We just got back from a week of holiday from California.

It was my little insan’s (Mabec) wedding. And yana was one of the flower girls. It’s almost eerie to think that our little mabec ahem correction she is now known as Maria, oh so precious; has grown so fast and is now a beautiful spouse.

I barely know my cousins, they’ve left the Philippines when they were very young; but when we met again it was as if we’ve known each other for so long there wasn’t any awkwardness. Although, I had to get used to them being older and more american hehehe.

We also met my other west coast relatives, funny coz they too were shocked when they saw me, all they could remember was the small popoy they left behind. They couldn’t believe themselves that I’ve grown much much older, have a beautiful wife and a wonderful daughter. There were some awkward moments but I guess that happens sometimes. But overall it was nice finally meeting them.

I couldn’t say the same about LA traffic. Oftentimes I moan and groan about Miami, but nothing compares to LA Traffic, well maybe Manila traffic comes a distant second. But man, it amazes me that everyone in LA, can sit it out for hours behind a wheel. I remember on the night of the reception, we were on our way home, it was 12 AM, but for some unknown reason we were stuck in a two hour jam. Imagine that, 12 AM, you’d think that everyone would be sleeping already! But no, not in LA, guess folks just love their freeways hehehehe.

Despite the traffic mess, we manage to do our thing, which was to hit the Pinoy hotspots (Jollibee, Goldilocks, Max’s, and Chowking). We also had a chance to try out Seafood market at West Covina, man that was awesome. A real pinoy supermarket, we never had one of those in Florida. That made us consider of moving to California, along with the sales pitches from our friends and family to come over.

Our house lease is about to expire 1st week of September so we are considering the move. But the traffic jam, the high cost of living, the expensive real estate and the so so quality of Life, are preventing us from considering California. I mean don’t get me wrong, you can do far more cool stuff in California than Florida hands down but based from what we saw from our friends and family, they barely get a chance to appreciate their state’s God given gifts primarily because they’re too hanged up maintaining their expensive way of life. I mean almost everyone have two jobs or at best both heads of family are working. They wake up way early in the morning to beat the traffic mess and come home late in the evening because of the same.

Like I always told myself, there is no life at all with that kind of pace. The reason I’ve tried so hard to make my own company work was because it gave me a chance to stay at home with Yana. If we moved the California, I may be forced to get a desk job again just to make both ends meet; and we may end up sending Yana to day care, negating all previous effots not to.

Plus, I don’t know about other parents, but we believe in old school parenting and that means avoding day care as much as possible. We’d rather adjust our lifestyle than jeopardize her chances of growing up properly.

Anyhow, despite the negatives, we will definitely go back to California. Maybe someday when the real-estate prices go down we’ll consider moving. As of now, we’ll just settle ourselves visiting.