simply complicated.

No matter how far our fate brings us, no matter how excited we feel when we reach the places we only dream of seeing, there is no greater feeling than being home.
Fort Bonifacio
Driving around Fort Bonifacio often brings me nostalgia.  The old military camp has changed so much in the past years.  In fact, there is almost no more trace of everything that I grew up with. The quiet surroundings full of trees where we stroll along as kids have been changed with tall buildings.  The spacious golf course covered with a carpet of bermuda grass withered with bountiful water every morning is now covered with asphalt.  The privacy we once enjoyed having the access to the camp has now been replaced with buses and jeepneys plying the road, bringing people from all over the metro.   The only evidence left of what it was before is the small portion in the finance area.  A few years back when fort bonifacio was initially offered for sale, the developer marketed it as “the way life should be” but for someone who was born here and who have spent the many childish laughters, there will be no more to look back to but the memories it had left behind inside me.

The Market Place.

Coming home for me means living my life the way it was before.   Though a lot of things have definitely changed, I still act as if It was just yesterday when I was here.  None of the usual Balikbayan scene.

Among my siblings, its only me who likes to accompany mama to the wet market.  Mom doesn’t go anymore to Pasig Market but this time, on a Saturday morning I asked her to go there.  Philippine wet market is always annoyingly noisy and literally wet, overly crowded to the point that I almost fell down when somebody just blindly passed by me.  Mom jumped from one stall to another looking for fresh meat, and fresh means ‘mainit-init pa as in bagong katay’.  Wow! Everything is fresh from fish, meat, fruits, vegetables…another face of the Philippine wet market are the vendors of all ages.  I pity the small children who, instead of playing at home are there, roaming all over the market selling plastic bags.  At the same time, I was so proud that at such a young age they learn the value of hard work.

penned while on vacation in manila, feb. 2009.