Bababa ba?

Ito yung umubos ng oras ko the past few days. Sa wakas, natapos ko na siya, pero super sabog siya!

Kaya…

I need your comments, PLEASE! Kahit sino man kayong napadpad sa blog ko, hinihingan ko kayo ng comments.

I need to submit this by mga 12mn mamaya. Hahahaha. Kaya please, tulong? :p

PINAKAIMPORTANTENG NOTE: SA ISANG TRAVEL ESSAY, WALA DAPAT PLOT.

The noisy red Philcoa TODA tricycle passes by in the long stretch of Maginhawa Street. It’s the stout and jolly Mang Sinoy again. He’s such a familiar figure in this area; it’s as if everyone knows him.

His familiarity just struck me in the recent years. I remember, when we were just new in this village, our grandmother always conjured weird stories about him just to keep us inside the house. Once she told us kids that this big, large-bellied and mustached man resides on top of a mango tree and eats children for breakfast.

“That’s why he’s that big! So you kids stay inside the house! You might bump into him outside, and he will stuff you in his sack, bring you on top of the mango tree, and eat you!”

Ang mamang may sako sa may puno ng mangga, as we kids hatefully called him.

I still get a good laugh whenever I recall those days of childhood. We weren’t allowed to go out of our brown gate, unless we were with our parents or inside a vehicle; so I only had a vague image of how the outside world really looked like. My parents always insisted that we stay inside the house. “It’s too dangerous,” they said, “and Mang Sinoy’s gonna get you. So don’t go outside, ok?”

Eventually, things became very different. A few years later my parents allowed me to venture outside the house and commute by myself. I guess they got tired of bringing me to my friends’ houses, and fetching me four to six hours later. Since then, I have always found myself walking on the once forbidden sidewalks of Teacher’s Village. And of course, as my 1000 words per minute grandmother had predicted, I would always bump into Mang Sinoy.

Contrary to what I have been told, the beer bellied man does not stuff me in his sack, bring me on top of the mango tree and eat me; rather, like every other tricycle driver from Philcoa TODA, Mang Sinoy, slows his vehicle down and asks me if I’m on my way to Philcoa. I immediately decline his offer, as Philcoa is not my destination. Upon seeing me shake my head, he revs his engine up and goes on with his tricycle driving, leaving kerosene smoke all over the place.

Once he leaves, I continue my journey through Maginhawa Street.

The place is garnished with palm trees, most of which are fruitless, thank God. I have this fear of falling coconuts, you see. These trees are deadly, for they drop coconuts that accelerate at 9.8 meters per second squared without warning. I remember a few years ago, I was laughing at a sign that said, “BEWARE: falling coconuts.” A few days after, a palm tree, seemingly insulted by my sense of humor, dropped a coconut in front of me. Since then I developed a phobia for coconut-bearing trees.

Bushes bearing pink, orange, yellow and red santan flowers also populate the area. I found the pinks and oranges very amazing, for pink and orange santan flowers were a rarity in our old town. The yellows and reds were the only ones that were planted by the villagers. Only here did I encounter pink and orange santans. Until now, as if still new to this place, I still am amazed at the “different” colors of santan. Don’t blame me - blame the unusual colors.

Just like every morning, the first people one would encounter in Maginhawa Street are the old lolas and yayas. These people compose the little army of cleaners along Maginhawa Street. Armed with their palengke walis tingtings and Baguio walis tambos, they begin battling against the previous night’s mess. Every morning, as if instructed by a drill sergeant, they come out of their houses one by one, carrying their weapons of cleanliness. They clean up the sidewalks in front of them, ridding the area of dog crap, dead leaves, rotten garbage and fallen coconuts.

Oh no, fallen coconuts! There still are falling coconuts!

Looking upwards I see a palm tree, filled with coconuts golden yellow in color, ready to attack the unwary passerby. I hurry across the street, fearing that an aerial coconut attack might catch me off-guard. For me, one near death-by-coconut experience is enough.

A short sprint brings me to Magiting Street: the home of many different and short-lived establishments. Many young entrepreneurs try their luck by putting up small businesses in this place, but only a few of them succeed. This place once accommodated Pakopya ni Edgar photocopy services, Zeitgeist Record and Rehearsal studio, and a few restaurants, all of which have disappeared in the past few months. Only the successful and the relatively new ones remain today.

In this mini-Katipunan exists the recently revived Yesteryear vintage music store, the nearly invisible clothes and novelty store, the very colorful Flowers of May flower shop, the very popular MiniStop, the relatively new Peejay’s and Oompa-Oompa snack houses, the little green-gated DMC Child Learning Center, the customer-less A Perfect Creation paper store, the very small Web Reader internet café, the cramped magazine store, the quaint Wish You Well book and gift store, the Rollanaire refrigerator repair services, the Havilah television repair shop, and the nameless motorcycle repair shop. This place can be compared to a halu-halo: all of them are very different establishments, with very little connection with one another, but they end up as a very beautiful and delicious mix.

This would be seen in an afternoon visit to the place. In the morning, the place seems to be forsaken by people, populated only by the lone roving vegetable vendor, the different cars and the busy tricycles. But, a visit at around 3 ‘o clock would introduce you to a very different Magiting Street.

At around 3 pm, the once person-forsaken area would be populated by the different students of the nearest schools: there are noisy kids from the learning center across the street, white polo-ed boys from Claret School, girls with black and white checkered skirts from Holy Family School, burnt-out students from UP Diliman, and a few highschoolers from the Ateneo. This area is one of the more popular tambayans since just like SM, they’ve got it all for you! Books, magazines, vintage music, clothes, internet services, computer games, food, salon, they’re all there.

But, the real highlight of this place is MiniStop. It’s the longest standing business in the area (except for the refrigerator, television and motorcycle repair shops, which have been there forever). This is where students, dormers, and residents alike get their daily supply of Chippy, Doritos, Agua Vida, Sun Call and Text Unlimited, Panda ball pens, Joy, Modess, Frenzy, Marlboro Lights and Red Horse Extra Strong.

With a slight jerk, I pull myself together and leave the vespertine street of Magiting. I walk towards CP Garcia where I encounter some of Krus na Ligas, Teacher’s Village, and UP Village’s hired manangs. One is toiling under the titanic and fiery morning sun, trimming the grass of CP Garcia Park with her garden scissors while another was just sitting down by the pavement, rapidly texting with her dull pink 3310.

In the distance a topless man is walking bare-foot, and wobbling like a Rugrats baby. He stops for a second, takes a swig from his bottle of Ginebra San Miguel, and continues walking towards our direction.

“Ang aga-aga at ang init-init, naglalasing na ang lokong ito,” says one of the manangs while slashing at the grass with her gigantic and rusty scissors.

The drunkard passes by the manangs and looks at them with disgust, as if they were plagued with leprosy. He wobbles away from them and walks up to me. He looks at me, smiles, extends his free hand, and asks for a Manuel Quezon. “Pahingi ng pera, kahit bente lang,” he says. I shoo him away, saying I don’t have money to spare. I am not that stupid to give this drunkard some drinking money. Disappointed, he wobbles away from me, towards the abandoned Stud Farm, where his pushcart labeled Ren is located.

The Stud Farm didn’t always house people like him. In the old days it housed actual horses. As a kid I always loved this part of CP Garcia, for the simple fact that in the middle of Diliman, there lived real, live horses. I found it fascinating for they seemed so out of place in a time where riding horses is not anymore the premier mode of transportation. Whenever we drove by here, I’d always ask my dad to slow the car down, so I could see if the horses were playing tag, sleeping, or just happily grazing at the tall grass. For some weird reason I found watching the horses here more exciting than watching the horses in Discovery Channel.

Eventually the years of horse-watching faded, as the Stud Farm went out of business. All of a sudden the horses disappeared, and were replaced with stray goats and men, drowning themselves in Ginebra San Miguel. Since then, for me, this part of CP Garcia died, as the two lots located on both sides of the road were occupied only by tall grass, carelessly thrown garbage, ornery goats and inebriated men.

Mayor Sonny Belmonte, however, was a saving grace to this area. I don’t know why, but he decided to give life to the empty lot opposite the Stud Farm. So he commissioned a team of architects, carpenters and gardeners, to work on CP Garcia’s abandoned lot. They tore down the barbed-wire fences, cut down the unsightly weeds and got rid of the scattered garbage. They erected new lampposts and fences and built cemented walkways and pavements. And after a few months of menial work, the CP Garcia Park was born.

Different kinds of people occupy this place at different times. In most mornings I see the hired manangs and manongs, sprucing the place up. On Wednesday mornings there are young and old health-buffs sweating it out to the tune of Aqua’s Barbie Girl (is that even an appropriate aerobics song?). In the afternoons there are the children with their tumbang-preso tournaments, badminton friendlies (you know, the keep-the-shuttlecock-up-in-the-sky game), and kite-flying sessions. And in the evenings, kissing couples and Champion Cigarette-smoking youngsters roam the place, as if they were the only ones who owned the place.

Playtime must be early today, as I come across two children with some kite-flying gear, good for one person. One of them holds the lengthy piece of string, while the other holds the green and white Eunilane plastic-bag kite in place.

They look at each other, and with a mutual signal, the kid who’s holding the string end begins running towards the other end of the park.

Their kite flies, and for a while they are ecstatic.

But a few moments after, something tells them that today is not a good day for flying kites. The wind brings their kites near the electric wires, and then dies down, causing the kite to plummet down on to the electric wires, entangling their kite in the process.

“Na naman?” one of them cries out. “Sa susunod ako na nga lang ang magpapalipad ng saranggola!”

These kids weren’t the first victims of kite-murder. Looking up at the electric wires one would see hundreds of barbecue sticks, plastic bags and string wrapped around the electric wires, forming some sort of dismally colored banderitas. This obviously indicates that this part of town is not good for kite-flying. But today’s kids are very stubborn. Despite the visible evidences of murdered kites they persist on flying kites in this area.

I leave the now quarreling kids and walk towards the end of CP Garcia Park, where a waiting shed is located.

An Ikot jeep was already there, seemingly waiting for me. I clambered and sat down in the middle of a sea of passengers. The jeep immediately moves.

“Manong, bayad ho.”

And in an instant, I drift off to a different world.