3 girls and a man

After living at alba’s place for nearly a week, we went out tonight. We first went to Intercon Hotel for her niece’s 18th birthday. Now, you shouldn’t ask me what I was doing at a birthday party of someone I hardly know. heee. Remember that Flash software I fell in love with? well, that was for this birthday. Anyway, after going around in circles in Ayala, we decided to park at the Glorietta 4 basement parking and walked all the way to the hotel. I helped them set up the presentation and decided to enjoy the company of myself and ate at Tequila Joe’s.

Yep. Alone. And while some people consider this a date night, I actually like myself enough not to be bothered with the conventional practice of going out on a date on date night.

Anyway, I went on and had dinner and after reading a couple of pages from my new book and allowing my creative genius to once again start continuing with the story I left hanging a few months back and whose readers were emailing me to continue, I started writing the continuation of my fiction.

Then, of course, I went to have tea at Starbucks still waiting for my friend and her niece’s presentation to end so I could meet them to go on our way to Intramuros.

Now while I have been the designated navigator since day one of my friend’s driving stint, I can honestly say that I do not know Manila that well. I do not know which is where. And I am serious. What I do have is a good sense of direction and an uncanny knack for coming out of trial-and-error situations alive and kicking.

In any case, tonight, we picked up her niece’s friend and brought him with us to Intramuros, but it was so late that we only stood and heard three songs from the band before it was done and we had to go. Since this friend wanted to dance, we decided to go to Malate.

Guess what?! I’ve been to Malate for a night out only once and I do not know how to get there since I was so busy talking to friends when I went there the first time. And so we played it by earsight and looked for it as we drove along Manila.

Lo and behold, we were stopped by a patrol car after we had scratched the front right side tire against the sidewalk. I actually thought we were being stopped because my friend did not see that we were that near the sidewalk. But then, the police on duty along that street crossing San Marcelino St. said that we beat a red light…. duh?! we did?! what the heck is he talking about?!

To make matters worse, we were just 3 girls and we had my friend’s niece’s Iranian friend with us! And to make the long story short, while one of the policemen were friendly as we tried to explain that we were lost and he gave us directions, the other policeman wanted money so much that he was actually able to extract P 500 out of my friend’s wallet.

True enough, we were Pol Eco students and bribery is against any of our principles and morals. However, it was actually more dangerous for us if we had tried to reason with them for a longer time. The road was deserted and well, they were policemen with guns. I guess when you think about it and about how nervous everyone in the car actually was, P 500 is really very little money to pay if not giving it would have meant putting our lives in danger.

And so, we all decided to go home – but not without stopping by KFC first. Since the guy we were with wanted some KFC at 3am, we decided to go to the KFC which we know for sure is open for 24 hours – we went to KFC at the shell station in South Super Highway. Only after we have satisfied ourselves with hotshots and chicken did we finally go home and called it a night… but not after we had to pay P 43 twice to get to and from our KFC.