Here On Earth

It’s Chayan’s birthday today and that explains why all of us; dad, mom, HM and I are in the Philippines now. All of us arrived in Manila on Friday morning at about 5am, 30 minutes ahead of schedule. By 5.30am, Manila is already brightly lit like 8am in Malaysia. It was rather hectic and exhausting yesterday as after I returned from my offsite meeting at 6pm, I quickly rushed to send Captain Midnight to the pet shop for 6 days boarding, pick up my parents, have dinner and rush home to pack my clothes. By 10am, we were already on the way to the airport and... wa lah.. we are now in Manila.

Upon arriving at the hotel at 5:30am, my brother, CM brought us to McDonalds and that was then I lost my husband to McD’s. He was thrilled to find that McDonalds serves pork ham in their McBreakfast. Ever since then, he will keep bugging me to go to McD’s. Both HM and I didn’t joined my parents, CM, SIL and Chayan for lunch as we snoozed away till evening where we went to Mall of Asia for dinner. That was then I realized that civilization exists in the Philippines but due to the enormous poverty gap, most of the people I see on the road are the impoverished ones who live in jeepnes and under the bridges like vagrants. It’s quite sad to know the corruption and bribery of the government has caused the standard of living lowly poor and demeaning. When I landed in the airport, I was overjoyed to know that I’ve set my foot on the land where Lea Salonga was from but upon seeing the people on the streets, now it makes sense why even Lea Salonga lives in the states and not here. If I am a rich Filipino, I wouldn’t even want to stay here unless I am a cunning, sugar-mouthed politician.

On Friday, rather than waking up at 6am, HM and I slept through till 9:40am. I missed McBreakfast and there’s barely any quality WiFi around the island since the hotel charges everything. The hotel charges about Ps2,000 to access the hotel WiFi so both HM and I said forget about it. I can’t be paying over RM$150 just for internet. We’re not so addicted at all and my office work can wait. I applied legitimate leave anyway.


We went to Chow King for lunch and the fried chicken was delicious. HM begs to differ about his sweet and sour pork though because the portion was so extremely small, even baby Chayan can finish the whole portion all by himself. After lunch, we went to Makati area for shopping spree. HM and I walked to the old wing so we didn’t really get to see branded shops until at the end of our shopping trip. I spotted Bottega Venneta outlet but HM just can’t help but to pull me to the exit door. For dinner, CM brought us all to Max’s Restaurant where we had Filipino authentic food. We had pig’s trotter, prawn fritters, sour and salty soup with prawns and fried chicken (Don’t ask me what’s it’s called in Tagalog. If I knew, I wouldn’t have generically titled all the dishes). One thing I noticed is that the drinks here are so extremely sweet. I find the drinks and desserts are so offensively sweet despite I have sweet tooth and no wonder the Filipinos will be diabetes when they hit 50.

Anyway, all in all is still fantastic to be away from work, traveling, sight-seeing, eating (lots of purple colored ube cake – my fav), shopping and spending time with my family. Love ko to !