Saturday is like most Saturdays for anyone, it comes down to a bit of planning for the weekend and also coffee at a local café to put you in the mood for making those plans.
its 9AM and Marge’s Phone is ringing ….I think its rung twice but I’m still in a state between dreamland and the Humid side of the living. marge comes to my bed and wakes me up saying the man is downstairs to collect the scooter from our rental… I grunt and roll over trying to pretend like I don’t know what’s actually happening. sleep is precious when you reach 30+.
Marge puts her big girl pants on and heads down stairs to go and hand the keys and helmet back hoping the husband of elaine doesn’t tell the Rental place that we were rebels the first night we got the scooter and tried our luck with the law.
she returns and said that the scooter was all sorted and that i need to get up because she needs coffee….. pffft women (eye roll).
the coffee shop is located down on the esplanade and seems to be the nicest place in town. its a white building done in minimal architecture with glass and granite floors and gleaming from outside is a chrome plated Coffee machine that looks like it was commissioned by Pininfarina themselves…..I perched up at this as I haven’t had a real espresso coffee for a 3 weeks… coffee here is filter coffee and doesn’t usually have the option of fresh milk… usually that American chemical concoction from 1946 as we know as Creamer…. another eye roll on my part.
in the coffee shop there is plenty of seats and further more there is more AC units blasting cold air than I care to count, we decide that today we will sit here for the morning and type my blog as I have been lacking.
During my 90 Minute typing extravaganza marge has left her charging cable for her phone back at the room that we need to check out of by 12, so she has gone to find a mobile shop to buy a spare one that I can keep in my bag so she can use my power bank so that when her Samsung series 8 phone goes flat 10 times a day I’m prepared…. yep…. women… always invading your space.
while Marge is out doing that i have to find another place for us to stay as our booking with Elaine ends today, we drove past a hotel that looked like rather okay and has a pool so i do some googling to try see what it costs. its called the Sierra hotel and there pricing does include breakfast… and if you take that into account which is around 500-600 pesos for us to have breakfast the room rate is okay, so i book a night there and once we check in and get settled by the pool I can corner tie her down and come up with the next plan of attack!
marge returns about an hour later and I’m on my second coffee bouncing off the walls ready to get into the day.
oddly enough we walked out of the coffee shop at around lunch time and surprise surprise there is a Japanese’s restaurant next door that has a tonne of people in it, we agree we will have lunch here. but first we need to go get our stuff from elaine’s Abode… which conveniently has a power outage for a considerable time this morning. i tell marge that we are staying at the hotel with the pool and its my treat as i made the booking without her input so no point trying to get her to go Dutch in it.
and from there we gather up our stuff and get a famous trike down to Sierra hotel to drop the unneeded baggage off.
after the drop has been accomplished we stroll around the corner back to the Japanese food that you need a solid gold bar to even place an order with….expecting it to be good we get a little of everything.
-Chicken Karaage
-Edamame Beans
-Takoyaki
-Pork Ramen
-Miso Soup
Japanese food i have always equivalated to portion sizes similar to the Spanish Tapas. the dished are more of a morsal than the full meal…. well that’s how it is in japan… in the Filipinas the dishes are huge…
the Chicken Karaage is basically half a chicken and the Takoyaki are the size if small tennis balls.
everything else was within expectation. unfortunately to Marge’s disgust we did have some food wastage and i couldn’t manage to stuff the last few Takoyaki into my bottomless stomach.
Checkin for the hotel was around 2PM that we decided leaving it untill 3PM before we waddled back was ample time for them tho get the room ready….. oh how we were very wrong.
at 3:30 pm we arrive and there is already a very angry man in the foyer asking why his room isnt ready and when it came to Marge handing over my passport to check in the said our room wasnt ready either… naturally in these high stress situations of not having a room you really only have 3 options….
1- go curl up on the street on a cardboard bed in the pouring rain
2-go to the hotel bar and have a beer
3- get your dirty washing out of your bags in the hotel bar load it into the day pack and stroll across to the Laundry across the road whilst having a beer.
option 3 is the one i went with while marge sat and waited for the room, it was also time to get Gerald washed of all his global dirt and radioactive filth of the last 4 years.
the turn around time at the laundry was only 3 hours and we could collect it at 6:40 PM.
when i returned marge had the room key sorted and we went up to room 404….. yes error room 404 page not found…..
and this room is tainted the main door lock doesn’t actually lock… the fridge stinks like a dirty gym sock and the beds yet again are no better to a Camping mat.
I tell marge that she is to be pool ready in 20 minutes as she needs warning… something about bathing suits and getting her hair right and what ever else women do in the bathroom for 20 minutes…….. I personally thing if all the women in bathrooms for extended periods of time instead of doing there hair.. they could work on the equations behind Cold Fusion technology as a hive mind and make the world a better place…. but today i will settle for the bikini and combed hair….
the pool is not large but big enough and as we sit there listening to music i pull my laptop out and we have to plan the last 13 days before I leave, the hardest thing is getting from Dumaguete back up to the main island.
we look at the map and agree we need to get back to the main island, as Marge’s home province is just south of Manila.
we decide on the following travel plans
-Tomorrow fly to manila
-Bus down to San Pablo (marges home city)
-stay the night there
-then across to Puerto Galera
-for a few days
-Back to Marge’s place to meet her doggie’s
-then up to manila for the last 4 days.
so i made the appropriate bookings for this and the plan was settled… there was a few arguments in this process but lets not get bogged down in the smaller details…also language barrier….
Dinner was served hot at the local Korean restaurant and we ordered Unlimited Samgyupsal that was yet again against marge’s philosisiphy of food wastage…. and i didnt even order so it was all on her!.
the samgyupsal is a cook it yourself kind of meal with a gas burner and meat that is fried on a hotplate and alongside is a mixture of pickled sides to eat it with.
the food was delicious however after having to try and keep the food wastage gods happy at lunch o was only feeling a light dinner that resulted in death stares across the table as i would not pull my weight in the food department.
Everyone love some meat.
dessert was a Japanese ice cream sandwich that we shared called Samanco, it is derived from Japanese Sea Bream Bread and has red bean paste and vanilla ice cream in it, I wasn’t sure about it but its actually pretty good and I’m sure my Sister Alex in Japan will know them very well!
time to End it on a quote from the Korean King Sejong, he ruled from 1419 in the Chosŏn (Yi) dynasty
“A wise ruler should not neglect minority opinions and give a careful hearing. Nevertheless, it would be foolish for a monarch to make decisions based on a single person’s opinion.”
– King Sejong- 1397AD – 1450 AD
Quantum Entanglement 