somewhere above Puget Sound

Bound for Sea-Tac airport, 9:37am the 14th in the Philippines, 6:37pm the 13th in Seattle.

The captain just announced our descend towards Seattle, I opened the window shade expecting darkness but was greeted by sunshine.

It already feels different, the clouds even look different, no more humidity, no more hard rain, no more heat. Seattle when I arrive will be 56 degrees. The water below looks cold and uninviting unlike the warm tropical waters of Alegria.

Leaving Cebu wasn't hard, hugged my cousins, said my goodbyes. It was different, I wasn't as sad, I could sense my return. My chest wasn't heavy, no hollowness inside, suprisingly no tears. I was excited to return to Seattle...to return to my family.

But now, now as we descend...now comes the tears...why NOW? I wasn't expecting this to happen. I will miss Manila. Will definitely miss Cebu. The office of PCIJ where I spent many long days...god I can no longer hold back the tears, the page blurs in front of me.

I hate how I can return to this country, leaving a place I hold very close to my heart behind. It is a blessing and a curse. I have dreaded this moment of reflection, knowing I would breakdown. The last two months and one week to be exact have been a blur, days of confusion, excitment, and Red Horse...mwhahaha.

Looking back now, I feel that I have accomplished nothing. More of a waste of my time? I don't know. I should have done more, seen more, I expected much more and I'm coming back empty handed. What did I learn? Did I learn anything? Have I found myself? Was that why I went back? Have I been transformed? What does that even mean?

What about death? People would say I would've done great things. But I'm here on this plane, alive and well...will I do great things? What do people expect of and from me?

I will disappoint you all.

Tears of joy, regret, despair. PADD, FASA, graduation, Fulbright, money...I can't handle the pressures. I have experiences to share but what have I done that is worth telling?

Tears.

I can see the I-90 bridge...we're getting closer.

We've finally landed. I'm back home. Home? Is this home?

Back in the first world, it is what I've known for fourteen years of my life. This woman next to me probably thinks I'm crazy...why is this stupid girl crying and writing.

I feel thankful, grateful of having the opportunity to experience and live the life that I live.

I don't think I'm making any sense right now.

I feel cursed with a wound I've inflicted on myself.

Bottled tears of memory, history and uncertainty.

Shit. Need to stop crying, immigrations/customs...need to look normal.

Goodbye Maynila!

I arrived in Cebu yesterday afternoon. Will be here until the 12th. My coworkers from PCIJ were really chill they took me out the night before I left Manila. Will try to post as often as I can, but won't have access to the internet as often as I did working at the office. See you all soon.

congrats

Congratulations Mark & Emily! Saw the pictures of your beautiful day and I sure did miss an Ygona family extravaganza....loved the mini cooper get-way-car.

Taho for almusal (breakfast)

I have it practically every morning. A mixture of sweet syrup, soybean chunks, and tapioca balls. Manong usually comes by the office around 9:30am, I hear him from my desk at the office scream,"TA--HOOO"...then I rush down and pay him 10pesos.

Table for One

Last night I ate dinner at Little Asia: Symphony of Flavors on Tomas Morato. Spent 315P for a bowl of rice, chicken satay, and bottomless iced tea. They stuck me in the corner near the stairs. The walls were of a vibrant red color, reminded me of my brother’s condo in Belltown. Considered about ordering their fried frog legs, but opted not to, would have ordered it if I was with someone more daring…Megan comes into mind.

When I eat out by myself, I usually try to look as if I’m busy and occupied while waiting for my food. I brought along a copy of 1984 last night, spaced off while pretending to read. Whenever I eat out by myself here, I walk into a restaurant and there is not a single person other than myself eating alone. Everyone is with family and friends, and I try not to get too homesick but I can’t help but reminisce the weekly dinner’s my siblings and I would have in Seattle. Our favorite and frequent stops: dim sum at New Kowloon, Japanese cuisine at one of the tatami rooms in Maneki, and “real” Chinese food at Ocean City Café in the International District. I’m also reminded of my best friends at the “lambda lambda cool” house. How we have our cultural nights once a month, which just consisted of eating out at restaurants that served a specific type of ethnic cuisine Ethiopian, Greek, Persian, Indian etc.

I use to hate eating alone. I still kind of do, but it has grown on me. I’m more aware of my surroundings when I’m by myself. I noticed that the people at the table next to me were speaking Chinese (I couldn’t make out which language, reminded me of that Mano Po movie). They were Chinese Filipino or is it Filipino Chinese? Distinguished themselves from the rest by speaking another language, but all I could think about was how they were using forks and spoons like Filipinos do. Why didn’t they use chopsticks I asked? Do they know how to use chopsticks?

Someone at the other table was celebrating a birthday. The waiters came out with a cake and a single candle. They sang happy birthday in Chinese and then in English. I thought this was interesting, two foreign languages…is there a birthday song in Filipino or in the other vernacular languages? --I thought to myself. I don’t remember anyone singing to me in Cebuano on my birthday. Maybe I’ll make that a special request on my 22^nd birthday next week.

Newsdesk Saturday Night

You can kind of make out the tip of my purple Nike dunks on the lower left hand corner of this photo, that is how much fun I had Saturday night.

Saturday started off with Edward coming to pick me up at my place. He needed to buy deodorant badly so I took him to the 7-11. We then headed over to have breakfast in Seattle at Seattle’s Best Coffee. Edward sat in the smoking section while I glared at him on the other side of the glass partition.

We headed over to the ABS-CBN studios to check out this store called Magnet that supposedly had some films worth looking through. We left in a taxi to the Kamuning MRT station. Rode the MRT to the Magallanes stop. MRT is convenient but not when it is packed and everyone is all up in your space. This shim (she/him) walked into the cramped MRT cart right next to Edward and I. Shim’s hair was still wet, seemed like shim just got out of the shower. I commented to Edward, “Shim smells really good.” Edward smirks, couldn’t say anything because he could not deny the fact that this guy did in fact smell really good.

Got off at the Magallanes stop, walked over the footbridge to Athena’s place. We were early so we ended up looking through all of Athena’s books. She has tons and tons of books. Behind the books on her shelf were more books, books that she had already read. Finally people started to show up to this cassette listening party. It was quite interesting, I remember listening to one entitled Indie-nesia. We had chips, corn nuts, Oreos, and soda. Edward started talking and acting like himself, there is actually an Edward counterpart here, his name is Paolo, kept Edward on his toes and I think they could talk for hours. Edward actually shut up for once. Finally found someone that would insistently argue with him and that didn’t put up with all his bullshit.

We left to attend a book launching party at Newsdesk, this bar/café on Timog near my place. Khavn invited us to hear his band The Brockas perform. Met Edward’s Monina, have yet to meet Joan though. I ended up dancing in front of strangers with Wawi Navarroza the vocalist of The Late Isabel, she’s also an award-winning visual artist. That’s actually her performing in the picture, well her black boots anyway.

Pictures

Exploring Tomas Morato

Sorry for the blurry jeepney shot. But, it does capture my adventure on Tomas Morato and Timog Ave.

Last Saturday I decided to explore the neighboring streets on foot and on jeepney. There are so many places to eat on Tomas Morato, to me it is comparable to the Ave at UW. Coffee shops, fast-food, two burger joints, and a couple of bookstores.

I decided to eat pho for lunch at Pho Hoa. It tasted the same, it cost the same too. But, the typical "student-on-a-budget" atmosphere was most certainly not there.

Went to Popular bookstore and bought three books for my growing Filipiniana library =) hahaha. Ended up at the ABS-CBN network, walked around inside, saw a couple cute shops, and then decided to have a foot spa (yeah, I know, extravagant, but I needed a little R & R time). Started walking back to Tomas Morato, when it started to drizzle, then it quickly turned to a downpour. I ran quickly to a nearby coffee shop, ordered green tea, and read the introduction to "Venerating without Understanding."

Timog area (from wikipedia)

Surrounding Timog Avenue (South Avenue, Carlos P.Garcia Avenue ) and Tomas Morato Avenue is a popular entertainment area. Located along these two avenues are many fine-dining restaurants and bars. Discotheques, Karaoke joints and comedy bars provide patrons with all-night-long recreation. It is home to many gay bars such as Chicos, Adonis and Gigolo, which are popular for their lively night time entertainment.

In the South Triangle (the area bounded by Quezon Avenue (R-7), Timog Avenue ( South Avenue,Carlos P.Garcia , and EDSA) are located the head offices of ABS-CBN and GMA Network, the top TV media companies in the country. Most Filipino entertainment is produced here, and it is also the home of many Filipino celebrities.

Most of the streets in the surrounding area were named in honor of the 20 boy scouts who died in a plane crash en route to joining the 11th World Jamboree. A memorial stands in the center of a rotunda at the intersection of Timog and Tomas Morato avenues. Because of this, Timog area is also often called Scout Area. In fact, one of the barangays (small local government unit) in the area is called Laging Handa (always ready), the motto of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines.

My life in a bag

This bag hung in front of my dying sampaguitas has come to represent my life in the Philippines. It smells of sweat, humidity and pollution mixed with the overpowering stench of cigarette smoke from the clubs, bars, coffee shops, and the 24-hour internet café I frequent where smoking is allowed.

It’s stained by pen marks and ink blots from pens exploding in my bag. It contains a small notepad for when I need to jot down numbers, or names, or ideas, it is so handy for someone as forgetful as myself. A green handkerchief that should be washed is in the right pocket, used to wipe the sweat from my forehead, to wear as a headband on the opened bus from Cebu City en route to my mother’s province of Alegria, and to cover my mouth and nose from the exhaust and pollution when traveling in public transportation.

In that same pocket are the keys to my two rooms and anti-bacterial gel. In the left pocket are my coin purse and a wad of tissue for you know, the public restrooms. Inside is my handy dandy Citi-Atlas map of Metro Manila, my umbrella for when it rains, for it rains often in Manila, my camera, sometimes my video camera (my bag gets kind of heavy so I don’t carry this at all times) to document my stay here, my voice recorder for interviews, and my cell phone charger. My wallet is also inside, bug repellent, and a water bottle. My bag and my life experiences in this past month has sometimes become heavy to carry, cumbersome at times, and extravagant at points.

childhood

Yesterday was Kaya's fourth birthday. One of the most adorable four year olds I've ever met. Her dad Alecks works here at PCIJ. Everyone was busy yesterday, working late because of a whistleblower leak on the election scandal from 2004.

And of course, me, I don't really know what the hell is going on because I'm not here in the Philippine year round...it's hard to catch up with all this current and past events in politics shit. So, I decide to take Kaya and her older sister, Marlee to get dessert at the Cheescake around the corner on Tomas Morato.

Kaya's eyes grew big at seeing all the decadent pastries and cakes. We decide to get 3 different slices of cakes and bring it back to the office. We even got four candles for her to blow out. It was really cute, she could tell that Tagalog wasn't my native tongue and started to speak in English to me. I felt more comfortable practicing my Tagalog skills to this four year old =)

Kaya blew out the candles but before she did we told her to make a wish..."I wish for a skirt"..."a long one" is what she said out loud.

I was talking to Edward last night, well texting him. There is this deal with GLOBE users were you pay 15 pesos to have unlimited texting for 24 hours. I told him about Kaya and how I wish I was I was that age again. To be carefree, unaware of grown-up issues and problems, just having fun. He disagrees, being a kid to him "sucks". I guess I just remember my adolescent years vividly and I wouldn't mind being a kid for a day again.

Edward like a kid in a candy store: Filipiniana section at Power Bookstore, Greenbelt.


Filipino version of "America is in the Heart"--Carlos Bulosan

Yellow Umbrella

This young boy looking no older than seven years old, loiters barefooted in the rain on Tomas Morato Avenue.

He waits playing with a loose red brick on the sidewalk in front of him, rain quickly collecting, making a puddle where he passes the time by dropping the brick over and over again.

He waits for a patron in one of the restaurants that he himself has probalby never stepped foot in.

He waits, umbrella in hand for a passenger from a jeepney or taxi that is caught unexpectedly in the downpour umbrella-less. And even if he were to walk on the tips of his toes hold the umbrella with his arms stretched to the sky, he still probably wouldn't be able to hold his yellow umbrella above the head of an average Filipino.

He waits for a private vehicle to assist in parking or to hold the traffic for them on the busy street.

He waits for the pocket change for his small service...he continues to wait.

Tomas Morato is perpendicular to the street I live on. It is home to multiple restaurants, coffee shops, and places to "gimmick". Every time I get into a taxi bound for home I say, "sa Scout de Guia Manong, malapit sa Tomas Morato" [Scout de Guia Manong, near Tomas Morato] and the driver will almost always know exactly where to take me.

I sometimes order food or coffee in these nearby establishments, especially when Tita Lina or Kuya Nonong aren't selling food in their makeshift canteens. I always see these boys when it starts to rain on Tomas Morato, who knows, these are probably the same nameless faces I see selling sampaguita at nightfall.

When will I ever get use to seeing this? Will I ever become numb to the stark contrasts of wealth and poverty? How can the rich and the privileged ignore this everyday? How does this boy survive day by day?

August 15, 1992

Fourteen years ago on this date, my family left the Philippines to start a new life in the States. An anniversary of sorts, I guess.

I was seven at the time. I remember being excited to fly on an airplane for the first time, I had imagined that the U.S. was above the Philippines the snow acting as the clouds. My reasoning was that why else would you have to fly into the sky, but to land somwhere up higher?

It's kind of ironic that I'm back here in the Philippines on this date. Come to think of it, I was also here for our thirteenth anniversary last year.

Original Pilipino Music

I'm back in QC. I'm sick, I've been travelling a lot, all I did in Cebu was sleep....except for last Friday when I partied with my cousins till' 3am. I don't think the cold shower this morning helped either.

Will be seeing Edward tomorrow morning, he's a little overwhelmed. I'll see how he's doing at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, livin' it up first world style.

That concert was on Wednesday, I took my video camera...the concert was alright. It was pretty weird, everyone was lounging in their seats listening to these live rock bands. Our table was to the right of the stage, I was eating french fries and drinking a Red Horse while these acts were going nuts on stage. Maybe at a different venue things will be different. Planning on checking out this band called Sandwich at the Saguio Cafe at the end of the month.

I didn't enjoy the hosts for the event, I think that's what bothered me the most. In between acts these two DJs from a local radio station would come out on stage and interview the bands and give out prizes. But these DJs were both I believe Filipino Americans, well I know for sure the guy was and the female DJ didn't even look Filipino. I don't know why, but I think I really got pissed off because these two hosts were supposed to represent OPM rockbands this evening. They couldn't pronounce the name of Rocksteddy's album, they forgot Hale's album title, and they kept saying sorry to the audience members for butchering their Filipino names. I was like good god, it would be like having me represent OPM up there, I was really pissed.

Cebu

From August 4--9 I will be in Cebu visiting family and hanging out with my older brother Joseph. I'm excited, I need a little break from work, but I'll also be picking up some documents for Tess. You know me, mixing work and hanging out is how I roll. Will catch up with you guys next week. Peace!

Yellowcab Pizza

Just bought my ticket to see Bamboo, Hale, Sugarfree, Rocksteddy, and Barbie Almabis scheduled to play at Dish next Wednesday. The ticket only cost me P350, not bad for 4 acts. The ticket lady said it was first come first serve and I was thinking, oh okay, this is a general admission concert. Then I rembered how it is here, first come first serve for tables. People sit at tables, order drinks and food and watch the show. It's so laid back, I hate it, I want to be smashed up right against the stage. Maybe at a different venue like Saguio Cafe.

I'm still here at work, it's 9:04pm, I've been here at work since 9am. Well, I left for a couple of hours to get some documents. I should go home, but I have stuff to finish before I leave for Cebu on Friday. It's okay, Avie a researcher is still here doing work too. We just ordered pizza from Yellowcab...yum yummy in my tummy =) Was going to get KFC delivered, but found out they don't have biscuits here. How are you supposed to eat your mashed potatoes and gravy without your biscuit? AND they don't serve mac and cheese either, I guess it's a trade off with having rice that comes with your fried chicken. I don't know what I'm complaining about, should get back to making graphs.

Photographs from Ilocos trip

Ilocos Norte & Sur: July 26-28

Sorry for not blogging in a while. Here’s a re-cap of my trip to Ilocos.

7/25—10pm

Bus departs, Cubao PARTAS Bus Terminal. Partas in Ilocano means fast I think. The fare cost P826 for the deluxe bus, pretty expensive for a bus ride, but then again it was a nine and a half hour long trip. The deluxe bus was super nice, the seats reclined, you could compare it to sitting in first or business class on an airplane. Actually, we even had assigned seats too like on a plane. Oh man… the assigned seats. So, Tess and I didn’t reserve tickets so by the time we bought ours we had the last two seats on the bus. So it was similar to sitting in first class, but on an airplane in constant turbulence, if you know what I mean.

7/26—7:30am

Bus arrives in Laoag [lawag] City, Ilocos Norte. Tess didn’t expect to arrive this early, she didn’t want to wake-up our contact who was supposed to pick us up so, we take a tricycle to the nearest Jollibee. Jollibee wasn’t opened yet when we arrived, but they let us in anyways with all our luggage. I should have taken a picture because before the Jollibee workers served breakfast, they all gathered together for morning prayer and then they raised their right hands and recited the Jollibee Code of Service (?) Someone should look for it online. Has anyone worked at Burger King or McDonalds? Do workers there have a similar ritual?

Laoag is interesting, there are no taxis, you basically get around on foot or by riding tricycles, I’d never seen so many tricycles in one city before. When we traveled around doing interviews in the different provinces of Ilocos Norte I saw so many caribous and rice fields. People were out in the mud planting rice…hard work and time consuming. After dinner and conducting interviews Tess and I decided to take a bus to Vigan, Ilocos Sur.

Vigan is about an hour and a half bus ride from Laoag. So, we head over to the Partas terminal, ask for two tickets to Vigan, the man behind the counter points at the bus that just left the terminal, “there goes your bus to Vigan”. The tricycle man (what do you call the tricycle guy, a tricyclist?) said something in Ilocano, Tess and I don’t understand him, but get in the tricycle anyways. Tess, “I think he might’ve said that he can catch up to the bus”. The tricycle doesn’t follow the bus, instead it takes a different route, goes around all the speed bumps, barely misses a pedestrian, and he abruptly stops in front of this bridge. Tess and I get out, we looked behind us, and there it was.... the Partas bus to Vigan, talk about a high speed chase, it was definitely an adventure.

Bus arrives in Vigan, Ilocos Sur at around 6:30pm. Vigan is a heritage city, “for more than 3 centuries it was the center of political, religious, commercial, social and cultural activities in the north” ---tourist brochure. The well-preserved Spanish colonial town is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site and is home to Gov. Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson, a whistleblower to then President Joseph Estrada, who was later on impeached. But, by the time we got to Vigan it was already late, we walked through the empty cobblestone streets. The stores were already closed, no one really around, sometimes a calesa would pass by…it was eerie. Tess and I checked out two of the old mansions that were converted into hotels. We pretended to be interested on spending the night, but really, we just wanted to look at the buildings from the inside.

That was that, after touring for about an hour it started to rain so we ate halo-halo at Chowking and waited for the bus back to Laoag. Vigan, an old heritage Spanish colonial town, complete with its modern day fast food amenities.

Wednesday was a long day, we didn’t get back to the hotel until 11pm, and the night before, we didn’t get much sleep on the bus ride. Not to mention that we spent the whole entire day going from town to town, but still managed to do some site seeing at the end of the day.

7/27

7:20am—woke up. We ate breakfast and left to do more interviews for the day. We went to Bangui part of Ilocos Norte to do an interview. Bangui I believe is about an hour away from Laoag. We stopped to take pictures of the windmills in Bangui, wish we could have gone closer though, it was an interesting site, these huge white structures right on the beach. Before reaching Bangui we sped through the town of Burgos, we didn’t stop but, I did see the Cape Bojeador Lighthouse from the road. After the interview in Bangui, we went to Pagudpud because it was the next town over, took pictures of the beach and stuck my feet in the South China Sea, then we left after 15 minutes.

7/28

Did some more interviews. We toook the 9:30pm bus back to the Cubao bus terminal. They were showing the movie SPEED on the ride back. I was watching a movie on this bus, about a bus getting blown up. It was strange passing through the towns late at night because everytime we passed the town centers there would be security check points, we'd have to slow down and outside were these guys with guns, the PNP (Philippine National Police).

Fragrance and Loneliness

I’ve fallen in love….

with another fragrance besides my fabric softener =)

Fallen in love with the scent of the Philippine national flower, the sampagita. I mean I’ve always enjoyed the fragrance, but this time the flower greets me every single time I walk into my room.

The fragrance is foreign, but familiar to me at the same time. Familiar because I expect it every time I come into my room. Foreign because it’s a flower I only encounter when I visit the Philippines. I really do like the familiarity it adds to my sparse room. Besides the sampagita the picture of my family and the square pillow I stole from Shayna, everything else is borrowed.

Being alone in Manila I’ve been searching for familiarity. Whether be it in fragrances, taste, pictures, people, even a familiar routine. This past week was tough with work, but even harder because it’s been difficult to find distractions after work that would take my mind off being alone in Manila. This lonely feeling gets to me especially when I’m eating dinner by myself. I know really lame huh? I’ve been so spoiled by always having family and friends around that it’s only been a week and I’m already feeling like this.

I go to Seattle’s Best almost every morning, I order the same thing, the same server asks for my name, and I wait it out for a couple of days in hopes they’d remember me. And when that day came when the server said, “Carmel, right?” –that made me smile just a tad bit inside. I know, I know, it’s a pretty first world experience, I might try a different café nearby, but the Seattle’s Best server already remembers me! And they accept credit cards there.

Since I’m at work all day instead of in a setting where I would meet people my age everyday like UP, I have yet to meet my first Filipino friend. I’ve hung out with my teachers from last year and they’ve helped out a lot, but they’ve got lives already and I don’t want to take up their time. So, I’ve been hanging out with the PSP folks and Karleen a little bit…(I know Edward, they’re Fil-Ams and you suggested that I hang out with Filipinos instead of Fil-Ams because I’m in search of my Philippines yade-yade-yada). But you wait until you get here, after I leave and Allison and Aaron, it’ll get hard…or maybe it’s just me and plus you have family in Manila and I don’t. Anyways, so it’s been really chill hanging out with the PSP folks and Karleen, it’s nice to just hang out, have fun and forget about the hard stuff for a little bit. Plus, I’ve been able to ask them about their reasons for coming to the Philippines and I’ve started a blog for them so that it can be part of our website maybe. So see, some fun and work too at the same time.

Rain

The weather has been gloomy and rainy lately. The rain comes down pretty hard, wakes me up in the morning it stops umbrella-less people dead in their tracks as they wait out the rain under shelters. I remember telling Karleen to bring an umbrella to the Philippines, but she said, “I’m a hat person, I’ve got plenty of hats for protection and I’ve never owned or needed an umbrella.” I reminded her about this today while we were getting drenched going to Mass and she replied, “ha. Don’t remind me!” Today’s rain was as if…actually I don’t know how to describe it, I’ve encountered different types of rains. Sometimes it starts as slow trickles of raindrops, then out of nowhere it just comes pouring down, then back to trickling, then pouring rain again. Sometimes it rains really hard for 5 minutes then it goes away, this kind of rain could leave you drenched if you are caught unprepared. Other times it’s gradual, starts to trickle then the rain slowly works its way up to maximum full blast rain. Rain…reminds me of Seattle, I miss Seattle.

And oh yeah, there's a typhoon, typhoon Glenda, which explains all the rain.