New Year's Eve 2011

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New Year 2011 is a happy occasion because Tita Babie and her family were with us (sans Donnell), as well as Biboy. They all flew into the Philippines specially to celebrate the holidays with the Philippine-based clan. 

The New Year in Sta Cruz is chaotic, as always; fireworks and firecrackers along the national highway made it risky to travel starting at 10PM. The roads have taken the feel of war zones with the frequent bangs and reports, the smoke-filled air, and the sound of fire trucks and ambulances echoing in the night.  Electricity was cut off close to midnight as self-propelled sky rockets (kwitis) flew dangerously close to power lines.  Some faulty sky rockets even flew low trajectories, hitting a roof, a door, and exploded right in front of a moving car! On the ground, pedestrians faced the risk of getting their limbs mangled by exploding Sawa (Python-like string of thousands of rounds of firecrackers).

But did we heed the dangers? No. Even the risk of getting hit by the random New Year stray bullet did not stop me from going to the bridge to take photos of the fireworks display launched somewhere close to the Roman Catholic Church. Biboy and Kuya Larry took charge of the firecrackers and the rest enjoyed luces light-painting. 

I'm sure that the bad spirits were driven off with all that racket. 

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