My Mid-Week Loot

I was in the City the whole day yesterday for a project meeting with a client at his posh building at Paseo de Magallanes. I got time to spare after the meeting and so I went to Alabang in search of the stuff that make me happy: pens, toys, books. And so here they are, my mid-week loot. Sinful, I know, especially to my shrinking budget and a headache to my savings allotment, but never mind. I haven't rewarded myself like this in a long while... *Grin.*

First, here are my Tomica toys. The first one is Tomy #68, an Isuzu Snorkel Firetruck scaled at 1/110, and the second is Tomy #51, a Toyota Crown Comfort Taxi scaled at 1/63. Why it's called a Comfort Taxi, I don't know. (Don't ask me. He-he-he.)


Next, I bought my own trio set of Pilot FriXion Ball gel pens. They're amazing! Pilot pens are just amazing! I also bought refills for my .7 G2s.

And then... I finally found the Rotring fountain pen I've been wanting to get. Yee-ha! It's a Rotring Newton 600 with an 18k gold B nib. Whoa. I'm now enjoying the pen as much as I enjoyed using the Core, my first Rotring FP.

My Wednesday in the City is a very productive day. Successful with my meeting, successful in getting the stuff I want--as a reward to my hardwork (and heartaches) the past several months.

Oh, and I also got my B a Nicholas Sparks paperback, A Bend in the Road. Sort of a belated quid pro quo for the Murakami she got me. Right, B?

My Newest

Here's the most recent addition to my growing toy collection, a Choro-Q firetruck. This one's #18 on the Choro-Q list, and it's my second Choro-Q toy, a very memorable gift from someone very special. Well, I'm glad that I now have all the firetrucks from the Cho-Q lineup. I'm hoping to get the police cars next time...

Remember Them?

(More) New Firetrucks

Here are the firetrucks I bought from fellow DCPH member Leo Sajonas. I went on a trip to Caloocan yesterday, and when I arrived at the office last night, a JRS package was waiting for me. Inside are 9 firetrucks I ordered last week. Look on.

More Firetrucks

I'm really crazy about trucks now, especially little, small firetrucks. Here are my most recent "acquisitions", products of my recent weekend trip to the mall.

Here's a most coveted Takara Tomy ChoroQ No. 42. It's such a beauty.

And here's a Cararama Land Rover Fire and Rescue Service. It comes with an acrylic case. So nice.

And here's a MatchBox Ladder Kings. I'm so tempted to open the blister pack!!!

New Trucks

On my way to grocery shopping at Robinson's yesterday, I passed by the toy section and went home with three more trucks and less groceries. Hahaha!!!

Here are my new Tomy toys:

This one is a Furukawa Wheel Loader FL140, scaled at 1/79.

This is a Tadano Rough Terrain Crane Crevo 600, scaled at 1/160.

A hit among my male friends!

And this one here is an Off Road Dum, scaled at 1/119.

And then my Hot Wheels Fire Eater arrived in the mail this morning.

Could somebody keep my wallet for me? :)

My Valentine Loot

I really didn't have the time to write about my Valentine loot, which actually are several items I bought from our recent trip to Makati on V-Day. Yup, our Valentine's Day was spent coordinating a seminar-workshop and a press conference at the Hotel Intercontinental in Makati. Well, for most of us, the Day was just another ordinary day, except that flowers are being sold everywhere we went. The day started early for us, since we still needed to travel to Makati from Los Baños, and all of us in the van were deep asleep because we only had two or three hours of z's the night before due to the GS launch. Hehehe. The seminar started late by almost an hour, and went overtime by two hours!!! The press con was over by four, and we were given two hours to roam the malls before our group dinner at six.

When we went to the mall, I went to Landmark's toy department and got these:

New fire trucks!!! These are Tomica Nos. 41 and 74.

There were other fire trucks in the store, but I wanted to get all the Tomicas first, before I move on to Cararama, Maisto, and Corgi.

After an hour at Landmark, my next stop was the Toy Kingdom at SM Makati. Sadly, the Tomicas there are all cars, no fire trucks. So I declined.

Next stop: National Bookstore. Guess what I got?

This is the Inoxcrom Vivaldi Fountain Pen I've been wanting to buy. And it came free with my name engraved on the plastic barrel. And it's blue.

Our group of 13 finally met at six, and by six-thirty, we were like a bunch of kindergartens walking in the sidestreets of Glorietta looking for a place that can accommodate all of us to dinner. By seven, we were seated at TGI Friday's waiting for our salads and steaks. Whoa. But before that, since Hardrock Café is just across TGIF, Popen and I made a dash inside HRC to buy a pair of Hard Rock Café Makati shooters. Here is mine:

See? Valentine's wasn't so bad after all. We were working, we got free ride to Makati, we shopped, we had free food. Not bad at all. (*wink*)

Along Came Tomy

I was in the middle of writing about my new-found hobby earlier last week when somebody interrupted my flow of thought. Oh, well.

So what’s new? Well, I am now into collecting toy trucks. Whoa. (grin) But yes, aside from my other collections, namely: journals, notebooks, pens, elephant figurines, soda cans, shot glasses, and fast food toys, I am now into toy trucks. It all started when one of my officemates came to work one morning and brought along his remote/radio-controlled toy car. Shucks. I knew I wanted one too, but the idea of a big RC toy car wasn’t very interesting to me. Toy cars aren’t my thing. What I want is a toy fire truck like this, complete with water spout, sirens, lights, ladders, and all the stuff that go with a real fire truck. But I don’t have the heart to shell out that much amount of money over a toy. At least not yet.

But one afternoon, while I was heartbroken over losing a James Patterson book to someone else at my favorite second-hand bookstore, I cheered myself up by going through Robinson's toy section. Hmmm… Among the limited toy selection I was looking at, the small cabinet of TOMY scale models caught my attention. And… surprise! Right in front of me are three TOMY firetrucks! At that time, I didn’t have any second thoughts of buying the toys. I bought the following TOMYs:

• #13, scaled at 1/159, it’s a Morita airport crash tender;
• #22, scaled at 1/120, it’s a Nissan diesel aerial ladder fire truck; and
• #108, which is a Hino aerial ladder fire truck, it is scaled at 1/139.

After my purchase, I realized the value (or importance) of TOMY or Tomica items in the toy industry. I was surprised to learn that TOMY has its own following, comparable to Matchbox, Hot Wheels, or Maisto. And so, me being me, I wasn’t content with the fire trucks yet. I got to have the other trucks (did I say I’m not into cars?)! Here, I got myself two new TOMY toys:

• #71, scaled at 1/110, it’s a wheel loader from the lot of several Hitachi construction machines; and
• #120, the last in the TOMY set, it’s a Komatsu articulated dump truck scaled at 1/144.

Next time I’ll get the Komatsu Motor Grader (#24) and the Off-Road Dump (#102). Or I can also get the Coca-Cola trucks (#s 35 and 105). That is, if I don't get to find the other TOMY fire trucks yet (#s 41, 68, 74, and 119).