Last Sunday, my wife and I got together with my high school classmates for dinner. Anna, a manager from Delifrance hosted it. Ginny just came back from California for a 27-days vacation. Being glib and loquacious as she always was, she had all these stories to tell. She works in a health care facility that specializes in aesthetic care- reconstructive surgery, beauty enhancements, liposuction, botox and other procedures.

One anecdote was about a middle-aged woman who had an obsession with botox. "Is my face beautiful, dahling?" asked the woman, to which Ginny replied, "You look fabulous!" She charaded the client’s face to us (as one who had one botox too many).

To debunk the so called "American Dream", things are not that different there compared to the Philippines. According to her, the only difference is that there are more "Puti" in the U.S. Work is harder in the US, the cost of living is higher and so are the taxes. At least here in the Philippines, customers don’t yell at you and call you names.

She is thinking of a business to put up whether here or in Cali. I had an idea to which we all laughed: to put up a PX goods store in the U.S. She enthused that she missed the tasty Bonuan Bangus. All they have in abundance there is the bigger but more bland Saranggani or the Malaysian and Indonesian Bangus. Can’t Dagupan City (where the world’s tastiest Bangus can be found) keep up with demand? With all the PR and festival expenses, still no concrete results? What happened to the multi-million bangus processing plant? Well, that’s another story.

Three days of being here, she had dined at almost all the local restaurants (at least the ones that are good). She plans to go to Baguio with Anna and experience the "ukay-ukay". Or to Boracay. The beaches of California, Ginny compares, is colder but cleaner than our beaches here.

Rob, another classmate, told us there is this "one peso promo" airfare of Cebu Pacific going to Boracay. All you have to pay is the tax (approximately P1000+). So what’s the catch? We all asked. No catch, he was serious. I might check this out if its true- if time permits.

What I could not forget about that evening was how she revealed that because of her Chinese features, she has experienced being derogatorily called Jap, Chink, and Vietcong. With a bat of an (tattooed) eyelash she proudly exclaimed, "Honey, I am a Filipino!"