May 24: My bday celebration

Long preamble: Is it just me but isn't it becoming increasingly hard (and expensive) to come up with ideas for 'special occasions'. When I was a kid, going to Peacock restaurant at the old Greenbelt was a huge deal. Now, it would be just another Sunday lunch.

I was racking my brain trying to come up with a creative way to celebrate my birthday. It was going to be hard to top last year's visit to the Ilog Maria bee farm. A few weeks before d-day and I found out from Anton about a 4 hour Yacht Cruise along Manila Bay. For the price of a ticket/reservation at MOA for the Pyro Olympics, we got a cruise along Manila Bay, a buffet spread (including soda and alcoholic beverages), and a great view of the fireworks. Yahoo! Needless to say, I made sure that Genevieve and Raymond reserved a spot for us.
The Prince of Tides left the Manila Yacht club at around 6pm, giving us the opportunity to see Manila bathed in the soft shades of pink and gold from the setting sun. We brought out our chips & drinks and soaked in the view.

At 7:30pm, Italy blasted the skies with palm shells and crossettes. The special rings which showed hearts were a nice addition. Overall, nice but nothing out of the ordinary. We tried to take pictures but the effect of the moving boat came out with very strange and freaky results.
Given the choppy waves, we returned to MYC to have a wonderful dinner on relatively steady waters. Raymond and G had tied up with a friend who had a restaurant and came up with pasta, seafood pastel, chicken rolls and an outstanding beef dish (sorry, can't remember what it was exactly, basta super sarap).

We went back to our position in front for the barges just in time for the first salvo from Venezuela. Now THAT was a show!!! Bigger, grander, louder... all sorts of -er. At some point, Andre got tired of saying waaaaa...aaaa.....aaaow and started singing. For some inexplicable reason, the recurring song was "SM... we've going it all for you". Strange kid. =)

The embedded video is from my Fuji camera. Zoom capability was quite limited so when you see the huge spiders, don't wonder at the loud "OMG" (that was me) in the background.

We took the long slow route back to MYC, taking in the sights, sounds (and smells) of Manila.

Ah Manila.. Simply no place like Manila. Thanks for making my day. =)