A little Sundate with the fam

Hello hello! I'm partially alive again today! And I feel a bit energised because I got to see something other than white walls again 😅

So yeah, today I went on a little family date just to spend some quality time with them. It's been a while since we all went out together because we're all usually dead kids by night. And since my great commute chronicles have started, I could barely hold up a decent conversation with my sisters now.

Yesterday, we all agreed that we all went on hibernation. Everyone just slept the day away then today (Sunday) we all just impulsively agreed to go see Manila zoo since it was renovated recently. It's been made open to the public and we were all curious about the changes it underwent.

I was a bit disappointed because it seemed like the entire zoo kind of shrunk. Or maybe the rest of the exhibits were still being made? I'm not sure because there was no map to use as a basis. What I was happy to see though was that the reptile house was made better for the reptiles under their care. The temperature was adjusted to their needs but again, there were less reptiles since I last got to visit and that was probably 5 years ago

That was basically everything I could capture in the reptile house because the giant snakes were all hiding in the tree trunks and it was too dark for me to capture a picture.

I laughed hard at this one building though because it basically groups kids with primates and I'm still trying to figure out if this says that kids are comparable to monkeys or the other way around 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Next part of the visit was the butterfly exhibit and that was basically everything in the zoo right now. Sure, there were a few other animals that they exhibited but most of the enclosures we're still empty

I didn't get to take pictures of the living ones but these displays were both sad and creepy to me for some reason. I understand that butterflies can only live for a few days to maybe a month but I don't know. It's just sad to see them on display like this. And I wanted to ask them if these butterflies were at least obtained ethically because even if you raise them in an enclosure, you still need to be ethical with using their bodies for display purposes. Either way... I was so close to buying a preserved butterfly 😅😅😅

You see, outside the butterfly garden, there was this really cute souvenir shop that sells butterfly themed items and preserved butterflies apparently cost quite a bit 😅 I was so close to borrowing money from my sister just so I could have one but then I realized, we have a cat that keeps knocking stuff off the shelves so I had to put that one back because I don't want my cat to knock this one over 🤣

That was how my morning went. Then by lunch, we all just agreed to eat light because we planned to go to China town to eat dinner. I told them that they should try this shawarma place I used to go to when I was still an undergrad but it closed down during the pandemic months :"( good thing it got replaced with this lugaw (rice porridge shop) and the food was so good!

Needless to say, coffee is still an essential 🤣 and we crossed the street just for this. I'm kind of jealous that manila still allows plastic usage because in my city and the city where I work in, they only allow plastic straws now.

We were supposed to go home after lunch, actually but I don't know what popped into their heads that they insisted we go to the national museum of fine arts. I was pretty sure they were all tired from the people at the zoo but apparently, I was wrong

So just a brief background: there's 3 museum that can be located in luneta park. The natural history museum, which is the newest. The anthropology museum. I forgot when that was established. Then the fine arts museum, which was the first and the biggest. Just 4 hours will never be enough to tour the whole place because it has 3 floors. And if you really appreciate the art like I do, maybe an entire afternoon still wouldn't be enough to see each piece

I forgot at what point I got lazy to take pictures tbh. I think when we reached the 3rd floor? But a majority of the pieces were oil on canvas, oil on wood or oil on panel except for the last exhibit that somehow depicted the travel of the Spaniards to the Philippines. There were a lot of journal entries there and a lot of weapons that were actually in use at that time but I kind of gave up on the pics because my energy ran out and I needed food 😅

Last stop for that day was China town!!! I really missed this food place under the bridge. It was a favourite of mine when I was still an undergrad and I was sooooo happy that the place was still there and that everything still tasted the same! I wanted to have crablets and frog legs but my sisters would definitely not let me order those so I maybe when I go here alone, I'll order those for myself 😅

Thank you for taking the time to look through my photo dump UwU

Tomorrow I shall be stuck in the lab, analysing coal for the next 2 days 🤣 wish me luck!