The plan was to spend five weeks with my family in the Philippines, meet my newest nephew Natxo (a Basque name, pronounced Nacho, short for Ignaxio), and to get scuba certified with my youngest sister, Chelong. I must tell you that the Spanish and Filipinos are big on nicknames. Chelong is short for Consuelo.

My sister lives in a Manila suburb, Pasig. The kids go to school in the general area. She also has a weekend retreat in Tagaytay (about two hours away). They spend most of their time in Tagaytay because Manila is so polluted. If only they had schools in Tagaytay-they wouldn't spend any time in the city.

We had a busy itinerary, not unlike our trip to the Philippines in Christmas of 1996. We traveled with five kids, my sister's four and my brother's one boy (ages nine months to eleven). We took a large overnight ferry to Cebu, used three cabins and had a blast with the kids on the open deck and the hot tub.

We visited seven Islands, most of them diving resorts. We got certified in Mactan Island. We were quite lucky because my sister and I had the instructor's full attention being the only students. In fact at one point we had three other Master Divers assisting us on our second open water dives. (Continued on right column.)

In the usual tradition, we celebrated the holidays with food. A very interesting way to fulfill our Weight Watchers program. We actually didn't do badly considering we gave three parties ourselves and attended six others.

We saw many movies, taking in matinees most Fridays after work.

Lucia performed Kareoke in front of an audience of 400 at the Olivia Cruise - she's always wanted to "Wake Up Little Suzie!"

Chelong said she couldn't look at me while we were under because the combination of our magnified eyes and stretched lips behind the mask and the clumsiness of our moves made her want to bust out laughing. Indeed we were most attractive.

All in all we had a great time. I miss my family very much. I wish it didn't take a 16-hour flight to get there!

We stayed at Casa Cosmos with eight other friends. Casa Cosmos had five master suites, all of them facing the ocean with four of them three steps to a pool.

It was staffed with a great cook and three others that had specific roles like doing the rooms, laundry and other maintenance around the villa. A great staff!

We were very well taken cared of. The food was wonderful: tamales, juicy sweet open fire grilled prawns, fresh ceviche, guacamole and salsa with frozen Margaritas and beers always ready in the refrigerator.

Mangos, papayas and melons with Mexican pastries for breakfast and fresh squeezed orange juice every day.

It was a most relaxing life of luxury- needless to say. We will definitely plan another trip there in the near future.

Funny ladies Marga Gomez, Suzanne Westenhoffer (sp?), Kate Clinton, the very demented Topps Twins from Australia, and Lisa Koch gave us great laughs.

Olivia Cruise entertainment was top class with Lucie Blue Tremblay and Ferron. (Not to forget Lucia Capron-of course)