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Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Bataan in a Budget
Tomas Pinpin was the frirst ever Filipino Printer (nope, not like HP, more like Scholastic). He was also a writer and publisher from the municipality of Abucay, in Bataan. He is sometimes referred to as the "Prince of the Filipino Printers".
Because we missed our class's field trip to Bataan, the three of us (Bella, Danica and I) went to Binondo to get to know Tomas Pinpin, a Filipino hero from Bataan.
Click here to find out more about Tomas Pinpin!
Because we missed our class's field trip to Bataan, the three of us (Bella, Danica and I) went to Binondo to get to know Tomas Pinpin, a Filipino hero from Bataan.
Click here to find out more about Tomas Pinpin!
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Fireflies
– are the most amazing things in the world. There is something very innocent and pure about them – a place with fireflies is a place with magic.
I only ever travelled to one place with these curious creatures and that is my mother’s home in San Pedro, Camarines Norte.
It would be summer, but the temperature would be cold as city –Bers’, and I would stay outside the front door, looking at the pine tree outside my lolo’s house; I would hide behind a column because I thought if they saw me they wouldn’t come out.
And there, one by one, they would light up and the pine tree would look like a Christmas tree. Slowly, and my smile would creep up my face just as slowly.
I would stay outside until my fingers would grow numb from the evening cold, until my mother or my grandmother or anyone who noticed my absence first called me inside. Only then, only then would I leave and even then it would be reluctantly, because I didn’t want to leave my friends. Friends who didn’t even know I exist, and that I watched them every night, and that I loved them.
Friends that probably only lived for a day or two and whose sole purpose that my little three-year-old brain could comprehend was to light up that pine tree across the yard.
“Bem!”
Oops, gotta go.
I only ever travelled to one place with these curious creatures and that is my mother’s home in San Pedro, Camarines Norte.
It would be summer, but the temperature would be cold as city –Bers’, and I would stay outside the front door, looking at the pine tree outside my lolo’s house; I would hide behind a column because I thought if they saw me they wouldn’t come out.
And there, one by one, they would light up and the pine tree would look like a Christmas tree. Slowly, and my smile would creep up my face just as slowly.
I would stay outside until my fingers would grow numb from the evening cold, until my mother or my grandmother or anyone who noticed my absence first called me inside. Only then, only then would I leave and even then it would be reluctantly, because I didn’t want to leave my friends. Friends who didn’t even know I exist, and that I watched them every night, and that I loved them.
Friends that probably only lived for a day or two and whose sole purpose that my little three-year-old brain could comprehend was to light up that pine tree across the yard.
“Bem!”
Oops, gotta go.
Three More Days
(A J195 - Travel Journ - Article)
I did say I took this class because I needed to travel more. I love it when I travel – the feeling of moving from one place to another, buttocks hurting from the amount of time sitting on a bus, knowing there’s some beautiful (or not, but nevertheless, a) place waiting for me at the end of the journey.
I love new cultures, and I love eating food I haven’t tasted before. I love the difference of the smell of the air in the city and the province, the sun on my neck and the wind in my face, the rain penetrating the ground and releasing petrichor and visible stars and –
I did say I love to travel. But I didn’t say why.
You could say I was a well-travelled child. My mother took me to Legaspi every month when she would get her dental supplies and the dentures her patients ordered. She would buy me Funny Komiks and a tube of Smarties and we would go to McDonald’s and she would buy me a 6pc pack of Chicken McNuggets (I was a fat kid) – all these without fail. Every month. Until I turned four.
She had to leave, she said. It was only for three days, she said. I’d be back soon, she said.
Only the first one was true.
It’s not so dramatic, you see. She had to work abroad – for reasons a child couldn’t understand, the adults thought, and so nobody told me anything. And so I didn’t cry when she left – because she said she’d be back in three days’ time. I waited, and I waited, and I remember waiting. I don’t remember when I stopped, though.
And so the next time my mother came home, I was too old for Funny Komiks. Smarties had phased out. And I had grown sick of McNuggets.
Don’t get me wrong, I love her, I can say that so many times and you may not believe me but I don’t care because I do love her and there’s no doubt about that. But I don’t think I ever stopped waiting. For the Funny Komiks. For the Smarties. For the McNuggets. Every month. “Maybe after three more days” is what I still keep telling myself.
I love to travel – and I admit it’s probably because I’m looking for that feeling the monthly Legaspi trips gave me, something that I will never feel again.
So you see, it wasn’t even my going away that made me a changed person.
A Trip Down the Food-Memory Lane
I would say my title sounds cliché, just like the food at Guevarra’s.
Once a spa before it was turned into a restaurant, the house’s owners decided they wanted to do something different with it, and since it was an ancestral house among many others in San Juan, they thought it would be nice to turn it into a buffet restaurant.
My classmates and I paid 447Php for the buffet lunch in the acclaimed restaurant, and ate main dishes by none other than Chef Laudico himself and pastries by his wife Chef Jackie.
The restaurant is two years old, established in March 5, 2013. It offers caterings, and events hosting, weddings often being held at the garden. The house can accommodate 200 people, and it is mostly fully-booked especially at lunch time, when the food is cheapest. Weekends are more special because of seafood and other dishes, and they pride themselves for their roast beef, lechon, and leche flan.
It was nice seeing a restaurant so tastefully presented: Filipino, down to the core. It was situated in a good neighborhood as well, although not too accessible to the masses. Then again why would the masses want to pay 500 pesos for lunch?
As for the food itself, it was pleasant enough; I liked it – I would even say I loved it, especially the roast beef. But I didn’t taste anything different in the dishes. I thought they could be cooked – maybe even better – by my mother.
I guess it would be great for balikbayans, or for people who have not tasted Filipino food at all. It would be a good “coming home” or “first time” experience. But I wouldn’t come back a second time.
Once a spa before it was turned into a restaurant, the house’s owners decided they wanted to do something different with it, and since it was an ancestral house among many others in San Juan, they thought it would be nice to turn it into a buffet restaurant.
My classmates and I paid 447Php for the buffet lunch in the acclaimed restaurant, and ate main dishes by none other than Chef Laudico himself and pastries by his wife Chef Jackie.
The restaurant is two years old, established in March 5, 2013. It offers caterings, and events hosting, weddings often being held at the garden. The house can accommodate 200 people, and it is mostly fully-booked especially at lunch time, when the food is cheapest. Weekends are more special because of seafood and other dishes, and they pride themselves for their roast beef, lechon, and leche flan.
It was nice seeing a restaurant so tastefully presented: Filipino, down to the core. It was situated in a good neighborhood as well, although not too accessible to the masses. Then again why would the masses want to pay 500 pesos for lunch?
As for the food itself, it was pleasant enough; I liked it – I would even say I loved it, especially the roast beef. But I didn’t taste anything different in the dishes. I thought they could be cooked – maybe even better – by my mother.
I guess it would be great for balikbayans, or for people who have not tasted Filipino food at all. It would be a good “coming home” or “first time” experience. But I wouldn’t come back a second time.
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