last christmas i gave you my heart...

... that has to be THE most overplayed christmas song EVERRRR.

well ladies and gents, the holidays are here and there's some sort of cheer around every corner- singapore is DECKED OUT in christmas decor and there's all sorts of nonsense going on around orchard road- pretty ridic if you ask me i mean who's ever heard of christmas in the asian tropics?! haha not that i'm really complaining, i've spent half my life celebrating the birth of jesus in tropical heat waves... that's besides the point.

Here's the point.

Christmas, most people seem to forget, is about GIVING. This christmas try to remember how fortunate you are to be able to give... then GIVE. And i dont mean spend all your money on christmas gifts for your other fortunate friends (although i'm guilty guilty guilty- i bought all my friends gifts already) BUT there are lots of other alternatives to ipods, trendy clothes, fancy jewelry, designer purses, and other things that will be forgotten by the time 2010 rolls around. BUT if you're going to spend money- make sure more than you and your friend feel the benefits of christmas :) if you wanna buy a friend some shoes check out:

www.tomsshoes.com - you buy a pair and a pair gets donated to a cute lil barefoot kid in a country wayyy worse off than where you live.

if you're gonna buy toys, buy some for other tots too:

www.toysfortots.org

instead of heading to the mall check out:

www.tenthousandvillages.com

and even better yet, check out www.buynothingchristmas.org

there are SO many other options for xmas gifts than the usual go to a store, pay money, wrap the gift, then hand it to your friend...

one year i made soap for all my friends, another year i decorated picture frames and put pix of me and my friends in them, a few years ago i knitted scarves for my friends, i usually bake or make truffles for our family friends (i baked cookies for the entire mtv office this year), i used to make a lot of jewelry for my gfs for christmas... there are SO many alternatives! you can adopt an endangered animal (remember when i adopted the sea turtles earlier this year?!), you can make something amazing- if you're an artist, create art- if you bake, bake!- if you're good with music, make mixtapes!... honestly, i LOVE homemade gifts, in the end they mean so much more to me than the random material things that i'll love for a year or two- the homemade gifts never get looked over, never get tossed out, and only get more love.

for more ideas on alternative gifts like those check out the alternative link on the www.buynothingchristmas.org website :) 

i'm heading home to the beaches of southern california for christmas and new years to catch up with family and friends and cook cook bake cook bake and enjoy the holidays :) i'd love to hear what you're all up to and i would LOVE to hear what gifts youre giving your friends this year! 

be safe, dont drink and drive, celebrate responsibly, look for ways to smile, and give as much, if not more than you get. take the time to TRULY be with friends and family this holiday season- i'll be making smores around the fireplace with the Rogers family and talking about the good old days- reliving christmases past... playing lots of board games and staying up all night talking. This christmas i hope you all find at least half the happiness i have found in the people in my life. We are all reflections of the world and if you smile from the heart you can start a revolution.

love hugs and holiday cheer

Taya

PILIPINOooo

MABUHAY! hahaha okay okay so i have to admit... i saw it everywhere in the philippines, i've always heard my filipino friends say it... and yet i have no idea what it means...? any clue?

SO 2 days after my european whirlwind of London, Paris, and Take That, i flew off from Singapore to Manila to Caticlan then hopped on a ferry to Boracay! Boracay is BEAUTIFUL- it looks just like the southern islands in Thailand (which are near and dear to my heart) 

But the best part about our little trip was getting to meet mtv vjs from all over.... there was me from Mtv Asia, ZhuZhu from Mtv China, Teppei from Mtv Japan, Mandy from Mtv Taiwan,

 Sean from Mtv Korea, Amber from Mtv New Zealand, and Apl.de.Ap repping Mtv US/ Canada

We had SOOOOO much fun together it was ridiculous! The work was small and easy and we

 had a lot of down time to get to know each other- kick it, swap stories, all that good stuff. Now

 i

 dont know about alllll Mtv Vjs, but the ones i've met are DAMN AWESOME haha Some of us

 have only been with mtv for a while and some of us have been with mtv for 10 years but we all love what we do and we all love life... 

After work and every moment in between we were laughing so hard i felt at home... made me miss my friends at home even more. Then to top it all off, there were these ADORABLE little local kids that would come hang out on the beach in front of our hotel 

they dig these patterns into the sand and place candles in them so they turn into these super dope sand lantern things:

For dinner two different nights we headed to the local fish market where you can pick your own seafood to be cooked- we got shrimp, prawns, fish, clams, squid, and check out the size of this lobster!!!

That lobster was the size of a small child. no joke. my dad was soooo jealous! The night before we left i took a lil sunset sail with teppei and two of our lovely mtv people- SO AWESOME.

I didnt get to see much else of Boracay but it was beautiful from what i have seen and the trip was... an eye opener... a good reminder... soul shining heart smiling times.

thats really all we can hope for these days... 

sorry these are short and a little dry, i'll write more when the apartment isnt threatening to kick me out of my own disorder ;p

love. smile. xoxoxo

i see london, i see france

BONJOUR!

so this is weeks late buuuut i had 2 days between London and Paris before heading to Boracay, Philippines for a week and since i've been back i've been catching up on regular MTV work along with other stuffs- trying to clean the house (my apartment is complete shambles right now, some sort of swirl of laundry, travel clothing, christmas presents, and the random accumulation of the past month of my life.... SO to start here's a quick recap of my european adventures....We took the redeye out of singapore and arrived in london at 6am... driving from Heathrow to the heart of the city in the early morning darkness looks like New Jersey.... not the prettiest city BUT London justified herself later... 

ANYWAY we got to the hotel godawfulearly and they wouldnt let us check in because none of the rooms were available yet... nothing was open... not even the hotel restaurant SO we sat in the lobby couches and i finished reading Paolo Coelho's The Fifth Mountain... when the hotel restaurant finally opened we ate a nice long 2 hour breakfast waiting to see if we could check into our rooms at 10- when we couldnt i slapped on some make up in the lobby bathroom and we grabbed our gear and headed out to shoot.
London day 1 was SO LONDON. Gray, dreary, drizzling, FREEZING and sad out.... we hit the Buckingham Palace then walked through the park to Big Ben and the church then the London Eye then took a boat to Tower Bridge- stopping to shoot footage all along the way and stopping every so often to take pictures- a difficult task for most, but silly me, in my hurry out of the hotel i forgot my gloves- i thought i'd lose a few fingers on

 this trip... almost did! I was so so cold i couldnt even type an email on my blackberry to my

 mom and my roomie letting them know i got there safely.Anyway we finished shooting at 2pm and headed back to the hotel to check into our rooms, shower, change, and then we met up with my producer's cousin who lives in London and offered to take us around... soooo at 3 we finally regrouped and headed out for a quick bite of Japanese then charged the streets to shop shop shop in the 2 hours we had left before all the shops closed at 6 (it was a sunday, unfortunately)... we basically only made it to topshop and h&m - i would go back to london just to go to that damn topshop!!!! it was the retail equivalent of the titanic and i woulda lost all my money if it werent for the time crunch.... soooo 2 solid hours of shopping later (i actually didnt end up with too much! everyone in my life should rejoice haha) we finally headed to dinner. 

I wanted to hit a pub, grab some truly London tastes and a beer or two before going back to the hotel buuut when we finally got to the recommended pub, they were closed sooo we wandered the London streets for a bit longer before finally settling on a cute little italian deli. Dinner was good but nothing beat the last few hours of the day, wandering the British streets, seeing what life in London is all about... i LOVE LONDON!So we turned in early for the night, unfortunately but we did have to be up and out early to head to the eurostar station... long story short... we waited around the eurostar station for AGES - literally hours- until Take That showed up and we were able to ask them 2 quick

 questions before everyone was herded onto the train for the 3 hour ride to Paris. We got to

 Paris and after mass confusion and more cold rain, we finally made it to our hotel where we all checked in then went for a stroll to find a spot for dinner... dinner was MMM MMM

 MMMMMMMMM... then we headed to the TAKE THAT launch party- Circus themed (to match the album title no doubt) with a flame thrower out front and people on stilts and a bunch of girls dressed as the people who sell snacks at the circus annnnd a pretty ballerina girl who was totally nonchalant and tatt'd up- i LOVED her. We waited around with the rest of the papparazzi/ camera people for another hour or two before take that showed up, we took a few snaps at them then grabbed a few drinks, heard the first 2 songs then a handful of us peaced out. It was way too pushy up in that little club and a lot of the guests were... obnoxious. Not my kinda crowd.
I spent the rest of the night galavanting around Paris with Alvey (channel V vj at large and all around awesome guy)- 

we were the only 2 still up to be out and about so we walked the dark parisian streets 

then caught a cab to the eiffel tower just in time for midnight when the tower lights up and dazzles... it sparkles and shimmers and i have to admit i felt my breath catch in wonder.... 

the world can be so beautiful thanks to men.... hard to believe sometimes that we're slowly killing the

 planet... Anyway after that little escapade, we headed back to the hotel for another quick night of sleep.
Day 3 we're up and out early again, we've all got scheduled interviews with TAKE THAT at their awesome little boutique hotel a few blocks from ours so we head over to prep and set up... an hour later i'm talking to the guys about the new album, their old stuff, and when Robbie's gonna rejoin the group, laughing about football and all kinds of random stuff til it's time to cut it all, give Alvey his chance to ask a few questions then me and the channel V team (my team LUCKY THEM arranged to stay on for another few days of play) are off to the eiffel tower again for a little photo op before we catch the train back to London and then head to Heathrow to catch our flights back to asia...
So that in a nutshell was my trip to London/ Paris... i'm now in love with london and i've been in love with paris for years now... SUCH a beautiful city... i cant wait to go back and spend more time there... i could totally live in paris for a while... italy too- i LOVE italy... sigh. But here i am back in my messy little apartment in Singapore trying to wrap up work, bake christmas cookies for the office, then pack my bags to fly home for the holidays :) YAY! That's right folks i'm flying back to california for christmas and new years... SOOOOO STOKED to see my family and my friends and to cook in MY kitchen and drive my car and BE by the beach...

which reminds me of my trip to the philippines... but i'll post that separately....

so many adventures, so little time.. LOVE!