filipino birfday baby!

my life will never be the same again! one of the pediatrics residents in the hospital invited tim and i to her son aaron’s first birthday party! it was held on the top/tenth floor of the nicest hotel in tacloban. there were even signs outside indicating “this way to the best party ever!” inside the elevator was what seemed like a plastic robot, which was impressive. but then we realized he was a person painted like a robot, being paid to act and dance like a robot in the elevator! by about floor six on the ride up we could start hearing the bass pounding. upon reaching the top, we were greeted by a room filled with streamers, person-sized mickey mouse balloons, and memorabilia from aaron’s first year of life, along with dozens of rambunctious toddlers and children and their parents. the highest concentration of morbidly obese, spoiled kids i’ve ever seen – like maybe this is what they are doing every night is going to these parties. they’re definitely not walking the streets of the tacloban i thought i knew. aaron was dressed in a tuxedo, wearing a red bowtie, completely ambivalent to anything occurring around him.

the festivities began of course with a prayer, quickly followed and perfectly juxtaposed by two clowns gyrating sexually to “talk dirty to me,” which obviously had to be loud enough that they could hear it in manila. the clowns continued gettin’ down to a few more r&b songs themed around bootys; toddlers clearly in awe. then, some hired musicians came out to take it down a notch with some popular valentines-themed pop songs aimed more at the adults. parents could jump in kareoke style if they’d like. then, it was food time: a lavish buffet with three types of pork including the necessity at every filipino party: lechon – crispy-skinned spit-fired suckling piglet. waiters brought around soft drinks on gold-plated platters that were guzzled by the morbidly obese young partiers. a chortling metrosexual wearing a wizard’s hat and a suit who was clearly hired for his infectiously incessant machine-gun-style laugh took the stage for jokes, and to referee a bunch of games for the kids. also ones for the adults, including one for tim and i, who, as the visible minority “guests,” raced to drink large baby bottles full of grape soda while wearing bibs. they brought around cupcakes. there was a magic show that lasted for over an hour. it involved fire. they brought around more desserts. there was confetti falling from the ceiling. multiple types of chocolate things on sticks were coming from somewhere. kids were drinking sugared juice from special-produced bottles with aaron’s likeness on them, with an ingredient list that read “cute: 100%, precious: 100%”, etc. the round kids were helping themselves to more chunks of dripping fat off the roast pig. there was a game where the parents got to jump in a free for all to reach expensive toys that their children wanted that were hanging above them just out of reach. everyone got huge plastic 3-d mickey-mouse heads that were filled with candies.

aaron, your parents got a new mortgage for this party; sure hope you enjoyed it!