The Road to 40 Day 80/365: Science!

While kids are going back to school around this time in the PH, we’re taking advantage of Vino’s vacation.

Little dude slept until late again, so our breakfast was our lunch at 11:30am. This has been the norm, but I’m letting it go since he’s on vacation.

Che saw this science-inspired playground in Ayala Circuit Mall, and I’ve been wanting to visit it with Vino. Unfortunately, the rains and the fear of flooding in the area prevented me from taking him there last week.

I was determined to do it today, so I got him to wear pants (always a shorts guy, but I thought it might be cold) and we went down to the car. I turned the engine on and got ready for the drive until I realized I couldn’t drive it today due to number coding.

The metro in the PH has a number coding system that restricts certain cars from the road on particular days depending on your plate number, with the goal of reducing traffic. Of course, we’ve seen how effective that is, or maybe traffic could be worse without it.

I turned the engine off and told Vino we’ll just book a Grab to get there.

It’s my first time going to this mall in a long time. I never frequented it, maybe went there once or twice while I was here, but it didn’t look like this back then.

Vino kept asking where we were going and I just kept saying he had to trust me on this one. I didn’t know where it was in the mall, so we had to walk around to find it. As we walked closer, he saw the name of the place and slowly built up a wide smile.

There were options on activities we could do, but the keychain making was fixed. I decided to just go with the basic one, and see how we could go about it later on.

We used hama beads for the keychain, which was a first for us. They didn’t have a lot of patterns, but we were told we could Google patterns we can follow. With this option, Vino chose a football.

We were given a bowl of colorful beads. Since I only needed black and white, I had to dig through the colors to find what I needed. I went back to the counter to be greeted by another lady who said they didn’t have single-colored beads.

I dug throught it again, and when I needed more, a third different lady at the counter gave me a bowl of just white beads. We got that done and went on to explore the place.

It was a good-sized space with a lot of activities. Unfortunately, they decided not to turn on some of the attractions. The walking treadmill was not plugged in, the TV in the MRI-type space station was not on, and the wind blowers in the wind area were all off.

The interactive projector for the sand was also not working, but a couple of kids came by with their mom and the staff turned it on.

We did some other things, but as we went around, I got more and more irritated by the inadequacy of this place. I was told that they were planning to add more things in one of the rooms so they only had a small inflateable slide.

There was a cool ball pit where you could wear 3D glasses for a special effect, but unsurprisingly, they didn’t have the 3D glasses available.

The staff was helpful in the most unnecessary spots and practically useless when I really needed their help. I felt like most of them don’t want to be there and were bored as hell.

What’s frustrating is I empathize with them when there are a lot of kids. However, seeing them with this kind of attitude despite having to deal with literally five kids with parents for 700 pesos in this economy makes me feel like this place won’t stay open for long.

We went out around 4pm and checked out the food offerings in the area. Vino gravitated to a ramen place, but I told him the broth and the noodles were not the same as those that he liked.

He said he craved for hotdogs, so I searched and found this Korean snack place that sold corndogs and teokbokki at the cinema level. Vino had a jumbo corndog while I had a cheese corndog and teokbokki on the side.

He finished his snack and actually asked for more. I had maybe a couple of bites more and he asked if he could try it. I told him he could finish it, and once he did, he said he was full – so at least I saved at least 100 pesos by not buying another one.

He finished his snack and actually asked for more. I had maybe a couple of bites more and he asked if he could try it. I told him he could finish it, and once he did, he said he was full – so at least I saved at least 100 pesos by not buying another one.

We went back home and played a round of 99 Nights in the Forest. Che arrived already, but I haven’t set dinner yet because the game took a while.

She was feeling under the weather, so she went to the room to try and sleep it off while I whipped up a quick meal – bok choy and minced pork.

Che already decided she will work from home the next day, with the hope of not feeling worse. The weather is better than last week, so fingers crossed, she won’t get any more sick than she is now.

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