Quick Encounter with Friends

Yesterday I was so happy to see a lot of my old friends in the Catholic renewal group I was in before. We saw each other at a birthday party that my good friend brought me to. She didn't tell anybody I was coming so they were all shocked and happy to see me and my little tot. I saw same old faces, but a lot of them had put on weights like I did, lol. We had some good laughs and we reminisced the old times. It was a very quick encounter but I know we will still get-together in the days to come, maybe in a girls-night-out party to talk about the best weight loss supplements there are because we look like we need them badly ;-). The girls are talking about taking me out to ballroom dance one of these nights, and I look forward to that. I can't wait to dance again.

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Pampering Massages and Spas

The first three weeks of my vacation were really exhausting but I'm happy to be able to accomplish a lot of things in the home front, one being, the successful 50th wedding celebration of my parents. Now I have a lot of pampering time for myself that I've been wanting to have in a long time. Every time we come home for vacation, we stay for a few days usually over a weekend at the house of our generous good friends who live in the posh area of Alabang. I hired a driver to drive us there, that's one thing I so love about being here, I can easily hire help when I need one. I don't have much patience driving through the heavy traffic in Manila.

Anyway, on Friday I had the time of my life at the spa center. Though I didn't do the usual body scrub, I got an hour and a half of warm body massage and it was so relieving. I threw out all my cares in the air especially so that my son was with one of the nannies of my good friend playing with her son at a nearby play area. Also for the first time, I enjoyed eating at a resto and chatting with my good friend because my son was being fed and watched by a nanny. Then at night my good friend treated me to a home service of foot spa with pampering massage and pedicure and manicure. Wow I felt like a queen for the day.

In the Philippines you can get all these pampering services at only a fraction of your dollar, and they're quite addicting I must say. My good friend confessed that massage and spa are two of the habits that she couldn't break anymore. If only they're not so expensive in the States I can easily get hooked on them.

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Food Cravings

One thing I like about being 'home' is I can eat the food that I like anytime I want it. I've been craving for fresh crabs since I arrived and yesterday my mom cooked some for me. It was so good I must have eaten half of the rice in the pot. I don't care much about gaining weight at this point since I rarely eat this kind of food. I'll worry about losing the excess weight later, I can always have diet pills to take care of that, lol. Then after sumptuous lunch of fresh crabs, I craved for sweet and cold Halo-Halo (mixed cooked fruits in ice and milk) but I was too bloated to drive to the mall to get some. I'd probably take my little tot to the play area again in the mall today and afterwards I'll treat us to some Halo-Halo.

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Your Dollar Goes a Long Way

The humidity here is really killing me. Most of the times, I don't feel like getting out of my room anymore to keep myself cool and fresh. But of course I have to take my little tot somewhere to keep him busy. I usually drive to a nearby mall to take him to a play area called Wonderland. Wonderland charges really cheaply, I only pay P100 ($2.10) for an hour and there are tons of stuffs to keep him occupied there. Then I discovered another place called Kids' Village which charges only P180 for unlimited number of hours, what a great deal.

Last week I took my little tot to a children's salon which only charges P225 ($4.74) for a haircut. In Filipino standard this can be very expensive since you can get an P80 or even P30 haircut in a barber shop. But what the heck. I pay $21 for my son's haircut in the states - $16 for the cut and $5 for the tip, so a $4.74 haircut is really very cheap. He enjoyed pretending to drive a car while getting a haircut and he's also watching his fave Cars movie on dvd.

My hb and I used to talk about moving over here when we retire because our dollars will go a long way here, everything is too cheap and you can get practically everything you want. We can always hire cross country moving companies to move all our things from US to here. But the thing is, my hb can not live in a very hot weather continuously. I don't blame him. Even if I lived most of my life in a tropical weather, I couldn't stand the humidity here anymore.

At Wonderland, playing with a girl friend Valerie

At a kids salon, getting a much needed haircut

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Summer Vacations

Every summer, my family and I take trips in and around the states or overseas. Few years ago we had Carolina (North and South) and Gatlinburg vacations. We’ve been to several parts of the east coast; and some parts of the west coast and northwest states. We’ve been to different places in Canada too like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Victoria. We’ve been to Hongkong several times and once in England. And of course we've been to several tourist destinations in the Philippines. But little tot was not in the picture yet when we had most of those vacations. This one in the Philippines would be our first time to enjoy his company. I just hope that hb can join us next month. My son has been missing him already, he keeps pretending talking to dada on my cellphone. And every time we get ready to go anywhere, I would ask my son where we were going. He would always say "to see dada at the train station". My hb has not been to Baguio or Boracay yet, I hope the weather will permit us to visit there next month.

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Unbearable Traffic and Distracting Billboards

Yesterday, I fetched my 15 year old niece in Bulacan. We came from Cavite (south) and drove to Bulacan (north) and back. No I was not the one driving, I hired two drivers to drive for us. One driver drove up to Manila and another from Manila to Bulacan and back to Cavite. I commend their patience and perseverance driving through the traffic and road conditions here. I usually don't have the confidence to drive here yet in a week or so after arrival. It will take a lot of courage and confidence again to drive in the busy, crowded and unruly roads of the Philippines. Anyway, we left Cavite at 7:30am and arrived in my house in Manila at 10:30am. Then we drove to Bulacan and arrived there at 1pm. Needless to say it was a very exhausting trip.

My niece is also vacationing from HK and my brother didn't want her to commute in public, thus our ordeal of picking her up, lol. Well, I wouldn't blame him for over-protecting his daughter, my niece is so tall and pretty and I could catch people taking second glances at her all the time. She would easily pass for a print ad model in one of those big billboards at the stretch of EDSA, which are very distracting anyway. Geez, I wonder how drivers can drive without getting distracted by those billboards.

Anyway, aside from going to church last Sunday, yesterday was our very first time to really go out. My son enjoyed the ride because he saw a lot of different new sights. He particularly liked the view of the MRT/LRT trains as if moving side by side with our car. He thought we were chasing the trains and he screamed with excitement.

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Downside to a Great Vacation

Since we arrived here, I've been eating too much again. It is hard to resist my mom's cooking, they are just excellent. And of course its good to eat freshly cooked food again, unlike the usual microwaved ones that we eat back home. Over the weekend my sister and her family came with my niece's birthday food and cake. I had too much to eat again. On Sunday after church, we had an extension of her birthday at McDonalds too. I'm only at the first week of my vacation and it is still a long way to go. With the rate of pigging out I'm going, I might need the best weight loss diet pills I could get to get back to where I was. Gaining weight is certainly the downside to a great vacation.

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Very Warm Weather

I’m glad to be at my home at last, resting in my cool and quiet room instead of sitting for endless hours in a crowded and noisy plane. But the humidity here is killing me, it is just too unbearable. After taking a shower, it wouldn’t take long to feel very sticky and sweaty again. I take at least two showers each day and I already get sweaty just coming out from the shower. Yup that's how bad it is. This is one of those rare occasions when I would prefer winter over summer, lol. My face is about to breakout acne too, I always do on warm season. My son and I have filled up the hamper with sweaty clothes in just few days. Our sleeping hours are still not normal yet; we’re still on US time zone, asleep in the morning and wide awake at night. I also haven’t had good internet connection since I arrived, so I’m a constant fixture at my good friend’s house (we’re just a house apart) to connect to her wifi to check and reply to my e-mails at least. I hope to be back to normal soon.

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Confront the Challenges of Informaton Security

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