a recap of a long weekend.

01. thursday.

slept a few hours then went to ortigas park for the chinese new year tarot reading gig. ended up reading for almost a dozen people from 2:30 to 9:30 with hardly any breaks except to pee and to buy a large cup of tea latte. skipped lunch because i was already late (i promised that i will be in ortigas park at 1); i wasn't able to get a proper meal until later in the evening.

went to alabang after ortigas to see the boyfriend and have dinner with him. the halo-halo from this local filipino-chinese fast food was surprisingly good. arrived at the boyfriend's place around 2 in the morning and spent the rest of the night there.

02. friday.

braved the early morning crowd at the mrt to go back to makati for a company party. it was partly to celebrate the 4th anniversary of the team, partly a birthday celebration of the program director. there was the usual overflowing beer and the not so usual tequila shots. ended up taking 300+ photos of shiny happy officemates in various states of drunkeness.

went with vanny to the mall after the party; she planned to buy shoes. ended up in rockwell where they had a particular shoe design at her size. showed vanny fully booked rockwell where she bought more books. i didn't plan to buy any but there was this beautiful cook book of filipino and indonesian dishes (with very nice food photographs) that i wanted to buy, but can't because it was so expensive for a cookbook. compensated by buying a tpb of alan moore's from hell.

03. saturday.

woke up at dawn to catch an early bus for dau, pampanga. i only had 3 hours of sleep. for once, i didn't find it difficult to sleep while sitting in a bus. from dau, was able to figure out how to go to clark for the hot air balloon fest without much difficulty.

the early morning wind was cool and crisp when i got to clark. i thought that was a great thing but it turned out balloons can't launch if the winds are too strong. so the first time i'm watching the ballon festival, i wasn't able to see the balloons launch. (and it seems that winds were too strong only during the saturday event, the previous days had fine ballooning weather, bah.)

the rest of the morning went fine despite the lack of balloons. the aerobatic show was particularly good. the only problem with someone who takes photos as a hobby is that i often watch events to anticipate the perfect moment to take photos; as a result, i hardly saw the entire air show and appreciated it for what it was (i.e., outside the camera's viewfinder).

i still ended up with 500+ photos.

saturday night, i decided to join the rock fags for drinks at the queen's place in pasig. his house looked like a floating fortress.

fag boys listening listening to rock music over the bus of alcohol is rowdy enough, and every now and then, we had to compromise to the gay stereotype by playing the odd madonna or cher track (most of the time, we got away by playing garbage). four hours of drinking later, the fags were mostly drunk, some of them were already horizontal and some had progressed to going screamo. drunk people are the same everywhere.

04. sunday.

there was some question on how to sort out the guys who were still barely conscious. that took fifteen minutes. plan was to head for a steet-side eater but there were too many of us to fit inside. we went to a nearby filipino-chinese fast food instead. ordered halo-halo again and so early in the morning; it wasn't as great as the halo-halo from alabang.

i had about a hundred photos from the fag night, most of which were taken in the dark.

sleep all afternoon until early evening. there was still work, after all.