what's been happening at the home front in good old HI? i have no idea. i haven't had access to my cellphone or used the internet since now (although i still don't have access to my phone). what's been happening here in the homeland of pilipinas? a fuck ton.
first day: took a taxi from the airport to the renaissance hotel in the heart of makati, manila. there are no such things as lanes much less rules of the road. courtesy is shown through the horn and if there's an opening, you take it.
day 2: watched the pacquiao/de la hoya fight in central manila. the crowds were intense and when pacman was victorious, the newspapers venerated him to sainthood for the next few days. apparently, he's also a politician with ambitions for a congressional post. went shopping, got a sexy yesstyle hooded vest for $12.
day 3: visited rizal park in luneta and saw the site of dr. jose rizal's execution. visited intramuros and fort santiago (old school manila). started my first day of arnis training with an expert recommended by one of my father's friends.
day 4: visited the sm mall of asia, ate cheech (chicharron) made from the omentum of the pig (the apron of fat and tissue that covers the intestines) - probably some of the best cheech i've ever had. second day of arnis training. as it turns out, the training i've received is actually what's covered over several months.
day 5: visited calamba and saw dr. jose rizal's birthplace (kind of a backward order) and the giant pot adjacent to rizal's house that grants the city its name. third day of arnis training. one more day of training to go.
i still have about three days left here. the philippines is so ghetto, i love it. i've seen despair and abject poverty. i've seen people sleeping in ditches, hanging clothes in shanty towns erected next to the fish markets. i've listened to a 70 year old taxi driver tell me the story of how he survived being held at gunpoint as a door-to-door salesman. i've sat in the passenger's seat of a car while an 80 year old lady pressed her face against my window to beg for change. all this is still only in makati (the nicer, urban portion of philippines). upon my next trip to PI, we're supposedly going to the provinces - tuguegarao, cagayan; bannawag, cagayan; maybe bacarra.
i said in an earlier entry that if the world were to end, it would look like manila. if it does, i would relish it. the only order is chaos. cars here are more expensive than people. security is needed at every door to major buildings. a day before i arrived, there was a shootout between police and a gang that left 16 people dead, including a father and his 6 year old daughter (civilians). if that is america's future, bring it on. i know what it looks like and if that is our fate, all i can do is sit back and enjoy it.
"Do what you can to survive. It's a jungle out there in the streets..." - Gabay (Guide) D
currently: suffering from lack of sleep last night and the countless blisters on my hands and the destroyed muscles in my upper body
2 comments:
all the more reason why i'm afraid to go to PI. Even if I did know how to speak, I would still be scared shitless~
I wanted to watch that fight. Rowboy even texted me that he ordered it on pay-per-view. But it's Rowboy. F*** That~
The end of the world sounds scary. But I can imagine it being like that.
I suppose by time you return to the US of A you'll be able to kill anyone, huh. I look forward to learning some of that, too.
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