Manila, no vanilla,

Sunday May 28th

So I flew from Cebu city to Manila. And Pip met me at the airport. At first I did not recognize her in the sea of smiling, tan faces. I almost expected to see her holding up a sign that read ‘White Butt’. (she told me later that she thought of that idea too.)
Three years have pass since WG and I saw here. Not much has changed with her. (bitch has seriously not seemed to age!)
Okay, I think that maybe a jean with a slightly higher rise might look better. And girl, I know it was a casual day, but you could have treated me to better fitting jeans. You have a cute butt, but those jeans just didn’t help. (Yes, I am only thinking of myself. If I cannot be seen with my sweetheart, then I want people to see me with some other pretty woman.)

Well, I gave her the wrong arrival time(she missed some sleep because of that), my plane was late, Pip is starving. “So I’m your Bitch because of all that?”
“Damn straight you’re my bitch tonight.”
“Then tell me where you want to eat, and I’ll buy you dinner.”
Good old Pip. Wonderful sense of humor; but with that little chip on her shoulder and a slightly narrow view of things. I could so push her buttons and rile her up. But friends don’t need to do that to one another.

Into her little puddle-jumper and off to the hotel and dinner. The rest of the night was the endless questions, answers, tangents to stories, then back to the questions. You can chat on IM, send emails; but nothing beats a face to face gab session.

Dinner at Bubba Gumps then desert and a beer at a little eatery a short drive away.
I really got a chance to talk with her, listen to her life. See what she is, what she wants, what she wants to become. Sorry, I didn’t more gossip.

She is so much a princess, in the bad type of way. Not her fault, it happens to guys and gals here. Nannies/housekeepers here are so cheap, that lots of people have them. And that spoils them into princes and princesses. They get used to being taken care of. Now add to that, Pip’s ideal mate. Someone who can bend and shape themselves to fit her world. I sense a lack of compromise on her part.
At one point Pip asked me if she was ‘high maintenance’; unfortunately, yes.
It’s too bad, for that seems to structure her life, forcing fewer options on her, setting patterns. The longer that structure stands, the more she walks the patterns; the harder it will be to change.
I fear she will have a chance for something, but miss it because she cannot change the structure.

Yes, easy for me to say, I who do not need the structure and patterns as much. The few useful ones, WG and myself have created together, sometimes as a compromise.
Yes, I have patterns in my life and I am irked at times when they change; but they are not absolutes. Plus I have my patterns and structure with Wonder Girl. It’s taken twenty five years to make them and we are comfortable with the structure. It is harder for two people to adjust their structures after they have been single and in their own world that they have created.
It’s not just Pip, but I do enjoy picking on her from time to time. But as we get older, lots of us get really entrenched in the structure and the patterns. So much so that we become inflexible. And life can pass you by, unreachable.


And now I see I am totally off topic.

Saturday, she picked me up around 11am and we were off for a drive to the volcano and it’s crater lake.
A latte, cinnamon roll and the adventure begins.
Pip was following a different route that her brother gave her. A road less traveled. Pip made one wrong turn and we found ourselves defiantly not on a ‘rode less travailed’.
We ended up at the city dump!
So, get directions, turn around and off again. We ended up back at the toll road and soon we were on the right track again
It is really nice to drive out of the city and see the countryside. See things outside of the big city.
Lunch at a quiet restaurant. They grow most of their own food in the fields surrounding the restaurant.
The food was excellent and the company couldn’t be beat.

Back on the road. Beautiful, lush all the way to the small resort at the edge of the crater rim.
The hotel we stopped at sits on the crater’s rim. There is a big outdoor patio with a lawn that slopes down to a low wall. All of this give you a great view of the lake in the crater and the small volcanic islands in the lake.
Just a beautiful place.

Too soon, it was time to go back to Manila and catch my flight home. It has been so much fun, spending time with Pip. We have gotten to know each other better and that builds a friendship. The next time I am here, I will make it a point to see her again. Perhaps she will have her house remodeled and I can see it.

But there is another reason for cultivating friends in faraway places. I miss my wife terribly. Seeing friends distracts me for a while and eases the pain.