having children.

Legislating your own sixth century morals is against the freedom that our constitution pretends to give us. What pisses me of is when I hear people our age talk the same drivel these old farts do. They also buy into this myth of "culture". Yes. Sure. Because it's served us so well over the past few centuries. *coughsecondlargestpopulationintheworldcough*

In our country, people can get away with murder, with creating mob hysteria, with forcing little kids to work below minimum wage, but the heavens will fall and the gates of hell will devour us all if two, law abiding, tax paying citizens just want to have a cocktail together.

Makes you want to hit the bottle, dunnit?

you take care neng...its bloody cold in there!!!

My sister is leaving to Alberta Canada today for a greener pasture...sigh!



We will be missing you neng...and remember we always love you!!!

That idiot PAL and some other stories...

...and after my 3-day holidays in Singapore, i need to be back home ASAP to catch up with my another cousins wedding in the barrio. The journey has been good from Changi to Suvarnabhumi to Ninoy Aquino except the excruciating domestic flight to my City via the undependable PAL (Philippine Airlines). My bro has wittily documented my colorful holidays in the Philippines btw in his blog and im copying it here in toto for you guys to enjoy :)

my bro while doing the shopping at Glorietta

Prometheus in Narcissus

“Another bullsh*t!”

My brother spouted fortissimo, while dragging his deep-red luggage towards the queue for our terminal fee. The flight to Manila has been delayed from 10: 15 am to probably 12:00 pm, we were informed. The airline, thanks to its prize-winning idiocy decided to change to a bigger plane the last minute because, in their words, the passengers turned out to be more than what they expected. The Christmas before, with the same airline, his trip from Manila to home was cancelled and he had to endure the long and torturous trip by land so as not to miss our cousin’s wedding. He came home bruised and harassed. The cancelled trip caused a series of unfortunate events which resulted in a rift between my sister and my aunt. How it happened, the details of which I will not discuss as it is a worthy plot for a soap opera, complete with confrontational scenes, raising of thin eyebrows, high-decibel voices, name calling, and intense lachrymal outbursts… in the midst of a wedding celebration.

The sudden rupture of self expression has its moorings from the perennial bad experience with the airline. He’s been complaining for the PAL domestic services but he has no choice as it is the only airline operating in our place. Being well travelled, thus used to first rate services, my bro is aware of the services that are due him. Give him a service less than what he deserves and he would launch into tirade at unsuspecting victims. On the other hand, treat him like a king and he would rave about it in your presence. One time we dined at restaurant with a first rate service. He complimented it with a glowing review of the food. At every bit of the morsel he would utter aloud “oh, this soooo gooood!” two to three times. I had to remind him that he only ordered clams.

mouth-watering cuisines at Banana Leaf in Trinoma

His reference to the gross human dung was so palpable that everyone in the airport could smell the stink. Like a bomb joke, I was concerned that he would be arrested or blacklisted as a potential threat, or the least declared persona non grata. From my view, an airport personnel kept looking at him while talking to his walkie. I was afraid that he has alerted the security giving information of his identity: "Roger... Roger...subject identified… over…short, dark complexion, in tight shirt, skinny folded shorts, and leather slippers; hair stylishly messed-up to conceal a receding hairline”.

Before we left home noting the overcast sky, he dreaded for delay or worse, yet another cancelled flight. He is leaving for Chennai the next day and his schedule is as tight at his lacoste shirt. As a corporate animal every second counts and a millisecond difference could wreak havoc. With the delay, he had to run to OWWA before 4 pm and spend the remaining hours for shopping for pasalubongs.

It is the pasalubong that excites us. Like Prometheus who brought fire from the gods and gave it to the mortals, my bro is often obligated to bring home stuff for us whenever he goes home: leather products and spices from India, teas from Vietnam or Sri Lanka and chocolates and branded clothes from Duty Free. His home-coming is always an Event. From my parents to our youngest nephew, we would gather in our sala all in suspended animation as he opens his large suitcase. There is always something for everyone. The same way when he goes back, he would shop for pasalubongs for his friends and colleagues. Their favorites include Goldilocks sweets, Cloud 9 and Choc Nuts chocolates, statements shirts from Green Hills, Bench underwear, Island Souvenirs and Ilocos cigars.

at the Greenbelt where i aquired my first Zara wardrobe :)

In exchange for the airfare I would be his slave. Before leaving abroad, I am always the official alalay of my brother as he scours Manila for his pasalubong and personal needs. I wouldn’t mind because it has its perks: I get to swipe his gold credit card for branded clothes and skin and hair products, dine in fine restaurant, swill loads of star bucks fraps. Except the part where I get to be his photographer.

It’s the picture-taking part that I dread. Unless you’re both tourists, two grown man taking pictures with each other is unsightly. He would take snapshots of anything that catches his fancy. I would take snapshots of him everywhere. In these times of facebooks and blogs, he documents everything in pictures. Judging from his files, I think my brother is the world’s most photographed man…. by himself. In fact he has mastered his best angle which involves slight body contortion, as if constipated, with his patented semi-smile look.

My bro is leaving the country again. From the NAIA waiting area I wave at him goodbye. He drags his large red suitcase, this time filled with pasalubong for his friends and colleagues.

Our Prometheus will be back in three months time.

Phew!!!!

Whoa!!! How on earth did I manage to find time and update my blog?
Thanks to global recession.

After the firm has decided to downsize our traveling allowances and wait till my Kingfisher miles expires on its natural death, we the managers have to brave the arduous and long torturous journey via TRAIN whenever there are technical seminars, field day tours and presentations conducted across India.

So here I am sitting on berth 31, II class A/C at the Prasanthi Express after completing the 3-day International Trade Show in Bhubaneswar...

In the meantime please bear with me while I am trying to recall all those momentous events, trips and sexcapades (or the lack of it, hahaha) I had in the previous months...

Here we go...

• if I have been bragging about my prowess in sports from my previous entries, well hell yeah! My team had sweeped all the trophies from all the sports events during my company's annual sports day on December...Kudos to me, the captain!!! and thanks to my lucky charm too, my bf who came all the way from bangalore just to witness me playing the volleyball and table tennis :)
• Spent my Christmas holidays in the very clinical Singapore courtesy of my cousisns. The city is so obsessed with cleanliness...that everytime i move, i make it a point not to smudge their malls and elavators with dust accumulated from my havaianas...

to be continued...

hello everyone

alright, one of my new year's resolution is to update my blog often...i promise!
after reaching chennai on thursday, i will totally revamp my blog and start posting...:)

missing you guys...i hope you have a fabulous new year...

The love of my life

My parents circa their raging-hormone days...:)


Aint it obvious why i am so stylish ;) ...smudged with a tomatoe nose!!!!


My very resilient mother who was able to raise 7 beautiful kids despite the absence of aplenty!!!!

is this blasphemous???

I'm sure my mom won't let me come inside our house if she sees me wearing this...:)

missing you guys...

to all my blogger friends, i will get back to you soon! i'm just bogged down with loads of crap in the office...in the meantime, you can buzz me in my FB anytime....

i am missing you all so much...

what!?! me, gay!!! :)

Klein Sexual Orientation Grid

I scored an average of 4.71

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Heterosexual

Bisexual

Homosexual

Meaning

This result can also be related to the Kinsey Scale:

0 = exclusively heterosexual
1 = predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual
2 = predominantly heterosexual, but morethan incidentally homosexual
3 = equally heterosexual and homosexual
4 = predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentallyheterosexual
5 = predominantly homosexual, incidentally heterosexual
6 = exclusively homosexual

Summary

The idea of this excercise is to understand exactly how dynamic a person's sexual orientation can be, as well as how fluid it can be over a person's lifespan. While a person's number of actual homo/heterosexual encounters may be easy to categorize, their actual orientation may be completely different. Simple labels like "homosexual", "heterosexual", and "bisexual" need not be the only three options available to us.

Take the quiz