2017 Holidays with the Fam

it's been 5 years since i last spent the holidays in my home land. it was the usual stuff: holiday traffic jam, malls open til midnight, reunion with a close-knit group of friends and my immediate family. i remember that year though, in the morning of the new year, we drove up to my dad's home town on the northern most part of the country (and i wrote about it here). 

this meant that lovro has not experienced holidays in the philippines in all 3+ years of his existence. which was not a big deal since he's too young. but this year he's begun to understand the concept of a holiday and has been quite excited about seeing christmas trees and balls and lights and most especially about christmas presents. so it is a perfect time to bring him here, where christmas is such a big event and the christmas spirit is alive and well. this is the first time that we are staying this long in the philippines, so lovro really got a chance to bond with the pinoy side of the family :)

no visit to my family is complete without stopping by Solenad in Nuvali. With lots of dining and shopping options and activities like feeding koi fishes and water taxi, it's a good spot for a day out. we had lunch at crisostomo, a usual go-to place for filipino food albeit pricey. their lechon kawali on laing was so good, worthy of being the first dish for my inevitable holiday weight gain. outside the restaurant is a sorbetes (ice cream) cart which growing up is lovingly called dirty ice cream. we then headed to the koi pond where a gazillion koi fishes wait to be fed, which lovro thoroughly enjoyed.

mamang sorbetero

we then drove to paseo for lovro to get some haircut. one of the things that are still cheaper in the philippines (because dining absolutely isn't cheap there anymore) is having a haircut! lovro's haircut was only 200php (around 5sgd) while it's 24sgd back home!

paypal allows us to work remotely so i managed to plan working from the philippines on 18th to 20th. what's great is there is no time difference between the philippines and singapore, the only caveat was the poor connection in the philippines so i got kicked off VPN from time to time. but it worked out okay, except on some occasions during the business hours where lovro wanted my attention. luckily ate kyla, my niece, was there to the rescue! they'd play the piano or cycling game in Wii so that kept lovro's mind off for a while.

also during this trip, i allowed lovro to debut playing in an arcade. it's so expensive in singapore that i couldn't bear to waste that much money on games! but when we went to the one in Vista Mall, i only spent 150php and we already got on a few games and even won some prizes thanks to ate kyla. 

on the 21st when i was officially on vacation, kuya A dropped us at SM Sta. Rosa mall so we could kill time. we had lunch, went shopping for a bit, then got lovro to enjoy some rides. 

"mama, i don't like cinderella!"

kuya A was going to pick us up around 3:30pm and we'd go straight to pick my sister up from work. we still had around 20 minutes to spare, and lovro saw the choo-choo train that goes around inside the mall, so i got him a ticket and asked ate kyla to walk alongside him. i basically told her to go wherever the train goes, and stand next to the cart where lovro is, since he's alone. then i ran off to return the car that we rented (which i did to avoid having to carry lovro when he'd get tired). as i returned and walked towards them, i saw a man walking along and holding on to the cart where lovro is. i immediately sensed danger and ran towards them. then i held onto lovro's hand and walked along as well. i looked at him from time to time, very obviously trying to intimidate him. all i could think of was, he has no business walking and holding onto that train cart, and if he did have a child riding the train he should walk next to that kid, right? after a few minutes he walked away, and i learned a very important lesson: all it takes is a second that you don't pay attention and something bad could happen. i was quite upset with myself, what with all these news of children being kidnapped in the philippines, why did i keep my eyes off lovro for that long? luckily, nothing happened. i won't make that mistake again.

Pico de Loro Country Club

on the 22nd my sister arrived with her boyfriend and her son to pick us up and we would drive to Pico de Loro Country Club in Batangas, some 80+ kilometers from Laguna. as planned, we had lunch in Tagaytay and had a chance to see the Taal volcano from the restaurant. it was drizzling for a while, so it was really cold outside, such a welcome change for my tropical life! we had so much food but that didn't stop us from having desserts: bibingka (claypot rice cake) and puto bumbong (purple sticky rice cake). we love rice cake! 

he loved the brown sugar. ONLY the brown sugar.

when we finally arrived in Pico de Loro it was about 3pm. we were exhausted! i wanted to explore with lovro though, and took the scooter which i brought all the way from singapore to go around. 

we went to Pico beach and lovro would not step on the sand! and since i had the scooter i couldn't carry him and the scooter at the same time. the Pico de Loro staff were quick to assist, and a nice kuya carried the scooter while i carried lovro closer to the water. i came back and declared to the rest that it would be awesome to hang out at the beach, so all of us went back. our timing was perfect, as the sun was about to set. and it did set the sky on fire. you know that cliché that sunset makes sensitive people cry? well it really does make you feel something.  

we stayed until it was dark, maybe past 6pm, and stargazed for a bit. lovro enjoyed looking for airplanes, and i taught him the difference between the aircrafts and stars. he tried to count as many as he could.

the next morning we fed ducks to start the day, then we hit the pool, then the beach, had lunch, did some siesta (power nap) then went bowling and played billiards while drinking SanMig light. on the 24th we had to leave before noon, and had lunch at Mang Inasal in a Walter Mart Mall in Nasugbu - where they ran out of rice and we had to wait for so long to get our lunch. had halo-halo while in the car, then drove back to Laguna. 

Christmas and New Year

in our culture, families would do a salubong (anticipate) for christmas by having noche buena (christmas eve night) dinner. then we would open christmas gifts. we had noche buena dinner at past 7, and before the littlest one gets drowsy, we opened gifts past 9. he happily handed all the gifts to the right recipients. it was nice to see him so stoked about christmas! 

the next morning we drove off to visit my parents in binangonan. this time instead of cooking or buying take out food, i actually had paluto (cooked to order) from my late friend's wife who i heard makes really good baked macaroni. she did not disappoint. 

for the new year, customarily we'd have late dinner and kill time in between that and midnight. when we were young, we would watch TV or play video games until midnight strikes and we'd get the fireworks out. this year, the philippine president made a ban on certain fireworks to minimize injuries, so i suppose there were less booms this year as the ones that made really loud explosions were not being sold. but not having spent a few new year salubongs with fireworks in my hands, what minimal fireworks we had was already such a treat for me. early in the day i was trying to prepare lovro for what's to come. i told him that we would have dinner and then sleep first, then a few hours later it will get very loud because of the fireworks. i told him that if it woke him up, not to be afraid, and that i will be there with him. well, i didn't have anything to worry apparently, because he slept through all the noise. i actually tried to wake him up but he was not interested :-D

and so we spent more than 2 weeks in the philippines but it went by in a blur. it was nice to have spent a lot of time with family and friends, and i felt that i really needed this year's christmas holidays to be spent outside of singapore. also this year i had two major reunions that are very unforgettable. i'll talk about those awesome reunions next time. 

happy 2018, people!