Allergyboy

The best town in O-H-I-O, Ohio USA!

Remember that song? It was from the critically acclaimed cinematic masterpiece entitled “Babes in Toyland” starring Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore. Anyway…

After six days in California, I was off to Cincinnati to visit my dearest friend, Diane, who has been residing in the land of the cicadas (gross-looking winged insects that emerge from the ground in large numbers during certain parts of the year for the sole purpose of attacking famous actress Cameron Diaz) for about two years now. I hadn’t seen her in ages so I was pretty excited to finally see her and to meet the people in Cincinnati she calls her friends. I wanted to find out if they were just as kooky as we are. They were.
The flight from LAX to Cincinnati took about 4 hours. I hated my seatmates at the plane - two old, unattractive, white folks who kept blabbing about nonsense. I was so glad when the plane finally landed in Cincinnati. Their airport was rather large and vast. It took me about 3 1/2 days to get from the gate to the baggage terminal where Diane was waiting. Yey! And then we had dinner at this Asian restaurant called Teak which had really good sushi. And then we walked around a bit.

Here, you see us posing beside a fountain-slash-statue of what appears to be a fat friar.


I forgot what the name of this area was, but it was a pretty nice place to walk around. We also went to this nice little cafe to get some hot coco.

There were a few days when it got pretty cold in Cincinnati. As in cold enough to get frosty breath. You know? When you talk and you could actually SEE your breath coming out of your mouth. What I loved about the cold weather is that it allowed me to wear nice cold weather clothes which I could never wear in Manila unless I wanted to look like a sweaty idiot.

Naka-scarf pako. Say mo? Geoffrey Been yan. 100% pure wool pa. Sosyal.

I came prepared for the cold. I even bought a beanie and thick gloves that kinda looked like potholders. They were all black so I kinda looked like a burglar when I wore them.

Enter magnanakaw…

This is me rifling through what I regretfully discovered to be Diane’s underwear drawer.

Now if only I could fit this TV in my carry-on luggage.

Huli ka!

Yes, we were that bored. But you have to understand, there isn’t much to do in Cincinnati.

I got Diane a small gift during my stopover at the Narita airport in Japan. It was one of those dangling thingies that you could attach to small items like a cell phone or a mini coin purse. What dangled from the string was a miniature statue of what, to me, appeared to be the prevailing Japanes archetype of the all suffering female.

Here she is standing beside the miniature cow on Diane’s countertop.

We named her RJ. After our good friend RJ Paculan, who has noticably pouty lips.

So aside from playing dress up and naming inanimate objects, I also got to meet and hang out with Diane’s lovah, Aaron, as well as some of Diane’s friends. We stayed at Aaron’s for a couple of days. He lives in the suburbs. His neighborhood is very Wysteri Lane-like.

Aaron’s a musician and he’s got a lot of musical instruments in his house. From pianos to piccolos and trombones to timpanis. His home was a veritable orchestra.

This is Diane’s friend, Noname (pronounced no-neym). The story goes something like how her mom, not being able to decide what name to give her, just gave her no name at all - Noname. Here you see her playing one of Aaron’s bongos.

And here I am playing the bongos with Diane’s scientist friend, Julissa. Notice Julissa’s shirt. She doesn’t work in Hooters but she’s most certainly qualified. She is, after all, a scientist.

Here we are in our grand finale.

We were magnificent. Diane gave us a standing ovation.

The funny thing was that Aaron wasn’t even home that time. And yet there we were playing with all his stuff. We looked through one of his closets and found numerous head ornaments and wigs. What he uses them for, I do not know.

The guy on the left is Roman. He’s a total boyscout. He has this “emergency” bag that he carries all the time. It has tons of stuff in it like two-way radios, flashlights and a defibrillator. You know? In case someone gets a heart attack.

At this point, I would like to reiterate that there isn’t much to do in Cincinnati. But I still had a lot of fun with all the people I hung out with. See you soon, Diane! And thanks for letting me stay in your nice high-ceilinged apartment with easy to use washer and dryer.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 7:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.