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The last time I spent All Saint’s Day here in the Philippines was in 1975 and Donna 2 or 3 years later. That’s why we were in a hurry to come back so we can experience it again. We had our flight back from California booked for Sunday October 29 so we got here mid day, Tuesday October 31 – Halloween actually. We were here a couple of hours and we got our first visitor, Tan, our friend and classmate Amanda’s husband from San Francisco. He’s here on a ‘scouting’ trip. He’s planning on building a home here I guess. Once he saw the house he was pretty impressed and he told me to convince Amanda to retire here.

Jet lag didn’t hit us too bad this time. Donna took a little nap when Tan came to visit but both of us were able to sleep through our first night back.

We’ve learned from text messages that Leda and family are coming All Saint’s Day from Muntinglupa to light candles on my mother-in-law’s grave at the old cemetery in San Fernando. So early Wednesday Nov. 1 after our morning walk, we headed towards town to find a place to have breakfast in. (I take this back - we didn't do our morning walk. We walked to a nearby chapel, St. Paul Novitiate, to hear mass) We figured since it’s All Saint’s Day, most restaurants are closed (in fact all restaurants by Lazatin Blvd were closed) so we went to Jollibee by the Cathedral. While we were there we sent Alma a text message. Alma is Josie’s sister. They’re my cousins from my mother side. Josie is Rey Angeles’ wife, by the way. We brought an envelope from her to be given to Alma. When Alma came, we were mostly done with breakfast and Donna mentioned that she needed to go to the market to buy food for everyone who’s coming for All Saint’s Day so Alma took us to her ‘suki’ at the wet market and we got a bunch of crabs and shrimps for fairly cheap price. It was early enough so it wasn’t too hot yet.

Pareng Nasty and Mareng Didi also called and said they’re coming so I told them sure, why not? They originally planned to go to Tagaytay but changed their minds. They weren’t sure we were back but when I answered the phone I guess that was their stimulus to head north instead of south.

We took our loot to Len’s and we had her cook the seafood. Our range has not been converted to LPG yet and the stove in the utility room still needed a gas hose. We went back home and straightened out a bit. Around noon everyone came. They were pretty surprised at our seafood purchase from the market. The crabs were thick with the fat that Filipinos love so much.

After lunch Pareng Nasty and family watched some movies and around 3ish Leda and the rest went on ahead to the cemetery saying they’ll wait for us to pray the Rosary.

Around 5, we left for the cemetery. Pareng Nasty and his family left with us.

We figured traffic and parking will be horrible so Donna and I parked in front of the banks close to the Protestant chapel (by the bridge) in San Fernando and we walked all the way to the cemetery. Leda text’d us saying Dodong will be waiting for us by the gate. That was a wise idea, we wouldn’t have found the grave site otherwise. There were already a lot of people when we got there. It was quite a walk from the gate, as usual we passed all the huge mausoleums with their big, ornate candles. We had to walk over other graves to actually get to the site and we noticed some that are actually still under a few inches of water. It was already getting dark when we finished the Rosary. Then Donna and I went to Good Shepherd Memorial Park to visit the graves of my parents. Leda and everyone else tagged along so we can visit the graves of Donna’s Aunts buried there. Now, let me tell you a little insight about Good Shepherd. A lot of people have already dug up the bones of their long dead relatives from the old cemetery to escape the crowds and its floods and reburied them at Good Shepherd. When we got to Good Shepherd, they had to reroute the roads to control the traffic. I had to drop them off a couple of blocks from the gate and I parked a good 15-20 minutes walk. When I got there, the crowd was actually breath taking. For those people who transferred their dead from the old cemetery to Good Shepherd to escape the crowds - oh well. We haven’t experienced All Saint’s Day for a long time but this was way too much! There were vendors all over hawking from bottled water to hot dogs. People put up tents over their family’s graves. There was an aura of celebration almost. To many people All Saint’s Day is not just a day to light candles and pray for the souls of dead relatives but is also a day to meet relatives in a sort of family reunion setup.

Kong Naring and his wife Ate Elang along with son Jay-Jay were already there with candles lit. We talked for a little bit and then we started looking for the graves of Donna’s aunts. Long story short – cannot find them! I went back to my parents' graves and spent about 10 minutes or so looking for them. It was crazy! The crowd was enough to disorient one’s sense of direction! They finally gave up looking for the graves of Donna’s aunts. We found the graves of Alan and Ned’s Dads instead!

BTW, I took a picture (see attached) of a store selling Christmas lanterns on the way to Good Shepherd. There's a lot of them around here nowadays!

After walking back to the van, we took everyone back to the house so they can have dinner before heading on back down to Muntinglupa.

The next day we got a visit from Alan and Neneng. We told them we were at Good Shepherd. They live here and THEY were amazed with the crowd. I guess they didn’t really go to Good Shepherd since his Dad only passed away this year.

November 8, our classmate Bert Franco from California came to visit the house he’s getting built at the Lakeshore (see attached pics). He took me and Kong Naring there so we can check it out. I’m supposed to visit once in a while and take pictures and mail them to him.

I finally have my Internet and cable hooked up. They had to install a small antenna on our roof to get signal from a Smart cell site from nearby Barangay Calulut.

The day after All Saint’s Day I had Kong Naring help me out with my lawn. We bought some more plants and rocks so he can finish the landscaping. I helped him out a little bit but I stop when the sun gets too hot. Rommel installed most of the lights that we were missing like the ones for the music room etc. He still has to install our door bell. We filled up the Jacuzzi but it won’t come on. It turned out that he missed to install a GFCI for it.

Donna and I already have some kind of routine that we attempt to follow. We try to wake up between 5:30 to 6 in the a.m. and do our morning walk around the neighborhood. We were told one round is roughly 1 km. We’ve been doing three so far and I intend to push her so we can do even more. We have breakfast after our walk. By the way, we try to stick to our diet as much as we can. When we went to California this last time, we shopped for some Egg Beaters, turkey bacon, and two chunks of turkey. We get our salads and cheese from SM.

I started this blog in January with the intent of informing friends and family about the construction of our new house here. As you know the house has been completed and I haven’t seen any comments on the previous blogs that I’ve posted so I assume people have lost interest in reading them so this will probably be my last. I thank the two or three of you who’ve kept up and I apologize for my constant rambling. It’s been quite an experience – the construction, I mean.

NOW, we’re retired!

At The Terminals

Note: I'm attempting to post this blog today Nov. 4th although I wrote this during our stay at the terminals - LAX and Taipei. Blogger was acting up again however. It won't let me publish blogs. So this one plus the previous blog looked like they're in the blog but I still don't see them somehow. I'm actually using my lap top with Internet here at home for the first time.



Dan finally showed up around 5 in La Mirada. While we were waiting Donna and I loaded most of our luggage into the van including the Balikbayan boxes. When he arrived Nido and I just had to stuff the boxes so the third one will fit at the back. On the way to Norwalk we got a call from Nido saying we forgot the smoked salmon we got from Costco. I didn’t think it was worth the trip for Daniel to pick it up but I got out voted and as soon as Daniel got done with dinner he went back to La Mirada.

We had a nice dinner at the Quizon household. They served ribs, shrimps, fish and duck. Everyone was saying this will be our last good meal and it will be diet time afterwards. After dinner we sat around and talked some more and waited for Daniel.

We got to the airport at around 8 pm. Fifteen minutes later we were already in line to check in with our luggage x-rayed. The line went pretty quick and we had a little spare time to have quality family time together with everyone. Well, except with Reggie.

The flight to Taipei was horribly bumpy. There was quite a bit of turbulence. Somehow I was able to finish the movie Click with Adam Sandler. It’s a little fantasy movie about a universal remote control but with a great life lesson. They also showed X Men and Lakehouse or House on the Lake (don’t quite remember) with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves.

We got to the Taipei terminal and there was a long line through x-ray to the gates. Going up to the escalator to the gates, an elderly gentleman fell and cut himself in several places. Donna and I hung around to give him some assistance, got him a wheelchair and a couple who’ll be in our flight gave him some bandages for his wounds. It turned out he’s diabetic and he’s a Kapampangan from Macabebe. He has three pieces of hand carried luggage, two of which are really heavy.

Donna picked up a couple of cartons of Marlboro’s for Dad and we’re by the gate right now waiting for our flight.

We’ll see you all later when we’re back in the Philippines.