Last night we were invited to a birthday party. A Surprise Suarez for our upstairs neighbour. Our neighbours are very nice people from the Philippines, and we thought it would be a nice thing to go do. The kids could have other kids to play with, Irish could get some Tagalog-time in with other Filipinos. Great time all around.

Now one thing I keep forgetting is that the Philippine culture is very social. Now if you are Filipino, this is great. However, I find myself in these parties that tend to isolate me. The only people that talk to me at these events are the host, who feels compelled to talk to everyone, and my wife. The other guests, group together away from me, and won’t even look at me. Now I am used to this and actually have been living life in this way for most of my life. But I want my wife to be able to go and socialize without worrying about me. I was perfectly happy with the Sunday funnies section of the newspaper, and the puzzles section of said newspaper.

I talked to an Irish man who worked at the restaurant for about an hour. He was a nice guy who had a lot of things to say about the government, and attempts by the government to quell the masses, but mostly it was political. So most of it I spend in wonder, as I have never been able to keep up with, let alone understand politics. I tried to keep up with him as best I could but all I remember from his conversation was that apparently fluoride is a neurotoxin (It is actually a developmental neurotoxin, which means it only affect children whose brain is still growing). And that the government has been forcing this on us, in the water, to pacify us for 50 years.

At that time JD was trying to integrate himself into the group of children, like Jane Goodall did with the Apes, trying desperately to be one of them, knowing that they were just different. It was heartbreaking. His sister has no problem integrating into any group of children with ease, JD tends to analyze them and try to understand them, first. Ann 8 year olds understanding of other children is always filled with questions, which he immediately returns to his senior research partner (Me) to ask questions about. “Why is Jacob climbing the fence?”,“Katie just stepped on an ant” “Samantha’s dancing funny” he would observe, as if trying to comprehend this culture of children. Then the Tablets happened (dun dun duuuuuunnnnnn)

In my opinion, parents that bring iPads (or any tablet computer) to social gatherings for their children, need to be smacked with a vengeance. We make a point never to do that, because (and our children know this) when you’re with other children, it is social time, and it’s rude to be stuck in front of a screen. Well some parents at the party decided to whip out their 2 iPads that they had brought, and of course, 12 kids tried frantically to crowd around to play Minecraft. So my son came and sat with me, bored and not really sure what to do. I gave him my phone to watch game walkthroughs (He has discovered an “edge” walkthrough that has helped his game a lot).

There were 3 cakes and a Mango float there. They had a small chocolate cake, a small vanilla cake with fruit on top and an ice-cream cake. Of course the moment they opened the box, the Ice-cream cake started to melt, and so we rushed to get the kids some of it before it was a puddle on the tray. They ate most of their pieces before they was drinkable. I didn’t have cake, but my wife and I had some mango float, which is like a frozen, ice-cream, mango, and graham crumb casserole. At the end of the night, we were given a section of the vanilla cake to bring home.

I had texted my brother to let him know that we had cake for him. But when we got home he wasn’t there yet. He arrived shortly after, looked at the cake, made a comment about the fruit, closed the box and got himself a bowl of ice-cream. I’m guessing that he doesn’t like cake with fruit on it. (It is not fruitcake, which is different). It was a mostly enjoyable party, but by the end of the night I was ready to take the kids home to bed.