Author: ajay

I wasn’t able to visit the Royce chocolates stall while in Singapore, so it was quite a relief to find a Royce counter in Harbor City, Kowloon. My HK-based friend Mira told me Royce is available in City Super, I didn’t quite know there are a number of them in the territory. Note the picture: the shop girl didn’t want me to take a picture but I guess it was too late

Silly me wanted these Royce chocolated-dipped potato chips to myself, and would have bought a dozen, if my budget allowed. They were simply addictive! What could be more sinful than Royce’s divine chocolate and potato chips combined??

Our Royce shopping stash! The chocolate-covered marshmallows (in orange box) were another revelation. Even the simple-looking Royce chocolate bar was good - not too sweet. What is good about shopping in Royce is that you get to taste any chocolate you like in their delicious range - the sales people would be willing to cut a slice for you and let you sample the flavors.

The Royce range: Nama Chocolate in Au Lait, White, Champagne, Bitter & Mild Cacao (HKD$85); Pure Chocolate in Sweet & Milk, Creamy Milk & White ( HKD$90), Venezuela Bitter & Ghana Sweet, Mild Bitter & Extra Bitter (HKD$100); Petite Truffle in Praline, Kirsch, & Orange (HKD$70); Criollo Chocolate in Bitter, Sweet, & Milk (HKD70), Chocolate Bar in Almond, White, Black, Almond, Rum Raisin & Creamy Milk (HKD38); Almond Chocolate Assort in Coconut, Hazel Cacao (HKD$80), Assorted Box (HKD$125); Marshmallow Chocolate in White, Milk Coffee (HKD$60), Macadamia Chocolate, Coffee Beans Chocolate (HKD$98) Chocolate Wafers (HKD$75); Nutty Bar Chocolate, Potechi Crunch Chocolate, Potato Chips Chocolate & Coffee Chocolate (HKD$75); Royce Aroma Chocolate Collection (HKD$110), Kurumaro Chocolate (HKD$115); Royce Gift Boxes (with assorted goodies) from HKD$200 to $380.

Royce Stores in Hong Kong:

City Super Times Square
Basement 1, Times Square, 1 Matheson Street
Causeway Bay

City Super Harbour City
Shop No. 3001, Level 3, Harbour City, Canton Road
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon

City Super IFC Mall
Shops 1041-1049, Level One, ifc Mall
Central

City Super New Town Plaza
Shops 204-214, Level 2, New Town Plaza
Shatin, New Territories

LOG-ON Festival Walk Shop
UG Level, Festival Walk, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon

… and so it came to pass that we ended up in Holly wood.

The Disney Holly wood Hotel in Hong Kong Disneyland

It was raining, but we enjoyed it just the same.

(to be continued)

Between paying $131 for a US visa application and trying your luck in the slot machines, I’d choose the latter. At least with legalized gambling, you get a free Coke and a sandwich. Not with the d*ickheads-in-residence at the NIV Unit of the US Embassy in Manila who go through their job without rhyme and reason. I actually thought being a “diplomat” was a distinguished, honorable profession until you encounter them in real life (okay, I dated one of their ilk in my younger years, but that’s another story!)

Cases in point: they don’t maintain eye-to-eye contact. All they care about is making notes on their computer screen

They talk to their counter seatmates (and laughing at that!) while Filipino visa applicants are there in front of them, waiting for their fate to be decided.

Some of them actually use headsets with microphones so that the rest of humanity can hear the interrogation and humiliating comments they subject Filipino visa applicants to. Comments that are uncalled for and unwanted, like this personal encounter I had with a certain Mr. Norman Culbertson (???) who told me to get a fiancee visa when I was clearly JUST applying for a vacation!

It would have been better if Mr. Culbertson just denied me up front and put the X on that blue slip, but no, he rattles on further to say: “if your boyfriend is serious with you, why don’t you tell him to get you a fiancee visa? You don’t even have to apply for it, we will process it for you.”

Well heck, Mr. Culbertson, you forgot that I don’t have to get a fiancee visa when I can aim straight for a spouse visa or go apply for the dang journalist visa. You keep a one-track mind and nitpick on my love life and clearly disregard the fact that I’ve had two US visas, Schengen visas, the Japan, China, South Korea visas yadda yadda yadda. Clearly, I don’t have the character or inclination to settle out of the country soon? And the fact that I’ve shown you the 10-year mortgage contract to the house I just bought in Manila as well the full custody of three minor children means that am really not exchanging my life in the country for anywhere else - right here, right now.

Shortly after this post came out, a friend called to agree with me on what I pointed out here. She told me of this family of eight who owned a building in Makati and got denied , and just because they wanted to go see Disneyland! That’s more than $1000 in visa fees down the drain.

It is a pity really. There’s no place for honesty in these US visa interviews; on the contrary, honesty can get you nowhere. The fact that I have an American boyfriend lends me highly suspect as a potential immigrant, but other more compelling factors would have excluded that possibility as well.

The US Embassy Manila’s NIV Unit has no directly measurable standards and benchmarks for granting US tourist visas. It is based merely on the gut feel and false psychology of their dumb*ss visa officers whose sense of judgment are, more often, erroneous and skewed. They don’t even take a moment to ask for vital documents to prove your case and study them, the kind of scrutiny that your $131 deserves. And that is why I say it is almost like a scam.

Paging US Embassy Manila Non-IMmigrant Visa chief Karen L. Christensen, hope you read this and get your act together. The officer who insulted me by saying I should get a fiancee visa deserves the supreme karma of being assigned to the US Embassy in Afghanistan.

The United States of America, for me, is a place for visiting family and loved ones. If I had really wanted to stay there, I would have done so ten years ago, when I set first set foot on the US mainland and had all but one kid. If I had really wanted to stay there, I would have acceded to my mother and sister’s requests to petition me for the Green Card. In all instances, I’ve said NO because silly old me wishes to make my home in Manila where I feel comfortable with the smog, the dirt and the ‘flying’ jeepneys.

I am sure this sentiment is shared not only by me but countless other Filipinos who have OPTED to stay in the Philippines. Because living in the Philippines is a matter of choice, not desperation. Some of us have been the world over, in places more beautiful than some parts of America, and came back like a prodigal child because in our hearts we feel there’s simply no place like home.

Home for us is the Philippines and Asia, a world blessed with eternal sunshine, resplendent beaches. al fresco cafes and cities that never sleep. This is my comfort zone, a queer place where some houses are separated by clotheslines, not white picket fences; where malls have ‘midnight sales;’ drivers pride themselves of road shortcuts; and pot-bellied men drink San Miguel Beer or Ginebra in roadside stores.

True, millions of Pinoys have ventured to foreign shores to have a sense of normalcy and to search for a better life. What is ‘normalcy’ and what is ‘better?’ A place, perhaps, where the air is fresh, the trains run on time and there are no beggars knocking on your car window.

Sometimes I am tempted to scratch my head and pronounce myself silly for putting up with the polluted air, the crowded trains and the beggars knocking on my car window. I actually say a prayer every time I go out into Manila’s streets because I believe too much of what is highlighted in the newspapers. But I guess this is also a risk in whatever part of the world you’re in.

Wala namang mangyayari sa atin dito.” Nothing will happen to us here is the oft repeated reason of my kababayans in opting out.

To these friends of mine, I wonder how they are now. Has being in the First World made them happier, better, fuller? I cannot judge their choices in the same way that I don’t want them to judge me for being foolish enough to stay.We all have our own definition of what comfort is. To you, it may be a eight-bedroom mansion that you can show off, to me it is our three-bedroom house that is easy to clean and full of the laughter of my children.

I really don’t know where heart and home leads me someday but am staying because I feel comfortable in this country’s own skin, because I have affection for this sun-kissed, sometimes typhoon-battered islands. Just think: if all of us talented people flew out of here, what will happen to this Philippines? We are after all NOT one of those who choose to stay here because ” there is so much money to be made from the public coffers, let’s raid the treasury dry!” Some of us, particularly the doctors in the barrios and public school teachers, are staying out of hope for this country, love for the Motherland and the desire to serve.

Going back to my beginning statement, it is amazing how a rejection by those “shitlomats” at the US Embassy in Manila can make you reaffirm your roots. Wake up gentlemen, the world is fast changing! If your high and mighty Embassy should reject us poor Filipinos who merely want to visit your “overrated” country (after robbing us of $131, of course) , it wouldn’t be any loss.

The map has shifted. These days if we want to gamble, we wouldn’t even have to fly all the way to Las Vegas, bigger and better Macau is just nearby. Golden opportunities are opening up, not in America, but in the Middle East and Asia. So what are they being so arrogant about??

Related post:

Wanted: A New Breed of Filipinos

As this blog’s contribution to the “so-called” Filipino-American Friendship Day, let me share my own experience on how Filipinos are treated like second-class citizens in their own country in that premium piece of land called the US Embassy Manila on Roxas Boulevard.

Ironic but true. Are Filipinos masochists? Or is it just those imperious American Embassy “diplomats” who lack respect for Filipinos (and their hard-earned $131), denying them of their right to a US visa within one minute of seeing them?

The US Embassy in Manila has of course become less “inhuman” already. I remember the time when I got my first US visa in the 90s. People camped outside the embassy premises as early as 10 pm for their interview the next day. Twelve or more hours of waiting for an interview that would only last two minutes or so.

Still, what is highly doubtful about the visa process is how the counters are manned by babes-in-the-woods visa officers who are armed only with their own biases and bigotry about the Philippines and Filipinos. Extreme biases and bigotry at that.

The official US Embassy Manila document says: ” Consular officers make their decisions based on their …. their familiarity and understanding of the Philippines, and the accumulated information available to them based on previous Filipino visa applicants.” This is of course baloney. Chances are these visa officers (especially the younger ones) have not been outside Serendra or the US Embassy Clubhouse to lay claim to an iota of understanding of the Philippines. Vacationing in Punta Fuego doesn’t count either. They have not lived with Filipinos or assimilated themselves to Filipino culture, not unlike the fallen US Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell who should be called a heroine in her own right. The “accumulated information” part if questionable as well. If Juan flew the coop upon arriving in California, does it mean you have to judge every Pedro, Miguel and Alejandro of the same motives?

We are not oblivious to the fact that the Philippines has one of the highest rates for illegal aliens in the United States. It is a shame really. For every TNT Pedro who sent a balikbayan box of Spam to his folks back home, poor Pilar has to take the brunt for it when it’s time to apply at the embassy. And yet, it probably escapes US Embassy Manila people that the reason why illegal aliens increased was because their dimwitted visa officers issued visas to the wrong people, based on their false assessments and shortsighted knowledge of their country of assignment.

(to be continued)