Vacation Lessons

1. Stick with your plans. I was supposed to be staying at home to just eat, sleep, watch tv/movies, and review. This way, I would've saved one-week of expenses. As it turned out, I was out most of the time and spent more than a week's worth of expenses. Food trips from Mandarin to Masuki (the one in binondo) and shopping sprees from malls to 168 and tutuban have left me penniless. I am so poor right now that aside from the fact that there's nothing left off my "luho" budget, i also have debts from papa, mama and siobe.

2. Follow your instincts. When we decided to head to 168, we were first thinking of going around tutuban. We should have trusted our instincts instead. It was a year ago when we checked out mall 168 and at that time, there weren't much people shopping. But apparently, 168 has gained popularity thus the throng of people now. Going around tutuban's cluster building was far tolerable than in 168 plus we found more stuff there too.

3. Know how to haggle. And make use of what language or dialect you know because it helps a lot for you to talk your way into getting additional discounts from the stall owners.

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[I have 4 and 5 but my officemate is ready to go home now. Continuation tomorrow sometime this week.]

4. Try something new. One of the things that I am not capable of is cooking. As much as I love trying out dining places, I wouldn't know how to prepare dishes by myself which is ironic because everyone in my family line are known as good cooks. At home, I am considered inutile in the kitchen. Ironically again, when I went to Japan, I wasn't given the opportunity to be forced to learn since lunch and dinner were compliments of the client. So anyway, during last week's break, my sister would often bake (she had all the time since she was on a semestral break and i was at home to be the official consumer) and I thought I'd try my luck by helping her. Helping her was another thing but for her to let me bake something on my own was a bigger deal. Yeah, congratulations to me.

5. Be flexible. (In reference to lesson #1) If you don't have any control of a situation anymore, might as well go with the flow and enjoy the moment. ;)