Monday Malling Palling w/ the Pelinas (or Chasing CoffAmy)

On special occasions I give myself the rest of the afternoon off from work. Who am I kidding, the hard work is usually done by lunch and the afternoons are spent looking for useful things to do around the office. Good thing then this Monday afternoon I had useful things to do and special people to see.

After bank errands and picking Jian up from school, I drove out to SM MoA to meet long unseen college classmate, Facebook chat buddy and Flixster soulmate Amy Yap Pelina (after almost a decade of long-time-no-see-ness), along w/ her husband, fellow comic/movie/TV geek Marc and their bibliophile daughter Trinity. They had just gotten back from a weekend trip to Batangas, and Marc was sporting the consequences of not having placed enough (or any, I think) sunblock on his person. Supermom was on her 2nd-but-definitely-not-the-last container of non-migraine curing coffee (inside joke). Trinity took an extended LOA from her school.

We met outside (and later ate inside) Cafe Mediterranean, exchanging presents, sort of. As they were kind enough to bring the books and T-shirts I (and Lola, respectively) ordered, in my attempt at being a gracious host I wasn't showing up empty-handed. In hindsight I underestimated Trinity's voracious reading appetite and should have gotten her more than the first 2 volumes of the Doraemon series, as she finished the Vol. 1 after lunch and Vol. 2 after dessert at The Coffee Bean.

After the hearty meals we went the IMAX Theater to watch Avatar , w/c is now first on my "Longest 3D Movies Ever Watched On An 80-Foot Screen" list. The first scene w/ Sam Worthington's character Jake waking up in the space station had its best affect on me, and I "felt" the screen tilt along the rest of the movie while it was depicting weightlessness. Got kinda sleepy in the 2nd Act, more alert in the 3rd (explodo scenes will do that), and for some reason watery-eyed (not teary-eyed, this ain't a touchy-feely chick flick) for the rest of the movie. Same thing happened w/ Trinity, w/c I assumed was our eyes trying to catch up w/ all the 3D action and not succeeding 100 percent. Not that I blame them, 'coz that movie was long, all 2++ hours of Titanic, Return of the Jedi, Robocop, Aliens, Lord of the Rings and Pocahontas homages and countable cliche lines. That said, it wasn't bad.

After the movie we went to the bookshops looking for origami paper and looking at interior design books, etc.. and window-shopped, all to pass the time while waiting for Marc's cousins to arrive. I felt sorry for Trinity having to walk around a huge mall w/ 3 grown-ups around the time that's too late for merienda but too early for dinner. If I was 8-years-old I'd be tired and hungry as well. When the cousins finally arrived we had Chinese for dinner (Marc's treat) and Starbucks for a nightcap.

On the odd and rare instance like tonight, Mom didn't call to check up on me. Has she finally realized I'm over 30? Nope, more likely (as I found out) it was because she and Pa also went out to dinner tonight, and I managed to get home ahead of them.