What Happens In A Journey To Nzee

chili's birtuwal diary :D

day 2

Okay. The idea struck me just now. Its osum. I keep a sortofova virtual diary during our... um- embarkmentation to the big mushroom island. aeoteoroa, the big cloud island. The place of the kiwi dudes. And dudettes. Must never forget the dudettes. So I’m in the plane to Manila from Davao. We are experiencing TURBULENCE. Bad turbulence. The shaking makes me want to grit my teeth and scream at the wind for causing such tension. Tension to, y’know, to me. I am a self important idiot, after all. :)

We went through the whole boarding/checking --turbulence, for the THIRD frikin time demmet!!-- in a very... noticeable --Gaahhrrgg!! I’m going to die soon. shitshitshitcrapcrapcrap ohemjay SHIT -- manner. Were five people, with huge bags, pretty note-worthy noise pollution, and bags falling and crap like that. We had to take our shoes off at one point. We got plenty of attention, due to the Big Guy Up There ( I think He was maybe looking for a bit of a laugh). If I wasn’t included in the offending party ,I suppose it would be pretty hilarious. We were the only people not wearing socks, speaking of which, my feet are cold. Also, my eyes are stingy. I’ve got a sniffle, and I have a HUGE zit on the right cheek. Mom and dad are currently talking about all the money were gonna lose thanks to transportation, airport people, and all that blah. I think I might get synuses. uuuug. T_T

NOTE TO SELF: cover huge ginormous deadishh zit with band aid. When I have time. Also...I feel like doodoo. Guh.

The first day... It was great. Mom and dad were going slightly (wow. BIG understatement here) mad with the pressure of packing everything we would need to start a new life in a different country. Speaking of packing, --again, turbulence! This is not good, Lord-we forgot to pack toothpaste, towels, soap... nyahaha. I can’t remember anything else.—again turb (waha. That’s my word. uh-huh.) --Anyway, yeah. Literally last minute packing, and mom was acting all menopausal (hehe she does that when she’s pissed at the world. or papa :] waha) --turb again.. Sigh… I think it cuz of that Hurricane Jolina thing-- then we had lunch at lolos (about half a seconds walk from my house. its 2/3 meters from our little chubby hole. wait, ex-chubby hole now. not sure if I’m sad or happy about that) I’ll miss lolo. I somehow grew a fondness for him

around the time he gave me an Eee students notebook. The one I’m using. Right now. Yeah... but it’s sincere. No matter if kuya and pao think its sucking up, it’s not. You can’t help liking someone who gives you a laptop. It’s natural for me, man ;) but I can tell he’s lonely.. :( Then we packed some more... and we got into this super efficient (not really, no...) flurry of activity minutes –turb, guh--before tito bong prudencio (one of papas fraternity brothers, and a really good guy, awesome doctor, and tight (like THAT) with papa.hes got 2 daughters, Ate gels a year older moi, and she’s heaps nice, while the other kid, I’m not quite acquainted with. Meaning I don’t know her name, or her age. Shes about two-four, maybe.) arrived to pick us up. We said our goodbyes and tito bong drove us to Davao, where we ate at this awesome seaside restaurant. The food was brilliant. We went up to the back of the open air restaurant and watched violent waves pound the dark shore. The moon was a bright, brilliant moon, the clouds in front of it casting it into a dramatic picture. We didn’t take any, the camera, we forgot, and it was locked in the car. I want to imprint that pic in my head. The sky was a deep dramatic navy, the sea was darker, with the white froth of the waves casting thick horizontal lines close to the shore. The sand was not white, but brown and in the dark it looked almost black. The wind was salty (I stuck my tongue out and tasted it, too, hehe) and it smelled wonderful. Fresh and somehow sweet, and I couldn’t get enough of the smell. It was grade A tropical breeze, except for the fact that the wind was way stronger than a breeze due to Hurricane Jolina in the Visayas. The scene was something out of a drama film; unbelievable. Two kids came from somewhere, and one asked kuya if he could rap for us. Not understanding, kuya asked him to do it. And he rapped. And did a bit of beatboxing. He was pretty cool for a little kid of about 8-10. He was skinny, his skin dark, with a dirty face and messy hair. --my ears are experiencing pressure, and I can’t seem to pop them. Damn.-- he was wearing a dark blue sleeveless shirt that was ragged and torn. His friend went off somewhere near us, and when the kid finished his original rap thing, we gave him some change. He thanked us and left with his friend. We were called back to the table and had a great dinner. I thought about bribing my stomach to stretch so it wouldn’t feel so sickeningly full. The bribe was Nestea apple green tea. I drank it all. The result was not feeling too good. --later, were landing. I’ll be back when I can :)

day 4... or maybe 5...?

I’ve been sick. I had the flu, and then yicky cough (luckily enough, it didn’t hurt to cough out the gunk in my throat - much) and I’d get dizzy, complete with matching headache. The second day I was here in pampanga, I woke up really late, and I went to the bathroom, got out, and sat on the dining room table and almost emptied my stomach. And the rest of the day and this morning almost barfing, as well. Im gonna stop now, cuz im not in the mood. I also have a stack of pocket book love stories to read and a very old novella. Hehe. I thought it was tita Tess’, but when mama talked to her about it, she said it was lolo Pedro’s. hahahaaaah! xD xD funi. He admitted it too, and mumbled stuff.

Were HERE :)

I dont know how many days it’s been… I don’t want to attempt to count. It makes my brain pissed off at me  but yes, we are here, in Wellington, New Zealand. We arrived yesterday. Currently, we are in this hotel called Wellington YHA. This place is pretty awesome. Alright, time to recount all the things I did and all the stuff that happened to me on our way here…

Let’s see… Tagum to Davao… check. Davao to Manila… um, summary… we flew to manila, got there, got picked up by tito Edgar and this dude Mr. Driver Man (he’s been driving us around, back and forth from Manila to Pampanga since the days we were coming home or going to Australia. He’s done this for us… four times now) and both guys are really nice people. We went to some office in manila, and listened to some important sounding stuff for 4 hours (roughly) then we got a pretty stamp in our passports for our trouble :D and for me and Pao (ages 12-19, dependants) a signature from our ‘counselor/ seminarian’ lady, then went on our way to Magalang, Pampanga. On our way, I caught a bad cold. And cough. I felt miserable. We got to Magalang at around 10.30 or maybe 11.00 pm, we crashed after greetings, and I woke up at 12.00 noon, and they were serving lunch. I shared a room and bed with Kuya (luckily the bed was a double) since Kuya had a very mild case of dry cough, and him and Pao had this pathetic argument and Pao got pissed and declared that he didn’t want to be roomies with kuya anymore (they shared a room at tito Bongs place in Davao, and I slept on top of two mattresses in a floor in our parents room). The first two days I spent in Magalang, I felt horrible. I was constantly dizzy and on the edge of puking on something inappropriate-for-puking-on during almost all of

the second day. I took three kinds of drugs, I think. There was a pink (or sometimes a SUPEEER bitter yellow one or green, and at one time, white c: ) pill that I took once a day, then there was the advil/medicol thing, three times a day, for the fever, headaches, and maybe the puking (correction. ALMOST puking  ) and then there was the cough syrup, which, all things considered was pretty damn delicious for a cough syrup. It was pink and strawberry flavored, and left me licking the spoon (while grimacing and half going ‘mmm…’ and half groaning and saying ‘ooohhhh, ICK) kuya told me that it’s possible to get addicted to the stuff, and he knew cuz apparently in his old school at Tagum (AMA), they found this cubby hole in the roof, (like a rotted part of the ceiling that made a hole in a corner that was easily concealed by something) and it was filled with empty cough syrup bottles. Isn’t that really weird though? I mean, who gets addicted to cough syrup??? Well, anyway, back to the story… I was sick like HECK and on the third day, I felt relatively more alive… on the fourth day in Pampanga, I think, we went to Abbe Farm, this awesome resort chock-full of cultural goodies. It had ifugao huts, like giant straw huts with no walls, just a roof lifted four feet off the ground. And some stairs leading up to it. Under the hut, it was open air, where people could hang out and stuff. There was a bunch of wooden chairs/sofas (minus the cushions, I think… I can’t seem to remember any more) and a bunch of foot-tall figures/statues of gods. Specifically; fertilization gods. You know, wooden naked people with boobs and *ehem* Mr.Happies (note that their ‘little friends’ were usually… ‘Happy and attentive’). The huts were tall, and on the sides, were skulls of the native water buffalo or ‘Kalabaw’ (I‘m still dumbstruck by the fact that the things have such HUGE horns. Scary, black, curving and with lines that looked like they were naturally engraved on) or native carvings of geckos which were 3/ 4 feet long, short spears (about a meter long with stone heads) and other native looking artifacts tourists could ogle. we went up the stairs and found a sort of cute little sleeping space, where guests slept in (if they wanted to stay overnight) and it had all sorts of knick knack things all over the place, out of the way enough that it just looked like something to add to the background ‘ambience’ and the place was well sealed against the inevitable mosquitoes (yeah, the rainforest was right outside. Beautiful, peaceful and refreshing, but also swarming with bugs, animals, and dangerous plants. And mosquitoes. Especially those.) the mattresses were folded discreetly (well, not really, since the place was TINY, like not reaching 4 by 4 meters. Not even 3 by 3, I think) to the side of the space and there was a tiny refrigerator and an air conditioner. These ruined the whole effect of ‘nativenessness’ thing, though. We got back out and explored/used the awesome all natural (seeming, but actually pretty normal but more awesome than usual) bathroom. Then we went to the spa spots, and the ‘presidential and/or special’ suites, which were huge, not so natural

looking, but still pretty damn hot rooms, with brilliant views of the mountain-side hills sloping downward. The whole place was pretty damn cool. I regret not being able to stay there longer, and also that I didn’t get to experience a spa treatment thing and/or massage :( Well, im feeling a bit lazy again… meaning ill be typing again sometime in the near future, but I’m stopping right at this moment :) see you sometime I feel like typing again ;]

Day 1 in new apartment :D Ok, so we just moved into our new apartment. It looks really cruddy on the outside. you know, compared to the beauty of pretty much everything we’ve seen so far in this country… every building, tree, even grass species, the ocean, the bay, the mountains, the birds, almost everything looks excellent on camera. And off, as well, including the people :-0. There are so many different kinds of people everywhere, it’s no wonder these people are not judgmental! (comparedto the Philippines, this place is the image of tolerance) they must have been tired of trying, there are too many; EVERYWHERE!!! I’ll talk about all of this stuff later though, since I still have SO DAMN MUCH to cover >:) grrrr. I’m irritated yet not negatively. It’s an odd feeling :D Ok… let’s see… I was, where?? Umm… Abbe farm… ok, so we left, and tita Dinah offered to have me over for the night at their place in not Magalang… somewhere in the city. Iduno. Can’t care anymore. It’s not like its important. To me. Whatever. I can still live without knowing all this stuff, really, but I guess the details makes the story better… according to my research (hahaha. Romance ebooks! Im into chiclit, love stories, all that. Minus the annoying over-dramaticness of the twilight series. I can’t stand that stuff). Ok. Babbling. Must stop. So I agreed and slept over there (the main reason was the fact that they had internet connection and a router :D) and then Kuya, Pao, mama and papa stayed in Magalang and came over Tita Dinah’s house the next day. By the way, I fell in love when we got to Tita Dinah’s house the night before. To Tasha, AKA Tashie. The cutest, coolest, weirdest, most adorable, ugly faced Japanese Spitz I’ve ever seen. She came out of the house jumping up and down, GALLOPING (except it looks like two paws on the ground, both front, and the back paws up in the air, and then vice versa. galloping.) and charging around the place towards any person (the only qualifications are the following: feet, taller than Tashie, shins… hands to pet her, I guess… and… I think that’s it) then after a few minutes of enjoying all the showing

off tricks the girls made her do and the reward pets and patting and undivided attention, she slowly starts to lose energy. Then sometime later, after everyone’s in their jammies and bathed and settled and pretty much waiting to get sleepy and just passing the time until then, Tashie would be lying somewhere, looking like a white and almost orangey brown mop with two front paws sticking out in front of her, completely oblivious to anything not concerning a three feet radius around her. She would completely ignore us all. A brilliant dog, Tashie. Her face is yucky, though. The fur is always wet, cuz it seems like her eyes water or something, and her eyes are HUGE, I tell you. Her nose, I never took notice of, I just know it exists. Her teeth are the highlight of the show, though. Her lower teeth, or maybe I should say her entire lower jaw, was jutting out. Two of her longest canine teeth made her look even ickier. Whoo, Tashie. I miss Tashie, now. Anyway, blablabla. The next day the rest of my immediate family came over and Tashie enjoyed some more attention. Then came the rest of Mother’s siblings, except Tito Edjun (he’s in Singapore with his two daughters, Dianne Rose and Buena Joy, and his wife Tita Raquel). Meaning there was Tito Noli, or Kakuei Araral, and his wife of 3 years (not sure), Tita Jhorisha/Jho. They call themselves Jesus Freaks, since they love Jesus so much. I’ll never understand it. Tito Nol entertained us with his awesome guitar skills, hilarious self edited versions of songs (edited on the spot, I think) and funny geekish hand signals with a saying to go with them (“Whatevur, Major Loser! Put them together (the L shaped hand signs), and I’m the Winner!”), and there was also the Psycho-analytical Rock-Paper-Scissors, where you try to analyze your opponents tactic/attitude/mood while staring, and attempting to be intimidating, into their eyes :D Tita Jho is a fashionista, a very good designer. She’s not professional or anything, but I think she’s taking courses or sumthing. Learning how to sew. But she’s already taken a course in college for designing, or iduno. But yes, they are a young couple, and they’re the hippest of the lot :D There was also tita Golda and tita Lina. They are both old maids, unmarried, call it what you want. They both like to tell painfully hilarious and odd stories from memory lane. And when they’re together… the fun and laughs are always on the loudest volume possible. And again, when they all arrived from the house in Manila (Tito Noli and tita Gol came from the same house, I think, and they picked up tita Len and drove to Pampanga) Tashie was showered with attention. Mama tried to tie her hair up so it wouldn’t hide her face, but she looked adorably ugly, and she kept trying to scratch the thing off, so we showed the poor mutt mercy. Not too much mercy as to spare her from having to wear a puppy shirt, though :] it was white, with red and pink glittery lettering that said ‘I love being a princess’. And oh, it fit the ‘reyna ng bahay’ (queen of the house) to a tee. The saying and the shirt, I mean x]

Ok, so we had mirenda (after lunch snack) and dinner there, along with the usual stories of the past. That time, it was the hilarious versions of the courtship rituals of our parents and tito Butch and tita Dinah’s. And some about the other guys that courted both while they were still in school. As always, dinner was fun. Then ALL of us, and this is where we count the CLAN; tita Dinah, tito Butch, mama, papa, tita Golda, tita Lina, tito Noli, tita Jho, Shobe (cousin, middle kid of tita Dinah, almost my age), Daniella/Niella (youngest, BIGGEST [like WHOO], curliest hair, almost paos age, Shobe’s sis), Ate Ishna (eldest, short, the only of the siblings with straight hair, pretty, about a year younger than kuya), me, Paolo/Pao (my younger brother), and Kuya/Jemoy/Francis (likes to call himself ‘Kick’, an ‘english version’ of ‘Kikoy’ which is a Filipino nickname for Francis. Also, ‘Kuya’ means ‘older brother’ in Filipino, it is also a term for slightly older male friends, as a sort of respect thing), that’s 14 people, with VERY different personalities, bound together by blood relation or marriage, under the same roof for one night. It wasn’t really eventful, when the time to sleep came. It was a well practiced thing. Tito’s and mostly tita’s would come over to lolo’s (grandpa’s) house in Gemini Village, Tagum City, Mindanao during some holidays, usually Christmas, and I think there was one time during summer break, maybe more than once but I’m beside the point, now. Next day, we went back to Magalang. We met heaps of very unfamiliar cousins and aunts and uncles there (all on papa’s side. We don’t really know them, since they all live in Magalang, and were hardly there, except to leave the country [which was what we were doing] or to spend some down time there [coming back recently into the country]) my favorite is Tita Tess :D she’s pretty cool, and friendly, and easy to like. She’s got an American fiancée, now, I think. Yay, she’s getting married! I hope she’s happy with the dude she’s marrying. I mean, some people can fake their entire personality when only in contact online, in chatting places, or something. But I think the dude is alright. They have a fondness, a closeness, I heard it in the way tita Tess was talking about him :] the guy wants to start a business here, as well. As to that, I don’t know what to think. Too much of Pinay-American marriages are for green cards and a citizenship in America. Who knows if there are other ways to do that, except now, the American gains from the Pinay. Of course, the Americans who marry Pinay’s (the ones who marry for green cards) make sure they get the cute, hot, young ones for their brides. The kind they can’t get in their own country. It’s a winwin situation, I suppose, but I feel like it’s worse than an arraged marriage :[ Enough of that, though, I think tita Tess is gonna be happy. I’m hoping for her sake, at least :] They have a basketful of romance novels. The pocketbook sized ones, about the size of any Goosebumps book. I tried reading a quarter of the pile (the ones I

decided would be the most worth it books) and I only got to read like… 4/ 5 books, mostly skimming the story. They weren’t really that good. They were okay. I also tried reading this reaaaallly old novella, a very complicated story. A lord turns into a pirate somehow, and something about a wife he was forced to marry blabla, and they ‘hate’ each other, but the girl ‘betrayed’ him, but she didn’t really, and then the girl thinks he’s dead, and then meets him again when he’s a pirate captain, and he takes over the ship she’s on, and then… something. I don’t know. I have no idea what comes next after that. I only got halfway through the book. Ugh. I want to finish the book real bad. The title says it all though, I guess. Plus the captain of the ship the girl in on. Title: ‘Bride of the Wind’ (I think) Captain: Gaylord Niemens. Yup. :] I still want to read it though. Hehehe Alright. Where was I?? oh yeah. So we met titos, titas, cousins, ‘grandpas’ (they’re the brothers of our granma/granpa on papa’s side) then we went to the airport about a couple days after getting back to Magalang. We went to Manila, to the old airport (with a pit stop at Mcdonald’s :D) and flew met a family of four there. We were family friends in Australia, and they went home earlier than us. We planned to ride the same plane to Wellington, New Zealand, and that’s what we did. There was tita Malou, mamas old friend, and then her kids, the oldest is Mickey/David, he’s the same age as me, a model (not anymore, though, since were now in New Zealand), with funny pointy shoes. He dresses like a Jonas Brother. He was wearing a pretty damn awesome trench coat, though. And shirt. The middle kid is Monique, 12, and she’s tall for her age, stylist, too ;] then there’s my crush, Ryan, 8, has an Optimus Prime robot toy :D and he’s sooooo sooo sososo cute, with the potential to be really handsome (and probably super hot). He’s got style, too 0-:3 We met them, looked them over and let them look us over (all of this discreetly. – ish) and talked and blah. Thought: how come I was never EVER included in any of the thing kuya and pao and mikey talk about, anyway??? I suppose it was my fault, as well, but HECK, I was always stuck with the younger kids. Bloody sexist rules, I suppose. But maybe it was also because we were teased (me and mikey), and accused of liking each other. Just because we happened too have parents who knew each other, we were both Pinoy (maybe??? I dunno), and we were of the exact same age. What the heck is that anyway?? I don’t know, at least, I was teased and stuff. I don’t think Mikey suffered the same thing. But I kept my distance because of the teasing thing. Mostly because it was sort of true, then. Hey, he was a good looking kid, its normal for a 12 yr old to be easily poked and influenced into liking some not ugly guy. Plus he was nice. No one’s got a reason to blame me, demmet! And now, since becoming a model, he looks even better. Damn. Oh well, it’s not like we’ll be in the same radius of livage. Sure, were living in the same city now, but Wellington is HUGE, and they’re living over at Upper Hutt, and were living now at Ranwick Road, Moera, Lower Hutt :D yay.

So we flew for 12 hours. Got to Brisbane, walked around the gate place for about 40 minutes or so, got back on the plane, sat for 2 more hours, stared at the sunrise from the windows…it was beautiful. There was one thin line of red, under the yellow and orange clouds, and above that the clear blue of the cloudless sky. The sun was still unseen. Then we got to Sydney. Then we waited some more. Then we flew to Wellington for about 4-5 hours, maybe. I couldn’t tell anymore. Mother thought it was only going to be an hour. Ha. The glass on my window frosted a little bit. It was freaking cold when we landed. We stayed at a hostel called YHA Wellington City for three days, mom and dad in one room, us kids in another. Then we moved into a suite after the three days, and stayed for three more days. In that time, mom and dad got a car for 2,000 bucks, a very good apartment (not considering the outside appearance) for only $240/week (that is about the cheapest we could ever DREAM of. See? Awesome.) Note, tita Malou has stayed with her sister, and has been texting and calling us, helping HEAPS. Without her and her sister, we wouldn’t have found the car/apartment. So thank you, you wonderful person, I love you. Even if I’m uncomfortable in your son’s presence. Papa and pao moved in here the day before, when they brought the entirety of the hugest luggage with them (papa’s fraternity brother, Paul helped us heaps! He brought our luggage here, using his car :D the Beta Sigma Fraternity has a website. Thanks to that website, all of the Beta Sigma dudes of the entire world. Your oath, and the niceness of this world has helped the existence of us, and probably thousands more :O I swear, I at least, am very grateful. I don’t know if the rest of my family understand or appreciate the massiveness of the help we’ve received from Beta Sigma. Tito Bong is also a Beta Sigma Dude. THANK YOU BETA SIGMA FRATERNITY, BONG PRUDENCIO, AND TITO PAUL!!!) they slept here, in the apartment. Which is foogling frickin COOOOLLLD. Must be why it’s so cheap to rent. We need heaters. NOOOOW. I’m wearing a tight black sando (sleeveless shirt for wearing under polos and shirts), two green long sleeves, a thick wooly jacket, jeans, a school uniform jumper (also known as jogging pants)on top, sweat sock, and halffingered gloves. My toes are numb. My right knee is aching. The only reason why the tips of my fingers have any heat left (and I’m talking not gang green, cold rot, frostbite whatever) is because I’m typing fast. Really really reaaaalllyyy fast. As fast as I can. My elbows are causing my arms to lose circulation :D its 12.17 in the morning. I should really stop. Hotel food. We didn’t eat any hotel food. We bought from the supermarket across the street from YHA, called New World. Potato wedges, hot chips, steak pies, chicken nuggets, chips (Bluebird), Coke, Lift, fruits, chinese food, burgerking stuff… I think that’s it. During our stay in YHA, we toured the city. me, kuya and pao, I mean. We went mostly to the museum, called Te Papa, meaning ‘our place’ in Maori. It had the

history of the whole Maori vs Whites thing in the upper floors, but the best exhibition is in only one section of the museum on the second floor. The animals display, showing HEAPS of species’ of insects, shells, snails, birds, animals, fish, and stuff. There were HEAPS of skeletons of dolphins in a room with one glass wall. It was closed off from the public. They looked like evil dinosaur things, the ancestors of whales or something. And the best part splits into two. The colossal squid preserved in anti-freeze, and the young (20 yrs old) Pygmy Blue Whale, a huge skeleton hanging above our heads. The jaw could fit 4 me’s stretched out in a sunbathing pose, minus the outstretched arms. 15 of me’s if I want to really squish myself in. I have lots of pics of it, too. The colossal squid was four meters big, and I got heaps of pics of that, as well. And it looked rottingish. There were heaps more animals hanging above our heads, as well, most stuffed, I think. Others look like plastic/wax :] We also went to civic, which was pretty boring, we just ate McDonald’s. We went to the pier, just outside the museum. Beautiful. I got pics :D Me and mama went hunting for secondhand stores, as well. We found two next to each other, Salvation Army, and Abel’s Something. And in between there was this garage sale :D The best furniture was in Abel’s, we got 2 beds and my one mattress (without a base) there, along with our couch, dining table, and office table :D We got 6 chairs (though I think they accidentally sold three of them to someone, so mama canceled the thing, and she got a refund :[ ), dunas, bed covers, wooly blankets, and for me, a brown dress, a black scarf, and cool black/pink shoes that look like a Vans design, except with a wide pink rubber strap over it, all from Salvation Army/ Salvos C: We went again the next day, and found another shop called cash converters; we want to buy a fridge there. We got a clock, though, and I saw a nice tiny tv. WE NEED A HEATER. And I need some sleep. Time: 12:47 AM T_T g’night.

Date is August 24, 2009 1:07 am Well, we’ve got a heater ages ago :D but we need three more  and we got a new tv today. Which is good. And it has access to all of two different channels, one of which occupies two numbered thingies (0 and 1). Which could be better. We also got two buckets, a mop, three tennis balls, a really HEAVY sack of potatoes, an almost as heavy sack of rice, two choco chip bags, honey, nutella,