A shower of light

Remember the hanging lights at the Promenade of Our Lady in the Ateneo de Manila High School? This is what it was like sitting underneath one of those acacia trees.

Wishing you all a peaceful and prosperous 2009!

And to those who live in countries that have not yet banned the personal use of firecrackers and fireworks (like the Philippines): please be careful tonight!

Of hills and heroes

December 30 is Rizal Day in the Philippines. It commemorates the death of Dr. Jose P. Rizal by firing squad in 1896 which made him a martyr of the Philippine Revolution against Spanish colonial rule. So today I offer you a photo not of Metro Manila but of the province named after him. Rizal province is to the east of Metro Manila and has one city and 13 municipalities. It is hilly, situated as it is on the slopes of the southern portion of the Sierra Madre mountain range, and the weather is cooler than Manila's. It can actually support pine trees! They're on the scrawny side, but still. Because of Metro Manila's congestion and high land costs, the nearest municipalities of Rizal are seeing a lot of development. This photo shows some of the new subdivisions in Taytay. Next to Cainta, it is the nearest municipality to Pasig City, which is part of Metro Manila. In fact, Pasig City itself used to be the capital of the province of Rizal until it was made a part of the metro in 1975.

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Just a reminder to all you CDP bloggers out there: If you haven't voted for the February theme yet, please do so! The poll is in the February Theme Day Poll forum topic. Please help spread the word too!

Luxury jeep

Metro Manila's king of the road, the jeepney, is open and sits about 14 people—two in front beside the driver and six on each side at the back. I saw this large, colorful jeep parked near Harbour Square one night and wondered about it. I knew that WOW Philippines is the flagship project of our Department of Tourism and it took a little web search to find out what this was. Basically, it's an air-conditioned jeepney—with more comfortable seats, I assume—specially made for tours of Metro Manila. There are several tour packages available, one of which brings you to the nearby province of Pampanga, but you can also buy a hop-on-hop-off ticket from hotel kiosks or from the tour facilitator inside the jeep. Jeepney Tours has a website which lists and describes all the stops and packages available. Though most of the hop-on-hop-off stops are in the cities of Makati and Manila only, one of these days I'll just hop on one of these jeeps and be a tourist for a day in my own metro.

Find more Odd Shots—or post your own—at Katney's Kaboodle.

First time lucky

The very first photograph of my very first attempt to take pictures of fireworks. It was the only decent shot too. I couldn't quite get the timing right between the 'boom' and the click of the shutter so many of the photos were just of smoke. Ah well. I hope I'll have other opportunities to try again. This was part of the fireworks that greeted alumni of the Ateneo de Manila University during the 2008 Grand Alumni Homecoming.

Veneration

At the end of the Christmas Eve Mass, baby Jesus is again taken out of His crib to allow the congregation to welcome and venerate Him, much as the shepherds and wise men did in the Nativity story. One person holds the infant and another holds the napkin to wipe the statue after each kiss. More than one statue is presented to the congregation for this ritual, otherwise it'll be Christmas day before everyone finishes.

Jesus is born

The infant Jesus was installed in the crib that was empty at the start of the Christmas Eve Mass, which we call the Misa de Gallo. The term is quite inaccurate, actually, because gallo is Spanish for rooster, so it should refer to a dawn Mass. There was a time when Christmas Eve Masses were really held at midnight too, but nowadays, many are held earlier. The Mass we attended was at ten o'clock in the evening.

Maligayang Pasko!

Certain matters (and a couple of parties!) will be keeping me busy and away from the computer for several days, and I might not be able to visit everyone that I'd like to, so…

From our home to yours,
Merry Christmas!
May you have a blessed day full of good food and surrounded by the people you love.

The season of waiting

A Catholic priest friend once told us that if there is only one piece of Christmas decoration we could put up, it should be the nativity scene. Owing to the fact that Christianity was brought to the Philippines by the Spaniards, we call the nativity scene by the Spanish name for Bethlehem, where Jesus was born: the belen. This is the nativity scene in the Ateneo Church of the Gesù. Since Jesus hasn't been born yet, the crib is still empty. The image of the infant Jesus will only be installed during the Christmas Eve Mass. In contrast to the modern and simple architecture of the Gesù, the nativity scene is very Filipino—at least during the Spanish colonial period. The clothes of Mary and Joseph are typical of the era and so is the building reproduced on the screen. The parol (Christmas star) is made of capiz shell, used extensively in handcrafted, decorative Filipino products from jewelry to home accessories.

Garden café indoors

After more than six months, I finally managed to get a photo of my other favorite coffee shop: Figaro. Unlike The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Figaro is a Filipino company and among the varieties it carries is our very own Barako coffee which is in a dangerous decline because of a bad infestation in the 1990s and tough competition from other countries. The Figaro Coffee Company is a member of a coalition of coffee farms in the provinces of Batangas and Cavite that is working to save the Barako (tough man) coffee, a Liberica with a very robust flavor. This is the Shangri-La Plaza mall branch of Figaro, located in one of the mall's very wide corridors and designed to look like a garden café, complete with marble tabletops, wrought-iron details and ivied walls. Though it's not in the photo, it even has a little fountain among the garden tables and chairs.

A house that isn't a home

The last time I posted a picture of Bookay-ukay, a used-books store near our house, a couple of people commented that all they need now is to offer coffee. I don't think that'll happen any time soon, but can I offer you beer instead? No? Then what about some pizza? Flowers? Haircut? How about an hour or two of network games? Bookay-ukay is only one of several shops crammed into this converted house. There's a restaurant that turns into a watering hole at night, an inexpensive pizzeria that delivers, a flower shop, a salon that offers facials and massages aside from the usual hair and makeup services, an internet café, a review center, and even a graphic design studio and printing service. It's like a tiny strip mall. Except in exclusive subdivisions, Metro Manila's cities aren't very strict with residential and commercial zoning. Oftentimes, even light industrial activities are allowed in residential areas.

Blue glow

The Promenade of Our Lady and the St. Stanislaus Kostka Chapel of the Ateneo de Manila High School. Unlike the higher education levels, the basic education units (high school and grade school) of the Ateneo de Manila University are still only for boys. The low buildings on either side of the promenade are the classrooms of the 4th year students. I hear that the lights hang on the trees year-round but are only turned on during special events and occasions. This was at about 5:00 in the afternoon.



An hour later, this is what the promenade looked like. Even the chapel is outlined in lights! Please pardon the fuzziness of this picture—people and cars were beginning to crowd the driveway and I had a hard time getting a clear shot and couldn't take my sweet time about it.

Visit the Sky Watch Friday home page and tour the skies of our beautiful world.

Busy but happy

Say hello to Jollibee, the mascot of the Philippines' largest fast-food chain of the same name. Back in July, I posted a photo of its interior, which looks just like any other fast-food restaurant in any part of the world. It serves burgers, of course—it started as a copy-cat McDonald's before McDonald's came to the country. But if you look at the poster behind it, you'll see one of its most popular dishes, which also identifies the chain as being very Filipino: pansit palabok. Palabok is made of rice noodles, a seafood-based sauce, and topped with more seafood, hard-boiled eggs, green onions and crunchy tsitsaron (fried pork rind). The orange color of the sauce comes from atsuete (annatto) from the shrub Bixa orellana. And in case you're wondering about the title of this post, it's the reason why Tony Tan Caktiong and his family chose the name Jollibee for the small ice cream parlor they opened in 1975. With more than 1600 stores worldwide in the entire chain, I'm sure they're all very busy and very happy.

Translucence

I once posted a photo of a dim sum cart found in many Chinese restaurants in Metro Manila. Here is one item that you won't find in that cart because they're steamed only as they're ordered: har gau, steamed shrimp dumplings. It's spelled in many different ways, actually—the problem of translating Chinese characters into Roman letters. We have further 'Filipinized' it into hakaw and that's the word you'll see in menus here.

Self-illuminated

Aside from the suspended Christmas trees, Power Plant Mall in Makati City also decorated its hall lamps for Christmas. Gives me an idea for our chandelier next year, but I'll probably be either too busy or too lazy to do it.