Alien Adventures

I was an illegal alien for eleven days.
Me, little miss follow-all-international-laws. I misunderstood how long my visa was valid for. It expired. Who’d have thunk.
I was told to report to the police by the immigration powers that be. Not a pleasant thing to hear when you have no clue what the laws of the land are for overstaying foreigners. After being assured by a friend that they would probably just slap me with a penalty fine, or worse case scenario, deport me, I went and trudged up to my local police precinct .
I ended up paying a fine. I then reported back to immigration for a visa I technically had no use for, as I was leaving anyway.
Trust me to get into a scrap like this.
Had the immigration dudes given me a hard time, I had planned on telling them that I had Chinese ancestry by playing up my Sino sounding middle name: Cha-lu-yan.
In the end, the officer only asked why Filipinos had such long names. The Chinese don’t have middle names. I told him our middle names were our Mother’s maiden names. I was about to tell him mine, but thought better of prolonging my stay at the Overstaying room.

All Saints Day

Breakfast in Shanghai. Post Holloween. Jobless again. But in one of the most modern and dynamic cities in Asia.
Mama is in the mountain province paying respects at the grave of my grandmother. The rest of the Philippines is busy doing the same thing. Visiting the dead.
Career paths die easily in this industry. This is crap writing. I have no idea what to do next. Beg for a position at friggin Star cinema. Sell my soul to the industry devils of mass consumerism.
Manila or Shanghai? Manila or Shanghai?
I wish I had a roadmap.