The Coolest SM Mall

The coolest, by far the most beautiful, SM or mall doesn’t have an air-conditioner! This is because SM Baguio is located at the coldest part of the Philippines, Baguio City. The city’s overall climate is usually 8 degrees lower than most lowlands in the Philippines including Manila.

SM Baguio stands as a beautiful and proud structure at the upper part of Session Road near Burnham Park. The mall’s architectural design breaks from the box-type norm of SM malls and instead employs castle tops and open-air view decks as main attraction. The view decks are this mall’s brilliant and most unique feature and are definitely the places to pose for a picture.  Among the alluring backdrop of SM open spaces are the Baguio Cathedral, the surrounding mountains, and the well-roofed houses and buildings plus the fog that hangs in the air from mall start to mid-afternoon.  There are also telescopes for rent parked at the decks and they’re cheap. You only need to drop a five peso coin on their slots and voila, you can have a close-up view of the nearby roads, mountains, parks and what not in the small but really thrill-packed Baguio.

SM Baguio is already five years old but any new visitor would think it has just been installed because unlike old-time malls in Manila, this mall still has shiny floor and wall tiles. Young it is, the mall is already home to a lot of forms of entertainment not only shopping. It also has two barsides where you could listen to live bands play during night time. It also houses a play-and-fun ground.

Like every SM mall, there are cinemas in it. (But I wonder if there’s air-conditioning in those! If you’re  a tourist in this scenic city, why bother going to the movies!)  It also has a cyber zone where popular cellphone and computer stores from Manila can also be found. When it comes to clothing, accessories, and gift items etcetera– SM Baguio has enough signature and branded names to show off.

When you travel to provinces or go to the highlands, you’d think malling is not an option. When you go to Baguio, this virtue is something you should forget! 

so little time, too many islands

“Have you been to the Hundred Islands?” This is a question that as a child I was fond to ask my mother who hails from Pangasinan. But now that I’ve already gone to three of the Hundred Islands, I asked her a different question which is “How many islands have you visited out of those group of islands.” Because now I realize that it is quite impossible to ply by all those hundred islands in just a day.

Traveling via a wooden boat  from the Lucap wharf in Alaminos to an initial destination to the nearest island, would already take thirty minutes off a traveler’s time. The resident boatmen would surely offer trips to Governor’s, Children’s, Quezon Islands for a price of P250 per person. A maximum of six passengers with fairly heavy baggage is what they recommend for each wooden boat.  It’s a pretty safe ride as there are enough life vests on board and at least two very skilled swimmers-boatmen per one boat.

 Hundred Islands is a slight misnomer because there are more than one hundred islands clustered in that small portion of that sea. If there’s any truth to the myth once told about these islands that it originated from greed, one would surely greed to explore each of these coasts or islands. For these island-hills seemingly seat atop or float by clear, azure waters and have vast white sand resorts. While on voyage through a boat, one would surely be amazed by the changing colors of the waters and the hills around from green to blue caused by the mixing of the sky’s blue tint, the sun’s brightness and other great sources of color in that wide open space. There are no confining building walls, just the islands, the sea, and the sky and the sun! For a lack of a better term, the place could be described as phantasmagoric!  The place is no less comparable to the “Beach” featured in the movie with the same title and which starred Leonardo Di Caprio.

The Governor’s Island is one of the famous stops in this cluster, and is home to one of the Pinoy Big Brother houses. The Island’s land area is roughly the same as that of  the Philippine’s biggest mall. The Quezon and the Children’s Islands could be just as big. Each of them have a wide resort area and low-level water areas ideal for non-professional swimmers to wade and swim by. Kayaking is also a cheap source of fun in these resorts. An hour of rent for a kayak would only cost P200. That’s a lot of time already if you compute how many minutes you coud last paddling the boat. You bet, it’s not any longer than the time you could walk continously on a threadmill.  Children’s Island is said to have the largest resort area and is thus named because its water level is ideal for an average child to swim by.

Transport time through a boat to and from one of these Islands is about thirty minutes or less. Boatmen are usually Filipino-language speakers and may understand little English. They are usually warm and honest people to whom you could trust not only your belongings but also your life.

A bus fare from Cubao to Alaminos would cause 380+ and that trip would last 5-6 hours, much the same amount of time and money as a man from Manila would spend going to Baguio.  But a visit to Hundred Islands would definitely give amazing returns to a voyeur for postcard sceneries and the beach bum or summer escapist.

 

The Grand View

Grand View is a small complex in Tagaytay offering a vast, frontside view of the stunning fata morgana which are the Taal Lake and the volcanoes seated by it. The complex is situated at the ridges of the Olivares circle of this famous summer escape.

While the famed destinations in Tagaytay are still the People’s Park and the Grove forests, Grand View already is a worthy, no less romantic, stop for visitors. Here you can dine and wine in the mini-restaurants and bars which not only cater to your appetite for food and drinks, but also to your viewing pleasure. While sitting and sipping coffee or wine or standing by these attic-like bars and restaurants, you can have an unrelenting site of the Taal Lake and the verdant forests and volcanoes.

God’s super scape Taal can also be watched from a concrete bank by the complex which functions as a tricycle station by day. Here, while you stand grounded at the view, a cold, moist air breezes by your face and skin. Taking pictures here is absolutely free. Some of the tricycle drivers also act as salesmen and offer a memorable horse ride through the forest leading to the brinks of Taal lake.

Time stood still when I first met Grand View. A girl and I shared the view while we ate a drumstick ice cream. One day in the love month of 2006, just after a noontime lunch from our company’s team building seminar, we went there for a brief talk… and I had two great views to look at, her face and Taal.

From the bank, Taal looked like the most beautiful postcard; and the quiet movement of white clouds traveling on a calm blue sky from above added more drama to the scene. Right about the time, I had wanted to propose but I thought I’d spoil it all by saying something stupid like…

ATM HASSLE

I need some support to encourage our lawmakers to make a resolution making it mandatory for banks to pay us when our ATM cards get captured, not the other way around. This grievance comes off from a very bad experience I had last June 22, 2007. That Friday morning, 7am to be exact, I tried to withdraw a substantial amount of money from the ATM because I wanted to buy pasalubongs, and of course get some “bills” to pay my bills which were due that day.

I did everything right as far as withdrawing procedures are concerned. I inserted the card faced up with the first digit of my account number and my first name shooting first on the ATM card slot. I then entered my 4-digit (a significant number, if it gives u a clue) pin, and then when I was asked by the machine to enter the amount that I should withdraw, I did. It was just a few thousands of pesos. Moments later, the screen flashed “pls. wait for cash and card” (receipt was not available as always when it’s pay day). I waited for a few secs more but nothing came out, except for my card sticking out from the slot like a tongue from one’s mouth. I tried to pull it out (but it was not a strong pull at all) because my bank has this new ATM card-dispensing method which is sliding the card very slowly, reminiscent of a cash register dishing out a receipt.

As i tried to pull it out, my card got swallowed by the slot. Then the girl next to use the ATM said to me, “Nakain din yung sayo?” Of course, she was pertaining to my ATM not anything else, so i said, “YES.”

I also said, “Kelan nakain yung sayo?” and I was also hinting about her ATM card not anything else.

“Kani-kanina lang,” she said and walked away. End of our story.

I, myself, went on with my ATM misadventures by calling my bank’s hotline to report the incident. I asked for my card to be deactivated immediately. After a short discussion with the agent, she asked me to go to their SM Fairview branch (where my payroll acct was generated) if I wish to withdraw all of my money. Her suggestion meant that I had to travel back to SM Fairview, where I just came from that morning. SM Fairview is just a few strides away from where the call center I work in is located. To provide an excruciating flashback, I had just finished my graveyard shift at 6 am, rode a jeepney towards Novaliches Bayan-Susano Road to a kiosk where the hungry, swallowing ATM I withdrew from was installed.

I was coming from an exhausting night shift, knees and nerves shaking (True! Try being on a night shift and tell me how it feels!). I had to endure that one-hour travel, which was normally just a 15-minute ride, due to a really bad traffic jam! You can imagine how I kept pinching myself so I didn’t fall into a deep sleep bcoz If I had, my things (cellphone, ipod, wallet, bags) would have been snatched. It was really a bad day to begin with, starting from the traffic caused by the slow road work in various parts of Novaliches. You know what the worst part is?

When I went to SM Fairview and talked to the bank manager, she told me that if ever my card will not work anymore upon reactivation, I will have to pay them P50. Oh, what the heck! In all fairness to her, she was polite and very professional in dealing with my problem. I’m just pissed that I have to pay them an amount in case my card will not work any more after it was captured. When I lost my ATM card (which was also from this same bank) to robbers in an FX in 2003, I still had to pay the bank at least 50 or a hundred pesos to get a card replacement. Now that it was clearly the bank’s fault why I got into this ATM mess, I still have to pay them! It is so fair, right! I hope sarcasm can really get into some people’s heads!

I wonder why this bank keeps charging us fees when it looks like a threshold company judging from its ever-growing number of branches nationwide. Fifty is nothing to me. I can give out fifty or more to an institution for the blind or whatever noble institution, but I won’t give a cent to a wrongful cause. This is not a question of money; this is a call for righteousness in the banking business. I think if something similar happens to you, you would be able to notice how bad a brand of customer service this bank and many other banks in this country is able to afford. I hope that in the near future, lawmakers can look into this situation no matter how small this concern is, because it concerns the masses just the same.

Just imagine if this thing happened to a low-wage earner, someone who can not even afford to pay P50, someone who cannot even afford to double up on his fare just to complain for the exact same hassle I had to go through. What if it happens to someone who cannot speak for himself? What if it happens to a good portion of our people, who cannot speak for themselves? That would mean a great amount of income for these kinds of banks and a lot of loss for the hardworking people of this country.

To all those who will receive this mail, I hope you will not let these banks do this to us. I hope you’ve seen “Idiocracy” a film starred by Luke Wilson. The film shows the gravest scenario that could happen to a world ruled and inhabited by stupid people. Plants do not grow anymore in such a world because their people have listened to an energy drink corporation when they said that energy drinks should replace water in watering plants because their drinks are high on electrolytes. I hope we do not get into a world such as theirs. I hope you will do everything to prevent the advent of the world of idiocracy! One thing to make this possible is to keep this in mind: Not everything that your bank says you have to pay is something that you have to pay!

sunset

Red-orange sky

Bites the dusk

As the sun from afar

Appears seasick, drowning

In the blue waters

But not dying

Only sleeping

For a night’s best rest.

You think he got tired shining

For your heaven’s sake?

No! He just collected

The weight of all your worries

In both his boldness

And weakness

And hid them, willingly,

In pure darkness.

THE FOG

I might be late because traffic is moving at a snail’s pace due to a thick fog hanging low on the cold atmosphere. Yes, there is fog in Manila! Last time I saw this kind of thick whiteness was maybe 15 years ago. I was 10, playing in the fields, chasing dragonflies, grasshoppers and many weird arthropods. There were askals too and carabaos. Those days, I would usually notice fog even before I could my own sticky morning star. Thick fog like this was a usual background for exercising and jogging around the village … and it does not evaporate completely until eight am or even 9.

 

Now I watch this fog touch people’s heads and cars. There are a few green trees that break my view of d white horizon. I’m riding an fx and I’m seated beside the right window. I thank God for this befogged morning atmosphere usually belched by the dirty black smoke of cars and factories. It is truly a change of atmosphere!

 

In a few days, the Catholics in the Philippines will have a cold and white Christmas. Not of snow, but at least there will be a white curtain in the air. For some people, this foggy morning is just a hint of a new calendar and a new set of resolutions…to break…

 

Well, I hope this moist air will not give me colds later on. I have a busy day to face. Work is still breathing down my neck. Here’s what I got from taking so much to the malls and watching TV. 

 

A change of atmosphere comes without you asking for it. It happens and it comes like an unexpected yawn. Sometimes we want this sort of phenomenon to happen when we need it the most, and we sometimes force the issue to make it happen.  Some people have the money to change their atmosphere…they travel by air and just like the wind, take off from one place to another. Some of us can only dream on to even have an idea of what’s on the other side of the world. Some people have the luxury to say “I have to smell the flowers” and with their means really get to faraway gardens. Some don’t even have a garden at home, but just a few pots of cheap flowers.

 

Today, God has changed the atmosphere not only for those who can not fly around the world, or those who can not even buy a fan to ease the sweltering heat of daytime, or those who do not have a garden or those who do not own a pot of flowers. Today is a gift that is up for all of us to appreciate.

 

 

 

 

(written on my 3660 while in an fx sometime in Dec. 2005)

 

Life and Basketball

For me, life is basketball.

It is not always crunch time, but the more you live, the more you experience defining moments. So you are sometimes dubbed as a loser or a winner. However, it’s up to you what you would want to call yourself after a loss or for failing to conquer a certain field in your life. As for me, no one is ever a loser. Sometimes we are just not prepared enough to take the big shots, or simply didn’t have the will, the drive, and the hunger to win…yet. If you find yourself in one of these situations, tell yourself “I didn’t practice at all but still managed to keep it close.” You can make excuses for losing as long as it makes you a better player, but do not ever be a sour one at defeat. You can cry over a loss. In fact you can do so even in a stage as big and famous and as watched as the Boston Garden or the Cuneta Astrodome. Anyway, you’ve seen that Michael Jordan and Asi Taulava can weep their eyes to dry after being kicked out of the playoffs.

In life, there are much deeper pains than not getting the trophy, to which you will definitely shed more tears for. It so happened that Jordan and Taulava’s life was basketball itself. (Although some people would argue that basketball wasn’t these cagers’ life at all, it was just their means to life.) I, myself, many times over, have been hurt so badly, physically and emotionally, over a basketball game. There was a point that I was so drawn-crazy to basketball. One time in college, I did not review for the mid-term exam for one subject after Ginebra (Gordon’s Gin at that time) lost to Shell in a playoff for a seat in the finals. In the dying seconds of that game, Kenny Redfield (Shell’s import),who was fast breaking with the ball, threw a hail Mary of a shot some inches above the three-point area. To me that was the floater of all floaters. The ball banged to the center of the board before falling through the rim and swooshing the net. Redfield hence put his team ahead by a point or two as time expired or was there any second to go, I don’t quite recall. I did not commit the whole scenario to memory; but how painful it was, I may never forget. Ginebra was then towered by Marlou Aquino, Noli Locsin, and EJ Feihl. Their import then was surnamed James, a hot-shooting American in the tradition of Briggs, Matthews, and Joe Ward.

A year later after that game I read about “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens,” not knowing I would learn from it how to move on well after every loss Ginebra would take. In more ways than one, the book has taught me how to not whine over things you do not have control over or cannot change anymore. Basketball, the tv show not the game itself, is one of those things that I can’t control. Another is anything that happened in the past. However tragic your experience was, it is something that you cannot fall a victim for. Even if it haunts you, it should not keep you stuck. From reading that book I learned being sorry for Ginebra is Ok, but wallowing over such a loss was not so smart and healthy an exercise. Reality check set in at some point, and like a head that was hit by a ball on a fastbreak i realized I had a college degree to achieve and obviously a career that will not have anything to do with basketball. So I then dropped my mantra that “Life is basketball.” 

However, recently, I’ve come back to believing that same old line, “Life is basketball!” Perhaps because I’m now faced with bigger and towering opponents in the form of monstrous problems, deciding battles at home and at the workplace which makes me feel perhaps more pressure than Sonny Cabatu had felt when he was put to the free throw line with no time left in the clock in a game against San Miguel, PBA circa 88. All he needed was to make one free throw and they will win the ball game as there was not one microsecond left in the game clock. History has it that San Miguel won in overtime and lived to fight another playoff match against Ginebra (then Anejo) for the right to meet Purefoods in the Finals. In the championship round, the young-laden Purefoods then led by Patrimonio, Jolas, and Codinera, despite their size and talent, failed to control the rugged run-and-gun play of the Jaworski-led Ginebra. Eventually in Game 4 of that supposed five-game series, Ginebra would bring home the bacon to the delight and delirium of their legions of fans. Oh, lIfe and basketball, their metaphoric correlations are just so hard to miss…

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going! That’s how it is in basketball, that’s how it is or should be in life. The tougher team would allmost always win granting the breaks of the game are equal on both sides. There are too many hassles, but life is a much more level playing field than basketball, so there must be more chances of winning for all of us. But some are not tough enough to face their own obstacles including their own fears.

Give and Go. It’s a classic play even “we, “the “kanto” boys have mastered. In life sometimes, as it is in basketball, you need someone to do things for you. You can’t always be the one delivering the goods. You need another person to pass to, or make the basket for you, no matter what, the conversion should also count as yours or that one other player.

When in trouble, call time. Even if you’re team is the most talented ever assembled, you will still encounter obstacles. Other teams will catch up with you, perhaps not because they are as flashy as your team is, but because they have the guts to fight, or the will to win, and they are methodical and scientific, or they know how to defend. No matter how much you’ve gained or learned, someday you’ll be the one trailing someone whose gone ahead or simply faster. That is the time that you should reinvent yourself. Call time, before it’s too late.

There are too many things that basketball can teach or explain. For some it does not only mold them to become good players inside the court but also as good leaders or thinkers in the bigger arena called life. Although life has a bigger dimension, basketball can give you the ins and outs of it.