Why Nigh Tagaytay?

It’s an easeful short voyage out of jungle Manila.  I don’t have to purchase plane tickets.  And most of all I love the snuggly weather.

overlooking the taal lake

i love their lunch buffet

I and a few members of my family did a short getaway to cool breezy Tagaytay.  We were supposed to stay overnight but after a sumptuous buffet lunch at Bags of Beans Café & Restaurant that filled us to our respective alimentary rims… everybody agreed that the money to be spent in a luxurious hotel would be more appropriate to buy miscellany of foodstuffs that can be brought back to Manila.

That is the beauty of charming Tagaytay.  Being so near Manila, you can actually return anytime that you may want or back out from it if your nutty erratic and eclectic judgment wished so.

After lunch we stepped into the coffee shop portion of Bag Of Beans and purchase us bag loads of freshly baked (and still hot) loaves of raisin bread, a box of their special and very popular blueberry cheesecake and packs of buttered biscochos.

nengkoy and her loots!!!

Of course our family’s usual trip to Tagaytay will not be complete without going to Mahogany Market to purchase the most famous and freshest local beef of the province.  The purchases done by Nengkoy is sooo plenty it felt like she bought one whole cow in that meat market!

is it just me??? but there seem some eerie atmosphere inside this church…

Before proceeding with more purchases, my elder sister demanded that we pass by Tierra De Maria Heaven of Meditation and Enrichment.  Though very small for a church, it homes the majestic 50-foot image of Mother Mary.  Surprisingly the small room with low ceiling is filled with devotees and the walls with statues and statuettes of various saints as well as testimonies of Mother Mary’s holy intercessions.  Before I start melting and devotees start exorcism upon me, I demanded that we leave the holy place.

We then head to Rowena’s, one of those famous pasalubong-stop-over-stores in Tagaytay.  I can hardly determine the single English translation for the Filipino word “pasalubong”.  It is because this Filipino norm and convention of buying take home presents and giveaways is so Filipino.

pasalubong overload!!! inside rowena’s store…

Will definitely be back to scenic Tagaytay…

Nabusog… Tinamad… Umuwi…

Modern Bowel Movement

I hate winding up with thriving colonies of molds and mildews bonding together like concrete on my bathroom walls and floor.  That is why habitually, routinely and tirelessly I would scrub my bathroom and my toilet.

Early today while I scour, soap-up and wash my toilet which I consider to be a medieval form of torture, I remember taking photos of public restrooms during my recent trip to Japan.  It come not a surprise that this highly urbanized country has technologically advanced and sophisticated toilets.  They transformed the basic toilet facilities into ingenious comfort room devices.

To prove my point, here’s one photo of buttons to press of a modern Japanese public toilet inside a mall when I answered a call of nature and do a number two.

Notice those patterns of raised dots? Those are Braille, making this toilet blind-friendly.

I was nuts about the right most button (in the photo).  When I pressed it, an artificial sound of flushing waiter played on a speaker inside the toilet to disguise what otherwise obnoxious tune my butthole is producing.

Hay tek na pag pupu.

Harrison Plaza

The Philippines boasts of its humongous shopping malls.  Two of the biggest in the world can actually be found here (SM North Edsa and SM Mall of Asia).  But there’s one mall I grew up going to.  It’s Harrison Plaza.  Growing up, this has been my family’s mall of choice during the 70s and 80s because of its accessibility since it is simply just at the borders of Pasay and Manila cities.

I am writing about this mall because I happen to bumped into a photo of how glorious Harrison Plaza was in the 70’s…

harrison plaza during the ’70s

This one-stop retail center is the first shopping mall in the country.  It opened in 1976 and up until now is very much operational.  Though it obviously needs some serious refurbishing to bring back its glory, Harrison Plaza is actually even older than the world’s worst airport NAIA Terminal 1 by 6 years.

harrison plaza today

Obviously, time has changed.  It is no longer the mall of choice by the Filipinos.  But going to Harrison Plaza does not entail and pressure a person to primp and gussy up (like when you would go to Rockwell, Greenbelt or Resorts World).  You can simply go sporting your casual house clothes.

It is no longer the mall of the well-heeled and A-listers.  Yet being so near to one of the Ivy-League-like universities of the land (De La Salle University), Harrison Plaza for sure has been visited at least once by these privileged souls.  I suppose this is one place every Green Archer can’t inevitably get rid of during his fun yet busy college life – may it be a simple need for a cellphone fix, a school requirement purchase, a cheap lunch or a societal immersion to a lower to middle class bracket of the population.

Now that I am living 3 minutes away from Harrison Plaza, this mall has been my most convenient place in resolving my addiction to rash and unnecessary purchasing binges otherwise known as “shopping”.

Bakit walang estatwa o rebulto si Francis Burton Harrison sa mol na ‘to?