Happenstance

“Write in white heat; edit in cold blood.”
My journalist mom always told me to stick with what I knew. But in writing this new experience project, I wanted to steer as far away as possible from that. Given this assignment, much like when I first entered UP, I felt like I could conquer the world. I had a multitude of experiences that I wanted to try and experience for myself, some of these new and quite far-out while others I had already experienced for the first time years ago and have mostly forgotten about.
I started a lot of experiences simultaneously. I tried to steer clear of Facebook (FB) and the general internet for a whole week. I tried making dinner for a week. I even tried going to the wet market one weekend with my mom. These were all wonderful experiences—which the universe seemed to conspire against.
Thesis writing seems to have internet use as a requirement these days. With a lot of sources and resources up online, I was on the World Wide Web the very afternoon that I came up with the idea of ditching it. Apparently too, more and more people are using FB to coordinate even school activities; people including professors. I failed that endeavour on my 3rd day of being FB-free.
I thought dinner would have better results. I really do cook after all, my recipe having already been featured online once. http://www.pinoycook.net/ernests-pancit-canton/. I cooked a total of three dishes, two of which have pictures here. The first one was pasta with sauce from scratch. It had fresh tomatoes, chicken chunks, and even olives. It was a lot like a cooked salad, actually. I think I’ll be making it more often. The next one was Bicol Express. I chose not to check out recipes beforehand because I wanted the recipe to be my own. I just winged the procedure. Later on, I learned that I should have used either bagoong or patis and not just salt for flavouring, and my gata should have been nagmamantika. All in all, it was delish! The last dish was something I forgot to photograph. Both cellphones were charging and I didn’t dare bring my camera that close to boiling soup. It was Misua with Patola and Meatballs. It ended up being very tasty though clumpy and strange. Note to self: unlike other types of pasta and noodles, misua is not supposed to be washed before use. It disappears into the drain. Alas, my culinary escapades came to an end the night before I had to pass 50 more annotated bibliographies for my thesis. So much for my Michelin Star!
Lastly, mom and I went to the market! It’s been so long since I’ve gone marketing. The last time I stepped foot in a wet market was as an actor shooting a short film. That was an experience that is worthy of a blog-post of its own. Anyway, the day started early. We favour a wet market in Taguig which has a nice selection of different finds and are open from dawn until around lunch time. Different because they have stuff that are fresh from mom’s childhood-in-the-barrio-memories like itlugan ng manok or what I think is the tract that eggs pass through in a chicken. It’s like an intestine with eggs in various stages of development. It’s quite good with adobo or tinola. They also have fishes that are sinaing or cooked in brine and, sometimes with pork fat and kamias or the Bilimbi fruit—a sour Cucumber-looking thing. I personally don’t eat this dish, but mom loves it. The thing is: we couldn’t find the market! There was a vast, empty lot where it should have been. That goes to show how long since we’d been there.
I was feeling kind of lost already. My backup plans were not backing me up at all. Then, a bit of luck—or the lack of it, tossed me into an experience that was not quite new, but definitely out of my routine and comfort zone. I had to commute from Paranaque to UP Diliman. Something I haven’t done again since 2007—my first year in college. I have taken public transportation to North Avenue since then, but even that experience was a year or so ago.
My car was broken and no one could take me to UP that day so early in the morning. I had a practice for a performance and could not afford to be late. My family went into crisis and troubleshooting mode. Within minutes of calling my aunt if I could hitch a ride to the Taft Station, an uncle had been assigned to take me to UP, lunch had been packed, and my fare was all laid out. My allowance was also slashed to 200 Pesos; 100 pesos in two different wallets so that should I lose one wallet, or God forbid it get stolen, I’d still have another 100 on me. This was not what I had in mind. I specifically wanted to burst this little protective bubble and just get on with life.
I explained to them that I could not wait for my uncle to take me to school at 10 am precisely because I had a schedule to follow. They had apparently been expecting that, hence the other preparations. I also told them that I would not be taking the packed lunch because I wanted to travel light. And that, yes, I would travel alone. I did not take anything else they had laid out. I unpacked my backpack—took out my big camera, heavy script, excess books, and laptop leaving me with just 2 books and a notebook and a bunch of index cards. I took my wallet and cell phone pouch. My wallet had about 600 in broken bills, my pouch had about 50 pesos in coins. I also grabbed my old, small, point-and-shoot camera. The looks of smile-masked worry on my family’s faces were priceless.
The ride to the station was filled with idle and nervous banter. I don’t know how many times she offered to take me to school in just that short trip. She’s an important lady, mind you, with people waiting for her orders and instructions. And, well, she could make them wait if she wanted. I declined. She comforted herself in reassuring me that my dad (and perhaps all our dead relatives) would be there to guide and protect me. She then segued into the give-the-bad-people-your-phone-and-wallet speech. Perhaps the 5th time I’d heard it in the same hour. But her voice had never seemed more beautiful, nor the sky any cloudier than that moment. I cannot say that I was not scared.
She dropped me off as close as she could to the steps leading into the station. I got off, looked back, and waved. I had my happy face on. The moment I turned my back, my game face took its place. I’m not new, I’m not lost. These were what I wanted to project to everyone around me. Everyone who didn’t even seem to notice I was there. The steps into the station were the same, the station itself was not. There were signs and passages I swore were never there. And the ticketing booths had transferred and so did the place to line up. Dammit, I was lost. I kept my cool though. I followed the general flow of the people until I was assimilated into the unified mass of bodies. It was all like a procession in some festival—the sights, the sounds, the smell. People all around me were mumbling, some probably reviewing their schedule, some their routes, I definitely heard some curses from some though. I realized that a lot of these people probably do and see all these more routinely and more religiously than they did their prayers nor saw their parish church.
I cannot say that the trip was uneventful. For one, I swear my derriere was touched at least once just in line to get my ticket. A pretty nurse smiled at me, and an old man glared at me for what reasons I may never know. People definitely stopped and stared when I stopped and took photos. I even heard a snippet of a conversation probably about me taking pictures. The kid asked his mom “...bakit ‘Nay?” and the mother replied, ”Malay ko ba, wala namang maganda dun.” Oh was she wrong. There was ganda all around, but they had reduced it into mundane-ness that they failed to see how maganda things really were. I snapped shots of all the station signs that I could. Some signs were either out of sight or obscured by the masses of pedestrians. There were nice sights, but what I really wished I could capture were the weird looks I got. If those people knew what “WTF?” meant, I’m sure they were thinking it about me.
While the train ride was strangely beautiful on its own—also having given me the chance to offer my seat to a lady and seeing several other men do so in suit, the station I got off at was what surprised me the most. Back when I first used to commute, the Quezon Ave. Station would lead you down into a messy lot complete with patches of swamp land, a rickety bamboo bridge which I swore people were betting wouldn’t hold me, and copulating sheep. Yes, copulating sheep. Of course piles and the smell of trash and the tambays were a given. There were no roofs to hide from neither the heat nor the rain. Well, that was back then. So, I was pleasantly surprised by the new Eton Centris Mall conveniently connected to the station. It was still closed at the time, but the station seemed to have gotten brighter and cleaner from what I remember of it. The marshland, most of the trash, and the copulating sheep were gone. They were replaced by food stalls and umbrellas waiting for their early morning customers. The jeepneys and the taxis were also lined in order, and there weren’t any long lines for people waiting to ride. The tambays and barkers were still there though. Minutes away from school, I knew I had made it “home” safe and sound.
Now, comfortable and safe here on my sofa, writing about my experiences, I realized that I had made a mistake. I set off to write a series of articles but instead ended up with an epic. This was not a project, it was an adventure.