Wednesday, December 14, 2005
I keep coming back to Manila
[tags: _travel ¦ _philippines]
My body says 8am, but my watch says 4 in the afternoon. Welcome back to the Philippines, the acid whispers of exhaustion on my tendon strings tell me. After being in one position, more or less, for 25 hours straight, I don't blame them at all.
We landed at about 0530, just short of six hours behind schedule, and had a cheap laugh at the entry gate when a bold blue sign announced "Welcome to BIRD FLU FREE Philippines!" I guess they make all the birds walk on the "disinfecting" carpet before flying into territorial waters. Good job, guys! Maybe you can tackle AIDS next.
Nanay and Tatay met us at the exit and we drove home. Aggie is now almost five foot tall and Gikoy is scraping the 5'10 mark. My siblings are getting the growth spurt I never had. Even oreo the lab puppy is now big enough to knock us all over. Ain't I supposed to feel TALLER back home? Ah well.
All this time I'm chilling out in the cafe, and the quality of light here in Manila is different - somehow less bright, as if daylight struggles to get through the poison cloud permanently above the city - a lesson to Londoners who are now being blanketed by the spume of a recent oil fire.
Just had lunch with Heda and some of her Med friends. Heda spent two months in the US and came back the day before I did. She still has her friends, her familiar hangouts and her habits to fall back on, automatically. Three years on, and I'm totally adrift, the day stretches out before me and I can't connect to anything concrete. I remember, as though in another life, hanging out in these same malls, driving down the same roads, but the memory seems totally unrelated to the NOW. It's less a homecoming than a sightseeing.
I've been here before though. In time, as the days pile on, the old habits will settle on me like blankets, and I will no longer feel the need to wash the dishes after a meal, nor complain about the heat, I will lose my patience in traffic and I will be shoving in with the rest of them on the MRT. Given enough time (and two and a bit weeks is never enough time), I will even start bitching about the prices again, and lay about in the house watching cable all day, because one can get used to ANYTHING, even things you swore you would never do, because you fit the life you're in, and not the other way round. I'm happy to come home, but happier that at the end of our visit, another home awaits, one with only five channels. And bright sunlight over water.
My body says 8am, but my watch says 4 in the afternoon. Welcome back to the Philippines, the acid whispers of exhaustion on my tendon strings tell me. After being in one position, more or less, for 25 hours straight, I don't blame them at all.
We landed at about 0530, just short of six hours behind schedule, and had a cheap laugh at the entry gate when a bold blue sign announced "Welcome to BIRD FLU FREE Philippines!" I guess they make all the birds walk on the "disinfecting" carpet before flying into territorial waters. Good job, guys! Maybe you can tackle AIDS next.
Nanay and Tatay met us at the exit and we drove home. Aggie is now almost five foot tall and Gikoy is scraping the 5'10 mark. My siblings are getting the growth spurt I never had. Even oreo the lab puppy is now big enough to knock us all over. Ain't I supposed to feel TALLER back home? Ah well.
All this time I'm chilling out in the cafe, and the quality of light here in Manila is different - somehow less bright, as if daylight struggles to get through the poison cloud permanently above the city - a lesson to Londoners who are now being blanketed by the spume of a recent oil fire.
Just had lunch with Heda and some of her Med friends. Heda spent two months in the US and came back the day before I did. She still has her friends, her familiar hangouts and her habits to fall back on, automatically. Three years on, and I'm totally adrift, the day stretches out before me and I can't connect to anything concrete. I remember, as though in another life, hanging out in these same malls, driving down the same roads, but the memory seems totally unrelated to the NOW. It's less a homecoming than a sightseeing.
I've been here before though. In time, as the days pile on, the old habits will settle on me like blankets, and I will no longer feel the need to wash the dishes after a meal, nor complain about the heat, I will lose my patience in traffic and I will be shoving in with the rest of them on the MRT. Given enough time (and two and a bit weeks is never enough time), I will even start bitching about the prices again, and lay about in the house watching cable all day, because one can get used to ANYTHING, even things you swore you would never do, because you fit the life you're in, and not the other way round. I'm happy to come home, but happier that at the end of our visit, another home awaits, one with only five channels. And bright sunlight over water.
Labels: philippines, travel
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