I told all my friends if they wanted to see me that's where they'd have to come as I was bypassing Metro Manila. Even so, transiting from international to domestic airports was a congested torturous nightmare.
In the two years I had not been back, I had relocated to my new home in the old neighborhood of West Hoboken by the Union City reservoir in New Jersey.
It was exhilarating to leave the biting wet chill of an early East Coast winter for the cool equatorial breezes in my coastal town this time of the year.
