Nine years of happiness

Time flies.
Hard to believe our second child is already nine years old. To me, he’s still a baby.
This year Markus didn’t want a big party, he just wanted to go to the arcade with friends. What a relief.
He wanted to go to Shang to play games and eat Pepper Lunch. But I wanted to give him something more.
Luckily, just ten days before his birthday, I received an invitation to the opening of Game Zoo at Resorts World.

I recognized the naked buff guy on the right as the wallpaper of Marky’s iPod, and emailed Joy Andrade of Resorts World to inquire about the facilities.
Game Zoo softly opened last March 2012 at the 4th level of Resorts World, but grand opening was on May 4th.
I asked Joy if I could visit the site before the event, so I met up with her on May 2.
It was amazing, with two floors of games and two virtual roller coaster rides with special effects.

I even checked the loo and approved!

Sorry I don’t have many pictures of the place, but it was without a doubt the coolest arcade in town.
I emailed some parents with instructions to be at our house before 1 PM on May 8 and booked the Bieber bus, or The Black Fleet, to shuttle 11 kids + 4 parents and yayas to Resorts World.

The kids were excited to ride the Bieber bus, which seats 20 passengers (I call it that because Justin Bieber rode The Black Fleet while he was in Manila). Inside, The Black Fleet had for us some chilled bottled water in a cooler, candies and chips. I also brought cookies and cupcakes by Roshan.
Of course many kids have gadgets these days.

The sweetest thing, The Black Fleet prepared a video collage of Markus from birth to 9 years, which I found so touching.

Upon arriving at Game Zoo, I bought 17 reloadable game cards and distributed them to kids and parents. Then the kids were off and us parents snuck out to have lunch at Tao Yuan two floors below. Chicken rice was in order

and not so soft-shell crab. Seriously, we ordered way too much food.

We came back to experience the 4-D horror roller coaster movie, which was more scary than funny…

The kids were obsessed with this ice cream grabber. They pulled out a few Cornettos and Magnums and gave them to the yayas. I can’t tell you how much money was spent on this machine—we could’ve gone to Select and just bought a ton of ice cream.

Jeroen played one game, while my role was basically the banker. I had to be on standby to reload the cards.

At 5 PM we gathered the kids to leave, otherwise they would not stop and we will be broke!
Traffic was bad on the way home. I was so tried, but we had to stop by McDonald’s at Bonifacio to eat. Imagine a party of 20 occupying McDo.
Got home past 8 PM so tired and we still had to blow some candles.

Guess who did?

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