December 31, 2008: Fogged In at Tagaytay

Making up a bit for the brutality of the Baguio return trip, we didn't leave for Tagaytay - where Alma's uncle also has a house, and where New Year's celebrations would take place - until 1:15 in the afternoon.  It only took about 90 minutes to get there, but unfortunately we arrived in a thick fog that rendered Taal Lake and its volcano, Tagaytay's showpiece attractions, invisible except for a brief period right as we entered town (though even then I could barely see anything).  So we simply went to Tagaytay Highlands, a country club where Alma's uncle is a member, for a late lunch.  (The thick fog made the drive down to the country club perhaps even more nerve-wracking than the pitch black winding trip to Anvaya Cove had been.)  There was a New Year's Eve mass held at the club, so we also attended that, then went back to the house for festivities - in addition to it being New Year's Eve, it was also Alma's uncle's birthday.  The house had three floors; I was in the tower room, some distance from everyone else up a narrow staircase and adjacent to the roof on which the New Year's party went down.

My confinement to the tower proved the final indignity of what turned into a rough night.  Everything was fine until I got the hiccups right around midnight and was unable to easily shake them, somewhat ruining the start to the new year.  Shortly afterward, I saw a big spider on the stairs and refused to go down until someone killed it, thus looking like an eight-year-old girl in front of everyone.  (In my defense, it was huge and disgusting, and the narrowness of the stairs meant I would have been unacceptably close to it.  What if it moved towards me while I was passing?  Gah.  That thing had legs like french fries.  And of course after the driver killed it - with his hand, no less - he brought up a remaining leg in the "What, this spider?" way that I absolutely saw coming.  It took Alma heading him off with a "Seriously, do not stick that spider leg in his face"-type warning to spare me further humiliation.)  Then, I did a couple decent karaoke songs but threw my voice out of whack on the final chorus of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" (which I had not chosen but accepted the mic for since I know it well) and never really got it back.  To make matters worse, my bedroom was not only right next to the karaoke setup but the cord came into the room through an opening in the window, meaning I had no insulation from the noise, and the household staff continued doing karaoke until 3 in the morning (I eventually fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion, only to be jarred awake again when they actually stopped singing).  I contemplated pulling the cord out at one point but opted not to so as to avoid looking like a Grinch (plus, as Alma noted, this was just about the only day of the year when the staff could really cut loose).

A shot from the restaurant at Tagaytay Highlands, which doesn't quite do justice to how foggy it was - but suffice it to say that outside the club, where the buildings seemed to break things up a little, you really could see nothing.

A less foggy picture inside the club.  It was cooler and raining, so the pool wasn't exactly being put to use, but it sure looked nice.

Near the area where the mass was held was this rather amusing nativity scene made out of neon lights.

There's some Filipino Bagong Taon (New Year's) tradition involving having a lot of different kinds of fruit.  I think we counted 17 between the two baskets here.

One of the items in the basket was this weird-looking variety of lychee, which had this odd, almost hairy outside.  It kind of looked like some alien bug.

A closer shot, though out of focus in the front.  They really were strange.  Tasted fine, though.

The fruit again.  There were conventional things like oranges, cantaloupe and grapes, and slightly more exotic but still "normal" things like pineapple, papaya, and mango, and then there were things like the lychees and "star apples," which I didn't care for.

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