Last Days of Disco

My last days in Manila were spent... wrapping things up. I got back to work and since I already started turning over stuff to puput beforehand there was less for me to do. Had some last minute meetings and last minute logistics and last minute crises, but otherwise I managed. I spent the last two weeks on leave, only coming in once a week to do meetings, check on the kids, coach and well, say goodbye. In Cebu, I spent it eating through everything. In Manila, I crammed like anything.

First I took swimming lessons for two weeks straight, which involved not smoking. My teacher, Mr. Bana, who is muslim, is this nice old guy who reminded me of one of my lolos. I started out being able to do everything just not at the same time. At the start of my second week (i actually only did 9 out of 12 lessons) I finally got all the freestyle put together complete with breathing so he got me onto breast stroke, which I prefer. On my last day we squeezed in a tiny bit of back stroke. He kept saying althroughout, "maganda yung stroke mo pag madevelop mo yan". Which basically means Im okay, but I could be better with practice - at least to me, anyway.

[Insert Boracay trip here. My cousins from Australia and my tita (who I would be moving in with when I got there) were here and we went to Boracay with my mum and another tita. Will insert an excerpt of my email explaining the entire thing later on. In fairness, the pictures turned out good. All I can say is, even if I love my family and we were all okay when I was there, the next time Im going with friends. Oh, and Jonas Fruit Shakes Rules. ]

I had four despedida parties. The first one was with my college group, where we all met at Breton and had crepes. Char & Ceres were actually together. I saw Rhoger for the first time in a gazillion years. Everyone was there. It was great. We moved to the house to have wine and I just barely missed Carlos. Fortunately Falx was still there to entertain him as he didnt have the time to move on to the house. Jen also slept over.

The second one was the next night and it was actually Den's birthday party at his house at Commonwealth. All the Dark Forces were there except for Lex and Ayu (evil ones). Had a great time catching up, although due to the massive amounts of wine that I had I slept for like two hours during the party. Right before that, I had lunch with Jen & Wati at Friday's. Impi our other high school friend backed out again, her being the doctor in residency that she is. Derrick came in from Pangasinan to go to Den's party so he ended up at lunch too. We all hung out at home before Derrick and I went off to the party. He ended up crashing in the guest room and the next day he fixed my blog - thanks to him the picture is nice and neat on top! - and we hung out watching tv. Celle came by to visit bec she wouldnt be able to come later on. Derrick then went home and I prepped for my 3rd despedida with the folks from the office.

Pooky & April passed by to drop off cds and eurotrip but they had a Valentine's Day date so they left right away. After them, Rey L, his wife Lizette and happy perky 3 year old Missy arrived. Missy was so excited and talkative. She kept asking "where's everybody?!?!" . She hung out with my mum - they both liked each other very much and she took care of entertaining all the guests that arrived. It was so cute. (It also caused JR to say, "I cant see what my future is..." referring to Bianca, his one year old) Rina & Hector arrived next, with three bottles of wine, two of them open and stale, and then Jason, who as taste tester of the spoilt wine came up with varying datu puti-esque expressions. Onie and Ayie came next with super yummy Aling Nene & Mang Siding's Barbecue, followed by Debbie & Oliv, who also brought barbecue. Mylee, the Puputs & JR arrived late because, well, they waited for each other in Eastwood. Mylee made some of her yummy dip and brownie cheescake. Ryan & Tap arrived followed by Erica, Elaine & JJ who came last. I think. Or maybe there's other people I forgot. :P Sorry. We drank a lot of wine, and I went with Ry & JR to buy red horse which they didnt finish and the driver ended up drinking it for his birthday (on Valentine's). We ended at around 3am.

On the 16th, I went to the office to pass in my resignation form. By then I'd already completed most of my clearance. I went around taking pictures and saying goodbye to everyone. It was...touching. The next day I went to the Makati office to do the same thing. Eunicelle cried, while Rache & Ava looked away to avoid doing the same thing. Celle was still crying when I left. There were some people I didnt get to see - Darrel, John, Trina and a bunch of others I didnt get to say goodbye to. In the end I turned in my id and left. That was the last I saw of my office. Heartbreaking.

I spent that entire week squeezing everything in. I went to the bank a gazillion times. I went to the dentist and two doctors. I had Joey rip songs into the portable day after day after day. Ceres slept over twice. Carl, San, Therese and I hung out Thursday night and all of us except Therese saw Constantine, which was a great movie. I went swimming practically every bloody day. I even squeezed in some editing, finishing the competencies for the technical growth path I helped develop for work. I worked out my packing but didnt pack until the day before. Or rather I had a pile that whittled down and kept getting even more whittled down. (Mom and Yayi, who did the actual packing, didnt finish until Saturday morning) I kept trying to organize stuff. I was sooo tired.

On my last night in the Philippines, I went out. I made Jason go on leave (he had to register his car anyway) so he met up with me and we had dinner in Casa Armas. I invited all possible people. Jake dropped by with his Rica, his girlfriend, an old friend of mine who I havent seen in years. Maricar was in Cebu (and I wasnt there!) so she couldn't make it. Onie dropped by. So did Oliv, who managed to convince Debbie to come even if she had a 7am shift the next day (thank you, girls!) . Puput backed out bec he had to attend a meeting since Donat was on leave. Most of the other people had work. We ended up drinking wine in Magnum. Onie took me home at around 3am, with Jason, who parked his car in front of my house due to lack of parking earlier. Said goodbye to my boys. Sad.

The next day was the ultimate epitome of harrassment. First, I got up early. We repacked. I went to the parlor. Mum and I had lunch. Jen and Joey arrived at the house and kept right on burning cds. Then suddenly it was time to go. I almost cried saying goodbye to my bathroom. Then the combination for the suitcase lock wouldnt work so they had to break it and use a real lock on the zip. My yayi and Nene both cried when I left. I put on my shoes in the car and then we got to the airport. And then. Well.

First, I had to pay 2 kilos overweight. That's okay. Then the lady security guard checked my hand carry and said it was too heavy (it was 11 kilos, we were told 10k was acceptable, but apparently it was only supposed to be 7) so i had to unload and give it to my mom who was waiting outside. When got back in, the girl wasnt there and the guy guards just waved me through! To add to that, i was wearing my MANGO ADDICT shirt, which indicates an addiction for the brand of clothing. Unfortunately everyone fromt he security guards to the Australian tourists thought it was an addiction to mangoes: "Hija, mahilig ka pala talaga sa mangga." Respeto. (Since I was all sweaty from running around and fixing luggage, I changed my shirt anyway)

In the end, I made it through and crashed at the smoking bar with three newly purchased packs of cigarettes (couldn't find the one's therese gave me, my room was like... well, it looked like a hurricane passed through it) and I smoked away while calling to say goodbye to EVERYONE. Finally we boarded and I got on. The flight was permanently turbulent. The plane shook the whole time and I woke up everytime the fasten seatbelt sign beeped, which was often. The steward was medyo sungs (they had to tell me 3 times to turn off my cellphone before lift off but we were still loading passengers then, usually you dont have to turn it off until everyone's sitting down.) . The girl sitting next to me was also studying in Sydney, at CQU. (We still havent figured out which uni that is) They woke us up at 430am (this is from an 9pm flight - we were an hour delayed) and they handed out perfumed hand towels that activated my allergies. When we touched down at Melbourne I ended up sitting behind this couple who were both pinoy, looked about my age and seemed like they lived together but were not married. They kept talking about their apartment and getting groceries and it was all sort of cute and chick novel like until the girl kept making hirit, "im going to get sipon, im going to get sipon" which sounded aimed at me since I was sneezing all over the place. I wanted to go, "Theyre allergies, ok!?! hindi ka mahahawa!". Finally, after abouta 20 min delay, we boarded the plane and off we were to Sydney.

At Sydney airport I queued for awhile to declare my pancit canton, sinigang mix and various medicines. When I got to the front of the queue, the guy checking asked a few questions and when I tolf him what I had he waved me through and I didnt have to have my stuff checked. My Auntie Genie was waiting outside and we went straight home where I slept the entire afternoon.

And so it was that I arrived in Sydney, Australia to begin my next adventure.