I made pumpkin cheesecake for work. It turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

Now I want to use up the rest of the pumpkin in some pumpkin cookies, but the recipe calls for one cup and I've only got half. I could try to halve the recipe, but I'm a little befuddled as to how to go about baking with only half an egg.

Sadly, this morning's baby class was not as much fun as I'd been anticipating. Mei and Samomo were both cranky and sleepy and not at all interested in putting a costume on. Masami had taken the smart approach and gotten Liam a t-shirt with a skeleton print on it, so he was happily running around in that, not knowing that he was actually in costume. I took one look at the cranky girls and decided not to spring my spider costume on them, but instead reached for a pair of cat ears. Samomo took one look and burst into tears. Ok, fuzzy kitty ears are not her thing. Next I tried a tiara, same reaction. Kid, I don't know how to tell you this, but soon it will be cold and people will be wearing things on their heads all over the place. Brace yourself.

We did trick or treating (Mei said "trick or treat", Liam said "pees!" and Samomo just fussed) and then they spent the rest of the lesson devouring their snacks and not being interested in much of anything. SIGH.

The plan for Saturday was to go as a 1960s girl. I had the dress, and the boots were sufficient. They weren't white, or, alas, silver, but they were the right general shape. My hair, however, refused to be styled. I didn't even ask all that much of it, just that I get a little volume at the crown. I teased it, sprayed it, and went out into a typhoon in it, and it still settled calmly down into its usual shape. This is officially the point where I give up. I mean, if a typhoon can't do anything with my hair, I'm certainly not going to be able to.

I did my best with a hairband and some pale lipstick and if I'm lucky, people looked at me and got the general gist. I did manage to elicit some compliments at the nightclub, which is a particularly impressive feat considering I was a girl in a gay club, and I was standing next to these two:



And yes, I did spend a good portion of the evening coming up with various plots to steal those boots.

(Probably the best part of the whole thing was getting to ride the subway with Andy in all his gold-sequined glory.)

I'm not sure if it's a Tokyo thing or a gay thing or a Halloween thing or some combo of the three, but the club was hopping by nine and I got in a full two hours of dancing before we had to head off home. This was fantastic....if I want to go out dancing in Hamamatsu, there's not much point getting there before midnight, and then you're in for a long long night and a rather cranky day after.

Definitely worth not being frugal for.

This? Is actually going to give me nightmares tonight.

We got this little guy to use on Halloween but were unable to resist the lure of using him early. The kids love him to an astonishing degree...even the ones who can't spell. "Oooh, sensei, sensei, can we play hangman?", and then they shout out lots of random letters like "q" and "z" and I'm sitting there thinking "the word I picked is "bat". Oy."



My dad sent me this today via the scanner...it was taken in 1993 on a band trip. I think this was when we went to the West Edmonton Mall. Pictured are myself, Mr. Kowallis (the band teacher and one of my favourite teachers ever), Christina, and Carlana (seated). And yes, I know I look like a particularly prim schoolma'arm...I was really skinny back in the day and it was hard to find a gown that didn't fall off me. And anyhow, it's fun trying to imagine why a schoolma'arm, a sheriff, a preacher's wife and a hooker would all be hanging out together.



I was doing my online banking today when I realized that I actually have just enough money now to get the scary eye surgery. And before you tell me your stories of how you or your friends got it done and it wasn't scary at all and was over before you/they knew it, please pause and actually read the details of the procedure. This ain't laser surgery. It's basically cataract surgery, except when they cut open your eye they leave the natural lens in place and insert a new one on top of it. Think of it as contact lenses you never have to worry about losing. Now, you may be saying "Ooooh, you'd be able to see!". Yes, well, I'm sure not being legally blind is fine and dandy and all that, but I'm kind of used to it. And I'd still have to wear glasses. And I'd have to take a month off of work and find someone to cover for me. And I'd be more likely to get cataracts at a relatively young age. And I'd be broke. Oh, and someone would be cutting into my eyeball. Did I mention that part?

Wow, that's some crappy quality. But you get the general idea of how freaking cute he is. He makes these noises all the time now, since he almost always has a train or car in his hand and is constantly making them go. Lots of "choo choo choo"s and "bu bu bu!"s (Trains say "choo choo." Cars say "bu bu". Sometimes they just go "mmmmmnaaa mna mna!"")

When faced with a ghost*, he purses his lips and goes "Whoooooooo!" and it is, by far, one of the cutest things ever.

*obviously not a real ghost, although it is entirely possible he'd react in the same way anyway

You know, I distinctly remember saying to myself that October was going to be a budget month, where I would live relatively frugally (What? You expect me to skimp on wine? Please.) in an attempt to make up for the fact that I took two trips in three months. Yes, well, ask me how well that's going.

The fact that I have to pay for my ticket to Canada can't really be helped. I mean, I did think I only had to make the deposit this month and I could pay for it all later, but then my travel agent apparently up and quit and didn't actually make my reservation so I had to grab the next available one and it needs to be paid in full by Thursday and I only have half of it in the travel fund at the moment so 60 000 of it will be coming out of my bank account and bah, humbug.

And probably I shouldn't have attempted frugal living during the month that Halloween falls in. I blame Andy, though. He really shouldn't have invited me out to Tokyo next weekend. And he really shouldn't have used the phrase "big gay Halloween party", because hello, I'm only human.

At least I won't have to shell out for a costume, as my new dress doubles nicely as a 1960s costume. I just have to pair it with white tights and hope everyone overlooks the fact that I'm not actually wearing go go boots.

Monkeys. So clever.

Seriously, the bread maker? Best damn birthday present ever. The timer function is especially nifty...I toss in flour and a tiny bit of butter and sugar and salt and milk, add yeast, press a couple of buttons, and in the morning I have bread! It's like magic! Although, to be honest, the whole "bread" thing is taking a little getting used to, as I'd been eating English muffins almost exclusively. Turns out it's harder to balance things on toast.

The second batch of cinnamon buns turned out much better. They still tasted great and this time they actually looked like what they were supposed to. Further experiments are needed until I've perfected them, of course, but I shall persevere.

My cold is much better, so now I just have to put up with people saying things like "You have a cough! You shouldn't be wearing short sleeves! Put on a sweater, regardless of the fact that it is sunny and 25 degrees out!"

I tried making cinnamon buns today. They get full marks for taste, but rather less for presentation. This means, of course, that I need to eat them all myself instead of sharing at work and try again. It's a hard life.

What? I'm sick. Cinnamon buns are a perfectly legitimate dinner when you're sick.

Yay! Underwater photos!







I seem to have caught a cold. Or maybe I am experiencing a bout of fall allergies. Either way, misery and woe is my lot today. *sniffle*

Right, so I bought the mini-dress, yes? And Liz convinced me to come to Shizuoka and wear it out, yes?

What she neglected to mention was that we'd be riding bikes downtown.

Still better than riding in a sarong, though.

After snorkeling we headed more or less straight for Cebu. We stopped off at our cheap hotel long enough to grab a change of clothes and then headed over to Mactan Island, where Liz's sisters and mom were staying at a five star hotel. This is the way to travel, my friends...pay for the cheap hotel, but hang out at the fancy one. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say I experienced the best shower ever there. (Of course, by this point I hadn't seen hot water in a week and still had bits of ocean clinging to my hair, so I was ready to be impressed anyway.)

Friday morning was spent touring the sights of Cebu City, all...um...three of them. It's not exactly a sightseeing mecca, but it is a charming little city. We met up with the others at the main shopping mall for lunch (her sisters spent three weeks just shopping. It's kind of awe-inspiring), but then headed back to the city to do my favourite kind of shopping...on the streets. It's weird. Put me in a shopping mall and unless I'm really in the mood, I get all tired and cranky quickly. Outdoor markets, which are even noisier and more crowded? Love 'em. There wasn't a lot to see, but I did manage to find a cheap shirt. It falls into the "well, I wouldn't have paid $30 for this, but $5? Yeah, I can swing that" category.

That night we had to change hotels. A lot of them were booked, so we ended up picking a new one by just phoning and accepting whatever was available. It was out on Mactan Island, a roughly 30 minute ride from downtown, and the cab driver was none too happy about having to take us out there. You'd think that the bigger fee would have made him happy, but no. He wanted to negotiate a fare, but we insisted he use his meter, and in passive-aggressive retaliation, he drove really really slowly for the first 20 minutes. For the record, this is a really good way to deny yourself a hearty tip.

The new hotel was right by, but not on, the beach. Our room had a front porch area where we could sit at the table and enjoy breakfast. It wasn't the most secure of hotels, and Liz later said she couldn't sleep because she was afraid someone would break in, but a) it was pretty remote and b) the other guests were all families, so I wasn't worried about it. Not even the concern that I would wake up with a lizard on my face was enough to disturb my slumber.

Saturday was meant to be a spa day, but mostly it turned out to be a "drive around in a taxi while trying to organize six people and a baby" day. The weather wasn't the greatest, otherwise there was a very nice resort we could have gone to. But when a cyclone is approaching, the beach does not appeal. We did eventually (much, much later) end up getting a massage at the fancy hotel, and it was gooooooood. Also surprisingly cheap. Not, like, non-fancy hotel cheap, but still about half of what I would have paid in Japan. I do love a good massage, I just can't really justify getting them very often, as my life is the exact opposite of stressful.

And then we went home, and that was less fun that shopping and snorkeling and getting massages.

Right, so where was I? Oh yes, heading into Maolbaol. The advantage to having a driver is that you can go from hotel to hotel checking out the various deals. The first few we tried were all clustered together in the main tourist area...all right, I suppose, but crammed up against each other and a little pricey. So then we drove out to a resort a little ways outside of town, and that was much better. It was spread out, so there was a lot of room to wander around without bumping into tourist hordes. Who we did bump into, however, were a group of university-aged Swedes who had been in our hotel in Cebu the night before. This wasn't exactly a startling coincidence, as Liz had gotten the hotel recommendation from them. They're taking a break before writing their thesises (thesii?) and are travelling around Asia for four months. Yes, four months. Yes, I kind of hate them a little too. It's ok.

Edwin took us out to a restaurant/karaoke place for dinner. Well, he drove, we paid. On the table was an ad for a nation-wide beer drinking contest with a grand prize of 500 000 pesos, which is a fair amount of money. It's a relay contest....you have to join with a team of five people, and each person has to drink one beer, and the fastest team wins. The best part is, you can practice for the entire month before hand. "Honey, I'm off to the pub to practice making our fortune! Don't wait up!" Awesomely, one team actually showed up while we were there and practiced. I think the best part was when they sat around discussing strategy.

That night was the first (and only) night we didn't go to bed early. We ended up swimming in the pool until about 1:30, after which the Swedes demonstrated the joys of travelling with a bunch of laptops and some external memory drives by entertaining us with tv.

Despite not going to bed until 4, we were still up by 8. Not very happy about it, but unable to sleep in some more. We wanted to try some snorkeling before we had to head back to Cebu to meet Liz's sisters, but we were a little unsure of the wisdom of going out. Liz can't swim and I can't see, so we don't exactly make a winning combination. Liz decided to ask the Swedes to come with us and make sure we didn't drown, and it is a testament to how charming she can be that they actually rolled out of bed and didn't try to feed us to the sharks.

Snorkeling. Snorkeling was awesome. The shop actually had some prescription lenses...nothing near my strength, of course, but enough to allow me to see a little bit. Unfortunately, and weirdly, the prescription masks didn't have anything on them to hook the snorkels too (apparently you can have vision or air, but not both), so I eventually ended up abandoning the snorkel altogether and just holding my breath. The area where we were was not all that spectacular, but it was my first time and I loved it. There were some bright blue starfish that really popped out of the ocean bed. If we swam out a little ways, the bottom suddenly dropped out and there was nothing underneath but miles and miles of ocean, which was actually a little creepy. Turns out I'm not so much scared of heights as I am of depths.

I know what you're thinking and the answer is yes, that IS Hello Kitty dressed like a moose.

So far, no tears. The little girl who once pitched a screaming fit because a mosquito wandered into her field of vision apparently has no problems with giant spiders all over the window. Ah, the power of candy.

Anyhow, back to the Philippines. Tuesday was mostly spent travelling. You can imagine my relief when I discovered that despite their insanely low prices, Cebu Pacific is a perfectly legitimate airline. It's not even close to being the smallest airplane I've ever flown in, which leads me to suspect that Air Canada is ripping their consumers off. This does not exactly come as a shock. We arrived safely at our cheap pensionne that evening after being only mildly ripped off by the taxi driver. As far as cheap hotels go, it was pretty good, although it was located down a dark side street that did not invite exploring. Liz and I stepped out after dinner to go look for a convenience store, took one look in either direction and decided we'd rather pay the inflated hotel prices for a bottle of water. The rest of the night was spent coming up with a plan for the following day. Somehow we evolved from spending the morning sightseeing in Cebu City to leaving our luggage in the hotel and taking off for two days down island. The brochure that we got from the front desk indicated that there was a festival happening in a town called Argao, and we thought a festival sounded fun. After that, we thought, we could head over to Maolbaol and check out the beach.

We really did start out intending to take the bus, or at the very least, a van full of other people. It was going to be all budget travel and everything. But that morning, as the taxi driver was taking us to the bus station, he mentioned that he was from Maolbaol and for a very reasonable price was willing to drive us wherever we wanted to go. The temptation of having a private driver quickly overcame any desire for frugality, and our only regret was that we had left our suitcases behind and brought only a swimsuit. As far as regrets go, that one isn't exactly a doozy.

Hiring Edwin turned out to be a great idea. We could stop whenever we wanted, wherever we wanted. We had lunch for 130 pesos (don't ask me how much that is. If you're really curious, go google it.) at a small local restaurant, stopped frequently for snacks, and swung by a shoe factory (which is how I ended up that evening in a cottage by the beach with three pairs of shoes but no change of clothing). We made it down to Argao, to be faced with lots of banners saying "Fiesta Argao!" but a distinct lack of actual festivities. Upon inquiry, we found that the festival was happening on Friday, not Wednesday, and that the brochure was obviously printed by lying liars who lied.

So then Edwin decided to take us to Maolbaol the scenic way. And it was. Very very scenic. And also very very unpaved. Ow. I'm sure we caused a lot of whiplash as we passed by the tiny hamlets as people tried to figure out what a taxi was doing out there. And that was before they noticed the white girl in the back.

Masami and I took advantage of a cancelled class today to decorate for Halloween. Check out the spiffy new window decorations Andrew brought back from Canada. I'll keep you posted on how many little kids go into hysterics. Um, God forbid.

Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like being taken to see a giant statue of Jesus.



I guess it's an auspicious start to the year. Afterwards we went out to a fancy floating restaurant and ate much food. Mmmm. Food. It was a really pretty location (pictures can be found by following the links to your right) and although lizard shit was involved, it happened on Liz's head, not mine. Yay for birthdays!

Then we headed back to Tayabas for a well-deserved nap. What? I'm old now. I need my rest. Liz and I went out in the evening to visit with the other side of her family, who can cook up a mean cassava root. I got stared at a lot...I guess they don't get many white people wandering around the side alleys in small Philippine villages.

This was followed by a refreshing cold shower (hot water was not an option), some bourbon, and more karaoke. (They've got an entire tv channel devoted to it. Why the Japanese haven't taken this idea and run with it is a complete mystery.)

OH! I just realized I have completely neglected to tell you about her uncle's convenience store. Ok, so it seems that many people in the Philippines run small convenience stores out of their homes. How any of them can make even the most marginal profit when every other house has one is beyond me, but her uncle definitely did well by this family reunion. They set up a running account and we would do things like yell out the window "Hey, can we get another bottle of coke in here?" and voila! A bottle of fresh cold coke would be passed through the window. I mean, I always thought Japan was great for convenience stores, but in order to get to one, I'd actually have to get up and go outside and walk three blocks. How is that convenient?

Pictures are posted. Just look over at my links and click on the second photo album.

Did you know Manila has two international airports? Well, now you do. If you're ever meeting someone in Manila, make sure you know which airport you are supposed to meet them at so that you don't spend two hours hanging around and wishing your cell phone worked overseas.

And we'll just gloss right over the fact that my first meal in the Philippines was at KFC, shall we? Good, moving on.

Liz's uncle and mom and a few other relatives (eventually) met us at the airport in a rental van and took us back to Tayabas, where we were greeted with many more relatives and some very tasty (non-KFC) food. I managed to stay up until 11, and then my two hours of sleep (or lack thereof) forced me to bed. Sunday dawned (as they all did), bright and early, with sunshine pouring in through the window and roosters going off and the entire population, or so it seemed, up and about and bustling by 6 am. (Liz's sisters said they were woken up even earlier, but the good thing about being exhausted is that you can sleep through pretty much anything.) We started out the day right by going to church. I have never seen so many churches in my life as I have in the past week, but the one we went to was something special. It is about three hundred years old and was made in a time when people really knew how to make churches.

Then we went shopping, where I encountered the first of many security guards. It seems like every store has them, although I'm not sure what, exactly, they do. I mean, when you walk in, they peek in your bag, but it's just a very quick glance. I guess they are there to catch the lazy and stupid would-be terrorists, who can't be bothered to hide their guns at the bottom of their purse? Liz quickly managed to stock up on a bunch of bargain clothes, but one quick perusal of the merchandise told me that I was out of luck. (You know how I have this delusion that I am large and Amazonian? Yeah, being in the Philippines did nothing to dispel that.) I think all that I bought was a Thomas the Tank Engine VCD for Liam. (Somebody loves him some Thomas, yes he does!) Oh well, not being able to fit into the clothes saves you a lot of money. Money that can be better spent on halo-halo.

That night was the family reunion. One of many cousins asked me if we had parties like this in Canada, and I tried for a moment to imagine what the neighbours would say if we held a karaoke party out on the street.



(Oh, by the way, I won't be putting the photos up on Dropshots - aka "My Pictures 2" - until I get copies of LIz's. I'll keep you updated.)

HIghlights of the evening include a children's dance contest, a birthday cake for all of us with September birthdays, and me judging a serenading contest. Have you ever been serenaded via karaoke before? By people you've never met? I had to listen to seven songs, most of which were in Tagalog. Actually, those ones were great, because one uncle (?) took it upon himself to translate the lyrics. So there you had the singer crooning away while I sat in a chair in the middle of a giant circle of people, with a translator jumping in with "I love you! SO MUCH!" and making sweeping melodramatic hand gestures. It's hard to judge someone's singing when you're laughing that hard. Anyhow, I knew from the start that contestant number two was going to win. Not only could he really sing, but he did the whole thing with flair. He started off by presenting me with a flower (that he'd picked from a nearby bush) and then insisted on gazing soulfully into my eyes for the whole song. Well, as soulfully as one can gaze while also trying not to giggle.









Which brings us to the end of Sunday night. Monday was, of course, my birthday, and as such deserves an entry all its own.