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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Embarking for Paradise

It was late in the afternoon when they left port. The seething heat of the day had briefly been relieved by a downpour forcing everyone into the terminal building where the warmth from their bodies soon overwhelmed the few fans set up to move the thick air around. There were more white faces than they had seen up to this point in their journey among the islands, intermixed with the local brown and various other shades of travellers embarking for paradise. 

They passed the wait imagining stories for various passengers. The two American families loudly conversing about where they had travelled to this point while their bored teenagers focused in on their phones. The young Japanese couple buying an inordinate amount of fried potato slices from the kiosk selling them, as though they were stockpiling for the upcoming journey. There was the man (indifferently dressed, long hair pulled back into a pony tail to hide a receding hairline) slouched beside a woman (tiny, immaculately dressed, LV purse in her lap). She looked much younger than him at a distance, less so the closer they got.  

It was uncomfortable to look at them, though they found themselves unable to stop, noting their every interaction and even the way others looked at them. Suddenly it was no longer fun to imagine a story for these two strangers. Did others look at them the same way and make the same kinds of judgments? Surely not, for there was nothing like the same contrast between them. And yet. A disconcerting thought. 

The ferry was air conditioned and enclosed, the roar of the engine as they jetted out to sea heard only dimly. A movie played on a screen at the front of the rows of seats – some nature documentary – which everyone ignored. They passed under a great bridge connecting the city to an island suburb and soon the shorelines of both vanished behind them. Ahead the horizon was only briefly empty before more islands loomed ahead, dark outcroppings dimly visible on the horizon. 

It was dusk by the time they disembarked at the next port, the shadows and a thick canopy of trees obscuring the island beyond the shore. Everyone dragged their suitcases through the terminal and outside to where the tuk tuks waited to ferry them onward. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Senior’s Discount

They pulled up to the fruit stand on the side of the road, a slight woman emerging from the shade of the awning to greet them as they stepped out of the van to stretch. The stand was overflowing with everything the countryside had to offer: mangosteen, lanzones, pineapple, mango, several varieties of banana, eggplant, avocado, kalamansi, jack fruit. Samples were asked for and provided.  

Try a mangosteen. Squeeze it until its purple shell cracks open releasing the white fruit within. It’s the same approach with the tiny lanzone. A knife is procured from somewhere and an avocado is sliced and proffered. Try this. Creamier than any you’ve ever had. The short and stubby bananas have a good flavor. Not too sweet. 

Serious negotiations ensue. Prices are offered and scorned. Counter-proposals are received with wide expressions of disbelief and pursed lips. Counter-counter-proposals incur further outrage and sorrowful shaking of heads. More samples are requested. Have you ever had fresh jack fruit? Gradually white plastic bags begin to fill with fruit as terms are arrived at, though no one appears happy about the fact. The driver emerges from his van to claim some sliced jack fruit, his commission for bringing customers to the stand.  

What about a senior’s discount, comes the suggestion, innocently offered as the final price is tallied and quoted. You look so young, she says earnestly. I couldn’t possibly. As though doing so would be grievous insult.  

With that, matters are finally settled and they return to the van, now perfumed with the smell of fresh fruit.    

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

New China

The sun set quickly in that part of the world, a half hour of gloaming before the darkness took hold. They gathered in the city’s old main square while the full brightness of day still held, though the sun had already vanished behind the crowded buildings. Trees lined the outer edge while a statue of some notable raised up on a white pedestal occupied the centre. At either end food vendors clustered, stalls offering quail eggs, fish balls, and skewers of bbq meat, including tongue and heart and intestine dredged in a mixture of vinegar and soy sauce.  

They picked their way among the stalls sampling the wares, joined by a crowd of others. Mostly students finished classes for the day and enjoying a snack and a few last moments with friends before heading home for the evening. A few men pushing small carts offering dirty ice cream wandered the square, a popular choice given the oppressive heat of the day. Even the sun’s disappearance offered little relief. They each had a cone of the watery stuff – more sorbet than ice cream – which they had to eat frantically before it disintegrated onto the pavement at their feet. 

Just off the square was the New China Restaurant, the oldest in the city. Large fans whirled from the ceiling while portable ones stood along each aisle vainly trying to bring some cool air to the cramped tables. But there was no relief to be found anywhere. The place was empty but for them, despite the fact it was dinner time. They ordered lumpia – the best lumpia in the city it was said – and beers. It really was the best they had had, crispy, flavorful, a marvel. 

They were the only customers, the owners sitting at another table gossiping in low voices. When they finished they returned to the square, sill bustling with activity amid the shadows, going to the far side where the tricycles idled waiting for customers and headed for home.  

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Local Monkeys

They passed from a flat plain filled with rice fields into forested hills, the road winding precipitously. The towns and villages, which had clustered along the highway all the way from Manila vanished as they began to climb. The van roared as the switchbacks became steeper and steeper, drowning out the easy listening on the radio. As they climbed the world dropped away until they were clinging to a precipice. On one side the hill, still rising above them, and on the other an impenetrable chasm, green with the tops of trees.  

At the pinnacle, the road levelled out and the sky came into view, bright and blue with a few porcelain white clouds scattered across it. They could see the whole of the hill and the hills that surrounded it, all thick with forest. There were monkeys there he was told. What kind, he asked. Local ones. 

They descended on the same winding roads. Here and there they caught glimpses of small houses through the trees, surrounded by them, seemingly soon to be swallowed by them. There were people on the side of the road selling this and that and places for vehicles to pull off and hikers to venture out in search of the unseen primates.  

The blue cloud disappeared as they came to the bottom of the hill and left the forest behind. Rain began to fall. A few splatters on the windshield and then a torrent, water coming in rivers down the road. Suddenly there were towns again and the road was crowded with dripping motorcycles and jeepneys and tricycles. They would pass from one to another with only a few breaks where rice fields sprawled and carabao stood indifferent to the deluge. The rain ended just as they came in sight of the sea, a thin line of blue along the horizon beneath the grey of the clouds. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

The Fair Way

It had been raining most of the morning by the time they drove down the long boulevard leading to the golf course. The road was lined with carefully sculpted shrubbery, hiding what lay beyond. A gold statue of some notable stood a gaudy watch at a roundabout. The pavement was the best quality they had driven on that day right up to the parking lot in front of the clubhouse.  

They parked as close as they could and ran through the rain to the cover of the building, which looked out on a driving range. The left side had a bar and the right a pro shop, while the middle was open leading to a concrete veranda lined with tables and industrial sized fans to keep back the humidity. The veranda was empty so they went into the bar, which was empty as well, except for the usual half dozen staff idling bored in one corner.  

They requested a table outside looking out on the driving range, which resulted in a surprisingly long, hushed conversation among the staff, at the end of which they were informed that would be quite impossible. Mystified, they pressed the point, saying they preferred to sit outside, to enjoy this brief respite from the crushing heat of summer. Again, they were told it was impossible. “But there’s literally no one else here,” one of them remarked. 

The staff grew defensive and it emerged that the outside tables were held for the local congressman who expected them to be available should he turn up. This was his economic development project, an attraction to bring wealthy tourists to the area. When they asked if he normally golfed in the rain, the staff finally relented and a table was arranged. They sat, eating pizza and watching the rain fall upon the empty driving range, staying well into the afternoon. 

Eventually the rain passed and, as if they had been waiting, a family appeared and started on the golf course. A well-dressed mother and her two children got a bucket of balls and some clubs and set up in front of their table. The staff hurried about, glad for the opportunity to do something. More golfers straggled in throughout the rapidly warming afternoon and by the time they left the veranda was full.  

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Après the Deluge

They gathered for lunch as the midday heat reached its sweltering peak in a white house, one storey, surrounded by a stern wall with a large gate that opened onto a sleepy side street. The humidity was heavier than usual, clouds thick in the sky overhead as she walked from the corner where the tricycle had dropped her off. It was all instantly familiar, though it had been a decade at least since she had walked down this street. Her aunt and cousins were waiting at the gate to greet her, while her uncle stood in the doorway, a hand on the frame to steady himself.  

Inside it was as she remembered. A long room divided between sitting and dining areas, leading to a large kitchen at the back of the house. The table was filled with brimming dishes waiting for them to eat. There was fried chicken and fish, dinuguan and puto, banana fritters and lumpia, papaya and pineapple for dessert. Prepared by her aunt, no doubt under her uncle’s supervision, for since his stroke he’d been unable to work in the kitchen.   

This place felt like home as much as the one she had grown up in. She had stayed over often as a child, running about in the surrounding undeveloped lots, where there was always adventure to be found. In high school and college she and her friends would come over for lunch or to while away the afternoon when they had nothing better to do. Both schools were only a short walk way, so it was convenient, and her uncle was an excellent cook.  

As if it had been waiting for them to sit down to eat, the clouds erupted with thunder and rain, a deluge that quickly swamped the street outside. By the time they were finished and had moved to the couches in the sitting room, the water had passed through the gate and was approaching the entrance, leaving her pleasantly stranded. Her uncle told her, not for the first time, of how the surrounding area had once been swamp with a canal that had connected to the river. She had memories of walking across wooden boards that had been set out by locals to allow passage over the swampy ground. 

The land had long since been reclaimed, the swamp banished, except those days when it rained, of which there were many in these parts. The paved ground couldn’t absorb the water under even the slightest downpour and it swelled up and into the front entryway, a forgotten guest that could never be banished. The past was always like that, she supposed, never completely gone no matter how much of life one built atop it. 

She was thinking this as she and her uncle lapsed into a comfortable silence while her aunt and cousins put away the food. The rain ceased and all she could hear were the clatter of dishes from the kitchen and the rotating of the fan, trying vainly to push the heavy air around. Her eyes wandered to the windowsill and she saw a familiar line of ants steadily and inexorably marching across it. She and her cousins would spend hours trying to disrupt them, turn them from their path, but they always kept on. And evidently still did. They had been crossing that windowsill as long as it had been in existence, she was certain. 

Gradually the water began to recede as the sun came out. One of her cousins went to clear the water out of the entryway with a shovel, though she said it wasn’t necessary. She could get her shoes a little muddy. But no one would hear of it. Goodbyes took forever, as they always did, and it was already well on into the afternoon by the time she stepped outside. There were still puddles on the streets where the gutters didn’t drain, but they disappearing rapidly. She picked her way among them, thinking of different times. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond. 

Crosstown Traffic

One bright and muggy day, like any other day only more so, the traffic was as it always was, chaotic and confused, idling one moment and racing the next. The city had no locus. Roads went everywhere, criss-crossing, climbing over and crawling under each other. A many-tentacled creature whose every appendage had its own perverse agenda. Buildings seemingly had to accommodate the roads rather than the other way around, standing at bewildering angles, disjointed and separated, with the sole purpose of enabling the cars to keep flowing onward to some other destination. 

Yet it did not flow. Traffic was forever snarled. Even the motorcycles that darted through every nook and cranny available, oblivious of any law except for those of geometry, were forced to slow or halt on occasion. You could drive for hours seemingly and suddenly look up and be on a street much like any other, surrounded by cars (surely not the same ones?), swarms of motorcycles still lunging ahead, following their own logic. Looking around you could be filled with the sinking feeling that it had all been for naught, that you had gone nowhere and would never go anywhere. That the future was an endless line of idling traffic going on forever. 

In the midst of this despair a motorcycle appeared, distinctly visible from the rest because of the party balloons tied to the back of its seat. Dozens of them, multicoloured, filled with air and bouncing in the air high above the traffic. So many that you could almost swear the rear tire took air with each bump of pavement. You could almost imagine the motorcycle being lifted up, taking flight, a creature of the air now, drifting where the winds would take it. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond. 

Blessings

They arrived at the agreed upon place, straggling in twos and threes to the hotel lobby where masked attendants welcomed them with bows and ma’ams and sirs, ushering them through the entrance to the restaurant. With each new arrival everyone had to stand and greet the newcomers. There was laughter and embraces, explanations offered for those absent. The elders held out their hands and the younger pressed it to their foreheads, bowing down slightly, lending a formality to the occasion.  

After some stilted conversation, where everyone worked to reacquaint themselves after so many years apart, they decamped to the buffet. Some conducted reconnaissance of the full spread before making their selections, but most headed to the soups for a bowl of sour broth with pork or congee to begin. The serving tables were filled with local delicacies as well as more standard fare: Kare Kare, siomai and siopao, Laing, Lechon belly and more. For dessert there was cake and ice cream, flan and a Halo Halo station. 

Now that they were eating the talk was much easier. No one felt obligated to speak to the whole group, instead chatting with those closest. There was the usual discussion of politics, of what had happened in the city since the visitors had last been there, and all the good and bad of the world. Work was discussed and relations not present. The visitors talked of their lives overseas, of the weather and how cold it was, how the government worked and how (very) distant places were. 

As the evening wore on servers began to move about the restaurant loudly singing happy birthday at every table that had availed itself of the birthday discount for any guest whose birthday fell in the current month. Applause followed each rendition, ending when the next round struck up in what, for a few terrifying minutes, seemed, an infinite loop.  

They were in a land of discounts. There were senior discounts, birthday discounts, discounts for those staying at the hotel, discounts for charging the bill to the room, discounts for groups larger than 10, and more. The visitors had wondered as they made their reservation the day before if they would somehow end up being owed money by the restaurant.  

They were left alone when they were done eating, as every table was, to converse for as long as they wished. When they had exhausted all conversation they took their leave as a group, gathering again in the lobby. It was prom season and gleaming teenagers, practically vibrating with excitement, trailed by their proud parents kept streaming through. They looked on benevolently, reminiscing about the schools they had attended.  

The visitors had returned to one earlier in the day, exploring the grounds after claiming to the security guard manning the gates of the campus that they needed a copy of their transcripts. The campus was vast, a series of long, interlocking buildings with courtyards at the centre. High school, elementary and university students intermingled in a constant buzz of activity. They sat in the shade of one courtyard watching as people moved about, the air still, hot and heavy.  

Everyone said goodbye two or three more times in the lobby, lingering and not quite willing to let the evening end. Just as it seemed all conversation had been exhausted someone had another question or anecdote. There was heartfelt goodbye after heartfelt goodbye. More embraces and shaking of hands. At length all those who had come took their leave, the attendants bowing and ma’am siring them out. They disappeared into the darkness of the night, leaving the visitors to return to their hotel room. 

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The Heart of the City

The church was under a white tent, protecting those gathered from the midday sun. Chairs, mostly empty, surrounded the pulpit. Surrounding it was a carefully manicured forest of green, with ponds and streams intertwined throughout. The already humid air was made positively damp by the greenery and water. People walked through but didn’t linger, heading to one of the buildings that encircled the gardens. Inside was air conditioned and gleaming. Well-dressed people wandered through the corridors of this oasis, idling in shops. There were security guards everywhere, watchful and unobtrusive. By the pathway leading to the tent, at every entrance to the buildings and within as well. They gave a cursory check of bags and asked people to take off their hats. A familiar protocol.  

The city surrounding this idyll was a warren of streets choked with exhaust and traffic. The pavement absorbed the noon sun, reflecting it back, affording no relief. A profusion of buildings crowded, apparently haphazardly around it. Modern business towers with gleaming windows, campuses for private schools built at the turn of the previous century, shops with apartments above them, the buildings crowded so close together it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. Half-built complexes littered the landscape. Cranes stood beside them, seemingly forgotten. The streets were crowded with people, though not as much as the roads were snarled with cars. They lingered in the few places that offered any shade, where jeepneys and trikes picked people up, or hurried from building to building where air conditioning might be found.  

These two realms intersected underneath the mall in the parking garage with many levels and drop off points. The chaos of the streets outside was limited here, only because there so little room to maneuver. Every entrance and exit was manned by security, these individuals looking far more fearsome than those inside. They knew they were the barrier that mattered. There were many failings in the city, that no one would deny. Problems so vast it was hard to comprehend fully let alone hope to address them. Inside, all that could be forgotten, left invisible. There were no windows looking down on the streets. People drifted about, laughing, idling in restaurants and on benches. Enjoying a pause from what awaited them outside. 

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The Predator

A half-dozen gather at the side of the road on their motorcycles beneath the pulsating midday sun. The heat shimmers in the air under that bright light. The earth has a reddish tinge to it here, arid looking, though they are far from any desert, unless one counts the concrete that makes up the highway and the streets that they ride through. A small town, the sort one passes without bothering to learn the name. Each of them wears a Predator mask as a helmet, heavy, unwieldy things that give them the look of a doll, their heads out of proportion with their torsos. Some are in shorts and t-shirts and flip flops while others are wearing something that resembles the Predator body armour without being an exact costume. No one pays them any mind. The men sitting under an awning at the nearby pancit shop don’t even glance over. In a practised unison they swing out onto the highway joining the steady flow of traffic, Predator-locks flowing in the wind.