we interrupt these lovely holiday snaps with some breaking news....ergh. more typhoons.

of course, this is just a nuisance storm, nothing like what's going on in the mainland. if you know anyone who is looking for an emergency information database for katrina, the tsunami help folks have set one up at www.katrinahelp.info. don't know what's up on it, but if they ask for help, i'll probably be there.

my mom's family recently restored their old house, the "ancestral" home. they did a wonderful job, i think, as the house looks less like an old house fixed up and more like a perfectly preserved old house. did that make sense? everything is pretty much as i remember it, except for the colours. i think originally the house may have been unpainted, as evidenced in these photos of my grandparents, abelard and brigida:



however, the colours aren't out of character for houses like these, and they kept all the original details in the woodwork, the original layout (including some hidden rooms where granddad hid american soldiers during WW2), and most of the original furniture. unfortunately, it doesn't look like any of the specimens from granddad's hobby of taxidermy survived. damn.





click to enlarge and for more details


our guard dogs!

my family is from the province of pampanga, in central luzon. it is along the northern edge of manila bay, and where the chinese, spanish, and portuguese explorers first landed. the name pampanga comes from pangpang, which means "by the river", and where the spanish explorers found most of the natives' homes. there is evidence that there were other foreign settlers in the area long before the spanish arrived, most likely chinese traders. the regional dialect, kapampangan, has more in common with indonesian and malayan dialects than most of the other filipino ones, probably due to the early influences from outsiders and being brought along on voyages throughout southeast asia.

i don't speak it. i barely understand it. heck, i barely understand tagalog, and english confounds me on my best days. i speak in arrrr arrrrr arrrrgh most days.

where was i? oh yeah. pampanga is under mount pinatubo, an active volcano which erupted in 1991 after 500 years of dormancy. our town of santa rita used to be home of an ancient forest of giant trees, but is now covered in lahar and ash. luckily, it is not buried under like many towns that have literally disappeared off the map, but the giant dyke around the town that is meant to stave off any future lahar flows is a sobering reminder that there is a possibility that this town may not be around forever. that is possibly the biggest reason why i want to get to know it better, because it may all just be a memory one day.

the view from ayala museum. yes, you are in the middle of makati.

makati is the financial and commercial capital of the philippines, one of the cities that makes up the collective metro manila area. even though my family is from pampanga, this is where i live, this is where i spend most of my time. when we first bought our condo a zigillion years ago, we were a short but somewhat treacherous walk from the major shopping area, the SM department store at ayala center. then the ayalas built the glorietta shopping center, which made shopping even closer, but the journey still treacherous, due to the crazy traffic, and crazy drivers. now the ayala center is just this hugetastic 6 million square foot complex that could easily be thought of as the heart of makati. and now that they've hired callison, the pacific northwest architects responsible for a world full of nordstroms and california looking shopping malls, they are literally changing the landscape of makati with the renovation of greenbelt, their all-singing, all-dancing, premiere shopping, dining, and entertainment complex, which is conveniently across the street from me. literally 10 steps away. it looks like something out of the west coast of the united states, only better. better shops, better maintenance, better landscaping.



and now they've built skywalks so you can walk over the traffic, not have it run over you.

despite my ambivalence towards the further californication of the philippines, i do have to admit liking greenbelt a lot. they've kept almost all the old trees in the old park, the church is still in the center of the garden, and there are large tracts of green where people can just sit and chill out and not indulge in any retail therapy. i like being able to walk out to a lush patch of green, to walk to church, to shopping and to the movies, without worrying too much about my safety (lots of security, not as much traffic now), so i can go it alone.



there are outdoor cafés, state-of-the-art movie theatres, a museum, auditorium, two decent bookstores, a good cd shop, and um, 120+ restaurants and food outlets. wooh.



during the day, it's relatively empty (except for at lunch, yike, watch people descend upon this place like locusts), but at night it is bustling. it's supposedly the place to see and be seen, but i like that there are tons of families and little kids along with couples, teenage packs, and the starbucks crowd.

since guam is only 3.5 hours away from manila, and we arrived on the morning flight, we just dropped our bags at the condo in makati (metro manila), and headed straight for greenhills, a shopping complex in san juan, about half an hour away (still in manila). although it just looks like a typical older shopping center, it's actually mostly a tiangge, which is a bazaar, open marketplace.

greenhills is probably the biggest, cleanest and most organized of the tiangges i've been to, but if you're not used to third world conditions it may shock you once you go inside. the walkways are narrow and crowded, people everywhere, overwhelming heat (although it's airconditioned so mornings are okay), the stalls are tiny and filled with any sort of merchandise--cheap clothing and toys, bootleg dvds/software/mp3s, electronics and cell phones galore, antiques, native handicrafts, food, plants, and the two main attractions: freshwater pearls from mindanao, and counterfeit luxury brand items. i took a lot of surreptious cell phone photos, but i haven't downloaded them yet; i wanted to whip out the digital camera, but i was sure i'd freak out someone selling fake rolexes or louis vuitton bags, so i refrained. i love shopping here when i'm in a shopping mood, but i really wasn't in one. i am the type of person who normally gets all her xmas shopping done in august, but i couldn't be arsed this time around. also, my favourite chinese deli had disappeared. apparently they renovated and expanded only to have the whole store burned down. typical. i think there is a fire every couple of years that guts one of the wings. maybe it's arson, but i'm more inclined to believe it's faulty wiring. the building's a death trap. but don't let that stop you.

actually, i was disappointed to find a lot of tourists there and like, everyone from guam (sheeeeeesh). i guess everyone's discovered what a complete bargain it is, and that it's not pickpocket city (anymore), so it's cleaned up its act a bit. more security, a tourist information desk, and slightly higher prices for everything (although that could be inflation). no more secret shopping haven. also, a lot of the stall sellers are muslim, so there used to be this rather exotic air about the place, with the beautiful women in their headscarves stringing pearls, and the men doing their midday call to prayer anywhere they could lay a mat, but it's been slightly homogenized for commercial purposes. the pearl sellers are younger employees, and i don't know where they've made the men pray these days. however, it is still a bargain, and the upside is that there's a pretty nice (mostly) food mall next door, the promenade. we bought some small trinkets, grabbed some lunch, and then i went back and haggled for these lanterns, which have electric fixtures, and are quite large for this sort of thing, about 24-32 inches tall.



in glorieta, the huge-o large-o shopping mall in makati, i saw the same lanterns and the shop wanted almost US$1000 for three of them!! huh. i got all of them for US$290, which is pricey, but they're not made locally, and there is some exquisite metalwork on the one ornate one. i'm sure i could've gotten them for less, but eh, i needed a nap. anyway, i bought a year's worth of socks for like $5, so i got my bargain of the day.



oh, and i found out where the chinese deli moved to, huzzah!

back from manila. went to the province for a day but mostly hung out at the condo. one of the things that no one tells you about being in the jet set junta and owning homes around the globe is that you inevitably spend most of your time in each home CLEANING OUT THE FRIDGE.

anatahan, a nearby volcano, is in a constant state of eruption. the ashes are blowing our way, mixing with the humidity, causing "vog".