Holy Week

     Less than three weeks to go here in Manila! We leave for Singapore on April 19, where we’ll stay for a month to do research. The weather has really started to warm up here, so we’re still jealous of seeing all that cool weather back in the U.S.

some of finished bagels

            This was an especially busy week. Grace’s parents left on Sunday night during a relatively unusual summer thunderstorm. The next day, we went over to our friends’ house to start making bagels (these are the friends with an oven with whom we baked challah a while back). We shaped the bagels on Monday and left them to chill over night. The next evening, we went back to boil, bake, and eat the results (we used the recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, a great book). After we ate, they showed us the litter of six kittens that they found in their back porch area one day. It seems like a pregnant cat crawled back into their fenced-in area and gave birth in a quiet, dark, corner. So now they have six absolutely tiny kittens to try to find homes for. Here’s a brief video of them just waking up and coming out to greet us.

           

            This week has been completely shaped by Easter events. The whole city started to shut down on Wednesday afternoon. When Grace and I were coming back from our evening walk that night we ran across a giant procession of images of saints and such going down our street. It was similar to the procession we saw on Friday that we’ll write about more below.

             Our street also featured two pabasas, a 24-hour reading/singing of an old Tagalog poem that basically tells the story of Jesus and creation, etc. Our neighbors read the poem into microphones attached to giant speakers. It was really interesting to see and hear these recitations (we heard they not be too common any more) but we didn’t sleep very well on Wednesday or Thursday night since the recitations went on at all hours. I made some short recordings to capture some of this: recording 1 (you can hear the girls singing above the noise of the street), recording 2 and recording 3, both from Friday morning.

Pabasa at Barangka Credit Coop, across the street from our apartment

building and decorating the hut for a pabasa down the street

pabasa going on after decorations have finished

            On Friday morning we heard drumming outside our apartment so I went out to the roof with my camera to see what was going on. Turns out, there was a moving senakulo, or passion play, processing down our street. We recognized some of our neighbors in costume as drummers and soldiers. While the beating and whipping of the people playing Jesus might seem a bit extreme, I think the whips were made to have more sound than substance. Furthermore, in comparison to the actual crucifixions that go on each year in Pampanga (where people volunteer to have nails driven through their hands and all that), this seemed relatively painless. Grace had to go down to another part of Manila that day to tutor and saw several people flagellating themselves on the road, drawing blood form their bare backs with palm whips. This is also apparently not all that uncommon throughout the Philippines. Below are some photographs, but I also captured some video as the procession passed by our apartment building: video 1, video 2, video 3.

drummers leading the procession

looking on after the procession passed by our building

             On Friday afternoon, our friends Mike and Peter picked us up to drive up to the town of Arayat, Pampanga, to watch a procession of images/floats that culminated in an ornate hearse with Jesus in a coffin. Some of Mike’s friends have an old 1920's home up there. He had been in years past and wanted to show it to us. It was really neat to get to see what Good Friday was like in this  town at the base of Mount Arayat and, since everyone had left Manila for the weekend, it was a breeze traveling in and out of Manila, something that can’t be said very often. I also took some videos from this trip: Video 1 (view of the breeze moving decorations in front of the chapel), Video 2 and Video 3 (of the procession).

the procession would go by this beautiful old private chapel

the home where we stayed for the evening, built in 1895 but burned down, rebuilt in 1928

inside, beautiful old furniture (but no AC, so quite hot)

one of the images for the procession

incredibly ornate silver-work

towards the start of the procession, people walking with lit candles on either side

a person would walk in front of float with a bamboo pole to make sure there wasn't anything overheard that would damage it

the electric lights on the floats were powered by generators

the finale: Jesus in a hearse

March Madness in Marikina

Grace’s parents just left on Sunday night so we’re trying to get back into our regular routines (which will be interrupted for several days as the whole city shuts down for Holy Week). We think they had a nice trip.

            One of the evenings they were here we took them to hang out at our neighborhood basketball court, the Barangka community court. For the past few weeks, there have actually been formal games going on, complete with organized teams, announcers, referees, and audience. Normally, there are just lots of children out and about shooting the ball. Since Michael and Grace had just finished reading Pacific Rims, a really fun book about basketball in the Philippines, they were interested in watching a game. We were having trouble scheduling a time to attend a professional game so we opted to just show Michael what we normally see (the shortcut from our apartment to Ateneo campus goes right through the basketball court, so we literally have to walk through a game every time we come and go).

            When Grace’s parents came down the game going on was Mabolo versus Tuazon, teams probably named after the street/neighborhood where they lived. Unlike most of the games we watch, the players were all adults, and many had children and families watching from the stands. While the game was really entertaining, lots of very fast play and lots of turnovers, we also really enjoyed listening to the announcer, who regularly had the crowd in stiches. I took several videos of this game, as well as some from other games we’ve walked past over the last week.  More pictures are below.

Video 1

This was from the first game of the night, as we were walking over to go get Grace’s parents.

Video 2

This was the game that we actually stayed and watched for a while. Mabolo was a little outclassed by Tuazon, but it was still fun to watch.

Video 3

Halftime was fun, since lots of the neighborhood kids came out to play. Here’s a fun video of one of the players playing with the children.

Video 4

Again, we loved listening to the announcer, so I captured a little bit of his schtick here. One of our favorite lines that he had was “Traveling! No passport, no license!”

Video 5

The next day, Grace and I were walking back and say an organized game featuring two young teams from our neighborhood. The style of play is actually very similar, but the shots don’t go in quite as often.

watching an afternoon game

more of the scene, basketball court in back

Mabolo's line-up

lots of little children running out onto the court during warm-ups

Mabolo vs. Tuazon, rebounding

Tuazon up by 30 points

announcer making people laugh, Tuazon up by 35

next day, a younger team warms up

night game with a younger team from Barangka

Ateneo basketball shirt next to NBA Miami Heat basketball shirt

Taho

For our last month in Manila we’ll try to post some more things about daily life here.

One of the most common sounds in the morning (6:45-7:15ish) in our neighborhood is the taho man calling “ta-ho!” We’ve heard a couple variations of this call, so it seems like each taho vendor has his own distinct identifiable jingle.

typical taho scene

Taho is a sweet tofu drink with syrup. There’s a man in our neighborhood who rides around on a bike with a giant container of the tofu and the other various toppings (it’s more common for people to carry taho in two silver buckets over their shoulders like the man we photographed in Tagaytay).

We don’t actually eat taho very often (it’s very sweet and primarily for children) but it’s a common sound and sight in our neighborhood. On Saturdays and Sundays, the only days we’re actually around in the morning, we often see little children running out to the taho man with cups for him to fill. One morning I took a video from outside of our apartment of one of these interactions.

One of our friends has two small children and she pays the taho man in her neighborhood a monthly amount so that her children can have it whenever they want. She said that her mother did the same for her when she was young. 

Second Hong Kong Trip - Videos

                Kathy and Michael are enjoying their last few days in Manila and Grace and I are realizing that we have a lot to take care of before we leave for Singapore in less than a month. We’ll have more posts about things here in Manila soon, but I’ve finally finished uploading some videos from our trip to Hong Kong. You can read more about that trip (and the context for these videos) here and here.

Here’s a view down toward Happy Valley from my walk up Broadwood Road. It was a beautiful, quiet Sunday, and I chose to capture this spot because the sound of the birds was so nice.

Later that day, I walked through Victoria Park and saw hundreds of Indonesian domestic workers there. As I was leaving, some of them took part in a march protesting some of HK’s policies towards foreign workers. 

Here’s a little clip of a Red Lory from the Hong Kong Garden aviary. 

Grace and I finally took a tram (which was very slow) after an afternoon in Sheung Wan. Here’s a view of a bit of our ride. 

And, finally, I took a brief video of a Filipino Tinikling performance inside the Hong Kong Flower Show.