More from Antipolo, Rizal. Life is made of awesome.
Category Archives: A Moveable Feast
travel, vintage, toned down, writing, lifestyle, food, fashion
Pinto Art Museum: Antipolo
Tossing most of teh pictures here.
Better than fiction: The Legaspi Market and such moveable feasts
Sometimes, when I walk through an underpass along Ayala or see the lights lining up the Makati skyline, I feel like living straight off a scene in the tunnels of Neverwhere, or a segment on Saturday Night Live. The horrors and humors of living in Makati City are characteristic of a concrete jungle in a cosmopolitan era, and can sometimes be better than fiction.
During Sundays, however, the scene shifts to combine elements and actions from The Walking Dead sans zombies and car collisions, and A Moveable Feast sans Hemingway. Anxiety levels drop with only a few buses and cars cruising down the avenue, while the backdrop of silence gets amplified by the towering grave of commercial buildings. If you follow the story, you have to take a turn to Rufino from Dela Rosa* until you reach an intersection (a Starbucks should be in sight at your right), because there awaits a hub for the insatiably curious, subtly hedonistic mind.
The Legaspi Sunday Market
If you don’t live, but work, in Makati, you should come by its weekend markets: The Salcedo Market on Saturdays and the Legaspi Market on Sundays. Both are outdoor markets featuring street-style eating taken several notches up. I remember scrawling it here my plan to scoot to any of these fares one of these days. So, at noon today, I did.
Upon arriving though, it totally escaped me to check out slabs of tuna or salmon in the fish section — my goal of goals. My lack of nourishment then proved to be antagonistic to photo binging: The place was teeming with coffee table snaps, only moving, like on The Daily Prophet.
I just went on stalking couples who were checking out the Arts and Crafts Section. After checking out things myself and making small talk with a vendor, I politely asked to take a couple shots and left with a P160 desktop basket made by the good people of Bicol.
These scents were lodged somewhere between the artsy stuff and the buffet tables. Look like potions to me.
At a stall called Taqueria El Rey, and so much for alluding to fiction, I found my brunch’s entree and brushed shoulders with Iza Caldo (a Filipina actress) and boyfriend(?).
For another awesome P160, I got two pieces of quesadilla with chips and salsa. The band playing ethnic instruments was still lulling us into self-indulgence but it was getting close to 1:30, so I just ordered out and scooted back to reality. I promised to return, with so much swelling in the heart for whatever piece of resolution and peace I’ve found from the moveable feast that was the Legaspi Market. Next time, I’ll bring an entire cast of characters and more lenses with me.
Legaspi Market opens Sundays from 7:30 AM to 2 PM. Parking space is available in the area. Other sections include the fresh produce, the organic stuff, and dining.
*There are other routes to check; try Google Maps to be sure. 
Roof deck rockin’: Affairs with open spaces
2011. GA Tower 2. Right smack in the middle of Metro Manila’s skyline is the GA Towers roof deck. From that plane the uplands of Rizal and Batangas/Laguna would look accessible. Oh, how they looked accessible!
Circa 2005. UP College of Business Administration. When I had troubles as a teenager/college student/business administration major, I paced myself on the CBA roof deck to reach my inner calm. I found more than that.
Before 2003. Country Village Subdivision. There was no roof deck here, just wide, open spaces that made up my Eden, the Eden that has inspired the longing for and nostalgia over places that make you feel alive and free. Since I chose to live in the city, the roof decks have come close to being my Eden, my refuge, my hidden paradise now that I’ve grown up.
Now
2012. San Antonio Village. The night lights, the sunset, the Manila sky. My sister and I are fortunate to have lived and be living in houses with roof decks. In our current home, we’ll always have a place to run without hiding. Our refuge hides us, as it helps us find ourselves.
This one just in. Ayala FGU Center. I’ve found my dream place. From this view you’ll access the airport, the Manila Bay and its port, the mountains of Rizal and Batangas/Laguna, and many other take-off points for life’s adventures. I’ll be bringing my notebook here from time to time and plot those points. Well, the search for Eden is not over, but this one almost brings me home.
The photos above were taken Friday the 9th; the moon rose so big and bright and I and my friend/team mate/ate (big sister, the one I never had ) Jona took the time to capture it. I even joked that the moon must have risen nearer the Fort, where she lives. You’ll never know what solace we find until you get your butt up here yourself.
Eden may just be round the corner for you, or the riverbend, or up on the roof deck — depends where you are right now. Get there while you can.
My heart in Bohol
A quarter has already passed but Bohol still gives me premature ventricular contractions (translation: makes my heart skip a bit; Kuya EJ‘s GMs can come in this handy). And I still have no idea how to turn this into the late post of all late posts ‘cos Bohol still leaves me incoherent, devoid of words at times. I had my heart buried in a sandbar — Bohol is love, love, love.
*****
Failed jump shots here and there. Ask Mia why this shot is screwed-UP. Haha! She jumped (and thus landed) too soon, even before our tour guide could holler “4!” Our backdrop by the way is the oldest stone church in the country.
Laugh when you fail. Apparently we failed another jump shot here, but the moment that came after was worth capturing (never mind if it’s blurred). That is a virgin island behind us and we are on a strip of sand here. This is where I imagined walking hand in hand with my future love, perhaps to dig the sandbar for my palpitating heart. Sarap mag-beach!
My closest encounter with the winged kind. And the scaly and the small-ish kinds. We went to this den of a caught Philippine python and had pictures of ourselves sitting ~2 feet away from a sleeping, digesting sawa (python). It just gorged on a six-month-old goat, and oh my words, the thing looked like a baby bump under the reptile’s thick skin.
So there’s the bird in the same den with the python. I wonder if the maintenance people got any idea of how hard mutualism can be manufactured in a setup like that.
The butterflies in the conservatory were friendly. But don’t be fooled by this particular lovely thing on my pinkie; its legs were tickling my pinkie and ring finger the whole time. Cute but creepy.
*****
Bohol was like a year in the making. We’re part of the second wave in our friends’ circle that was brought by Ate Weene to her paradise of a home province. I haven’t even posted the Loboc River cruise and binging photos yet, or about the tarsier’s beady-eyed face, the death by the hanging bridge, and the Chocolate Hills trek. All of these remind me how the Philippines is so rich in so many things. And so moving forward, I’ll keep track of my local travels and someday conjure a revolutionary thought of how to fully love the world we’ve been given — our nature, our nation.
