I was at a wake last night, accompanying Caren and two of her friends, Rona and K-Anne. I decided to go because it was at Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heritage Park, actually, right next to it.), and I have never been there before. Like they always, say, visit as many places as you can before you die. Brrr.

The wake we went to was different from all others that I've been to. It was high profile. To Caren and her friends, she was the mother of one of their groupmates back in college. Pretty normal, don't you think? But to me and to the rest of the world, she was actually the wife of a Supreme Court Justice Associate.

And so I witnessed how the rich died and were remembered.

The Heritage Park chapel had four rooms, capable of housing 4 different wakes at a time. This wake took up all four rooms by itself, and was averaging 1,500 guests a day. I guess Caren put it best, "That's much better traffic than in a Ministop store." Touche'.

Not only the guests were plentiful, there was a buffet table with chafing plates that never got empty. Wreaths were flowing outwards, spilling out to the lobby of the Chapel, which was a good 150 feet away from the rooms. From every significant politician, every notable institution, or as far as I could tell anyway. I saw flowers sent from Senators Lacson and Villar, A huge wreath from our VP Kabayan Noli, and of course Fidel Ramos and Family threw in a few bouquets, too. Governors, congressmen, probably from anybody who was a somebody in Philippine politics. People like that surely get remembered. So this was how the rich died. It made my head spin.

But for an entirely different reason.

It made me think about my own future wake. How will I be remembered? How do I want my wake to go? How do I want to be buried? How many people will come and visit me at my wake? And how many will visit me at my tomb?

And what about if I die rich? Will I get the same treatment as I saw last night? I was certainly overwhelmed by the hugeness of the event, like it was one big party. I'd like my own to be a celebration of my Going Home to the Big Guy Up There, though significantly smaller than the soiree last night. It was much too huge for me.

And if I die poor? Will my closest friends and loved ones come? I sure hope so. Either I die rich or poor, I just want a small congregation of people, though surely I won't be able to control that once I'm snug in my coffin. I want a simple service. And hopefully I don't get buried among many others. I hope I get buried under the shade of a big tree, on the land that I hope I'd have someday. I guess that final resting place sums up all of how I wanted to be when I was still alive -- FREE.

I have now been officially inducted into the hallowed echelons of the Hall of Fame for Lazy Bloggers. I just got my popcorn trophy in the mail yesterday. It was already stale. They were too lazy to send it out on time.

Enough drama. I waited a whole week to tell this story. And this isn't a story about my college classmate Gina. It's a story about a mountain. I climbed one last weekend, and named Mt. Maculot, thus the direct disclaimer for my college friend.

I went up with my girlfriend, a couple of friends with siblings, plus friends of friends, so it was a diverse group. There were veteran climbers and then there were us mainland folk. The trek to the campsite (about 700 meters above sea level), was to take 1 1/2 hours, but us newbies took three days. Okay. I exaggerated. It was no Mt. Everest, but it still took us almost four hours to climb. I personally would have liked to have ran as fast as I could to the top, but that would have taken the fun out of watching the others slip and stumble every few times. I'm cruel, I know.

I'm all for postcard-ish views and breathtaking scenery, and Maculot's view of the sunset over Taal Volcano was supposed to be one of the best. So I was particulary looking forward to witnessing that. We were just about right on time for the sunset when we got to the campsite just before 6PM (The veteran climbers in our group had gotten to the site in 2 hours, so the had all set up camp and everything). I was ready to shoot photos, after setting up our tent, of course. That took another half hour, and as soon as we were done, the sun promptly disappeared below the horizon, headed off to service the other side of the world. I had missed the sunset. I had picked the worst time to be macho and pitch a tent.

Dinner was an interesting subplot in the adventure. I finally got to the 'roughing it' part of the trip. I found all the tiny cooking stoves and pots and pans amusing. It was like he had brought an entire kitchen with us. Even dinner was mainstream, we had beef steak. I half-thought that were were just going to be eating leaves and berries or tree bark or whatever.

The roughest part was the sleeping. Our tent area was uneven, and the sleeping back saw no point in hiding the rocks and plant stubs underneath. They just poked right through. Sleeping was literally a pain. Plus the weather up there made it all the more impossible. The wind was howling fierce, that from inside the tent, it sounded like a storm was going on outside. I was worried we were going to get blown off the face of the mountain.

But I enjoyed every minute of it. It was different.

The whole essence of 'roughing it' is supposed to be anything you do during your normal, almost boring life, except you take it into a jungle, a mountain, a warzone, or a desert, anywhere, where there aren't toilets or a McDonald's or movie theaters or the Internet. It's where you go to sleep where there's space to tuck your tent or sleeping bag into, where you take a dump anywhere there are waist-high shrubs or thick enough tree trunks you can hide behind. (I kept that last part to a minimum, however, by drinking enough Loperamide to not make me go potty for 10 years.) Yes, it sounds disgusting, but the caveman inherent in all of us finds this both exciting and necessary.

I have not written anything in two weeks, mostly because I've been too tired. Jetlag, lack of sleep, too much work, and every time I got the notion to write, I actually didn't want to.

Oh, the excuses I come up with when I'm too lazy to write.

So I'll just get right on to telling everything that has happened in the last two weeks.

March 27. My return flight to Manila. I had been bracing myself for the 16+hour flight back home. I tell you, subjecting people to sit in an airplane 37,000 feet in the air in economy class is as inhumane as the slave trade. Somebody should do a study of people sitting in first class and people sitting in coach, and be ho-hummed by the fact that none of the 1st class passengers get jetlagged. Why can't an entire international flight have better accomodations? Grumble mumble mumble. You know, I really like to travel, I just don't like sitting in airplanes for long periods.

March 29, 5:00 AM, PHT. Land! I can't help but get over the torture of a flight that was, because I am home again. I am far away from the killer cold of Northern America, and back to the hot and humid regions of Metro Manila. And how HOT it is! At 5 AM, I was expecting the air to be cooler, but of course I was wrong. I had a wet handkerchief after 5 minutes. I haven't worked up a sweat like that in 2 months. And that was just from walking out of the airplane down to the baggage claim area, a total of a hundred plus feet. Still I didn't care. I was on the ground and home. Nothing could beat the feeling. Nothing could ruin my day... except maybe someone stealing my luggage. And that thought drove me into a state of paranoia only privy to those who live out here. I got my bags as quickly as I could and left the terminal.

As soon as I stepped outside I place a phone call to Caren to let her know I was back. She had actually planned to surprise my by picking me up from the airport. So of course my happy day became happier, because she was the first person I got to see when I arrived.

March 30. Back to work. I couldn't believe it. We were supposed to have recovery leaves allocated so we can reset our messed up body clocks from all that travel accross different timezones. But it couldn't be helped. We were needed, so we had to respond. Unfortunately for me, all the "we" I was thinking about actually was just "me" reporting back to work. Lem had actually gone home to CdO. So there I was, all groggy and not-entirely-myself, working double shifts across the weekend and into the current week until he could come back. Even right now I feel I haven't fully recovered. I still can't sleep longer than 3 hours and not wake up.

And I almost forgot to mention, I got promoted. So the week didn't turn out as bad as it did.