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.
No comments:
Post a Comment