A happy brand-spanking new year to you all. :D
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Tita Vik sent me this SMS message just before we got to White Plains last night:
"If you had sex once a day for 365 days and kept all the condoms and melted them, you can make a tire and actually call it a GOOD YEAR! Wish you a good 2003!"

Naughty naughty, Tita. But it was funny.
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The last day of 2002 was a bit of a traveling affair for me.

Went to Pam's after lunch. The whole trip took me a mite less than 30 minutes...goes some way into proving that Metro Manila isn't really that big a city in land size; it's just the horrific population density that makes it a "megacity." Brought my PlayStation and some CDs along, too, just for something different.

I got there to a still-drowsy Pam having a stiff neck which cause we didn't know. We just sat together, ate some pomelo and talked. She gave me her old mobile phone, a Nokia 8250 with a new battery, "so you can give your phone a rest." Later on we got around to playing a round of Jeopardy on my PS and with her looking at the cars I "bought" for her on Gran Turismo 2. She particularly liked the cuirass-metallic (aka lavender) Ford Ka I got her, and I played back a replay video of one of the races I used the Ka on.

I didn't stay too long as my dad had other plans for my family that night. I did enjoy every minute of it, though. Thanks for everything, love. Happy new year, my darling.
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"Other plans" saw me in White Plains for the traditional "second dinner" at my grandma Nanay's house with every one of my dad's relatives present...which wasn't too many to begin with.

Tita Dani and Uncle Bobby were there, like they usually were around the holidays, from Jakarta and somewhere in Switzerland (my Chinese uncle works a year for the WTO, I hear). Tita Vik was...well, she still lives with my grandma. Tito Francis and Tita Agnes were there, too, with all my boisterous cousins present.

Drank a Mule and goblets of red wine and champagne to shoo the new year in...and I could feel my face heating up in the weirdest way. I am still not good with handling my alcohol. I don't plan to drink too much anyway---I am not looking forward to getting my Honda's windshield grotesquely embedded on my face anytime soon. Make that anytime at all, for that matter.

Worth looking forward to was some quality time spent with my three cousins. Carlo, Bea and little Martin were a blast. Tita Vik mumbled that I was going to be their new favorite relative pretty soon. Hee. We'll see.

Another welcome guest was Nanay's pet Rottweiler, Zero. The big black girl seemed happy that we were all around her, keeping her away from the expendable gunpowder that was New Year's. She was still big and heavy even after talk that she was "on a diet," so that meant my little rascal cousins used her as a big body pillow. Seems Zero even knows how to snatch thrown grapes in mid-air, too.
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On the way home, the soupy clouds of Quezon City smoke from the New Year livery made driving home hard for my dad. It sure beat being in Baguio clambering up Kennon Road on a January day.

What a stark contrast to the midnight skies of Bicutan. Hardly any smoke at all was present. Papa says it's all about the difference of disposable income. True, but I bet SM City Bicutan ate all that disposable income up instead of fireworks.