Yet again, the whole of Metro Manila was a bit gloomy this weekend. No typhoon nor any tropical depression, but there had been scattered rain showers since Friday evening. Nevertheless, I had a lot of things to look forward to for Saturday and Sunday – a lot of people to catch up with, and a lot of things to catch up on.
It has been almost a year since I left the humanitarian sector. I got the happy surprise mid-week that one of our colleagues from work was going to visit Manila from Nepal on a whim. I was very excited because she joined and I left the organization without seeing each other in person. Yes, pandemic woes.
She were to arrive Saturday morning, and my former colleagues planned a wonderful evening for her. The AirBnB she was staying in the same city as we were, thus it made sense for me to pick her up, unless she gets caught with the Saturday traffic of NCR.
Met with friends-slash-colleagues from my former humanitarian life
We decided to meet early at around 5:00 pm, so we can evade the potential carmageddon 30 minutes after. While everyone was to meet at 7:00 pm in Shangri-La Plaza, arriving early and loitering was much better than just to sit in traffic. We reached the mall a few minutes shy of 6:00 pm.