Metropole Hotel- Macau

We arrived at the Macau airport and took this taxi which brought us to the hotel:



his dashboard is to die for haha!



The Metropole Hotel is located just along Avenue de Praia in Macau. I asked my sister to book us here via asiarooms.com as per the recommendations of some friends who have stayed there as well.



The rooms are quite nice except that the beds are kinda stiff. we just thought of it as some orthopedic bed para hindi sumakit ang likod hehe...



the breakfast buffet is good just that they served exactly the same food on our second day too. :p



soy milk, congee, dimsum



rice, noodles, vegetables



bread, butter, jam



Chinese cakes and pastries

what i love most in here is its location. just behind the hotel is a short walk to Senado Square which could lead us to the Ruins, churches, temples, and starbucks, mcdo, haagen dazs and bossini, and giordano as well. yey!

WALKing around Macau

Nov. 19-21: yup, we WALKED most of the time because i felt intimidated by the bus system. although there were free shuttles for most hotels i didn't know which ones to take. besides taxis were quite expensive. and yes, it was a bit cold. we landed at about 2pm and it was already 19 C and much more cold at night and during mornings yay! and i brought mostly shorts haha!

Macau is such a lovely city haay...

the Ruins of St. Paul's Church



Grand Lisboa and more casinos



overlooking Macau Tower



a gondola inside the Venetian



egg tarts galore!



Fisherman's Wharf

"no hits"

i finally got my NBI clearance. i went to the QC city hall at past 2pm and was already in jollibee studying my freshly released clearance by 3:30. mas mabilis pa kesa pagpila ko sa autograph signing ng blue eagles team!

a woman who was tending some store near the NBI booth told us that the place is actually chaotic in the mornings. lines would reach up to the streets and most people would become too grumpy.

being the non-morning person that i am, i always abhor very early morning queues especially when the offices are not even open yet. i don't get it. why do we need to wake up and line up at so early times when we can actually do it in the afternoon when most of the frenzied crowds are gone?

well anyway, i thank my parents for giving me a pretty unique name (pretty na unique pa hehehe) that i didn't have any trouble getting my clearance. yey! just please don't stare at the pic. the problem with these guys who take our pics for documents is that they don't even bother to let us project a bit hmpf! i look like a ghost awooo!

catching up

my idea of catching up really aside from sleeping all i can and holing up in my room is to go out and see what the mall is like once again.

and this is what i did yesterday, Monday. i've decided not to report to the office just yet since i felt like my weekend's rest wasn't enough, especially after two weeks of being in one city after another. and i wanted to spend my day paying my bills, watch a movie or two and check out what's new in the malls.

i watched Nights in Rodanthe first because i've always loved Nicholas Sparks. i went alone with a bunch of grannies among the audience and i was thinking what must be on their minds when some love scenes came out hehe...the night before i also got to see Bridges of Madison County on QTV 11 and the idea of some wife making out/ love with another man kinda bothered me a bit. i mean, these were women in their 40s-50s even and suddenly they found themselves desiring other men? hmmm...

as i sat there on the theater alone with just my hotdog sandwich, popcorn and coke i found myself thinking what i must be 20-30 years from now. will i find myself finally enjoying that stage which Erikson calls the generativity stage? will i have become the best mom to Xan and be able to take care of more kids and grandkids? will i still want other men, or men in general as well? LOL! or lo and behold, will i find myself stagnate, retreat in my own world as i get older?

i know i ought to keep myself from thinking too much.

well back to the movie, i find myself liking Diane Lane even more. wow, when i grow old i want to be like her haha!

like most of Spark's books, the movie had a bittersweet ending.

i was to meet my old friend Lala for dinner but it was still a bit early and i felt sad by the movie quite a bit that i decided to watch another movie, this time it was Quantum of Solace.

oh well, Daniel Craig isn't really guwapo but i've to say he's hot, hot, hot!!! i think he's a way cooler 007 than Pierce Brosnan.

i've no major complain about the movie, in fact i love how this film's Bond girl got her own's really kick-ass action scenes.

my major issue though is that i couldn't quite comprehend how an Alicia Keys' song got chosen as it's theme. hmpf!

they say there has to be some missing scene somewhere in the last part but i barely noticed it, have you?

i later met up with Lala for dinner. when you wanna keep grounded always keep in touch with old friends who know you 15 even 20 years hehe.



we went to Cafe Bola and yes, i had bola-bola for dinner.



i also got to try San Mig's premium beer and brought home the coaster as well hihihi.

yeah, i have to say i really had full and satisfying day.


************************************************

just today, i learned that our Batanes trip for this weekend has been cancelled. imagine my relief when even after almost 30 minutes of being put on hold by Zest Airways trunkline (thank greatness for speaker phones!) they told me that the flight has been cancelled. well. i've been losing sleep over it for days now especially because of this rainy weather and i didn't want to get stranded in that so far away land especially when i have our Macau-HK trip scheduled/fixed and relatively paid for already.

yup, i would love going to Batanes, i've always looked forward to going there but my skeds are just too close i couldn't really afford anymore bungles in it.

so the trip has been resked to January, by then, if we'd get stranded for a week then i won't really care since i don't have any more trips scheduled after it haha!

so here i am, home for the entire week and the weekend. i'm not going anywhere for now, yey! it can really be a nice feeling, eh.

rm guesthouse

there's this inn/mini-hotel which we discovered in dumaguete. apparently, most of my suki hotels then were fully booked because of the Buglasan Festival, the Uni-games, and some other conventions.



located just across the St. Paul's Academy, it is but one tricycle ride away from the port and airport and the downtown Dumaguete area.



the room is ornately furnished. it's a bit small but it has all the basic amenities naman. and it's just PhP 550.00 for single accommodation.



what i love the most about this place is their food! and it's pretty cheap too, most meals are at PhP 60.00, cakes and desserts for PhP 40.00. there's free wifi at the lobby too.



this breakfast set of hotdogs, rice and egg is just PhP60.00 and the caramel macchiato, which is so good by the way is just PhP65.00. argh! i wish there's some cafe like that here in Manila! hmpf!

anyway, they don't have any website yet but you may contact them at (035) 422-4000 or their mobile nos. 0917-474-2724/ 0910-227-5446.

flight-y

i miss my self. i miss my soul.

i've been in transit for the past two weeks and there's still more destinations coming up. yeah, it's been really exciting and fun and interesting but a part of me is desperately hanging on to what is familiar, to what is constant.

i've been reading just one book for the past days, Haruki Murukami's After Dark. I'd leaf on a page or two on the flight or before i sleep. I've been listening to three albums in rotation too, Portishead's Third, Radiohead's In Rainbows and Up Dharma Down's Bipolar. these are but the few constant things i've been holding on to each day. i'd wake up some morning wondering where i am, what date it is. I'd even wonder for a short while why my alarm would go off each morning and what i'm supposed to be doing that day. I've lost track of dates and places. I've also missed several Survivor episodes already or get updates on the latest news. i feel like i'm just floating, losing myself in the flurry of things.

just recently, i saw some comment on my blog which had an article about an old acquaintance. the article was about some interview of a writer/poet/playright who happens to be a co-fellow of mine in some writers' workshop which i got in ages ago. i bought most of his books and my most favorite then was his Purple Cat...i guess that's how the idea stuck. I could say i'm still very much a purple cat till now.

i thought about him and our group and those days when i was still supposed to be a "writer". we used to tout ourselves as the few ones who were still "old souls", "artists", the eccentric ones. it was a fun group. i realize how i'd never want to lose my soul, myself, in the superficialities of life. i'm finding it hard to keep up with the times, with the latest fads, with what's popular. not that i'm interested in what's uso anyway.

well, i guess in this crazy, fastpaced world such pursuits could indeed become a struggle. but yeah, people like us... we'll have to get by of course.