Sunday 27th June - To the mall!

This morning we went to Jollibee for breakfast. Jollibee is the Filipino equivalent of McDonalds, but instead of serving American 'classics', filipino delicacies such as palabok are served.

Palabok

On the way to Jollibee something scary happened, and I'm convinced I had something to do with it. If you think roads are bad in London you need to come to South East Asia. Road lanes and pedestrian crossings are things of myth; I mean even the kerbs are used by motor vehicles! Anyway, so my cousin and I were walking along the road against traffic, I was walking closest to the kerb and he in the line of traffic. Now my six-year old cousin seems like he's constantly OD'ing on Red Bull or something, and I don't really know what happened, whether he tripped, was caught off balance or bounced off me, but he leant in towards an oncoming taxi.

The driver slammed on the breaks coming to an immediate halt. We thought that was going to be it but a motorbike with a passenger -neither driver nor passenger were wearing helmets- smacked into the back of the taxi. I mean it's not much of a consolation but if they were travelling any faster the bumper wouldn't have been the only thing to have taken some damage.

And what did we do? Just kept on walking. The passenger were a bit shaken up but the bumper took the brunt of the 'crash'. My aunt didn't want to cause any trouble so we just continued on our way. Now I don't need lectures on morals, on whether we should have stayed etc. etc. What mattered was that the people involved were fine.

Later in the day we took my cousins and some children from our extended family to the cinema to watch Toy Story 3.

Cinemas in the Philippines are different than what I'm used to. For one, there's a dixed price for all - only senior citizens get a discount. Secondly, even if the film you are going to watch does not start for another two hours, you can enter whenever you like. Also you can watch the film as many times as you like. So in theory, you can end up watching the end of a film first before watching the beginning. All you need is a stamp and you can walk in and out of the cinema as often or as little as you like. Great I guess if you are one of those epople who like to watch the same film over and over and ove....

I remember when the first film was released and dubbed one of the best toy films of all time. I'm always wary of sequels as a lot of the time they never really compare to the original. But this film proved to be different.

The little boy we knew as Andy is no more. Instead he's all grown up and on his way to college. But what to do with the toys he grew up with? A mistake leads the toys to a daycare centre where they are promised to be played with all the time. But not everything is as it seems. Once gain, Woody, Buzz, Jesse and Bullseye accompanied by the others fo on another epic adventure. The ending is sad (a glimpse at a woman in her late 30's shedding a tear was proof enough for me) and highly reminiscent of the last two films, with this message: Nothing lasts forever, but where a door is closed, somewhere else another opens.