Home - It's Good to be Back!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Our flight from LAX to Taipei went fairly smooth on a brand new (it seems new, anyway) 777-300 with roomy seats and on-demand personal monitors. I watched a British produced movie called I Am England - pretty good, I wished it had English subtitles, however, and The Contract with John Cusack and Morgan Freeman – pretty decent. Flight food aboard EVA Air is typical, nothing to write home about so to speak. I was asleep when not eating or watching a movie all through the 14 hour flight.
Tuesday, November 27
We landed in Taipei at around 5 in the morning I believe. The weather was bleak to say the least. It was raining and cold. I was hoping our flight wouldn’t get delayed due to the weather. The Taipei terminal got rearranged somewhat. I took a few pictures of Donna in front of the new Hello Kitty store, among others.
It was easy to pass the 3 hour layover, I found a wireless signal for my laptop and I was able to check my eMails. I sent Sherwin an OLM message and told him about the situation.
They had us check in Donna's hand carried luggage because it was too heavy. We would have checked in both of them but I had my lap top in mine.
Our flight to Manila took off as scheduled in spite of the bad weather and we arrived on time. As soon as we got through immigration, I got a text message from Sherwin instructing us to go the letter ‘M’ section of the arrivals area. Immigration and customs was surprisingly hassle free. Sherwin was already waiting when we got out and he called his brother Jojo to drive out of the parking lot to meet us over the arrivals section of the terminal. They brought their barely broken in Toyota Grandia. This is a full sized Toyota van. Mareng Didi was with them along with their youngest, Chik-Chik. I don’t know her real name! Anyway, they called Pareng Nasty once we’re on the road and I convinced him to take off to Pampanga with us. He said sure and for us to pick him up at his law office in Caloocan. The traffic was fairly heavy but they’re saying it would have been much worse if it was during rush hours. This was around noontime.
We picked up Pareng Nasty and we headed north to Pampanga. By the time we reached Luring’s Barbecue, everyone’s starving! Thanks for lunch Pare and belated Happy Birthday!
By the way, Mareng Didi was Donna’s nursing classmate and she’s 1/8 of a group of friends called the Thaetians. She’s also one of Eph’s ninangs.
After lunch they dropped us off at Greenfields and left home a few minutes afterwards. Donna’s nieces Berna and sister Len with daughters Ems and Erika were waiting for us along with Sister Gay. We found the lawn over run with the grass but I've already talked with the resident grass cutter and he'll do mine probably Monday. He was going to do it the day we arrived but since he was going to cut it really short he wanted to talk with me first to make sure I won't mind it turning brown afterwards. I figured with the rains we've been having it should recover and hopefully become green again before Christmas.
Wednesday, November 28
I woke up at 6 am and woke Donna up so we can immediately go back to our morning walk routine. Friend and neighbor Doret Tombo has already walked a couple of rounds by the time we went out. It was great! The weather was cool, it rained last night. Then Bong Naguit and Engr. Pineda joined us as well. When we finished Donna sort of told Doret that we don’t have any food in our fridge so he said, “Come on over and we’ll have hot chocolate or something!” And of course we did. He had his help serve hot chocolate, toast, scrambled eggs and cheese. It’s great to have good neighbors!
I took a few pictures of our dog, camera shy Indo, with Donna when we got back to the house.
Donna and I went and had lunch at our usual hang out by Lazatin Blvd, Cely’s. Everyone’s glad to see us. We dropped by nearby body shop Talyer ni Kiko, owned and operated by my nephew Francis. He’s going to assist me get insurance for the van. He joined us for lunch and then we went to BPI/MS Insurance to get a new policy for the van. Afterwards, we went to Guagua to take care of some banking stuff and to visit Cong Orling and Atching Pie. We found Jack with her employees disconnecting and cleaning up her PC’s in her Internet Café Etc. It turned out she’s closing the place down and has sold everything wholesale.
We then went back to San Fernando to go shopping at SM Grocery. Our kitchen was pretty much bare of food so we had several bags when we went out of the market. We didn’t like their selection of produce so we decided to go to the wet market tomorrow.
Thursday, November 29
This morning we did our usual morning walk and then we went to downtown San Fernando to do some more shopping. We parked at our usual spot by the Jollibee parking lot at the old Estrella Building (don’t know what it’s called nowadays). Fortunately the security guard still remembers us and he let us in.
The street towards the market was surprisingly less crowded than usual. Then I noticed the vendors on the sidewalks are gone!
I took a few pictures on the way back to the van. Check them out all you Fernandino’s across the seas and see if you can remember these!
We then had lunch at Jollibee and had their famous Chicken Joy. It’s basically crispy fried chicken. But I was hungry so it went down well with a Diet Coke (called Coke Light here). We went home afterwards but not before getting a small bottle of garlic peanuts from famous Allies and a couple of scooped out whole young coconuts. Yummy!
There’s another political crisis going on in Manila as I’m writing this. It seems a former military man who ran for and won as a Senator in the last election, Antonio Trillanes walked out of his coup d’etat court hearing along with his supporters and held a street rally and are now holed up at the Manila Peninsula Hotel asking for President Arroyo to resign.
I’ll keep you posted. Well, it’s all over the Internet anyway.
Our flight from LAX to Taipei went fairly smooth on a brand new (it seems new, anyway) 777-300 with roomy seats and on-demand personal monitors. I watched a British produced movie called I Am England - pretty good, I wished it had English subtitles, however, and The Contract with John Cusack and Morgan Freeman – pretty decent. Flight food aboard EVA Air is typical, nothing to write home about so to speak. I was asleep when not eating or watching a movie all through the 14 hour flight.
Tuesday, November 27
We landed in Taipei at around 5 in the morning I believe. The weather was bleak to say the least. It was raining and cold. I was hoping our flight wouldn’t get delayed due to the weather. The Taipei terminal got rearranged somewhat. I took a few pictures of Donna in front of the new Hello Kitty store, among others.
It was easy to pass the 3 hour layover, I found a wireless signal for my laptop and I was able to check my eMails. I sent Sherwin an OLM message and told him about the situation.
They had us check in Donna's hand carried luggage because it was too heavy. We would have checked in both of them but I had my lap top in mine.
Our flight to Manila took off as scheduled in spite of the bad weather and we arrived on time. As soon as we got through immigration, I got a text message from Sherwin instructing us to go the letter ‘M’ section of the arrivals area. Immigration and customs was surprisingly hassle free. Sherwin was already waiting when we got out and he called his brother Jojo to drive out of the parking lot to meet us over the arrivals section of the terminal. They brought their barely broken in Toyota Grandia. This is a full sized Toyota van. Mareng Didi was with them along with their youngest, Chik-Chik. I don’t know her real name! Anyway, they called Pareng Nasty once we’re on the road and I convinced him to take off to Pampanga with us. He said sure and for us to pick him up at his law office in Caloocan. The traffic was fairly heavy but they’re saying it would have been much worse if it was during rush hours. This was around noontime.
We picked up Pareng Nasty and we headed north to Pampanga. By the time we reached Luring’s Barbecue, everyone’s starving! Thanks for lunch Pare and belated Happy Birthday!
By the way, Mareng Didi was Donna’s nursing classmate and she’s 1/8 of a group of friends called the Thaetians. She’s also one of Eph’s ninangs.
After lunch they dropped us off at Greenfields and left home a few minutes afterwards. Donna’s nieces Berna and sister Len with daughters Ems and Erika were waiting for us along with Sister Gay. We found the lawn over run with the grass but I've already talked with the resident grass cutter and he'll do mine probably Monday. He was going to do it the day we arrived but since he was going to cut it really short he wanted to talk with me first to make sure I won't mind it turning brown afterwards. I figured with the rains we've been having it should recover and hopefully become green again before Christmas.
Wednesday, November 28
I woke up at 6 am and woke Donna up so we can immediately go back to our morning walk routine. Friend and neighbor Doret Tombo has already walked a couple of rounds by the time we went out. It was great! The weather was cool, it rained last night. Then Bong Naguit and Engr. Pineda joined us as well. When we finished Donna sort of told Doret that we don’t have any food in our fridge so he said, “Come on over and we’ll have hot chocolate or something!” And of course we did. He had his help serve hot chocolate, toast, scrambled eggs and cheese. It’s great to have good neighbors!
I took a few pictures of our dog, camera shy Indo, with Donna when we got back to the house.
Donna and I went and had lunch at our usual hang out by Lazatin Blvd, Cely’s. Everyone’s glad to see us. We dropped by nearby body shop Talyer ni Kiko, owned and operated by my nephew Francis. He’s going to assist me get insurance for the van. He joined us for lunch and then we went to BPI/MS Insurance to get a new policy for the van. Afterwards, we went to Guagua to take care of some banking stuff and to visit Cong Orling and Atching Pie. We found Jack with her employees disconnecting and cleaning up her PC’s in her Internet Café Etc. It turned out she’s closing the place down and has sold everything wholesale.
We then went back to San Fernando to go shopping at SM Grocery. Our kitchen was pretty much bare of food so we had several bags when we went out of the market. We didn’t like their selection of produce so we decided to go to the wet market tomorrow.
Thursday, November 29
This morning we did our usual morning walk and then we went to downtown San Fernando to do some more shopping. We parked at our usual spot by the Jollibee parking lot at the old Estrella Building (don’t know what it’s called nowadays). Fortunately the security guard still remembers us and he let us in.
The street towards the market was surprisingly less crowded than usual. Then I noticed the vendors on the sidewalks are gone!
I took a few pictures on the way back to the van. Check them out all you Fernandino’s across the seas and see if you can remember these!
We then had lunch at Jollibee and had their famous Chicken Joy. It’s basically crispy fried chicken. But I was hungry so it went down well with a Diet Coke (called Coke Light here). We went home afterwards but not before getting a small bottle of garlic peanuts from famous Allies and a couple of scooped out whole young coconuts. Yummy!
There’s another political crisis going on in Manila as I’m writing this. It seems a former military man who ran for and won as a Senator in the last election, Antonio Trillanes walked out of his coup d’etat court hearing along with his supporters and held a street rally and are now holed up at the Manila Peninsula Hotel asking for President Arroyo to resign.
I’ll keep you posted. Well, it’s all over the Internet anyway.
posted by reyjay @ 5:03 PM
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