Wanders

Manila Trip - Day 2
(June 5, Friday)

Two traffic-filled hours and rain-flooded highways later, we reach the Sampaloc apartments. The kids are bouncing off the sofas and climbing up the walls, and Yaya Rose is at her wits' end. We console them with our 168 loot, and Yaya Rose proudly struts around in the blouses we bought for her.

In the evening, we are scheduled to attend Wanders, an international-class extravaganza at the PAGCOR casino in Paranaque. Inday is the physician-retainer at their branch back home, and she has scored a total of 10 complimentary tickets. We are excited despite our exhaustion, panting to attend a show with free tickets that the casino has been selling to the public for 3,000pesos each.

By popular demand, and because we are loathed to repeat our sweaty public jeepney experience in the smog and rain, Atch heads off to Pasay City to borrow my uncle's car while the rest of us spoiled mortals put up our feet and snooze.

By 5pm, Atch textes us to grouch that he is still stuck in traffic. To save time, all eight of us pile sardine-like into a cab to PAGCOR Paranaque. We make plans to meet up with Atch there, as well as Nat's husband Eric, who has flown in from Bacolod that noon.

Two hours later, we are wedged in horrendous traffic in the pouring rain. The kids have thankfully buried their collective heads in various cellphone games, while Yaya Rose moans fretfully into a paper bag

"Mapatay ko! Indi na ko magliwat di!" *

in one of her bouts of car-sickness.

We are provincial hicks who have forgotten that this is Manila. It is the weekend. And the rain is drumming us out of our minds.

It is a quarter of 9 in the evening when we finally reach our destination. We shudder into the arctic air conditioning of the Philippine government's answer to the rich and pseudo-rich's quest for gaming and gambling amusements.

The government monopoly on the millions of pesos sucked each day into this nation-wide gambling franchise doesn't solve any of the country's economic problems or endear its public officials to the poor and working classes. We shamelessly venture into the casino anyway: wide-eyed with wonder and eager to experience what well-heeled gambling enthusiasts see, hear, taste and smell on a daily basis.

We buy hundred-plus peso club sandwiches (they are the cheapest food items we could find) in the luxuriously appointed lounge, and duly present our tickets to the tuxedo-clad ticket inspectors at the entrance to the casino's auditorium, where the musical circus is set to take place at 8pm, or so our tickets say. However, once inside, we are bombarded with socio-political advertisements in large screen format for more than an hour, as the show's organizers wait for the rest of their 3,000-peso and 5,000-peso ticket crowd to make it in from the traffic and the rain.

It is in the middle of this maddening lull that Atch and Eric, waterlogged and rush-hour cranky, finally arrive to help us calm the restless kids, who are themselves cranky with the stupendous wait. It is 10pm and they have watered every stall in the restrooms with their urea-filled impatience.

The show finally starts with sudden darkness and the earth-trembling vibration of drums. The thundering progress of acrobats across raised wooden platforms startle us, and we surrender ourselves to the sights and sounds of people twirling on ribbons in the air right above us; natives in loin-cloths brandishing clubs, their heads bristling in feathers; the sun, the moon, and bird people in flight; punk kids playing synchronized basketball; ballerinas piled on bicycles, and the story of birth, growth, and decline presented in a musical score ranging from primordial chants to full-blown arias.

Our chests resound with the beat of drums and the clash of cymbals, and our feet chatter on the floor in time to sambas and rumbas and the rapid-fire skipping of steel-toed tap dancers on the wooden stage.

That we have waited for centuries and missed our dinner has become irrelevant. Even Yaya Rose has forgotten her nausea and is hard-pressed to keep drool from escaping her gaping mouth. A free pass to a world-class show will do that to anyone.

The show finally ends past midnight, and Inday and Sam hoist a sleeping Ia in their arms, while Woog and Eli scamper amongst the feet of the departing audience, picking up the colorful metallic streamers that have rained from the sky at closing.

I pay a jaw-clenching 100pesos to have our picture taken with the cast, wishing I had surreptitiously taken a few prohibited shots during the show with my camera phone.

The international cast of Wanders, with Yaya Rose, Atch & Eli, Woog & Mom

We finally make our way out of the casino, suddenly realizing we are ravenously hungry. Thankfully, we have my uncle's car that Atch has so painstakingly braved traffic for, a thousand eons ago it seems when he went off to get it earlier that afternoon. We grab a midnight snack at a McDonald's in Makati, and make our way home to bed in Sampaloc, still in midst of a thrall.

Smiling in the aftermath: Eric, Nat with Woog, Yaya Rose with Eli, Sam & Inday carrying Ia

______________________________

* I'm going to die! I'm never going back here again!

Moral of the Story: Trying to Stuff a Month's Worth of Stories Into a Single Post Will Play Hell on Your Cohesion

Time flies like a demented loon out of the forest of good intentions.

I am trying to shoot for a good metaphor here, instead I end up gunning down said demented loon out of my grammatical stratosphere. Or at least I try to. Because as time is moving ever onward, the only dementia that's left is clinging in tattered entrails to my frantic typing fingertips, trying to make up for lost time (and posts) on this blog.

In the amount of time I was on "blog sabbatical", Woog went through a frightening week-long asthma attack, reminiscent of the ones I used to have as a kid. His was brought about by a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't appetite and a staunch refusal to honor siesta hour. With a weakened resistance, the poor bugger succumbed to wheezing and hacking at the first touch of the cold.

Needless to say, we drowned him in anti-allergens, smoked him silly with his nebulizer, and whupped his stubborn ass each time he conveniently "forgot" a noon meal or his afternoon nap. After each whipping, we sat down with frowning growling Mr. Obstinate, trying to sooth his hurt with some well-meant parental platitudes.

The following vacation day (one among the many other ill-placed holidays declared by an ill-placed president), we took him out for a long scenic drive and tried to stuff him with food. We'd have liked to think we were successful, or perhaps it was his new appetite stimulant cum vitamin supplement, because in the weeks that followed, he started eating and sleeping again. We threw in a full body massage each night (with efficascent oil yet!) each time he met his food and nap quota. How he purred!

Food again?!

What a lucky thing to discover massage as a bribe for good behavior. I wonder if any other desperate parent has come up with equally unusual solutions.

Robust mom, frail son

Meanwhile, the 13-month-old had developed a temperament that ran the full range of the spectrum. He'd go from saccharine sweet to viciously angry in a matter of seconds, uttering harsh staccato barks, hands darting like quicksilver to yank on his Manong Woog's hair. Or rake down our startled faces. Maybe he was frustrated about the excruciatingly slow speed of his first tottering steps, who knows? But in the two weeks that brought him into his 14th month, he went from wobbling little piglet to prancing little piglet, leaving his handlers (two parents and a nanny) plumb out of breath. As part of his daily routine, he'd scuttle up the stairs to the very top, look down from his dizzying height, then wail in a panic for someone to help him down again.

He walks. Finally.

But despite his swift progress, the temper remained. An early caveat about what to expect from him at Terrible Two? We shudder at the thought.

Eli on top of the world

One morning, under a slight drizzle, he made it out the front door and glanced up the drainpipe, hoping for a gush of water to dunk his hands under. Denied that pleasure, he turned his attention on the droplets of rain dotting his grandfather's car. Ooooh! By the time we caught up to him, he was damp and giggling. Eyes lost in the folds of his cheeks, drool mingling with the raindrops on his chin.

It may very well have been the same kind of curious excitement that led his Manong Woog to play with the new set of kitchen knives in the new knife block the day before, losing him a night's massage in the bargain.


Hah! Massage as both positive and negative reinforcement. Who'd have thought it'd work?

In other sad news, my second hand rose died. It is currently serving as compost for my growing sunflowers. Atch made it up to me by buying me some celery. The stalks I chopped and incorporated into our workday meat sandwiches, the leaves garnished Woog's favorite pancit, and the roots I buried in a pot where they are growing fresh shoots even as I type. Thanks to all this rain.


And it is still raining. It has been raining all week. It is flooded from China all the way to Ghana, and our damp days-old wash hangs in sodden downcast flags, sometimes blowing three sheets to sudden gusts of wind.


Oh, what I'd give for a touch of sunshine and some thoroughly dry underwear!