Final Four

October 2, 2012

Final Four

On Saturday around noon, after returning to our apartment from a swim, we received a text from our friend, Eric, a Jesuit student from Kenya studying at Ateneo's seminary:

"I have 2 xtra tix for d game 2night, ateneo playin in final 4 game. u n grace want to join?"

A bit of background: as we mentioned before, basketball is huge in the Philippines. The college basketball season is finishing up this week. It’s the equivalent of the final week of March Madness in the U.S. Ateneo has won the championship for the past four years so they have big expectations. Their biggest rival, by far, is La Salle University, also in Manila (There's even a musical about this rivalry). We had mentioned a week or two before that we thought it might be fun to see a game and everyone told us that there was no way to get the Ateneo-La Salle tickets, even if we stood in line starting at 4:00am.

 Back to the story: We quickly told Eric that we’d join him and arranged to meet at his place in early afternoon to head out for the 4:00 tip-off at Araneta Coliseum (This was where the Thrilla in Manila was held in 1975. It's home to all sorts of big events like Disney on Ice and Elton John. Andy Williams played here in 2006 so one of the regular images on the screen was a tribute to his recent passing).  Eric guided us through our first motorized tricycle and subway ride to get there, only about a 20 minute trip on the train. 

   The crowd at Araneta was 18,360 people and was split right down the center: Ateneo fans in blue on one side, and La Salle fans in green on the other. 

Thirty minutes before the game began each school’s band brought out a dozen large marching drums to the top tier on each team's side of the dome.  The 24 drums were used continuously until the game ended (In our experiences, school bands usually are not allowed to make music while the game is in play.  Not the case here).  One side's drummers would start pounding and the other side would quickly try to drown them out. Here's a brief video we took before the game even started. 

Add to that almost 20,000 people who were on their feet and cheering non-stop made the din painfully loud. Mid-game the cheering was still intense, so much so that nobody could hear any of the announcements. People would shout "what's going on?" after foul calls because they couldn't hear what the ref said. We decided to make ourselves some earplugs from napkins and that helped a little bit. The game was crazy: the players sprinted the whole time and were very fast and loose with the ball. Lots of missed shots and not a lot of passing. It really was quite different from U.S. college basketball. The lead shot back and forth every few minutes but Ateneocame out on top when, in the final seconds, a La Salle's player was driving to the basket for the winning shot and lost control of the ball. 

We were in the third tier of the dome and seated right next to the dividing line between Ateneo and La Salle fans which made for some passionate taunting between fans in the rows ahead of our seats.  After the game ended, both teams sang their alma maters and filed out of the arena.  We stopped for a quick bite to eat at a mall food court while we waited for the LRT to thin out a bit.  Everyone has been recommending Razon's halo-halo and so we shared a serving of their all-white version.  Surprisingly, we both were disappointed and realized we preferred the rainbow mixture we first sampled at Chow King.

On Sunday, wanting to try the subway by ourselves, we set out for Legazpi Market down in Makati (we had a post about our plan to go the market a week ago).  Makati feels like a combination of Wall Street and Los Angeles inserted into downtown Manila.  Very clean and very expensive.  Nonetheless we enjoyed delicious food at Legazpi Market, an equally tasty lunch at Paris Delice (we've both been craving "real" bread), and some fun window shopping at Greenbelt mall.  We'll definitely have to go back earlier in the day as Legazpi was starting to wind down by the time we arrived at 1:00. 

big boulevards in Makati

yummy lunch

walking around Ayala Triangle

A tropical depression passing through has provided us with deafening rains the past two night, but the days have remained mostly clear.  We're looking forward to brunch this Sunday with the children of one of Fritz's grandfather's medical partners.  It will be our first trip down to Manila Bay.