- destination:home, feb 10 -

^ i started my day early ... at around 545 am to be exact ... i had to bring - no, haul ... my luggage down five flights of seemingly unending steps ... it took me 30 minutes to reach the building's first floor ... despite the cold weather, i was sweating like mad ... when i was doing my packing and shopping for pasalubong, my goal was to limit everything ... i wanted to travel light ... it's just a short trip ... lo and behold, i found out during check-in that my bag weighed 24.4 kgs ...the limit was 20! ... thank heavens they didn't ask me to pay for the excess baggage ... my uber-laking bag didn't cost me anything but it did give me a number of ugly bruises on my left leg - as i used it to balance myself and my bag pababa ng hagdanan ... how clever is that!... aside from the bruises, i'm also enduring pains on my shoulder and my arms from the lifting ->

^ one of the first things that my family - even jeni - told me when they saw me was i lost weight ... *expletive deleted* dapat lang anu! ... i've been a gym-bunny *even if i hate to admit it* for almost a month now ... and i'm trying to maintain the after-7 diet ... the after-6 is just too much for me to handle ... i just found out that some of them used to think of me as "dambuhala" or gigantic ... obese, even ... well, i have to admit that there was a time when i actually saw myself as big ... funny thing is *funny? weird?? stupid???*, i didn't do anything about it at that time ... it's only now that i decided to really shed-off the "excess baggage" ... not so much for vanity - don't get me wrong, it is a factor - but for my health ... dealing with my health problems is hard as it is ...

^ i don't know if this holds true for every OFW/balikbayan ... i do know that this is true for almost all of my pinoy friends here in taiwan ... going home=gastos;expenditures;money ... this is actually one of the reasons why we try to avoid going home for christmas *no matter how sad/grinch-y/scrooge-y that may be* ... cause it's definitely more expensive ... but despite this, i learned that no amount of money can equate to the happpiness that you see on the faces of your family and friends ... i realized this on my first night over a simple family dinner at kfc ... nothing beats the chatter and the laughter ... i also realized this when i was buying books for raprap, riane, roi and ann ... all of them , by the way, remember me and are very generous with hugs and kisses that i really missed ... *i know, i know ... this is the idealist anne talking *

^ one of the things that i missed in PH is television ... let me correct myself, i mean television shows ... the tv is on but i wasn't paying attention to it and then i heard KAWATAN from the host ... i became glued to the tv ... the show was - i think - called XXX? The complete title is Exclusibong Explosibong Expose - translated, Exclusive and Explosive Expose ... not bad ... catchy catchy ... kawatan is a bad person ... masasamang-loob in simpler tagalog terms ... i personally think the word is all-encompassing: robber, swindler, trapo -> papasang kawatan ... and to further amuse me, i started hearing the words - ADUANA, KATIWALIAN, KABALBALAN! san ka pa??? now, i know that aduana is for customs but how is katiwalian and kabalbalan translated????

- jeni's bertdi bash, feb 11 -
^ due to my "uber-tight sked" on this short trip, i only set some dinner plans with my family and another get-together for jeni's bertdi ... pictures to follow ...