Home for the Holidays 2011

For the first time since I moved to Singapore in 2008, I got to go home for Christmas. It was a short yet sweet vacation.

Day 1

It was an uneventful flight to Manila, and when I got to AA’s condo, where I was staying, we talked for a bit before both falling asleep on her bed because it was still too early in the morning to stay awake. But not before she ate my Garrett popcorn pasalubong for breakfast. Then I had to wake up a couple of hours later to get ready to meet my friends in Makati.

My first meet up was with my P&G friends Caloy and April. We were supposed to have lunch at Dencio’s near their office (my old office), but it turns out that place no longer exists, so we dined at the restaurant that took its place – Romulo’s Cafe. I love the design of the place! The black and white walls scream coffee shop instead of the pinoy food restaurant that it is, but it makes it all the more cozy.

We ordered deep-fried tilapia, crispy pata, ensalada, and before we could finish saying that we wanted laing and vigan fried rice, too, our amusing waiter, who shall remain nameless, actually left us to help out another table. Whoa, talk about bad case of attention deficit disorder. He did the same thing to us again while he was packing up our leftovers in takeaway containers. Lucky for him, we all just laughed at the incident instead of screaming at him for it, which I can imagine anyone else in our shoes would have done.

That wasn’t the only thing that we laughed about over lunch, though, we all had fun talking about what we decided to call the “chicken” tales. Haha. April and I will always remember how we have that in common.

It rained very hard just as we were getting ready to leave. I dropped by the Ayala malls and had my lashes permed before heading back to AA’s place where she had booked a home service mani-pedi-footspa-massage combo for us both. It was so wonderfully relaxing that we both dozed off and could no longer meet our respective friends for dinner.

Later we woke up and had late dinner – a Chowking delivery which I had requested. I happily gobbled up chao fan, siomai, tofu, kangkong with bagoong and halo-halo. After that, we settled down with our kindles. We copied each other’s ebooks and she organized her categories while I finished reading a book I had started on the plane earlier.

Day 2

This was the day of Rodel and Monet’s wedding, the main reason why I flew home.

AA and I headed to the Shangrila Mall to buy some necessary things and had lunch at KFC where I had a fully loaded meal. Philippine KFC gravy is still the best!

Then AA drove us home where we changed and did our own hair and makeup. We turned out pretty decent and left to fetch Chi at her office. We had underestimated the traffic so we were late for the wedding, so we decided to go directly to the reception place instead – Bellevue Hotel.

Chi changed in the bathroom and I did her makeup while AA did her hair. Haha we make a good team! We laughed at our dress choices, though, because they were all purplish, so we looked like we were part of the entourage of another wedding. We still had some time to kill after dressing up, so we went to the hotel lobby for coffee before the reception began.

The wedding itself deserves a blog post of its own.

After the wedding, Chi, AA and I headed to Punchline where Chi’s hubby Punch was having a company outing of some sort (he does not own the place, despite its name). We got disgusted with the jokes even before the main event came on, though, so we left and headed home.

Day 3

I left AA’s place to check into The Peninsula Hotel with my P&G friends Drew and Yen. We got a discount on the hotel rate thanks to Drew’s company benefits.

After checking in, we took a walk towards the Ayala Triangle and had a very late lunch at the Kanin Club, ordering their famous crispy dinuguan and my favorite sinangag na sinigang.

We had a catch-up conversation filled with the usual laughter. Then Drew had to go back to the office and Yen had to go home to her baby so I headed to the Ayala malls for a Lucy Britannico Salon deep conditioning treatment for my hair.

When evening came, Drew met me at the mall and we had dinner and a continuation of our lunch conversation at California Pizza Kitchen.

After that we watched a movie, just like old times. The movie he chose was Mission Impossible 4 in Greenbelt 3 and I couldn’t help but notice that their HD screen was way better than the ones in Singapore. Way to go, Makati!

We both loved the movie and nobody fell asleep. I’m saying this because we have both fallen asleep on each other while watching movies in the past. For me it was because I was both sick and exhausted after having just run a marathon, and for him, it was from the sheer boringness of the movie, which was The Golden Compass, by the way.

Day 4

The next morning, we ate the breakfast that came free with our room rate and I had champorado, realizing that I hadn’t eaten one in years, probably never since I moved to Singapore.

Then we checked out of the hotel and I headed to the airport to catch a plane to my hometown. I thought my flight was going to be on time and the moment I sat down, I put on my seatbelt and texted my mom that I was in the plane then promptly fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later, I was shocked to see that our plane was still on the ground. OMG!

Mom fetched me at the airport and we went home she said did I want to eat dinner? She had bought a simple noche buena for us and though this was supposed to be for midnight, I was hungry since I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so we ate some. It was a good thing we did, though, because before 9 pm, mom was already sleepy and said maybe we don’t really need to stay up till midnight and I said okay, and she went to bed.

I wasn’t sleepy, though, so I tried to catch the Christmas spirit which had eluded me for the first time since I was aware of Christmas. I tried to watch my favorite Christmas movie, Love Actually. Didn’t work.

As a last resort I decided to give Glee’s christmas episode a shot. Lately I had been avoiding Glee because of its lackluster season 3 episodes, but this one actually did the trick. I caught the Christmas spirit, and just in the nick of time for Christmas too.

Day 5

I spent all Christmas day with mom. We stayed home then walked around looking at houses and she showed me where she would be moving on January.

Then we dropped in on old family friends and went back home so that my cousin and her family could visit us. And silly me, I completely forgot to take pictures. :-/

Day 6

Mom took me to visit my niece, who still cried whenever she saw strangers, and that included me. I gave her a stuffed Piglet because I never know what to get for babies, and after a while she actually stopped crying and rode in her mini bike with the piglet in the passenger seat.

I left my niece to meet my high school friend Flisha at Marcian Garden Hotel. We were supposed to overnight there with her barkada but in the end they all couldn’t go so we asked Chu and Jefrey to join us instead.

Upon checking in, we were asked for ID and we realized that we both had none, so she had to ask for Christopher’s help. He came and presented his ID, and we checked out our room and had a few pictures taken.

Then Fli and I changed into our swimsuits and dipping into the pool where we had a lengthy girl talk; I had missed this! We were so into our conversation that we forgot to check our cellphones – Brian had like 16 misscalls and he was waiting in the lobby. Oops.

After swimming we got dressed and headed to Lantaka Hotel. We were driven there by Kay who had come to fetch us. We were supposed to have dinner with Chu and Jefrey and them at another table but Kay and Brian decided to move to another restaurant instead.

Chu and Jefrey had also brought Kathy, their high school friend, and the five of us shared grilled panga and a bilao of food. The main meals were good, but we made the mistake of ordering crepes and churros for dessert and those were bad.

Dinner conversation was fun, and we kept talking in the hotel, reminiscing college debate days and asking some very personal questions of each other and gossiping about other people.

Then Chu decided he wanted to eat Chowking buchi, so we called Chowing delivery and had that and siomai and halo-halo for midnight snacks. The next morning when we woke up, we had breakfast at Zalo’s Point before heading back to our respective homes.

Day 7

It was college reunion time. Zenie rode a ferry from Basilan and Nald called me last minute to say that he could join. We were supposed to eat at Alejandra’s but on our way there, Zenie and I spotted the new Max’s Fried Chicken and changed the venue.

When we got there, we realized that the ones present were all those who were not based in ZC. It was like an OFW reunion plus Ronald. Luckily, Rona and Lester showed up towards the end of dinner.

After dinner we wanted to do videoke and walked over to Alejandras, but the place has really fallen so low, it turns out. The videoke place was empty and smelled like cockroaches. Ugh. And the restaurants have become like a beer garden, with girls in skimpy clothing singing up front.

Lester said there was a new place called La Clarita in Pasonanca, so we went there. The place was cheap, just a little over a thousand pesos for two hours and the amount was consumable in food, can you believe that? Best of all, Lester picked up the tab. It was really fun to sing and laugh with old friends.

And that was it. My short and sweet Christmas in the Philippines. So, three years from now again, maybe?