My love affair with Issey Miyake

It's love at first sight.

The striking blue bottles of L’Eau Bleue D’Issey Pour Homme that are neatly displayed at the counters of Duty free shops in Suvarnabhumi heaved my attention…until the petite Thai sales lady spritzed the tester on my wrist…and I climaxed!

Issey Miyake’s perfumes are the unusual mélange of mandarin orange, lemongrass, rosemary, ginger absolute, patchouli, sandalwood, and musk mallow. Yeah, they could be mistaken as a concoction of your local thai dish that gives the sniff of a delicious, herbaceous, sharp aquatic fragrance.

L’Eau Bleue’s smell for example is similar to the effect of standing right in front of an oil essential display showroom. What I love most in this perfume is the earthy yet subtle patchouli blend with sandalwood aroma that begins to emerge as the tang of the mandarin smell quickly dissipates!

And then the Intense arrived followed by the limited concrete edition of L’eau D’Issey Pour Homme in the spring of 2009 targeting the executive travelers.

Again I was completely bowled over with their creative innovations by adorning the bottles and the tops in real concrete. The wordings on the bottle are in the same style to that of a graffitis…and the scent! It just can’t stop penetrating your skin deeply…beautifully hour after hour. Its sexy and unabashedly masculine. A real must have!

I'm 250,000 rupees poorer! Thank you very much!

And god is playing joke with me...

After getting bombarded with notices, calls and warnings of my mounting debts from banks, credit cards, Pag Ibig and what not, upgrading my ABN AMRO gold card to titanium is the least thing I am interested of…

And then the platinum from HFDC came. I mean hell yeah! With all the perks and benefits attaches to it and that pseudo feeling of demarcation from the haves and the haves not, the inevitable happens.

Don’t be surprised if one of these days you’ll see me begging on the streets of Chennai and Bangalore.

And i was outed...officially!

We were off for lunch at the company’s Thai canteen yesterday…and instead of queuing for my plate, I put my wallet and cell phone to the table where the Accounts Senior VP always seat. I unknowingly left my stuff there so I can play with my boss’s adorable daughter who was playing then at the TV room while waiting for the long queue to settle.



Bewildered with the presence of the unknown wallet, he gave a shout-out, trying to trace the owner but to no avail! He then proceeded to open the wallet searching for further identification and voila, this is what he found:



Everybody in the office, (at least the expats anyways) knew that I’m “different” and they are pretty ok with that! I am not wearing my sexuality on my sleeve but they kinda feel that my taste, my fashion style, my personality is quite special. And yes, they have an inkling too that the gorgeous boy who comes and visits me quite often in the office…that the gorgeous boy who I have introduced them as my friend is actually my boyfriend.

So when he saw the picture inside my wallet, he right away guessed that its mine without venturing further to check out my Ids and credit cards!

And then he exclaimed: “whoa Joseph, you’ve got a very handsome boyfriend there”…and that’s when everybody laughed and clapped with exultant happiness :)

Ours, but ain't the owners...yet :)

It’s funny how AJ and I ended up buying/building houses of our own and yet WE just couldn’t term it our OWN.

Because when I say OWN, both of us should be together living on it…make love wherever, whichever place we want to, be it in the kitchen, in the sofa, on the stairs etc :) but then that still not the case…at least not yet.

The apartment he recently bought (through the help of a bank loan of course) cost a whooping Rs 3.4 million excluding the interiors. He still needs to shell out a minimum Rs 300,000 for the carpentry work not to mention other accessories like lightings, draping etc. The apartment is impulsively bought, after realizing that renting an apartment in Bangalore just doesn’t make sense at all.


AJ's brand new apartment soon to be ready in two months time

In my case, the house I am currently constructing is a gift to my graying parents. It’s a long, overdue promise that needs to be completed before their golden anniversary on May 2011. In another three months time, the house should be well furnished and must be ready for occupancy.

It’s my elder engineer brother who is in charge of the structure and design while I takes care the interior, mostly copied from the interior magazines of India.


my humble abode

It is quite a huge house with 4 bedrooms upstairs and a master bedroom below with your typical hall and a kitchen. But the main highlight of the house will be the sprawling garden right at the back of our dining hall where it is made open with see-through sliding doors to give you that airy outdoor feeling while nibbling your grub :)…although it still remained to be seen how the landscaper could execute the garden that is brimming on my head :)

I dread the day...

The feeling was indescribable. And that’s exactly what I felt when I had this sumptuous lunch with my bf’s entire family at Tandoor recently. The occasion was actually a post birthday celebration of his adorable and naughty nephew Sid, who had just turned 3 but gifted with an intelligence of a grade 1 pupil!

Laughs…candid talk…and more laughs were being exchanged across the table while we dissected and devoured all the biryanis and tandoori chickens with so much gusto!

But reality hit me hard!

Will there be still the same joyous smiles, the infectious laughter, the unadulterated fondness and care, the perpetual love they have genuinely demonstrated in front of me…of us when later on they would come to know that the cute boy they are sharing table with…that the cute boy who regularly visits and sleeps at their house…that the cute boy who have no qualms of calling them mom and dad is actually their son’s boyfriend!!!

I hope…

For I dread the day, when I will be introduced as their son’s boyfriend and I see nothing in their eyes except contempt, betrayal, disgust and hatred!!!!

Thanks to you Ash!

When my dearest friend Ash commented on my FB: ‘pepe this is screaming for attention’ …which she of course is referring to my blog, I was floored! I mean here is a very intelligent and witty author who, in the name of god is also a follower of this mediocre blog…gosh, isn’t that a huge deal when friends (or virtual friends) started missing you despite the superficiality of your entries???

Thank you Ash. Thank you.

hello there!

Damn, i relaized that I didn't have any entry at all since last month?

Well, its not that I'm suffering from a mental block out or something coz there's barely on my head anyways... :)

It's just that I have lost my razzmatazz to blog and found myself struggling to scribble again...

Anyways, guys my official entry will come soon...

I am missing you so much...

4 beautiful years...and counting

AJ was here last weekend.

My gorgeous bf came all the way from Bangalore to celebrate our 4 years of torrid, steamy, beautiful and oscillating love affair.

It was actually on the 18th this month we turned 4 but knowing how demanding and cruel our executive jobs can get, we decided to celebrate it instead on the weekend that followed.

And this time, when I thought nothing could beat the romantic dinner we had last year at ibar, we completely went overboard, indulge and got insane at Absolute restaurant at the POD boutique hotel.






Dinning at the hotel is truly an experience. With their contemporary cuisines that combine the ‘flavors of Thai and Indian ingredients with a pinch of Japanese aesthetic with a French accent’ you will be surprise to ask the menu card once again and beg for more…

And that’s when I heard this beautiful south Indian actress whispered foy grasssssssss (foie gras) after giving her orders to the equally delectable waiter :)


pork belly topped with tiger prawn all devoured by AJ


and my delicioso roast duck

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I so love the watch my bf gave me on our anniversary. It’s a funky POLICE with yellow strap that could just go with my Friday dressing and casual Saturday in the office.




While this is what I gave to motivate him more in flexing those muscles at the gym.





Thank you baby…

And thank you for the love and happiness you bring into my life.

The Hollywood studio of India

Experiencing Ramoji Fim City in the outskirt of Hyderabad should always be a part of every tourist's intineraries. Named as the hollywood studio of India, it is dream world created for the celluloid on a sprawling 2,000 hactares, with every imaginable set and location, that offers facilities to produce any kind of movies...

This is a 'city' that blends with the man made wonders and nature's pristine beauty...

more photos here