My First Day in Manila

Advil PM...you genius. I woke up at 4:00 PM, 13 hours later. That helped a lot. Good thing it was a holiday in the Philippines for general elections...I got online and pinged my buddy Alfred to see that he was up to (on a side note I used to hate that word ping when I first started working at Accenture, but I guess I got used to it). I finally got to take a shower and after being on a plane for that long I needed it. Unpacking took a while since I had a 70 pound bag and a 40 pound bag...I'm from the Brigid school of packing.

Alfred picked me up at 5. He asked if I wanted to go see the sunset from the Mall of Asia. I laughed and remarked that I didn't know he was such a romantic. We went straight to the mall where our car was inspected for bombs...they do that every time you go in to a parking structure here. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. We found a spot and walked to the area outside where you can view the coast. Unfortunately, it was very overcast so we didn't see the sunset, but I still took a few pictures (for those of you I haven't sent it to you can view my pictures here). It's very humid here. Like 100%. All the time. I've been sweaty a lot. Insert joke here. We wanted to cool down so Alfred suggested we go get a halo halo. This would be my intro to Philipino food. It was good. It was served in a glass, on the bottom were sauteed bananas, then a bunch of shaved ice, and on top a chunk of flan (tastes like tira misu). You mix it all together and you get a refreshing beverage. Most excellent. We walked around the mall a bit more and saw an ice rink where mostly inexperienced children were falling on their faces trying to ice skate. Very amusing to me. I decided I needed to buy some water since I was afraid of drinking the water here. I have a fear of intestinal diseases, so I don't want to take any chances. We went to the grocery store in the mall and I picked up four 6 liter bottles of water and four 1.5 liter bottles of gatorade. Total cost? $10. The dollar goes a long way here. We loaded everything up in Alfred's car and we were off in search of dinner around 7 PM.

I mentioned I like Chinese food, so Alfred first drove me thru Chinatown. Unfortunately, there wasn't parking and Alfred said he didn't know where to go when it was dark. I'll take his word for it. We headed off to this place called Gerry's Grill. Alfred ordered since I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Every meal here is served family style, so we shared three dishes. First was sisig. Sisig is meat from the face of the pig along with the skin, fried up with some spices and onion. It's very tasty and served with rice. Next was Bicol Express. I really like this one. It reminds me of Thai food. It's pork (I don't know which part), cooked with green and red chiles in coconut milk. It was good and spicy, just like I like it. Finally, we had grilled squid. The Pinoy (slang for Filipino) name escapes me, but it was great. Very fresh. Much better than American squid since it wasn't chewy at all and I'll assume it was caught that day. All in all a great meal.

After that Alfred wanted to show me where to go in the case of an unexpected bombing or new people's revolution. That's right...the US Embassy. I'm glad I know where that's at now. Very close to there is Intramuros. Intramuros is the famed walled city that the Spaniards built when they first colonized Manila. Their used to be walls surrounding this area around 16 square blocks, but most have been brought down now. I'll be back during the day so I can check it out before I leave. I was getting a little thirsty at this point, so we head back to Alfred's pad. It's about 20 minutes away, close to the airport. Filipino condos are a bit smaller than that of American so I was kind of surprised where I got there even though Alfred told me it's 150 square feet. It was 150 square feet and no more, but the San Miguel Ice and San Miguel Light was flowing like water and we played Madden '08, NBA Live '08, and Fight Night on XBOX 360 for a few hours. Alfred drove me back to the Ascott around 11 PM and I attempted my first night of sleep in Manila...