the mall.
it is, by sm standards, one of their smaller malls. perhaps a bit larger than sm centerpoint. it does have a singular feature, one that is shared by no other malls that i know of (and have been to) in the sm mall empire: it's got this open air chasm, if you will, in the center of it, topped by a permanent industrial-scale translucent tent.
makes sense, really. less airconditioning load, given the generally cool weather year-round in the city of pines. i noted that a given corner of the atrium on any given floor had at least one of the coffee chains represented. starbucks on the first, next to the main entrance, seattle's best on the floor above, and on the uppermost floor, facing west, i think, was figaro. of the three, the upper floor coffee joints had the benefit of the balconies that flanked the building on eastern and western sides.
in terms of the view, figaro had the best.
also, with the prevailing winds, figaro had more than it's fair share of the prevailing westerly winds, which meant a fair amount of wind chill. thank heavens for their coffee (decaf) and their rendition of black forest cake (which seemed to be more moist that most versions i've tried at coffee places).
now if they only had better outdoor seating (seems like the aluminum extrusion thingies that cibo also favors), it would be a fine place to spend literally hours just watching clouds roll in over the bowl of the city proper.
thus went the rest of that afternoon, a cup of coffee and a slice of cake helping the time slip by.
incidentally, and as glenn mentioned, clouds are warm.
surprising, really. stood at the balcony railing as a wall of white poured over the western hills (peaks?) and obliterated the view of the city below. the wind that drove the cloud had the bite of wind chill, and not a few drops of rain. but when the cloud finally made contact with the mall, the wind actually died and i could feel that warmth that glenn spoke of.
...then it began to rain in earnest. back to the coffee and cake.
a quite interesting though fairly uneventful afternoon. which, from time to time, is a good thing.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Sunday, September 18, 2005
thunderbirds are ... stop
a few days back, a dvd of thunderbirds (the remake of the marionette tv series of the sixties), came across louie's desk, courtesy of one of the composers in the company's music division (we're a semi-one-stop-shop for multimedia production, so to speak).
neither of us had caught the movie during it's theater run (hard to remember why, if it was because we were busy, or due to the potential for the movie's being a dud courtesy of the director...)
later that day, while i was on a search and destroy mission for temporary files on his home computer, louie decided that it may be time to give the movie a look-see. at that time, joe also came in, so we three ...
... suffered.
it was, plainly said, horrible. at times, it seemed that i was watching a bad local movie, so lame were the situations, so centered on the teenage component of the cast, so set up with "moments" where they could throw off some "witty" quips while time stopped, then resumed as soon as their "cute" moments were over.
ugh.
i am not surprised that it bombed.
neither of us had caught the movie during it's theater run (hard to remember why, if it was because we were busy, or due to the potential for the movie's being a dud courtesy of the director...)
later that day, while i was on a search and destroy mission for temporary files on his home computer, louie decided that it may be time to give the movie a look-see. at that time, joe also came in, so we three ...
... suffered.
it was, plainly said, horrible. at times, it seemed that i was watching a bad local movie, so lame were the situations, so centered on the teenage component of the cast, so set up with "moments" where they could throw off some "witty" quips while time stopped, then resumed as soon as their "cute" moments were over.
ugh.
i am not surprised that it bombed.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
cafe by the ruins (the unplanned trip, part 3)
the plan: lunch at the "cafe by the ruins"
we left the red lion inn at the stroke of noon, and somehow decided to wear our jackets (which turned out to be a good thing, as we found out later) -- though at that moment, with the sun shining through sparse cloud cover, i felt somewhat foolish for being overdressed given the heat.
another sub-40-peso fx taxi ride and there we were at the cafe by the ruins. strictly speaking, though, it should be called the cafe "in" the ruins, seeing as the entry to the establishment is actually one of the arched doorways of the former governor's residence in the city of pines; it had been bombed to pieces during the japanese retreat of world war ii (so i read somewhere).
it's a small-ish place, no more than 15 or so tables, but it's a nice place to be nevertheless. especially that it began to drizzle as soon as we were seated.
cafe by the ruins, seen from the furthest alcove -- you can see the remnants of the ruin's wall and the two arched doorways beyond the people seated at the tables
view outside the alcove at what may have been a garden of sorts
one of the light fixtures close-up
the rest of the place
so, cool weather, made cooler by the rain. even the slightest breeze had a bite to it.
to the food:
ingredients-wise, i had a white fish in coconut milk with ginger and malunggay leaves, paired with native red/purple rice -- i forget what the dish is called. glenn had a pasta with crab fat and pan de sal with quesong puti. definitely a food trip, and good. ...and, going against the grain after my recent-ish bout with something acronymized as g.e.r.d., i had a cuppa fresh barako coffee...
neat fortification against the natural airconditioning of baguio.
lunch, to reiterate, was good. have to go back there sometime. as to the coffee bit, the diuretic effects were quite pronounced, no doubt exacerbated by the chilly weather. so off to the comfort room, then. where i noticed the signs.
note on the signs: as i recall the menu had a short introduction about the establishment, and it said something to the effect that the owners envisioned it also as a hangout for artists, and there were quite a few artworks about the place (which, sad to say, i didn't take pictures of. my phone/camera is just not handy enough to take pictures without a fair amount of hassle -- a blogworthy topic, to be sure.).
but to give you a sample of the art, here are the signs for the male and female rest rooms:
after lunch, the unplanned trip continued. took a jeep and got off around burnham park. where, it transpired, there were few people.
odd, memory serves that burnham park is one of the most congregated (if that's the proper word) places in baguio, practically one of the only open spaces in the city for people to use. it could have been the drizzle, true, but the place was really sparsely occupied, few boats making lazy circles in the rectangular man-made lake. especially odd that it was the beginning of the weekend.
we walked around the lake, avoiding enterprising salesmen of various trinkets. i was not keen on boating on the lake, so without much ado, we decided to see what shoemart baguio was all about, having heard that one of it's features, an open atrium, had caused some grief at the outset, during a rare direct typhoon hit to the city.
the walk to the mall, set on what seems to be one of the highest points in the city (site of the former pines hotel, i'm told -- that burned down years ago to some loss of life), was quite an exercise. add to that the fact that no straight way to the place was immediately visible. so it took about 30 minutes of walking to get there.
once there, we discovered where everyone who should have been at burnham park went.
they went malling.
more later.
we left the red lion inn at the stroke of noon, and somehow decided to wear our jackets (which turned out to be a good thing, as we found out later) -- though at that moment, with the sun shining through sparse cloud cover, i felt somewhat foolish for being overdressed given the heat.
another sub-40-peso fx taxi ride and there we were at the cafe by the ruins. strictly speaking, though, it should be called the cafe "in" the ruins, seeing as the entry to the establishment is actually one of the arched doorways of the former governor's residence in the city of pines; it had been bombed to pieces during the japanese retreat of world war ii (so i read somewhere).
it's a small-ish place, no more than 15 or so tables, but it's a nice place to be nevertheless. especially that it began to drizzle as soon as we were seated.
cafe by the ruins, seen from the furthest alcove -- you can see the remnants of the ruin's wall and the two arched doorways beyond the people seated at the tables
view outside the alcove at what may have been a garden of sorts
one of the light fixtures close-up
the rest of the place
so, cool weather, made cooler by the rain. even the slightest breeze had a bite to it.
to the food:
ingredients-wise, i had a white fish in coconut milk with ginger and malunggay leaves, paired with native red/purple rice -- i forget what the dish is called. glenn had a pasta with crab fat and pan de sal with quesong puti. definitely a food trip, and good. ...and, going against the grain after my recent-ish bout with something acronymized as g.e.r.d., i had a cuppa fresh barako coffee...
neat fortification against the natural airconditioning of baguio.
lunch, to reiterate, was good. have to go back there sometime. as to the coffee bit, the diuretic effects were quite pronounced, no doubt exacerbated by the chilly weather. so off to the comfort room, then. where i noticed the signs.
note on the signs: as i recall the menu had a short introduction about the establishment, and it said something to the effect that the owners envisioned it also as a hangout for artists, and there were quite a few artworks about the place (which, sad to say, i didn't take pictures of. my phone/camera is just not handy enough to take pictures without a fair amount of hassle -- a blogworthy topic, to be sure.).
but to give you a sample of the art, here are the signs for the male and female rest rooms:
after lunch, the unplanned trip continued. took a jeep and got off around burnham park. where, it transpired, there were few people.
odd, memory serves that burnham park is one of the most congregated (if that's the proper word) places in baguio, practically one of the only open spaces in the city for people to use. it could have been the drizzle, true, but the place was really sparsely occupied, few boats making lazy circles in the rectangular man-made lake. especially odd that it was the beginning of the weekend.
we walked around the lake, avoiding enterprising salesmen of various trinkets. i was not keen on boating on the lake, so without much ado, we decided to see what shoemart baguio was all about, having heard that one of it's features, an open atrium, had caused some grief at the outset, during a rare direct typhoon hit to the city.
the walk to the mall, set on what seems to be one of the highest points in the city (site of the former pines hotel, i'm told -- that burned down years ago to some loss of life), was quite an exercise. add to that the fact that no straight way to the place was immediately visible. so it took about 30 minutes of walking to get there.
once there, we discovered where everyone who should have been at burnham park went.
they went malling.
more later.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
another spur of the moment
view from the rented hut at leslie's tagaytay
rainy day that saturday, much like today. except that there were some spots of sun amidst the downpours. someone felt the need to see the sunset from the tagaytay highlands, and a bunch of us were sufficiently energized by that notion to pile into a car and drive off down south.
naturally, there were some fits and false starts thrown in before the trip actually got underway, but underway we were, at about 2 in the afternoon.
after about an hour, we were ensconced in one of the rentable cliffside huts of an establishment by the name of "leslie's". the view from our particular hut, as per the picture, was framed by two other huts with uninterrupted views of the volcano on an island within a lake on a larger island. i figure that the square structures on the water are fishpens of a sort, though how fish survive in the acidic water of the lake (which is itself a caldera lake, if you stop to think about it) is unknown to me.
after some photo shenanigans, lunch was had at about three, and the food was good, and the wind, chilly.
hooray for impromptu trips.
incidentally, the trip's instigator didn't see the sunset. we repaired to the picnic grove to see the "nature walk" i think it's called, and sunset was therefore hidden from view when that particular time rolled around.
...perhaps our next trip should be to the breakwaters at manila bay. at least the sunset there ought to be a sure thing to see.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
the unplanned trip: just get on a bus: cheap accomodations
continuation...
4 am in baguio city. the sky is impressively clear, and the air is cold -- breath condensing cold, as we speak of where to go while debarking the bus and plunging through enterprising taxi drivers handing out little slips of paper with accomodations writ thereon.
glenn, having spent quite a whiles in this collegiate city in his college days, suggested someplace that was reasonably priced, with hot water shower facilities (a plus, in the frigid early morning temperatures baguio is known for).
so off we went, fx taxi diesel roar through the ups and downs of the streets of baguio, to corfu village. see other places with big signs note that their rooms are available for 1,800 a night. expensive...
after a short trip, we arrive i know not where. the web lists the place as either "aussie (or attic) hotel and pub", while the sign says "red lion inn" and "corfu village rooms" (i think).
taking the semi-obvious entryway, the ostensible information desk is empty. glenn makes for the bar inside and lo and behold, that's where you get information about the room rates and availability (or it may have been the late hour that caused the info desk to be unmanned).
800 pesos per night per room, with complimentary breakfast thrown in.
see the room, quite oddly shaped, somewhat like a skewed trapezoid, one window, an american style fan with lights and droopy wooden blades, tv with cable, double bed, door to c.r/shower.
what the hell, lack of real sleep on the bus ride over, take it.
he takes the left side of the bed, i the right.
sleep till breakfast, somewhere around 9 or so; unlike what happens to me in the metro when i sleep during the day, i wake up without a pounding headache. hooray for natural airconditioning!
take a bath. shower is odd in the sense that it has a heating device/shower head at the end of a pipe sticking out of the wall in the equally oddly shaped bathroom (a consequence of the fact that the room is situated in a part of the building that has a sharp diagonal wall relative to the rest of the structure).
instructions are above the sink's mirror. something like "turn shower knob four revolutions and then when water is at desired temperature, turn back to adjust heat". hmm. so i shivered while waiting for the rushing stream of water to get warm -- which it didn't, even when the device was making that boiling water noise that you get from electric airpots.
on a hunch, i turned the shower knob until the flow was reduced to a trickle akin to the effect of water draining from a small can with a bunch of holes in the bottom... ...at which point the water began to warm up.
so, hot shower, sort of. but better than the arctic blast of refrigerated water that would have been the alternative.
got dressed up for baguio adventure, woke up the roomie, and watched cable tv as he got himself all refreshed and all that. the only real alternatives on the cable were cnn, bbc, and discovery travel and leisure. cnn/bbc were all on the katrina disaster, discovery travel and leisure was all global trekker (nee lonely planet). refreshing to see the latter show, which was a mainstay of destiny cable when that was the cable provider i'd had when i lived in mandaluyong...
...at the makati apartment, the cable provider is sky. they don't have discovery travel and leisure.
the breakfast was decent enough (i had the "longsilog", which is to say: native (skinless) sausage, garlic fried rice, and scrambled egg, plus their brewed coffee), not bad at all.
and after that, we repaired to the room to discuss the day's adventure. some more cable tv, and then off to the "cafe by the ruins" for lunch.
hmm. a food trip. seeing as there wasn't a real plan of activities once the ascent to baguio was made, a food trip was all right with me.
i'll have to see about how to include pictures with this blog. think i'll ask joe.
to be continued...
4 am in baguio city. the sky is impressively clear, and the air is cold -- breath condensing cold, as we speak of where to go while debarking the bus and plunging through enterprising taxi drivers handing out little slips of paper with accomodations writ thereon.
glenn, having spent quite a whiles in this collegiate city in his college days, suggested someplace that was reasonably priced, with hot water shower facilities (a plus, in the frigid early morning temperatures baguio is known for).
so off we went, fx taxi diesel roar through the ups and downs of the streets of baguio, to corfu village. see other places with big signs note that their rooms are available for 1,800 a night. expensive...
after a short trip, we arrive i know not where. the web lists the place as either "aussie (or attic) hotel and pub", while the sign says "red lion inn" and "corfu village rooms" (i think).
taking the semi-obvious entryway, the ostensible information desk is empty. glenn makes for the bar inside and lo and behold, that's where you get information about the room rates and availability (or it may have been the late hour that caused the info desk to be unmanned).
800 pesos per night per room, with complimentary breakfast thrown in.
see the room, quite oddly shaped, somewhat like a skewed trapezoid, one window, an american style fan with lights and droopy wooden blades, tv with cable, double bed, door to c.r/shower.
what the hell, lack of real sleep on the bus ride over, take it.
he takes the left side of the bed, i the right.
sleep till breakfast, somewhere around 9 or so; unlike what happens to me in the metro when i sleep during the day, i wake up without a pounding headache. hooray for natural airconditioning!
take a bath. shower is odd in the sense that it has a heating device/shower head at the end of a pipe sticking out of the wall in the equally oddly shaped bathroom (a consequence of the fact that the room is situated in a part of the building that has a sharp diagonal wall relative to the rest of the structure).
instructions are above the sink's mirror. something like "turn shower knob four revolutions and then when water is at desired temperature, turn back to adjust heat". hmm. so i shivered while waiting for the rushing stream of water to get warm -- which it didn't, even when the device was making that boiling water noise that you get from electric airpots.
on a hunch, i turned the shower knob until the flow was reduced to a trickle akin to the effect of water draining from a small can with a bunch of holes in the bottom... ...at which point the water began to warm up.
so, hot shower, sort of. but better than the arctic blast of refrigerated water that would have been the alternative.
got dressed up for baguio adventure, woke up the roomie, and watched cable tv as he got himself all refreshed and all that. the only real alternatives on the cable were cnn, bbc, and discovery travel and leisure. cnn/bbc were all on the katrina disaster, discovery travel and leisure was all global trekker (nee lonely planet). refreshing to see the latter show, which was a mainstay of destiny cable when that was the cable provider i'd had when i lived in mandaluyong...
...at the makati apartment, the cable provider is sky. they don't have discovery travel and leisure.
the breakfast was decent enough (i had the "longsilog", which is to say: native (skinless) sausage, garlic fried rice, and scrambled egg, plus their brewed coffee), not bad at all.
and after that, we repaired to the room to discuss the day's adventure. some more cable tv, and then off to the "cafe by the ruins" for lunch.
hmm. a food trip. seeing as there wasn't a real plan of activities once the ascent to baguio was made, a food trip was all right with me.
i'll have to see about how to include pictures with this blog. think i'll ask joe.
to be continued...
Friday, September 09, 2005
jeepney moment
late to work, due to spending the night in the makati apartment as opposed to the las pinas one. after the de rigeur mcdonald's supersize me breakfast (big breakfast with muffin -- as opposed to the rice i normally get), walked about a kilometer and a half to the most opportune spot on the south superhighway near pasay road to get an alabang-bound bus.
instead of broiling in the sun at the late hour (best time to be walking there is around 8 am, in the shade of the skyway), the walk was made bearable by the threatening overcast sky. got a rare "juaymah maureen" bus (for that time, anyway. they usually come along once an hour), again mostly empty for their return trip to alabang.
went to the jeepney terminal at the alabang market and got on a zapote jeep.
i got on the shadowed side of the jeep, close as possible to the entrance/exit and immediately had an odd impression of the guy one person shy of being behind the driver. he had a very pinched face, highlighted by the hollowness of his cheeks, and his eyes struck me as somewhat downcast, yet darting about.
his long-sleeved pullover shirt was probably once very colorful but now was faded and quite thin, fabric-wise.
as is natural on a jeepney, the farther from the driver, one has to hand off the fare to passengers inbetween...
...and he took the fare, doing something strange. maybe it was a matter of timing, but i recall his receiving it with his right hand, but he then made a motion with his left hand to give it to the lady next to the driver; who was at that very time giving someone else's change back.
in that odd exchange, his left hand, fingers closed, just tapped the lady's left shoulder as he got the change with his right hand.
i really don't know why i was looking at this entire happening, but it struck me that he didn't pass my fare along at all.
the situation got stranger when the lady with the driver began to make a fuss over the fare from a passenger opposite me, asking where it was.
he mentioned quite loudly that he'd already passed it, and he had -- though i didn't notice to whom he handed it to. in the intervening period, people had gotten on the jeep, hiding colorful-faded-shirt from my view.
he got off at a stop next to a road that led to a "depressed" area, and i lost sight of him as the jeepney sped away.
mixed feelings on my part. perhaps it was just a matter of timing, but with my senses still raw over my previous loss on a jeepney, it lent a kind of unease about this kind of public transport.
granted, the amount was very small, but still...
not sure i'm making sense.
instead of broiling in the sun at the late hour (best time to be walking there is around 8 am, in the shade of the skyway), the walk was made bearable by the threatening overcast sky. got a rare "juaymah maureen" bus (for that time, anyway. they usually come along once an hour), again mostly empty for their return trip to alabang.
went to the jeepney terminal at the alabang market and got on a zapote jeep.
i got on the shadowed side of the jeep, close as possible to the entrance/exit and immediately had an odd impression of the guy one person shy of being behind the driver. he had a very pinched face, highlighted by the hollowness of his cheeks, and his eyes struck me as somewhat downcast, yet darting about.
his long-sleeved pullover shirt was probably once very colorful but now was faded and quite thin, fabric-wise.
as is natural on a jeepney, the farther from the driver, one has to hand off the fare to passengers inbetween...
...and he took the fare, doing something strange. maybe it was a matter of timing, but i recall his receiving it with his right hand, but he then made a motion with his left hand to give it to the lady next to the driver; who was at that very time giving someone else's change back.
in that odd exchange, his left hand, fingers closed, just tapped the lady's left shoulder as he got the change with his right hand.
i really don't know why i was looking at this entire happening, but it struck me that he didn't pass my fare along at all.
the situation got stranger when the lady with the driver began to make a fuss over the fare from a passenger opposite me, asking where it was.
he mentioned quite loudly that he'd already passed it, and he had -- though i didn't notice to whom he handed it to. in the intervening period, people had gotten on the jeep, hiding colorful-faded-shirt from my view.
he got off at a stop next to a road that led to a "depressed" area, and i lost sight of him as the jeepney sped away.
mixed feelings on my part. perhaps it was just a matter of timing, but with my senses still raw over my previous loss on a jeepney, it lent a kind of unease about this kind of public transport.
granted, the amount was very small, but still...
not sure i'm making sense.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
the unplanned trip: just get on a bus.
every once in a while, discussions come up in the office about going out of town on a weekend, be it just a day trip or an over-overnight at a beach resort somewhere (typically down south).
naturally, multi-person pre-arranged trips will take the successful confluence of various conditions to happen, and more often than not the trip simply evaporates into the ether as one or more proponents see to other, more pressing, matters.
on my end, self-inflicted pressure to be out of the metro for a weekend had been building ever since before my rather odd birth day.
harkening to something louie said about just jumping on a bus to somewhere, me and my roommate decided last friday night to just go to baguio. no firm plans, no nothing. off he went to the bus station to see about securing seats on the last express bus, and i did little other than stuff some clothes into a duffel bag; enough for a three-day trip, just in case.
express bus: i was also considering a trip down south to my comet-viewing haunt of white beach in mindoro's puerto galera area. but that would have entailed a bus/boat/tricycle trip one way and the reverse order of that the other way (naturally) -- and i was looking for the least hassle on this particular occasion, so the north-bound bus to baguio seemed like a good idea indeed. the "express bus" part is another inducement -- otherwise, aircon or no, the bus would have paused at every conceivable stop along the way. that would stretch the nominally six-hour journey to god knows how long.
i wasn't in the mood to be that patient.
the last express bus of the day was scheduled to depart at 11:00 pm. more time to consider what to bring or not: we decided not to lug along his megapixel digicam -- bad idea, as it turns out, but that's the way of a spur of the moment trip.
to the bus station, then. good thing i insisted on being early. i'd forgotten to consider the effect of "office time" versus "philippine time." turns out that office time was ten minutes late, oddly. if we'd been on time according to my watch, we'd have missed the bus entirely.
at any rate, bus left on time (their time) and being a late hour, we cleared the metropolis in under thirty minutes: pasay to balintawak via edsa, and thence to the privately operated north tollway. i suppose the massive increase in toll fees are worth the "world-classness" of the construction employed on the tollway. the trip was smooth and uneventful (short of the rain, but that's a given for this period of the philippine seasonal dichotomy), highway traversed in an hour.
i tried my best not to sleep (not that there was anything to see out there, really), but the sandman did his work and consciousness fled not long after the bus had departed the tollway and began negotiating the national road network heading for the mountain fastnesses of the "summer capital" of the philippines.
every once in a while, i'd wake up as the the bus did some sharp sideways transitions during overtaking maneuvers. on this matter: victory liner (the operator of the bus we were on) has a motto to the effect that they bring you to places "faster and safer."
the "faster" part was not in doubt, given the super-sharp overtaking maneuvers. we'd come up to a clot of slow movers, and the bus would shift left, then shift right after overtaking up to three vehicles in a line. immediately after that, something would flash by on the left. fun! not.
back to sleep. hard.
woke up as the bus did it's one scheduled stop somewhere in tarlac or la union, i don't remember for sure. probably the latter. it's a stop that's owned by the bus line itself, so i'm told. i'll take more notes next time.
soon enough it's the ride into the mountains. slept for a few bits, except where the g-forces of the bus negotiating switchbacks would wake me up by either pressing me against the windows or against the seat bolsters such as they were.
back to sleep.
then i wake, and i notice stars in the sky as we come up and there's a carpet of sodium pinpricks in the distant dark. we're almost there.
bus station. glenn (roommate) notes that the victory liner facility is new to him, situated where the old pnr office was. odd, i thought. a philippine national railroad (presently semi-defunct) office in baguio? i could hardly imagine their ancient hardware making that climb.
time was 4:00 am. a five-hour trip. a full hour shorter than expected. "faster" indeed.
i am glad, though, that i didn't get a ringside seat next to the driver. i figure that the climb into the mountains would have been hair-raising indeed (had i a head of hair to raise, at any rate).
so there we are. baguio. now what?
to be continued.
naturally, multi-person pre-arranged trips will take the successful confluence of various conditions to happen, and more often than not the trip simply evaporates into the ether as one or more proponents see to other, more pressing, matters.
on my end, self-inflicted pressure to be out of the metro for a weekend had been building ever since before my rather odd birth day.
harkening to something louie said about just jumping on a bus to somewhere, me and my roommate decided last friday night to just go to baguio. no firm plans, no nothing. off he went to the bus station to see about securing seats on the last express bus, and i did little other than stuff some clothes into a duffel bag; enough for a three-day trip, just in case.
express bus: i was also considering a trip down south to my comet-viewing haunt of white beach in mindoro's puerto galera area. but that would have entailed a bus/boat/tricycle trip one way and the reverse order of that the other way (naturally) -- and i was looking for the least hassle on this particular occasion, so the north-bound bus to baguio seemed like a good idea indeed. the "express bus" part is another inducement -- otherwise, aircon or no, the bus would have paused at every conceivable stop along the way. that would stretch the nominally six-hour journey to god knows how long.
i wasn't in the mood to be that patient.
the last express bus of the day was scheduled to depart at 11:00 pm. more time to consider what to bring or not: we decided not to lug along his megapixel digicam -- bad idea, as it turns out, but that's the way of a spur of the moment trip.
to the bus station, then. good thing i insisted on being early. i'd forgotten to consider the effect of "office time" versus "philippine time." turns out that office time was ten minutes late, oddly. if we'd been on time according to my watch, we'd have missed the bus entirely.
at any rate, bus left on time (their time) and being a late hour, we cleared the metropolis in under thirty minutes: pasay to balintawak via edsa, and thence to the privately operated north tollway. i suppose the massive increase in toll fees are worth the "world-classness" of the construction employed on the tollway. the trip was smooth and uneventful (short of the rain, but that's a given for this period of the philippine seasonal dichotomy), highway traversed in an hour.
i tried my best not to sleep (not that there was anything to see out there, really), but the sandman did his work and consciousness fled not long after the bus had departed the tollway and began negotiating the national road network heading for the mountain fastnesses of the "summer capital" of the philippines.
every once in a while, i'd wake up as the the bus did some sharp sideways transitions during overtaking maneuvers. on this matter: victory liner (the operator of the bus we were on) has a motto to the effect that they bring you to places "faster and safer."
the "faster" part was not in doubt, given the super-sharp overtaking maneuvers. we'd come up to a clot of slow movers, and the bus would shift left, then shift right after overtaking up to three vehicles in a line. immediately after that, something would flash by on the left. fun! not.
back to sleep. hard.
woke up as the bus did it's one scheduled stop somewhere in tarlac or la union, i don't remember for sure. probably the latter. it's a stop that's owned by the bus line itself, so i'm told. i'll take more notes next time.
soon enough it's the ride into the mountains. slept for a few bits, except where the g-forces of the bus negotiating switchbacks would wake me up by either pressing me against the windows or against the seat bolsters such as they were.
back to sleep.
then i wake, and i notice stars in the sky as we come up and there's a carpet of sodium pinpricks in the distant dark. we're almost there.
bus station. glenn (roommate) notes that the victory liner facility is new to him, situated where the old pnr office was. odd, i thought. a philippine national railroad (presently semi-defunct) office in baguio? i could hardly imagine their ancient hardware making that climb.
time was 4:00 am. a five-hour trip. a full hour shorter than expected. "faster" indeed.
i am glad, though, that i didn't get a ringside seat next to the driver. i figure that the climb into the mountains would have been hair-raising indeed (had i a head of hair to raise, at any rate).
so there we are. baguio. now what?
to be continued.
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