Friday, November 30, 2007

Of Holidays and Vacations

A colleague of mine has been telling me for months now that I badly need a vacation. Well, I guess he's right coz a day or two before leaving for my much-awaited US vacation, I realized that a week before, I implemented the wrong customized program in production (PROD). To make it easier to understand, rather than implementing Program A to PROD, I mistakenly implemented Program B. Imagine my horror after I realized this mistake! My oh my...I really DO need a vacation!

Well, I finally had my vacation and headed to the US with my Mom last November 15. Imagine my excitement knowing that I won't have to think about work for two whole weeks! Yippee!

Our first stop, after landing at LAX and heading to San Diego where my Godmother lives (and where we'll be staying for our entire trip), was Las Vegas to attend a fund-raising event that my Ninang organized. After the dinner event, we partied the night away at the newly-opened Planet Hollywood (PH) hotel. At first I didn't know what "PH" meant and kept on asking "Where's the hotel?" (coz we walked from Monte Carlo, where we were staying, to Planet Hollywood), and they said, "Ayun oh! Yung may 'PH'!" And I replied, "Ah, yun ba! Akala ko kasi 'PH' stands for 'Philippines'!!!" HARDIHARHAR! Stupid me!

Well, there are actually two things that I wasn't able to do in Vegas: (1) Gamble...I wasn't really planning to anyway, I'd rather spend my money shopping rather than gambling; and (2) Get Married...this, I think, I really should've done. HAHAHA! Well, with drive-through weddings available in Vegas, it really IS very easy to get married in this place! I should've thought about that in the 4 days we were there. Oh well, there's no use crying over spilt milk anyway.

After the "Vegas Event" (as I would like to call it), we were back in San Diego to spend one of the most awaited holidays in the US: THANKSGIVING. It's actually the 2nd time that my mom and I will be celebrating Thanksgiving with my Ninang's family (the first was in 2004) and it has always been fun spending Thanksgiving with them seeing that my Ninang's family is quite big and very close-knit. We had fun eating all the food in the table (we had Turkey the day after, but that's a different story), singing the night away with the videoke/karaoke, playing poker, and just sitting by the fire pit in the backyard talking about anything that we could think of.

The day after Thanksgiving is the biggest sale of the year for the Americans: the After-Thanksgiving Sale, where all stores offer discounts that one can't just pass off! We were actually at Best Buy by the crack of dawn: 5AM! Imagine that! HAHAHA! But it was all worthit coz we got to buy, among others, a Digicam with Digital Frame for only $100, and a 2GB RAM, 250GB HD Laptop worth $600. After that, we went to a few other stores like Walmart and Staples, then headed back home to rest.

That night, after resting, we headed to Pala Hotel and Casino, which is about 40 minutes from my Ninang's place. We stayed there to relax and gamble (but my mom and I didn't), then had our facial and massages the next day at the Pala Spa. The one who did my facial was actually half Pinay! But she looked more American than Pinay. Anyway, we also celebrated Ate Ping's birthday (Ninang's youngest sister) there with a heartful lunch at Noodles, the Chinese resto there.

Oh my...I can't believe that my vacation's over. =( We'll be heading back to Manila tomorrow night and i'm sure it would be very hard to get my mind and body into 'work-mode' once again. Oh well, that's life. Gotta enjoy the happy moments while you can. For now, i'll just try not to think about work and make the most of the remainder of my vacation.

Til next month's blogs you guys! *MUAH!*

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Candy!

Glad you had a great break from work. Im currently checking out your pics at multiply.
Ayan, wala ka na excuse pag nagkamali ka ng implement ha ... di pwede jetlag hehehe. miss you girl! muah!