Gratitude

Daybreak over Cebu Strait

Today, be grateful. Be grateful for your favorite music, for movies that make you feel good, for your phone that connects you with people, for your computer, and for the electricity that lights up your life. Be grateful for air travel that flies you everywhere.

Be grateful for the roads and traffic lights that keep the traffic in order. Be grateful to those who built our bridges. Be grateful for your pet, for your child, for your loved ones, for your eyes that enable you to read this.

Be grateful for your imagination. Be grateful that you can think. Be grateful that you can speak. Be grateful that you can laugh and smile. Be grateful that you can breathe. Be grateful that you are alive! Be grateful that you are You!

Be grateful that there are two words that can change your life.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

                                                                                         May the joy be with you,

                                                                                         Rhonda Byrne
                                                                                         The Secret

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According to Cicero, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others.” 

Multiple studies have shown the correlation between gratitude and increased wellbeing not only for the individual but for all people involved. The positive psychology movement has embraced these studies and in an effort to increase overall wellbeing, has begun to make an effort to incorporate exercises to increase gratitude into the movement. 

Read more here.

Skywatch

Watery Wednesday

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Please note:

I very much appreciate my articles and photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for permission first.

Thank you!

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Bread Talk

I love bread! Actually, I love baked goods – bread, rolls, muffins, pastries, cakes and all!

And my love for it since childhood eventually compelled me to take baking lessons – certification programs, mind you – at a skills-development school in Diliman, Quezon City, sanctioned by TESDA. 

The only class I never got to attend was Cake Decorating.  Somehow, my dabbling in computer programming with all that typing made me lose my script-writing skills.  Anyway, I never got to further practice my newly-acquired baking skills, because the equipment and tools I needed were too costly, especially for someone into it for mere pleasure.

Nonetheless, I’m always on a lookout for good bakeries and pastry shops wherever I go.  Unfortunately, here in Panglao Island, there isn’t much of it. But then I met a master baker right here in the island – Baker Mar.  Like two kindred spirits, we'd incessantly talk about baking whenever running into each other.

The last time my cousin from Subic came to town, she stayed at Amorita where Baker Mar works, and she and I got to enjoy some of Baker Mar’s creations at Saffron’s breakfast buffet.  And when my cousin flew back home, she took back with her a couple boxes of Baker Mar’s dinner rolls – for her own gastronomic pleasure, as well as for pasalubong.  They’re that good!

By the way, Baker Mar is the only Pinoy baker I know who is adept with European bread-making; hence, he can easily whip up some bagels and bialys – my favorites when in Manhattan.  You see, Baker Mar was once the head baker at the New York Bagel Coffee Shop in tony Alabang.

Here are some of Baker Mar's creations:

 

Dinner rolls

Coconut

Red Mongo

Ube

Mango

Blueberry

The baked goods featured above are served at Saffron's breakfast buffet. 

Black Forest

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Please note:

I very much appreciate my articles and photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for permission first.

Thank you!

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