Manila, part I



It always amazes me whenever I see girls wearing heels on snow days. I mean, how is it that they can walk on ice supported by sticks? These girls must be the same ones who never look one bit ruffled even with 60 mph gusts. They can walk through rain without getting wet. They never sweat, even in the midst of a heat wave. They're weather-proof.



Sadly, I am not that girl. Yesterday, I made the mistake of thinking I was. I wore my trusty (or so I thought) black heels to church, thinking that I'd change into sneakers if it started snowing. I hadn't taken more than three steps down the stairs when my left foot skid on a wet patch and I traveled via butt the rest of the way.



Those slapstick comedies have got it down pat. That's exactly how it happens - foot slips, butt makes contact with step, jaw drops and eyes widen, while butt slides down each step seemingly in slow motion. And that foot-sliding thing really propels you downward, you can't stop. One can only wish one doesn't break anything.



When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I just sat for five minutes, petrified of moving a broken leg or arm or neck. In the cab, I checked for bruises and discovered my whole left thigh is one big bruise. I also discover a new bruise every time I touch a solid surface.



Today I thought I'd make like a football player and sit in a tub full of ice, but it IS freezing, so I just sat on a towel on my couch and rubbed ice on my thigh. Hopefully, it'll only turn five colors instead of six.

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I had a blast during the holidays. My sister, my cousin Josh, and I left for the Philippines during a snowstorm. It took Josh four hours to drive from New Jersey to JFK. He would have been late for our flight, if it hadn't been delayed for three hours.



We had a three-hour stopover in Hong Kong, and we hopped on the train to the other terminal in search of a Starbucks. We found coin-operated massage chairs, roughly $1 for 10 minutes, clearly a steal as it was the best massage I've had, ever.



In Manila, we found out that the hotel we'd booked online was a dump. It was in Makati's red light district, which is a stone's throw away from Powerplant. Powerplant is Makati's swankiest mall, and the area immediately surrounding it is really quite beautiful. Our hotel, however, although very near Powerplant, (and this we took to mean it would be a decent hotel) isn't in the immediate area.



It would have been all right if our room was clean, but it looked like it hadn't been used in months. Unfortunately, it was too late to look for another hotel. I was running late for dinner with my high school friends. I called up my friend Kath, who told me Intercon had a Christmas promo thing. When I called up Intercon, the girl in reservations gave me an even lower price than the promo price, which had me and my sis deciding we'd move out the first thing the next day, even if we didn't get a refund from the old hotel. (Incidentally, my sis and I hadn't been speaking in months, and the whole hotel thing actually got us to cooperate with each other.) And so we left for separate dinners feeling quite proud of ourselves.



Andrea, Jared, Marlon, Roselee, Alej, Ariane, Wendell, and Paolo were waiting at Tequila Joe's, where we ended up staying for dinner because everyone was getting hungry. Of course, I got lost in Glorietta. Sheesh, it's only been three years since I've been to Manila and I had no idea where everything was. Afterwards, we decided to look for a coffee place so we could talk. Mario, who came to visit me last year, caught up at Greenbelt. Marlon, Mario and I had our pictures taken in memory of our collective geekhood. In high school, we had called ourselves "M cubed", as we'd all sat in the same row and all our names started with M. (I was "Msub3", had an intense fondness for sleep, and Marlon and Mario would take turns waking me up when the teacher wrote new notes on the board.)



We ended up at a Starbucks a block away from Greenbelt, far from the madding crowd. Apparently, everyone hangs out at Greenbelt, where I saw Joey Odulio, who I spent countless afternoons at the AMP room with and who I haven't seen since maybe 2000.



At Starbucks, we sat around a huge table and reminisced, and wondered how quickly ten years could have gone by. I practically grew up with these guys. I spent my formative years with them. We go way back, when the girls had thicker eyebrows and the guys tucked in their shirts and didn't drink beer yet. We were all extra close in high school because there were only fifty of us and a lot of us had to stay in the dorm. I have distinct memories about each one.



One reason I was so bummed about leaving the Philippines was because I wouldn't get to see my high school friends as often. Plus, the fact that we were all supposed to be engineers and scientists and I felt like a traitor, but that's another story.



We had been in Starbucks for an hour when we remembered that we had told Lloyd we were meeting at Greenbelt. Poor Lloyd had been waiting there for an hour. Drey and Paolo went to get him and we split up when the guard at Starbucks started turning the chairs over.



{The Herb, Ciudad}