Masonic Hide and Seek

© Joselito Briones

This is a photo I took at the Masonic Center a few days ago, when Ate Uding and Kevin went there for their citizenship ceremony.

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Carnival

© Joselito Briones

I went to San Francisco today to watch and take photos of the Carnival parade in the Mission District. I also went to the "Bullet Art Festival" in Octavia and Hayes, but other than the funky headgears which are basically snap-on hoodies (they're really just hoodies, no sweater nor jacket attachment) and cute t-shirts and grocery bags, there wasn't much to see there.


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Pancakes

© Joselito Briones

I can't remember when the last time was when I had pancakes this way, but it surely brought back memories. For breakfast today we had pancakes topped with sugar and drowned in condensed milk. Have you tried pancakes this way?


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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".


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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.


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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.


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Mint

© Joselito Briones

Two new Americans. Mom and son. It's Ate Uding's oath-taking today for U.S. citizenship, and Kebbs being a minor, he automatically became an American citizen too.

The photo above, taken shortly after the ceremony, would've been much better in color, only I forgot to reset the ISO setting of the camera after using a high value indoors, so the noise was just too much. I thought making it toned monochrome would look better.

Yep. I'm back in California, pigging out with my mom's home cooking. She made oxtail Kare Kare yesterday.


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