March 24

Took Katarina shopping today. Is this a part of my job description? Lemme check. Here, no it's not.

Haha. Who am I kidding with the grumbling? I'm not, or my name isn't Erika.

Moi, Cest, and I picked Katarina up at the Renaissance Hotel at 10am, then started our long trek to the malls. It was a long walk, but hey, she had sufficient warning from us the day before. She just shrugged us off, saying that Swedes are used to walking in the forest. Surprisingly, that did make sense.

We started with Greenbelt, had her going shoe-crazy at Landmark while Moi and I left her for a bit to grab some breakfast, then arrived at SM en route Glorietta. She had a great time loitering around Kultura Filipino (is that the right name?), buying God-awful gaudy shirts for her two sons--but of course I cannot very well tell her that. Not really planning on buying anything, I bored my eyes out looking at about 200 different jeepney figurines, then decided to buy dried mangoes to give to her on her last day here.

We were still bloaty from the breakfast (and Katarina had breakfast at the hotel too) so we chose to have light lunch at this dainty coffee place called Tsoko Nut, which turned out to be a nice discovery. The food is Filipino and the ambiance is not, which works for me. Katarina really, really loved her tsokolate ah. I had this black-and-white devil's cake (stop judging!) which, hands down, is one of the best I've ever had.

We picked out some beach stuff for our team outing tomorrow, then finally called it a wrap at around 3pm. Again, Moi droped me off at my house. I gotta tell you, it feels a bit weird having your boss drive you around all the time, but it still beats commuting, so.

Anyway, I bought a DVD copy of The Notebook and have great plans of lying around and crying my eyes out for the rest of the afternoon. Then tomorrow it's beach time!