Signing Off From 2011

Sorry, but I am going to sign off until next year. Parang antagal ha. Anu ba, that’s just in 2 days!

Anyway, it has been a tradition of the Fam to escape from fire crackers and all the hoopla every New Year’s Eve by checking in at a hotel. That way, we can still see the colorful company-sponsored-fireworks without damaging our lungs and ears, not to mention our pockets (Why, firecrackers are expensive ha!). We fully open the hotel room’s curtains to view the bing bang, but all in mute. Then we (WE!) jump and hug and kiss one another at the strike of 12 midnight. And after five minutes, we go back to the fluffy beds.

Is it New Year's yet?

Let me see, when did we start running away from the noisemakers? When we were living in Davao City, the mayor there banned the use of firecrackers, especially on New Year's Eve. Sure, people made some noise, but by honking their cars and hitting their pots and pans with a metal ladle. Yes, it sounds lame, but the next day, Davao City emerges as the winner, because it had zero firecracker-related incident report. In Davao, if your hand got busted because you were unlucky enough to light up an illegal ‘bawang’, you’d better not go to the hospital. Else, you suffer the wrath of the mayor, which is far more deafening than a lowly Five Star. You choose.

Aah..peace and quiet!

We started checking in at hotels on New Year’s in 2000. Remember the dreaded Millemium Bug, wherein doomsayers predicted that all computer-controlled electronics and power plants would go haywire because the computer only recognized until 1999? They said chaos would result, and the end of the world would ensue. We didn’t believe it, of course, but we checked in at Marco Polo just the same. If anything happened, at least we were all together, right?

As you know, nothing close to a catastrophe happened to the world. But the Family kind of got the hang of celebrating New Year together in one room. So that’s when this tradition really began.

Anyway, so we are off to Cebu today. Signing off from the Year 2011. Welcoming the Year 2012. With the whole Fam at Cebu Park Lane.

Have a Prosperous New Year everyone!!!