Archive for September, 2011

MY TWO GRANDMOTHERS

September 12, 2011

Yesterday was Grandparents’ Day. I never met either of my Grandfathers. They were both dead by the time I was born. But I was lucky to have the love of my two Grandmothers, Impung Lori on my father’s side, and Mama Lola Tinang on my mother’s side. This blog is about them.

IMPUNG LORI

Impung Lori

Impung Lori was already 77 years old when I was born. She looked exactly like this picture as I remember her. She wore an embroidered cotton chemise under the thin blouse made of pineapple fiber. Then she had this billowy skirt where she had a pocket with a few coins to give to us urchins whenever we went to her room to ask money to buy some goodies for snacks. All my cousins knew I was her favorite, so I would be tasked to ask money from her. Many times she would be asleep in her bed. She hardly left her room, except for rare times when they would bring her out of the house to get some sun. It would take a lot of courage for me to rouse her from her sleep. But since our need for that snack was very great, I would summon all my nerve to nudge her and whisper to her to wake up. She never lost her temper at us for waking her up. If I asked for 5 centavos, she would pull out 15 centavos. How could 5 centavos feed around 5 of us kids, all under 6 years of age?

Impung Lori was the sister of two brothers who became Mayors of the small town where I grew up. She had another sister, Francisca. Mariano, her elder brother, was feared by many. He was known to have saved the centuries-old Church from being burned by the rebels who were fighting Spain. Her brother Felipe’s picture still hangs in the Municipal Hall to this day. He was an elected Mayor, not like his brother Mariano, who was just a leader. Felipe remained single until he died. From Felipe came a lot of the agricultural land that was distributed to his siblings and their children.

Lori married when she was 40 years old. When my father, the younger of her two children, was nine years old, Lori’s husband, Cenon, died. Lori herself died when I was in Grade 2. I will never forget the day when they distributed black veils to cover the women’s heads to allow them to grieve in private. I was given my own “manto” to cover myself. It made me feel so grown-up. The younger children were not given “mantos” like me.

I never saw Lori manage her rice and sugar lands. They were a few kilometers from town, along the main road. When my father was small, Lori would often go to her sugar mill to process the sugar harvest. From the list where all landowners were compelled to list their agricultural lands, Lori’s lands numbered around 200 hectares. These were surrendered to the Farmers who tilled them, in the name of Martial Law.

While I was growing up, I would often be sent to entertain Impung Lori. She would have spells of “nervios“, specially when my mother and father were having their quarrels early in their marriage. My mother would often run to Impung Lori to complain about my father. The object of their quarrels was mostly his playing mahjongg with his friends. Impung Lori would pretend to sympathize with her, but she was heard to say after my mother had left, “If I had the money, I would give my son some money to play.” Her two children were her most precious jewels.

She also suffered from nerves when my father was sent by the Philippine government to take further studies in Medicine. To distract her from her fears, I would regale her with stories of how well I was doing in school. That was an assignment that I took seriously. Fortunately, I was at the top of my class, at six years old! Even after Impung Lori was gone, I assumed that many old people needed to be entertained. So I tried as much as possible to visit them during my spare time. And to immortalize my love for Impung Lori, I named one daughter after her, and a whole building after her.

MAMA LOLA

Mama Lola

Mama Lola was 62 years old when I was born. She was different from Impung Lori. Mama Lola did things around the house. She cooked (none of her two daughters cooked!). She wove for me a small blue bag made from one-inch ribbons. This I brought to school as my school bag. Mama Lola died when she was 110 years old. But I never heard her raise her voice. She always kept her cool, in spite of the problems she had with her favorite son. Understandably, her son had gotten married, and had a growing family. So he wanted to have his share of the Estate of his father and his brother who died during the war from consumption. During those days, you never asked for your share of the Estate if one of your parents was still alive. But necessity drove my Uncle to go to Court to force his mother and his sisters to decide on the division of property.

Those were difficult years for me and the family. Everyone was stressed out. But you never heard anyone have what the young kids call now, “a blowup”. People talked in whispers. I heard Mama Lola curse, “sin verguenza!” under her breath. This meant, “without shame”. Mama Lola developed a life-threatening heart problem, so the Doctor recommended the sisters accede to the brother’s demands, for peace. Within two years, a settlement was reached. The brother, being the eldest son, received the best agricultural lands, the prized apartment in what was the best location in Manila, Malate. There was peace on the surface, but relations among the siblings were never the same. Then Martial Law took all the lands away from all the Landowners including the siblings, and it was everyone for himself.

I spent many decades with Mama Lola. In the afternoons, I would take a portion of her bed and fall asleep. Then she could not sleep anymore. She would pound on her pestle to make “nga nga” as I slept. This sound exists even in the mind of one of my daughters, Lori. Lori thought that the nga nga was the elixir of youth of Mama Lola, the reason why Mama Lola kept death at bay. Pound, pound, pound, she would go the whole day and night. After Mama Lola’s death, the smell of her nga nga pervaded the garden. She planted a vine there so she would never run out of the nga nga leaf. Mama Lola is still with me until this day.

I think of both my grandmothers on Grandparents Day, and wish them well in the other side of the world…….

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HONGKONG ADVENTURE

September 11, 2011

The whole adventure started in May, when Hongkong Shanghai Bank Credit cards issued a statement that, with five charge slips of at least P10,000 each, Cathay Pacific will give free ticket for one round trip to Hongkong. I decided to bring the two accountants (Nancy and Ana), Nelly (laundry woman), Fely (cook) and Lety, my adopted sister who is now 70 years old, and who has never been in an airplane, tickets to Hongkong with this Promo. From Day One when I told them of my decision, their whole hearts and minds were geared toward this goal: The Great Hongkong Adventure!!!

A. Getting Ready

1. Getting a Passport. That was the first hurdle. It took one month to get an appointment with the Department of Foreign Affairs, and another month for the DFA to release the passport. We were running out of time. There were all the requirements: birth certificate, marriage certificate, government IDs. The biggest problem was Lety, who only had a “Unknown” for her father and mother written in her marriage certificate. She didn’t have a birth certificate. But she staked out at the NSO (National Statistics Office) and the DFA (Foreign Affairs), until they told her how to get a passport. The NSO said that all she needed to do was to have Government IDs that stated her married name. She had to choose who will be her father, so she chose Coyang Dulcing Franco and Dang Floring as her parents. Coyang Dulcing is almost her age, but she has always called him “Tatang”, and Dang Floring was an old maid, never married, never been kissed, and too old for her to have borne Letty.

2. By August, all the passports were in. The next step was to get money to spend in Hongkong. Everyone in the office borrowed from the Social Security System, except for Lety, who expected Mel and me to give her some money.

3. Makeover. Each one of them went through a make over. Lety used my expensive blouse that I brought to Japan, and my Louis Vitton bag, Mom’s fake diamond-encrusted watch, my pearl earrings and my pearl ring for a total makeover. Fely had her hair curled, and everyone including me, had a manicure and pedicure.

B. AT THE AIRPORT

Thank God that I was with the girls at the airport, because the immigration people were not convinced that they were not planning to escape in Hongkong. So all of them joined my line, and I told the Immigration Officer that, yes, this was an Office Party, and we were going home together.

C. IN HONGKONG

Hongkong, Here We Come!

Ralph bought us matching hats so we could look like a Tour Group. You could tell that we had metarmophosed from ordinary people to tourists!

At the Hotel

1. Simple Instructions

We reached the Hotel by midnight, so I felt very tired. We were met by Jeanggay, Ralph’s former secretary, who was now based in Hongkong. I told her to run after Fely and Nelly to teach them how to get into their room and to slide their Entry Card into the slot so they will have power in their room.

Jeanggay did not think it was necessary to tell them how to operate the elevator. The next day, when I was going up to have my breakfast, when the door opened, Fely and Nely were inside the elevator.

“Why are you in the elevator?” I asked them. They were on the 14th floor and the dining room was on the 19th floor. I was on the fifth, which meant that they had gone down instead of going out on the 19th floor.

“We were the first to go in, and others came in the elevator. So they squished us inside the elevator. Before we could go out, the elevator had closed. The next thing we knew, the elevator had gone down, and you had opened the door.”

2. Security Fears. Nely was afraid of the security of her room. She said she was used to have THREE barrel bolts in her room. She was afraid someone might go in their room. She groped in the dark, even lifting the Room Entry Card. So their room was in total darkness. “Hay! mali!” (wrong move). So she put the Room Entry Card back in its place.

3. Cook Fely’s dream — to sample Cantonese food. Since this was the request of Cook Fely, I brought them to the most recommended restaurant by “Guide to the Lonely Planet”– Maxim’s. It looked like they didn’t enjoy the food, because they were served chopsticks. Or were they worried that this restaurant was too expensive, and they really didn’t want me to spend so much.

One of the group’s biggest concern was that they didn’t know how to use chopsticks. Here is Lety struggling with her chopsticks at The Maxim’s. You gotta hand it to Lety. She never let a small detail like not knowing how to use a chopsticks bother her. She just poked one stick into the food, and let the other stick assist bringing the food into her mouth. I was glad they were able to go into Maxim’s because that was their first and last meal outside the Hotel. Thank God, the Hotel gave a free breakfast, otherwise, they would have subsisted on the noodles they brought with them so they could save on spending for food.

SIGHTSEEING

Jeanggay was a good sport. She brought us all over Hongkong. We rode the tram, we rode the double-decker bus, the MTR (metro subway), the ferry.

Posing at the Avenue of the Stars

Hongkong at Night

The Sampan Boat looked too ritzy to be a Sampan Boat

We went all over the place. We posed at the Avenue of the Stars. We went to Hongkong Central to check out the bargains of the “alley-alley” where small shops like the ones back home sold cheap stuff. We went to the City Hall area where we saw all the thousands of Filipino maids on their day off (Sunday), playing their card games and eating their home-cooked Pinoy food, while sitting under the trees, on used carton boxes. We also watched the “Symphony of the Lights”, where all buildings by the Bay switch on their lights, and the lights open and close according to the music being played. We also went to the quiet side of Hongkong, up midway to Victoria Peak, to see some greenery amidst the skyscrapers. I was pretty happy to see so much of Hongkong in such a very little time.

HONGKONG DISNEYLAND

Finally, we were there– in Disneyland! That was the culmination of their dream. Nelly, our laundry woman, confessed that, her one dream, should she win the Lottery, was to go to Hongkong Disneyland. The only guy in our party, Art, who was the husband of Ana, said that, this trip was so special to him because, he never dreamt that he would be able to step into the shores of another country.

Disneyland, at last!

In the Disneyland Park, I was able to watch two shows, “The Great Mickeys” and the “Lion King.” I was thinking while watching the shows, that all the money I had spent on this trip was worth it, just by the two shows alone. I was able to take two rides. At the Astro Blaster, I knew this was for a child who wanted to shoot at space targets. At the Space Mountain ride, I was glad to have survived the sharp turns and roller coaster ride.

During lunch, I decided to sample more dimsum at the Disney Maxim’s Restaurant.

Animal dimsum

Bunny dimsum

Mouse dimsum

By this time, my companions had disappeared, doing their own thing. So I happily enjoyed myself. I had been to the Anaheim Disneyland, in my past life. It was in 1974 when I was in the USA Disneyland. What I missed most was the weather!!! For some strange reason, I couldn’t connect Disneyland to sweltering heat! It was just like going to a local Resort with Disney characters. I also missed the night parade where the Disney characters were all lighted up — their hair, their clothes– in tiny lights.

END OF THE HONGKONG ADVENTURE

Before we left, the girls made sure that they bring a bit of Hongkong back with them. They wanted to make sure that their families also shared in this once-in-a-lifetime experience by bringing home the veritable “pasalubongs”. I am sure that, every time they look at those stuffed toys that they brought home, they will remember what it was to feel like a tourist, once in your lifetime!

Bringing Home a Bit of Hongkong

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