Kate’s Winter Vacation

Not much really happened for the first few days in Manila. I met Sarah, an intern with CIDA who was staying with Mum and Dad for a couple of days in transit, and Mum invited two other interns, Simmi and Debra, over for dinner while Sarah was still with us. It was nice to meet some people my own age (ish) instead of only meeting work colleagues much older than myself. I went to Mum’s work party which involved far too much horrible hip hop music with dance instruction, and not nearly enough (and by that I mean, none at all) of the karaoke I was promised. I also went to Dad’s work party at the Hard Rock Café, where I was pressed into service as a judge for the (ridiculous) performance competition between the departments. Dad’s department was particularly feeble, as they hadn’t prepared anything in advance, and thus Dad was left along to sing “Automation” while the rest of the department giggled over having to do robot dancing on the sides. Ugh. How painful. Poor Daddy. Some of the other performances were less excruciating, though not by much.

We celebrated Christmas a bit early because we were going to be at a resort for Christmas day, so I was handed item after item from Japan souvenirs and other things that Mum and Dad believed I ought to have, while I handed back just a couple each of things I decided that they ought to have. I had previously loaded them with the things they had requested, like shaving cream and Echinacea and the like. (I later discovered TWO places in Manila where they sold the kind of shaving cream that Dad likes, after having gone on a bit of a wild goose chase around Peterborough trying to find the damned stuff.)