It's scorching hot in the Philippines
If you have ever been to the Philippines at this time of the year or live here in the Philippines, you'll know that it becomes really hot here, even at night. The suffering grows more annoying if you don't have an AC to your disposal or, if you ever did have one, the electric bills at the end of the month would cut through your wallet.
Just early this month, I phoned my friend Noimi to let her know that I wanted to meet up with friends to have a swim (well, I don't know how to swim, and my friends made it their mission to tutor me). After a couple of "you invite them" and "you do the planning" from Noimi, it seemed that she was prepared after all.
The invitation
"How about I make a pubmat and email it to everyone as an invite?" she asked me. And I told her, "Whatever floats your boat."
A few days later, this publicity material below sat on my inbox, and I see Noimi really did her homework.
"Drawing" has become colloquially known among Filipinos as a term referring to un-materialized plans. In this case, "drawing" was used as a pun.
Noimi, by the way, works as a Physics instructor in our alma mater. Apparently, she did all this (pubmat + emailing everyone) while in one of her classes. That is not an example of an instructor that should be followed by another.
(A comment on her pubmat though: she got the sea waves backdrop wrong; we were planning on a pool swimming afterall.)
D-day
I met up with Noimi and @travelingmercies at uni (after a lot of walking on my end) and we were good to go! Somehow, at the middle of the night we got lost somewhere in Sikatuna Village (Noimi's sister dropped us off) and we had to rely to Grab to take us to the bus terminal.
I had been sick the past week, so in between getting lost, phoning friends for updates, and taking buses, I also had to take my meds. Noimi swore she would get sick, too, because she was stuck with me. It's been days, and she hasn't said she got sick for real.
It is a private place in Pansol, Los Baños, Laguna that is owned by Noimi's friend.
The place
The place had a lot of ammenities, and paying for it was worth it. We paid for 7 PM to 6 AM and got 1 adult and 1 kiddie pool all to ourselves, as well as billiards, videoke, 2 airconditioned rooms, television, WI-FI, and cooking stuff.
We enjoyed hanging out while preparing food and playing games in the pool all night (and early morning) long!
The best thing about the pool was that the water was really clean (because the only people there were me and my friends) and it was warm! Pansol in Laguna is known to house some of the best hot springs, and apparently, the waters in the pool (in most resorts in the place) are warm to hot, too. It was really relaxing. I had been suffering from bad cough and cold the whole week, and the warm waters soothed me a thousand times over.
There were a lot of cats, too, and they were being really cute all night.
To more get togethers
We are a group of young physicists. We are all busy building careers and pursuing graduate school, so talking "adult" tends to get stressful. This outing, despite being a few hours only, was really worth it. We got to make random chikahan while preparing food and catch up to the few months' time we didn't see each other.
We plan to keep this going. At the moment, the next get together would be in a beach resort somewhere in Batangas or a lunch out in Makati. Our May and June schedules seemed to be really uncooperative, though, so July would likely be the next one. But I can't wait!
