Makiling versus Makati

   I hate to be redundant...but today was one of those achingly bright, blue, sunny, beautiful days.  And as with many photo-perfect days, I did not have a better camera with me than the phone's. This view from Kingbee is still, thankfully there. But for how long? If you can ignore the power post and lines, and try to imagine what the camera could not capture, there is Makiling, ridges visible, and the mountain verdant. verde. green.
   It was around 3pm but the usual line up of vehicles coming down from Tagaytay was to arrive around an hour later.

   I spent the past week, day and night, in Paranaque City.  I went to the Glorietta mall in Makati on Thursday, and I have to say, I was overwhelmed.  By the stuffy, crowded air, the crowds, period, and the "noise and haste".  You see, I had not been there in two years.  Prior to that, the place was like a second home, being ten-fifteen minutes from home.  I could navigate its confusing zones, knew by heart which streets in Salcedo and Legaspi Villages were "One Way" only. 

   I knew Glorietta when it was still the center open 'stage' area of the QUAD arcade.  As a child in the '70s, I shopped in the first, small, shoes-only Shoemart (SM).  Our suki ice cream parlor and its coiffed owners were comfort places, and we watched movies in the Rizal Theater (now where the Shangri-la hotel stands).  There's more, I can go on...

   But I'll just say--not being OA ha, it's for real--I felt like a true probinsiyana or country bumpkin emerging from Rustan's Supermarket to face a solid mall building I confused with..6750? What on earth was here before? Where's the Starbucks?  My mother helped shake my brain...that was the parking lot, between here and The Intercontinental! The rush of cars and people; wind from moving cars and not from grassy fields just screamed CITY. As in New York City (for some reason); the gray new building, Singapore, maybe. OA, I know.  Just try it though...live in Santa Rosa for two years without ever going to the Makati Commercial Area.  Then go one day. Things can happen to you like,

   Having sensory overload from all the shopping choices.  We have SM, we have Alabang, but really, the pickings are slim in these parts, of many non-essentials. Nice to haves, like toys, clothes, shoes!

   Catching a cold, getting dirty toenails and skin from the pollution there. 

   Possibly wanting things you can live without again.

   Realizing how much you have not really missed, how few are the things you actually need to live.

Kingbee

    Kingbee is the Chinese restaurant along the Sta. Rosa-Tagaytay highway, just after Paseo de Santa Rosa. Toward Tagaytay, it is just after Rose and Grace Bulalo.  This place is most packed on Sundays. Last year they added a big function room also in a separate building. It's comfortable Chinese food, delicious.  As is my custom I forgot to take photos of food...but then, I do not even want to venture into food blogging. I'll leave that to the pros.  A pity, as I was in the late Prof. Doreen Fernandez's freshman English classes (believe it or don't).  For those who don't now, she was the most prolific food writer.

On a clear day, you see Mt. Makiling across these fields. My fervent wish is that nothing is ever built on this land, to forever preserve the view.

 I include this shot with a bittersweet thought that this area along the highway will quickly be lined by more architecturally uninteresting buildings.  The lights are of the Phoenix gasoline station. Right before it is a newly-constructed commercial building. Right after it is the KGB call center.  Right after that, begins heavy traffic to Nuvali...

     Twilight turned me to mush, I suppose, as I stared outside, worrying about the disappearance of cogon fields and the increasingly heavy traffic on Saturdays.  On the foreground of this last photo are palm trees marking the entrance to two villages over a decade old--the Santarosa Estates 1 and 2.