I haven’t been able to blog too much in the past week because I’ve been busy with other things. It’s not like I have a deadline to catch or have a ton of readers waiting with bated breath for the next blog post. Hah!
A couple of days spent with my high school classmate plus a birthday party on day three didn’t leave me much time to enjoy my usual routine of doing nothing. Even though ideas come to my mind from time to time, if I don’t write them down, the feeling passes and I would have forgotten what the idea was. With the break in my routine due to entertaining and being entertained, I kinda lost control of my calorie intake which I’ve been trying to stabilize in the last couple of days.
I enjoyed spending time with my former classmate who is currently visiting the U.S. We were in school together from kindergarten through high school then lost touch after that. The last time I saw him was in 1989 when I was on vacation in the Philippines and got in touch with him, after which he took me out to lunch. I don’t even remember the details of that day almost 21 years ago. This time, it was my turn to show him around. First I wanted to give him something he hasn’t experienced in the Philippines before, something authentically American. So I took him and his aunt to a restaurant called Johnny Rebs’ Southern Roadhouse, for a taste of the South. While he ordered a sirloin steak (not too southern, I thought), his aunt ordered pork chops (getting closer to the south), and I had the blackened catfish (now that’s more like it!). The ambience of the place was unlike the usual eatery. At the entrance, I could hear a cat meowing, but didn’t see a cat. Upon entering, you immediately notice the peanut shells strewn all over the floor (I already read about this so it was not unexpected). When I used their bathroom, I heard a rooster or hen crowing and cackling and noticed there were chicken figurines perched near the ceiling with a recording of them doing the chicken noises. I came to the conclusion that the meowing I heard at the front door was also a recording. Funny stuff!
I was supposed to take them to downtown Long Beach afterwards to show them the Pike, Shoreline Village and the other sights of Long Beach, but after taking them to my condo, we got hung up searching for some of his relatives on the internet, then upon getting back to his aunt’s house, a couple our townmates came to visit and we just ended up reminiscing about our small town in the Philippines. It was not until the next day that I was able to take my classmate on a tour of downtown Long Beach, but not before we had lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant and had pho. At least I was able to get him to experience two different types of cuisine he has never had before. See how one can lose control of the calories in just a couple of days? Anyhow, we walked around the Long Beach Convention Center, the Pike, Shoreline Village, Aquarium of the Pacific, and the lighthouse (Parker’s and the other taller one), and took a bunch of pictures which are currently posted on Facebook. Upon returning home, his aunt had her grandkids home and we were off to Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant to entertain the kids. While the kids played games, we sat around and ate pizza. The kids were burning their calories while we were storing them.
The next day, I met with our AREC running group and did 12 miles (more on this later), then I went to a nephew’s birthday party, where my aunt cooked some Filipino goodies which I managed to partake of generously. Oh my goodness! Three consecutive days of engaging my body with all these good food. No wonder I lost control. By the time Sunday came, I was all but ready to decompress from the overindulgences of the past few days. I stayed home, watched a few movies, tried to reboot my mind and body so I could be fresh and ready to go back to work the next day.
Please forgive any grammatical errors in this entry. If you find any, please let me know because I didn’t have time to proofread it very closely.
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