Elsietampong's Blog

ELSIE’S YEAR END LETTER 2011

Normally, I leave the making of the Year End Letter to Ralph. But as I was clearing out my pictures, I thought, maybe I should write out my own. This year has been very exciting for me. I was able to do the following:

1. Organize the Senior Citizens of Barangay Laging Handa. I was able to get the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Certificate for our group. We have more than 150 members. The treasurer said, “We have been trying to organize for so long. It was only you who was able to push this to reality.” We had an election of Officers, and we were sworn in by Bong Suntay, Counselor for the Fourth District of Quezon City. I posted all over the Barangay, crazy tarpaulins where where Ralph’s secretary superimposed the faces of our Officers with bodies of the Super Heroes. One such sample is shown below. Do you recognize me? I am the one on the right with the flying pony tail!

The Seniors were thrilled to no end. They asked me to make placemats of these crazy pictures and showed it to all their friends — church community and family. A true conversation piece!

At the back of Counselor Bong Suntay, there is another tarpaulin. I am the one with the body of Wonder Woman. I just loved it!

2. In March, our St. Joseph’s College High School class celebrated their 50th Golden Jubilee. Ours was the biggest class to attend, and we had everyone ( I think we were 30 all in all) on the stage dancing the “Waka-waka”. It is still on You Tube, “SJC ’61 Golden Jubilee”. Many of our classmates came for the occasion—Lina Javier from Australia, and many others, from the USA and Canada. I have as the picture here, Biruth with Lorina and Amel.

We hadn’t seen Biruth since she left for the States after graduation. Since she was the Sales Representative for Asia for Revlon, she metarmophosed into the glamour gal we never knew was in her. We were thrilled to see everyone for the Golden Jubilee. Lina Javier, who was a member of the Filipiniana Dance Troupe of FEU, spiced up our dance with innovations of her own. She flew in just a few days before the reunion, and boy, she really inspired us to do much better than what we were doing!

3. We had several balikbayans during the year. My siblings came in May. Sister Nini celebrated her 60th birthday and all the members of her family came to be with her. In July, sister-in-law Baby came with her children Liza and Erwin, with their children. The photo here shows Nini with her husband at the Anvaya Cove clubhouse.

4. At the beginning of August, I managed to slip into my busy schedule, a trip to visit my American grandson Rogan in Denver. (All the other grandsons are Irish.) My ideal grandma was Mary Racelis Hollensteiner, from Ateneo and UNICEF, who writes us every year, saying that she is always around her grandchildren for their important milestones– birth, Holy Communions, graduations, weddings. I tried to do this, but my pockets were never deep enough to afford a plane ticket whenever important events took place. The free ticket that I got from using my credit card was from BPI Mabuhay Miles. It went to Las Vegas. Then another free ticket I used was from Delta Airlines, to connect Las Vegas to Denver. It was my first time to see Las Vegas. I met Elvis and Michael Jackson (impersonators) in Las Vegas. Daughter Elena and her husband brought me to celebrity Chef Mario Battali’s restaurant and together, we watched the show of a Beattles’ “Love” as interpreted by the Cirque de Soliel. In Denver, I met other children Regina and Laurie, and of course, the object of this trip, five year old Rogan. Photo shows Rogan with me.

5. At the end of August, I brought a hugely excited group of my staff to Hongkong. HSBC offered one free ticket to Hongkong if you had five charge slips of over P10,000 worth of goods and services. We were a party of seven. Try to multiply that with P50,000 worth of purchases each. It was very exciting to go, but paying for all those purchases and paying for Hotel accommodations really burned a hole in my pocket. I heard HSBC also got burned paying for those Cathay Pacific tickets worth P9,000 each just for P50,000 worth of purchases. But all my purchases at that time were with HSBC. And the staff that I brought—they will forever have the experience of being in Hongkong engraved in their minds. The staff here has their photo under the Hongkong Disneyland sign.

6. By the end of November, I had the Gonzalez Doble Zeta Reunion on my plate. We held it at the Philippine School of Interior Design owned by Charo Concio Yujuico. Her grandfather, Dr. Virgilio Gonzalez, was one of ten brothers. Our family numbers over 2,500. We targeted 150, and 200 came, even after we closed our doors one week before the event. That was a mistake because the food was overflowing, and there was enough space and seats for 300. There is a You Tube video of the event entitled “Gonzalez Reunion” and “Reunion 2011”. For this article, I chose my photo with Vicky Belo and our host, Charo Cancio Yujuico. Vicky is currently the most popular among the present-day Gonzalezes.

7. The most important thing this year was the construction of our house in Anvaya Cove, Bataan. We broke ground on May 18, 2011. We bought the land in April 2010 when I needed a distraction to Ralph’s preoccupation with the Barangay. We needed to house our workers, so when we saw a lot not too far from Anvaya, we bought it. It was a Mango farm. In Ralph’s Year End letter of 2010, he states that we hope to spend the New Year 2012 in the house. But Ayala is very strict with its Deed of Restrictions, etc., that hopefully, after Ralph’s 73rd birthday, we can have clearance to enter the house. Right now, we are doing the finishing touches, and will start buying furniture when 2012 opens. Sorry, you will have to wait until the house is finished before I post a picture…

8. The Floods. We suffered from the October flood in our house in San Luis, Pampanga.

This is the house in front of our mulahan, or yard for fruit trees. The strength of the storm ripped the front and sides of the house apart. Every year, the water seems to go higher. This year, it was ten feet in our yard. Fortunately, our caretaker, JP, has seen so many floods, he had put all the furniture from the lower level to the second floor. It also helps that no one lives in the ancestral house. But Bessie, my cousin’s wife who lives in San Luis, suffered trauma from the flood. She almost drowned trying to wade through the water. Of course, it is not as bad as the floods in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro. Those ones really wiped out whole families and spared no big houses. It is really the wrath of God for man’s destroying his environment. For Greed!

I can see that the year 2012 will be more quiet for me when we move to Anvaya. Can you imagine, being in a neighborhood where there are only two other families residing there?

But I’m always open to adventure– new places, new friends. Meanwhile, let me say good-bye to 2011, and thank the Lord for all the blessings I received during the year. Blessings like good health to have done what I did….

This entry was posted on December 24, 2011 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.