My family is kinda nuts.

My father is strict, while my mother is a nervous wreck (aka praning in Tagalog).

Put it this way, since I am not always in Manila and my dad was playing mah-jong this evening, my brother and I were given free reign to do whatever we wanted for the evening. After meeting up with my high school classmates, we settled on a delicious dinner at Fely Js Philippine Cuisine at Greenbelt 5. We were joined by his newly minted girlfriend.

Dinner was yum — we had tilapia with plum sauce (around Php350), ginataang kangkong, pork with bagoong and dilis rice.

Afterwards, we decided to have some massage. A 2-hour session was Php 400 and included a foot and back massage with relaxing volcanic stone treatment.

30 minutes into the massage, my nervous mother calls us up repeatedly asking us to go home. She was afraid that my dad would finish his mahjong earlier and wanted us to be home before they did or “all hell would break lose.”

“You better go home now,” she said repeating this statement around three times. Eh mom – how can we go home if you’re talking to us on the phone hmmm?

So we had to:

1) Tell our masseuses that we had to stop.
2) Tell my brother’s sleeping girlfriend that we had to stop massage.
3) Explain to her why we had to stop.
4) Rush home before dad did.

Mind you, we are already like old. And we’re still acting like kids.

When we dropped my brother’s girlfriend home, I joked, “If she still sticks with you after this, she’s a keeper. This is one reason why I don’t bring Trader into the family too often.”

My brother is distressed but shrugs. It does make sense. Since the woman is coming into the family, if she cannot even accept who our background is, then so be it.

She calls my brother anyway for their usual video games session. He breathes a sigh of belief.

I like her. She’s cool. 🙂

Anyway, my family — particularly my dad and my mom — are kinda nuts. Sigh, I really do hope that Trader can accept myself and my family for who we are.

Have a great week guys!