Casa of My Dreams

Eight years is a long time not to go to a favorite place within reach but maybe just enough time for a realization to sucker-punch its intended effect.

Casa San Miguel and I go back a long way, almost as long as its nineteen years of existence.  In our youth, my architecture classmates and I organized an exhibit-event there linking music and architecture where classical compositions were performed by the pianist, Mariel Ilusorio who happens to be my sister while we mounted three installations featuring photos of buildings related to the piano pieces.  Since then, I've been taking different groups of friends from mountaineers to office mates to the community arts center built by Coke Bolipata in Zambales.  It's a twenty minute boat ride away from Capones Island where a beautiful Spanish lighthouse stands in a crop of dramatic landscape so we usually combine the trip with a visit there.  I've introduced a theater group from Bulacan to the magic of this place and there was a time a Green Peace eco-warrior studied the corals around Capones with us.  One of the my last visits was an escape I needed one New Year after a great rejection, the kind of which you've spilled your heart to someone and it gets pulverized and you just have to go somewhere far, far away from the noisy revelry.  Casa was it for me and Coke and his family were there with their usual open, jovial selves.

Coke has been my idol for what he's done at Casa San Miguel.  It's a dreamer's dream to do something with an impact to the community and to individual lives - children who discover their musical and artistic talents, artists who have a venue to develop their craft while sharing knowledge with others, locals who get to mingle with international performers, visitors who appreciate the color the experience brings to their day, ad infinitum.   After travelling the world over giving concerts as part of the famous trio of Bolipata brothers, Coke decides to come home to the Philippines and does this incredible feat of hope and imagination that gives back to the country as much as he has been blessed by family, fortune and fate.

The night before I went back to Casa, I couldn't sleep thinking about what has happened in the span of years I haven't gone there, what I've done with my life, the twists and turns that has taken me to a place Dr. Seuss would probably term "nowhere" and I contemplated a decision I had to make that was calling me once more to get out of a comfort zone.  How many times have I been called to do this and I answered affirmatively only to get led into seeming dead-ends and bumbling limbos?  It made me sleepless wallowing in fear and doubt.

My husband drives my son and I to Casa the next morning using the GPS on his tablet.  He takes us on the type of road he loves where ours is the only vehicle running through the rural-scape.  We arrive in Casa and just as expected, it has changed tremendously in spatial orientation and lay-out with additional functions.  This is no surprise from Coke since he has been toying and tweaking with Casa ever since.

Now there are three new bed and breakfast type rooms whereas before we just slept in beds in an area that is currently a gallery.  The foyer to the theater has been converted into a kitchen with it's own brick oven for the Casa Backstage Cafe which serves breads, sandwiches, pizzas, pastas and paella.  The concert hall lost it's balcony to an improved acoustic setting and there are new rehearsal studios.  Beyond Coke's Casa is Plet Bolipata's house surrounded by her sculpture garden.        

How time indeed flies and where does it find us?  That night in my strangely well-appointed room so unlike the maski-paps (maski papaano; any-which-way) type of accommodation before, I couldn't sleep again.  But this time, my mind did not wrestle with fears and doubts.  It celebrated and was simply excited with the prospect of what was unknown.

Check out the Pundaquit Festival schedule here:

http://pundaquitfest19.weebly.com/schedule.html

. . . and directions to help you get there:

http://pundaquitfest19.weebly.com/contact-us.html
http://www.waypoints.ph/route_gen.php?dest=casasm
http://www.maplandia.com/philippines/region-3/zambales/san-miguel-15-17-0-n-120-1-0-e/

The Logos Hope Childhood

The last time I went to the big ship bookstore, it was still the MV Doulos before and I took my two little brothers with me.  They were less than 10 years old back then and now they're gigantic men attending college with schedules and lives of their own far apart from mine.  Digging up the old photos makes me a bit sad that those days can never return.  There will never be that ease of taking them out at a whim because they have to consult their girlfriend or classmates. 

I went today to the MV Logos Hope with my husband, son and stepmom.   I was hoping to bring the once-little-now-big Carlo and Bobby but they had classes.  It's always a joy bringing children anywhere since they see everything with the freshest of eyes and Joshua was no different grinning with excitement at the gigantic ship.  

These are the books I got - nine all in all priced at P100 - P150.  I didn't want to go over that range because if I did then I should've just bought from Booksale.  However I allowed myself the indulgence of a P250 Hot Air Balloon book because we recently went to the Clark Hot Air Balloon Fest and Joshua would swoon over the pictures of the colorful flying objects.

That drawing on the left side was made by Joshua while we waited for Tita Tessie to finish shopping for all the Christian books her heart desired.  Joshua's usually glued to the Disney Junior channel so it's great to find Handy Manny and Little Einsteins sticker books.  I chose only one book for myself -- the Asian cookbook.  Usually, I'd get more but I'm awaiting the arrival of a Kindle so got to practice self-control.

Too bad the people behind Logos Hope didn't sell food beyond hotdogs, popcorn, cookies and ice cream because we would have loved to try cuisine from different continents.  It would be a great way to share culture if they had various nationalities represented through food.  The other thing they didn't take advantage of is the lovely ocean setting.  We were just shepherded into the bookstore, a gallery and into a cafe and except for the cafe, it was just a big windowless room that could be anywhere.  It would be nice if they allocated deck space to welcome visitors who can enjoy the infinite ocean - sky view, sitting down sipping latte or tea and chatting up the crew. 

We had a very late lunch at the nearby Little Lamb hotpot restaurant, one of my hubby's favorite and now my stepmom's too.  The healthy broth was so gorgeous and after leaving the place, I dreamed of going back there as soon as tonight.

Here are more photos of Carlo and Bobby - sentimental trip down memorable childhood.  I hope as Joshua grows up, I can always take him places and he doesn't have to check his calendar.

Randomly: William and Ashley

I was waiting for my turn at the clinic of Dr. Mow and there was the usual stack of Newsweek.  Underneath were two copies of this book which I flipped through and couldn't help but want to share it with everyone.  If I can get it into the hands of my brothers, Carlo, Bobby and RM, cousin Juggie plus a list of other people, I'd be very excited-happy-ecstatic for them to read Dr. William Tan's raw-inspiring true tale.

William contracted polio when he was two years old but this was not a deterrent at all to pursuing his dreams of becoming a doctor and marathon "runner." He was a Harvard Fullbright and Oxford Raffles Scholar and trained at the Mayo Clinic.  He took a year off from his medical practice as a neurosurgeon and through seven continents, raced in his wheelchair through ten marathons in the Antarctica, Argentina, Egypt, Thailand, South Africa, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA.  Makes you think anything you're going through now should be easy.  Makes you think any dream you can conjure can be realized.

I don't know how it ended up in my hand but I must have accidentally, unconsciously taken the TIME magazine also from the doctor's office so another random inspirational discovery landed on my lap.  Ashley Sutton's bar in Bangkok was featured and it was amazing how his artistic inclinations expressed themselves in his life story and were the basis for various successful businesses.

He was an iron-ore miner working in what we can only imagine as a bleak, dreary environment.  Letting his imagination run cannonball loose, he created a world of faeries in his mind that led to sketches and a series of beautifully crafted books that appealed to both children and adults.

He started sculpting metal faeries based on his imagined creatures and they sold the world over through shops and the internet.  He opened up a faerie-world-themed bar in Bangkok where he now lives while continuing to operate the entrepreneurial fruits of his pure creations.

Someday, I wish to discover something like this that I can do, have fun and spread around in an enterprise and I wonder, William and Ashley, when that day will come.

Finding the Real Deal

My hubby who is from mainland China has been trying out living in the Philippines for over a year now and I can’t believe there are only THREE Chinese restaurants that thus far have passed muster for him – one in Malate, one in Binondo and another near MOA.  I made it my mission thus to desperately jack this number up. 

Let me explain how this is not a simple task.  Most of the Chinese restaurants here are considered “fake” by my husband’s standards and if you’ve lived in China for a number of years, you would be able to relate and commiserate with him.   Working in Tianjin (two hours east of Beijing) made me realize how vastly different the food is there from the Chinese food we’re so used to here in Manila to the point that I’d be hankering for our very own siopao and siomai.  

But back to the task at hand, the key to spotting the “real deal” for my hubby is to find restaurants where the customers are from mainland China who speak Mandarin.   The menu also provides a clue.  If you see words like siopao, siomai or asado then it’s “Filipinized” already.   If the pictures on the wall or menu look too familiar to the Pinoy, then it’s probably not what we’re looking for either.   Hubby also shuns the big, palatial looking types which he thinks are way overpriced especially for tasteless fare as he prefers the small, no-pretense type of gigs.

Eagerly poring over food blogs, I thought I found one hopeful in this much hyped and talked about hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Rockwell.  Sadly, when hubby and I tried it, it was a disappointment.  Maybe we didn’t order right but my hubby is strict when it comes to matching the value-for-money with the taste factor.   Ah well, try again.

Last night, it was an important date for the Chinese since it was the fifteenth day after the Lunar New Year so we headed for Binondo.   Traffic has subsided considerably at night so the stroll is easier but I thought after walking down Ongpin that we’d never find a single candidate.  The establishments on the main street look just like that – very much established through the years so they’re Filipinized.   Hubby however had the magic eye and could read the characters and he found a place off the main street that proved to be our savior.

The owner spoke to us in Mandarin and everyone else eating there spoke in Putonghua.  Jackpot!  And when we tasted the food, it brought us back to China with the fish choking and drowning in a sea of chillies. 

Talking to the owner’s wife also took me back to China since she did what any Chinese woman would do seeing another woman with a small child – give a lecture about what to feed and not to feed a baby and why.  I got those lectures a lot not only from my mother-in-law but from total strangers who weren't shy about giving their opinion and usually aghast at the sight of a diaper.  They’re very against using diapers in China and mothers won’t mince words making you feel that you’ve done a major wrong deed.

Our score card is up to four – a bit paltry but with renewed determination, we'll discover more.   

The others in the list were introduced to my hubby by his adventurous friend who didn't speak a word of English and yet managed to go all over the Philippines inspecting mining sites by himself.  He introduced the restaurant in Binondo where you can get turtle soup which hopefully doesn't use the endangered type.  Jason, my husband was so happy with this find because turtle soup is a delicacy in China that costs a fortune but in Manila, it was unbelievably cheap.   The other restaurant is the Suzhou Dimsum on Mabini St. and the third is the Hong Kong ____ place at the seafood market near MOA.  A group of mainlanders entered that restaurant lugging bottles of wine in SM supermarket bags.  Definitely mainlanders since they want their meals together with their alcohol.  Passing by their table, hearing Mandarin like music to my ears and seeing what they were feasting on, I want to go back there to order what they ordered plus more.

There is a hotpot place near Manila Hotel which is a big chain in China called Little Sheep and it's the closest we can get to the Mongolian hotpot that we miss.  However, the sauce -- which is a key element -- is not as good as the one in China but passable if you crave the ultra thin slices of lamb cooked in boiling broth.  

The disappointing restaurant pictured above was so promising based on blog entries alone but experiencing it ourselves, the colorful barangay parade that passed by the window was the most interesting part of the trip.  Before going to the restaurant ourselves, I told some friends about it since they, a Canadian married to a Chinese mainlander, were also in search of the holy grail of Chinese cuisine.  They checked out the place and also weren't impressed.  They theorize that maybe the chef was away for the New Year holiday so they'll give it another try after a month.