Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A visit from the Zoleta Family


























After more than 12 years, I finally met my nephews who visited me here in Los Angeles for the first time. The last time I saw them was during our vacation in the Philippines in 1995. My son was 5 years old, J.R. & E.M was about 11 and 13 - now they're all grown up. They arrived in San Francisco on Monday, Oct. 20th on board Philippine Airlines flight from Manila, Philippines. For my nephews, this was their first trip to the U.S. and they were accompanied by their father who visited us three (3) years ago. It's for so many years now, their business Argo Forwarders was recognized by Philippine Airlines as the Top Domestic Cargo Sales Agent in the Philippines for the year 2007. Last year, it was my cousin Amy and her daughter Katrina, who visited us on a similar trip they won for the year 2006. My cousin, June Longcob picked them up in San Francisco on Wednesday night and drove them to Santa Barbara with their Lola. They arrived in L.A. on Friday morning and spend the afternoon at Universal Studios and I met them at the Universal Hilton where I booked them for their 2 night stay. We have dinner at Mayflower Restaurant in Chinatown to catch up on a lot of things that have happened in the many years that we did not see each other. After dinner, I drove them to the famous Sunset strip and we stopped by Hustler Hollywood store to browse at their Halloween collection including their kinky toys and other sex stuff. J.R. was a bit overwhelmed of what he saw and could not imagine if such would be available in Manila if ever. Our last stop was Hollywood where they spent an hour exploring the footprints of the stars at the Chinese Mann theater. I dropped them at the Universal Hilton around 11 p.m. On Saturday, I picked them up again after lunch. My nephews decided to spend the afternoon in Disneyland and Bobet decided not to join them as he needs to buy a laptop so after we dropped them, we drove back to Burbank and I took him to Best Buy. We had dinner at Yakitori on Glenoaks Boulevard and picked them up again at around 10:30 p.m. I asked my son Champ to drive for me so he can meet his cousins. On Sunday, I checked them out of the hotel and we had lunch at our place in Burbank. After a week away from home, the kids were craving for Filipino food so I had some fried Tilapia, Max's famous fried chicken, pancit canton, dinuguan, beef with onions which I ordered from Arko foods. We left for the airport around 2:30 p.m. and we drove to Melrose Avenue, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and unwind at The Proud Bird restaurant on Aviation Boulevard and had some drinks and snack while watching the planes land at LAX. I dropped them at Tom Bradley around 5:30 p.m. just in time June and his mom, arrived with their check-in bags. It was a busy weekend after all.

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