Haley and I went to hobby lobby and bought some stuff to make a boquet of flowers with pictures of the Sarah and Haley on them.  It was more effor then I thought it would be.  It took us about 3 hours to paint the flowers, print the pictures, mount the pictures on the flowers (back and front) and trim the pictures.  But in the end, I think it looked rather nice.  :)

 

 Once we got into the van, I was introduced to our driver, Romie.  Apparently Romie has know my family for a long time.  Melissa remembers Romie from her first trip to the Philippines back when she was 14.  He is a driver for the Hospital where my Uncle Ben retired.  Driving to Baguio, we first drove through Tarlac and dropped some packages off at Tito Ben's house.  Before we started to drive up the mountains of Baguio, we stopped at a small town to get some "two-pig" (sp?) from some street venders.  Two-pig is made by grinding gloutinous rice (sweet rice) with coconute and sugar, place into a banana leafe and grill over coals.   ummmmmmm.  Very very good.

I walked up the street from the last petrol station to buy some snacks.  Here I bought some cashue tarts, which are common in the Philippines.  The funny thing is that while I was purchasing the tarts, a naked 5-year-old boy who is the son of the shop keeper, came into the store sopping wet and covering his genitals to get a quick snack... and then back to the backyard where I can only assume he's playing with the water hose or water well pump.

We didn't have any music.  She didn't need any.  Decades of big band music was embedded in her head.  Her hearing was still sharp, and she spoke very quietly but authortatively.  She spoke as if in her day people waited on her every word.  She took great  care in her appearance.  Every time I picked up a camera, she schwished her hair back as if she still had long locks. 

 My Dad's sister was quite beautiful in her day.  You don't need proof to see that.  My Dad embarrassingly bragged to me on how beautiful she was.  On the last day that I saw Tita Ne Ne, before she left for home, she reached into her coin purse and pulled out two pictures of herself.  One when she was 30, and another when she was in her 50's.  She told me that people didn't believe that the picture was of her.  She had to show and compare the beauty mark on her left cheek before people would believe her.  She said that on every birthday, she'd treat herself by dressing up nice and paying a photographer to take her picture.  She then did something that shocked me.  She told me I could keep the pictures.  I KNOW she didn't have extra ones lying around, and that this photo was special.  I assured her that I'd take good care of it, and scan it, and put it on the internet for all the world to see.  She blushed.  She liked that idea.  If it was the 30-year-old I was talking to, she would have responded, "But of course.  What else would you do with it?"

Thank you for the dancing lessons, and the pictures, Tita Ne Ne.  Now the whole world can see them!

 

Melissa, Joe and I decorated the wedding van with what we could find... shaving cream and toilet paper.

While in line to enter the church, I was constantly messing with my collar of the borong.  The edges were constantly turning upwards.  As I stood at the at the front of the entourage straightening the collar, I'd ask one of Cecil's crew "how does it look".  He'd respond, "oh, you look very handsome".  Damn I like these guys.  I wish I could hire them to follow me around in Houston and tell me how good I look on command.  Handsome.  I could get used to that.

The ceremony went very smoothly.  One thing of note were the singers... three guys signing harmony.  They were AWESOME.  I wish I got a picture of them.  Quite nice.  I recommond everyone buy the wedding video soundtrack from Ramon.

The Priest kept everyone on their toes.  First he called up Johna's Uncle Bob up to say something to the congragation about the union between Ramon and Johna.  The entire room felt for Uncle Bob knowing that he wasn't prepaired to address everyone publicly.  But Uncle Bob gathered himself and in his best Aussie accent, provided a nice blessing to the Bride and Groom.  Karma would have it that the Preist would have to do some tap-dancing of his own when the speech he prepared about the joinning of two cultures with Ramon being from LA, and Johna being a local Filipina woman, had to be redone on the spot after Johna pointed out that Ramon and herself were BOTH from LA.  Well... like Uncle Bob, the Priest gathered himself and provided a very nice blessing over the couple.  What's a wedding without a little dancing?

Non-Catholics at a Catholic wedding always makes for good fun.  All Catholics know that you kneel in the ceremony three times: twice before communion and once afterwards.  Savvy Catholics know when to kneel with their eyes closed, and take great pleasure being the first to kneel when the time comes.  Not so savvy Catholics follow when everyone else kneels.  Sem, the Maid of Honor, is not Catholic.  I warned her during the rehearsal, that she'd have to pay attention to me for when to kneel.  At the time, she thought "what??? that's no big deal".  Ha.  As the Best Man and Maid of Honor, we were at the very front of the Church, with only the Bride and Groom, the Priest and the Parents in front of us.  So when the time came, Sem didn't have any visual clues on when to kneel.  Both times before communion, Sem first sat down, realized that everyone was kneeling, and recovered.  So after the communion she thought she finally had it right, and was kneeling when everyone else was kneeling.  But she didn't realize that Catholics only kneel for a short time after taking communion to pray for something specific.  After praying, we all go back to a sitting position without a cue.  So Sem was kneeling... feeling good that she got it right, and then looked around realizing she was now the only one kneeling.

And the reason we are all here...  the reason many of us traveled halfway around the world...  

As the couple left the church, Ramon again showed everyone where one year ago at Pepet's wedding, the spot where he proposed to Johna, and again asked her to marry him again.  A dangerous question in my book.  After a second proposal acceptance, the newlywed couple walked into the crowed, where they were bombarded with red rose pettles.

One last note about Cecil's crew.  They were great.  All were very passionate about what they were doing.  Melissa pointed out that one of them was sobbing during the ceremony.  Come on now?  Sobbing?  At someone else's wedding whom you just met.  They love their work.  I don't think I've ever been brought to tears over an elegant C++ program, or an out-of-proc COM call, or a TCP/IP handshake.  Maybe I should show more heart at work.

 Friends and relatives, if you want a copy of all the pictures on DVD or CD, just Email me a request.

We get to our villa (old millitary housing) where we meet up with Paul Richards and Jeff Day.  Paul and Jeff went to college with Ramon at the University of Texas.  Paul and Jeff are the white guys. :)

Here's a view from the back of our villa.  It's a duplex where we have the old people on the left (Mom, Dad, Tita Neh Neh, Manny and Uncle Boy),  and the kids on the right (Ramon, Melissa, Joe and myself).

When we were settling in, I got to know my Tita Neh Neh and cousin Manny a little better.  Manny is very much still very young on the inside.  He didn't know English very well (although his English is miles better then my Tagalog, which is non existant except for a few cus words).  Manny is a very happy guy, and really happy to see his cousins.  He was all smiles... that is unless there was camera around.  Here's a rare picture of Manny smiling

Depending on who you were, or who you were talking to, you might have heard that the meeting time for the rehearsal dinner is either 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM, or somewhere inbeteen.  The more "Filipino" you were, the more likely you were told to be there at 5:00 PM.  Filipino time is famous.  Back in the states, if you were invited to a Filipino party and showed up on time, you might catch your hosts still in the pajamas.  Don't laugh... I've seen it.  As always, a few people showed up a bit late.  Cecil, the wedding cooridinator, got a little frustrated with our crowd, but I guess that is to be expected at weddings.  I know I wouldn't want to make a living coordinating weddings.

Cecil made us run through the wedding three time until we got it right.    One thing unusual about the wedding to me is that towards the end of the wedding, but before the end of the ceremony, we do all the organized pictures.  The Bridal Party, the Groom's Party, the Brides Family, the Groom's Family, with the Best Man and Maid of Honor, all the Parents, etc.  It was strange for me to see this in the ceremony.  I've seen many weddings in the states, as I used to take pictures at weddings when I was a poor college student.  This was a first for me.  In the states I'm used to camera's having to be invisible to the wedding.  That isn't the case here.  Here it's definately orchestrated as a production to be caught in film, still shots and video.

After the rehearshal, we moved next door where we ate and song Happy Birthday to my Dad and Miggy.  My Dad was celebrating number 72, while Miggy was celebrating number 14

We all left the Hotel Intercontinental in Manila for Clark at around 11:00 PM.  We pack all of our luggage and people into two vans.  Ramon, Johna, Lola (my Mom), and Cecil (the wedding planner) all went in the lead van, while Lolo (my Dad), Uncle Boy, Manny, Tita Ne Ne, [update] Melissa and Joe, Susan, Sem and I all went in the rear van.

About 10 minutes into the trip we were in the heart of Manila traffic, on a 4-lane road filled with cars all going from 5 to 15 miles per hour.  We were all the way in the far left lane when a white police van and 2 or three other police on motorcycles pulled us over.  We block all lanes of traffic for a while as we attempted to pull over. 

One of the police officers went over to the driver and started asking him how much he was being paid.  I’m not sure what offense they were accusing him of as they were all speaking Tagalog.  Another officer opened the side door of the van several times and said to all the passengers “who is the driver… what is his name… how much are you paying him…”.

A few of us responded, “We don’t know.  We are travelers in a wedding party.  The head van has all the details”.

Just then an officer grabbed my arm and tried to pull me out of the car…

Naw… not really.  We just had a little fun with that last picture.  The driver made it clear that we didn’t have any details and that we were one of two vans.  The trip organizer was in the lead van, now about 7 minutes ahead of us.

The policy got into their van and motorcycles and went to chase down the lead van.  I didn’t expect for them to be able to catch the lead van, but with the motorcycles able to whip in between traffic, they were able to catch up and pull the lead van over.  I called Ramon, with June (our driver) called Cecil.  June was quite angry at getting pulled over.  I explained to Ramon that cops were on their way.  At first he didn’t believe me.

So the cops told the driver that he didn’t have the correct plates and that there was going to be a fine.  At the same time, he made it clear that money would make this issue go away.  The driver told Ramon to hand him $1,000.00 pesos.  My brother, being a highly moral person, refused.  Johna starting to get a little worried that the wedding wouldn’t happen at all.  Despite my brother’s protest, my mother started to get the money ready for the cops.  Meanwhile, Cecil, the schmoozer that he is, started to talk to one of the cops.  They ended up being from the same small town.  After Cecil made nice with the cops, they let Ramon’s van go without incident.

Up the road the two vans pulled over, where Johna recited how all the action went down.