Just a two to three-hour drive away from Manila’s busy streets is the province of Batangas which is known for its many beaches and excellent diving spots; and situated in one of Batangas’ popular towns is this Santorini-inspired resort that is famous for its aesthetically pleasing domes and interior.
I can still remember vividly the first time I signed up for Blogger — it was almost the summer of my sophomore year in high school and I was just plain bored, but I ended up not writing anything there at all. Then, sometime in 2009, I found out about Tumblr. Again, I signed up using eyesthatsparkle as my blog name (because When You Look Me In the Eyes by Jonas Brothers was still my favorite song at the time) but eventually changed it to dustypromises on the same year. Here’s a little secret: I always find it hard to think of a cool username for each of my accounts; so when I felt comfortable with dustypromises, I never changed my blog name ever.
It was also back in 2009 when I discovered bloggers like Kryz Uy, Tricia Gosingtian, and Laureen Uy who are now considered pioneers in the blogosphere — I’ve wanted to get my own domain ever since. So I continued blogging and I cannot count the number of times I researched on domains, where to get one, how much would it cost, should I opt for hosting, etc. Maybe hundreds of times or so, but who am I kidding? I was still a student, even saving up for birthday presents for family and friends were a struggle at the time.
But today is a game-changer — to celebrate my 10 years in the blogosphere, I am excited (and very happy) to announce that Dustypromises is now a dot-com! After literally a decade of dreaming of a domain, I finally purchased one for my blog!
P.S. I would like to thank and send virtual hugs and kisses to my ever supportive boyfriend for helping me make this decade-long dream come true — from transferring all my content from Tumblr to WordPress to choosing and customizing my theme to finally getting my very own domain. Thank you and I love you!
P.P.S. I am still working on my logo. So I apologize for my photo being constantly displayed whenever I share my blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Books are one of the known sources of entertainment, learning, and changing of perspectives. With that, some books have also been labeled as controversial by different organizations which resulted in some titles continuously being challenged and banned in libraries and schools in other countries. Continue reading
Since I recently moved here from Tumblr, I decided to launch a new series as an opening entry in WordPress. I’m never really good at introductions, may it be in print or in person, so let me just start with this:
I was at a local secondhand bookshop one Sunday morning with my cousin and while we were browsing through the shelves, I came across this book by Nick Hornby which gave me an amazing idea for my blog: A new series. It’s been a while since I last introduced a new series here, and I haven’t really been consistent either. So, I hope this one works.
My boyfriend and I along with his mom went on this trip in June, and I wasn’t really sure I was going to join them until the last minute and I only thought about visiting bookstores when we were actually there. Thank heavens for the Internet!
“Maybe it’s wrong for us to hold any one person as our whole world. Maybe it’s wrong of us to owe all of our happiness or sadness to one person.”
I finished reading this book early last month and I just finished writing my review about it. Now, where to start? Well, for one, I totally enjoyed reading this book. It’s about a girl who kills people in order to survive and a boy who was trapped in the forest and was captured by a dokkaebi. Ironically, the girl saves his life and both their worlds has never been the same since.
I’m not really that into K-drama, so I can’t say that I’ve been waiting for a book of this kind like everyone else. But I do love mythology of all sorts, so when I heard about this urban fantasy-romance book, I thought, “Why not?” And I ended up loving it more than I thought I would. All I can say is that for a debut novel, this has the makings of an awesome story. It’s a light, fun, fast-paced read that will surely keep you turning its pages. I can’t wait for the next book in the series.
Many thanks to Penguin Random House for providing an ARC of this book. ♡
I don’t think I already mentioned in my previous posts that our trip was originally just until the 25th of June, but sometime during May, we were informed that there were no scheduled flights on that date, so our flight back home was re-scheduled on the 27th instead. So, on our last day, we decided to wake up a little later than usual because we were all too exhausted from the previous days. We didn’t have anything on our itinerary, anyways.
On our third day in Malaysia, the places on our list in the morning are the Thean Hou Temple and the Sri Mahamariamman Temple. As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, I wasn’t really into this before this trip, but having been able to visit and see different kinds of temples, I found myself getting more curious about each of its history.
So the story continues – on our second day in Malaysia, our schedule is to travel from Malacca to Kuala Lumpur where we will be staying until our flight back to the Philippines. Our booking at Faithview Hotel & Suites is also inclusive of breakfast. So, of course, we just had to take advantage of that since we still have a long day ahead of us.
It took 4 hours and a couple minutes to get to Malacca from Singapore. If I remember it correctly, I think it was a little after 1 a.m. when we arrived at the Malacca Terminal. It was one heck of a crazy experience arriving there at that hour — from trying to connect to the internet using our newly bought Malaysian sim to trying to hire a cab or booking from Grab. It took us a couple of hours before we finally found someone to drive us to our hotel only to find out that we couldn’t book for an early checkin because they are already on full-house. Good thing there was a nearby hotel where we stayed for the rest of the night (+ inclusive breakfast. Yay!).
Lenn of Spades ♠ 