My "going-home" boo-boos and yeah-yeahs list

Having spent about a week in Manila was not a cakewalk, but the following boo-boos made it just a little bit worse, although the yeah-yeahs seem to make it all worthwhile. I hope the list helps you out there planning to go home :)

BOO-BOOs:

Left Driver's License. You only actually need a license when (1) you get caught by those traffic enforcers, and (2) when you get caught in an accident. With these in mind, I always had that nagging feeling whenever I'm driving around the Metro... Yep, not the best feeling at all... which only makes you even more prone to accidents... :(

Left ATM card. What's worse than your wallet with missing driver's license? Your wallet with no money whatsoever! I already transferred cash into my ATM account in Manila (since remitting from SG to Manila has better rates than converting through money changers in Manila). Of course, that is useless if your ATM card is not with you. Darn! Good thing, we had a simple workaround: transfer funds into another ATM that you have access to (such as the ATM of your parents!) This was a bit of a hassle, but it's better than not having any cash at all!


No traffic "intelligence report". Traffic was so heavy, we spent the entire morning crawling through the South Luzon Expressway. I guess if I had tuned in to one of those traffic watch programs, I would have taken the Skyway or any other alternate routes. Oh well... That's a half day wasted. This is perhaps the worst case of "waste"... You waste time, energy, gas (and consequently money) in the middle of a damned highway. The only good thing here is that we were stuck in traffic in our entire stay only once.

Unset alarms. You'd expect some days in which you would have to stay up real late and, as such, you are expected to wake up late as well... However, time is not on our side. Alarms should have been set so as not to waste two or three hours to sleep. It's only a small thing to overlook, but one that cost us several hours... Multiply that by several days and you'd almost have a full day lost to sleep... Not the healthiest choice, sure, but we could have grabbed some sleep after finishing whatever tasks we had for the week... Oh well....

Planned a not-so flexible agenda. Many items in our list were not done mainly due to "surprises". At one time, we had unexpected (but welcome) visitors which practically cleared out the rest of our day. Our timetable was so tight, there was very minimal room for adjustment. Surprises like this forced us to leave out some items undone.

Not-enough days! One week -- actually, 5 workdays plus the 4 weekends, inclusive of the in and out flights -- is simply not enough! It was just enough time to finish off some loose ends, but not enough to actually enjoy the stay. One week would have worked for a non-flexible and completely predictable time. Otherwise, it's just not enough... :(

Note to self: next time, plan a two-week vacation at the minimum.


YEAH-YEAHs:

Meet family, friends and colleagues. What's better than meeting the ones we've left behind after a long time? Although sadly, we didn't get to meet everyone due to time constraint. But I guess we were able to meet with the people that we really needed to meet with anyway, so that's fine. :)

Home. No matter what you say, home is home, and there's nothing like being home after a long time... Well, in our case, it's actually just a few months, but still... In our case at least, we had three homes: our actual house where we live (or used to live), Che's parents' house (with all her pamangkin's including the newest one, Keisha), and my Dad's house (where I grew up and is the "gathering point" of my clan). Spending time in all three is very refreshing.

Eat foods missed. Needless to say, food abroad is nothing like food in Manila. So which foods did we have? Well, there's Jollibee's chicken and breakfast meals, Tapa King's Tapa Queen (the sweet and spicy one, I think), Goldilock's puto and mamon, and, of course, the home-made dishes (too many to mention). Aside from these, we brought back to SG some of the things that you'll never find there: Purefood's Tender Juicy Hotdogs, Purefood's Salami, Purefoods Corned Beef (simply the best corned beef for me), Century Tuna (Hot and Spicy), laurel leaves (bay leaves) and banana blossoms (puso ng saging) for the paksiw, different types of tuyo and daing, Filipino curry powder (i.e., our local yellow curry powder, not to be confused with SG's fiery red curry powder), bunch of chichiryas like Kirei, Oishi and Tortillos, and, of course, my favorite sandwhich spreads -- Cheez Whiz and Lady's Choice Guava Jelly. Actually, my favorite since way, way back was the Peanut Butter with Guava Jelly Stripe. If I'm not mistaken, it's either Lady's Choice or Kraft. Well, it no longer exists today, sadly, so I'd settle with the Guava Jelly with any brand of peanut butter such Lily's.

Note: Wow! What a long entry for food! Hehehe...

Had our first-time massage. We never really had a massage together before. So we thought that it was a good time as any to do it. We went to the Relaksasi in Park Square I in Makati. We went for the Combination massage. Hu-wow! What a massage! Maybe next time, we'll try their so-called signature massage, the Balinese massage. Almost twice the cost of the combination massage... That better be worth it! :)

Note to self: Include massage in the itinerary of any homecoming vacation.

Dealt with our wedding photo package. Yep, at long last...after more than a year and a half, we finally met again with our official wedding photographer to finalize our photo album. Allan Boras, excited as ever to take pictures, was more than happy to accomodate us. :) He still definitely exhibits that passion of his for photography. Here's a guy that just loves taking pictures. :)

Triggered retro-gaming. Checking out our PC at home, I came across one of the best games I've every played: Baldur's Gate 2 - Shadows of Amn. It's one of those early 2000 RPGs (role-playing games) based on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game. To make the long story short, I installed the game in our laptop (thank God, the game is compatible with Windows Vista!) and started playing on my free time. :)

Helped one of my cousins. We learned that one of my cousins is already graduating from college. Her life would be made easier if she had her own PC to use. Those reports can be a real drag if you don't have your own PC. Well, we wouldn't be using our PC anyway, so we gave a PC to her. Hope she makes the best of her final year in college!

Well, that's all for now. :)