Late Post II: The birthday bash - Part 1

In keeping with the finest of traditions, 2014 would not be complete without celebrating my birthday! December is my favourite month of the year, because this means Christmas is just around the corner, and, before that, I also get to celebrate my birthday with my family.

Birthday celebrations in our family has always been a humble affair. My birthday on 2014 fell on a working weekend (!) so we had to celebrate a day in advance. And since I am working in Manila and not in Angeles City, I decided to take the entire family on a trip to Manila Ocean Park.

So off we went on a rental van bound for Roxas Boulevard and to Manila Ocean Park. I have not been there before (it was constructed a few years after I left for Norway), and to be honest I wasn't really expecting much. Tourist attractions in Manila tend to be, on my experience, overpriced, crowded, and just a ripoff of some other theme park in another part of the world. But I was pleasantly surprised! Manila Ocean Park was quite entertaining. While some things in Manila, like the traffic and population, have worsened over the years, some things, like the malls and amusement parks, have become truly world-class.

So we spent the entire afternoon marvelling at the diverse exhibit of marine life at the Oceanarium. It was very hard to photograph since the glass aquariums acted like poor quality glass filters which made a lot of the photographs unsharp. But it was a fun day, and everyone had a lot of fun.