Impression of Philippines

Today is my Day 1 of Philippines. Let me share from where I left off.

6:50am - Boarded Air Asia flight - AK32 to Philippines. This is my first time taking Air Asia

7:10am - Almost everyone boarded. Thought that the flight would be on time, since departure time to be 7:20am

7:20am - Air Asia's plane left the gate.. Impressed. Air Asia is really punctual! :)

7:30am - Plane tried to be started....still no success

7:40am - Plane reversed back to gate - announcement said that it had to be repaired.. A bunch of repair folks came up the plane.

8:10am - Finished repair.. Plane reversed.. tried to restart engine..

8:20am - Succeed in starting and plane went air-borne.

8:45am - Tried Pak Nasser Nasi Lemak - not hot...(as in it is cold), and also not nice...Definitely hope Air Asia to buck up on this! But have to say that the menu is attractive...

12:05pm - Reached Clark. Everything is very fast. Immigration is fast, although they do not smile or greet anything.

12:20pm - The driver was there. He has waited for 1.5 hours due to plane delay... But he is very patient..

12:50pm - Journey been quite good. The driver drove very slowly. He stopped at a Caltex for petrol. I jumped down to get a Philippine newspaper called Philippine Daily Inquirer, and also a hotdog and also a green tea with apple juice.

1:40pm - Reached Manila area... Road is not that good quality. Lots of bus/taxi lane. Seemed great! Although drivers seemed to be cutting left and right, with lots of horn.

2:50pm - Reached hotel... Tried to contact JobStreet.com office, but couldn't reach... Hotel staff can't really understand English too... So, decided to check in. Then, Jenny from JobStreet.com call. So, I checked in.

3:30pm - In room. Continued to work on some JobStreet CAMPUS slides. Tried to rest a little too. Nica called that she would be here by 4ish or 5.

5:50pm - No one came to room, so decided to go down to 3rd floor. Met Jewel and others there. Nica came around in a while too. We all continued to pack the goodie bag.

6:20pm - discussion between Nica, Patrick and me on the checklist.

7:30pm - Go shopping for wine...hahaha... the Wine class at Cornell does not go to waste.... the bookstore is closed, so cannot get wrapper for the wine... Nica went to search. Jewel went to get McD, and I showed the supermarket staff how to bring wine to our hotel. It is interesting that in Philippines that the supermarket has the service of sending the stuff to where it needs to be, if it is within reasonable distance.

8:30pm - continued working on goodie bag, and then Ritchie, Marketing Manager came...had dinner - McD.

9:15pm - went back room for a while

9:45pm - continued meeting till around 10:30pm, when I went down to get more McD to eat...

10:30pm - back to room....chatting on MSN, blogged and also replied emails... =)

1:00am - to go to sleep now..

5:30am - wake up call...

Not sure whether I would have internet in next hotel, since I would be moving to Legend Villa after this.





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Would encourage any of my blog readers to share with me any event that you come across. As long as the event/activity/initiative is education/charity/youth oriented and is not-for-profit, I would be more than happy to post it to share!