The Road to 40 Day 158/365: Planning No Plans

It’s our first full day in the Philippines, and while it felt like we didn’t do anything much, it also felt busy. Maybe because of the traffic.

Che had to go to work, so it was good that Vino woke up earlier than usual despite having slept late because we could have breakfast at the hotel.

Later, Vino and I watched a movie in the room, The Longest Yard. Che doesn’t like Adam Sandler too much, but somehow, Vino is enjoying his movies. I thought a sports movie with him would be something he could enjoy.

We then took our bags to move to the other hotel, which was closer to Che’s office. This trip isn’t too well planned because it’s really short, and we don’t even have a weekend here. I wanted to take the chance to visit my sister and my dad at home before heading over to dinner with friends.

Of course, what is a visit to Manila without suffering through insane traffic?

It took an hour for us to reach home. We all sat around the dining table where we caught up for a bit. It’s not much of a thing growing up, but it has been a place where we could all talk whenever I visit the Philippines.

My sister usually has her work station set up there, so if it’s just the two of us, we would hang out there and just talk about stuff. We do exchange messages, but its always nice to talk in person.

As for my dad, we didn’t really talk too much growing up. I never got the sense that he was ever interested in the things happening to me during my adolescent years. Eventually, I realized I was maybe venerating him too much, which made it difficult for me to create a connection with him. When I treated him as a person like everyone else, I was able to navigate my way to conversations with him.

At this stage of our lives, I’m fine with any kind of connection we could have. I don’t regularly call them or have a lot of stories to tell because not a lot has been going on, as evidenced by this daily blog. We didn’t grow up sharing our days to each other, so I never had an urge to update them about the smallest things.

Still, I always appreciate these talks, no matter how random, short, or long.

The drive to our house was longer than the time we spent there, but we were set to have dinner at a nearby mall to plan out some things for our trip next week.

Che was going to be a bit late, so she asked me to represent for the both of us while she wasn’t there. The difficult thing about planning a gathering for a group of our size is that we have to consider everyone in the party, including the kids.

Arianne had a notebook, while the boys had a bottle of Johnny Walker. You already know that we weren’t going to be productive contributors to these plans.

Che arrived a bit late, but she was the right person Arianne and Carla had to talk to in order to get things done. Vino at least had Neo to play with, so everyone was happy.

Everyone was able to express the things they wanted to do, and the girls plotted it out on the notebook to see which days we could do them. We were planning, but its not all set in stone, and would greatly depend on how the days go while we’re there.

We stayed until Fridays closed, and parted ways from there.

On our way back, the Grab driver we got was a little chatty, and of course, chatty me indulged him. At some point, the discussion reached politics, and while I usually don’t engage with this topic with strangers, I was already buzzed and still fuming about all the corruption revelations recently.

Che didn’t like it, as she wanted to just sleep quietly at the back. Our ride took longer than exepcted because of the traffic. The guy told us that the shortcut we recently discovered was closed, so we just endured the traffic. At some point in the trip, he turned to the shortcut we discovered. Apparently he was talking about the village that you had to pass by to reach the place was closed, but the bridge was open.

I feel like I was a bit diplomatic with how I was explaining my frustration on him not listening to us, which could have saved maybe 20 minutes of our journey.

Honestly though, everything that we talked about and his stubbornness about our route made sense when I learned about his political leanings.

It was a pretty long day, but we got a lot of things done, so I think it was a pretty productive first day in this short trip.