I was at home for roughly 2 and a half weeks.

What did I do, you ask? I went to the Mall with my mom everyday. Well, mostly everyday at least. I also went to get coffee a lot. But, I stayed at home a lot too, which was what I really wanted to do anyway.

I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell while I was home. That’s about 750 pages. So yeah, I spent a lot of time at home.

Of course, the things I meant to do, I wasn’t able to. I wanted to practice driving so that I’ll be more confident driving here. I didn’t get in the driver’s seat once. I was freaking out too much with traffic and the way people drive to actually bring myself to do it. I didn’t know the roads anymore either. All the turns I used to do are now closed as well. Oh well. I was perfectly happy being drived around anyway.

The second thing I said I would do is go swimming everyday. I went swimming once. I completed the 50m lap 2 out of 8 (hopefully it was 10)? The other times I stopped in the middle for a breather. Pat’s dad who was there in the pool with me swam more than I did. It was pretty pathetic.

I had good food everyday. I had meat for almost every meal, even breakfast. My favorites are:
Breakfast:
– Salted and cured meat from my dad’s province. Tapa is what it’s called. (with rice)
– Salted egg with tomatoes (with rice)
– Pan de sal (incredibly good, local bread) with cheese spread
Dinner:
– Grilled tuna cheek (with soy sauce and lemon on the side). Man, this is sooooo good. It’s one of the things I loved before I moved to the US which I still love. I’ve lost the passion for my other favorites (i.e., tocino)
Dessert:
– I always, always eat fruit for dessert. My 2 favorites are atis (I can’t find the English name) and mangoes. Yummy. I like bananas too, but I never had one back home just because atis and mangoes are so much better. Philippine mangoes are THE BEST.

I think that’s my only favorite. The others I all equally liked anyway.

People love going to coffee houses there too. There’s about as many Starbucks in the Philippines as there are in LA, I bet. Of course, there’s all the other local coffee houses too. So I went to 3 different coffee houses with Ria (my neighbor), all within 15 minutes from my house, two were four stores apart. At the last one we went to, we stayed there for 3 hours talking non-stop. It was a bonding experience.

Meeting up with my old friends was the best too. It’s always great when you meet up with friends and it seems like you were never apart. That’s how it was. That’s what I miss here. My friends are too far from me and I have very few really close friends. Oh well. Trade offs, I suppose.

I saw three movies with my parents on three separate weekends: The Terminal, Bourne Supremacy and Feng Shui (local horror flick). It’s a pretty cool tradition of my family to watch movies and eat out together during the weekends.

Watching the Amazing Race was pretty awesome too. 2 episodes were devoted to the Philippines! People there are Amazing Race and Fear Factor addicts. They’ve already made local versions of the shows. Check okut the Amazing Race link, it has a write up on Manila.

The worst thing about the vacation? I was freaking scared of my own house at night. I had trouble sleeping because I was too scared to turn off the lights and the tv! I don’t know what it is about my home. I guess it’s because it’s always dark and you’re surrounded by superstition and people who really believe in that stuff.

Anyway, that’s it for me. I should try to get some sleep it’s 6:09 AM! Hopefully I’ll get to put up pictures soon.

Stupid jet lag. I start work on Friday, I gotta get regular.

So here I am all alone in Keene.

First thing I did before finally settling in? Buy food at the Asian store in Boston. Now I have Filipino soy sauce, good instant noodles, mango juice, and some other things I can’t recall right now. Of course I cooked today and realized too late that I didn’t have any spices at all. No salt, no pepper. Needless to say, it wasn’t very good.

When I got here, I stayed with my aunt and uncle. I planned to pick my car up first thing in the morning the next day but my uncle left kinda late so I got to the dealership to get my car around 2:30. So, with 2 hours of travel time, I’ll be in Keene by 4:30. That’s still pretty good, right? Sure, but not if you get freaking lost! I stayed on I-93 I don’t know how long until I saw signs for Maine! Maine’s about 2 hours from Keene! Ugh, I was so mad at myself. Fortunately, I wasn’t in Maine yet, so it only took me an hour and a half. Great.

So I rented 5 movies from Blockbuster because I don’t have cable yet. Here’s my list:
1. Office Space
2. High Fidelity
3. Stuck on You
4. The Guru
5. Half Baked

I really like the first 3, the last 2 are okay. I saw Half Baked solely to see what T does all the time, the “I’m from Jamaica, man… right near the beach” quote. That part was pretty funny.

High Fidelity was really awesome. I’ll be reading that book soon.

Speaking of books, I started reading Noli Me Tangere on the plane from Detroit to Boston. I was tired so I only got to read Chapter 1. It’s pretty good, and a lot more understandable than the Tagalog translation. Still, the Tagalog one seems slightly more beautiful than the English translation.

Anyway, I should really write about my visit home.

So many things happened this week I don’t even know where to start writing. I guess I’ll go with a summary:

1. Moved to Keene
– I drove the Uhaul truck to IKEA to get furniture. The next day, I drove it all the way up to Keene too! I was freaking out. My own sister couldn’t understand why I was freaking out so much, but imagine not driving for 3 years, then just a week after getting your license, drive a big Uhaul truck, for a 2 hour trip on the interstate. I was kicking ass though. I was driving up to 80 mph. I rule. Yeah, yeah, it’s no big deal, but I had broken my prior speed record, (~100km/hr) on a truck, so it’s a big deal for me. Shut up.

2. Stayed in Boston with my old roommies
– Tugba and Devrez were nice enough to welcome me back home. We assembled their new roommate’s furniture: bed and futon, and moved all her stuff into my old room. When I was leaving on Saturday, they even woke up to see me off! That’s a big deal for them, especially since they got home pretty drunk at 2:30 am. They were telling me to keep the keys too. That was too weird though. Having keys to my old place when I don’t live there anymore just doesn’t seem right. It’s nice to know that I’m welcome anytime though! Thanks, T&D!

3. Bought a car, registered in Keene, got NH driver’s license
– So on August 30, I go visit Boston VW. This is how my visit went:
Me: So, I talked to you before about the Jetta?
Dealer: Yeah, so you want to test drive it?
Me: Well, I want to talk about a few things first. (At this point I’m thinking, handle the financial questions, talk about the optional packages for the Jetta, customizing the car, etc)
Dealer: So, what do you want to talk about?
Me: (Uh-oh, I don’t know.) I’m actually new to this, so, uhm… I don’t know where to start!
Dealer: Well, some people like to test drive the car first before they buy it.

Of course the reason why I didn’t want to drive it is because I was still nervous about driving. Anyway, after that we talked about the pricing and everything. I made the mistake of saying, “Wow, that’s really cheap!” After he gave me a quote. So, no bargaining for this shopper.

All in all though, I got a good deal. I’m pay no interest, at about $300 a month for 5 years, and $1580 for premium insurance for a year with Progressive. I got a silver 2004 Jetta, with a moonroof, a solar battery charger, cold weather package: heatable seats and heaters for my wind shield spray, and defrosting side mirrors. Cool, yeah? Best thing about it though, I left it with them while I’m on vacation at home. I’ll get it back when I arrive in Boston, all waxed and vacuumed and clean. Yay! I hope they don’t use it for test drives.

After that I drove all the way up to Keene and then to Concord and then back to Boston. Of course I stayed over night in Keene to try and tidy things up a bit. But then I left my left-over Chinese food by the door. Good thing the agents at Princeton Properties were kind enough to take it for me and throw it away. Thanks, Addie!

Also, I’m officially a resident of Keene now. I registered my car there, and I got the driver’s license. Of course, that cost me $450. Yay. That left me with approximately $160 on my bank account.

4. Flew home
– Yup, 26 hours travel time. That’s all I can say about it.

– Wait, I actually can say something about it. On the flight home from Japan, there was this dude, 67 years of age who talked to me. He had just come from a month-long vacation in Chicago. Turns out, he went there to be with this lady, 64 years of age, who had a crush on him when they were kids. This lady is rich, but has no family. So when his wife died in 2000, the lady searched for him. The trip was a trial to see if they can get married. He said it didn’t work out. After all, “would you want to wake up in the morning and see an old lady beside you?” Yes, those were his own words, in Tagalog, of course.

– Amazing the things people talk about. All this he said after 2 minutes of talking to him. Isn’t that awesome?

5. Got junk out of my eye
– Ever noticed that white thing on my left eye? I had that removed today. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have touched it, but my mom’s the boss. It was excrutiating. Of course it didn’t really hurt that much, but imagine seeing somebody making slices on your eye. I could even see the blade moving! He did put topical anesthesia, before he started slicing though. After a few tries though, he realized it was in too deep and it had to be taken out via minor surgery. I’m glad he did that because the only thing that hurt was the injection, which really hurt a lot, by the way, more than injections usually hurt. The whole procedure was done under a microscope, with a small light right in front of my eye. That was a blessing. At least I could hardly see the blade. Now it’s done. no more junk in my eye. I had a cool eye patch for about an hour though. Now it’s just blotchy red. Sexy.