Travel: January 2006 Archives

Post-wedding and reception pictures...

Everyone was given a handful of rose petals to throw as well as little packets of bird seed. Someone forgot to take their bird seed out of the packet...hope nobody got hurt.

The wedding cake. It was carrot cake, for those of you who are curious.

Mrs. Dave's cousin's children, Mikaeli and Andrea, commandeered the MC's microphone, while Gabrielle danced in front of the bubble machine.

Stefan really had an unfair advantage at the garter toss. I have no idea what Peter is trying to grab at.

The bride & groom's last dance of the evening.

And with that, the last pictures from the Philippines. I was sick all the next day, then packed up and left the day after. Not much fun (or photographic evidence, fortunately).

I know, I skipped day 2. Unfortunately I neglected to bring the camera on our golf odyssey, and my other pictures of the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner were rather pedestrian. So instead...wedding day, part 1!

As mentioned before, Victor's inhaler among the other wedding attire on the bed. Not a bad idea to make sure you're asthma-attack free on your wedding day.

Big events and grand aspirations, indeed.

Possibly my favorite picture of the entire trip. Amidst the hubbub of photos, getting dressed, and having eighteen people in his hotel room, I caught Victor at a quiet moment just gazing out the window.

Another candidate for favorite photo. My lovely wife, as seen through the latticework next to our bed.

A great view of Manila Bay from the 14th floor. You can barely see the smog.

Today's wedding is brought to you by the letter "W".

A few of my favorite snaps from the trip:

The Philippines are apparently the only Asian country completely free of avian flu. And they're rather proud of it.

A Philippine calesa, a kind of touristy way to get taken for a ride (literally and figuratively). I just really liked how the colors came out in this one.

How's my driving? Goddamn frightening! The Philippines are apparently the texting capital of the world - they text-message more than they actually make calls using their cell phones. Mrs. Dave's cousin was actually getting medical consults via text!

A crappy picture, made crappier by the poor cyclist I blinded from inside our speckly taxi window. But yes, there are even Dunkin' Donuts in the Philippines.

My other brother-in-law is a New York Giants fan. So much of a fan, in fact, that he woke up at 7 in the morning, eat breakfast, pack up his room, watch the first half of the Giants-Raiders game on ESPN starting at 9am local time, check out of his room at 10:30, jump in a taxi, race across Manila, and check into his other hotel room in time to see the end of the game. Now, admittedly, this was a game with playoff implications for his team, but still, it warrants mentioning as admirable dedication.

The rest of us were on a bit more leisurely schedule, and after our episodes of the night before, it was just as well that we took things more slowly. Nothing but fruit and bread for me for breakfast, and the wonderful Mrs. Dave had taken it upon herself to pack up our stuff while I was convalescing and moving my creaky-ass body around the bedroom last night like your average nonagenarian, so we had very little packing to do. We managed to load ourselves into taxis for the cross-town trip and ended up in room 735 a half-hour later or so.

And then, out came the tiles...because no visit to the Philippines would be complete without a Mrs. Dave Family Mahjong tournament.

Some families play a variety of games together, others sit in front of the TV, or go out to a movie, or sit around and have a drink together. My wife's family is a group of mahjong fiends, and I was indoctrinated into this very early on in our relationship. Hi, my name is Dave, and I'm a mahjong fiend too. Normally we play on a card table, but Manila hotel rooms (most hotel rooms in general, really) are lacking in the appropriate furniture. So we took an end table, Vince "borrowed" one from elsewhere on the floor, along with a conference room chair, we drapped a towel over it (to make the shuffling quieter), chipped in 400 pesos each (about 8 bucks), and the game was on.

Well, sorta. It was practically over as soon as it began, since Mrs. Dave proceeded to romp, winning six of the first eight games. Victor took the other two, then I began to creep toward respectability, but by the time her cousin Keith showed up with his big airport-going car - the same we arrived in, actually - she'd opened too much of a lead to overcome. We'd also had someone call from the front desk to say that a few people had complained about the noise coming from our room. Who would have thought that my first citation for hotel-based disorderly behavior would have come halfway around the world while playing a friendly game with my family?

Unfortunately our trip back home was not as cushy as the JFK-Hong Kong leg had been - the ticket agent who checked us in in Manila was a bit dense and impervious to Mrs. Dave's charms, so coach it was. In a bit of oddness, the flight that we'd gotten from Orbitz for San Francisco to Boston was taken out of service between when we bought the tickets and when we flew, so they changed our itinerary but didn't issue new tickets. We tried to resolve things in Hong Kong during the layover, but they were only able to have our baggage held in San Francisco. And a good thing, too - after our Hong Kong-San Francisco flight (miserable, thanks to the short guy in front of me putting his seat as far back as possible within 20 minutes of takeoff, crushing my kneecaps and rendering the tiny movie screen unviewable), we arrived amidst a heavy snowstorm. So heavy, in fact, that our San Fran-New York flight would have been delayed to the point that we would have missed our New York-Boston leg.

The American Airlines ticket agent called the United desk (and, irony of ironies, was put on hold for a good ten minutes!) to get us two "involuntary reroute" tickets on a direct flight, San Fran to Boston. We got in three hours early but had the chance to alert my co-worker, who gladly trekked down to Boston to pick us up. We got home around 7:30, immediately collapsed and woke up about 11 hours later. Our body clocks were out of whack for most of the week but I think we're finally starting to get back to normal...

But we're missing the 80-degree weather.

There's a thirteen-hour time difference between Manila and the east coast, so we got to celebrate the new year a full half-day before our friends back home. Oddly, though, it felt like we had celebrated 37 hours early - we had stayed up well past midnight partying with our friends, woke up later feeling stuffed, groggy, and making regular runs to the bathroom. Basically, the last four meals I'd eaten, I'd already felt fullish, but I also had that "I'm in a foreign country, the food is cheap, when will you have it again, let's just eat and let my body sort it out later" feeling. So everybody in, party in Dave's small intestine! Unfortunately, something from the wedding dinner had really disagreed with me, so (pardon the oversharing), it was both runs to and in the bathroom.

When the rest of the wedding party suggested we head over to Makati City (the ritzy part of Manila with the malls, fancy designer stores and American chains like TGI Friday's of all things), I thought it might be a good idea - walk around a bit, let things stretch out, shift, and settle. All morning I'd felt like my dinner was halfway up my esophagus, so maybe moving around would help out, burn some stuff off. We hopped in a taxi for the 15-minute ride and I immediately began praying the whole time that there wouldn't be an accident. Not of the fender-bender kind, either, though that's always a possibility. Things got even more interesting when, on the last turn of the trip, just before dropping us off, our driver blew through a red light and took a right turn, right in front of a police car. The guy was so nailed that the officer had a chance to step away from his car and flag us down, rather than putting on the sirens and chasing us. So there's another five minutes sitting in a car (not to mention the driver's humiliation at realizing he didn't have money to pay for the fine, which he borrowed from the groom).

We got out, walked around, and things were ok, but once we got inside the Landmark shopping center, I started getting sweaty, nauseous, and all around not good. I excused myself and headed for the bathroom, where I discovered that some stalls are, shall we say, bring your own. Not the best situation to be in, considering my condition, but I improvised as best I could, and that's all I have to say about that. It turns out Victor had sent Imelda to buy an emergency roll for me, but I'm glad I didn't wait, because it took her a half-hour to come back. When she finally did return, she came bearing Gatorade, and lo, we did drink long and heartily. It turns out that Victor was also feeling nauseous, and Imelda wasn't feeling all that great either, so after replenishing our liquids and making some quickie souvenir purchases (we picked up a toy jeepney, a few wooden carved carabao figurines, and some pottery for my mother), the two married couples headed home, leaving Jeff, Stefan and Vince to their own devices.

We got back to the hotel around 3pm, whereupon I collapsed and napped for three hours. Woke up, didn't feel a whole lot better, and was sick of feeling like dinner was going to make a run for it, so I did the only thing I could think of and made myself throw up. Scared the shit out of Mrs. Dave, who was also napping at the time, but I felt sooooooo much better afterwards. Not that I recommend vomiting as a matter of course, but I've never been so glad to toss my lapu-lapu. My joints were still achy and I was running a fever, so, lamely, I spent the rest of the evening in bed. Mrs. Dave's angel of a cousin ended up canceling his plans to come do a house call at the hotel for me, Victor, Imelda, and my mother-in-law, who was starting to feel the effects as well. By the time the fireworks were going off over Manila (the real ones, as opposed to the Pyro Olympics), I was unconscious and slobbering all over my pillow. And so ended my premature New Year's celebration.