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