February 12, 2011 – – Manila Harbor Square, Manila Bay
It was actually our friend’s ( MARI ) birthday that day. Baby bear wanted to celebrate our Valentines Day a little bit earlier , so to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, he proposed to do that today. Fine by me. It’s a good idea since we would be traversing SOUTH ward for the “party”.
I was suggesting of having our very late lunch at Jollibee since we were quite . . . poor-essa! (Yeah we’re poor, no budget! XD ) It was totally fine with me to have our lunch there since I know that we were having financial difficulties. But baby bear wanted our pre-Valentine date to be a bit more special even though we’re tightening our belts. We had a very nice and simple lunch at Pepper Steak. I ordered beef something (sorry can’t remember the name) which was actually good and we shared iced tea since I don’t exactly drink a lot. It wasn’t exactly the dream Valentine’s date but it’s workable since like I said earlier . . . we’re poor. XD Plus it’s the thought that counts!
We were also the only ones inside the restaurant at the time we were having our meal, towards the end we were accompanied by another couple, an old white guy and his whore. Sorry, but that’s the truth since we were at Manila Bay local most of the Filipina companions of white guys are of lesser demeanor. But honestly the whole feel since Harbor Square was mostly open aired was really romantic. Plus the brightly lit and playfully colored sky that time.
After our cute lunch we walked around while waiting for our other friends to arrive since they were car pooling with us to Mari’s place (our friend with the birthday). We hang-out in the car after some time since it was getting hot and we were also getting tired walking around. While we were listening to the tunes I took some pictures of the fabulous sky (you can actually see the silhouette of my iPhone at the first photo) . It really made the whole mood (naughty!).
To fast forward very boring events . . . we met our friends and went south. Once we got to the village my friend JA called up the celebrant to ask directions, Mari who was born drunk kept on telling JA directions how to get to his place. To tell you the truth it was okay IF (1.) JA who called up MARI was using his phone, but NO he was using my baby bear’s phone! (2.) Mari is a SMART subscriber and my baby bear is a SUN subscriber . . . you might not understand why I’m getting pissed about that. Let me explain . . . we have 3 main cell phone providers here. Sun, Smart, and Globe. Now they have their own gimiks to make their subscriber be more loyal, one of those gimiks were if you call (example) Sun to Sun — it’s either FREE of charge (because you purchased a plan where calling same subscriber is free) or you will be charged with very low costs. If you then call other network provider, the call charge is higher and more expensive. Now what happened was the call was getting too long than it should be, plus we were getting no where near Mari’s house either since Mari wasn’t exactly talking to the most clear minded of all (JA is naturally high btw, he’s a bit clutter minded too . . hehe) plus he kept on adding side notes to the directions he was giving. So I got a bit irritated (coz it was getting late that time and lunch was far far away) I grabbed the phone from JA and asked Mari for his home address. Simple. He then gave it right away.
We got to his place , every one was excited and of course hungry. It was past dinner time, what do you expect? After settling down in their small and quaint garage which was made into a make shift grill restaurant / mini diner and playing silent musical chairs (you know people, if you don’t give them seating plans or seating arrangement they just stand at one side and ogle) , we were surprised at Mari because he was already asking people who wanted beer. I guess everyone was expecting that they would serve a meal in the birthday party, so we were very shocked to find out that the only food were beer appetizer which were the following :: sliced hotdogs with julienned onions and cooked in ketchup. and tokwa’t baboy, a Filipino appetizer, of small cubed pork (baboy) chunks with bits of fat and tofu (tokwa). Most of the time it’s already fused in the sauce which is simply soy sauce and vinegar.
Another unexpected surprise was we were EXPECTED to order food from them since it’s one of their “small” part time income generating home business. WTF?! And there I thought birthday parties have FREE meal from the invitee! Plus the drinks (which were either a bottle of Red Horse beer or water) weren’t exactly a drink all you can thing. It’s quite understandable if , let’s say 3 or 5 bottles of beer per person. But noooo! Every bottle you take is counted. You can’t exactly get more than 2, coz every single one of the bottles are counted and he is just serving 1 tray / cask (I don’t know how you call it) of beer ONLY!
We went home starving (LITERALLY) that we even needed to stop at McDonald’s and buy ourselves a meal. Horrible Horrible ending of a very nice day!!!
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