“More than three decades ago, a healthy baby girl was born in a small town called Marikina. As a daughter of a carpenter and an uppermaker, she lived a simple, yet happy and sheltered life. Even in her childhood, she already shown love for learning and genuine interest in people. The girl grew up as a nice fun-loving lady who never experienced a salt of thinness in her bod.”

Okay, enough with the story. You probably figured out anyway that it was me I’m referring to in the story and pardon me for praising myself and saying nice things about me because I deserve it I think. After all, it’s my birthday!!!

Wow! My blog is celebrating a year-old in the blogosphere and I am celebrating my first birthday as a full-pledged blogger. It was a wonderful year and there’s so much to thank about. And to you — yes you — my dear blog reader, I thank you for making my blogging life a success and for sharing with me my thoughts and life over the web.

Having a sweet tooth, among my favorite desserts are cream puffs. I love these luscious treats. My favorite are bite-sized cream puffs that melts in the mouth.

The other night, I attended a wake at the Arlington where the family served delicious cream puffs. Having tasted and liked it, I asked our friend where it was bought. We learned it was from Conti’s of Greenhills. From then on, I kept on pestering my husband to go to the said resto.

Of course, I won! My husband and I wandered along Greenhills to find Conti’s and there, at the Connecticut St., we found the popular pastry shop. I got so excited I immediately entered the restaurant and ordered a box of cream puffs (@ P175.00 for a box of 30s) plus their famous mango bravo cake (@ P105.00 per slice which slice is already good for two persons). Oh my, I wanted to ravage the cream puffs right there and then.

Of course, the trip to Conti’s was truly worth it. the cake was delicious and the cream puffs tasted heaven. I am now a certified Conti’s addict. I am planning to go back and back and back to this resto to taste all their specialty.

These past weeks, I developed a new fondness for watching home TV shopping shows. It started when my husband and I went channel surfing and got stuck to this show where they feature a set of miracle knives that cuts miraculously anything with perfect precision.

We had to contain ourselves to not dial the TV shopping numbers and order a set. Since then, I became a fanatic to this show and whenever I’m home and resting, I watch the featured products with great interest.

Here are messages from readers through the contact form:

From Monica Joy:

may i know the contact number of the Immaculate Conception Church in concepcion marikina for the schedule masses for I want to list my daughter for baptism. Thank you very much.

Monica, the telephone number of Concepcion church is 941-7876.

…
From Martin:

Hello, I’m interested in getting a copy of a baptismal certificate would like to know what I would need to do to get one. thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Hi Martin! You can get a copy of your baptismal certificate at the church where you had your baptismal. You have to know the date and year of your baptismal.

Thank you for your questions. If you have one or if you wanted to offer suggestions to other readers, please send the author a message through the contact form, or by sending an email at marikenya@yahoo.com, or by leaving a comment below articles.

This morning, I watched the financial and inspirational guru Francis Kong provide wise tips on money management to survive this year’s global financial crises.

I watched intently his segment because I adore Francis Kong and I know, I need help in terms of financial management. What he said was very interesting and practicable. The host asked him if saving money would help a person improve his finances. He answered it would not because saving merely doubles one’s money since bank only provides very little interest on savings. More so, if you keep your money in the house, it would not earn anything at all but dust. He said investing on little businesses would do and after a while, it is assumed that you would acquire entrepreneurial skills and could develop your business into something big.

This is the long overdue story on Rehiyon Rehiyon Festival 2008 held last December. Photos courtesy of Randy Azul.

I History and Description I

The Rehiyon-Rehiyon Festival started in the year 2000. This festival celebrates culture and traditions of people from the different regions in the Philippines which represent the bulk of Marikenians today. These are the transients from various parts of the country who chose Marikinas their second home and permanent residence. Thus, the festival’s theme –

“Iba’t ibang rehiyon, iba’t-ibang ugali, pinag-iisa sa lungsod ng Marikina.”

I The Rehiyon Rehiyon Festival 2008 I

The annual festival coincides with the cityhood anniversary of the city and for 2008, the festival was celebrated for the first time on a Monday, December 8. It was joined by the different barangays in the city where the eight representing regions for the competition came from. Performances of every barangay depended on the popular festival in the region they were assigned.

I was very intrigued by the number and kinds of feedbacks my posts on Supermarket Tripping created. Looks like many of this site’s readers are mommies and women who always scout for good supermarkets to shop from.

In that case, we are on the same boat. I am a wise shopper when it comes to buying our groceries and I always go around this city and neighboring towns just to see which store provides better prices, products and services.

Join me in reviewing these featured supermarkets so we can see which ones worth visiting. First stop: Puregold. This popular px shop just opened this December and is along J.P. Rizal St. in San Mateo, Rizal. I used to look at it during construction when going to Budgetlane, one of my favorite groceries. I used to marvel at how big Puregold would be and all those time, I was thinking it would be just like its popular branch in Pampanga. More like Shopwise where you’d find everything you need inside the store.

One of the readers of this blog, an interior designer by profession, recently left a feedback on how he liked this blog thereby offering me a complimentary design assistance. I was so excited about it of course. I love beautiful houses and I would love to have my house designed by a professional interior designer.

When I got home that night, I looked around our living room to check if indeed the idea might work for our house. In the end, I dismally decided that my house and my budget are both not yet ready for any drastic and major interior design renovation. There’s so much to be done all over the house and that’s something I can’t afford right now.

A friend of mine who also provides web hosting services for Marikenya.com and my other blogs just warned me about hackers who took over some of his blogs just yesterday. He was furious and I understand him with all my heart. I was panicky myself. I can’t imagine my blog being hacked especially this site Marikenya.com which is my primary blog and my passion.

This event made me realize the need for backing up my files as well as doing some measures that would somehow protect my site from being hacked.

This early, I would like to apologize to all of you who would like to subscribe to this site using the new user registration provided by Wordpress. If you wanted to subscribe to Marikenya’s feeds, please use the feedburner delivery service that may be found at the end of every post, there’s also another one at the top of the rightmost part of every page.

Wordpress is disappointing. I have been using it for more than a year now and I really liked it except that it has created a new version with an unforgivable flaw — a vulnerability that is a dream for hackers!