Part two

Part two:

Adventures from the mall:

Going back to the mall for a bit (this was Sat day- in the afternoon) a few noteworthy things happened:

Number one, I found and fell in love Rustan's dept store. This is where I bought the perfume I featured in my album, and I quite frankly wish I'd spent the entire three hours in this luxury brand emporium. We only were there for about 20 minutes, but it was Sinequanone (one of my fave brands) heaven.

Number two: In wandering the mall with glazed eyes looking for something to do, we passed a store that was literally called "Havin' A Baby". (It was a mix of maternity clothes and a small section of baby clothes). I cracked up, immediately listing other equally coy names for the store
"How about "Knocked UP?" How about "Preggers!" How about "A Bun in the oven?"

A light bulb goes on over Ives' head and he remembers that his good friend just had a baby and he wants to get her (and the baby, Megan) something. We go in and I wander over to the frilly dress section, speculating out loud as to how old Megan is now "three months?" I ask, and I turn to see Ives studying some very hardy denim overalls embroidered with a backhoe as if they contain the secret of the universe. He then picks up a boldly striped utility shirt and studies it with equal concentration.

"Uh, isn't Gemma's baby a girl?" I ask him, and he drops the item as if it were radiated. Now I'm questioning my own memory- I mean, it was late a night when I met the baby- nope, I clearly remember the ninety pounds of pink frills this child had on. Ives gives up almost immediately. "I'll just get her cash. That way she can get whatever she wants" he concedes defeat with grace, gratefully leaving the store.
I had to laugh. Good to know a dude is a dude is a dude, no matter where he was born.

So Sat night around 4 we fell asleep. We woke up once to turn up the aircon at 8 pm, but didn't wake up again until the next day around 4 am. We watched TV until 6.30 when the buffet opened (a show called True Beauty, which Ives was fully caught up on, having stumbled on it while I was in the shower- he could and did fill me in on all the major players and their quirks).

Breakfast was lacking in peace, since the TV was on CNN, which was showing coverage of the Libyan conflict, which the US had just entered. We hustled our way through the meal, and then got a taxi off to the fish market. The region is famous for it's dried fish, and our friends had asked for it, could we please bring some back.

This leads me to a side discussion of culture here: I had to explain to Ives that in the US, not only is it totally gauche to openly ask for a souvenir (at most you would put on a faux naif tone and ask in a voice dripping with irony, and then only from your closest friend), you really wouldn't expect one. If you got one, great. If not, eh. No biggie.

Given the atrocious taste level of most of the world (you should SEE the kitchen mats my cleaning lady tried to buy for me- we're going to have to have another little chat about how cartoon characters have no place in Naomi's world) it's really better that way- I mean, do you really want that "I got blown away at the top of Mount Whatever tee shirt? Here, people really buttonholed Ives, reminding him multiple times of what they wanted, right up until the last minute. I'm surprised there weren't people yelling their requests at the bus station at 5 am!

Anyway, we had to get pasulabong for about 10 people, to the tune of almost 2500p, and my god was that box heavy. Most of it was dried fish, but I got cocoa and dried mangoes for my friends, and we had tee shirts made for Ives' two closest friends (a grown man with two kids who is called Ro-ro. really. and children, he's the kind of man you see shooting darts at the end of the bar and think "That guy looks like a hell of a good time and I bet he's nothing but T-r-o-u-b-l-e" and by god are you right) and a sweet, quiet girl named Sophie.

After this we took a dip (it was starting to get sunny out) and then off to the spa, where I got a pedicure and Ives read back issues of Glamour magazine. At the back of one was a one page article called "10 times it's okay to throw a hissy". He turned to me "What's a heee-see?" he asked.
I was stumped for an explanation. "It's uh...it's when you have a temper tantrum as an adult, basically. It's short for "hissy fit". Heh.
Having to explain things like the new 30 oz Starbucks drink, exactly what a "hissy fit" is, and various other Americanisms sometimes sheds a rather cold, angular spotlight on the eternal adolescence that is the good old USA.

Then it was off to the Lighthouse, a place recommended in the guidebook that was also handily next door to the hotel for a long lunch. We ate ourselves into a coma and sat outside, flicking mosquitoes away from our faces as we tried not to fall asleep after two beers in the hot sun.

Then it was time to go to the airport. At the airport were two places of note: the first was the smoking lounge, which was called "The Tinder Box" and was classier than any place in Clark that's not inside the perimeter (inside the perimeter is much nicer than out). Modern and sleek, it was exactly the kind of place I've been dying to go to for 7 months. However, calling a place "The Tindebox" is a little like just outright naming it "the Firetrap" something that eludes Filipinos, and I couldn't adequately explain, so after having a private chuckle I just contented myself with the knowledge that my American friends would get it.

So we hung out and had coffee and chatted, and Ives told me a folktale about "The magic tinderbox" which is a story I've never heard (although I bet Kez has), and then we paid our fees and went to the gate.

At the gate we were delayed by an hour, so it was off to the other smoking lounge, also a place about 75% cooler than any single location in Clark. This place was full of yellow glass, giving everything an ethereal, gorgeous golden glow, including the television that only showed cigarette ads and the hazy, dessicated smokers all around me, desperately smoking their last cig before the plane ride. I do tease Ives a little about smoking, (he claims he'll quit before he's 35, but seeing as he's 32, we'll see) but honestly you can't make someone quit, and quite frankly, I can 100% see exactly why people smoke here. They live on the firing line.

I read an article just recently about a massacre in another island where 58 people were killed (shot to death execution style) by the ruling clan, their cars crushed by a backhoe with the clan's NAME ON IT. These were woman, journalists, and children on their way to support an opposing government candidate. The brazen, shocking, and cruel way this went down (this was almost two years ago now) makes ME want a cigarette. And trials will take about 5 years or more. And the family is still in power. Thinking about this makes me so angry and helpless I feel as if I'm floating in a sensory deprivation tank, saturated with nameless emotions. One of the things that's good-bad about being here is that I've felt emotions I've literally never felt in my entire life, some of them I couldn't even put a name to. This was one of them. So yeah, smoke em if you've got em.

Also in the airport: As we got our boarding passes, I was idly reading the signs: among the awesomest:

"Jokes about bombs in the airport are taken very seriously, etc, etc. Anyone caught cracking such jokes will be dealt with very seriously." Cracking!! HAR!

"the following things are allowed as exceptions to the carry on rule:

[a bunch of other stuff]
-a reasonable amount of reading material"
I totally know exactly what happened here. Some a-hole totally brought an UNREASONABLE amount of reading material and was like "what? I need this to read!"

"this area is off limits to well-wishers"

On the plane, it was explained to me that as we were in the emergency exit row, Ives had to have the window seat because women can't sit in it because, and I quote "They become too tensed in an emergency". Well. Okay. Now, not that Ives' isn't admirably (almost autistic-ally, sometimes, to be honest) calm, but DAMN!

After a long plane ride and a longer bus ride (this was nice though because the bus left from the heart of downtown Manila, which is a breathtakingly spectacular site, a true spectacle in the old sense of the word- huge towering icicles of buildings roped around with pedestrian walkways, sidewalks teaming with people that looked like ants, huge white hot billboards illuminating the sky for miles around, the whole thing looking like a set from Blade Runner)--we were home. Sleep, and then more sleep.

All in all, a good time.

welcome to Cebu, Queen City of the South

Part one today, part two tomorrow.
Friday AM:

Ives and I took off right after work at 4 AM, taking the very early bus to Manila, from there we would take a taxi to the airport, and fly to Cebu, then taxi to the hotel. The bus ride was relatively short, and the scenery kept me awake despite the fact that I was dead tired from work and the stress of worrying about all the arrangements had made me lay awake when I should have been sleeping. I'd also been very ill the past week, and was just recovering, but still sick enough to lack appetite and focus in the way that one does when one is very ill and the world seems to be operating quite independent of you.

The slums of Manila were predictably terrifying, with the occasional palatial house with a hopeful turquoise balcony twinkling over the jumbled mass of tin shacks, and then we were in the station, loading up the taxi to the airport. The airport was the usual chaos, walking barefoot through the scanner, cursing the day you decided to wear complicated buckled shoes (the girl in front of me) or sneakers and socks (Ives), and then on to one of several lines to wait for boarding passes, security again, pay the boarding fee (?- The Phil likes to get your money coming and going with several million of these mysterious little "fees" that you can't avoid), then on the plane.

For me, this was plane ride 9000, having racked up over 100,000 frequent flier miles when my parents were first divorced and I was flying back and forth every other weekend, as jaded and wan as a 50 year old executive with a melting scotch in his hand. For Ives however this was only plane ride number 2, the last time he flew having been in high school. As always, he was admirably stoic without being bored, even reading the safety instructions (something it takes about 10 plane rides to stop doing, the point where you realize "I'm toast if we crash, life vest or no life vest". Thereafter you just white knuckle it or get boozy, or if you're one of those that doesn't mind flying, you do a crossword and listen to your ipod and doze while the plane bounces like a beach ball and rattles like a set of dice in the sky).

On the ground we gathered our bags and had the pleasant surprise of seeing a placard with my name on it and a driver to take us to the hotel. The rolling green hills of Cebu were interspersed with intensely, almost painfully, ugly industrial areas and the sun struggled to illuminate the quiet, but tattered streets. I confess I thought "Oh, shit, we just left this section of town behind! Tell me it's going to be the same damn thing all over the Philippines!" Thankfully it was not.

We tooled up to the hotel and the porter took our bags while the front desk clerk explained that the room was being cleaned and it would be a while. We toddled into the bar, exhausted, and killed three beers and some squid and something else (it escapes me but it was some sort of savory meat thingie) while watching MTV and laughing, planning to eat dinner later after a nap.

We fell asleep in the room (finally!) at 12 ish, in the most beautiful light I have seen outside of the movies. The only comparable light I've ever seen is in Sophia Coppolla movies- liquid gold straight from 1974, pouring through barkcloth drapes and onto the bed, which was kitted out with cotton sheets and not much else. The light was so stunning I stayed awake for a few minutes, just looking around the room and at Ives, who fell asleep as if he had been struck smartly on the head with heavy object.

I recently read a magazine profile of an artist who made a piece of art called David Sleeping, which features the eternally stunning David Beckham sleeping, in sensual black and white. At the time, I thought "and you got PAID for this?"

But looking at Ives, with his face half hidden by the pillow, just the paintbrush edge of his lashes, the steep drop of his cheeks down to that mouth of his, the Rocky Horror Picture show perfect mouth, with the cupid's bow that dips in the top and at the bottom of the upper lip, with that slight overbite that gives those that have it an unconscious sensuality usually quite at odds with their real persona. You are one lucky bitch, I thought. Then I fell asleep and we slept for 14 hours, until 2 AM the next day.

Waking up we admitted the "fail" ( we had done zip that day but travel, eat and sleep, which was not the plan at all) and ate at Jolibee down the street, planning the day.

Ives had woken up about an hour before I did and as usual, was deeply ensconced in a conversation with the guard, the two of them drinking coffee and smoking cigs, kicking back on the patio chairs, as if he had known him his whole life (his usual manner with people is to fall in conversation as if he had just seen them yesterday at the local mah jong game and by the way how's the trick knee?
I'm always in awe of people who are able to chat up the locals everywhere they go and not a little jealous. People do talk to me, but it's usually the "undesirables" who sense an easy mark and then the conversation is usually one sided, with me nodding away as they tell me about the Saga of the Home for the Criminally Insane where they Really Didn't Belong, etc). So he told me that he had checked with the guard about the itinerary (which items were doable and which weren't, being too far away) and had arranged a taxi to drive us around that day for a flat rate.

Now all that remained was to kill time until the breakfast buffet opened. We killed time by fooling around on the internet, showing each other pictures of our family on facebook (he has brother in London, lucky chap!) and then watching TV (in a delightful stroke of luck, Lie to Me was on, followed by Bones, both of which we liked) and then took a shower and toddled off to the buffet.

Sat: The breakfast buffet was pretty good- including the dried fish the region is famous for as a breakfast food, and then after lingering over coffee, we got in the taxi we rented for the day to take us around town.

We saw several "cultural" attractions, including Magellen's cross, the cultural museum, a gorgeous church museum featuring the most intricate doll clothes I've ever seen (people make these incredibly elaborate vestments for the patron saint totem Saint Nino and this museum had them on display. No pictures were allowed, but they were dazzling. Well worth the 10p). We tramped around taking pictures and looking at various glass cases with historical objects in them, stopped for coffee in a diner that had seen it's last customer sometime around 1965 I would think, then we went to the Butterfly Conservatory, which the guide book listed as a "can't MISS!" in TWO different places.

In my mind, the Butterfly conservatory would be a huge white modern building, smelling of alcohol, with vast hallways of framed butterflies, and then a huge topiary garden with thousands of butterflies flitting around in a profusion of color and wings. A staff of young scientists would give us a tour, showing us the different types, answering questions, and then leaving us to marvel over the pretties.

Wellll... suffice to say, it was.... not like that. The taxi pulled over to what looked like someone's house (uh, it was), and despite being asked in English and Tagalog several times if this was the right place, the driver insisted it was.

We stumbled out in a daze and toddled down the steps to what was CLEARLY a private residence with a burned wood sign. A rickety card table with a cashbox on it had a handwritten sign asking for 100p a person was set up to the side of the front door. We were inside an overgrown backyard. A scruffly little grey poddle mix dog got to its feet and hustled over to the screen door to the house, rheumy eyes fixed on us, faithfully guarding the door so we couldn't get in without paying our 100p.
We wandered around the "grounds", which consisted of an outbuilding and an enclosure with about 10 butterflies in it. We spotted what appeared to be the tour guide, a little old lady, leading several antsy, bored children around, and she said she'd be right with us.

In a side building with three walls, some glass fish tanks held caterpillars and pupas and newly hatched butterflies. Some caterpillars were inching along the edge of one cage, which had wooden edges, like cages from 1911. ("Look at this. He's trying to find his way home." Ives noted. "I'll tell the old lady about you." He scolded the fuzzy thing as it inched around, surprisingly fast for a bug. "I bet someone left the cage open", he guessed, which turned out to be the case, actually.)
Finally we stumbled across the owner, an extremely old, frail woman with huge glasses and a halo of fine curls- the same lady that had been leading the "tour" earlier. She gave us the tour, using a wooden teacher's pointer to show us the 10 or so framed butterfly specimens, giving us the *bare minimum* of information about the butterflies inside. "This is the largest butterfly in the Philippines. This is the smallest. This is the most beautiful. No flash photos." Etc.

She was however, full of information about her father, a man who emerged as more and more of a nut the more we heard about him.

A sculptor, who's delicate features and extremely petite frame, combined with his large eyes (perfectly reproduced in his dedicated, dessicated daughter) gave him a distinctly insecticidal look himself, who seemed to have withdrawn from the real world around 1935 or so, he dedicated his life to collecting butterflies and making art with their wings (REALLY!). The outbuilding was a shrine to this dude's Art 203- level drawings in oil and watercolor with the same painting made in butterfly wings. Subjects tended to be nature, with a heavy emphasis on animals or oddly, the celebrities of Science (Darwin was there), with topics like "Werewolf vs. Craken" (REALLY, I know. It's delicious). Ives and I avoided looking at each other as we politely studied the evidence of the Butterfly Nut and His Legacy.
Once in the car Ives, his face a study, was clearly at a loss for words, a problem I've never encountered, so I took the wheel of the conversation that was on both our minds "What the hell was THAT?". We discussed as we planned our next move, laughing over the super oddball lady and her faithful "guard dog".

Then it was on to the mall, to get tee shirts for the friends and ourselves. Three mind numbing hours later we had located the store where you can them made, and in the meantime we had lunch at Red Kimono. It was drizzling the whole day, but the mall was gorgeous, the resto was on a terrace level that overlooked stunningly green gardens and the rain was very relaxing, not enough to create a problem, just enough to give you a feeling of intense well being as we sat and drank our wine and beer and ate enough sushi to choke a horse and people watched.

Coming home we promised ourselves we would just nap and then get up for dinner (you can see it coming, right?).
We went up to the pool, which was on the roof, to take a swim in the rain (something I love). Being, shall we say, more well insulated than the very slender Ives, I jumped in and was frisking around while he shivered, eyes wide at the, for him, freezing cold water. After a valiant attempt, he got out and we drank our beers with me in the pool, and him on the edge, wrapped in a towel that he probably wished was a wool blanket. "My body is trying to keep itself warm" he noted, as his legs knocked together in the, for me, very slightly cool breeze.

The decadence of having the rooftop pool all to ourselves, ordering drinks from room service, the knowledge that a bed with clean pressed sheets and air con was just down the stairs, and a feast of epic proportions was to be had anytime we wanted made the night seem as sweet as any I've ever known.
Life seemed very full, and I knew I had done the right thing in waiting to have someone to bring with me, since memories that only you have are sweet, but even more wonderful are the memories you can laugh over and turn over and over in your hands with someone else.