Manila day 2

or "Watching the sunset from the clubhouse lounge"

A mellow day just settling in. Nice to back in a city, sort of, but wasn’t motivated to see any sights, just acclimating myself to the area, which is a big shopping area with tons of meandering outdoor malls, from high end to low end, lots of clothes and food throughout. I like the clubhouse lounge, you can make espresso from the automatic machine, and although it’s not great, it’s no worse than the Nescafe crap elsewhere, and for the price (free) beats the chain Starbucks, Seattle's Best, or Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Co., which although technically better, probably, i just would rather avoid. Wandered down to Anna's family's condo/suite room in the Ascot, a few blocks away and had lunch with them, and watched them cut up another lechon suckling pig that they actually flew over in the airplane from Tacloban. If my internet doesn't run out before i make it back to my room, i will post the video here.

Shopping is not much different here, except there are a lot of sales people and they tend to watch you a lot. I was told if you want to exchange something or return it, it takes like a half an hour and is a long process of printing out papers and stapling them together. Even buying with credit, you have to sign two papers and they are mostly on carbon paper, which i thought basically didn't exist anymore.

My legs are sore from my long run yesterday (8 miles in an hour) on the fancy treadmill, so i just swam a little in the pool. It's nice how they bring you sweet tea even though you are swimming and don't really want it.

Well this clubhouse lounge is getting busy and it's full of old business men and maybe one wife of one, because she's walking around with one, and i saw her at the pool this morning, so she's obviously not working. Most or a lot of the people staying here are working on business.

Tonight we (anna, analiza, hubie (oops still don't know the spellings), maybe miggy and i are going out to some place called bonafacio (maybe fort bonifacio, i'm not really sure since i've just been being lazy and walking and swimming and shopping and lunching today without much intellectual endeavors except for maybe, if you stretch it, a brief talk of the economy over lunch). It requires a cab ride, so it's the farthest i'll have gone in the past day. I should really try to get out and see some other sights tomorrow.... But now my internet will run out so i better get outta here and try to save this...