Wishes

Note: I should have written about this a month ago but for significant reasons, I only write about it now.
December 11, Monday, 7 PM.
I was sitting under a huge, extremely bright streetlight somewhere inside the parking lot of the NAIA Centennial Airport. My textbook was cradled between my knees and my phone was in the pocket of my jacket. It was a windy evening and my hair was flying all over the place like the snakes on Medusa's head. I was aware I looked like a bum in one of those New York movies. As I sat on the sidewalk and read my book, I received a text message from my cousin, telling me that her delayed flight was finally accepting passengers for boarding.
I was hit by a sudden flashback of the opening scene in the movie "Love Actually," where Hugh Grant's character does a voice over while shots of people arriving in Heathrow Airport in England are shown. He says he loves observing the goings-on in the arrival area of that airport. Smiles are everywhere, people of all ages are running around and hugging is especially prevalent. Then the irony struck me. An airport and smiles. Among the throng of people to flood the arrival area of an overseas airport in two days, one face would stand out in the crowd.
I was in NAIA to fetch Manang Apple, the oldest among all my cousins. She was due to fly abroad by noon the following day to report back to work after more than a month of being home for vacation. She had been gone for more than a year and it was great to have her home, although she arrived the same week my sem break ended so we only spent a couple of days together before I flew back to Manila. The month sped past as if it were on swan's wings and now, she was going to say goodbye again. She left, among others, a father, a sister and, most significantly, three very young daughters with ages between ten to four.

Manang Apple is not just my cousin. She and her younger sister Manang Maya are almost like my older sisters. For about five years, I lived across the hall from the two of them on the second floor of my grandparents' home. Day in and day out, the two of them took turns in introducing me to "cool '80s teen icons" like New Kids on the Block, Brooke Shields, Phoebe Cates and Spandau Ballet. In other times, they would dress me up in tights, "tease" my hair with a comb until I got split ends, paint a Madonna mole on my face and if I didn't indulge their whims, scare me to my wits' end by telling me that a lady once electrocuted herself and died in our bathtub.
As a little girl, I looked up to Manang Apple for a lot of reasons. Long before "kakiyan" became the byword, she was already the ultimate fashionista and she always had the coolest and most outrageous outfits ever, not to mention her colorful hoop earrings. In fact, it has become much too easy to spot her in old family pictures.
She was also among my first music teachers. As far as I can remember, she was always singing somewhere - church, the bathroom, school, the car, music competitions, the garage. We used to sing together with Manang Maya in the children's choir although I think they detested having me around because they had to keep an eye out for me all the time. She later became part of the adult church choir and I vividly remember sneaking into the balcony during church services just so I could see her. I remember when I was 10, I joined this singing contest for the first time in my school and she taught me for several nights in a row, making me stand on her bed, hairbrush in one hand. I lost in that contest and later in the day, she told me "It's okay," in between mouthfuls of ice cream.
She was my saviour in every mealtime. I had a yaya when I was little and she would heap food on my plate too much for a four-year old to ingest. Manang Apple would ask her to get some water or something and when my yaya's back was turned, she would pull my plate towards her, stuff her mouth with as much of my food as she could then push my now less full plate back to my cover just in time.
I ruined her legs once. When I was 9, I used to ride a motorcycle. To show her how good I was, I asked her ride in the rear seat while I drove. I lost my balance and we both fell on the concrete pavement. I bruised and wounded my left knee while she tore her good pair of jeans.
I knew her more significant crushes from high school to college and the corresponding "theme songs" for each.
On her 18th birthday, my newest Barbie decked the cake I helped Manang Maya and their aunt bake.
During her 'pamanhikan,' I sat on the hallway of our house and played optical volleyball between her and her (now deceased) future in-laws.
I watched her sing her vows to her husband during her wedding.
I dashed straight from my high school to the hospital when she gave birth to her first daughter with whom I share part of my name.
For the next ten years, it broke my heart to see her struggle and cry as she juggled a full-time job in a city hospital with a full-time designation as mother and homemaker, to the point of travelling four hours each day to get to work and back home. I had always known she was made of tough stuff and I could not believe it when I saw her strength dwindle through the years.
For ten years, I found myself praying for her everyday and hoping she would get the life and the love she had not only desired but truly deserved.
It took ten years before she finally realized everything had to stop. She broke free of her cage. Her mettle had finally won out.
I know going away was not an easy decision to make for a hands-on mother like her, especially since her three beautiful girls love her unconditionally with every square inch of their hearts. She has missed graduations and plays, storytelling contests and chorale presentations, birthdays and games of hide-and-seek and patintero. By the time she comes home for another vacation, one of her girls might not be asking for Bratz anymore.
We had a late dinner on that Monday evening, the traffic along EDSA-Guadalupe being extremely horrible. We were both very sleepy but what kept us awake was a stream of texts from her oldest daughter. "Mama, we can't go on like this forever," she said with wisdom beyond her years which oftentimes makes me rethink why I still treat my eldest niece like a little girl in a pink dress. I don't recall everything Manang Apple texted back but I remember she said "No." And I remember being half asleep at around 5 AM, hearing the sound of a cellphone keypad punctuating the silence of a cold December morning.
I wish so many things for her I do not know where to start. For one thing, I wish that she would no longer miss anymore of her daughters' growing up years. I wish that everything she has longed for ever since she was a little girl would all be fulfilled. Most of all, this Christmas season, I wish her happiness, contentment and peace which come from loving and being loved by God, her family and herself.

A Week Like No Other, Part 2: Lost, The Series

Four days in Mactan left my tongue schizophrenic. I understood most of the Cebuano I heard but I was teetering when the time for "sulti" (speaking) took its turn. By the time we had checked out of Plantation Bay on Friday after my grandparents flew back home on the noontime flight, I was ordering lunch back in sutukil for my dad in fractured Cebuano. The next minute I turned to talk to my sister and realized my soft native accent was heavily dragging a tinge of Cebuano and Tagalog in an odd mixture which made me sound Indian overall.

There were five of us left in the now roomier AUV. We could have opted for a faster trip back home via boat but all our heads were screaming for an epic adventure of Neverending Story meets Lord of the Rings proportions. We left Mactan after lunch and decided to spend the rest of the day in Cebu City. We checked into the Cebu Midtown Hotel in Fuente Osmena where my sister collapsed into the bed in a cocoon of sheets and refused to do any walking. So we left her in that state and went to Ayala Center to spend the afternoon.

Later in the evening, dad decided to take a quick shower. We began wondering why we could hear dad fiddling with knobs in the bathroom. we started teasiing him that he couldn't figure out how to use the shower. Upon closer inspection, we realized the shower was busted! Inday was eating a small can of Pic-Nic at that time so she was forced to lick the can clean then hand it to my dad so he can use it as a tabo.

Lost in Translation

The best part of any travel experience is the food. Right beside our hotel was this restaurant called Abuhan Dos which, in its past life, was my mother's dorm back in med school. Outside stood banners proclaiming that it served the best pochero in the city and came with high recommendations from my mother and all her Cebu-loving officemates. The huge bowl of pochero followed the steaming rice and the balbakwa (litid in Manila restaurants) which was practically drowning in its thick, rich sauce. Just writing about it is making my tummy whine like a puppy. The moment the waiter set the pochero on the table, all of us chorused "That's not pochero!" Papang, my paternal grandfather, loved to cook pochero so I know very well what it looks like: pork or chicken with vegetables in tomato-based sauce. Two huge bones brimming with cholesterol-laden marrow and tender beef shanks sunken in clear broth were sticking out of the bowl. I know it's bad manners to stare at your food but I maybe correcting its identity may not be classified as such. My stomach was now staging a revolution and attempting to override my brain by sending impulse signals loosely translated to: "Just eat the thing...it looks good anyway."

I politely told the waiter "But that's bulalo, not pochero."

"Um...no," he politely answered. "That's pochero."

"Really? It looks a lot like bulalo," I whispered while reaching for my spoon.

Maybe it's like that same mistranslation I have with patis and toyo but after landing my spoon in my mouth, I just decided to focus on eating. It was indeed the best pochero/bulalo I ever sank my teeth into although I have some difficulty describing exactly how it tasted. Needless to say, the stuff was delicious with a capital D.

Lost in the Wilderness

The Old Testament chronicles the Israelites plight as they wandered in the wilderness before they reached the land promised to them by God. Like I earlier said, there could have been an easier way to get home but then if you're thrill-hungry, it's a less interesting option.

My uncle recently introduced my mother to an alternative route back home which was more...er...hopping (pun intended) than the traditional boat ride: From Cebu City you'll need to drive for about an hour to an hour-and-a-half to Toledo City then take a Ro-Ro (Roll in, Roll out) for another hour-and-a-half to San Carlos City, Negros Occidental. San Carlos City is a roughly two-hour drive from Bacolod City where we can then take a fast craft home. So we decided to give that one a go.

We checked out of the hotel at 5:30 AM. It was still dark outside as Ariel handed me the map. For the entire duration of the trip, I assumed two roles: navigator on the road and ritratista off road...which meant I would see very little of my face in any of the photographs to be developed. I took out mom's flashlight as we tried to figure out how to get out of Fuente Osmena and into the highway which would lead us to Talisay, Naga then Toledo. We had to be in Toledo before Yes, we did get lost as the street signs were either invisible in the darkness or were too small to be noticeable. We did manage to get to the highway and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there on...until we got a flyover and we had to answer the million-dollar question: "Up or down?" The best way to get an answer was to ask for directions and we figured the best person to get the answer from was a tricycle driver since they always seem to know the best routes in and out of anywhere.

He told us we could take the flyover since that would lead us to Toledo but he added that it would take us through Naga to Toledo. However, he said, he could suggest a shortcut if we were up to it which, according to him, was nearer and would take us Toledo in a lesser time. In the morning darkness I could make out a lightbulb hovering about his head.

"You could take Manipis," he suggested. "It's a shorter route and takes you straight to Toledo." He then motioned to a road that stretched out behind him.

It was like straight out of a nature movie gone bad (think Lake Placid or Dante's Peak). Five heads peered out of the car to survey a road which disappeared into the mountains.

We should have known something was not right. For starters, my uncle never suggested that road. He was a Cebu frequenter so if there was a better route than what he had suggested, he would have given it to us. But no, he never said anything about a road whose name alone suggested want, either in terms of width or thickness.

Then my mom let out a little whine of protest. "Manipis? That's a scary route. And the road's not good."

Again, we should have heeded the warning overture which waxed and waned about our deaf ears. But no, Mr. Nice Tricycle Driver was not about to let his bright idea go to waste. "That was a long time ago," he argued. "Now the road is paved and is wider. Even buses take that route"

We glanced at the clock on the dashboard which read 6:10. Maybe my uncle had not known about the road improvement in Manipis. Besides who was to doubt a tricycle driver from the area, right?

So on we trudged up the route I call "the road less travelled." The view was beautiful as green mountains soared past us on both sides of the road. A river dotted with huge boulders weaved alongside the left side of the road. My mom then launched into story-telling mode, telling us that the first and last time she had gone through Manipis was in her days in med school. The name means "thin" or "narrow" and was named such because it was good enough to accommodate only one vehicle at a time. The entire length of Manipis is carved out of a mountainside and so just think of the possible dilemma which awaits two vehicles approaching each other from opposite directions.

Whatever apprehensions we had dissipated with the altitude as my mom commented that the road had indeed been widened as we met a significant number of cars on their descent. And besides it did not seem all too far-flung as we realized that an entire community resided up in the clouds.

The first sign of trouble started as we chugged up the road and realized that we were meeting less and lesser cars as the clock ticked. The road which Mr. Nice Tricycle Drive boasted to have been widened also seemed narrower. As a matter of fact, a line was drawn right in the middle to suggest that the road could accommodate two lanes but who was the road painter kidding? Drawing a line does not make the road bigger! There was no way two vehicles, even mini cars, could fit in that road side by side. Well, maybe except Matchbox cars.

Then all of a sudden, Ariel slowed down. I began to ask, "Why are you..." THUD! Ratatatatat!

The paved road Mr. Nice Tricyle Driver assured us would always be under our wheels was gone. We were now traversing a dirt road high up in the clouds when the dashboard clock said 6:45 and we still had over 25 kilometers to go. "Oooohh," I fumed. "If I could get my hands on that driver, I'd...ow!" I hit my head on the window.

Now there was no questioning the view. It was still beautiful with all the mountains, the greenery and the blue sky but if you're in a hurry to catch a 7:30A M Ro-Ro, all you can see are rocks, dust and Mr. Nice Tricycle Driver's bulging eyeballs glowing in the early morning light. On hindsight, I really should have enjoyed the view because I certainly might/would not pass this way again.

Eventually we entered a crossing which led to the highway we should have taken from Talisay through Naga to Toledo. The car was practically flying as we sped down the highway and made a sharp right turn to the puerto at 7:15. My mom and I ran out of the car as if we were in the Amazing Race then straight into the ticket office.

By 8 AM, we were seated inside the Ro-Ro en route to San Carlos City. On the other hand, our car was stuck in the port of Toledo, waiting to be loaded when the vessel was to make its second trip to San Carlos at 2 PM.

Lost in Time

We got to the sugar city of San Carlos at around 10 in the morning. So what do you do with roughly five hours to slaughter in a city which reminded me of my hometown? Honestly, at that point, time proved to be an elusive victim.

First, my dad requested the tricycle driver to drop us off in the city's Gaisano mall. On the way, he asked the driver what else we could see in the place. His answer? He drove us to a walled house in the middle of a sugarcane field and pointed to it. "That's the house of Jules (Ledesma) and Assunta (de Rossi)." I am not sure if it has come to the power couple's knowledge that their home was fast becoming a tourist attraction heehee.

When you're extremely bored and tired to Grim Reaper levels and your hair has not been washed properly in days, a five-hour wait in a new place can be more gruelling than a jog uphill. Nevertheless, we found ways and means to entertain ourselves lest we self-destruct. We first had brunch in their local Jollibee where we noticed that their fries were saltier than usual and I had to stop eating because my the corners of my mouth were burning. Ordering was fun, though. The Cebuano-speaking lady behind the counter was entertaining both Cebuano and Ilonggo customers and was having trouble with neither dialect at that.

We then took a walk around their mall which hardly had any shops open so we took extra care to walk extra slowly so we could at least do away with thirty minutes. We then took the tricycle to another supermarket/department store called HiTop which had the feel of my home's City Square and Marketplace. There they sold clothes, groceries, DVD players, Angel Locsin posters and, mind you, stacks upon stacks of Ma Ling meatloaf in outrageously low prices which, just a couple of days earlier, was ordered to be pulled out of shelves because of an alleged formalin contamination.

My dad and I then suggested dropping by their Catholic church. Visiting rickety old churches is a habit I picked up from my dad. There was barely anyone inside the church. In one side was an enclave which housed the statues used during Good Friday processions. Right in front of the entrance was a blackboard teeming with marriage announcements it almost looked like it was a fluttering wing. A quick glance left me wondering whether I would have been married off before I reached 25 if I lived in this place.

If you ask people there where you should go to just "hang out," the unanimous answer would not be the mall but a place called People's Park. It's an open space overlooking the sea which sort of looks like Nayong Pilipino meets Disneyland. It has benches and bamboo bridges, rusting locomotives and ponds, waterfalls and benches, Pagoda-like structures and more benches. walking around and taking pictures later proved to exhausting so we sat inside one of the pagodas and started opening the chips inside my dad's backpack when it started to get too quiet.

When my mom went out for a bathroom break, she spotted a videoke machine. We had about an hour to spare and I guess, she wanted to leave San Carlos with a bang. So the four of us started an impromptu concert in People's Park with the boy manning the food joint as sole audience. My dad took out the songlist and declared "I am going to sing 'Turn Me Loose,'" a reference to the Elton John classic "Skyline Pigeon. "A little while later, another friend of the boy joined him and by the time we were done with wailing loud enough to jolt all the ghosts within a hundred meters back to life, there were already three people snickering behind us.

By 3 PM, the AUV had lumbered out of the Ro-Ro like a tired animal. As we piled into the backseat, I said goodbye to the miles of sugarcane dancing with the wind. Just ahead, the mountains once again loomed before us a like a giant monster.

Information you might find helpful:

Abuhan Dos
F. Ramos Street, Cebu City (near Fuente Osmena)
Tel. no. (+6332) 2531157

Cebu Midtown Hotel
F. Ramos Street, Cebu City
http://www.cebumidtownhotel.com

A Week Like No Other, Part 1: Swimming with Fish and Grandparents

When I was in high school, my parents brought home a stranger one Saturday afternoon. He was a tall, gangly American who owned a huge SLR which hung over his neck like an oversized medallion. He was having lunch alone in my family's favorite seafood restaurant and ended up eating with my parents. All he actually wanted was to take pictures of the city's old churches and Spanish colonial houses so the three of us - my mom, dad and me - took him for a drive around.

"There's so much to see in your country," he told me.

All I could muster was a sheepish smile, hoping that was enough to mask the disbelief going on inside my head. After all, my idea of "having much to see" lay on borders beyond my nation's sovereign territory.

Of course, if Master Yoda were to say it: "So wrong I was."

When Home is Starting to Give You Arthritis

Sometimes, home can be the very place you want to escape from. Not that it's exactly like a national penitentiary but you sort of get the feeling that you can't even be afforded a decent space to breathe. It's place you love being in but would sometimes love to get away from. And sometimes, the itch to just grab a rucksack and fly off into the universe morphs into eerie with the thought that you let a chance like this pass one too many times in the future and it may never come your way again. This week, home seemed like such a place.

I planed in on midday of Saturday and by Sunday evening, I was dragging a baggage I shared with my mom through the cobbled-stone paths of the city port into a Cokaliong vessel bound for Cebu. A week before, we had partly-convinced, partly-begged, partly-forced our grandparents into going with us for a short vacation to Mactan. We were all deeply stressed to our hairstrands - us in school, my parents in work and my grandparents in other things aside from work, not to mention their escalating health problems which, in the past months, seemed endless. It was not an easy thing to do but in the end, everything worked out to our advantage (with huge thanks on the way for my sister's brief tampururot).

We got to Cebu at around 7 in the morning. We brought our old, trusty AUV along for the ride along with Ariel, our former driver who's now back in town after a roughly 10-year absence (ask him why, if you wanna know). We then drove to the Mactan Airport to fetch my grandparents who took the 9:30 flight to Cebu. Getting there was not a breeze but my uncle's map gave us all the help we could get. We got to Mactan International Airport with half an hour to spare for a Jollibee breakfast and even a couple more minutes to rearrange our baggage in the car's hold to secure my lolo's oxygen tank and make room for my grandparents other...er...medical gadgets. It was not difficult spotting my grandparents in the airport since not too many people are brought out in a wheelchair.

Four Days in Beautiful Mactan

We then drove to Mactan Shangrila which is about a good fifteen to twenty minutes away from the airport on light traffic. The place is nestled along a peninsula in the east coast of Mactan, just a stone's throw away from the Magellan Shrine. The hotel was built right beside a white beach and was choked with grass, trees and miles and miles of water which left my sister and I with all sorts of "ooohs" and "aaahs." The hotel has cheaper rates on Mondays to Wednesdays so we made sure to check in on those days.

The hotel has two swimming pools - the serene infinity pool which opens to the sea and the other more "fun" pool with the water slides, volleyball net, basketball hoop and long-range water guns in bubblegumcolors. My mom and I loved the infinity pool because it was deeper and there were these underwater outlet tubes which practically forced water out of its small opening and gave a good backrub. On our second night, while everybody else was in the room taking a shower or preparing for bed, my mom and I spent about an hour shooting hoops in about four feet of water. I landed three shots while my mom decided to swear off basketball.

But the place is not all white tiles and chlorinated water. The hotel buldings loom over a white beach dotted with umbrellas, sun lounge chairs and children's buckets. An island which looks like a huge chunk of rock sits near the shore and serves as a fish feeding station. Mactan Shangrila was recently declared to be a marine sanctuary. In other words, it was fish and coral friendly and could rightly be called a snorkeller's wonderland. From a small outpost situated in the far end of a wharf built on the beach, we spotted a huge purple jellyfish which, according to the lifeguard, was not going to have you bursting with welts unlike the smaller, transluscent white kind.

I was itching to get into the water with my snorkel one afternoon although I did entertain a few doubts when a Korean snorkeller ran up to the life jacket booth and was pointing to jellyfish welts on her arms and legs. I finally relented and borrowed a life jacket (which is for free unlimited use by guests whereas snorkel gear are available for rent at P300 an hour) then slid into the water with my sister. The water was cool and clear and a few feet from the shore, I spotted a beautiful blue starfish nestled amidst the sea grass. A little bit further on, I spotted tropical fish swimming below me in myriads of colors. Some were in an interesting combination of orange, blue, green and yellow while we spotted a smaller fish which resembled Nemo only that it was monochromatic. It didn't help at all that I decided to wear my contact lenses inside a very tight mask which I borrowed from my aunt. It was overstretching my eyes to unhealthy proportions so I started to get teary-eyed. So on that cloudy afternoon, I was floating face down about thirty meters from the shore staring at citrus colored fish nibbling on the seafloor while half my mind was seriously contemplating laser eye surgery.

In the morning, I woke up early and skipped breakfast to go snorkelling again. I used my own goggles and decided to just pinch my nose as I dove into the water. At 8 AM, I was the second person in the water, the first one being some guy who was doing laps just a few feet off the fish feeding station. I swam out into the sea about twenty meters from the shore and dove into the water only to be greeted by more citrus colored fish. Some were still nibbling on the ocean floor while others were swimming in odd directions. I arched my back to start an underwater stalk operation but found that impossible thanks to my wonderful life jacket. When I spotted my mother, I made a slow swim back to the shore and as I approached shallow water, I was suddenly engulfed by silver slivers. I realized I swam into a bunch of fish fry. Then another school of fish which we locally call 'gusao' swam past me then under me then right beside me. I was actually swimming with fish, no matter that they were the kind of fish we sometimes bought in the market for sinigang. I WAS SWIMMING WITH FISH!

My sister then came bounding into the water with a basket of leftover bread in one hand. Bread was given to guests upon request if they wanted to feed the fish. We both stood on waist deep water and began picking out small fragments of bread, dropping them into the water about a two feet away while my lolo sat on the shore on a stool, watching what would happen. The fish would attack the bread in groups, fighting with each other just to take little nips off the bread. Then they got bolder and began swimming closer and closer until they were practically swimming around us like a swarm of Spartans. They were so close there was practically no space between us and the fish. We tried holding the bread with our hands but finally ditched the idea when their slippery scales brushed our fingers and left us screaming. The next minute the fish dispersed in all directions and when my sister and I turned around, our lola was sputtering out of the water. She apparently had been trying to catch the fish with her bare hands and was obviously unsucessful.

YUM YUM MINUS A HUNTING EXPEDITION

We weren't prepared to kill ourselves with the outrageous prices for food in the hotel so we went out for lunch and dinner (thank God breakfast for three came with the room...for the rest of us, cup noodles were great anyway). Right beside the Magellan Shrine was a market/bazaar which served the best seafood, according to the recommendations of the friendly guard who stood by the gate. When we asked him where the best place for lunch was, he smiled at us and said "Shoot to kill."

"WHAAAAAAT?" came everybody's almost curt reply. By everybody, I refer to an old AUV bursting with nine people.

I was immediately transported into an African safari where I had to wield a shotgun to hunt me some game for a meal. Surely he was joking.

"Can you say that again?" I asked him while mentally preparing myself to respond with an "I'm not killing anything even if I get ulcer" response the minute he says shooting in any form is involved.

He said it more slowly this time, like a pre-schooler learning the alphabet: "Su-tu-kil."

Oh no, now what could that be? Some kind of shellfish?

"Sutukil is an abbreviation for 'sugba,' 'tola,' and 'kilaw,'" came the explanation.

"AAAAHHHH!" the old AUV chorused and I could almost picture it nodding its headlights.

He pointed us to the market near the Shrine, saying a restaurant called Manna was the best in sutukil. So off we went and parked near the a shop which sold guitars. I got off first and the minute my feet landed on the ground, I swear I felt like Britney Spears on the red carpet. Five guys ambushed me with their umbrellas and brochures, all speaking in Cebuano and pointing in absolutely all kinds of directions beyond a compass's comprehension. Finally I spotted that one of the guys was wearing a Manna T-shirt so I asked him to take me to their restaurant. The other four then simply vaporized like jilted suitors haha.

Manna offers a variety of fresh seafood which is cooked according to a customer's request - whether "sugba," "tola" or "kilaw," whichever is applicable. They also offer other possible cooking alternatives when the hungry stomach makes food ideas evasive. Lying on tiled slabs of concrete were tangigue, lapu-lapu, maya-maya, tuna, pesogo, squid, lobsters, crabs and all sorts of shellfish for the seafood junkie.

The food was simply amazing and writing about it now is making my stomach rumble so bad. I think after that lunch, I grew wider by about two sizes. The kinilaw nga tangigue was a killer (according to Lolo) and the garlic-fried lobster was delicious...actually so were the other things we ordered. But the over-all runaway winner by a million miles was the lapu-lapu sinigang. It was the best sinigang I had tasted in my entire life. The lapu-lapu meat was tender yet firm (obviously fresh) and the steaming soup slid down my throat like heaven. It was perfectly sour and was littered generously with tomatoes and onions which gave it a distinct flavor. It was just the best thing I ever sank my spoon into.

But the greatest part about that lunch was the bill. After having fed nine very hungry people, we only had to pay something like P1,300+ (roughly $29). Sutukil all the way!

WHEN SEVEN DON'T MAKE A CROWD

On our first day, we practically had to convince our grandparents to go for a dip in the pool. My grandfather used to swim like a fish when he was a child but he can no longer be subjected to anything physically exhausting because of his failing lungs and an incident in his younger days left him with a limping gait and one leg shorter than the other. My grandmother does not share his physical incapacity but hates anything tight and thinks swimsuits should be loose and long like basketball shorts. The only time I remember her ever getting into a pool was when I was twelve in my uncle's new house. She was in her house shorts and was having a grand time with all her grandchildren in the water.

But eventually, we were able to persuade them to try out the shallower children's pool which they did. My lola loved all the swimming and we never realized she could float face up until that day! My lolo, on the other hand, cautiously entered the water and stuck to one corner like a child punished with time out. A couple of minutes later, he was brave enough to float around after sometime and even asked us to leave him alone!

In Plantation Bay (where we checked in on our third and fourth day), we also got them both to go for another swim. Lola was still complaining about her swimsuit but forgot all about it being too tight when she was lying inside the jauzzi or the whirpools scattered along the perimeter of the pool in Kilimanjaro Cafe. Lolo was still floating around the water and still didn't like the idea of us holding on to him.

At night, we slept on the same HUGE bed: two Queen beds we stuck to each other, just like Saturday nights when I was in grade school. It was good to see my grandparents so out of everthing which was making their faces more worn and wrinkled. For four days, they lived one day at a time. They had long listened to stories of the places we have gone to or merely contented themselves with videos and pictures. Now, they were both part of the entire experience and what was funny was that they did not realize they were in dire need of a good vacation until they were actually there. Both my grandparents take pains to make sure my sister and I have a good dose of R&R when we're home and it's time they had their turn. They've tried their best to make our lives better than theirs ever since we were children...even if it simply meant a softer pillow or an extra helping of pork and beans. So now that we're strong enough to stand on our own two feet, it's our turn to make sure that they bask in one warm, glorious sunset.



Information you might find helpful:

Manna Grill
Punta Engano Road, Mactan, Lapu-lapu City
(+63) 32-3406448

All Dogs Go to Heaven

She came to us as a surprise - an almost-hairless bundle of flesh inside a mesh bag.
Less than year later, she left us, perhaps sometime in the night, in the same manner as she came - quiet and unexpected - just three weeks before I was bound for home.
To some she may just be any other four-legged critter and may find my sobs oddly misplaced. But to my family, she was our baby.
Yesterday morning, I was walking around the Hall of Justice which housed the different RTC branches for my Crim Pro paper, looking for the best courtroom to spend the morning when I received a phone call from my mother, telling me they found our dog Eunchae dead in her usual spot in our kitchen. Later on in one side of a small, packed courtroom, as detainees in their yellow garb threw us a variety of looks, I quietly wiped tears as I sat on a bench with my classmates.
Eunchae originally belonged to my uncle. He was surprised one day to see little puppies inside his dog's cage. Originally, it housed his female dog and her son. Now it had four more little inhabitants inside. He asked me if I wanted one although he would warn me that the puppy was a product of...er...dog incest. All I could think of was an all-white puppy to match my all-black Balrog so I said "Sure." She was then brought to my mom's office where she was alarmed by the puppy's sorry state. I first saw her when I was home for Christmas break. She was a little over a month old, almost devoid of hair and her little body was covered with sores and lesions. She was severely underweight, skins and bones all over except for her little tummy which was unhealthily protruding. Her only beauty came in the form of a pair of clear, black eyes. The first time I tried to carry her, she pushed herself against the basket, shivering from fear. She was so small and fragile but she seemed to understand I was not going to hurt her. Less than an hour later, she was following me around, trying to clamber on my lap but never went beyond the kitchen.
Perhaps because of her pitiful state, everybody seemed drawn to her. Our household helpers were always fussing arund her, calling her "Smallie." My dad just couldn't ignore her skin lesions so he called her "Leprosy." I didn't think that was funny so I told everybody I was naming her after the female lead in my favorite Korean serial because they both had big, dark eyes. It didn't matter that it proved to be a tongue-twister for some people and just to get it right, they resorted to calling her "Once (pronounced 'On-se')," the local word for "eleven."

Eunchae of the K-serial and Eunchae my dog shared the same eyes...and hair?

Eventually her hair slowly grew and she gained weight. However, she was still a little paranoid and she would usually cower into a corner when a new person arrived or if she was brought to a new place. She was afraid of everything - even frogs and anything loud. For more than four months, she never left the kitchen and venturing into the living room left her little heart pounding in her little ribcage. But it would not take too long for her to be befriended by strangers so she practically made herself a useless guard dog. I surmised that if robbers would break into our house and cart off with some of our belongings (knock on wood!), they would definitely bring her along with them.

My mom, sister and I take turns poking Eunchae's wet nose.

A veterinarian told us that puppies born from closely related parents, like humans, may have certain abnormalities. Surely for Eunchae, that meant her recurring allergies. The veterinarians were at a loss as to what was wrong with her. We had to apply ointments on her, watched what she ate (no chicken, pork and seafood), used sulfur soap for her bath and later on mixed antibiotics in her milk. The skin lesions would disappear for a while but resurface again after sometime.
But that didn't stop her from being everybody's darling. Eunchae seldom barked, growled, whined or made any sound that it almost seemed abnormal. Dad figured out a way to make her bark. He dangled a small piece of meat before her which made Eunchae's big eyes even bigger. As the meat hung on the tip of my dad's fork, she made an almost inaudible sound - something like a cross between a purr and a bark. Dad gave her the meat then dangled a slightly bigger piece. Her purr-bark turned into a small yelp. By the end of lunch, she was pretty much barking. She loved to be hugged and carried around and could not seem to get enough. She hated her collar with a little bell and was desperate to get it off her. She loved to take little nips off our 13-year old dachshund's tail and then scuttle off like a mouse when Nicky bared her teeth.
I just hate the fact that she left us like that, especially when I had been looking forward to running around the house with her at my heels. When I left for school, I closed the kitchen door so that she wouldn't see me leave. She had a habit of waiting in the garage for inhabitants of our house to arrive at day's end. On second thought, I don't know if I would have done the same thing had I known I would never those beautiful black eyes ever again.

God's Roses

This afternoon, Lola asked to write a speech she is supposed to deliver on Sunday during her oldest sister's funeral service. While tip-tapping, I tried to channel my Lola's feelings and the like, which isn't easy. But it was only when I ended the message that I realized that this would be the last time my Lola would be in the state of losing a sister. She had gone through two similar losses in the past three years and each one left her sad yet hopeful. And so, through me, my Lola writes:
A booklover will tell you that to have a glimpse at what makes a person tick beneath his skin, try checking out the books he reads. Some people know this technique all too well that they would display rather profound works on their shelf so as to give an impression that they too gravitate towards reading material that make your head swirl. Perhaps they have yet to realize that sometimes, the best written words which overflow with wisdom amidst unmatched simplicity dwell in the pages of a children's book.

One such book is The Little Prince, the classic favorite by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. It is a rather thin volume, consumable in about an hour or less. The Little Prince, the central character in the book, actually hails from a small planet which has three volcanoes and a rose. The Little Prince takes care of his planet by removing the trees which grow there as these have the capability of turning his planet to dust. However, he pays special attention to the rose because he thinks it is the only one of its kind in the entire universe.

In the course of the story, he visits planet Earth and there he encounters an entire row of rosebushes. Upon seeing the rosebushes, he is immensely saddened because his little fantasy of his rose being the only one of its kind in the universe has just been sucked into nothingness. However, this situation gives birth to the most memorable lines in the book and in the literary world:

"But my rose is more important than the hundreds of you other roses. Because it is she I have watered, it is she that I have put under a glass globe, because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen, it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars, because it is she that I have listened to when she grumbled, or boasted or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

In the course of my story, it should have been clear to you that I have seven roses. My seven roses may be a rosebush to other people but I certainly do not care. These seven roses are mine, these are my roses and each of these seven roses is unique to me. They are not like each other, each one is personal, each one has a unique bond attached to me, each one is my rose. If the Little Prince had his rose, I had my sisters. They may be Ramona, Pening, Ester or Nanay to others but to me, they were my sisters because they were the ones I grew up with, they were the ones I tried to shelter, they were the ones I tried to look out for in our old age, they were the ones who I listened to when they grumbled, or boasted or even sometimes when they said nothing. Because they were my sisters.

No one could have been more ready to go home and face her Creator than any of my three older sisters. They had each lived a long life and each step of the way, God had been with each of them. God had promised in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: "Even when you are old, I will be the same. Even when your hair has turned gray, I will take care of you. I made you and I will take care of you. I will carry you and save you." He fulfilled that promise to them until they breathed their last, all because in the eyes of their Creator, they were His. They were His creation, they were His own. Nene Moning, Inday Pening and Inday Ester were God's roses.
- In loving memory of Moning, Pening and Ester

Flannel Sheep on a Sickbed

The last time I remember being IMMOBILIZED by fever was a good eight years ago. I still got sick after that (naturally!) but I still felt well enough to walk around. I was with my high school classmates attending a science fair held in a high school located in a town outside the city. By lunchtime, I was feeling rather whoozy. I told my Sue and Doi I was going to hail the first jeep home but my EnSci teacher didn't think I'd survive the 40-minute ride, judging from the way I looked. He looked for a cab which brought me home. One look at the insides of my mouth revealed the cause of the fever - German measles at the ripe old age of 16.

My more recent date with a temporarily debilitating fever was Monday last week. With the thermometer hitting 38 degrees, I was coughing incessantly as if I swallowed a handful of thorny barbs and my nose dripped endlessly like a wet sponge receiving a steady supply of water. I still managed to crawl into my morning classes with my thick jacket zipped up to my neck. By lunchtime, my head was throbbing as if a marching band lived inside my head and decided to have a concert. I could barely walk so after a visit to the infirmary, I went home, put on my worn out yellow flannel pajamas with the numerous nameless sheep, buried myself in three layers of blankets and drifted off in what would be my best and longest sleep since school started. The fever wore off after a couple of days but the cough still punctuates the stillness of my study nights and my stuffy nose still somewhat makes the "n's" and "d's" difficult to distinguish. That means no cold drinks and sweets until I'm back to normal...oh the agony!

To be really honest about it, though, I welcomed getting sick to some degree. I did not really have much of a summer break to relax and when I started school, there were still knots in my muscles which had yet to come undone. Add that with a much uglier schedule this semester compared to last year (which sees me in class until late Saturday afternoons) and I sometimes forget breathing as a mechanism has a voluntary aspect. I juggle all that with training with a church singing group and attending and sometimes leading a small group along with being a daughter, granddaughter and an older sister...the list just seems endless. A couple of mornings before I got sick, I woke up feeling not just tired but deep-down exhausted, the kind that seeped past my bones into my soul. That brought to mind a documentary I saw a couple of months ago in Discovery Channel about a group of people who pull boats upstream in China's great Yangtze River for a living. There was so much tension evident in the images - from the ropes bound to the boats to the taut muscles of those who did the pulling. That's what I told Macor when she came to visit me, while chewing off yummy choco pie (Ooops! Didn't I just say 'no sweets?').

As I lay on my bed swathed in blankets and the sheep shivering in my flannel pajamas, I swirled a bottle of messages from Mayla, a gift from Mayla on my birthday a couple of weeks ago, popped the stopper and picked one. The small slip of silver paper contained two lines from Matthew 20:28 - "The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many." I immediately pulled out my copy of "My Utmost for His Highest" and turned to a reflection I had read sometime ago. Oswald Chambers wrote "The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people's souls until they learn to feed on God. We owe it to ourselves to be the best for His lambs and sheep, as well as for Him (February 9)."

The thing was that I had not been getting my fill of God for the past couple of weeks. It was like drinking half the contents of a glass of water and sweating off a liter. I was runnning around headless and it was just a matter of time before I would crash into a wall - and I did. Sheila texted me, saying that I really needed my rest this time and there was no arguing with her, especially since she's older than me and I sometimes call her Mama. There was something more than just satisfying when you're working for Someone Else's glory and not your own in any aspect of your life and I get to know more about that Someone and His true nature as I get mud on my fingernails and sweat on my brow.

But then, nothing beats the stillness.

I slept in my Father's arms that night, shivering flannel sheep and all.

Inside My Summer Backpack: Cebu and the Time Machine

Prior to visiting Mactan, we decided to stay overnight in Cebu. For one thing, mom wanted us to check out the Ayala Mall Complex in Cebu, a far cry (I have to admit!) from our local SM City, the biggest mall in my part of the country. Aside from that, she wanted to give us a quick tour of Cebu, a city where she lived for roughly four years as a medical student.

We were billetted in a hotel along Ramos Street, another choice of my mom because "that's the same street where my medical school is." Sure enough, when we were on a cab en route to the hotel, we passed by a white building with horizontal blue accents here and there. "That's my school," my mom said. "So my dorm must be here somewhere."

The hotel was strategically located because it was right beside a coffee shop and about a minute away by foot from Robinsons Place. As we crossed the street to get to the mall, my mom stopped and said "This is my old dorm. For goodness sake, WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO MY OLD DORM?" Sure enough, what loomed before me was a restaurant which obviously could have been a house in its previous lifetime.

Robinsons Place was located right at the corner of Ramos Street and Osmena Boulevard. My mom asked me if I would mind walking just a bit further because she wanted to check if her old boarding house where she and her best friend (and my namesake) lived was still standing. Their landlady, a gracious woman, eventually became her best friend's mother-in-law. She's one of those people you'll immediately warm up to and my first telephone conversation with her lasted half an hour. She now lives in Alabang and I only met her once in a hotel lobby. As she hugged me, she said "You don't look like your mother but you sure sound just like her."

So off I walked along Osmena Boulevard at 11 AM with my mother, thankful for my good anti-perspirant. We walked past two or three high-rise buildings under construction and a bunch of roadside carinderias. We first passed by a hospital which my mom said "could not have been there before." After about every block or two, she would say "just a little further" or "just up until McDonalds" until she finally said "I really think the house is gone." When we turned around to go back, she changed her mind and walked up to a sidewalk vendor. "Asa man ang YMCA?," she asked in Cebuano, knowing that the house was located near that complex. The vendor told us to a walk just about a block more. With hope renewed, we went our way until we got past YMCA and then saw a huge excavated lot right beside it. A sign stuck to a cyclone wire fence read "Sony." The house was really gone this time and my mom just wanted to cry.

My mom did bring us to Ayala Mall as she promised. The stores sold a lot of interesting items, like a feminine Swiss Knife which reveals a lot of girlie gadgets inside like a vanity mirror, tweezers, nail cutter and scissors. We didn't buy any clothes though. One thing about being a stickler for Divisoria is that you get turned off by prices of clothes in the mall. But my best (and only) buy though would be a nice pair of Italian wedges made of strappy brown leather. I am not a huge fan of wedges or heels for that matter but this pair was absolutely comfortable, rather stylish and made my feet look smaller! And the best part was the 70% discount off the price tag, making the shoes way cheaper than a pair of Mary Janes on the Celine outlet next door!

My mom was planning to bring us to the Chinese Temple ("because that's where I used to bring everybody who visited me when I lived here") and go for a drive around Beverly Hills, an exclusive subdivision on the hillside. I asked her how she planned get past tight security. She answered that she could remember a couple of names from her roster of classmates in med school who lived there. Now I wonder what makes her think they still lived there. But those plans did not push through anyway for lack of time.

With Cebu being the so-called cradle of Christianity in the Philippines, we did get to visit the Santo Nino Church compound which houses the famed image of the Santo Nino as well as the cross Magellan planted in Cebu in the 1500s. The church is huge and elaborately decorated, doubling as some sort of museum with paintings on the wall and statues of saints in every corner. The ceiling was also adorned with paintings like the Sistine Chapel. The intricate door carvings and antique benches were major scene-stealers. The devotees were all over the place in droves, lighting candles or praying fervently, while a bunch of twelve-year old sacristans were practicing their march to the altar.

Five pesos (the student discount rate) is good enough to visit the Santo Nino Museum. On display are all sorts Santo Nino images. I liked one portrayal of the Child Jesus as a streetchild. The image was carved out of wood and the image was dressed in rags and the hair was all messy. They also had the different vestments worn by the Santo Nino through the years encased in glass boxes so that the viewers could scrutinize every minute detail of each vestment. The embroidery was done in gold thread and the designs were fine and intricate.

One shelf towards the rear part of the museum housed a rather odd, if not, interesting, collection. It contained the toys given by people to the Santo Nino - and there were A LOT. I spotted, among others, a carwash playset, a Simba action figure, rows of Matchbox cars, toy trucks and yes, even a Voltes V.

A story tacked to one wall of the museum told about the ritual of bathing the Santo Nino. The origins of this ritual have yet to be established but it is an interesting story in itself. I am not sure exactly how often bathing the image occurs but according to the story, after the image has been bathed, the water used is not thrown away but distributed to people for use in curing ailments and diseases.

The cross of Magellan was sought after by tourists in a more historical sense than the Santo Nino. It seemed like people went there mostly for picture taking and when we got there, there were around thirty plus people crowding inside the small kiosk, snapping picture after picture. Outside, vendors walk around selling more Cebu keychains and guitars.

I wanted to get a shot of the cross from top to bottom (just like the camera shots in music videos of the Philippine National Anthem played in movie theaters) so I angled my camera from the bottom so that it seemed from the viewer's vantage point that he was looking up. A second after I took my first shot, the next two people in line ran up to the cross and did the exact same thing, crouching on the ground and angling their cameras for the "looking up" perspective! I was...well, pleasantly amused!

My 5 centavos worth of tips:
* It's good to have a Cebuano-speaking companion especially when riding a cab...or at the minimum, someone who understands Cebuano. If not, speaking in Tagalog would just have to do. That's why I hung on to my mom like a lizard the entire time.

* Check out a store called Bisaya Ispisal in Ayala Mall. They have great T-shirts with prints consisting of Bisaya expressions. My favorite was a black baby tee with "Maldita" on both the front and back. Too bad it didn't come in my size.

* I absolutely recommend having a meal in Cafe Laguna, a restaurant located in the ground level of Ayala Mall. It's right about the worst place to go when you're on a diet. The place looks fancy but they serve Filipino dishes with the "lutong-bahay" feel a.k.a. nothing fancy like animal-shaped vegetables, just really good food. We had dinner there and we had radish salad, chicken tinola and crispy pata. In a word: BURP.

* Along a major thoroughfare somewhere in Cebu, vendors sell grave markers ("lapida" in the local dialect). Interesting enough, these were some of the markers they had on display: Rico Yan, Dorothy Jones, Fernando Poe Jr. and, of course, Dr. Jose Rizal.

Inside My Summer Backpack: Panglao's Chariots of Blue

All it took was one text from Sue to get me hyped up. She had gone with her cousins to Panglao last April, about a week before she started with her summer hospital duty as an incoming senior in med school. When she got back, she told me I should try going there to see the place for myself. "It's like Boracay with less people and less noise," she said.

So with her recommendations on hand, my family and I took a ferry from our homeport to Cebu and then jumped on the next available fast craft bound for Tagbilaran City.

Upon arrival in Bohol, we were awestruck by the cleanliness of their seaport. I mean, you could jump right into the water and swim. The water was emerald in the sunlight and there was no smell of grease, gasoline or anything rotting anywhere - a stark contrast to our seaport back home which was always guaranteed to get the soles of my shoes all black from grease. The water was clean enough for us to actually SEE fish swimming around in schools!

We were fetched by a resort car which took us to Panglao, an island about 22 kilometers (about 30 minutes) away and connected to Tagbilaran City by a bridge. I had booked the four of us in a resort located in Alona Beach, one of the more popular and more developed beaches in Panglao Island. For some reason, my sister was feeling awfully lethargic (blame it on Bonamine, maybe) so after a late lunch, my dad and my sister had a nap. Now my mom and I were fuming. We were on vacation, in a beautiful beach, in an island where there were hardly any people and the only thing they could think of was sleeping! So my mom and I went out for a walk by ourselves to see for ourselves what we could do here.

To put it lightly, Panglao is one of those places blessed with a beautiful duet of white and blue.

Alona Beach can rightfully boast of the fine, white sand which has made Boracay famous but the stretch, although generous, is not as seemingly endless as the latter. The water is also as crystal clear as Boracay's waters and is perfect for a dip during high tide. Three hours of getting prune-y from 9 AM to 12 noon was not enough for mermaid me.

But that's about as similar as Boracay and Panglao can get. Boracay, in TV terms, would be like MTV's Spring Break meets Next Top Model with the beach getting transformed into sandy runways and fun party places. Panglao, on the other hand, would have to be National Geographic meets Discovery Channel. It is the perfect place to sink yourself in cool clear water and make sand angels without smelling anything other than the salty mist or hearing anything else aside from the soft rustling of coconut leaves and the fluttering of crows' wings. In other words, Panglao is one of the best places to experience nature's perfect kiss.

Unlike Boracay where swimming does not have to be tied to a particular schedule of the tides, the same cannot be said about Panglao. During low tide (around 4 PM onwards during our stay), the water is a clear aquamarine up to only about five meters from the shore. Swimming during low tide is not recommended if you're over three feet in height because you'd end up waddling like a duck just to get the water up to your chest. Beyond that, the water shifts to a darker shade of (still clear) blue. The shift in the color of the water from light to dark is attributed to the lush underwater vegetation: a wide expanse of sea grass on the seafloor which extends into the open sea, giving the impression of an underwater rainforest to the quiet observer. My dad was curious and wanted to know if planting a bare foot on that area would give the same feeling as walking in a grassy meadow minus shoes and socks. Before we could warn him that it was not the best of ideas, he had jumped out of the water with a yelp, shouting "Something bit me!"

Having unseen things snapping at your toes would be a bane to the beach babe but it becomes a great underwater adventure to an avid snorkeller. I stood on the fringes of that "underwater forest" and silently observed what I saw on the seabed. From my vantage point, I saw two starfish, a sea urchin and something crustacean-like scurrying about the blades of the sea grasss I immediately got excited. I am not exactly an expert snorkeller and I had not snorkelled in years but what I saw was enough to have me bubbling. I then fizzled into disbelief when I realized I did not bring my old snorkel with me. Hopeful that my mom might have brought her mask, I overhauled all our bags in our room but could find nothing. I swore to myself that the next chance I get to go back to Panglao, the first thing I'll FIFO would be the snorkelling gear. The better snorkelling site would be off the coast of the neighboring island of Balicasag which we skipped because I did not like the idea of renting snorkelling gear.

Perhaps one of the highlights of our trip was dolphin watching. Sue told me about her adventure, perhaps out of some sincere desire to drive me to fits of jealousy, knowing very well how obsessed I was with these beautiful sea creatures. We met someone who offered us a good rate and told us we were to start at 5:30 in the morning. My parents were not all too keen with the idea, saying that we had seen dolphins a couple of times already. But I insisted that we should do that because it was one of the highlights of a trip to Panglao.

It is never too easy to haul your butt off bed at 5 AM when you're used to waking up at 7 AM and the blanket seems wonderfully soft all of a sudden. But I made up my mind to wake up and to do the same with all of my room mates. As my dad was putting on his shirt, he was whining about losing the extra hours of sleep. Uh-oh. If this did not turn out as good as I wanted it to be, I might get blamed for everybody's eyebags all day.

We were met on the beach by Ladio, the boatman and spotter. He had a rather soft voice and had some scars on his face, it made me wonder how he got those. We then boarded his boat, a motorized banca with outriggers called Golden Seal. True enough, there was a painting of a golden seal on the hull of the boat. When we were all settled, Ladio sailed out to the open sea, heading South. The sun was rising on the east, giving the sky a pinkish-orange tinge. The water was calm with little ripples here and there. From afar, we could see silvery-white patches stretched across the entire length of the water. We asked Ladio what that was. He tried to explain to us that it was that area of the water that the waves could not reach. True enough, when we got to that area, the water was still and glassy. Except for the path our boat had traced, the surface remained unmoving like dark gelatin wobbling from side to side. There was stillness in the midst of the turmoil of the sea, an area which even the waves could not touch. This area is what my mother thinks is called "linaw" in our local dialect.

After about fifteen minutes of seeing nothing except water and when the magic of seeing "linaw" had faded, my mother whispered to me "Seems like we're going nowhere." I couldn't be of help since I did not know exactly where we were headed. Another five minutes passed then ten and still all we saw was water. At least Noah was better off, what with all the animals on board to keep him busy. About thirty minutes after we left shore, when we were verging on boredom and slight panic, the four of us spontaneously erupted into some form of euphoria when we saw something dark partially bob out of the water like a cork and then disappear all of a sudden. Was that it? A couple of minutes or so later, we spotted another white boat looming in the horizon. It just floated there in the middle of the wide expanse of dark water and something else.

I don't know when I first saw them but at some point, dolphin fins all of a sudden graced our presence. There were fins all over the place, behind us, about ten meters from either side of our boat, about a couple of meters ahead of us. The fins seemed to spin around like wheels, emerging from the water and sinking again one after another. We were practically surrounded by pods of dolphins! A bunch of what I suppose were the pluckier dolphins would jump out of the water and then disappear again. We spotted two which swam around with their backs in the water, bellies up and exposed. A little while later, some moved just a bit closer to us, about three or four meters away, close enough to do some for us to do some scrutiny. My sister later stood up and pointed to a splash by the water. I approached her position and spotted a dolphin swimming alongside our boat! Soon another one swan beside the first dolphin, as if they were pulling our boat using an invisible rope. After about less than a minute, the dolphins Lol-lo and Saraw (43 Phil. 21) disappeared into the water's depths.

Our nights in Panglao saw us having dinner right on the beach while an acoustic trio sang to familiar songs from Bread, Eric Clapton and the BeeGees. The enterprising lead singer kept on changing the lyrics of Tears in Heaven. In the first chorus, he sang "Would you call my name, if I saw you in Germany?" He then went on to use every country from which every Caucasian tourist sitting in that restaurant hailed from. After a walk, we were all in bed by 10 PM, a far cry from our Boracay bedtime.

Panglao also has a good array of dive shops and stores which sell everything from the essentials (shampoo and sunblock) to gifts (Bohol T-shirts and stuffed tarsier teddies) and pasalubong (Peanut Kisses, of course). I bought a stuffed tarsier and immediately named him Rome. You'd wanna know why!

All in all, I desperately want to go back to Panglao not just to soak in some more sun. Because my parents wanted to enjoy the beach more, we did not go on the Bohol countryside tour which brings tourists to Bohol's heritage spots, a cruise along Loboc River with a hearty lunch which also allows them to see actual tarsiers and caps off with a visit to Chocolate Hills. Besides, I told my mom I wanted to swim with the dolphins next time, although she does not buy the idea ("God knows they might take little bites off you.") But like I said, my snorkelling gear will prominently stick out of my bag next time.

My 5 centavos worth of tips:
* It's good to make a reservation in a resort before heading off to Panglao, especially during the peak season. Most of the resorts I called were willing to accept room reservations without need for deposit. Beachfront resorts cost a little bit more than those which are located a bit more inland. If you'd rather scour around the beach for a good place to stay, just make sure you arrange for transportation into Panglao beforehand by calling up a car company. I'm not sure how much hiring taxis on-the-spot would cost. Jeepneys are scarce in Bohol...or are they non-existent?

* For those interested in dolphin watching, heading out early (like 5:30 AM) would more than make up for the lost extra half hour of pillow burial. It's better to watch the dolphins swim around you when you're the only boat floating in the middle of (sea)nowhere. More boats means more people hooting and cheering at these beautiful sea mammals and you'd soon end up chasing the dolphins around like Indiana Jones.

* Boatmen can offer a cheaper rate if you do both dolphin watching and snorkelling in Balicasag Island. For instance, an extra P500 for dolphin watching would also guarantee you a visit to Balicasag. Snorkel gear for rent would cost around P150 to P200.

* Resorts offer tour packages and the like but locals hanging around the beach can sometimes give you the same offer more or less at a cheaper price.

* Great lunch is served in Lost Horizon for those who are not calorie conscious or do not nurse cholesterol problems. They serve delicious, super-tender baby backribs and yummy sisig. They also have reasonably priced airconditioned rooms!

* If you're passing by Cebu on your way home (like us) and you're planning to horde Peanut Kisses, it's advisable to buy the Boholano cookies there. Peanut Kisses in Panglao cost between P38 to P40 for the medium-sized box and P15 for the small pack. I found out too late in a Cebu grocery store that I could get them cheaper at only P28 for the medium-sized box and P7.50 for the small pack.

Helpful links out of my backpack:
* Alona Kew Resort
* Bohol Tourism

Inside My Summer Backpack: Blown-Out Fuse and Sunburn

All it took was the inferno of May 14 to completely torch me and the last remnants of my sanity to bits. Rewind to that day and I remember being released from school for only a couple of weeks and I really did feel like zombie. I was up by 7 (but slept at around 2 AM the night before thanks to someone I know who got home waaaaay past bedtime) and did not get to sleep until 4 AM the next day.

So I went bawling to my mother and cried "I really need my vacation now."

Apparently she desperately needed one too.

So right then and there, my mom, dad, sister and I decided we were going to take a week off and just scuttle out of our city like refugees into some place where we could undo the knots in our muscles and the lines on our foreheads. Naturally, it was almost a unanimous yet unspoken decision that we would most likely end up in Boracay because of ease in accessibility, familiarity with the place and our pent-up desire to finally regain an old tan (for me) or get a new sunburn (for my sister).

But then, my mom and I had been planning to go on a backpacking trip somewhere South - like Cebu, Dumaguete or even Bohol. We weren't going to live exactly like backpackers but we had decided that we should bring nothing more than a backpack and "live out of it" for about a week or so. And the idea of going South was even more enticing because, even if I love Boracay a little bit too much, it would be nice to see a new place once in a while.

So into my backpack went, among others, two swimsuits, a black scrunchie, a huge bottle of SPF45 sunblock lotion, baseball cap, sarong, a batik halter sundress, my trusty phone with its high-res camera and 1 GB of storage up for filling and my mother who could still speak flawless Cebuano after more than thirty years. No, wait, the latter part of that enumeration does not sound nice.

But I had to cry because I realized I forgot my even trustier digital camera and video camera in my apartment closet back in Manila. Major bummer but the trip must push through.

Children's Hour

"I will never forget your favorite song," Manang Maya said to me as she held her fidgety younger daughter Aimee. "Your song was I'm a Little Teapot and when the whooshing part came, you really whooshed."
Good thing there was nothing tangible available to her to prove that point on one hand and embarrass me on the other. However, when my nieces Aidagere, Bea, Pau-pau and nephew Jepoy all grow up to be in their 20s someday, I will have tons of moving and noisy stuff to make their faces all scarlet like Christmas ribbons.
Last week was the culmination of the summer workshop classes they had been attending in one of the best new schools in the city. Aidagere was enrolled in a science discovery class whereas Bea took up a module on reading. Pau and Jepoy, who are of the same age, were in a kindergarten class which had them singing in Chinese.
Pau-pau and Jepoy took the stage in the culminating activity of the workshop held in the activity center of perhaps our biggest mall here. Pau-pau and Jepoy were singing with their own respective classmates and as early as three weeks before the program, the two of them would regale us with one Chinese song after another, singing as loud as their vocal chords would permit.
Pau-pau took the stage first with her classmates. She wore gloves and a paper crown over her head. The minute the music began she began to sing as loud as she could but as the song went on, her mouth began to move less and she began to find the stage floor more interesting than the faces of the people in the audience. A little while later, she just stopped singing all together. All of us simultaneously started cheering her on by mouthing "Pau" and "sing" in all sorts of combinations and expressions but she continued to fixate her eyes on the floor. Uh-oh. My niece just had her first dose of stage fright.
Jepoy's class took centerstage after Pau-pau had walked off the stage. Jepoy was one of the smallest boys in the group so he stood on the rightmost end. He was the first to enter and immediately stuck his tongue out at all of us. He sure is one brave boy...well, either he's very brave or simply "walang hiya (roughly translated to gutsy)." They went on to sing two nursery rhymes and one Chinese song and he jumped around and wiggled his little hips like a pro! He was just the cutest four-year old boy on that stage. And he did all this with a fever raging about him!
I got both of their antics on video so when Jepoy becomes a big boy and Pau-pau a big girl someday, I'll sure do a good demo for them to jolt their memory cells a bit and say "You know when you were four years old, you used to sing just like this..." I mean, that's what it's all about anyway: revenge.
Okay, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

(L-R) Aimee, Jepoy, me, Aidagere, my sister, Bea. Pau-pau was off playing with a classmate.

Seriously Freaked

It feels a bit different to be involved in something mundane for a change...especially since my summer break still has me running around restless. But now, I can at least allocate some time to allow my freaky nature to rear its naughty head once in a while. So here goes...just me on being seriously freaked!

****************

She's muh gurl and she'll always be THE gurl!
I am just seriously freaked that Melinda, MELINDA of all people(!), gets the cut in this week's American Idol. No, seriously freaked is not the right thing to say. I think it would be more appropriate to say that I am seriously bereaved I almost feel like reaching for the lacy black veil/shawl nestled within the confines of my mother's closet. What was America possibly thinking - and hearing - last night?! Muh gurl Melinda is the bomb and she deserves that place in the finals - every inch of that stage and every watt of that spotlight! I have liked her and Jordin the most since their respective first auditions but I have to say I have always liked Melinda a bit more than Jordin. Jordin is bubbly, young, pretty and has great pipes but Melinda can sing any song into smithereens. I mean, she blows familiar songs apart and recreates them into something she can claim as her own. And she does all this without a bubble of air in her head and that sincere smile on her face and that makes her totally endearing. My mom and I had it in our guts that she was going to be the next American Idol but all it took was one wrong click in the Yahoo homepage and my cutesy hope gets slashed to bits.
I had been hoping for a Jordin-Melinda slugfest come Wednesday next week. Blake was pretty good last night but he just paled in comparison to the two. Blake is a magician and a circus all rolled into one but he often sings flat (in terms of tremolo and pitch) and his beat boxing becomes his only saving grace.
Melinda, in my opinion, is the overall entertainer without the unnecessary frills and the magic wand. She is nothing but pure unadulterated talent who narrowly missed the standing ovation she justly deserves.

Melinda Doolittle will always be THE gurl to beat!
P.S. If Blake gets the American Idol next week, I think I'll be crawling on the floor with a broken heart. My mother has just threatened to boycott 'Idol' following the Melinda cast-off.
P.P.S. At around this time last year, Elliott Yamin made me cry like a baby. Tonight, he did it again.
P.P.S. Paula looked awfully funny dancing to Maroon 5. Maybe it was because of her dress but from the back, she seemed to looked like Whistler's mother.

****************

He's back and the wait is killing me (pun intended)!
After two years of contenting myself with my MISA DVD replays (please don't ask how many times because I have lost count) and staring at his picture, my favorite Korean actor and one-half ultimate dream squeeze So Ji Sub has just finished his mandatory military service at the district office of Mapo in Seoul. When I was in Seoul two years ago with my dad, I remember wandering across the street from the Mapo District Office by mistake. I still clung to some remnant of sanity, dignity and embarrassment so I quickly ditched the idea of walking into the office, kidnapping So Ji Sub and stuffing him into my luggage with his arms and legs sure to rip the zippers apart. The minute I got home, I almost got clobbered by Sue who did nothing but growl at my face for about five minutes.
Ji-Sub has is about to begin work on a new series with Ji Jin-Hee (of Jewel in the Palace and Spring Days) called Cain and Abel wherein both actors play brothers separated when they were children. Jin-Hee is the older brother who grows up to become a detective hunting down an assassin which actually turns out to be his long-lost younger brother played by Ji-Sub. Well, like I was telling a friend of mine from Singapore who also loves Ji-Sub, I've always thought he'd make one fine, convincing psychopath, killer eyes and all.
Now I'll have something to look forward to on the tube!
For the meantime, MISA will more than suffice. *hugs box of tissues and thinks of taking heart reinforcement pills*

****************

He's so fine and soon the world will see why!
The other half of my ultimate dream squeeze a.k.a Mando-pop star Wang Lee Hom has just embarked on his first international big screen venture - with no less than the acclaimed Ang Lee at the helm of the movie project.

The cast of Lust, Caution with director Ang Lee: (from left to right) Wang Lee Hom, Tang Wei and Tony Leung

A couple of months ago, I heard that Ang Lee was going to direct the movie adaptation of the popular Chinese short story by Eileen Chang called Lust, Caution (�F.‰ú) and that Tony Leung (of In the Mood for Love fame) had been cast as the lead actor. Leung plays government official Yee who works for the puppet government of Japan-controlled Shanghai during the 40s.

Weeks later, in the middle of a rather crazy week, I came across an online article that Wang Lee Hom had been chosen to play the second lead actor and the news got my brain functional again. Wang was to play Kuang Yu-Min, a student, revolutionary and boyfriend to Wang Jia-Zhi (played by newcomer Tang Wei), a spy sent to lure Yee into an assassination trap. I don't know how Lee Hom will do since he's more of a singer than an actor and on top of that, he'll be working side by side with one heck of a pillar Tony Leung!
Today, while acting as travel agent for my entire family, I decided to check if there were pictures from the set of the movie and lo and behold! There were pictures and a link to the first trailer too! I need to get used to Lee Hom's shorter, tidier "Jose Rizal" 'do (which I'm sure his mother would love) but he still looks mighty fine, I didn't even mind that he did not release a new album in December of last year, unlike what he had done for the past two years.


Hmmm...now my sister's birth month has become a bit more interesting this year.

I could get used to Lee Hom looking like this. ^_^

Spidey Porridge, Anyone?

The minute the credits began to roll and the lights switched on in our neighborhood friendly movie theater, the first question I asked my sister was "What was that?"
Spiderman 3 just didn't leave my legs in a twist...even if I have six less than what the neighborhood friendly spider has.

I am not a huge fan of any of the film's predecessors nor the comic books and I admit, I found the second installment of the arachnid movie rather revolting in terms of...er...cheesiness. So I went into the movie theater with absolutely no expectations, a heaping of objectivity and well-polished glasses to immediately spot Topher Grace the minute his wit scurried onscreen.
After almost 3 hours of being enclosed in a place as dark as Venom's slick pseudopodia, I left feeling more confused than ever. Seriously, what was all that about? They say too much of something is not a good thing and I guess the third installment of the film is a good example of that. I just thought there was too much going on in the entire course of the story that it all pretty much bound the movie in a cocoon too tight to render it unrecognizable. In the first place, there were too many villains for this movie to handle: the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Venom/Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) and of course, the only better looking person in the movie after Topher Grace, Harry aka Goblin Jr. (James Franco). Some films are able to pull off this kind of stunt of having one too many antagonists to really test the mettle of the superhero in question but Spiderman 3 had trouble juggling all three. Maybe I was just having memory problems but whenever one villain appeared on screen, I would instantly forget that there was another villain in existence. It was only when the other villain would rear his bleached head again would I then realize "Oh, right, you're still alive."
Spiderman 3's web of a plot eventually spun out of control thanks to its unamusing attempts to be funny. Case in point were "bad" Peter Parker's attempts to channel Fred Astaire, Eminem and David Beckham all in one go. For some reason, no one in the movie theater was chuckling, not even the kids. I thought those scenes would be funny in some other movie at some other time...just not in this one. My sister's expression was even funnier in the dimly lit theater. She was rolling her eyes and groaned "This is like the movie that would never end." But as if that were not enough, the "bad" Peter Parker had to strut around as if he were in a shampoo commercial, flipping his hair all over the place. He looked like half the boys in my 5th grade class when Casper was everybody's favorite movie and every girl was mooning over Devon Sawa. The entire act was just not funny anymore. Add that to Harry and Mary Jane's "Twist" interlude when the two were making scrambled eggs and Peter's rather awkward tango ensemble with Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) in a jazz bar, I then found myself wondering if I were watching a movie or That's Entertainment.
The movie's attempt to tackle several conflicts and resolve them all in almost three hours left it in tricky knot a bit too difficult to unravel. Naturally, Spiderman has to deal with the villains Sandman, Venom, Goblin Jr. and of course, the usual band of city crooks and criminals who are no match for the web-slinging hero. Aside from that, he also has to wrestle with impending narcissim and his tendency to be too self-absorbed, negative qualities which eventually get magnified when he plays momentary host to Venom. As if that were not enough, he has to watch out for his best friend Harry who is still on the Spiderman warpath but whose vengeance is momentarily interrupted by short-term memory loss. A new twist is also added to the events surrounding the death of Peter's Uncle Ben which makes the hunt for the Sandman more of a personal vendetta for Spiderman. The plot gets more tortuous when you factor in Parker's relationship issues with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), the love of his life, who begins to nurse insecurities because of her own career issues and the fact that her superhero boyfriend is becoming the darling of New York along with every girl who resides in it. It is also not to be forgotten that Harry the best friend is also still inlove with Mary Jane and even attempts to steal her from Peter again in the latter course of the movie. Top this off with the movie's only gem in my opinion, a rather poignant lesson on forgiveness, which disappointingly does not really make that much of an impact and ends up bobbing helplessly in the quagmire thanks to the movie's convoluted mesh of a plot.
Many movies have attempted to carry numerous conflicts in one setting and have succeeded in tying everything up neatly in a slick bundle. It just so happens that where other movies succeeded, Spiderman 3 sloshed and failed. It tried too much to be everything in one movie - action, fantasy, romance, comedy and even a mini musicale - but the formula just did not work that the film just seemed so disjointed. In the movie's last leg, when Harry eventually joins Spiderman as he battles Venom and the Sandman, I found myself wickedly waiting for Superman to show up. That was how hodgepodge-y it was in my opinion.
Sorry to Spidey fans but Spiderman 3 just got washed down my neighborhood friendly waterspout.

Pyroclastic Wonderland

I was cleaning out my "memories shelf" earlier today. It's actually this space above the dresser in my room which used to hold all the ceramic characters which topped my birthday cakes all ordered from Cakestop, the only decent bakeshop in my side of the country when I was a little girl. It later on housed all my prized Hardy Boys and Sweet Valley books and when I got a bigger bookshelf, I used it as a space for all the trinkets I had collected through the years such as my E.T. charm bracelet from Universal Studios, a bottle of colored sand which Sue and I bought back in high school, a Blue Jays baseball, the candle I carried around during my high school prom and a boomerang my dad bought for me from Australia.
In one corner of the shelf is a piece of rock, reddish in color with a lot of little holes punctured all over it. My mom once asked me why I had a rock inside my room and attempted to toss it in the garden. She stopped when I screamed "No!" loud enough to make the tectonic plates where our house stood on shudder. That piece of worthless rock, I explained, was a piece of lava which I had gotten from my first trip to Taal in the summer of 1998. I was then fourteen years old.
Last week, my family and I spent my dad's 54th birthday in Tagaytay. From our lunchtable in Dencio's, I got a great view of what I regard to be perhaps my ultimate wonderland.
I was an incoming junior in high school then and our school required us to spend our summer months working as interns in an agency, company or business which was focused on science, technology or research. I had begged my parents to allow me to spend the summer in Manila as an intern for the PNP Crime Laboratory in Camp Crame. When it was time to follow up my application, I was told that all the slots had been filled. I then turned to my second option: a short stint at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. I was admitted to the summer internship program along with my friend Dang and a number of other girls (I think around six or seven of us). I was just so excited in a seismically crazy sort of way. I had always wanted to be a paleontologist/geologist since I was a child but I had shelved such career options ever since I realized I I couldn't munch on rocks at the dinner table. But that summer was the opportune time to live out that dream.
For a month I lived in a dorm with my co-interns across the hall from another group of girls from my high school who were a year older than us. I remember standing under a dimly lit phone booth while one of my co-interns made phone calls to Vince Hizon. Day in and day out, I had cup noodles for dinner. I did not mind the eye strain from dissecting seismogram after seismogram. And I loved the sound of my time card getting punched in the PHIVOLCS bundy clock.
One of the highlights of that summer internship was getting to visit Taal and staying there for about three days. We had packed tents with us since PHIVOLCS did not have a place for us to stay there. Upon getting on the island, we realized we couldn't sleep inside the tents unless you wanted to know what hell felt like so we slept outside with our sleeping bags stretched out under the stars. I just had to swathe myself with insect repellant in amounts enough to equal a bath. Once, a slight drizzle interrupted our slumber so we scrambled under the trees for shelter. Despite all that, it was the best sleep I had ever experienced. We went swimming in the lake although occasionally, Sir Aries, one of the personnel-in-charge, would tell us we could even take a bath in the lake itself since the PHIVOLCS bathroom would usually run out of fresh water. I personally did not know how the fish in the lake would feel but after climbing craters for three days, I just had to wash my hair some way.
We hiked up the main crater of Taal whereas the tourists swarming around us rode up by horseback. As we walked up, steam erupted from tubes PHIVOLCS personnel had placed near the trail. A viewing station greeted us near the caldera of the main crater along with vendors selling water. That sent all of us scrambling up the sandy ledge just to have something to drink.
I got my piece of lava near Binintiang Malaki, the most visible of Taal's craters and the one usually mistaken in photographs to be Taal Volcano. We got their via a motorized banca which Sir Aries thought would give us the thrill. The rest of us stared at him and said we had a lot of motorized bancas back home. When we got off the boat, I saw a huge stretch of lava which had cooled and hardened through time. It jutted out in odd, sharp formations enough to scrape your skin if you weren't careful. I managed to whack out a heavy piece of lava from that stretch. On our way back to the boat, I picked up a small worn piece of lava on the lake, thinking I might never see this sight again either because I might never get the chance to visit again or another eruption might change the scenery.
That was the thing about volcanoes and their dangerous beauty - they will never remain as they are. With every eruption, they blow up a part of themseves and yet rebuild in some way. Their bubbling, simmering cauldron draws out the hidden adventurer in every person, a nature fiery enough to fight and die for its release.

In Tagaytay overlooking Taal Lake and Taal Volcano (Binintiang
Malaki prominently visible as always) last April 26. A year after my
summer internship, I was informed that Sir Aries, our PHIVOLCS
mentor, died in Taal Lake during a PHIVOLCS assignment
due to a boating accident.

I MIssed It

The minute I opened my eyes at 7 o'clock, Friday morning, only one thought popped into my head amidst the myriads of concerns which had been taking little bites off me me like an army of ants for the past month or so.

She was getting married today.

My mother then called me a little while later and we had a rather long talk. She and the rest of my family were in our home province whereas I was miles away, cooped up inside a room in an apartment I had just moved into two days before. This was my first time to spend Holy Week away from my family. There is always a first time, I thought to myself and I tried to console myself with the thought that I wouldn't get stuck in a horrendous traffic jam while watching procession after procession after procession pass by. Yeah, there is always a first time...just like getting married. I thought about it again.

We were fourteen, I believe, when we first talked about getting married. I don't really remember much about where we were except that there were three of us, seated on the steps of our third floor classroom, the long skirts of our school uniforms tucked under our legs as the wind tried to blow our heads away. She said "I'm sorry you can't be in my wedding. I'm telling you ahead of time so you can't complain that I didn't tell you beforehand." I teased her that I was toying with the idea of getting 'converted' for a day, just so I could see her in a white dress, a veil and make up. She gave me one of her looks as if to say "That is not possible." So I let the matter go like a leaf in the wind, consoling myself with the fact that I just might be there to attend the reception.

That was eight years ago. Now as I got off the phone with my mother, I glanced at my watch and the dial read 8:15. Her wedding had just started.

I left the house ten minutes before 11, having had to fumble through the half-full boxes in my apartment for the car keys with the mental note that I really had to unpack and rearrange my stuff pretty soon or else I could end up tripping over these things and land in the hospital with a broken hip. I had to be in church by 11 to go through some songs we had to sing for the Good Friday service that afternoon. On my way to church, I decided to take the route which would make me pass the church where she was to get married. I entertained the thought that she might still be there.

I slowed the car as I entered the drive which led to their church compound. The wind was blowing rather hard that day and the sun was partly hidden by the clouds. I almost spontaneously stepped on the brakes when I saw someone in a pristine white dress and a white veil clutching a bunch of white flowers walk though the neatly trimmed lawn of the church, a taller man in white standing beside her. Could that be her? My goodness, I laughed to myself as felt like I was in one of those movies where the jilted ex-boyfriend/other guy watching the female protagonist marry the male protagonist the movie watchers would want her to marry. She didn't tell me I could at least do this - sit in the car and from the outside, watch them take pictures. After all that was all I wanted: to see her in her white dress and white veil, clutching her bunch of white flowers.

I called her on my phone and I asked her if she were the girl I had just seen walk by.

"Where are you?" she asked me.

"I'm right outside your church, silly," I answered.

"That's not me. I'm in Cubao now. They are the couple who got married after us."

I thought I heard a thud somewhere and I knew that was not something beyond five feet of my arm's reach.

Great.

"You didn't tell me I could at least see this," I told her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know you wanted to be there."

"What do you mean I didn't want to be there? How could you know that?" I answered quickly.

Then we both kept quiet knowing we should not have said what we just said.

Her voice broke as she said "You're making me cry. You're making me feel guilty."

She almost always never cried. We even used to tease each other we shouldn't be with guys who cry more than we do.

"Konsensiya, konsensiya, konsensiya!" I chanted like a tease and we both laughed. I told her I'll see her the next morning, before she goes back home a married woman.

I was back the next day, Saturday at 8 AM. I met her husband at the gate of the place where they stayed. She came out a little while later and the two of us took a walk around their church complex. The sun was shining brightly on that day and a breeze was blowing softly. The garden of their church was beautiful, the flowers were blooming and the grass was neatly manicured. I glanced up to see the white spires of their church point towards the blue sky. I made out a gold figure standing on one of the spires. "That's Muroni," she said. I don't even know if I spelled the name correctly.

She later showed me the pictures of her wedding. She looked perfect in her immaculate long-sleeved white dress. A tiny tiara was on her head and I could make out a short train of a veil somewhere near her head. I told her I liked her dress although I hoped she wore just the tiniest bit of makeup. "After all, you won't ever get married again!" She kicked me and her husband laughed.

I met her mother a little while later and we gave each other the biggest bear hug. She was almost like my own mother also and I teased her that she should be ready to have little grandchildren sooner or later.

I later drove them - she, her husband, her mother and her husband's aunt - to the bus terminal for their trip back home. I told her I'd see her soon although I did not know exactly how soon "soon" should be. She was my best friend. Time didn't matter.

As I drove away, I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw her standing by the roadside near the bus terminal in her green shirt and jeans.

I missed it. I missed the vision of white.