I Love New Yorkers!!!

We have all heard about the crazy, fast-paced New York lifestyle so I pretty much had a biased idea about New Yorkers. Thankfully, I was proven wrong every single day:

• Day 1
  • Mitch and her family. My flight to New York was delayed but neither Tito nor Mitch minded waking up in the middle of the night to pick me up fro La Guardia Airport. God knows I would not know what to do if they did not pick me up there.
• Day 2
  • During my first subway ride alone (I had to transfer and take a different route from Mitch), a lady in our car just collapsed and started shaking. At first, people just stood and I was like, “Holy Crap! New Yorkers really do not care!” Then, people slowly gained composure. One girl rushed out as soon as the car’s door opened in the next station and alerted the driver. When the lady regained consciousness, me and another guy pacified her and then helped her out of the track. The employees at the station then took her where she could get more help and everything went back to normal again.
• Day 3
  • Ian (Mitch’s youngest brother) gave me a mini map to help me get around. A small gesture but a very thoughtful one at that.
• Day 4
  • I was at Bowling Green, waiting (forever) for the rest of the group. Since I had no phone, I had to break my bills into quarters so I can use the pay phone. When the vendor found out about this, he actually offered his phone to me (as long as it was local).
• Day 5
  • Another subway story. An old lady was on her way out of the car but decided to step back in at the last minute. When the train started again, she almost fell down. Another lady quickly barked out, “Are You Okay?” Then stood up and went to sit down with the old lady, helping her out with directions. When the old lady got to her stop, the other lady even offered to walk to the place with her.

I guess this trip also allowed me to see that, despite all the craziness happening all around us, there is still a lot of goodness in people all over..

Dan’s New Toy

This is pretty addicting…

My Lakbayan Grade…

… is C+!

Hopefully, my grade will increase once I go back home on September. For one, I have already booked flights to go to Camiguin for a family reunion. I am also planning a couple of other trips to the “usual” tourist destinations that I have not been to… Let’s see how that pans out!

How about YOU? How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out at Lakbayan! And let me know… trying to get some comments going on here. Hint! Hint! Hahaha!

Created by Eugene Villar.

I Am Proud To Be a Filipino

I know I have not blogged in awhile. I have been busy with work and traveling with my colleagues in Austin, TX but I just could not let this pass by.

I got this from a post on Our Awesome Planet

In Celebration of the National Flag Day (May 28) until June 12 (National Independence Day), let us put the Philippine Flag on all the Filipino Blogs out there. Lets declare that we are all proud to be a Filipino! You can steal and hot link the Philippine Flags below (I have enough bandwidth to take it)…

Sir, is there an emergency?

Wow! This was how polite the officer was when he pulled us over. Yes, yes.. I was actually pulled over by the cops for SPEEDING!

I am sure Milo (my roommate in Austin last year) would be surprised. I was always the one telling him to slow down and here I am, being pulled over for being 20mph over the limit. Apparently, I was driving in a school zone and a little over the limit can already get someone into trouble.

I was really feeling weak and uneasy. I have never been pulled over in my life and it had to be here. Here were you cannot bribe the cops and here were I was pretty sure that I had just wasted at least 2weeks worth of allowance to pay the fine.

Oh man, it was just not my day, or week for that matter. I have been going through a lot of stress lately and I just did not need any more problems. But, it actually turned out to be my lucky day b’coz the officer decided to let me off with a warning! Oh man! I was so relieved. I guess God thought I’ve had enough for the week. I say this b’coz I found out from my colleagues later on that speeding near a school zone is a pretty serious offense. Whew! Thank you, Lord!