Life in a duffle bag.

Life in a duffle bag. Eating pancit canton cooked by my mom. Emo at 4am.

In about 13 hours, I'll be leaving Manila and will be moving my life to Singapore. I should be excited, and to be honest, I think it's fair to say that March 2011 has clearly been one of the most awesome months of my entire life, and I can't wait for what April has in store for me.

But I just can't help myself from not feeling a bit down when I look at my now near-empty closet, and look at the two small bags that now hold all the carefully chosen stuff that I'll be bringing with me. I think it's the realization that I can't take the most important stuff in my life with me and put them in those two small bags.

The reason why March 2011 became a clear highlight in the timeline of my life wasn't really because I've found a job in a nice and shiny city, but because in the last two weeks, I've managed to reconnect with all my friends from most points in my life in a more profound way. We weren't just drinking because we wanted to get drunk (but yeah, that too...) We were drinking because we knew that the distance that was gonna exist between us after April 2 will surely affect our relationships, even if we try as hard as we can to convince each other that we'll be keeping in touch and nothing will change. We set aside a time to have dinner together because we knew that it's gonna take a long, long time again until we get to sit down in front of each other and just talk about our lives, and get what each other is saying without much explanation.

I can't help but feel down right now, at 4 in the morning, because I'm realizing how much I love these people (you) that I'll be moving away from, and your lives will move on, and my life will move on, and maybe when our paths cross again, we've already gotten used to not seeing each other, not getting drunk together, not eating together, or not understanding each others' jokes.

Fuck it. If you're still reading this up to here, could you do me a favor and not let that happen?

Also, thank you.

A Delayed Singapore Post

Before I write about the great Batanes trip I just had, I think I should write about the two other trips I had last June.

First up, Singapore!

I had an awesome time at Singapore last June with Mia. We stayed at our former officemates' (Mike, Geebee, Ben, and Jyue) place at Sengkang. They're all living and working in Singapore now and it was great to see them again. We were at Singapore just in time for the IT Show. I wanted to buy a laptop for myself, and the IT Show was the perfect place to hunt for one. There were so many booths selling so many different laptop models that I almost couldn't make a choice on what to buy. So I ended up buying a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 instead, and I'm definitely not regretting the purchase. The Xperia X10 is awesome! It has a huge screen, nice interface and controls, a long list of applications from the Android market, the camera is fantastic, and it's just a beautiful phone to look at. Haha.

After the IT Show, we went to Orchard Road for some shopping, and I'm not really a big shopping guy, but it was nice to walk up and down Orchard anyway. It's a nice place for people-watching (just like Clark Quay.) :)

The next day, Mia, Mike, Karon and I went to Universal Studios, where we saw Shrek, Fiona, Puss, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, some animals from Madagascar, and a couple of freaks from The Mummy. The Battlestar Galactica dueling rollercoaster was still closed which was disappointing because that ride looked awesome. Good thing The Mummy-themed indoor rollercoaster was open because that ride was awesome! The line going to the rollercoaster was an attraction in itself.

The rest of our time in Singapore was spent meeting up with SG-based friends and eating(!!!) From the hawker stalls at Newton and more local food at a small restaurant at Bugis, to steak at Astons and some Swiss food at Marche. Seriously, I spent most of my pocket money on food, drinks and dessert.

Singapore was really fun but the best part was seeing so many familiar faces again (and getting a new gadget for a much lower price compared to buying one in Manila. But that's just a far second.)

More pics here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67093&id=1375150079

Traveling and Budgeting

Funny how last January, I was complaining about not having enough trips planned yet for the year. Fast forward to now, and I've got Boracay, Baguio, Singapore, Iloilo and Guimaras, Batanes, and Baguio all lined up.

Woot! Cheers to airline promos! Ubos na naman ang pera ko!

The Iloilo (with a planned sidetrip to Guimaras) and two Baguio trips are actually for weddings of friends/current & former officemates (Mich and James, Marlon and Camille, and Karon and Wayne), so those are pretty much planned out. The Iloilo flight is probably the cheapest flight I've ever paid for at 300 pesos (round trip!!!) from Cebu Pacific. And Guimaras is less than an hour's boat ride from Iloilo City, so that trip is definitely a steal. Baguio is a 7-hour bus ride, so we actually haven't planned those ones yet.

Last January when Cebu Pac had another seat sale, I was asking (a.k.a. begging) my office friends to go to Bohol/Singapore with me, but not enough people bit the offer for various different reasons... So when we heard that another team in the office was going to Boracay for their team building activity, Pat, Mats & Becca, Rommel, and I decided to tag along with them (we're crashing in on the other team's team building trip since they found discounted PAL flights and cheap accommodations there. LOL.)

And then last week, my college/office friend Mia was planning for a Singapore trip and found discounted flights on Singapore Airlines, so when she told me about it and found that an IT Fair and the Great Singapore Sale was going to happen around the same dates of the trip, and Mike confirmed that Universal Studios SG is now open, I jumped in on it too. We're planning on just crashing at our former officemates/currently Singapore-based friends' apartment to save on costs. Thanks for not objecting to our planned invasion, Ben, Jyue, Mike and Geebee!

Finally, we've been planning/trying to plan a trip to Batanes for several months now. We even have a discussion on Google Wave for it (because we're dripping with technogeeky hipster coolness as it is. Heh.), but found most travel options either too expensive (14k + on Seair, or a chartered flight from Tuguegarao), or too um, hardcore (boat from Curimao, Ilocos Norte, anyone?) So when Seair released their promo fares in time for this year's Philippine Travel Expo, we were finally able to finalize the dates of the trip. Woohoo!

So... now I really have to work hard to stay on my monthly budget (also: I guess now have to start setting a monthly budget) and reduce unnecessary expenses. As a first step, magce-Century Tuna at Ligo Sardines na lang ako araw-araw.

Also, kailangang humanap ng role na malaki ang on-call pay.

Trip of the Month

This month's awesome trip was brought to us by...







Singapore! (and KL)







Before I rave about the trip, let me just say:

1. See that small blue thing on the lower left part of the pic, about half an inch away from One Fullerton? That's supposed to be the Merlion, but it got struck by lightning the week before, so it's all shy and covered up now.
2. Singaporean taxi drivers must've sucked all the awesomeness from Malaysian taxi drivers. Because Malaysian taxi drivers? Not awesome.
3. I should've used Tricia's classic line about hostels on my travel-mates. No illusions of grandeur when you're paying 20 SGD a night on hostels! Lol. (Fernloft FTW!)
   
4. Singapore Zoo was really nice, but we got rained out, so we didn't get to walk around as much as we wanted. Boo!
5. Sentosa is a bit expensive, and for such a huge island, there aren't that many things to do there...
   

Now for the raving...

Well... Singapore was nice and all. It's orderly, mostly efficient, modern and has all the trappings of a big city without all the hassle. I'm not exactly jumping out of my seat here, but that's not really a criticism on SG. I just like my cities to be rugged, chaotic and falling over itself with life and adventure, and I like my countries to be filled with scenery and beaches and nature.

At least that's what I use as a reason on why I'm not uploading a resume on monster.sg yet.

Clark Quay and the Marina area is pretty nice. And I got to try the G-Max reverse bungee with Mike. It's hella expensive (and Mike didn't want to treat me for the giant swing ride, so we didn't do that), but really, really, really, fun. Definitely a highlight of the trip (for me at least, everyone else didn't want to try it for their own reasons...)

The other highlight of the trip is of course, the company I applied for was with. My HK (now HK/SG) travel friends were fun as always (only Primo and Mats weren't able to come. Mats was supposed to be with us, but didn't realize that his passport was expiring in less than 6 months, or that you're supposed to have a passport that won't be expiring within 6 months to be able to enter another country...) Where next peeps? And it was also nice seeing former officemates Karon, Mike (who left for a quick Manila trip on the same weekend we were there...), Ben, Jyue, and Malvin, and college friend and loyal merienda buddy Del, who are all now based in Singapore earning lots of money.

On the 3rd day of our trip, we took a quick side trip to Kuala Lumpur, which is a 5-hour bus ride from SG (and what a cool bus! We rode a 20-seater double-decker bus, fully reclineable seats with individual monitors for movies.) Our main objective was to get to Petronas and go up the skybridge. We got there by 4, had breakfast at McDonald's, and headed straight to the Petronas Towers lobby to line up for tickets to the skybridge. It's my second time in KL, and the Petronas Towers is as awesome as I remembered it. Malaysian taxi drivers flat out suck though.

Taking it all in, Singapore (and KL) was really nice. But now I can't wait for Coron next month!



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