The
Peninsula Hotel In Makati
I have visited Philippines on many occasions as part of a
globalisation team, the visits began in November 1999 with a meeting to discuss
the plans for the world-wide sites using an AS/400, these meetings were held on
a regular basis. During my visit to Manila in December 1999 the hotel I was
staying in was shook by an earthquake at 2am local time, initially I thought it
was Laundry being moved outside my door as I was on the Phone to Jo at the time.
When the TV slide out of it’s unit I thought things were a bit more serious,
but as the shaking stopped after a minute I just went to bed. The next day the
results of the earthquake were evident, cracks appeared in the meeting rooms and
everyone was discussing how they raced to the lobby for safety, I had been
oblivious of these events!
During my visit in February 2000 Jo and Leanne travelled
out for my last week of 3 , to look at the prospect of relocating to Manila on a
permanent basis. Things didn’t start to well as I was unable to meet Jo at the
point I told her, so she was alone with
Leanne in a strange country not knowing where I was and what to do. When we
eventually got together the journey through the poorer sites of Manila were an
eye opener, but didn’t seem as bad as Lima. The first thing that strikes you
is the poor driving, there seems to be no consideration for other drivers, and
additional lanes are created by cars trying to squeeze through a gap that
doesn’t exist, this is not helped by the poor state of some of the roads and
the pollution that is prevalent. Jo and Leanne loved the trips to the shopping
malls as the prices were so reasonable and the stores so big. We were invited to
the house of one of the expat managers for Sunday lunch and both Jo and Leanne
loved the Singaporean food they had, Leanne played with the children in their
pool, and Jo could see herself moving out to the Philippines. During their stay
we went to a Theme Park to the south of Manila, it was nice to be in a park that
didn’t have any queuing. We all returned together and thought that we
wouldn’t mind living there.
I had several more trips during 2000 including spending the
whole of May in Manila, I did manage to see a few sights, but the majority of my
time was spent working or sleeping.
