Manila Diary - Haze!

I've finished laughing for now. What just happened wasn’t funny, but there’s no choice for me but to laugh.

These past ten days or so have been a haze – too many beers in dark rooms. I’m glad that

A) I haven’t lost my wallet
B) I haven’t lost my new Pocket PC
C) I’ve gotten out alive.

My father did tell me it’s not the amount of beer you drink, it’s the people with whom you drink. There is no safety when the guys you drink with are total jerks.

Speaking of my father, I visited his grave at the cemetery. This gives rise to two thoughts:

A) What if my family agreed, as per my father’s wishes, to have him cremated? --- AND
B) Would it have made any difference?

I also visited my late friend Miggy Baluyut in his resting place. The devotion of our other friends to his memory is so touching, almost “faggy” in nature, all in the most positive way, of course. It’s like those buddy moments like the Dirty Dozen or perhaps more recently, the Lord of the Rings movies, but as I said, all in a good way, of course.

I spent Easter celebrating Jene P.’s birthday with the Funny Bunch at Jene’s swanky new home. The future, no, the present, is all so bright for Jene – prospects coming up, a wonderful wife, and supportive friends. Granted, there are always bumps on the road, but wouldn’t there always be?

I slept through parts of “Team America” (finally, I got some good sleep) by the guys who created “South Park” and “Baseketball,” Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The movie was a huge broadside on liberals, self-righteous artist-activists, chick flicks, and for the most part, good taste. Needless to say, the gang lapped it all up. “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” was also a blast. To use the canine’s words, it’s probably the greatest DVD bargain ever – “for me to poop on!”

And after that – a real alcoholic haze that I was referring to.

Normally, I would pop in a “what have we learned?” portion, but I’d just get onto the funny story:

My sister (the youngest among them, the one with three kids) had referred to us a wonderful four day-three night package to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, all told for a sum of $178++ (plus taxes and other stuff, it went to more than $250) per person. I would pay for me and for my mother, and our eldest sister would join us on the trip. My sister asked for an April 7-10 schedule since it would fit in with her days off and the April 9 public holiday, and this is what I specifically did not look at when I bought the tickets on April 4, Monday. I assumed that my other sister fixed it up with the agent. Turns out the tours were on fixed schedules.

Now, I could have looked at the tickets, but all I did was stick them into my bag, go out, and then proceed on working myself senseless.

The following day, I was pretty groggy when I gave the tickets to my mother and she put them away. That makes us two whiz kids who did not bother to read the fine print, but of course since I was making the arrangements, I take all the blame. Because…

The tour was SPECIFICALLY scheduled from April 10 to April 13. We were already packed and scheduled to leave for the airport when our youngest sister (the one who got us the contact) called us and told us to check the tickets. And lo and behold! The tickets were from the 10th to the 13th.

(Long pause…)

{Aftermath edit, April 23: After we had gotten over the huge deflation over all the anticipation for the trip, it was time to laugh. The only damage it did was to my sister’s schedule since she had to move her days off. A few ruffled feathers, for the most part, and as a plus, my mother got to attend her prayer meeting with her prayer community, which she would have missed otherwise.

Still, that little glitch did not ruin that tour.

Did we learn anything from that episode? For me, obviously not, as events in the near future (as in the following week) would bear out…)