BATCH CHRISTMAS, I GAVE YOU MY HEART...

It was a bittersweet holiday season at Sydney, as the Consulate had to tearfully say goodbye to batchmate ONE MAIN IDEAL as she completed her tour-of-duty at post but  - as other batchmates put it - also looked really happy to be heading home/getting away from me

the Among Us doll sussed me out 

Anyway, let's check up on other batchmates still at post who may also have been on the move this month:  

ISOLATE HER AIR AIM visits ALIAS DEMON ANUS in Brussels for a fil-com event and set their Instagram selfie filter to "Ube" 

ABANDON JOY GOES ORAL and her baby successfully hunt down ninong NEW MAIDEN OLD ZIG in Istanbul for some of that sweet namamasko action

and JOIN EVASION 'COS NASA AJAR leads the Buenos Aires community's post-World Cup celebrations as only he can

 Moves like Messi

END OF YEAR HONORS

LLDD-Baby's Years 1 to 6 done and dusted! And with the most adorable send-off for the graduating class from the shorter-classmen 😁 On to Middle Earth, uh, School!

(proudly enough, I think "You were weirdly a good leader" and "I love you, but actually not" were also in my final AHOP evaluation ) 

Meanwhile, guess who also got some Phi Kappa Kick-Ass honors to roundhouse the year...

And if that's not enough she's now also taken up boxing PRAY FOR YOUR BOY

she'll turn me into puddin'

SO YOU APPARENTLY REALLY CAN'T HAVE O.V. WITHOUT COVID. OR FOR THAT MATTER V.A.R.

Y'all will recall that I got COVID last April just as our Overseas Voting was kicking off.  What I failed to mention then was that also kicking off was our World Cup-bound Women's National Football Team's training/friendlies in Sydney which I of course had to miss for everyone's health and well-being and all

reports from the field suggest the team indeed stayed fit

Fast forward to this month, and I just complete the latest regional OV training and help get the Consulate ready for the launch of the new Voter Registration campaign and, hey, look at that the Filipinas are also back in Sydney for some more training and friendlies I can't wait to see them in pers-

not the brace of positive results I was hoping for

Ok, so I have to miss out on the start of OV and the National Team's matches because of COVID again, but if that means the Filipinas will score as many goals as new voters registered, I will gladly take two for the team

in football, as in life and voter registration, the key is to score early and often

IT'S MONDAY, 'CAUSE I-I-I-I'M IN SEOUL TONIGHT

Annyeong! My first out of Oz travel in years, and it's to beautiful Seoul for regional overseas voting training.  Now, other than some Squid Games, Snowpiercer and BTS to annoy the LLDD-Baby, I haven't really dabbled in the Korean pop-culture juggernaut, so I can only recount my trip by randomly yelling out various K-genres (or as they call them here, genres) and hope they land properly.  Fighting!  

but first, shout out to the K-OMELEC seminar

K-BBQ! (and other post-training food)

K-Drama!

K-Vibe!

And of course can't leave without some quick-fire nods to

K-Pop! 

K-Beauty!

K-Toon! 

and K-Ka lang?

 

K-fine