Patio's new chef

© Joselito Briones

We dropped my parents off to the airport to check their luggages in. Their flight was cancelled. Supposedly, the plane that they're gonna be in didn't arrive from Manila today. Philippine Airlines. They were giving hotel vouchers to anyone who needed to stay in the city before the rescheduled flight tomorrow. What's very disturbing though, is that, even as my parents paid penalty fees to have their flights rescheduled for today, Philippine Airlines isn't offering compensation fees to the passengers who are involuntarily rescheduled for tomorrow. Go figure. If you want your flight rescheduled, you have to pay, if they reschedule your flight, you get nothing. NADA. Lesson learned: fly with other airlines.

After checking in the luggages, we went to Patio Filipino for dinner. Cesar works there. We had the usual goodies, plus one, the very tasty Paella done by their new chef Lavinia (photo, above). She was imported by the restaurant from the Philippines, where she was a chef for one of Manila's leading caterers, "Mingoy's".


XXX

Solitaire for two

© Joselito Briones

Whoever invented solitaire should be given a Nobel Prize or something.

Now that my parents are both retired, it's one thing that keeps them interacting together, keeping them sharp. They bicker over every game, who gets to play it (they only have one deck), and one almost always tells the other how to play it properly. To comic effect. Presumably so, because I always hear them laughing so much whenever they play solitaire together.

I took photos of them at Cesar's backyard, they're going back to the Philippines tomorrow.


XXX

Golden Friends

© Joselito Briones

My Itay's down with a cold today, so I ended up driving my Inay to Hayward, close to where I lived when I moved to the U.S., to visit her friends before she goes back to the Philippines again. It was a beautiful afternoon, in one of those days when I wonder why I ever left California. Light refreshments included Vietnamese-style roast pork sandwiches and fresh fruits.

It must be one the best things one can wish for in life, having friends to be with and chat about nothing in particular.


XXX