A Visit with Cong Mansing

I've already eMailed everyone about our meeting this coming Saturday and its change of venue. Instead of San Diego, we'll be having it in Arnold and Cora's house in Long Beach at 4 pm. Mary and Robert sent me an eMail and said they've arrived in the Philippines as scheduled and it's great to hear that they were picked up from the airport by Kuya Al and company.

Donna and I went out after lunch today and did some more shopping for stuff to take home to the Philippines. We dropped by my cousin Cong Frank's house in Norwalk to visit his mom Imang Ester. She's my mother's youngest and one of the only two surviving sisters. The other one is Imang Glo who lives with her son Gil in Dau. Anyway, we arrived at Cong Frank's house and there was a 'Beware of dog' sign on the gate. I started knocking on the fence when this little dirty white mutt (not good about breeds) started yapping at me. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to rouse anyone from the house, I gave up and we went to see Cong Mansing and his family in Downey instead. When we got there, my nephew Roland is on his way to work and was saying goodbye to his wife Jeanette and son Calvin. They told us Cong Mansing went to pick up Atching Mariette from her work and they were on their way home. So we stayed a while and talked with Jeanettte.

A few minutes later Cong Mansing and Atching Mariette arrived. After talking a bit and the usual pleasantries, they took us to a Chinese buffet on Rosecrans for dinner. Cong Mansing tried to have Homer come with us but he was on his way to put in some service hours at the church where his son CJ goes to school.

Their sushi was unusually good. We must have stayed there for at least an hour eating and talking and I have to admit it felt good spending some time with them tonight.

2009 Here We Go!

Although, we celebrated it with a bang in Las Vegas, it was sort of a sad start. I was talking with my brother Cong Raf today and he informed me that our brother-in-law Cong Edeng passed away last December 31. He was the husband of our only sister Ating Au who passed last May 2007.

May you rest in peace, Cong Edeng.

Yesterday was Daniel's day off and I dragged him to watch The Haunting of Molly Hartley at the movie theater across the street. A dollar each on Tuesday is not bad. but sad to say, this is one of a very few movies that I won't recommend for anyone to watch and I'm the type of person who's very easily entertained by any kind of movie. Well, at least Dan treated me to a nice Washington roll at Yasai in Norwalk. Thanks for dinner, Dan.

We've been planning a get-together with Mary and Robert in San Diego on Saturday who are here on Holiday from Spain. Last Sunday they accompanied Theresa and Erline to San Francisco and were set to come back tomorrow. I got a call from Mary last night and she said Robert's brother Kuya Al who resides in Cavite, is turning for the worse. He's been ill and she said he's developed some nasty bumps on his head. They were thinking of going to the Philippines to visit him.

This morning I found out that they drove back to San Diego last night and today they were able to book themselves a flight to the Philippines through PAL from LAX. Donna and I had the chance to meet them at the airport while they were checking in. For some reason the international terminal was unusually crowded. The fact that they were a bit late checking in didn't help lessen their stress level. Their flight was at 9:05 pm and it was already 8:30 and they were still in line to have their luggage x-rayed. Once that was taken care of they barely had enough time to go through the security entrance to the gates.


Mary will be back here in the States on Jan 15 I think and will be flying on to Spain a couple of days later, while Robert is staying in the Philippines through Feb 6, I believe.

With this latest development, it means that we have to have a change of venue for our get-together on Saturday. I've been in coordination with Ed and Josie today trying to figure out a place to hold our meeting. Imelda, Roger and Josie have all graciously volunteered their homes for us to meet. We'll have to make a decision tomorrow, Friday the latest.

On a bright side, while Cong Paing and I were talking this morning he mentioned that it's his son Rico's birthday today. He turned 31. Donna and I can't believe that he's older than Eph thinking all along that when Eph was born, he was the youngest grand child. It turned out we were thinking of Daniel. Anyway, Cong Paing invited us to have dinner with them. After eating, we headed to the airport to see Mary and Robert.


I've been chatting with all kinds of people from the Philippines: my niece Len who's been giving me information about our house; Mike, who told me about the JASHS Class '70 Reunion last December 30 both through YM and some friends from our Internet forum group KAM, through Facebook chat. Somehow it doesn't lessen my wanting to go home now. But I console myself by thinking we're booked and ticketed for January 26 and we'll be back in Sindalan on January 28!!

WooHoo!!