Sept. 4: Two months ago I was drafted to photograph the engagement of a family friend's daughter. This time I was there to capture the wedding at the local Baptist church on Kalaw Street. No word on whatever happened to the released doves. |
| United Nations! |
Sept. 6: Dee invited me and Eileen (and later on the Coron Group) to meet 2 foreign travel agent friends she met at a recent travel expo. Jam Al-Shuray is Arab-Russian, while Mehdi Hosseini is Canadian-Iranian. Between the two of them they are 2/3 of a Benetton ad. Dinner was at Mesa in Greenbelt 5 since the 2 of them wanted to experience eating Filipino food but Dee thought Gerry's or Dencio's wasn't classy enough. We went to M Cafe for a nightcap, but moved to Dillinger's when M proved to be deader that disco.
Sept. 9: Continuing her trend of taking foreign friends out to dinner and drinks, this time Dee treated me and her friend Cedric --who hails from Hong Kong but has a good command of Tagalog-- to Nabantei at Greenbelt 3. In return I took us all out for gelato. Unfortunately Cedric couldn't join us for a nightcap at Fat Michael's in Ortigas, where Medhi showed up (after flying out days ago but returning immediately after). That is one bored travel agent.
Sept 10: Another attempt at scheduling Movie Night at Dee's place was more or less thwarted when Bday celebrant Kester arrived early but every else was late or absent. What was supposed to be a screening of Bridesmaids turned into Kes and I watching The Proposal to kill time while waiting for everyone else. As Dee (and a friend who was visiting from Indonesia) showed up, they opted to watch a poor copy of Sucker Punch, but I couldn't stay to finish either that or the rest of the mini-cakes Dee bought. I gave Kes a hardcover of Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev's Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D..
Sept. 12 and 15: The picture of our mango tree on the left was taken 3 days after the guys Ma hired from Manila Seedling came and confirmed that it was infested with termites. Three days after that more guys from MS came, this time armed w/ ropes and a chainsaw. The image of the right shows what was left after some major pruning. Now more sunlight than ever beams into our office.
Sept. 17-18ish: While the 'Rents were vacationing in South Korea (courtesy of Holcim), I got to partcipate in a mooncake dice game at Dee's, w/c had a buy-in fee of 200 bucks. Fifth prize (or 1 of a kind) got you a Curly Top, but even that was demoted to a consolation prize. While I didn't win grand prize I at least won one of the second prizes (P200), essentially getting my money back. The better part of the evening's entertainment went to the first of the drinking games, dubbed "shi shi shwa shwa."
It was a variation of the Finger Guessing game (w/c sounds dirtier than intended), but instead of guessing the right number of fingers pointed out, you just had to get a higher number than your opponent as long as it's the subsequent number (i.e. 5 fingers beat 4, but does nothing for 3 to 0 fingers; 4 fingers beat 3, but nothing for 5 or 2 to 0, and so on) Suffice to say I was attentive enough to stay sober.
Sept. 23: Old college classmate Carmen Gonzales (now a senior flight attendant at Emirates) was in town, both for vacation and to visit her little brother Serafin (aka Afi) who underwent ACL (knee) surgery. We all met up at Makati Medical Center, where I was also introduced to Camen's parents, Afi's semi-psychic friend Rashmi (I say "semi" because she only seemed to guess correctly w/ women while striking out 3x on me) and Johnyan Koa (and his wife), master franchise owner of Cha Time in Manila, if not the whole country. Being senior guest, John was nice enough to treat us to a late dinner at the Pancake House located inside the hospital, w/c by the way was still using those old-school pneumatic tubes for disseminating documents.
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