Day 647 { To Cebu Island } Saturday, December 26, 2010

Day 647 { To Cebu Island }

The Philippines Day 5

Happy Birthday to my Dad, ... Even though he has no idea where I am now, or that this blog exists.

Met up with friend's, one who is a half Filipino / half black guy from England, but living in Osaka now... He came to the Philippines to visit his relatives for the Christmas season. We went to an area of Manila name McCarthy which is the uptown, rich people area of Manila. You would never believe that a place like this exists in the Philippines because of the widespread poverty everywhere else. There are many skyscrapers and up scale looking buildings.

We went to an all-you-can-eat restaurant to have lunch. The food was delicious and it only cost somewhere like US$ 12... In Japan, this would be probably 4 or 5 times this cost (seriously) and the food (to me) would not be as good. But that's how it is, different countries, different food, different prices...

We then went to a couple a stores to let the girls feast there eyes and procrastinate on which pair of shoes and which bag to buy or not buy.... Fortunately now I have some male company to walk around with... Ahmed's Filipino cousin and his cousin's wife, studied computing and are both CISCO certified engineers. The university that they went to combined the CISCO certification with their bachelors degree.... Why didn't my school do that??? His cousin even got a job offer in Dubai, U.A.E .... But after 1 month, he got homesick and came back to the Philippines...

After this, it was time to head for another Island in the Philippines name Cebu. So they dropped us to the airport and we took a 1 hour flight via Cebu Pacific Airlines from Manila to Cebu Island. While on the flight, they called 4 volunteers to go up and sing a Christmas song. One friend was asleep on the flight but another (the last lady that came) held up another's hand, so she had to go up and sing as well... She won a Cebu Pacific bag tag for singing.

When we landed in Cebu, we took a taxi from the airport to a hostel name Palazzo Pensionne guest house... We checked in then went out to have lunch, then headed to the hip strip area of Cebu known as the I.T. District ... We walked around in the IT district a bit then I visited a little party in the area..... While at the party thing, a white lady's hand accidentally hit me. She said sorry then asked if I was from Nigeria... I said no ... So I told her I lived in Japan .... She had a bewildered look on her face... And I said "Im serious"... She then said,
"I do believe you, you look too much like Tiger Woods to be lying" .... I then told her
"I smell your sarcasm" ... I then told her I'm from Jamaica but live in Japan... And she said she was from England...

I also saw a couple of persons with stronger Asian features, so I asked this lady where she was from.... But before I could complete the question, this guy jumped in quickly, "ooh she is with me... she is with me, it's my wife" ... I was like "oook then.. So where are you guys from??" And He said South Korea and they are leaving tomorrow..... After this, I went back to the hostel...
In the Philippines, the national languages are Tagalog and English... But, each major island has their own dialect... For example in Cebu, they speak a dialect known as Cebuano... There are over 170 different languages spoken in the Philippines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_Philippines