We were set to meet my college buddies for our first Christmas party of this trip.
The plan was to meet up in the afternoon, but we were a bit late as we went to Manila Memorial Park first to say our final farewell to Tito Peps, Kaloi’s dad.
We woke up relatively early, because we wanted to maximize our free breakfast in the hotel.
People were asked to wear white for the ceremony, so we passed by Uniqlo to get Vino a white shirt before we went over to memorial park.
Kaloi gave a very touching speech for the final words for his dad. He and Elle went through a lot through this time, and while it is sad to lose his dad, they can rest easy now that he will no longer feel pain.
From the cemetary, we went to Taytay, which was supposed to take an hour and a half. Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn, which added about thirty minutes to our drive.
On the flipside, our sidetrip led us to a Baliwag stall, which was the food we were assigned to bring.
Vino has been asking when we were going to meet “the guys” so he was very excited to reunite with Neo.
I’ve been friends with these guys for such a long time, and I’m happy that the kids are getting along fine. Vino claims that these boys are his cousins.
Tian was cooking, and i was asked to cook my “house famous” salpicao, so I prepped the meat. I’m not used to using the meat they bought, so I had to cut out all the fats first.
I think the cook turned out fine, even if some of the parts got a bit overcooked. I called it the “salpicao surprise” because there were some soft parts and some tough ones.
Dinner wasn’t done yet, but the shot glasses came out already.
Lia had some games for us, but we enjoyed it too much so we played it until everyone got the hang of it.
Later, we had an exchange gift of sorts, where we had eight random items under 100 pesos that were supposed to be useful.
I got a bunch of things from ACE Hardware, which Che doesn’t appreciate, but she didn’t really have a choice on the matter, as she’s been too busy to buy them herself.
The guys bought thoughtful and funny gifts, which made the experience very enjoyable.
We spent the rest of the rest of the night drinking, and as people got sleepy, we retreated to the rooms one by one.
Gatherings like this will never get old, but it would probably end earlier as the years go by.
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