LAZY, LONG WEEKEND

Day 1 – Oct. 31, Halloween
As soon as our dept. meeting finished at about 11:30AM, I bumped into our factory manager who was making rounds in the offices, wishing everyone a good weekend. And so he asked me “Where’s the party tonight, Trixy?” Feigning innocence, I vehemently denied having any plans to go out, telling him that I was taking a good rest, just having recovered from my weeklong colds. I was not about to admit to this party girl image that my manager’s manager has of me, lest it’ll give him the impression that I’m not working hard enough. :-)
So anyway, I treated my engineers to lunch afterwards. One of my team members is leaving and it’s my way of saying thanks for the good contributions and accomplishments. I have been obsessing about this situation for weeks, feeling somehow bad that I could not convince him to stay. With my long 1:1’s with him, I got quite a few doses of reality. Although we have a good and stable company, and relatively a great place to work at that, higher monetary compensation is just too good an offer to pass up so one can support a growing family with only one breadwinner. :-(
That night, I had dinner with my family (brother, sisters and brothers-in-law) at Congo Grill. It was really hard giving my order to the waiter donning a hunchback costume ‘coz he looked so darn real. It was harder even to eat with the ghost of Balete drive watching nearby. I felt like I was eating inside a haunted house, instead of in a resto! Talk about a clever way to implement your diet. Whatever happened to fairy, little mermaid and M&M costumes, anyway?
Later that night, I partied with friends I met through the internet (I’ll save the explanation in another blog) ‘til dawn at Strumm’s, then, after packing my stuff and my travel Piglet pillow, my bro and I headed to Subic at 3AM.

Day 2 – Nov. 1, All Saints’ Day
Never travel right after gmik, spec. if you’re drunk, even when you’re not driving. My head was spinning and aching and I could not go to sleep ‘coz I was so scared that my bro would, and I wouldn’t be awake to wake him up. I sound like I’m still drunk. Anyway, we got to Subic about 5:30AM, so you get an idea how fast utol was driving!
We shopped the whole day, and I ended up buying stuff I didn’t need again. Grabe, must have been the heat. We were supposed to go karting, but the sun was just stinging us way too bad! Anyway, we went back that night, only to find they closed at 10PM, so did the cosmic bowling. So we headed off to play pool. I have never taken up this sport in college, so I suck in this game, but after a couple of hours playing, I actually had so much fun, we extended another hour. As we went home, I felt like I was Black Widow already (I wish!) :)

Day 3 – Nov. 2, All Souls’ Day
I just discovered that Filipinos traditionally visit their dead on All Saints’ Day instead of All Souls’ Day. I was wondering about this when I noticed a lot of shops were closed on Nov. 1 but Nov. 2 was just like any regular gimik Friday! Could it be because we are all secretly hoping our dead will end up in heaven, no matter what? Anyway, our plan to go to the beach got dropped after I complained that it was way too sunny! Okay, folks, I think I had enough sun exposure back in high school to last me a lifetime so I’m not exactly the type who’d get excited to get a tan these days. I was more than tan back then! So we ended up watching a movie and going bowling. That night, we went to the night tiangge because I wanted to get ideas on what to sell in our tiangge endeavor later in December. Oh, and we went to play pool again!

Day 4 – Nov. 3 – like any regular Saturday
Definitely, ‘coz I woke up to the sound of my cellphone ringing. Yup, it was from work. I had a series of other phone calls the whole morning. To de-stress myself, I went to the salon in the afternoon and had my nails done and hair washed and treated. Went to visit the dentist for my quarterly oral prophylaxis. Felt great and recharged. Spent the late afternoon watching go-kart race. Then went home to watch the race to the 13th by the Black Widow and Bata Reyes. Darn, tough luck for women! But ok, still happy since Bata is Filipino, and we should be proud of our countrymen, right?

Day 5 – Nov. 4 – transition to reality Sunday
Woke up early to watch game 6 of the World Series (Madz – a friend from Seattle, got me hooked to baseball when the Mariners made it to the championships last year). What a great game by Arizona Diamondbacks! 15-2, with 8 runs scored in one inning! I’m a Yankee fan (I’m talking Pettitte, Rivera, Williams and Jeter here), but I’m rooting for the underdog in this year’s finals mainly because I have always considered Arizona my preferred home in the U.S. But of course, I can’t help but feel sorry for Andy with his dazed look after what has been his shortest postseason outing. So happy for the D-Backs, though, hope they win the World Series! (Have work tom., can’t watch the game. Sad.)
Headed back to Manila in the mid-afternoon. Traffic was not (bad) as expected. After a pit stop at Café Breton, we arrived in my Makati apt. only to be greeted by a brown out, no less! Shucks, who can live without electricity and technology these days?! Can’t eat ‘coz can’t microwave food, and can’t heat water to even eat instant lugaw! Also lost water supply, so can’t wash dirty mugs. Logged in internet (no battery-operated radio, as if that's still existent!) to try to search news 'bout what’s going on, only to drain battery after about 15mins., before finding the answers (ok, so I took a “detour” and read my emails first). So, I frantically text’d all my family and friends, to find out what happened, and discovered that there was a Luzon-wide black out (so that was why the MRT was suspiciously at a stop in Cubao, even if there was no station nearby) and the whole Luzon was one with me in my dilemma, trying to survive the very humid, electricity-less night. True to their commitment, though, lights went back after four hours of complete darkness, and yipey, just in time for me to watch “Will and Grace”. Still have not eaten dinner. Was too lazy to drive to Powerplant (about a km. away from home).Too late to eat now, though. Hah, another ingenious way of sticking to diet.

Would luv to know about ur long weekend, too. :-)