Museo De La Salle

June 4, 2016

De La Salle University-Dasmarinas Cultural Heritage Complex, Dasmarinas, Cavite.  Cavite is huge, and Dasmarinas is not as easy to reach from Santa Rosa as one might imagine.

From the Santa Rosa Silang border, specifically the Laguna Technopark and Paseo, it is best reached (for me at least, let me know if there is an even better route) via the "Cardiac Trail" at South Forbes, bgy. Inchican Silang...the road beside SMC's Wedgewoods.  Scenic and quick enough. May get confusing, what with a lack of signages through hills and little barangays, but following a compass and map (GPS) can help.  Of course, there are tricycle drivers and sari-sari store owners to ask.

Through to Silang town to get to the Emilio Aguinaldo Highway.

For a trip back up to Tagaytay then,it's just the Emilio Aguinaldo Highway all the way.  Well, not really "just" that.  Dasmarinas, Cavite is notorious for its traffic jams on the main road.  Especially on Saturdays. And this was a Saturday.

Shaded and lovely University Avenue, where one of three DLSD gates is located

Well, photos are not allowed inside much of the Museum, so...snippets of its surroundings in De La Salle Dasmarinas instead.

  

Beautiful, gorgeous campus!

I do cherish my Jesuit education...but I wish I had it in this campus, with this kind of heritage consciousness.  The La Salle Brothers have it, led by Bro. Andrew Gonzalez, from whose family a large part of the museum's collection comes.  It was his idea to build it, actually, per the museum guide.

central quadrangle of the COLLEGE OF TOURISM (and Hospitality Mgt I think?)

Admin building, a replica of the Kawit Cavite shrine

The chapel, a replica of one in Bulacan, if I remember right

There is a lake on campus

Museo foyer

on the Tagaytay Ridge

http://www.dlsud.edu.ph/Museo.htm

http://www.dlsud.edu.ph/museo/history.htm

Makiling Sunset

From one of the Alveo villages in Nuvali, Canlubang, Laguna.
June 5, 2016

Glass sculptures

JUST AT THE TOP OF THE RIDGE IF YOU TAKE THE STA.ROSA-TAGAYTAY HIGHWAY ALL THE WAY UP...

Beautiful art and a beautiful view...

Greetings from Museo Orlina!

We are inviting you to an exhibit entitled Blue Shirt by the remarkable glass artist Dong Hoon Kwak from Busan, South Korea.

​

In addition, we recently unveiled the replica of Ramon Orlina's "Arcanum XIX, Paradise Gained"—the first glass sculpture in the Philippines. This is part of his continuing celebration in the arts as a sculptor.

Operating hours: Tuesdays-Sundays, 10am to 6pm

Regular admission fee: Php 100

Student/senior citizen/ PWD admission fee: Php 80

Be sure to include Museo Orlina in your itinerary this summer! See you!

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Ziggurat!

We are very pleased about Ziggurat being here.  Well, not exactly in Sta. Rosa, but at the border--in Silang.

It occupies a corner of the ground floor of Stanford Suites in Bgy. Inchican. Right across the St. Scholastica's College, and St. Benedict's Church.

I don't know how Ziggurat is related to the Destination Hotel (a few roomswithin the building), but they gave us discount vouchers for the rooms after we paid for our meal. Oh, the building is a condo-tel. 
http://www.southforbes.com/house-lot-laguna-cavite-philippines-stanford-suites/
I am not connected in any way to the owners or staff of this restaurant.  We simply just enjoyed it in our previous city, and now here it is in our next one.

We are very, very pleased...

...having lived in close proximity to the main Ziggurat in Makati prior to here.  We didn't know we had missed it.

OKAY BEFORE I CONTINUE...LET ME SAY WE ARE LOVING PERI-PERI CHICKEN IN SOLENAD NUVALI. APPARENTLY SO DO MANY PEOPLE, AS THAT PLACE IS ALWAYS FULL! 

ZIGGURAT IS A JUST LOCATED IN  NICE QUIET CORNER NEAR THE CHURCH WITH CUISINE WE ALSO SAVOR.

I will leave a few not-so-great photos...but the menu, the extensive menu of North African, Middle Eastern, African, Meditteranean Indian dishes....I will leave for you to peruse in detail when you visit.  Extensive as the menu list is, not all the dishes are available at any one time because of ingredients on stock.  I am happy as long as there is lamb!
(and hey, prices are reasonable)

couscous!

https://www.facebook.com/Ziggurat-Cuisine-Restaurant-125013094177654/

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.

Laguna Very Gingerly

Okay I'm a hypocrite. Ranting about the new malls in town...yet seeing two movies since their Cinema opened a month ago, and enjoying the fact that they are new and nearby.

At the second movie today,  something happened to me.  I felt what seemed like a tiny bug crawling on my leg.  What happened was, it reminded me of where I was.  Happy to be in a cozy new cinema with only about 15 other people in the audience, five minutes away from home.  Then wham! my chest suddenly went heavy remembering what stood there BEFORE the mall was built.

Just five years ago these were fields of cogon...where we watched shrikes perched on thin branches.  Further into Nuvali, fields where in March kites were flown.  Actually, there were kites being flown yesterday, and I'm not sure if it was an event open to the public, but it was certainly not in the same scale as the kite-flying events of five years ago.

There were many children in the malls' play areas, the parking lots immediately filled by dusk.  So many people. Just mid-week there were press releases by the POPCOM (Population Commission) about...overcrowding in Metro Manila and the move toward Calabarzon.  Here we are.

I still find it a bit ironic...to have to have fitness gyms and equipment in a place where people (used to, some still do) enjoyed walking, running and biking outdoors.  I remember thinking about a correlation between the existence of malls, and obesity---because a lot of the people I first met here were fit and enjoyed the outdoors versus in the more urban areas where, really...fat people were in the indoor malls.

I know...I'm not making that much sense again, with disconnected statements.  I am just ranting again, and calling myself...a hypocrite about this.

Things are just not the same anymore. And you know what? Everybody is coughing, right? Suddenly, kids whose asthma allergies have not occurred since two years ago, are suddenly sick again.  And I have a theory.

CONSTRUCTION DUST.

Well, I will end with this shot, not a particularly great shot...taken at a cafe on the ridge.  Where I stared, very cold due to cold winds even at 11 a.m. The Taal lake was visible but not in this photo. A waiter came and said "Ma'am, nakakamangha diba", referring to the view... I asked if he probably was not from the area...and he said he was from there,  from Cavite.  It was nice that this waiter, with artista looks, admired the view as much as most of the customers...and paused to stare himself.  Then he said..."Ganito yan ma'am...'pag heartbroken ka, sigaw ka lang dyan..."

Well, I guess I AM heartbroken...torn...appreciate the paved paradise, do I?  I seem to have no choice.

PAF rescue chopper

0800H  today, at the Nuvali field. For Solenad's Emergency Drill.

     The Philippine Air Force (PAF) helicopter passed low over our home at around 7 and upon hearing it, my child asked "..airplane?".   Which reminds me how different her childhood is from mine.  At least where identifying aircraft is concerned.  

    You see, I grew up and spent around a quarter of a century, the growing up years of my life, living in military bases...the air force ones in particular.  A huge asthma trigger for me was the smell of airplane fuel,  I knew the dawn was coming when the commercial airlines' engines would warm up, or being tested, at the hangar nearby. And with my father having been a pilot, I did hope to learn to fly too.

   And here, in Sta. Rosa, save for the occasional private helicopters heading South usually over Tagaytay, and the airlines soaring very high above, my child does not hear aircraft.

   Which is probably a good thing, as the noise and air pollution must have done a number on my brain.

  

    Still...this sight is something I do miss. I could not help but take photos.  Ayala Mall Solenad cinema is in the background, on the right.  The white structure on the left is the new S&R.