Scenes from "development" in Silang

Hope these trees stay forever....many are gone...

April Showers Bring Narra Flowers

I know...Narra overload in this blog.  But in the past posts they came in March

http://lagunagingerlily.blogspot.com/2011/03/mmm-
smell-that-its-narra-tree.html

, a day after a rainshower too.

These bloomed on April 19.

  Oh here is my pineapple in a pot...I do appreciate pineapples more now...never knew they took long to grow...

I woke up to the narra's fragrance, and looked at them in golden sunlight just after sunrise.

Bye-bye Narra tree, after 8 exactly years!

They do bloom at the same time...like these on Inchican Road...and further up, in St. Scholastica's Westgrove campus...

So have you seen/smelled any lately?  How about in the UP Diliman campus? 

Paving paradise part nth

  So we chose to move up to the hills...far from the highway now regularly jammed on weekends...away from the commercial areas...never mind their convenience...

  But now the two big developers have joined together to create even more of the same up there too.   

  Saw the forest bulldozed...very very very sad.

  And yet in the future, I know I will patronize it. Or even be a tenant. 

  Surely, an asthma attack after twenty years of clear lungs...may be related to the construction around.  And what about EVERYONE now having respiratory problems.  It's not just the pollen, I say.  For former Manila residents maybe it's even being used to the cement dust and THEN experiencing pollen.

  I used to hear about "Green Lungs" in the city of Kuala Lumpur every day. Not once have I heard it here.  Just because we are not prone to the smog from Indonesia, or are not in a valley like KL is, does not mean we do not need the "green lungs" too.

  Bye bye birdies.

  

Lent

Candles at St. John Bosco Parish, Santa Rosa

     One of my rituals, not only during Lent, is to stop by the Perpetual Help Candle Sanctuary at the St. John Bosco Parish Church in bgy. Don Jose.

     If I am lucky and the candle drawers are newly replenished, I go for all the colors available, regardless of their symbolism. There is a poster enumerating the colors and what they symbolise.  Red is for birthdays, anniversaries, and white for general intentions.  I do not memorize what the other colors represent, as I light any or all available.  I do know that the one most often out of stock or low in supply, is the one for finances.

     Now that's not really a surprise, is it.

     You can opt to donate cash in the adjoining box, and I do have an amount set per candle.  From 1996 to 2007 I used to stop by to light candles at the St. Andrew parish in Bel-air, Makati, and pray to Our Lady of Czestochowa. Now, it is here, and not regularly.  Lighting a candle and praying while gazing at its flame is meditative and brings me instant peace.

     While being in the parish after the morning mass and when the place is empty makes me wary these days...(the new fences and gates have enhanced my insecurity), I find it is still quite neighborly and comforting enough to see the parishioners leaving or hanging around chatting.   
     
     Options for Bisita Iglesia in the vicinity are St. John Bosco in Bgy. Don Jose, and in through the Inchican Road (which intersects Laguna Blvd), is St. Benedict in Ayala Westgrove.  I do not think the Oratory at Xavier School Nuvali nor the Chapel inside Montecito will be open to the public for this activity.  Farther toward the Santa Rosa SLEX toll, past Greenfield is the Laguna Bel-air chapel.  Another route is to go up towards Tagaytay, where starting in Lumil, Silang is the San Antonio de Padua church, relatively new, but already having seen many weddings.  Indeed it was built for those, in my opinion.  Angel Fields' Holy Family Pavilion is not a church, but the place is a retreat place, with cottages to rent.

    And then of course, up toward Tagaytay for the rest of the churches.

S&R Nuvali

Sorry I have not taken a photo just yet.  S&R opened last November 14, and it was an insane weekend on the road to it.  Luckily, I was not one of those stuck in the jams on either days.

I heard...residents from the Westgrove side of town (who take the Nuvali blvd, which should go through the intersection to Solenad), were stuck for around 45 minutes just on that road, and so decided to turn back, and head for the S&R in Alabang instead.

I happened to be at Shopwise, where I overheard a cashier muttering that the reason their store was empty was that everyone was at S & R.

Hiring a housekeeper

     I shouldn't tease. After all, this is one of the most difficult things to do and I don't even have the right solution.  I will just speak from my experiences in this area.

   Lately I have been meeting more and more locals, mothers like myself who have chosen to live without a live-in helper.  We thus hire 'part-timers'.  The woman who offered her services to me, for example,  struck a deal with her solo businessman employer for her to get 'sideline' jobs.  He didn't require her to hang around the house anyway, and he encouraged her to get the other jobs in order to earn more and keep sane. 

   So there is a category of helpers here who are hired by companies to keep house on a live-out basis for their expat staff.  A helper can be minding up to 5 houses in one village per contract.   Of course that also depends on how many men actually live in one house.  It is also her choice how many houses to take on. Mostly the tasks are just cleaning, laundry and ironing.  There is a little bit of cooking.  There are two sub-categories.  There is the helper who lives in one of the staff houses and takes care of around three. There is the helper who lives in the barangay and thus gets to be with her children.  In most of my friends'opinions this seems a good situation for many of the women as they do not have to leave their children.  They can go to school while she works nearby.  Sadly, most of those I've met have 3 to 5 children just one year apart.  Most of them also claim their husbands either do not earn much or are not employed.

   I've also just recently learned that the tricycle fare from say, the Caltex gas station at the corner of the highway and Laguna blvd, to the barangay Inchican in Silang (towards Westgrove) costs Php 70 per head, in a shared tricycle.   So most of the workers walk home.   This is not a far distance, and we wonder if it has to do with the fact that the road traversed is within the Laguna Technopark's jurisdiction.

Beacon Academy

 

 

 

    Ahh! So conducive to learning!  Set against a mountain, this high school is.  And as with many of the new, good schools adding a ''branch" or relocating South (of Metro Manila), this one is never really far from where people live. In this area of Santa Rosa, that is.  When I say "not far" I actually mean the drives are pleasant.  No traffic jams, no smog, greens along the road...various bird species on the trees (and well, okay, the wires). 

 

    I hope these children know how fortunate they are.  When I hear of others trapped in EDSA or C5 or wherever, going from school in Makati to home in Quezon City or vice versa,  I feel sorry. Even sitting as passengers in private cars, their daily travel to and from school can be a stressor.  And then the kids and teens focus on tablets sitting in traffic in the car...

 

   That is another story, maybe for the Mother blog where I talk about how now the kid dislikes flavored milk "because it's too sweet for my tongue". Among other things natural, unrefined, pure and maybe organic... 

 



A Lonely Road

     Let's mosey on over (MOSEY? who talks like that anymore? here?) to another border.  We've already posted about the Silang-Sta. Rosa border.  The same road on my title photo above, bears the sign "Welcome to Binan, Laguna" on the opposite side of the road. That's where we are headed on this post.  Well, not quite to the main area of Binan, but to Barangay Binan, where a phase of San Jose Village is located (if I'm not mistaken there are 6 phases. The last one is a very quite location full of trees).

 

 

 



 



    This way leads to another gate of Ayala Westgrove and the Laguna Technopark Inc. annex.  At the corner is the Metrobank, and a phase of San Jose Village.  Under construction are Avida Shophouses.  With plans for a 7-11 in one of those, I'm assuming this area is going to be a busy place, and this road not very lonely for long.

 

 

    At the moment it gives my father the heebie-jeebies (okay, first mosey now this...)  After all, it is bordered by nothing but cogon for a stretch. It's the kind of road which in the Southern Philippines screams "ambush! ambush!" to a soldier.  Yes he was a soldier (an officer), that is why such an empty road frightens him.   (And with this pardon my detour as I pay my respects to those who were massacred in Maguindanao this month three years ago. Clearly, the roads were paved, the hills verdant, more beautiful than this...but the incident horrific). It sure looks and feels like the boondocks, but I assure him, it's still a part of Ayala Land and the technopark.

   I'm sure at night it can be scary.

   But following my mantra, I mean to enjoy this loneliness, these bare fields, while I can.  A brief stop at the grocery in the shopping area with its Sunday crowd and artificial lights afterwards jarred my head again. I need the fields, plains and green mountains to relax me.  Oh, the sound of birds, and the sight of them here! 

    The weather was mild too.  Very sunny, yet cool. And this is Binan, Laguna, not even Tagaytay.

  
    Visible from this spot (facing the other way, down to the city), is the De La Salle Science and Technology complex. I still am wondering why it used to be called De La Salle Canlubang, when the borders I see around belong to Sta. Rosa, Silang, and Binan...I enjoy looking at maps and would like to know why.  Can somebody enlighten me please?

Churches are our Castles

     Here is the less-than-a-year old Church of St. Benedict at the nearby Westgrove Heights.  The interior is very unique and awesome, conducive to praise and worship. However, I can't post the photos I took inside as my offspring posed in the foreground. (and I do not want to post offspring's pics). 

    Now WESTGROVE is the first place that came to former neighbor's minds when I announced our move to Sta. Rosa.  Technically, Westgrove is in Barangay Inchican, Silang, Cavite. I first heard the name bgy. Inchican from a receptionist at the beauty salon at Paseo. She said she was from that bgy. I also heard it from the carpenter who needed to buy from "the many hardware shops" at  Inchican. I had since wondered about what "Inchican" means. Imagining it spelled as Instikan, I had wondered if it meant something like a Chinese quarter of town.  Silly idea? Let me know if you know.  I haven't asked the barangay folk (whose barangay hall's design looks like it belongs in Westgrove hehe. nice.).

    This  church has no parish priest as of this writing.  They've got guest priests for the Holy Week, and the weekend masses are said by priests from the parish in Silang.  It is right next to St. Scholastica's Westgrove. 

     St. Benedict's is really elegant-looking, inside and out. It is sure to be A popular wedding venue. But of course our old Spanish churches are still our "castles", which, sayang, could serve as more important tourist attractions than they currently are.

     The church of St. John Bosco in Sta. Rosa near this church, is celebrating it's 10th anniversary this year. I promise photos next time.  Its design is reminiscent of the Sanctuario de San Antonio's in Makati, or the many other similarly designed '80s-'90s churches in Manila.  It is thus cozy, familiar, and just late last year, now airconditioned for everyone's comfort.  The cool (no pun intended) thing about this area is that the airconditioner is hardly used except for the summer months.  Don Bosco's addition of aircons is going to keep the flock coming I'm sure.  I mean, going to Sunday mass had always been difficult in the heat. No matter what a priest lectures about it being part of the sacrifice.  I just cannot focus on the Lord, blessings and prayers while fanning myself like crazy.

     Here is the Sta. Rosa de Lima parish, which is at the heart of the bayan  ng Sta. Rosa. Sta. Rosa is not just the area surrounding Greenfield, Ayala and the Paseo de Sta. Rosa!  Sta. Rosa does have a real, colorful history...which I have been failing to learn more of...until I get to talk to Ms. Nonia Tiongco, the historian of Sta. Rosa whose "Sta. Rosa Studies Center" eludes me. (more on this later).

     On the day of our visit, the Poong Nazareno (black Nazarene) was in the church. Vendors of replicas, holy oil, handkerchiefs with the novena printed on them, scapulars and miscellaneous Nazarene trinkets were outside in the heat of the church plaza/parking lot.  INSIDE the church, mobile versions of those vendors approached us every two minutes or so to sell their stuff.  Some of them were lying on the pews, some milling about, barking at each other. Well, talking, and it seemed they came all the way from Quiapo, the black nazarene's home.

      Here are photos of that church, built in 1796.  For those who have also recently moved to the "new" side of Sta. Rosa, know that here is the "old" town, ready for you to explore (in a later post, the museum and environs).

     The statue of Sta. Rosa de Lima was given by Peru in 1999.
There was nobody to talk to about the trompe l'óeil downstairs. This painting, not trompe l'oeil, looks like a typical 1920's rendition found in other churches.  Well, I hope we get to contact the Santa Rosa Studies group soon.  We missed their exhibition at My SM, My City two years ago. That series is where information could be gathered.