Vacation 2008 - 3rd week

July 31, Thursday
We decided to camp out again in Eastwood since the car was coding. We set up a few of our meetings with our insurance agent and lawyer at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. It was a nice pleasant rainy afternoon just lounging around a coffee shop – sounds lame but its something we don’t really get to do anymore.

We then climbed up to the cinema level and decided to watch The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. In preparation for this, past nights, we even had the not-so-little girl watch the previous Mummys’ to better appreciate this new one. Unfortunately, the movie seemed to dry for me compared to the first two.

August 1, Friday
Friday night out with xGTS (most of whom are already xIBM) at Serendra’s Abe`(subtitled: where good friends dine). This was I think the nth time we’ve been to Abe` but no complaints here, as the food was wonderful what with the bottomless rice!! After a long dinner, the group decided to move across to one of the bars for some more Friday night drinking.

August 2, Saturday
Today we had our only out-of-town trip (some would say it doesn’t really count because of its proximity to main cities). We drove off to Carmona, Cavite and visited the Manalang house. As expected, the food was great including the tahong (mussels), talaba (oyster) and grilled liempo (pork belly) and tilapia. I tried to stay away from the beer (lingering headache from previous nights’ fest) but managed to guzzle down a few bottles.

Sometime late afternoon, our troop of about four cars convoyed to the Festival Mall in Alabang and had about three rounds of very competitive bowling games. By the end of the games, everybody was very keen on dinner already. So we shot off to a nearby Grilla for another filling dinner with drinks.

August 3, Sunday
We decided to give a surprise advance birthday celebration for Lolo and Lola and Nana Kakay (actual birthdates are in oct & nov but thought it would be cool to celebrate with us still there). We woke up as early as we could and headed to ‘dampa’ to order (a lot of) seafood then bought cakes and balloons. When we arrived home we asked the little girl to keep the celebrants busy upstairs while we were preparing and setting up. When we were done, we asked them all to go down under the ruse of us all going out for our usual Sunday out. As soon as they went all down and choral, ‘Surprise!!’ and ‘Happy Birthdays!!’, the celebration began with so much eating, blowing of candles and opening of gifts.

August 4, Monday
We had our penultimate treat of the trip and went to Nail Tropics in Eastwood to try out their new shop. After finishing off some more chores, we drove off to dinner in Katips, Sct. Torillo QC. We met up with my college friends’. We were happy to see that most were able to go -two postponed Christmas-get-togethers notwithstanding. It was more of same – teasing and reminiscing of their college days or past years. An old friend of ours had joined Big Blue fairly recently and since they hadn’t had seen nor heard from him since college it was good that we were able to invite him along.

August 5, Tuesday
Our last treat of the trip was a body massage in The Spa in their new branch in Bonifacio Heights. After two hours of relaxing we went straight to Columns Condominium in Makati for the going away drinks hosted by a friend. After an embarrassing moment, thanks to the host for giving us the wrong building number (claimed to be non-intentional), we finally reached his nice bachelor pad and there they were. It was a very relaxed evening and was indeed one of our better nights. We had wines, beers, juice and cold cuts while looking back at our yearly old pictures.

August 6, Wednesday
After yet another route adventure to Cavite, we went to Thess’ sister's house to pick-up something they had custom-built for our house. We had lunch and meryenda and left sometime late in the afternoon. On the way home, we passed by MegaMall in Mandaluyong to sort out an issue we had with a previous purchase. We sorted it out (a bit grudgingly) and went home.

August 7, Thursday
We went out to buy things to complete our list of items for the trip back. We had two quick stops in Wilcon and Shopwise then headed home to clean-up and sort our stuff.

August 8, Friday
Day before going back: We finished up our chores and went to a couple of churches for some offerings and Thanksgiving masses. A simple Thank You for keeping us safe and helping us out with our ‘chores’ during the entire vacation. We went back home and busied ourselves packing for the flight the next day, and tying up loose ends back home. Ending up with one more luggage than what we brought over, we decided to bring the luggage down already to avoid the early morning back-breaking trudge.

One final gift to Lola, we replaced the old gas stove with two new (modular type) table top burners. Thanks to the Pedro’s again for the custom-built steel stand.

August 9, Saturday

We spent most of the day saying our goodbyes to our families. After a couple of long queues, paid taxes, and overweight fees (for the luggage, mind), we boarded our long flight back to UAE.

After three weeks of traipsing around Manila, we go back to reality. It was a wonderful three weeks. Three weeks greatly spent. Thanks to all of our relatives and friends who have been so accommodating and for all the gifts you have given us. Do take care of yourselves and each other. See you next time on our next visit. To those we weren’t able to meet up with, regrets… hope to see you next time.

Vacation 2008 - 2nd week

July 24, Thursday
Another coding Thursday, we went to the Loyola Cemetery to pay our friend Leslie and our other relatives, who have passed on, a visit. Left fresh flowers and gave a solemn prayer.

We had lunch at a nearby mall, Robinsons Metro East. Our tummies were craving for siopao and, of course, we matched it with wonton noodle soup and congee and additional siopao’s to go for each of us. We then had our third treat of the trip. There was a gamut of wellness clinics at the East’s third floor so we decided to try one of them for a simple facial. This is not one of my more favorite pastimes as it entails me enduring that dreaded derma spoon thingamajig on my nose for half an hour…yeah yeah, I know what a wimp! Either that or, ‘How vain?!’ HAHA! The wife enjoyed herself…at least one of us did.

July 25, Friday
Friday morning was tense for us – let’s just say I’ve officially taken a stand and, after accomplishing our gargantuan hurdle of a To-Do, kicked-off our boots and relaxed.

Today was the day we really started meeting up with long time friends. We had our dinner in TGIF’s - for ol' time’s sake (deeply rooted in ClubG history) – although it wasn’t the usual Glorietta branch but it was just the same. It was a nice long dinner with a lot of catching up, lots of reminiscing and jokes flying around over quite a number of bottles of beer. Good to see and hear that not much has changed…good friends still stay good friends. We’ve all gone our separate ways (mostly in terms of careers away from BigBlue)…and some of us have even changed country codes…impressively (thanks much to technology), we’ve kept our comms open (some more than others but what the he**, we know they’re still around).

July 26, Saturday
After some furious plunging with a drain rod at our home’s grease trap system, we quickly cleaned-up and attended the 5th birthday party of our goddaughter-inaanak, Katie!! It was a swimming party which was absolutely a fun moment for our little girl and all the other kids. Although the rains were a bit harsh that afternoon, it mellowed down after some time and gave the kids sufficient time to enjoy the kiddie pool. The food, which I believe the adults enjoyed more than the kids, was great… we couldn’t get enough of the spaghetti!!

July 27, Sunday
Today was Lola Bubbles 77th birthday celebration in the Makati house. As typical parties go in this house, it’s characterized by lots of people, lots of food and lots of drinks.

The people – from the ten Dimalanta siblings who were present, plus their spouses and their kids (up to the 4th generation) that could only mean never ending chit chat in the usual spots – dining area, exchanging stories over seemingly bottomless food or over drinks by the door or kids non-stop playing upstairs and watching the usual Sunday noontime and afternoon programs of the kapuso’s or the kapamilya’s in the sala.

The food – primarily because of the volume of the brood, eating is executed by batches usually dictated by sequence of arrival. This is then characterized by non-stop cooking and never ending eating since by the time the last batch have had their turn at the meal, the first batch would’ve started yearning for the next course of the afternoon.. so naturally, one would witness the overlapping of meals in this house plus the hordes of ‘take home’ after the celebration.

The drinks – after the hearty meal(s), the adult males usually setup camp along the outer hallway and start guzzling down either the house wines or San Mig’s light. The dudes kwentuhan usually revolve around current events, politics, traffic…this time there were stories about OFW life/middle east pinoy stories (one of the brood has spent some years in Jeddah as well).

Occasions like these are the highlights of our trip home. These are the MEMORIES that last particularly being TOGETHER with FAMILY, and celebrating traditions like these.


July 28, Monday
Thinking of the future on yet another rainy day… We decided to meet our insurance agent and got my wife some. One can’t find too many things to invest in these days, what with everything being too volatile, this and that, yada-yada. It was difficult to pick from the options but we eventually settle on a product. We then had dinner and spent most of the night in Serendra with Nana Kakay and Tita Karen. The little girl met her new friend "Pepper" that night.

July 29, Tuesday
This day was the death anniversary of Thess' father, Lolo Bubbles. We picked up Lola Bubbles and Kuya Alex in Makati and met up with Butch and Rose at Manila Memorial Park. We visited Lolo Bubbles and Tito Romeo's (Thess’ brother) graves, offered flowers and a short prayer. Had another (mini) celebration lunch back in the Makati house. That day was the actual birth date of Lola Bubbles.

That afternoon we ran some more errands - laundry, photocopy and the like. We then ate in pancake with our favorite pan chicken and the wife's fave, rootbeer float.

Note: Just felt there was a need to explain the Bubbles references…it was coined when Vivian was still quite young and going to the Makati house meant getting to blow bubbles, what with the bottomless bubble jars that were at her disposal. Somebody called out ‘Lola Bubbles’ and it just stuck since then. By affinity, Lolo Bubbles was also christened.

July 30, Wednesday
Because we were amazed at the instant closeness of Katie and Vivian (not to mention that Thess and Elaine wanted some more chat time), we decided to schedule a playtime for the two at their house in Better Living. We had a local delight bananaque which we gorged down without pause until there was nothing left – no kidding. We took the house tour and as expected, Katie and Vivian blew thru the house (and the tons of toys) like a storm. After another filling meal, the two girls parted ways (grudgingly) and we went home. This would be their last playtime until the next vacation. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before these two see each other again.

Vacation 2008 -1st week

July 17, Thursday

A time of firsts. It was our family's first international flight all together. It was our first time to experience Etihad airlines. It was our first time to see (albeit transitting only) Abu Dhabi. A few other firsts, not really worth mentioning here, but most important of all...this was our first vacation since we had all moved to Muscat. That was about a year ago. We all took the evening journey back to Manila arriving well into the afternoon the following day. The whole trip took about 11 hours. Etihad's second leg (Abu Dhabi to Manila for about 8 hours) was enjoyable if only for the personal entertainment system. Vivian slept throughout most of it but got to play some games and watched some shows. Myself and my wife watched as much of the movies we could cram into it.

The Pedro family was very kind enough to lend us their CRV during our entire stay and to top it all off, they arranged for us to get it right out of the plane...(strictly speaking, outside the airport). timing of timings though, the CRV was on its coding day. So from the airport, I risked getting a traffic ticket and moved to Duty Free (without incident). Aside from killing the time, we went around and bought some goodies for our friends and families and had our first dinner at... wait for it...Jollibee!! By this time, it was already raining quite hard… as in winds slamming rainfall all over the place.

Apart from the Pedro family, nobody knew we were coming home. We tried to surprise my sister at her place but no luck there. We went straight home to Marikina (happily surprising my mom and dad), unloaded our backbreaking luggages, unpacked (some of our gear) and settled in for our first night back. It was a good feeling to be back in our home.

July 18, Friday

After a good night's rest, a hearty breakfast, we quickly scooted off to David's in Eastwood where we gave ourselves our first treat of the trip (say that ten times real fast). We all got haircuts. I had myself my usual hot oil treatment and my wife refreshed her highlights. We then had our usual favorites in Phoa for lunch.

Expectedly, we visited our old office...Big Blue's third floor. Like an old haunt, hard to believe but I guess we really did miss the place. The place stayed the same (for the most part)...there were a LOT of new faces though. Amazing what a year of hiring can do...amazing how many people can resign in a year as well :0). In fact, a good friend of ours had just resigned and was having his despedida that very night. So then, off to another old haunt - Jack's Loft for the despedida, dinner and my first drinking spree for the trip. We got to see a lot of our old friends and colleagues (even x-IBMers) and met some new ones along the way. Reminded us how much we miss Friday nights in Manila…

July 19, Saturday

We were off to our second treat of the trip. We went to Serendra’s Nail Tropics with our friends. After our afternoon of pampering, went around Serendra and saw much of the development around the place.

Vivian met up with Katie, our ‘inaanak’ and spent some time playing around the area. We were all delighted to see the two playing around as if they kept in touch the entire time Vivian was in Muscat. Without skipping a beat, dispensing with any hi’s and hello’s, the moment they saw each other, they instantly cliqued and were inseparable. To think, a year ago, they didn’t really have that bond yet. I guess ClubG next-gen does have a chance. Katie’s dad (Viv says thanks!!) took them around Bonifacio High Street and bought them a pair of Havaianas each…take note: exactly the same design…a very sisterly act I suppose.

We met up with my parents and my sister at the Podium’s Banana Leaf for yet another heavy dinner.

July 20, Sunday

After Sunday Mass and our traditional Sunday breakfast, we had our first visit to the Dimalanta Makati homebase. We (again) surprised everyone and had an afternoon long exchange of stories and updates. Vivian got to see and play with some of her cousins and enjoyed the afternoon.

July 21, Monday

One purpose of our visit was to process several family documents. After our first very tiring day of going around Marikina and Makati we had dinner at Max's and had our favorites. Daddy and little girl even bought themselves a box of caramel bar to bring at home.

July 22, Tuesday

After touring the streets of Manila -- Carriedo, Sta.cruz and Quiapo -- for yet another day of To-Dos and chores, we went back to Makati and had a nice seafood dinner, Crabs in butter garlic sauce, at Glorietta’s Dampa.

July 23, Wednesday

After two days of processing papers here and there, we decided to relax a bit and watched the "Dark Knight". We decided not to bring the little girl as we figured it would be too 'dark' a movie for her to watch. True enough, it was. (coming soon - separate blog about the movie)

Dear Tooth Fairy

Dear Tooth Fairy,
This morning my first lower front tooth came out when i was brushing my teeth. It's been wiggling for three weeks since i bit hard on a ripe mango seed. my mom said i was so brave, i let it fall by itself and it did not hurt me at all. tonight i will place it under my pillow in my room before i sleep and my mom said while i am asleep you will take it and put it in a special place - your all-white tooth castle and you will leave a present for me. thank you and i can't wait!

Love,
Vivian

broccoli

the little girl can finish "this vegetable that looks like a tree" dish in one sitting.