Manuod Tayo Let's Watch

Welcome to the Sherwin M Podcast, a podcast about the adventures of being Filipino-American. I am your host, Sherwin. So today I took a day off. Today is first day of preschool for my Bunso. It’s like his like first day like of his educational career.

So I took a day off, not for his sake, but I guess for my sake. So I did this as well with my panganay when he had his first day of school. Because again, not for their sake, but for my sake. As a parent, I’m very nervous whenever they are like away. Whenever they’re away or if I’m away, I always think about them.

So it’s hard. It’s hard to be away. And so I took today off just so I could take him to school and I could go pick him up. You would think I’d be used to this by now because he’s my second kid to go to school. I would learn my lessons and stuff with the first.

But thing is, they are like night and day in terms of personality. I wanted to take this day off. And just be calm about the situation, I guess, to help myself. So a little story about my Bunso. So my Bunso starts preschool today.

And the way he is, he’s more confrontational compared to my panganay. And so he has a habit of, I guess, putting my or his oldest brother in these situations. That frustrate him and like they always, they always fight. They always argue. And at the end, my oldest would be the one to pretty much be picon.

How do you explain picon? If you don’t know picon, the one that loses patience, I guess, like, I don’t know. But yeah, my oldest is the picon and then my youngest is the instigator. And so when when my youngest, my Bunso was born. We noticed he had two Puyo.

So Puyo, Puyo is Tagalog for cowlick. And so he has two of them. And there is this Filipino saying, right, that having two Puyos or two cowlicks, they’re very mischievous, like loves to get into trouble, loves to start trouble and is just. Yeah, they’re just always at stuff. And it seems to be accurate, I guess, because that’s how his personality is.

And that’s why I wanted to take today off. Just I don’t know, to to make myself available if something were to happen. Well, yeah, I mean, he’s a good kid. He just likes to be curious, I guess. I don’t know.

And so. Yeah, that’s the. The thing with the Puyo, Puyo and cowlicks. So I dropped them off at his school today, this morning, and I didn’t want to leave. I was looking around to see the other children.

There was one boy crying, which was usual. I think my oldest that happened, my panganai cried when I left them. But my youngest today, like he he wouldn’t he’s not going to cry. He’s actually comfortable. Being.

Away from us. I didn’t expect him to cry when I left him, but I did explain to him, like, look, you’re going to stay here for a few hours till, you know, a certain time and then one of us is going to pick you up. So just have fun. Yeah. Go meet some new friends and remember their names, you know.

So, yeah, he he didn’t he didn’t cry. He just I just left them and got back to the car walking back. My heart would just pound like, man, I hope he doesn’t. Like, cause any trouble and I hope he doesn’t, like, fight the other kids or, you know, although he doesn’t instigate things, he doesn’t instigate fights or anything. But if if you start something, he’s going to finish it.

That’s the type of kid he is. So, like, another example would be we would be at a like a party or gathering or something. And so. There’s like a jumper and there’s a bunch of kids playing, and I guess one time there was a kid like he was the bully or something, because, you know, there’s always that one kid, man, parents, you know, do your thing because some of these kids, I don’t know. Anyway, so I guess the way my oldest explained it to us was the kid was picking on my oldest, like he would push him and stuff.

And so. The little brother sees this and he steps in and makes the other kid cry. Now, this kid is about the same size as my oldest and they’re four years apart. But my youngest stepped in and pretty much punks the other kid and like tells him to stop messing, like in his own way, as you know, I think he was three at that time as a three year old would do like, hey, stop messing around like he stepped in. But but the way he is, it’s not.

He’s not. Not I mean, I guess he’s protecting his older brother, but at the same time, knowing his personality, it’s more like don’t mess with my brother because the only person that messes with my brother is me. That’s his personality. So so he doesn’t instigate. But if if you do mess with him, he he tends to try to finish it fast.

So that that’s what worries me again. He’s not he’s not aggressive unless. Some other kid becomes aggressive towards him. But other than that, he’s he’s a great kid. He’s still learning and we all have to understand that.

And I have to understand that. But I I wanted to take a day off today, you know, just just to be ready. And I have friends who also have at least two kids. Right. And their stories are fairly similar.

Like their youngest kid is is the aggressor, like more aggressive than their oldest kid. It’s pretty consistent with my friends who have two or more kids. It’s always the youngest. That is, you know, more tougher, I guess, like more just wants to get into things. Yeah, I just wanted to share that.

Also, another thing I wanted to share turned the room that I record in, which is the same room I’m in now. It was a bedroom that I turned it into a studio wish like dad cave, I guess. So there was a bed here and a dresser. And I’m like, you know what? No one’s in here.

Let’s just get rid of that. No one’s going to use it as a bedroom. And it’s just a mess. So and plus, both kids are not going to be going to school. They need a place to do homework.

So I turned an old bedroom into like a dad cave. You know, you know how people have man cave. I turned it into a dad cave. I’m going to call it a dad cave because I’m a dad. And so now there’s a place where I could do work at home where, well, there was, but it wasn’t really that comfortable.

And there’s also a place for my two kids to do their homework right next to me. So but where my microphone is right now, it’s closer to the window and the window is facing like a busy road. So hopefully the background noise isn’t isn’t as worse or more worse than before. So if it is, apologies, but hey, we got to work with what we got, right? Pretty excited.

I’m still cleaning things up, organizing things, and hopefully I could produce more content. And like I said, I took a day off. So I figured I’d do an episode today on the podcast. And I may turn or rebrand my YouTube channel. And I actually checked.

I think it’s been more than two years since I recorded a last video. But I may turn that into like a dad cave theme or something. But I’m still going to be technology and hardware and just stuff that I use as a dad, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know.

We’ll see. Don’t even know. So that’s pretty much it about updates. Anyway, this is episode 12. Call it Manood Dayo, which translates to let’s watch.

And so this episode idea came about because summer. Is ending, I guess I’m recording this of end of August. So are we at the fall yet? The summer has like movies, right? Summer blockbuster movies or whatever.

I don’t know what they call it now. But surprisingly, over the summer, I was able to watch three movies. So having kids and just having a horrible commute, pretty much we don’t get to watch movies unless I either take a day off. Or it’s a holiday and we like have an extra effort on top of that to go watch movies at the theater in the theaters. And so I was thinking about it and I thought I’d do an episode about comparing my experiences with watching movies in the Philippines and watching movies here.

So we ended up watching Despicable Me 3. A great movie, love the series and my kids loved it. And we went to AMC and AMC has this dine in, I don’t know if you guys have heard, but yeah, it’s an AMC dine in and what it is, is it’s a day, I guess reserved a small theater and this particular showing is a 3D, so it’s extra money that we have to pay on top of that. The seats are reclinable. They’re leather and reclinable.

Okay, so that’s somewhat new, not really. But on top of that, they have servers, not computer servers, but people servers that would take your order and they’re going to serve your food while the movie’s playing. So of course, that’s an additional expense. So pretty much for four of us, so two adults, two kids. The tickets, and it’s also 3D, the tickets alone were about 65 bucks.

We ended up going to the dine in part because Abby closed the pharmacy. So if some of you don’t know, we own a pharmacy, we own our own business. Well, she owns the business and runs it. I’m just the janitor. But after we closed up shop or she closed up shop, it was already past six, almost seven.

The kids haven’t eaten dinner, I haven’t eaten dinner, we haven’t eaten dinner. So rather than do a separate dinner and watch a movie, and then it’s like all late and stuff, I’m telling you, we’re getting old, I’m getting old, like late to me is like 10:00 PM. So, and I didn’t want the kids to be out too late. So even though it was a Friday night, anyway, so we decided to just combine everything, combine the movie. Combine food.

So yeah, $65 for four tickets to go into this movie, because, you know, after 12:00 PM, you have to pay the, you know, more expensive tickets, and then I guess 3D is an additional cost, and then being that it’s a dine in is an additional cost. So, so we go in and long story short, the food. Ended up being like 68 bucks on top of the tickets. And we, we did this Filipino style, you know, Salo Salo, if you guys haven’t checked out that episode, go check it out. But anyway, there’s four of us, but we only ordered, I think two or three entrees and we just shared it.

And so, yeah, 68 bucks, I think it was something like that. And then plus tip ended up being close to 80 bucks, you know, so $150. Later, we’re full and we got to watch Despicable Me 3 in 3D and we got to spend time with the kids. So, you know, so it’s a bit pricey, but I guess you can’t put a price on spending time with family, right? So that that’s been the more recent experience watching a movie.

The second movie I got to watch with the kids this time is this mean two kids I actually had to. I planned to take a day off with Spider-Man homecoming. So we ended up watching that a few weeks later and kids loved it. And then the third movie we got to watch was War for the Planet of the Apes. Now, you may be thinking, wow, you took your elementary kids to watch that.

And I’m like, yeah, I mean, I had them watch. We usually have movie nights, myself and the kids. And I had them watch. We watched the first two movies of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And they enjoyed it.

And I’m I’m watching it with them just in case they have any questions and stuff. So and and my oldest loved it. He loved it. And I’m watching, you know, his reactions is making sure it’s not too violent for him. And, you know, so anyway.

And so he was asking, is there any, you know, continuation to that? I said, yeah, yeah, the the war one, you know, so we were going to watch some Filipino movie, I think with Sarah Geronimo, I think. I don’t remember. But so my wife and my sister in law ended up watching that and we ended up watching War for the Planet of the Apes. And and that one was there was some point where I.

Wanted to just take them out because it got too crazy. But we hang in there. We hung in there. So, you know, you know, at one point they’re going to figure that out anyway. So so we watched that three, three movies in the summer.

So that’s actually a lot higher than my average. Usually I only watch get to watch like three movies in a year at the movie theater. Yeah, but we love movies. So it was it was fun. So that’s like our recent experiences watching movies here in America.

You know, there’s a movie theater that has rooms, right? And then you pay for a ticket and you go to the area where your movie is going to be watched. OK, so in the Philippines, this is a bit different. Well, first off, there’s many ways that you can watch movies in the Philippines. One way is they have these things called movie houses and houses is spelled with H-A-U-S house.

And so that’s what it is. It’s like a house that showed movies in many rural areas, at least growing up. And when I was younger and I went on vacations there, it’s very common for homes to have like a side business at night and offer neighbor neighbors to watch movies at their house. And so you would pay a small fee. And of course, your snacks.

And remember, growing up in school, you had this cart with a TV and VCR that you rolled in. Similar thing right here at someone’s house. They roll in this TV with VCR. And this is the room of people at someone’s house. And they played a movie in front of their house as a chalkboard.

And they would have the title of a movie and at what time and what day it’s usually at night, they’ll they’ll show it. And you just show up, pay the entrance fee. It’s very affordable. And there are snacks and you just you just watch. Very interesting.

And I think it was fun. I thought it was pretty intimate because you get to hang out with friends and just embracing the culture and the people around you. So it was pretty cool for the most part. Some of the movies that they shown, I guess, were not like official releases for the most part. It’s like bootleg and stuff.

But yeah, that’s just, you know, that’s another story. But that’s one way you were able to watch movies. Also, keep in mind, not many people are able to afford a TV or a VCR back then. And, you know, so so this is how they were able to watch a movie. Oh, and plus, in some rural areas, there weren’t any movie theaters.

So now now for the movie theater. So as I recall, going to watch movies and it’s probably different now, but let me try and share what I remember from watching a movie theater or movie movie at the movie theaters. So movie theaters are fairly similar where they are in an area, right? Some of them are in malls and some of them are just, you know, by themselves. But here’s the big difference.

Each like movie room or movie theater that showed a movie, they had a ticket booth for each one. And so what you do is you find a movie you want to watch and you pay for the movie at that place that you decide to watch the movie. And so after you purchase your ticket, you go in and you’re able to watch that movie. You can do this at any time. You could do this at any time, whether the movie just started, whether the movie isn’t is in the middle or maybe the movie is about to end.

You could go in, you could pay for a movie and go in at any time. So this this movie theater shows the movie in a loop like like like here. It just shows that movie in that place. All day long. Yeah.

So once you go in at any point in time of the movie, you go in. The reason why you could go in at any time is because when you purchase that ticket, you’re pretty much allowed to stay all day long there. So if you go into the movie, it’s halfway. It’s OK. You sit down, you watch.

I mean, if you don’t mind seeing the ending and then you stay for the next showing, catch the beginning. I have had instances when that happened and it’s really a bad experience because you’ve seen the ending already and then. But but that’s just how it works now in between showing of the movies, you know, sometimes they’ll have previews and stuff, right? Well, they also play the national anthem every every time the movie starts right before the Lupang Hinirang, the national anthem of the Philippines, they play it and so people would get up if you had a hat on you, you’d put your tick off your hat. Yeah, some people saying it, some people just stood there.

But it was very interesting, a really cool experience because we never do that here. Also, when you buy a ticket to a movie here in America, you are paying for that time of the movie. Once it’s over, you cannot hang around. So in the Philippines, you could stay there all day long. Now, there’s.

There’s a couple of problems to that one is they they don’t like, you know, how we have capacities, room capacities. There is no such thing as capacity. I mean, there is, but no one follows them. So there was one time where we watched a movie and it was packed. So people would sit on the steps, people would stand in the back and hope that, you know, people would leave, you know, towards the end of the movie or the part that they started off with, because, you know, like I said, you could go in at any time in the movie.

So you would see people in the middle of the movie get up and leave, because I guess that’s the point where they came in and started watching it. Yeah. Throughout the movie, people would get up and leave and then people would switch seats, you know. So, yeah, that’s just how it is. Again, an interesting experience now on top of that.

They allow outside food, so it’s a bit weird, but yeah, we there was a subway next to the theater. We bought ourselves sandwiches and brought it in. There’s people who bring bags and like make a picnic out of it and they would bring it in like there isn’t really like they don’t discourage you from doing it. So but they do they do have snack bars and stuff as well if you want to purchase, you know, popcorn and things. So that’s, I guess, good, but.

Sometimes you would smell other people’s food and oh man, I don’t know, it kind of ruins the movie sometimes, depending on what they bring, you know, it would just smell. But that’s just the normal thing. So, so, yeah, now, when you purchase these tickets for a particular movie, like I said, the ticket booth, they’re all separated. So if this movie theater had eight theaters, they’re showing different movies in each one. There’s eight ticket booths when you purchase your ticket.

There’s always guards or people standing in the entrance. You cannot hand them their ticket, hand them your ticket, and you go in and you watch. Now, I remember when I was young and or how about let me just rephrase this story. I know people before. People would go into a movie in the movies and they would movie hop basically movie hopping is you would hop and watch different movies.

Once the one you paid for was finished, you would hop on to another theater and watch a different movie and you would try to time it right because there’s always a movie starting every time one ends because in the theaters in America, they they are all one big building. And so. There’s one ticket booth area, you pay your ticket, you go inside and now you just find the theater where your movie is playing. But guess what? Because you’re inside the building, you also have access to other theaters in the movie theater.

And so it is possible that one would finish a movie and then go to a different movie that they’d have not paid for. Yeah, so it’s impossible to do that in the Philippines because all of the. The theaters are separated, so you can’t you can’t sneak in can’t movie hop and so I just want to give a shout out to my uncle who taught me how to movie hop. I mean, allegedly, I remember my first time watching movie in America, we were in Chicago and my Tito Arnold, who it goes. By top on so there’s going to be a nicknames episode that I want to do in the future.

So that’s a spoiler alert. But yeah, so my uncle took me, I was and I don’t remember how old I was, eight, eight years old, nine years old. I can’t remember and we went out. You’re not going to believe what he took me to go watch. He took me to watch Predator, you know, the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

I was like in second or third grade, and he took me to watch Predator. OK, great movie. It may be a little too violent for my age, but whatever, man. So we were we were walking home late at night and in Chicago, you don’t really drive, not like in California. We took the train and we just walked.

And I remember we were walking home and there was a bunch of trees in the neighborhood and he would scare me and it was windy. Chicago was windy and I believe it was like fall or winter. And so he would always play tricks as we walked home. Like, oh, yeah, what was that? Did you see that in a tree?

Just like the movie Predator. But yeah, so shout out to him. That’s my memory of watching. The first movie in the theater, I think. So shout out to him.

Thanks for letting me watch Predator. Awesome movie. And many years later, we watched a bunch of movies together and gave me the idea of movie hopping. And I remember I think at one point we watched like three, three or four movies and we were there the whole day. Like as soon as the theater opened, we watched the movie and we stayed till like dinnertime.

And one would think like, wow, that that must have been fun. In all honesty, after the second movie, it kind of I’m tired, like I don’t want to watch any more movies, but then we’re like, well, you know, we’re in here anyway, so we’ll just watch. And back then there were a lot of great movies. So although maybe I’m just old and don’t really care too much about a lot of movies now, but yeah, so that that was like my earliest. Memories of being in a movie theater.

I don’t think I ever watched a movie when I when I was in Philippines before I went to America. But when I went there for vacations a bunch of times growing up, those were the memories I had going to movie theaters. So that’s about it. So thank you for listening. This is episode 12.

What else is there? You could check the show notes at podcast. Sherwin M dot com slash 12. You could check out my blog Sherwin M dot com or blog at Sherwin M. No, no, no.

Wow, it’s been a while since I did this. Apologies blog that Sherwin M dot com. You could go to Sherwin M dot com as well and you could navigate to the blog section and I’m at Twitter at W1 and 78 also on Instagram. You could follow me there and I do have some YouTube videos. I don’t know the.

Link exactly. But just check the show notes for the link. Hopefully I’ll be producing more content there in the near future with the new setup I’ve created. And what else is there? If you have the time because I sure don’t, you know, subscribe and rate me on iTunes or just just get at me like say what’s up on the social media shout outs to those who visited the Facebook page.

Sherwin M podcast. I believe on Facebook. So shout out to them. I don’t know who they are just as people are visiting. So don’t be shy by just say say hello.

Say hello. So I don’t bite hard Austin Powers. Anyway, so so yeah, I love conversating with people. So, you know, drop me a dime or whatever. Oh, drop me a dime.

Hello, 90s. But. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this episode and I will see you next time. Thanks.