California Nov. '08

Last night, my brother-in-law, Cong Francis came to our house in Greenfields from Baguio. With the number of people going with us to the airport, we were quickly running out of room in the Innova. I had to call Lando, our scheduled driver, to cancel out his services. After the airport, they went to Muntinglupa for Leda's blessing of her new building.

We were going to leave the house this morning at 6 but ended up leaving at 6:45. We really waited till the last minute to pack this time. It was the day of our flight, right after we woke up and we were still packing our fourth and last Balikbayan box.


There was plenty of time to meet Sherwin and his girlfriend Pam at the Jollibee by the airport, though. They were taken by his brother Jojo.

Sherwin had a bit of a problem with his luggage, however: a) he brought this Parol in a crate but the crate turned out to be too big and he has to pay $150 to take it with him; b) his Mom had him take some longganisa with him to give to their relatives in the US; c) he didn't weigh his check-in luggage and it was several kilos overweight. He had to transfer some of his stuff into ours which surprisingly are way underweight this time, especially our 2 hand carried luggage.


He decided not take the parol with him and he ended up calling Jojo so he can have him take it back.

The flight to Taiwan was uneventful. Sherwin enjoyed walking around in the new Taipei terminal. There's even a gate C3 dedicated to Hello Kitty.

The flight to LA from Taiwan was pretty bumpy though. Still, it didn't prevent me from being able to watch two movies, Wall E and the new X Files movie, and sleeping most of the way. I started to watch Tropic Thunder but was too tired and fell asleep. Food on the flights was pretty decent. They served this dessert on both flights, shaped like a shell fish with some kind of ground sweet beans inside.


We landed a little after lunch. Immigration and customs were really crowded at the LAX's Tom Bradley terminal. Sherwin's longganisa got confiscated. We were pleasantly greeted by Eph by the waiting area and Sherwin was picked up by his cousin's son.

I wanted Eph to take us to Samurai, my favorite Japanese restaurant here but Donna reminded us it's closed between 2 to 4 pm. So we went to another one in La Mirada close to Emy and Nido's place.