Summer Fright Night

What do you do when it’s summer and you’re single?  Our answer was to have a horror movie marathon.

We came up with this idea while we were browsing through Case’s blog. Case is a huge horror flick fan. Meanwhile, Jez and I are just a couple of scaredy cats. But it’s summer and we’ve got nothing awesome to do on weekends. Jez made some arrangements and in no time we’re booked at the Mabuhay Manor last Saturday. The first Balikbayan hotel in the Philippines is located in Pasay (about 20 minutes from my house).  When we got there, I sort of felt like I left the city because unlike the hot and humid Makati, that place was just well-ventilated. Guess what was the first thing we did? Attack the swimming pool of course! Then it was followed by a truly Pinoy merienda – we had fishballs, squidballs, quail eggs, and kikiam. (Yummy!) Afterwards, Jez’s dad gave us a quick tour of the hotel. We wanted to check out the junior suites but all of them were booked that day. Heard there’s a jacuzzi inside these suites.  I must remind myself to book one of them for my brother’s birthday.

Jez, Val, and I left the hotel (and left Josh alone in the room) to search for a 7-11 store and when we weren’t able to find any near the vicinity, we ended up going to Baclaran. Haha. I’ve never been to Baclaran. LOL.  What do we want from 7-11? Secret.  Anyway, when we came back, we had a sumptuous dinner with Case (thanks for the DVDs ). Nanlibre si Jez. Thank you.

We almost forgot that we’re supposed to do a movie marathon. We started off with Zombieland (not a horror flick but what the heck) after merienda, but after dinner this was followed by the Orphan (slasher flicks count as scary alright), then Teeth (it was a laugh trip) and ended up with old UFC fights (was it ’86, Josh?)  I kinda fell asleep after that. Haha.  This is probably the shortest movie marathon I’ve ever had but it was fun because we were screaming like, oh well, girls as we watched Esther kill her foster family one by one. I kinda wanted to watch The Shining again since it’s based on one of the novels of my favorite author, Stephen King. We ended up finishing the white cheddar popcorn instead.

I think our favorite part of this activity was the breakfast buffet. What’s for breakfast? We had a lot of things to choose from – there’s garlic rice, congee, meat loaf, sausages, omelets, salted eggs and fresh tomatoes,  fried fish, cereals, fresh fruits, coffee, cold chocolate, the list goes on. I couldn’t figure out what to get first. And there’s a cute Japanese guy across our table so it was really a good breakfast. Too bad, Jez’s Room 401 dude left when we came into the dining hall. Boo.

Overall, we had an awesome time and hopefully, we’ll do better at picking horror/slasher flicks. And I guess we should start early so we could watch more. I couldn’t thank Case, Jez, Josh and their parents enough.

Take me, take me to Coachella.

These are the times when you wish you were in California (I meant, I wish I was). The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival is happening this April at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, CA. This is an annual three-day event where artists of various music genres perform in several stages set-up in the entire Empire Polo Grounds. This is like my music heaven. LOL. Just look at the line up and you will understand what I mean.

Three frickin’ awesome days on the grounds for music. I’m no camper but I would camp for Coachella.

Rite of Passage

Inside the school, photo courtesy of a fellow MakScian

It was almost summer and everyone could already feel the unforgiving heat of the sun.We had no classes on that lazy February afternoon. Well not really, because we skipped our French classes. Despite the fact that it’s more comfortable inside the airconditioned classroom, we preferred the buzzing electric fan near the fire exit to the buzzing sounds that Monsieur Ribery made as he carefully pronounced each word. Où est-il? C’est là-bas. (Where is it? It is over there.)

And oh how he was right. There she was. Calling us, tempting us. She was about one and a half to two storeys high and there’s some sort of Globe fuse box waiting right outside and in front of it. Everything seemed like a huge joke until one of us made a brave declaration. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s climb the damn fence.” Little beads of sweat formed on my forehead and my thoughts were just swirling, my heart pounding in unbelief. You’ve got to be kidding. I have seen and heard of students climb the fence before just to get into the school. It happens whenever they arrive late and the gates were closed on them in the morning. I know it’s weird – kids breaking in just to get into their classes. But this time is probably scarier because we’ll be breaking not just one rule, but two – we’d be skipping classes and might die trying (literally). I was extremely worried because my parents were never, ever called by school officials before. Knowing how terrifying my dad was plus the fact that my mom lived in the province, I knew that if I got caught, I’d be dead meat by tomorrow. Two of the girls went ahead, including the daughter of a school employee. As we watched them climb like monkeys, I thought it looked pretty easy. I can do that, I said to myself. I was getting hungrier by the minute. There was no decent food left in the canteen and we were prohibited from ordering outside the school. I am getting more and more convinced that there is a true need to bust out of the premises.

There was this timid girl from another section who also agreed that we should climb the fence. I can still remember that she was celebrating her birthday that day and that an overly generous classmate gifted her a watch with an image of an angel on it. Together, we carefully climbed down the fire exit from the fourth floor. As soon as we reached the ground, we managed to get to the wall. We held on tight to the grills and we watched every step – careful not to rip our skirts. I couldn’t hear anything but the loud beating of my heart, it’s almost like it’s pounding right into my ears. And in a couple of minutes, we’re out! What a feat! Haha! We’re frickin’ out! Unfortunately, my schoolmate’s new watch got scratched. We happily skipped away but the celebration was cut short when our classmate’s dad caught us. What-the-fudge. We had to reason out with him and tell him that actually this was entirely your daughter’s idea. She fled a good ten minutes before us. Knowing that his kid could get in trouble, he let us free. He even taught us which street to take.

When we reached the jeepney stop along J.P. Rizal Street, we noticed that there were more and more students wearing the same uniform as ours heading towards our direction. For some weird reasons, they must have decided to let the students out early. Right then I knew that it was probably one of the most stupid and immature things I have done. What’s even more annoying was that, they let the other kids out early anyway. We could have easily gone through the gate but yes, we opted for the more difficult way out.

The following day, we learned that the school employee who caught us just told the Guidance Counselor that we got away and that he didn’t recognize the culprits. According to our schoolmates, a tattle-tale neighbor called the school to report girls climbing over the school fence. We also confirmed that classes were cut short that day and students were sent home early for some reason I can no longer recall. And I felt really stupid. Hmpft.

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