11/30/2018 ‒
Supermarket people

Spot the accidental BTS reference.

"Ang suwerte ko na lumaki kayong sanay sa grocery," my mother said from out of the blue.

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11/28/2018 ‒
Private members' club

The "third space" refers to a place outside of home and work where one usually spends a lot of time in. In the case of Manila, it almost always is a coffee shop. I mean, parks? We have parks? But that's another essay I probably won't write.

On Sunday night Shalla and I decided to just spend some time at a coffee shop. Schedule changes meant we haven't had Tim Hortons in a while, and we had an unspoken craving for their donuts. So, off to our usual branch we went, and on that night there was only one table available. All the rest was filled with people with earphones plugged in, and laptops in front of them.

Well, one was reading a book. She had one of those book stands, the ones you buy if you foresee that you'll spend a lot of your time in coffee shops and you'd rather not hold the book in your hand as you read it.

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11/26/2018 ‒
Earphones off

At least this time the cab driver didn't mind... or he didn't notice.

I usually have my earphones on, but not this time. Not despite the long slug from the arrival gate, to immigration, to baggage claim, to the foreign exchange counter, to the queue for train tickets. Not despite the almost half hour on the train. Not despite the long wait for a cab, a wait we wouldn't have done if not for the fact that it's almost midnight, and the free shuttles to our hotel are done for the day.

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11/22/2018 ‒
The finish line

There used to be only one building - the one on the left - when you look up from the classrooms at Miguel's third or fourth floor.

Mang Ed still remembers me. It took some prompting, but he remembers me.

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