Hello from the Philippines! After a total of 29 hours travel time (from the time I left my Keene apt), I got home at around 11pm Sunday night. Since then, I’ve gone to 5 malls, 5 restaurants, got 5 CDs (I just noticed the 5s, freaky!), and must’ve gained, heck, 5 lbs too.
I’ve got so many stories of quirky stuff, and oh-I’m-back-in-the-Philippines stuff, it’s going to be hard to keep up. I’ll have to shorten everything, but let’s see…

1. Sunday night, at the airport, one of my mom’s friends has connections, so we were able to get VIP treatment at the airport. At immigration, he handled all our paperwork and put us at the Diplomat line, which had oh, at that time, one other person in line. At the 5 other lines, they had what was the whole plane’s number of passengers in line. That’s a lot. That’s got to be at least 100, right? Anyway, he took care of our bags too, so my sister and I didn’t have to do any lifting, or carrying, or anything. All I had to do was point out which one was mine. Sweet.

2. Monday, on our way to the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) to get our exit clearances for our departure (as overseas non-immigrant workers), we were stopped by a police officer for being on the bus lane. Our driver, my dad, and my mom kept reasoning with him and pleading to just let us go (since it was Christmas time and all). My mom even tried giving him money. Fortunately, he didn’t accept it and proceeded to write a ticket. After seeing that our driver’s birthday was that day, exasperated, he exclaimed, “Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday? You gave me so many excuses, when all you had to say was that it was your birthday today and I would’ve let you go!”. He ended up writing a fake name on the ticket, so that it doesn’t reflect on our driver’s records. Sweet.

3. At the POEA office, we had connections again, so instead of lining up to process our paperwork, someone else was doing it for us, and we were just seated for the most part, passing the 1000 people there. I’m exaggerating the number, I think. But it was a roomful of people, and supposedly, you had to go through a quiz of your benefits and stuff too! Oh well. At least I have my Overseas worker ID now! Sweet.

4. My dad, my sister, and I went to the driving range today. Here’s what you do. You drive up to the entrance, and stop your car at the entrance. A tee-girl will come over, open your trunk, and carry your golf clubs/set. She will ask you whether you want to be on the mat or on the ground. If you choose to be on the mat, she’ll ask you whether you want a tee or not. If you want a tee, she’ll proceed to put balls on the tee for you to hit, otherwise, she’ll just drop it on the mat. If you choose to be on the ground, they form mud tees for you for every ball (I think only if you choose to have tees). Anyway, I thought it would be really uncomfortable having a girl sitting there ready to put another ball every time you hit, but it wasn’t, really. She was very nice and very polite. Sweet.

I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting other things, but those are the ones I remember for now. The others will have to be photographed. Oh, I wish I had my camera then, but there was this obese guy at the POEA office who was showing a couple around the office while working on their papers. He was sitting on a high, rolling, office chair. And he proceeded to slide himself everywhere, even as he was talking to the couple, just so that he didn’t have to get up and walk. It was so funny, I had to face the other way, because I was laughing so hard. Oh, and one other thing, we overheard this conversation… (I think it was with the same guy who was rolling himself with the chair)

Some guy: Sir, when do you want this done?
Ob-guy: Before after-lunch.

If you can tell me what that means, leave me a comment. It’s nice being back home.

Whew, here are the pictures for the Christmas party! I finally put up another web picture album! I have so many lined up from summer, but I probably will never get the time to do all of them. I do them all by hand, you know - resizing the photos, writing the webpages, etc. I was telling Andy last night that if I were a real geek, I’d look for a good tool that would do that for me. And he corrected me by saying that if I were a real geek, I’d write the tool myself (which, ahem, he plans to do some time soon). Just for that, I think I might just write my own too.

Sha right.

Last week, we had the company Christmas party. I can’t remember having so much fun getting ready for a party as I did then. Vanessa, because she was so excited about dressing up, made me so excited too. Plus, I was part of the Christmas party committee too, so that contributed to the excitement as well.

I got my dress from her friend Pam’s bridal shop. I had no intentions of buying a dress for the party, but one Sunday, Vanessa was watching after Pam’s store and Andy and I stopped by to hang out with her. When things quieted down for the day, we both tried on a few dresses just for fun. I tried on 3 beautiful dresses, but really liked a particular green dress. Vanessa put on this beautiful 1920’s inspired beaded dress and was sold. When I found out that Pam could get the green dress in my size, I couldn’t resist myself and got it. Andy, as a present for who knows what, had apparently made a deal with Pam to help me out with my dress. So, thanks again, Andy!

Not knowing how to fix myself up (whatever, I’m a software engineer!), Vanessa helped me out with my hair. I was just going to borrow her hot curlers and try to put them on myself. Thankfully, Vanessa knew better and did it for me. The wednesday night before the party, I came over to her house and she set my hair. Having a trial run was a good idea, because with my hair, it just poofed and curled up to way over my comfort level. She also tried on this complicated twist using about 10000 hairpins, which in the end looked so cool. But I still wanted my hair down. It gives me something to play with when I get self-conscious. So, on Friday, for the actual thing, she knew just what to do. That night, as we were both putting on our make up, she saw that I had no clue about what I was doing - i.e., brand new make-up, no brushes. So she gave me a brand new set of brushes AND took over putting on my eye shadow. Thanks, Vanessa!

Andy was my date for the Christmas party. He was part of the surprise for the night, but wasn’t invited for the party because of technicalities, so he had to come with me. Boo. Kidding. I was a little uncomfortable in the beginning because I felt a little too overdressed, but I got comfortable as the night went on. The fun really started with the dancing. It was great to see people so uninhibited and so different from their usual personas at work. My boss, for example, was such a good dancer! He and Lois practically never left the dance floor the whole night! It was great!

The best part of the night though, was our little “surprise”. It’s apparently become tradition that a costumed surprise group gives out candy giveaways. This year, I was part of it. It was only supposed to be one of our managers, Chris, as Frosty, but he didn’t want to go down by himself. So he dragged me, Andy, and Jessica to be Hocus Pocus, Professor Hinkle, and Karen, respectively (characters from Frosty the Snowman). It was a riot walking out with him.

I think that’s basically all I can say about that. It was a fun night, and I look forward to next year’s party already! Pictures to follow.

So I got the pictures ready to post about the Christmas party, but I must’ve been tired, because I just woke up, and it’s the middle of Conan. I think I was watching Jay Leno before I fell asleep. So, sorry, Andy, the post about the Christmas party will have to come tomorrow.

So I’ve been called on for not updating my blog often. What can I do, I’ve been keeping myself busy. Actually, I was supposed to do so much tonight, but I ended up talking to 3 people back to back. I’ve been basically on the phone for about 4 hours - with Andy, Vanessa, TB, and ending with Andy. I was watching a movie, The Shipping News, which seems really interesting, if a little freaky. I’m just hoping it’s not scary, but I’m guessing it’s not, otherwise it wouldn’t have been recommended to me.

So, other than that, today I met with my little sister, Alexis. She’s very cute, but very shy. But as everyone I’ve talked to today said, it’s probably only just because she doesn’t know me and it’s our first trip together. We ended up going bowling and then having hot chocolate and cookies, and coloring and painting. I think she liked it even though I only just barely got 4 smiles out of her.

Lastly, today is Larry’s birthday! He got 2 balloons that had “55″ on them, so I proceeded to wish him a happy 55th birthday. Well, when I saw him at lunch, he was shaking his head because apparently, he’s not 55 just yet, and his birth year is not even 1955. So, he was puzzling over the reasoning behind 55, and I thought he was just kidding. Well, that and I couldn’t believe Vanessa would have it wrong. So, he actually had to take out his driver’s license and show me his actual birth date just so I would believe he wasn’t 55 yet. 55 and 47, yeah, I know that’s a big difference, but, what do I know?

I saw my first professional football game yesterday at Gillette Stadium with Kim and Andy. It was snowing, wet, and but, boy, it sure was fun! Picture drunk guys falling on you, snowball fights with cops bringing out the perpetrators, a jets fan getting slammed every which way sitting next to us, and huge guys flirting with you. Fun, fun, fun!

Highlight of the night: The friends of the drunk guy who tumbled over me were teasing him after he settled down, saying, “Sure, fall on the little girl”. He says, “She’s Tom Brady”, and proceeds to notice Kim’s, saying, “She’s Tom Brady too!”. Then, he exclaims, “They’re the Brady Bunch!”. Awesome.

The game itself was fun, I had commentary and explanations from Kim throughout the game. It was good to be at the top bleachers, coz we got to see the plays. During the 4th quarter, I actually stood up and cheered after an interception. Oh yeah.