Fiancé Visits the Philippines

Day One - Today we exchanged money, shopped at Duty Free, and got massages. Less than twenty dollars for an hour and a half! Am liking it here already.

Day Two - Have lost Man Card. Fiancée talked me into getting a facial and eyebrow threading. Pain unbearable, surely some form of native torture to weed out the unworthy. Perhaps have not lost Man Card after all.

Day Three - Is it normal to have this much meat for breakfast? Apparently it is.

New Year's Eve - These people are insane. They bought "fireworks" in a box and lit the package without bracing it. It toppled over on its side and more than thirty explosively tipped thermite cannons shot out all over the place. They almost killed a dozen people, including us. I reacted sensibly and hid behind a tree. Now am laughingstock of family for some reason.

Day Five - Visited Grandma, family matriarch. She called me "guapo."

Day Six - Drove up the the highlands to look at partially submerged volcano. Ate at restaurant where they were out of everything. Good; have had too much deep fried pork anyway. Here is picture of me crushing volcano like the oily bohunk that I am.

Day Seven - Corregidor is awesome. Cannons! Barracks! Batteries! History! Man-squee! Saw one monkey.

Day Eight - Went to former U.S. base. Finally had proper American food: Texas barbecue! Clothes no longer fitting properly. Must be bloating from heat and humidity. Yes, that's it.

Day Nine - Drove through rural towns where streets can only accommodate one car. Progress interrupted by domestic dispute: household items being flung out onto street. Children swept everything over to the side so we could pass. Then, on way home, narrowly escaped multiple accidents as we sped down the unlit highway where pedestrians dressed in black nonchalantly stood on the road. Also, it seems overtaking on the right lane is common practice here. Fiancée is not allowed to drive, ever.

Day Ten - Last day here. Sadface. Not looking forward to wintry New England. Must get used to not having servants. How does one wash dishes again? First world problems so overwhelming. Will play on my iPad to feel better.

Travel: Unexpected Delights

After a delicious lunch at Max's (pictured: Platter Meal, with spring chicken, pancit, plain rice, and caramel bar), I bought some last-minute stuff, and then we were off to the airport, where unexpected delights awaited.

Delight # 1: WiFi at NAIA. See previous post.

Delight #2: I got upgraded to Business Class! Although your immediate instinct is to suspect me of flashing cleavage, no no, it was, in fact, my giant work laptop that attracted the stewardess and made her think I was a VIP. Which, in fact, I am. Very Impatient Person. Ask anyone.

The Business Class seats were like having your own private space capsule, plus you can stretch out your chair like a bed! Thanks to the free champagne, I only found this out thirty minutes before landing.

We were 2 hours behind schedule because of plane problems. I missed my connecting flight to Dhaka, but was presented with Delight # 3: a voucher for the airport hotel, plus free breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Eeeeee!!! Thus, unlike my fellow passengers, I did not launch into a screaming fit and demand to see a manager. I waited patiently (gasp) and politely asked to have my little maleta found so I could recharge my various electronics, and also get a change of clothes. (Although, actually, my suitcase has more pasalubong than clothes. Oh well.) Then I wandered over to the Regal Airport Hotel.

Delight # 4: Just look at my hotel room! On a "duh" note, I asked for a converter for US plugs, and it didn't seem to work, so an engineer (electrician) had to come in... and gently nudge the converter. That's all it took. Then I plugged in my monstrous laptop and discovered that the interwebz is not free here! So I ran downstairs and encountered a MASSIVE line of people, mostly flight crew from one of the stranded flights, who were trying to check themselves and the passengers in. We're talking at least 30 people. So I waited for about 15 minutes, and moved on to...

Delight # 5: The discovery that if you pop your head into the "Staff Only" room and are maniacally cheerful when asking for service, you will get what you want. I got the internet day pass in 2 minutes flat. And look, it works!

It's 3 am now. I guess I should hit the sack before getting up for the breakfast buffet. Life is good.

Sentro sa Serendra

For my farewell dinner in Manila, my buddies took me to Sentro, a restaurant in Serendra, an area of fancy restaurants. They had been raving about the Sinigang Corned Beef, which we dutifully ordered, along with salmon spring rolls, kare-kare, binagoong rice, and even some galunggong. We also had bottomless sago't gulaman, which turned out to be literally bottomless, as in they kept refilling our glasses so we never got to see the bottom. By the end of the meal, I felt like sago and gulaman were pouring out of my nose.






We went to nearby Magnet Cafe for drinks, incidentally passing by a "pH Balance" (=fachina) event, hosted by an old high school classmate. Since the event was open to all, we lurked nearby and got within shouting distance of said classmate, who was chatting it up with some couple, but just as we were about to shriek her name like fangirls, she turned away and went back onstage. So sad.

We trooped on to the Cafe, with a P150 "gate fee" ("Nasan yung gate?" I asked, and they gestured at the little table they'd set up in front of the door) and a voucher for Jim Beam. Ugh, I hate whiskey. Magnet Cafe boasts live bands and "always subzero" beer, which was quite true: JM's second Cerveza Negra was frozen, and the waiter had to shake the icy beer chunks into a tall glass. The same thing happened to T's San Mig Light. We had to leave, though, when the second band came on, as the longhaired, emo lead singer, who actually had a pleasant singing voice, spent way too much time shriekeing into the microphone, and doing his best Steve Tyler-high-out-of-his-mind impression while crooning the song lyrics, which none of us understood anyway.

We spent the rest of the night outside a donut shop, eyeing the various ladies (?) of the night, cracking inappropriate jokes about paper cups (believe me, with green minds, everything is dirty) and generally just shooting the breeze. Then we all ran out into the rain and went our separate ways.

I heart my buddies. *sniff*

...And That Night, My Arteries Wept

Before I went to the dentist, Ate took me to Mongolian Quick Stop in Festival Mall, where I filled my bowl with rice, noodles, lettuce, cabbage, bean sprouts, red bell peppers, and carrots. Then I handed it over to Meat Lady, who dutifully added squid, chicken, beef, and Unidentified Sea Product. Finally, Sauce Guy read my mind ("Spicy, mam?") and topped the overflowing bowl with spicy goodness before handing it to the Grill Man who would ensure that I did not get salmonella from eating raw foodstuff. Here's a picture of the finished product. It always gets smaller after it's cooked, which is why we all make sure the contents of our bowls resemble a small mountain before passing it on for grilling/frying.

I then went to the dentist's office, and almost stormed out of there after being made to wait for an hour and a half ("Mam, naipit siya eh." Hah!!! Although, must remember to be like my dentist's assistants and use the phrase "lunch meeting" more often, as it sounds like a legitimate excuse.). It's not a good sign when the assistant is frantically whispering on the phone: "Yes, sir, it was a 1:30 appointment," and it's already almost 2 pm. Anyway, long story short, I waited a little more, got my teeth cleaned and two "incipient" cavities filled. The dentist said, "Nicole, you have great teeth!" and all was forgiven. Hey, the whole shebang only cost US$70! Last time, Harvard Dental gave me a special discount package of $175 (plus tax), and that didn't include the fillings! Yowwwwch.

After I got home, I hopped on my bike to get some dried mangoes for my Japanese colleague K, who says "Mangoes!" every time I say, "Philippines." I believe it's a conditioned response from when she spent time here. As always, the little grocery store near the park was full of mommys and yayas and their charges. I had a brief "uh-oh" moment when I realized that I didn't have a bike chain, then I remembered where I was and I just parked my lovely pink transportation near some kids. Naturally, it was still outside when I finished buying.

Then I wandered over to the church. Here's St. James Parish. Someday I and all my siblings will be married there.

Ha! Ha! Ha!!!

In the evening, I had a craving for dinuguan, so Ate took me to Kanin Club at Westgate. We ordered crispy dinuguan (a speciality), garlic rice, lumpiang hubad, and turon. I had bottomless lemon iced tea with the food, and Ate had ripe mango shake. I attacked the lumpia first, with the vague notion that vegetables must be destroyed instantly. And then I bit into the crispy dinuguan. It was yummy. It was deep fried pork in blood. It was like eating sin. I had a second helping, at which point my arteries began crying softly. I ignored them and soldiered on. And then, when I finished, I had the turon, which had saba, ube and langka inside a crepe-like wrap that was itself coated with melted brown sugar. While I was eating the turon, the singing of my soul overcame the weeping of my arteries.

We took whatever we couldn't finish home with us. Ate remembered that she wanted to give me some Filipiniana outfits, so here I am modeling the one that DOESN'T make me look like the victim of an attack by mutant flowers and butterflies.

Gosh, look how thin I am. It must be the lack of beer from the past two months. No fears, I will be back to being pleasantly plump after I get back. Wow, how repetitive. Also redundant. All the fat from dinner must be constricting the blood flow to my brain already... can't... type...

(thud)

Two Days Later...

Yesterday we ran errands -- I had to get a bunch of bilins (note to self: never say, "I'm going to Manila, do you want anything?") -- and we also had to grab some booze for the evening.

We had lunch at North Park, a chain restaurant known for its delicious noodles. We shared a Century Egg and Seaweed Salad, and I had the Wonton Noodle Soup with Hong Kong Noodles, plus some siomai. My god, I have eaten more pork in the few days I've been here than an entire year in the U.S. If swine were indeed filthy and possessed by demons as some religious texts say, I would be doing an Exorcist impression and projectile vomiting on the cat right about now. Happily, this has yet to occur. Anyway, to top it off, I ate halo-halo, which is a dessert with crushed ice and condensed milk, with native beans, a dollop of ube, and, of all things, corn flakes.

Later on my old high school buddies came and we stayed up drinking and chatting until whatever hour the birds start chirping. It's now 9 pm and I just woke up. No, no, kidding, I woke up at 1 pm and had a productive day. I took my newly cleaned and repaired bicycle around the village! And what a pretty village it is: tree lined, full of birdies, and breezy. You know you're in the lap of luxury when your streets don't have bike lanes; they have bike/golf cart lanes. I had borrowed my sister's iPod Shuffle for the ride, and I clipped it on my shirt so that it looked like I was grabbing my boob every time I changed songs. You know, you gotta give 'em something...

Just came home from watching The Proposal, which was a "meh" movie with some funny bits thrown in, like Sandra Bullock shaking it in the middle of a forest to "Get Low" by Lil Jon. Ha! Ha! Ha! My advice: just get the DVD, or whatever the extralegal equivalent is in your part of the world.

I end this post with a challenge: come up with a caption for the picture below. Mine is: "AAAAH IT'S COMING CLOSER!!!"



You can definitely do better than that.

27 on the 27th!

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!

I woke to the sun streaming through my windows, banishing my fears of a thunderstorm that would cancel our trip to Lago de Oro, a place in Calatagan that my sisters had been chirping about since I got back. Here's Priscilla helping me pack by double-checking the contents of my handbag.

It took us a couple of hours to get to the place, and we all had to rush to the bathroom as soon as we stepped out of the car. The girl bathroom featured this sign, which sent me hunting for "foreign matters" the whole day.

Here's my birthday pizza. It had a super thin crust and had the yummiest cheese EVER. I had two beers with my slices, but only out of necessity -- a fly had landed in my first glass, and it was too drunk to get out on its own, so I had to get a whole new glass. I got a complementary iced tea as well, which Ate Au promptly chugged.

After eating, we trooped to Lago de Oro's main attraction: wakeboarding! Here's Ate Raine:



Ate Au and I are wussies, so we only did the "kneelboarding," where you kneel down on the board, pull the strap across your thighs, and hold on to the cord for dear life. On my first try, I got all the way to the first corner before the line suddenly snapped taut and the handle flew out of my hands, leaving me to sink to the muddy bottom. Fortunately, for the uncoordinated, there is a modified tractor that ferries you ever so slooooowly around the man-made pond back to the launching site. The boy who drives the tractor is full of helpful advice: "Next time, mam, kelangan diinan mo, etc etc." How to tell him that my triceps are completely unused to exercise, and it was a birthday miracle that I didn't drown on my first try?




We eventually finished, showered, and went to Tagaytay for dinner at Josephine's. This restaurant has a magnificent view of Taal Lake, but I had eyes only for the food: kilawing talaba, chicharong bulaklak, kare-kare, fired kangkong, and lechon kawali. We topped it off with a cappuccino cheesecake.

On the ride back home, we discussed the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" and I asked what exactly "Cheese" was supposed to be. It turns out that it's something that you pursue that makes you happy (or you think makes you happy). For example, for some people, it's their career, or their personal relationships. So they spend time running around looking for it, and when they find it, they get a sense of entitlement and become unable to adjust when the Cheese is gone (in the story, it gets eaten up). When my sisters asked me what my cheese was, I said, "Laughing Cow." Sadly, they were too engrossed in the conversation to notice my lame joke, which was an attempt to cover up the fact that I have no cheese. Boo hoo hoo. Something I pursue that makes me happy? Er?

Anyway, I like the question posed in the book: What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Right now, I'd stalk Jude Law.

A Visit to Lola and the Hairdresser (Not at the Same Time)

Today is Sunday, so it was time to visit Lola in Quezon City. She very thoughtfully made a little sign for me, and here I am posing beside it. For future reference, this is my "touched" face.


Lola had her little minions prepare a spread for us. We had two plates of lumpia (instantly demolished), veggie soup, pakbet, boiled saba, adobo, and chicken. Dessert was ice cream and the ube cake that Ate Au and I bought at Red Ribbon... because everything tastes better with a red ribbon. Even flip-flops.

Here's a picture of me with my two sisters (flanking me), and my cousins. After eating, these boys busted out the chess board. I ran away in fright (noooo! Anything but STRATEGY!!!!).

Picture of me with Lola, who turns 88 this year. She remembers all our birthdays. I believe she also dropped hints about becoming a great-grandma, but it was directed at my little brother, proud carrier of the family name. As a girl, I don't count. I did offer to find a husband who would take our family name, but lola said that the poor man then wouldn't get his inheritance. Er? Inheritance? Do I get one of those? Please?

*** QUOTE OF THE DAY: "When in Rome, be a Roman. When in Bangladesh, be Indian." ***

It rained SUPER HARD when we were there. We had to shout to have conversations. If I were to employ pathetic fallacy, I would say that God wept with me as I bit into my first ube cake in two years. Yes, in my heart, I cried THAT hard with joy as the flavor of a purple ground root baked into fluffy goodness exploded on my tongue. I heart ube.

I had one more adventure left: a haircut. I hate having long hair, plus I was getting split ends. Here's me now. Ate Au took me to her Korean hairdresser in Festival Mall. The hairdresser is so awesome that she had her own little minion who could vaguely speak Korean. Anyway, I was hoping to look like a Korean pop star, but ended up as a Japanese man. Oh well, close enough.

I ended the evening by watching Transformers and losing 50 IQ points. Megan Fox is boses ipis; I never noticed that before. Fortunately, we went into the theater with super low expectations, so we ended up enjoying it. Well, we didn't enjoy it so much as we didn't find it repulsive/boring/annoying enough that we had to leave. I am now firmly convinced that the U.S. military is fully capable of defending us from alien robot invaders. In the meantime, I suppose we can just keep shooting and bombing each other.

Manila: Day 2

Spent most of the day sleeping to recover from the past month of working from 8 am to 1 am. After I shclepped out of bed for my breakfast of fried pork links, I thought to myself, Ah, what a great country. Rice, meat, and not a vegetable in sight. I then went straight back to bed and only got up at dusk, like a proper vampire.

Here's a picture of Priscilla, the little kitten I adopted (stole from her mother) back in '07. Thanks to Ate Raine's obsessive mothering, she's now enormous and sleek. She's also hostile, I can't imagine why. It surely couldn't have anything to do with being deprived of her true mother at the tender age of two weeks. Anyway, unlike Sheba, she is totally NOT into me, or any human for that matter.

The highlight of the evening was The Tres Marias Hula Hoop Extravaganza. All three of us obibahito bone (Bangla = unmarried sisters) made our very best attempt at mastering this noble art. As you can see from the video below, Shakira we are NOT.



Anyone else notice the cat running away when I started gyrating?

But don't worry; we will persevere! Every day we will hula hoop our little hearts out. I recommend this activity to anyone who's feeling down, because it's impossible to take anything seriously when you're doing your very best impression of that dancing Coke can from the nineties. Also, you're gonna work up a sweat from all the manic wiggling and howling with laughter.

I end this post with a picture of this child I also "adopted" -- no, I kid, I kid, this is Carmen's nine-month-old baby, nicknamed Tikay. Awwwwwwww

MANILA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Made it back home! No misadventures to report, although I was a veritable wellspring of inappropriate creativity during the waiting periods. Only the lucky ones will get to view the finished product.

Here's picture of me and Ate Raine after I got back. I wore a kameez and an orna so people would be so weirded out by me that they wouldn't get friendly. It worked!!! Or was it my face?

I had an extremely productive day where I got some pesos, tinkered with my iPhone (OMG they have SIM cards in there! I thought it all ran on magic!), got my zits zapped, and watched the latest Harry Potter. An excellent start to a long-overdue break.