End of the Year Guests

Two days ago, my cousin Ate Gina and her fiance Ian arrived here in the Philippines from New Zealand to have a two weeks-long vacation. They're going to stay in Luna, La Union and since we are the relative nearest the airport, they first dropped by our house for a couple of days. It's actually their plan to let Ian meet Ate Gina's parents before getting married.

As Filipinos, it has been our custom to show hospitality to visitors. Be it in a simple gesture of welcoming the guests with a positive attitude or exuberance in every way. Through this kind of practice we make sure that the stay of our guests becomes worthwhile.

On their first night here, I was a bit uncomfortable but I must say I used to have this kind of feeling everytime there's a visitor in the house or I am a visitor to a place. Though Ate Gina's been with us several times, I felt that the thought that we don't see each other often or talk to each other that quite much made me a bit hesitant. But I knew I shouldn't be because they're just gonna be spending a short time with us so I was thinking, why not make the most out of that span of time.

The thing was, I forgot to brush up on my English speaking skill before I got into the battle of wit. I must admit, I really am not that confident with my English orally. I used to speak like a robot with a lot of "ah's" and "uhm's". And to make matters worse I often just say "Yes" when I understand.. without trying to expound more on the topic. Well, expect that I'm still constructing the sentence in my head. Then when I missed what was said or just didn't understand, I often respond with "I'm sorry" or "Can you repeat that?" or even "What's that again?" Haha! I need practice!

Ian's got a stronger accent than my Uncle Sandy who's a Scot. He's got a different intonation compared to the one that I got used to when speaking with Uncle Sandy. Aside from that, he talks a bit faster but we remind him so when it gets that fast. When it comes to the things that he speaks about, I think he's got a lot of things to say. He speaks whatever he's thinking and I see that as a good sign that he's a good person.

Since the period that they had here is just short, we spent the day with activities. In the morning, my sister and I joined them for a walk around our CLEAN community. Emphasis on the clean..lol! Marikina Heights is known for that by the way. Then back at home, Ian brought out his gadgets which to be honest I became a little envious with when I first saw them. Starting with his XBOX 360 and PS2. It was disappointing though that the picture had no color when the whole set up was done. We later found out that the problem was with our TV. It's only standard TV not HDTV! I was able to play one game but Ian did not want to continue it without color.

We proceeded with watching a movie. Ian brought out his collection of cloned DVD's. I guess about 50 copies of them or more. He told us that he's using a software called CloneDVD. He said, he bought the software and used it to copy the original, even the protected or copyrighted ones. He told us that he has about 300 collections of movies back in NZ. How cool is that! While we were watching Transformers the Movie, he brought out Ate Gina's laptop, his DVD writer and blank DVD's, showed us how it's done and offered to give us some copies!

Here are the movies that he gave us: 300, Aeonflux, Alien vs Predator, Indiana Jones(Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981, Temple of Doom 1984, The Last Crusade 1989, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 2008), King Arthur, King Kong, Star Wars(IV: A New Hope 1977, V: Empire Strikes Back 1980, VI: Return of the Jedi 1983, I: The Phantom Menace 1999, II: Attack of the Clones 2002 and III: Revenge of the Sith 2005), and Transformers the Movie

Then later that afternoon, we went to the mall of asia to stroll and buy stuff. However, I wasn't able to consume the money that was given to me. I couldn't think of where to spend the money that time so I just kept it.

The next day, they left for La Union.