Bump and Brunch

Last Sunday I 'treated' my parents and siblings for brunch at Hawaiian Bar-b-q (The Boutique Hotel, Tagaytay). I got there early, ahead of my parents and siblings. And I bumped into...JIGSAW!


Jigsaw by Stip. Stip by Jigsaw

Hehe.. haven't seen him in a year, and we were both surprised to see each other there. We were airsoft buddies, and now we both belong to the same photo community (smugmug). We even have the same digital SLR camera (and even bought it at around the same time)!

After some quick chit-chat, Jigsaw had to leave with wifey.

My family arrived a few minutes later, and everyone ate heartily. Pa was happy with the ribs I ordered, while Ma was fascinated with the pinaputok na talakitok. My parents were so happy with the food that they even had one of the ribs I ordered as "off-limits" because they're having it to-go.

Sunday was so relaxing... oh yeah.

PHO-TU-LA ni Geland

Obviously, Geland has been over-hyper-active recently (because of the steroids in his meds) that he found the time to construct and send this photo-poem feature to my mailbox on a sunday morning.

text and photos courtesy of Geland G.

ISANG PAGKILANLAN SA MANUNYUT

Mabusisi,
Maantabay,
Gala,
Mapagkumbaba,
At kahit pagal na,
ay pipiliting abutin pa rin ang nais tahakin.
BOW.

Ma and the Cooking Pots

Part of my daily routine goes something like this:

*cellphone ringing*
Me: Hello, good morning Mrs. Cruz.
Ma: (in her best English tone) Who's this?
Me: Wahahaha. Ako kaya!
Ma: Yes, what can I do for you Mr. Stephen Cruz?
...
..
.

Ma was never a career woman, so I kid her occassionally by being a very formal person whenever I call her up on her mobile phone. For variety, I do not call her at a specific time of the day; I call her at random hours. Thus, I'd catch her sometimes in the palengke, or at my tita's house, or in the mall with Pa, or accompanying my kid sister to her school or even when she's just half-awake.

Ma was my primary influence in my cooking capability. I was her kitchen assistant when I was younger. She taught me how to fry, boil, stew, broil, chop, marinate, grill and bake. She shared me her tips on how to select meat, poultry and fish from the wet market. She overlooked how I clean up after my kitchen activities, the requirement being that the kitchen has to be spotless after I'm done.

Of course, I and my siblings (there were 8 of us) were bound to leave the family house sooner or later because of our work assignments. But she looks forward to us calling her that we'd be 'home' for the weekend so she can bring out her cooking pots.

The cooking pots are Ma's treasures. She's acquired them over the years -- some were gifts, others were specific purchases abroad and a few which were handed over by lola to her. The pots vary in color, craftsmanship and size too. She has enough pots to ensure that whenever our family hosts a family reunion, there's enough lutong-bahay to feed about fifty people (that's the size of our extended family).

The cooking pots tell whose special day is it for the family as judged by Ma. All we have to do is march to the kitchen and look at the pot's contents. If the pot contains sinigang na baboy at baka, then Ma's expecting me to be home. If it's chicken afritada, then my brother Wowie is the house's guest of honor. Monggo and fried chicken for my brother Tweet, kare-kare for my eldest sis, ginisang upo at hipon for my youngest sister, morcon for my doctor-sister, adobo at bistek for my youngest brother and paksiw na lechon for special occasions. How much the pot contains indicate how many of us will be home, and what the pot contains tell us who is it that Ma misses most among us.

If ever I arrive home and Ma is not there to greet me (as she's probably visiting one of her friends or is at the mall), I know that a glance at the kitchen stove with a pot of freshly cooked viand will be there to welcome me and my siblings.

That's my Ma and her cooking pots. Advanced happy birthday!

This post is in tribute to Ma.
Priscilla 'BABY' Reyes Cruz
April 21, 1946
still alive, healthy and cooks special meals for us
looking forward to her first apo

Bawal Mapikon

Haaay... I just need to vent these out here.

FIRST: XXX PEOPLE SURVEY
In the company XXX where I work in, the People Survey for the last period was (as I expected) to be a big blow to management. Almost every key indicator dropped down, evidence that our workforce is not in total agreement with how the company and its management treats us. By 'treat' I'm referring to the whole package: professional, social, renumeration, career, leadership and equity.

The worst thing I can say about management is that they're almost like the trapos. Puro dialogues at engagements, but no action so far. Where's the action? It's really smart of them not to commit any promises to the workforce otherwise they really will be like trapos -- hanggang pangako lang ang kaya.

The activist in me is coming out.

SECOND: YYY GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Pardon me if I spoke too strong in our club's general assembly, but I am exercising my right to speak and assert my opinion.

For the coming elections, I am voting 'NO' on the proposed changes of the membership guidelines of the club.

I'm really disappointed with the Club Committee.

THIRD: My Game Has Limits
There's a limit to my skill as an 'athlete'. I'm not that good to reprogram my reflexes in an instant and hence the frustration of my partner's becoming evident. I should have walked out on the game, but doing that is already throwing away my manners.

The reason why I love sports is the same for why I love video games: I discover and develop my skills on my own. No formal instruction, no training camps, no hassles. I play not really to compete but to enjoy a few hours of sweat.

I think a vacation is in order. :D It'll be nice to just laze at the beach under the shade reading a book and sipping a cool strawberry melon shake.

Galera 16.04.07

The beach, the babes and funky hairdos.






Puerto Galera: Round-trip ferry ticket: 340 pesos. Port fee: 10 pesos. Fruit shakes: 55-70 pesos. 50-minute massage: 200 pesos. Henna tattoo: 350 pesos. Grilled hotdog: 25 pesos.

Where I Went for Holy Week

Batangas. Stip, Emer, Geland and Jason Wall. Non-stop driving. Haunted bahay na pula. Banaue Viewpoint. Batad Terraces. Tapiyya Falls. 4060 stone steps. Great pictures. Ilob Riverside Inn. Sagada. Yoghurt House. Lumiang-Sumaguing caves. Spelunking. Hanging coffins. Echo Valley. St. Mary’s Church. Videoke. Emer’s birthday. San Mig Light. T-shirts. Halsema Highway. Highest point marker. Trinidad Valley. Baguio. Session Road. Nevada Square. Flu. Rest. Breakfast and taho. Dominican hill and the Diplomat hotel. Ghosts. Travel home.

BAHAY NA PULA


We departed from Batangas at two-thirty in the morning on Holy Thursday and six hours later we decided to show our American guest Jason one of the more famous haunted houses in Philippine lore -- the old red house in Bulacan. Almost covered in dense overgrowth, the bahay na pula still looked eerie despite the morning light. Based on oral accounts, the house at one time served as a brothel during the Japanese occupation of the country. Comfort women were brought here and locked inside where they were raped and tortured. Numerous TV features have been done depicting the house to be full of wandering and restless spirits.

We didn't have the chance to enter the house itself. But as one who gets to see ghosts since nursery school, I didn't enter the grounds. While taking these photos, I was hoping to catch some of them on 'film' but no success there for me. Looks like ghosts don't present themselves on digital media.


BANAUE

By three in the afternoon, our group arrived at Banaue. We got a decent room (and cheap!) at ILOB RIVERSIDE INN. After settling our luggage, we hailed two tricycles to bring us to Banaue viewpoint for our first glimpse of the rice terraces.

Dinner was at the People's Lodge and Restaurant. While waiting for our food, Gel experimented with the monochrome features of my camera.

Richard and Kath joined our group (they left Manila at midnight, arrived at Banaue at 730 am!) the following day. We chartered a jeepney the following day to bring us to Batad village where the postcard-perfect type terraces are located. It's a bumpy 90-minute ride to get to the jump-off point, followed by a relatively easy 40-minute hike to reach the village itself. The ride and the hike itself was worth the view of the amphitheater-shaped terraces.

The next 30 minutes of hiking challenged our leg strength and sense of balance since we have to walk along the ridges of the terraces and navigate through the stone steps in order to reach one of Banaue's secrets -- Tapiyya falls. We rested here for about 15 minutes while Jason took a swim to reach the falls. A group photo is in order.




. .
. .
. .
Climbing back up to our rented jeepney took us twice as long to complete. Emerson counted 2030 stone steps (that excludes straight paths) for us to reach our destination, one-way. Gel coined a good term for our Batad/Tapiyya trek -- it was an honorable sacrifice for us. The timing for this activity is good -- we trekked for four hours on almost-empty stomachs (we skipped breakfast and lunch). Christians contemplate on sacrifices and acts of penitence on Good Friday to share in the suffering of the Lord.

We left Banaue (and Richard and Kath) at 430pm. With aching legs, tired bodies but lots of pictures and a wonderful experience, we drove northwards. We need to be at Sagada before the town's curfew of 9 pm.

Trip details: Ilob Inn: 1000 pesos per night for a room with private toilet/bath. Room can sleep four (two double-sized beds). Jeepney rental to Batad: 1700 pesos round trip for the whole jeepney. Guide to Batad falls: 250 pesos for every group of 3. Food: budget for 100-120 Php/meal; the red rice is great.

SAGADA

Sagada is still charming, as charming as a certain woman I know. The cool mountain air, clean streets and magnificent location is pleasantly hypnotizing. Visiting Sagada reminded me of my day trip a year ago to Bowral, a small town in Australia famous for its cool weather and tulip gardens.

There are plenty of things to do in this laid-back town. Top on the list is to do caving at Sumaguing and Lumiang caves. Our group started at Lumiang cave -- cool, dark and damp. And you're greeted at the cave entrace with an array of stacked wooden coffins. For about three hours we descended the cave network, balancing on boulders, twisting through some manhole-sized crevices and wading across waist-deep pools of very cold water (guaranteed to shrink your balls :D). The natural rock formations and great cave 'halls' we came across were astounding.

Echo Park offers rock-wall climbing, or shouting at the ridges (for echoes), and an up-close-and-personal view of the Hanging Coffins. People who want to be creeped out can hang around at the local cemetery enroute to Echo Park.

Mass can be heard at St Mary's Church.

There are hiking trails all over Sagada leading to some falls and views of some minor rice terraces.

And of course, a Sagada tourist shouldn't leave without having a meal at the Yoghurt House, having a sip of their local mountain tea and getting a shirt which says "I got this shirt at Sagada."

Our American friend Jason found Sagada so charming that he declared that he's going back there in the future "for a month or so" and just relax.



Trip details: Rocky Valley Inn: 400 pesos/bed/night. Each bed can sleep two (a bit cramped though, so all of us got a bed each). Communal bathroom. Caving: 300 pesos per head, minimum group of 4. Comes with two guides. Meals: about 100 Php/meal, except at Yoghurt House (250 Php/meal).


Baguio: the Diplomat Hotel

The hordes of people at Baguio still mark it as the summer capital of the country. I've been making trips to Baguio with family and friends ever since I was a toddler, so I've seen it evolve from a charming urban town to a congested city. And it so happen that I came down with a case of flu, so I spent a good part of our stay there under two comforters and two blankets.

Before travelling back to Manila, Gel wanted to see the Dominican Hill. I wasn't sure what he was referring to but when we got to the site, I instantly knew that place. At the top of the Dominican Hill is the Diplomat Hotel, a condemned-slash-abandoned building which used to be a convent, then a hospital and finally a hotel afterwhich it got razed in a fire and further damaged by the 1990 earthquake. It now looks like a modern ruin, but its appeal to me is mainly because it's haunted.

As a ruin, the place is in good shape. Details of the stone masonry and wooden tiling can still be seen at some places. The bare corridors and rooms allows you to imagine several scenes of what the place could have looked like in the past. The stone fountains in the small courtyard at the center of the hotel add to the eerieness of the building. A 15-foot stone cross at the roof gives an excellent contrast to the hotel's gloom.


.......END

Challenging Faith

A couple of weeks ago I decided on a compulsive buy at Powerbooks --- The Templar Legacy (Steve Berry). I’ve had this fascination with the Templar Knights since I graduated from college after discovering its connection with De Molay (of which one of my ninongs tried to recruit me before, and my dad protested vocally against it) and early Christian history, specifically the Crusades.

Presented in a fictional format similar to Angels and Demons (Dan Brown), the novel embedded a lot of researched historical and forensic facts in its storyline which are hard to dismiss. And these elements challenged one’s understanding of his/her [Christian] faith.

The academic climax in the book made my ‘reading-for-entertainment’ into a ‘reading-for-reflection’. It pondered on the following:

Why do the four Gospels contradict each other and show high levels of inconsistencies when compared side-by-side?
”Why” and “how” did Christ resurrect?
If proof of Christ’s divinity/non-divinity was discovered, what becomes of Christianity?

Let’s take a step back.

Early civilizations didn’t have access to information as much as we do now.
Men before were content on being herded; they depend on others to convince them of their faith. There were consequences then for those who questioned what is preached.

Men now strive to learn.
Men now ask.
Men now challenge.

Last night when I finally put down the book I took a moment to reflect on what I’ve just read. I have a lot of arguments and counter-arguments in my head, taking both sides of the various issues at once. I would have written them here, but I wouldn’t want to spoil anyone’s future read of the book.

At the end of my self-imposed mental debate, I concluded that I will stand by my faith. Not because it’s convenient, but because I’ve molded my life around it. I’ve been taught that faith is composed of beliefs and religious teachings, but I’ve rationalized that faith steered me in the way I live life AND the way I live life steers my faith.

There must be some divine or cosmic force, or perhaps personal intuition, that compelled me to pick out that book. It's a timely read (for me) for the Holy Week.

SAGUIJO

Mac missed a lot when he skipped out on the SAGUIJO gimik with Emer and Jake. In what was supposed to be his birthday celebration, we decided to go ahead with the plan sans Mac and enjoyed the venue's line-up of bands and performers for the night.

The night's climax? See for yourself below. All the photos below were taken by me. (clap clap clap!)





Francis M still rocks. He's got the character, charisma and showmanship to sustain it.

Weekend Tidbits

Friday Night

Tinters and Buddy just got back from their Eurasian holiday, so we got together with MJ for dinner at Teriyaki Boy in Greenbelt. The funny thing about their trip is that Buddy bunks in a room with Tin's dad, while Tin bunks in with her mom. =)

They got me ref magnets from Egypt, Istanbul and Greece (great additions to my mom's collection!). The two of them were also sporting amulets bearing their names in hieroglyphics (ultra cool!).

Originally, we were planning to go at a bar after dinner, but I guess the heat (and MJ's excitement over her new K800i cellphone) got to them and decided to call the night early. We adjourned at around 930pm.

One of my friends from college txted me at around 10pm, asking if I'm free to join their group for a badminton game at POWERSMASH in Makati. Since I'm still hyper at that time, I went for it.

It was a great session (we played until 1230am!), and I was able to improve a bit on my defense.

The bad part about the evening is that when we trooped back to the locker room, we were burglarized! My cellphone was missing (with 4 others), and another 2 lost their wallets.

Bad trip. I loved that SLVRL7 phone. Huhuhu...

Saturday

Spent the most part of the day filing a police report at Makati over our lost items from the previous night, and having my SIM card barred and availing of SIM card replacement. Tiring!

Late afternoon, I was shopping for baptismal gifts for a friend of mine.

In the evening, I met up with Emerson and Jake to check out the scene at SAGUIJO. See my separate post on it!


Sunday

I was asleep for most of the day. In the afternoon I had some of my photos printed for my photobook project and shopped for some groceries. Played badminton in the evening with Chito, Geland, Gel, Julius, Alvin and Bai. By 9 pm, I was cooking dinner for myself (I had a craving for my own-cooked sinigang na baboy at baka, hehehe...)

Fifth

Afternoon wind of March
blowing your dress
and the sun striking your face
is an image I'll regret.

It's an image I'll never forget.