I seem to have the worst luck in the hotel room lottery too. Paul is always stashed on a nice quiet floor, while my floors seem to be populated with partiers or screaming babies. The room next to mine currently has a screaming infant AND someone learning to play the recorder (learn faster, the squeaking is killing me). Normally, this wouldn’t be all that bad, but since we sleep during the day to work at night, having a baby scream in the room next to you for 5 hours straight tends to equal my not getting any sleep at all before heading to work. The walls in this hotel are incredibly thin. You can hear everything – especially those things you DON’T want to hear in a hotel!

As always, we’re working hard and not having much time to play. Unlike my second trip, I’m not alone this time. Paul, my travelling companion from my first trip, arrived in Manila the week before I did and will be going home a week after I leave. He is bringing his family to Manila in April and they will be spending a nice 2 weeks vacationing here before heading home. Paul will be working one of those weeks, but I’m sure there will be plenty of things Wendy and Alex can do during the first week to keep them busy.

I knew it was only a matter of time before my travelling luck ran out. I’ve never lost my luggage on a business trip before, and technically my luggage isn’t lost now either.. the airline knows exactly where it is. It just never made it onto the plane with me *sigh*. I landed in Manila only to be greated by an airline representative who had the cheery duty of informing me that my luggage is still in Minneapolis and won’t be arriving until after midnight the next day. Lucky me.

On the bright side, I do have my cell phone back. Despite repeated attempts to contact the hotel from Edmonton and determine if they had found it being met with no response, Paul was able to track down my cell phone and have it delivered to his room before I arrived. It had been stored in the hotel safe apparently.

Everyone from work is staying at the same hotel so that messages, travel warnings, etc., can be distributed quickly and easily. This sounds great in theory, but didn’t work so well in practice. I went out to Greenhills with Pau and Jing to celebrate Pau’s birthday. We caught a movie and ate at a very interesting Arabic restaurant – did you know the wait staff calls all patrons “your majesty”? – the next day we were out and about doing some shopping and just generally spending time roaming around the city. Apparently we were supposed to be sitting safe in the hotel during this time. On Sunday evening I received a notice that it was now safe to go out in the city and we could return to work. Unfortunately, I’d never received anything that said I wasn’t supposed to leave the hotel on previous days. I don’t think the fault lies with the company, as I’m learning of an increasing trend of messages not being delivered in the hotel. Twice Drew has called and they have either refused to connect him to my room due to the time of day he’s calling (middle of the night here, which of course means I’m awake – we sleep during the day) and any messages he leaves with the front desk aren’t being received. At least I have a cell phone now and can call him myself. No more reliance on reception desk operators who appear to enjoy dictating to whom we can speak and when.

It was an interesting last few weeks in Manila. The political climate here has been tense (to say the least) what with the 20th anniversary of the EDSA People Power revolution taking place this week. The was a bombing outside of the EDSA shrine around the corner from work which had most of us jumping out of our skin. The loud bang was completely unexpected and had many sitting on the edges of their seats for the rest of the afternoon. I think most of us were unsettled for the rest of the day. The planned marches in EDSA didn’t materialize when the government refused to grant permission for mass gatherings, so the citizens marched in Makati instead. There was also a soldier sit-in/revolt at Fort Bonifacio that occurred later in the week. After a lengthy stand off the soldiers stood down and the collective breath held by the citizens seemed to be let out slowly.

I know the above is a very simplistic view of what happened, but it’s very hard to relate to the political climate here. Instead, I’ll be bringing some newspapers home for those who are interested.