Day Fifty-Seven: Beach Resort, Sans Beach

8/9/14, 6:09 AM PDT

We went to a beach resort today.

Pretty pretty.

Kinda reminds me of a Wes Anderson film. If you squint.

Nice place, huh? Unfortunately, the water pretty brown and murky and I watched an episode of "River Monsters" right before we left so I didn't really feel like testing those waters for any snakehead fish or supergiant piranhas or stuff like that and neither did the rest of my extended family, who also went with us.

Instead, we opted for the nice, chemically-treated, cryptid-free pool. It was still a bit silty, but acceptable compared to the Black Lagoon levels of visibility that the beach had.

Yeah... no.

Brought my GoPro along for the ride. Took a few pictures of the place. Pardon the excessive fisheye use, there was no display on my GoPro and I wasn't quite sure what I was getting in frame, so I went with fisheye to make sure I got everything.

They had a poolside bar, which was pretty cool except they never sold anything.

I was so hungry too...

Making use of the camera's waterproof case, I took this picture of my sister, who just recently learned how to swim.

Good enough to be on a Nirvana cover.

My cousin's cousins also took a liking to the camera. They grabbed it and took a few selfies with it.

Normal.

Obligatory "silly" photo.

Despite the silty water, they also tried underwater selfies.

It worked... decently?

They all look like they're in pain.

I got in there too, took a big ol' group shot.

One big happy, first-cousin-once-removed family. I think.

The majority of the time, I played with my adorable niece, Ice, though.

Me and the happiest block of frozen water ever.

She tried to push me over.

She seemed to take a liking to this game that involved yanking my hair and pulling me underwater until I said sorry for something minor like splashing her with water. At one point I was under for 45 seconds and she panicked when she thought she killed me so she pulled me out of the water manually.

Dangerous? Maybe. But how do you expect to have fun without government terrorist interrogation methods?

"ARE YOU HAVING FUN?! ARE YOU?!"

At night, the pool lit up. And not just the boring white lights either. It flashed between red, green and blue so quickly that if Japanese kids were in the pool, they would've thought they were watching the Porygon episode of Pokémon.

I'm still trying to figure out whether or not that last joke is offensive. While I decide, have this gif of me showing you exactly what I mean by "epilepsy hazard."

Basically this.

Alright, I caught that video right when the lights started slowing down, but it's trippy regardless. Equally trippy? They had water arches that had LIGHTS THAT RAN THROUGH THEM. You know how optic fibers work? Yeah, same principle but with beautiful glasslike water. It's hard to put into words, so just look at this gif I made.

Trust me, if I knew how to make HD gifs, I would.

I also got a pic of one of the lights after I briefly cut the water.

Oh no, it didn't explode in midair, that's a water droplet messing with
the picture.

Let's end with a few other cool shots I took.

Notice my cousin in the background, stepping on a poor seal.

No, his head isn't curved like that, it's a fisheye lens.

RFotD: I have a ton of these to post.

SGAT: None really.

Day Fifty-Six: Bootleg Toys

8/8/14, 4:04 AM PDT

I rediscovered "Plague Inc" on my phone today. Two years ago, I was absolutely OBSESSED with this game, I beat every plague type on the hardest difficulty and pretty much beat the game 100%. Since then, I pretty much just let it sit in my iPhone.

You can imagine how surprised I was when I opened the app today and found they added a NEW hardest difficulty, a new plague type, customizable genes that you had to unlock, AND new scenarios.

And I thought I was on vacation.

Yeah, I got to work. And tell you what, compared to Brutal, the hardest difficulty back then, Mega-Brutal is EVIL. Brutal was a cakewalk for me, but DAMN, Mega-Brutal absolutely WRECKS ME when I play. But the new Zombie mode is REALLY cool. Haven't been able to beat it yet on anything harder than Normal, but I'm working on it.

Later, we went to Gaisano again to buy my sister a toy for surviving the blood sample that she needed to have to be diagnosed. There were a BUNCH of bootleg toys in here that I thought was hilarious.

First there's the name-changed ripoff toys to avoid copyright lawsuits:

Like the guy that writes Sherlock, right?

Owning it is your best choice! Better than college and a job!

The Autobots accidentally landed in North Korea.

These guys just got lost.

Then there's the awkward translations:

It's temperature is only 70°F. Hardly cool in my book.

"I can cook, clean, do dishes... Please I'm so lonely."

This one's not too awkward, I'm just amazed
that they said "circumgyrate."

Notice how the phone itself has NOTHING to
do with Angry Birds.

And then there's the toys where the manufacturer stopped caring completely.

Raphael now comes with a shiny Lightning
McQueen!

The Claw really messed that alien up.

That snake in her boot was unfortunately a
carrier of the Rage Virus.

There was this cool little thing too.

Real? Fake? No one knows, but it's still cool.

Also, my grandma's dog has PUPPIES. They're adorable. Even though they're covered in ticks and probably have a skin disease, but hey, cuteness comes in many forms.

In the aaaaaarms offfff the aiyyyengels...

Fly awaaaaaaaaaaay from here...

This one got a little too close to the camera.

There we go.

The proud mother. I think.

Oh, yeah, we have a goat. I forgot to mention that.

Hi.

RFotD: The time it takes for an update to save is directly proportional to the amount of pictures in the post. This post took 45 minutes just to upload.

SGAT: Got into the swing of using this tablet even though it's been sitting in my closet untouched for over a year.

Day Fifty-Five: Stomach Flu

8/7/14, 1:05 AM PDT

Went to a different mall today called Gaisano. Yeah, you're probably gonna read about a lot of mall trips during my vacation, it's a pretty popular thing to do here.

Almost, America. Almost.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay for long. My sister got sick with stomach flu and we had to go to the hospital, where my uncle, a doctor, treated her. It's nothing serious though, she'll be better in three days says my uncle.

Alright, let's settle a debate here. So before we went to the hospital, I bought a small box of pizza, about the size of a dinner plate. I ate it at the hospital lobby because I was STARVING and we were there for a good three hours. My mom says that eating at the lobby of a hospital is disgusting even though there was a crude cafeteria area right next to where we were waiting. Me, being the taster of said pizza, noticed nothing disgusting about eating at a hospital.

So, readers, tell me. Is it gross to eat in hospital lobbies? Comment below! And yes, there's a comment section, if you never knew, you just have to click on the actual entry to see it.

Not to sway your opinion or anything, but my mom saw a cockroach crawl across the ground of my uncle's office in the hospital and she shrugged it off as normal, so comparatively, how bad can eating in a hospital be?

Point taken, Silent Hill.

RFotD: Silent Hill's Otherworld hospitals only have slightly less strict health and safety requirements as my uncle's office.

SGAT: Ate delicious pizza.

Day Fifty-Four: Loitering In Malls

8/6/14, 12:47 AM PDT

I was still a bit impacted by jet lag, which made me wake up at 5:30 AM. Our maids weren't awake yet, so I ended up killing some time by reading a little more of A Thousand Splendid Suns. Incredibly sad so far, I'll tell you that. Those of you going into AP Lit that haven't started reading it yet, GET TO IT.

Went to Robinson's (one of the malls in the area) with my cousins Kershey and Kring-Kring. It's very big.

Oh, Big Box Mart...

...What have you done to me?

They have some really cool stuff here too, so they're not just compensating. They had interesting donut designs at Dunkin Donuts.

Maybe if we put it under the sea, someone will live in it.

Yan-Yan. For Men™

They also had some adorable prizes in the claw machines.

Money money money...

Not quite breaking 100, but still.

The Masuda Method made getting shinies waaaay too easy.

No joke, I spent 135 pesos trying to win one. No dice.

And this beauty too.

Commonly found in tropical areas, this species is considered
Endangered in Southern California.

We visited a shop called Kenko World and found some... Interesting phone cases.

I think you have the dong wrong number, sir.

We also ran into ASHLEY TISDALE.

These three are actually pictures taken before, during, and after
taking drugs.

And I also found the GREATEST GIFT EVER. I won't post a picture of it until I get back to America since I maaaay or may not be giving this gift to a certain person who reads my blog regularly, but let's just say that it's the best mug ever.

My cousins and I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, and we drove back home at around 7 PM, riding on the back of my uncle's pickup truck.

If there's two things I like about the Philippines, it's the abundance of Jolibee and the carefree motor vehicle laws. You just don't get that in America.

Then again, you don't get hordes of mosquitoes and regular, sweltering heat in America either, so I think the two are about even.




RFotD: Embedding links is too hard here. 

SGAT: Tried (and failed) to win a Pikachu.