Confessions

I have been holding off on the time when our family would purchase a minivan for as long as possible. Buying a minivan is really the last step in becoming a full-fledged family man adult. So we squeezed three kids in the back seat of our tiny Prism for about 8 months. But when we moved to Manila, we decided to upgrade to a larger vehicle, since the right-of-way in Manila always goes to the larger vehicle. Our purchase: a four-year old Chevrolet Venture we acquired from an American family that was leaving Manila just as we were arriving. It is a good car, though it has some Asian-specific qualities. For instance, in the front, there are not two captain chairs, but rather a bench seat. The middle also has a bench seat, and it even features four seat belts, so we have a potential capacity for 10 passengers. Long live the minivan.