A day at the historic Manila Hotel

My whole family was at the Manila Hotel last Saturday at the District Conference ofRotary Club International District 3800. We attend because my father was introduced as the incoming District Governor for RY 2009-2010.

My brother and I walked the infamous hallways of the 8th floor, which was rumored to be haunted. I even brought my video camera along and recorded the whole trek in case it would catch any wandering spirits. The operation was a failure. I did hear a couple quarreling from across the hall.

At the District Conference, there was this energetic speaker. He's a 81 year-old teacher who has been teaching in Ateneo for 54 years. Although I don't give a hoot about those motivational speakers, I found his speech to be very moving. His energy and eloquancy with the spoken word seems to transmit directly to the audience, and he kept me intrested the whole time. Oh, and he's called Dr.(?) Pagsi (did I get that right?).

At lunch time, my brother picked the seafood plate for me.  It was first time to experience haute cusine. I was expecting a large meal since I was going on without food since the night before. It had a chunk of fish meat, 2 rings of squid, 2 shrimps, 3 stalks of broccoli with some sauce on it. It looked beautiful, but I was hungry. CHOMP!! CHOMP!! CHOMP!!

By dessert I was composed enough to appreciate the food. I found the dessert to be cute. It was mango ice cream with a slice of banana, decorated with chocolate, and fruit puree, with ube roll cakes at the side. I hate ube, but the smell of the cakes was so sweet I also ate them.

I was excited to go to manila Hotel for 2 things, the ghost stories and the history of the place. The ghost stories part disappointed me, but the antique furnishings, the smell of wood got me good. I even found an old school thermostat control.

But for me, it was a fun day to spend with my family, my parents, along with all my siblings...just us, like when we were kids. It makes me kind of nostalgic of the times when we were still little.

The San Felipe Biomen (Kuya as Red-1, Jonathan as Green-2, Me as Blue-3, Ditse as Yellow-4 and Ate as Pink-5)