WHEN best friends are in town, everything stops. You have to give way and schedule everything around the homecoming. It’s not often that they are in town. The visit has been announced months ahead and plans were made. Everyone else should stick to it. This is when good time management comes to play. You have to weave the affairs into the work schedule.
Less sleep, non-stop eating and loads of fun. That sums up what transpired when everyone’s favorite friend came home for his annual visit.
A small wedding turned big and came with other big gatherings around it—five to be exact. Add to that other “reunions” with different sets of friends. How many lechons? I lost count. It was not even December yet.
Just when we thought it would slow down by the end of October, it carried through in November. It was busier. Half of it with friends, the other half, work-related travels and pre-Christmas events in the city (I was a no show in several) . I’m not complaining, it was a jolly month.
My friend’s homecoming is always injected with a quick trip to a place he hasn't been before. It was Singapore this time.
I may have visited Singapore frequently in the past but it was on this trip that I finally saw Gardens by the Bay. Other than that, nothing was new. However, the trip centered on food so we tried whatever was suggested, from Hawker food to degustation at Odette, ranked #18 in the list of World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Why I don't frequent the place? Except for electronics, everything else is expensive. Like what I told the airline manager, we can't be eating Hawker food the entire visit.
So our friends left but the Holiday season was welcomed. Christmas events have started and I had to take my annual work + leisure + birthday escape to Bangkok. The me-time was filled with surprises, which Novotel Siam successfully pulled off, and I encountered.
I also had my homecoming—going home to the family house. It took a series of high-intensity earthquakes to tell me the high-rise living is not for me, not at my age when evacuating meant walking more than 17 floors down. I cannot picture myself doing that on retirement age and beyond. I am not up for another Aldeguer Sisters dance moves up high in a tower. I have developed paranoia and experiencing “phantom earthquakes.” Yep, just like in a thriller flick.
It’s been a month now since I moved in at Dad’s place. It's good to be home, there’s no place like it. So to the lucky owner of my well-designed, product-of-hard-work Avida pads, I’m sure you will have fab time living in one of the best-designed pad, if not the only one (grin. LOL). Please take good care of the place I called home. I’m moving to a place on ground level.
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