Japan Trip - Part 1

My stress level is on an all time high right now. Let me paint you a quick scenario.

When we arrived here last month, we tried to have our travel agent arrange for our trip to Japan then back to the Philippines. Reg and Manami has scheduled their wedding on June 1st. So we had our agent book us for a flight from LAX to Japan on May 28 which is ONE WEEK from now. The problem was that Northwest is too expensive and JAL don't have any round trip tickets available for one year. But she said EVA Air does have flights to Tokyo. The catch - we have to stop over in Taipei first. So we said ok, that's fine and then we'll fly back to the Philippines from Japan via Taipei again. And here is where it gets sticky. She's having a hard time getting confirmations for the Taipei-Japan and Japan-Taipei legs of the trip. A few days ago the Taipei-Japan got confirmed but we're still on a waiting list for the Japan-Taipei. Now you know why I'm sort of stressed. We've looked at possible options and Plan Bs, one of which is to fly to Japan then wait there. This way we at least would be there for the wedding. The other option is to fly straight to the Philippines and then get round trip tickets from the Philippines to Japan. Either way, we'll be spending more money than we can afford.

We talked with Reggie this morning and he suggested a plan C of some sort - fly to Japan at a much later date and go with them to Sasebo. This will be great for them. We can help them move and arrange stuff in their new apartment. The problem with that is: a) we will miss their June 1st wedding which Reggie by the way doesn't think is a big deal since it's just a civil wedding; b) our agent totally forbade us to travel to Japan in June, there are some outrageously expensive summer fares.

..and the teleserye continues!

Various Happenings - US '09

Thank goodness for the Internet! As you can guess, one major way for me to alleviate my boredom is going on line. Thanks to friend Deo Co as well, since he saved my WD external drive and digicam, I'm able to access and upload my pictures into Flickr.com which then allowed me to download them into my blogs. And I'm almost caught up! Woo Hoo!!

I've also been trying to get caught up with all my eMails, chatting with everyone on line through YM and Facebook. A certain niece of mine had some really, deeply personal stuff that she brought up with me and I think it was a huge load off her chest. I'm honored and grateful that she chose me as "the only person I can talk with about these things."

Eph picked us up yesterday from La Mirada and we went to visit Elijah together. We then went and got us some El Pollo Loco for dinner at their place in Long Beach. They were watching the first game between the Lakers and the Nuggets while I was blogging. The Lakers won, by the way, in a really close game. I think they were only up by one point.

Speaking of Elijah, since we got here, Donna and I have made it a point to try and visit his grave site everyday at Forest Lawn in Cypress. We figured since we pray the rosary every night, we might as well do it while we're over there. I feel that it's helped us a lot deal with our grief and continuous healing. One of the days we missed was when we got there around 6:30 pm not realizing the gate to the grounds closes daily at 6. So now we see to it that, if we're here, we leave the house by 5:30.

The beautiful bronze grave marker that Rach and Eph specially ordered has been installed. They went and waxed it recently and when we visited we always wipe the water spots off it from the regular grounds irrigation by Forest Lawn.


We've also seen a few movies while we're here. The first one I watched was Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. The critics didn't care for it too much but I liked it. I've stopped listening to critics a while back. Star Trek was great! Like I noted over on Facebook, I'm not a Trekkie but this one was good and I think it'll be one of those movies that'll be really cool to watch in my home theater. I thought Angels and Demons was better than The Da Vinci Code. It's plot was a little easier to follow. And Donna kept on hitting me with her elbows whenever she recognizes a scene in Rome that we've visited when we were there in 2007. We took Emy with us when we watched the chic movie Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

We're going to be in Las Vegas this weekend so who knows what we're going to be watching next. Terminator maybe? Night at the Museum, perhaps?

My birthday and our anniversary was pretty quiet this year with a dinner at CPK. Everyone came including Dan's friend Sue. Nido ended up picking the tab I think because, according to him "It was my birthday on April 26."


For Mother's Day we had dinner over at Rach's parents' home in Norwalk. The Moms got some presents from Rachel.


Whenever we come over here, Donna takes it upon herself to tackle some kind of project around the house. I think, the first time she helped Nido with painting some of the interior walls of the house and last year, it's the retaining wall by the street outside their lawn. I'm really surprised that no one has tagged it with any graffiti.


When we got here, Emy was on medical leave due to her recent gall bladder surgery. And she told us we have to help her and Nido clean out their garage. I'm sorry I don't have a before-and-after picture. Just trust me when I say that Nido can now park his Camry in it whereas before you can't even park a Matchbox car in it!!

Several days ago, someone hit the Avalon while it was parked on the street of the apartment where Dan lives. It was a hit and run so the insurance has to cover it.


It was towed to a body shop recommended by the insurance. Dan is currently driving a white Dodge Avenger, one of those American generic small cars mostly found in fleets of rental car companies.

Unfortunately the Avalon got hit in such a way that the axle and perhaps even the chassis was damaged. The repair estimate the body shop gave the insurance was more than the value of the car, bought in 2000 with a little less than 120,000 miles. The obvious result - the insurance declared the car a total wreck. So now we're in the process of trying to decide what to do with the money they'll give us which is hardly enough to buy a decent used car and nowhere near enough to buy a new car.

Last Sunday May 17 was a pretty hectic day for us. After church we immediately headed to a hotel in Pomona to attend Arcel's Mom's (Imang Mer) 75th birthday. Donna was one of the major sponsors during Arcel and Evelyn's wedding several years ago. They have their daughter Nicki and twins AJ and CJ. Nicki is now a pretty 16 year old and the twins have grown so big we hardly recognized them.


We had to eat and run out of there because we had a scheduled meeting with our JASHS Class '70 USA group at 2 pm in Nestor and Daisy's place in La Mirada. It was good to see my ever active LA group: Ed and Odette, Bert, Elaine with hubby Gene, Rey and Josie with son Ryan, Alice and EJ, Boy and Remy and Maryjo. Imelda and Dan came a bit later. There was a lot of food although we agreed it will only be for meryenda. Daisy prepared some delicious fresh lumpia and Odette brought her scrumptious sampelut!

I reported about the classroom we're adopting at PHS. We also talked about the coming 40th Anniversary celebration in 2010. As previously voted on, we all agreed that we'll have it on Saturday, February 6, 2010. We were able to sell all the PHS Sentenaryu Souvenir Programs that we brought. It's too bad we weren't able to take all 15 with us because each book weighs 4 lbs so we had to leave 5 behind. Boy and Remy are going on vacation in the Philippines next month so his copy will be waiting at our house. Ed took Mon's two copies, 1 for him and 1 for his mother-in-law, Mrs. Santos. By the way, we'll be visiting Mon at their place on Friday evening.

I don't know what came over me but the only picture I took was of Josie's grandson EJ!


My god daughter Stacy (Nestor and Glo's daughter) had a work related trip to Palm Springs the day after so she booked her flight one day early to see us. Emy picked up some fish tacos and we had dinner here at home.

Various Happenings '09 - Philippines Part 2

The first week of March, Jack's friend Remy was talking to me and said she couldn't figure out what to give her for her birthday on March 11. During our brainstorming it was agreed that she'll surprise her with a birthday dinner at Fortune's, a famous Chinese restaurant in San Fernando. I don't remember now what ruse Jack's husband Jake told her but I guess it worked since she was pretty surprised when she came in. I did tell you Jake married her in a civil wedding recently didn't I? They're scheduled to have a church wedding in December.


Edmund and Donna used to work together at Davita Dialysis. He retired in the Philippines as well, a year or so after she did. We got a call from him from Angeles City. He's in town and is scouting for rice distributors. He deals in rice from Cagayan and he was asking Donna if she's interested to be one. She politely declined and invited him for lunch instead. Here he is when he visited March 14.


Former San Jose-Panlumacan Elementary School classmate Erlinda Simeon went on vacation in the Philippines from Italy because her mother was ill. She's married to an Italian gentleman. By the way, she's Albon's aunt - his Dad's sister. A lot of us haven't seen her in a while so I figured I'll organize a get-together. It was agreed that we'll do it March 28 in Greenfields. They brought a bunch of food, we had lunch and they sang Karaoke. It was quite an enjoyable reunion. Most of the people who attended the reunion last year came but this time they were able to invite Isidro Salalila, who's on a work break from the Middle East and Carmelita (forgot her last name), one of the twins.


We also talked about helping out the school somewhat. A week or so later I talked with the principal and he was requesting help in getting the walkway from the school's gate paved. He said they have to put sandbags on it during the rainy season for the kids to walk on. I told him I'll see what I can do which reminds me, I have to contact former classmates from abroad and solicit some funds.


Cong Paing and Atching Let went on vacation in the Philippines last month. They're still over there right now actually. I had to borrow Atching Pie's pick up truck to pick them up from the airport because they came on a Tuesday and the Innova is banned to be driven on Tuesdays in Manila. We dropped off a bunch of their luggage in their condo in Pasay. We then went to our house in Greenfields. He's in the Philippines on business and to finish the portraits of Pampanga's former Governors, among other things. He went with me during one of my morning walks and he got all hyped up upon seeing all the tropical fruits in people's yards and around the neighborhood. He took a bunch of pictures and said he'll paint some of them. I don't know whether he's done any yet. See if you'll be able to identify all of them below.


We took them on a 'piligrimage' to the Monasterio. Incidentally, Alyce's Mom passed away so she and her daughter Jane came from London. The funeral was over so we took them with us to the Monasterio. Alyce has told Jane about the previous trip with us when we went with Pareng James and Mareng Sella. We dropped by the Shrine in Capas as well.


As you know, Cong Paing and I are advocates of the Capampangan language and are both members of the Internet org ANASI, short for Academya ning Amanung Sisuan International. Fellow advocates from Sasmuan Tony Pena, Carlos Castro and his niece Maritess Mercado Evangelista (great grand daughter of the great Capampangan poet Don Monico Mercado) one of the newest recruit in the fold, visited Cong Paing and they entertained each other with some Capampangan poetry readings some of which I video taped but has yet to upload into YouTube.


Doret’s daughters Ann and April both graduated from nursing at the Angeles University on March 21 and he celebrated with a dinner at Fortune's in Balibago. Of course most of the Greenfields Joggers Club were invited.


On April 5, we went to Mike and Ayrin's place in Dau for dinner. His oldest daughter Nicole graduated from elementary and it was also a despedida for him. He left sometime later to go back to QE2 as a merchant sailor.

Various Happenings '09 - Philippines Part 1

When we arrived back home last February, we found our euphorbias infested with bugs chomping away on the leaves. Here are the nasty looking critters.


We immediately ran to Ace Hardware in the mall and picked up some chemicals to control them. I mixed it up with water as soon as we got home and sprayed the worms and I think it was pretty effective, haven't seen anymore after that.

I also noticed the threads on one of the faucets that I hook the water hose on to were missing and there's no way I can water the lawn on that side of the yard this way.


So I went and bought a replacement faucet. While I was unscrewing the old faucet, it broke off with the threaded piece still in the PVC on the wall. I had to use an old screw driver to take it off. After it came off I just screwed the new faucet onto the PVC. Success! I'm going to be a handyman yet!


When Donna bought the paint for the house at Home Depot in 2006, she was told that Behr was her best bet because it withstands weather with high humidity. So that's what she got but for some reason there's a section at the back of our house where the paint seemed to have faded. Last year, she got 4 gallons of the stuff and she started painting the outside of the house.


Later on she also painted the posts as well as the front metal fence. I told her to hire someone to do it, especially the fence since it's going to involve some detailed work but her stubborn streak won out in that argument.


Last year Emy and Nido took us to China Town in downtown LA. They bought these strange looking fruits called cherimoya. They tasted like a cross of guwayabano and atis back home. I even brought several seeds with me to try and grow them in the Philippines. There were already three of them that sprouted some leaves right before we left. Doret gave us a few anunas fruits and these are similar to atis except they have less seeds. Then it dawned on me that they resemble cherimoyas the most. Sorry, don't have pictures of cherimoyas - they are not cheap! But here are the anunas fruits below.


On February 6, my niece Jane and her husband Jake visited us in Greenfields along with their new baby daughter as well as grand niece Fel (big with child) and husband Albon and Jane's sister Ivy.


Former high school classmate Bert Franco and wife Merlyn had the housewarming for the house they had built at nearby Lakeshore last February. It was a two story structure with a small swimming pool at the back. Sitting right next to the lake, it's on a prime location in the subdivision.


The day after, February 8 was Leda's b'day so we headed on out to Muntinglupa to celebrate it with her.


Can you tell why we have such a hard time losing weight over there in spite of the daily morning walks?

Anyway, I've told you I got rid of the decorative banana variety I planted at the back of the house because it was growing wild on me. They have a nice and cute pink blossom but they don't really bear any fruits.


Doret gave me a shoot of his latundan variety and I planted it where the decorative variety was. Latundan is a common table banana and it looked like this when I planted it last year.


Its ripe fruits look like these.


When we came back from the US this year it has really grown with shoots of its own and lo and behold - a huge blossom!


After a few weeks the fruits started sprouting and much later I had to cut off the blossoms to make room for the fruits to grow.


They weren't quite ripe yet when we left last April. Doret was teasing me since we're gone, he'll harvest them for us and will tell us how sweet they were when we come back!

On February 25 we had Father Sito celebrate mass at the house for Elijah's 40th day. During the mass I sang the two songs that I sang during Elijah's funeral service in Forest Lawn last January. I totally lost it while I was reading Eph's letter. Father Sito told me afterwards, "I didn't think you'll be able to finish it."

We had some food catered and Donna invited friends and relatives to join us for lunch after the mass.