travelswithalice

After an unenthusiastic lunch, particularly since the road trip was peppered with a wide range of junk food, the kids decided to get energetic in the sports club where they proceeded to expend their youthful energy on what else? Wait for it,  . . . video games. Really! Did we have to leave home for that?

Cap Allan at the country club opened Zsa Zsa's especially for us. Then, as he always does when my family goes there to party, he cued in our G7 theme song, "All for One, One for All." So sweet of him! There were only three members of G7 present though, and the kids had never heard of the song, so the anthem was left unsung.




It was Xave's birthday party, so we had champagne.



Having sung their tender young hearts out, (why do these kids love sad songs?) we ended the evening with Mommy's sign off song, "I Do, I Do, I Do."

It was not easy, being there for the first time since Mommy died, singing that silly ABBA song without her, but we decided to sing it just this once more, before we move on. After all, the evening was all about the newest generation.




Day 2 was more successful in both the lunch and sports arenas. Bowling and basketball, followed by a hefty lunch, then swimming.

All passion spent, the homeward trip was calmer. I even had to remind them to put on their music.

We stopped on the way to buy mangosteen for Annette and All Saints Day flowers for Mommy and Daddy.

All in all, a very successful outing.

The Highlands fog has lifted. This means we won't have to miss tonight's CARMEN!

I'm looking forward to the ballet and trying hard not to feel let down that there won't be live music. I hope the dancing and the staging make up for it.

I have a rating system for places of interest. 1- no go. 2- ok if nowhere else to go. 3- nice place. 4- on list of favorite places, recommended. 5- magnificent even in rotten weather.

Gargnano on Lake Garda is a 5. So is Highlands in Tagaytay.

We are in Highlands- the Gang of Three (Baby, Annette, & I)- for a 3-day dose of mountain air.

We have no itinerary planned. We don't even know where we're going for lunch. After an indulgent room service breakfast, we are now weighing our chances against the thick fog that has settled on our mountain retreat all morning.

Not that we're anxious to make a move. The very idea of being fogbound, forced to stay indoors, in the cozy comfort of the spa lodge, embraced by the delicious perfume of cedar and pine, is irresistible.

Manila is slowly becoming just another stop these days.  So it now takes pride of place in my travel blog.

I've been back a mere two days and already my fledgling healthy diet has crashed.

Saturday's meals started off well enough with veggie soups, salads, and whole wheat pasta with even more veggies. We claimed entitlement to a dollop of cream in our soup. We've been good after all.

Then came the killer. Dessert. Is there anyway to justify sticky toffee pudding? Or a stack of lemon meringue in a pool of caramel sauce?

Never mind. All is forgiven. We'll start afresh.

We started over Sunday. Very commendable breakfast of oatmeal, fruits, coffee with soy milk. An A+ for lunch of tomato soup and pasta for Stuart, fish for me. No dessert.

In the afternoon, Stuart left for Singapore. Baby, Annette, and I dropped him off at the airport on our way to Lisa Macuja's final performance of Giselle.

We had an hour to kill. We thought it best to have a little snack before the ballet which was starting at the inconvenient time of 5:30. Right. Has to be quick and not too far. The offerings at the Star City complex didn't appeal.

We drove on. Starbucks? Not really. Pancake House? Yes! Really? Yes, really!

And that's how we found ourselves happily smacking our lips, snacking on pancakes and French toast. Baby didn't mind what we were having as long as it came with maple syrup.

And so ends this sad short tale of woe.


But the night was young and the evening's main event was yet to come.

Diet failures forgotten, we excitedly took our seats in the newly renovated Aliw Theater with its spanking new orchestra pit. We were excited and proud because the star we came to celebrate is, like all three of us, a Theresian and a Filipina.

And what a star she is! This Giselle is an unqualified triumph! We wore out our hands clapping and my tender throat, recently recovered from a bad cough, was sorely tested with every call of "BRAVA, LISA!"

Lisa Macuja was magnificent. In fine form. Still the perfect wraith, the quintessential wisp of a girl, soft and tremulous as a whisper. In character as the tragically besotted innocent, she was visibly heartbroken and heartbreakingly passionate in this her final performance of the role that has brought her acclaim.

And so was she last night in real life, as Lisa the prima ballerina, not quite willing to give up this part of her dancing life.  She was in tears, at times shaking her head and covering her face with her hands, as she took her final bows to wild applause and mighty cheers from a nearly full house.

(She wasn't the only one in tears. Seated beside me, Annette had started to cry half way through the programme.)

I am not a dancer so I'm not qualified as a critic. But I declare that the Giselle I saw last night was polished, precise, controlled, and very beautiful.

The garden looks nice even in the rain. Lunch on a wet balcony however is not an attractive proposition.


Weather like this calls for a big bowl of steaming wanton noodle soup.

The poolside restaurant starts to fill up as I quickly finish off my noodles.

I pick my way carefully under the awning, mindful of several friends who are presently suffering from falls and such. My friend Marilou says this only means we're all getting older.

The toll seems to keep rising though. Just the other evening Stuart's scheduled conference call was called off because somebody had slipped and hurt themselves. Even as we left KL last week, somebody at his office had to cancel a trip because she also had slipped and broken something.

Has everyone gotten old all of a sudden? Maybe the world just needs to slow down.

Speaking for myself though, if I slowed down any further, I'd be moving backward.

Time for tea and cake. There's a second, less busy executive lounge on the terrace side. That's where I'm headed. Very slowly.

We may have found the perfect spot! We've just changed rooms and are now happily resident on the garden floor of the Grand Hyatt. This is the deck outside our cabana.




I'm feeling very quiet and peaceful and absolutely healthy! And I can finally finish my book.



Never mind the book. With less than a hundred pages to go, I am no wiser as to whodunit to whom and why. I'm convinced though that Rankin is to blame for the slowness of my reading. This book is really boring. Too many characters and too much atmospherics.

The sun has begun to set and it's even more quiet here now. I've been walking around the garden for an hour. There is dense tropical planting in raised beds. Walkways of pebble-wash squares in a diagonal pattern.

It's probably not a good thing to say about Ian Rankin. But his latest book has taken me three months to get to page 97. Chapter12, about a fifth of the way in. Is it him or me? One of us is dead slow.

I have commandeered a tented pavilion tucked into a corner of the garden, far enough away from poolside to really enjoy digging into my book. I'm feeling a little guilty for ungenerously turning away a lady who had asked very nicely to sit with us so she can smoke.

Health reasons seemed a good enough justification so she left. This is Singapore after all. The city nation is not smoker-friendly.

But fate has other plans for me and my book. There's an impressive thunderstorm in progress and it has driven me away from my reading post.

Being sick abroad is a reality of life that has a sickening tendency to gain prominence as one gets to a certain age.

Meaning, we get sick a lot when we get old. We get sick even when we're having fun. We get sick even when we're on holiday. And the worst part of it is we can even be sick on a weekend.

I accuse that POSB teller of infecting me with this virus. That was over two weeks ago. And now, on a Saturday, a beautiful bright sunny Saturday in Singapore, I'm finally taking myself in to a doctor's clinic for a diagnosis.

We first came to  Singapore in 1987. We then lived here, off and on,  until we moved to Hong Kong at the end of  2003. I am happy to report that  throughout that period, except for annual executive check ups and  a few run-ins with colds, the only doctors' appointments I ever had to make were for visiting parents or for our nephew Ralph who came to stay with us for a year.

We went to the Horne & Chin Clinic on Scott's Road. There were occasions when they came to us.  Once, Dr Sie came to attend to my father when his blood pressure shot up in the middle of the night. A very young Dr Lu came to look in on Ralph who had just had his appendix out.

It's the closest thing to having one of those characters that loomed large in your childhood. They're all gone now of course. They went with our parents' generation. The much loved, all-knowing family doctor. They made house calls.

Dr. Chin retired a long time ago but Dr. Sie is still there. Dr Lu is now managing partner. It's reassuring to have somewhere to go to see a doctor. Without having to ask around.

Sick of the sickroom.

Armed with a bottle of water, iPhone, and Monocle magazine, I'm shooting for a holistic approach to healing. No more lozenges, now trying a bit of lounging in the open air.

I'm on moon watch. It's 8 o'clock. The harvest moon is late tonight! It's set to rise at 7:54.

How long does it need to climb over those hills?


Well, it's after dinner now. The moon is not worth photographing. It's hardly showing behind a bank of thick cloud. Bummer.



Dinner was Italian again. Soup and pasta. All very nice but this diet is beginning to fray around the edges. Stuart had cream in his soup and prawns in his pasta. There just aren't enough menu choices to maneuver in this vegan arena.

The wine was good though.  But is cabernet shiraz really vegan?

The jury is still out on that one.

Day 3 on moon watch.
Finally, the moon!


Somewhere between 97.5% and 99.5% illumination. Let's call it 98% shall we?

At the KL airport, going through Immigrations is a breeze. No forms to fill out.

Lately, I've begun to wonder if airports and banks would ever end their addiction to forms. Same for most other institutions of course, but these two just annoy me most. Some European borders, notably Italian ones, go the other extreme, hardly even looking at passports. But there's always a more balanced common sense middle ground, don't you think? So hurray and woot woot for Malaysian Immigrations!


My first time at the Double Tree Hilton, Stuart's favored stop in KL for its proximity to his office. That advantage has since been mooted by an office move but he likes it here now. So do I. We have nice corner rooms with wraparound views of the city and into surrounding hills.