I miss Manila. Not that I am terribly lonely or bored, in fact I’m neither one of those. It’s just that sometimes it kicks you in the balls so hard that you can’t ignore it anymore — I miss home. Darn it!
Now, before you go all “deep” on me about “home” being where the heart is (which is nothing but a poetic excuse for the nomadic) and get into a purely semantics debate let me make it clear: I miss my country. Home. Physical place. No heart talk here. This is not one of those days. Aren’t you glad?
Even for those who are together with family but are living abroad, it comes — the kick in the balls I mean. Although we try to avoid it as much as we could, TJ and I were discussing some of the things that we miss about home. Lookie:
- Powerbooks, A Different Bookstore, Fully Booked — we want books lots of them. Send us books!
- Driving along C-5 on Saturday mornings bereft of traffic
- Driving along C-5 on Friday nights with ALL the traffic
- Sunday afternoons in UP Diliman — those trees are phenomenal!
- Rare times when Megamall is not swarmed with people
- Walking around and deciding on which restaurant to eat at in Greenbelt 3 and 2…
- … And bumping into friends while making that decision
- Sunday lunches at the Shang (both Mactan and Makati)
- TJ’s shopping haunts
- Eluding wiseass traffic enforcers (lalo na pag coding and we just vroom pag hinuhuli na! Whatta trip!)
- Inuman with the gang (Kroc, and that tiny place near Makati Med, NSG, Big Sky at QC — actually kahit saan basta may…)
- San Mig Light! — dayum I almost forgot how this beer tasted
- The Fort — nights of making the rounds (dinners at Le Souffle, beers at Pier 1, then Embassy or Cuisine for more beers)
- Krispy Kreme
- SM Home Appliance Center — oo trying to imagine how our home would look like when we’re all trippy
- Eastwood on Sunday afternoons — swarmed with kids and fellow ‘rents, so we basically find out who recently got knocked up and is with a child
- Cuisine — feeling VIP kasi parati free
- Redbox — it’s still the only karaoke joint that has Pearl Jam’s Black in their playlist. When I visit next sana they have DMBs Grace is Gone
- Embassy (funny story about elections at “The Embassy” — feeling VIP rin kasi parati free)
- Flyovers — I don’t why pero nakaka miss lalo na the one from EDSA going to LSGH
- Chats with pet-owners in Eastwood
- Carousels for Cullen lalo na the one at Shang Ortigas
- Ortigas Center at 5 am weekday or early Saturday afternoon
- Highstreet/ Serendra before we left it was kinda the new place eh I wonder if it picked up from the initial curiosity
- Philippe the French stylist from F Salon — still the only stylist that doesn’t make me feel I am being played with and I always walk out happy after some sniping
I could go on and on but there’s really no place like Manila.
