the other morning, without sleep and freezing from the unusually cold weather, i went down to the department of foreign affairs, braved the ridiculous crowd for 4 hours and got my passport renewed in preparation for my flight on the 21st of February (yay!). i have never renewed a passport before in my life, so it was a rather torturous morning. normally, from what i remember when we were still in Singapore, my parents would drag me and my brother to a photo studio, push us on chair, tell us to smile and a few weeks later my dad would come home with the new passports for us to laugh at how idiotic we all look - well mostly, how idiotically awkward I look (you should see my old passport, with the 17 year old me, i look like a bloated-overly-tanned fool. the passport prior to that is no better).

so with a slew of passports bearing very unglamorous pictures of me, i explicitly told myself that this time, i will look magazine-cover gorgeous by putting all the knowledge i've acquired over the years of watching Tyra's "America's Next Top Model" (specifically the episode where she taught the girls how to look good in a passport picture) to good use. apparently, i wasn't paying much attention because i ended up looking like some washed up department store saleslady at the kitchen utensils department (they declined my relatively decent studio picture and made me take a new picture, at some ugly photo booth, unprepared); and to make matters even more wonderful, the passport man told me i look like a haggard mess and was shocked that i am actually 22 years old (he had expected me to be a lot older) - well screw you paper-pusher Benilde graduate (he practically screamed "ANIMO" at me when i told him i'm from the land of the green).

i am not amused; but because i am bored and can't get to sleep, here's a picture of my new hair^click
...and no, i am not pouting over the hair, my nipples were just cold - i know, you didn't need to know that.