one-man welcome team

i'm seeing metro manila for the first time this weekend. i'm seeing it through my "etranger" friend's eyes. last friday, i met my friend pia, a french student of ESSCA, at the ninoy aquino airport. she's going to be staying in the philippines until april, and studying at the de la salle university. first thing i noticed was... pia was sooooo tanned! turns out she came from a five-week holiday in AFRICA! imagine that, huh?! and another thing was she cut her hair! i still recognized her though--good for me. :) i'm set to be her one-man welcome team, and hopefully i can help her get accommodations, get enrolled, and get oriented with metro manila where she'll live for the coming eight months.

from the airport we tried to catch the bank (HSBC) to get her ATM card, but failed as we arrived five minutes after closing time, tried to look for a cafe with WI-FI access but also failed because, of all the darn times i've eaten at the coffee bean and starbucks at greenbelt, the one time i need their WI-FI access is the one time their WI-FI access is down (in the case of starbucks) or the one time they ran out of WIFI prepaid cards (in the case of coffee bean)! these things always happen to me! oh well, seeing that our first attempts at productive activities all failed in the first few hours pia is in the philippines, i thought: darn! maybe we should just sit down at a starbucks, have frappucinos and chat away!

and so we did just that till the sun came down at 7pm. i was surprised pia wasn't tired, it seems her energy level was still up even after the 12-hour flight. we walked across the bridge at makati avenue to the next mall (glorietta), checked out CD's at tower records and walked a little bit around.

i was walking with pia and realizing that, with the long lines and thick mass of people, the philippines has become such a mallrat culture! glorietta was SO crowded and not just because people pass through there to take the MRT, buses, or FX's to their respective destinations: a lot, and i mean a LOT, of the people DO linger and spend time IN the wall rather than THROUGH IT. we walk around, window shop, meet friends, eat, have conversations, date, quarrel, wait, walk... we LIVE in these malls. maybe a study should be made on how much time a person spends in a mall doing unproductive activities, i.e. walking, waiting, window-shopping. maybe that can be a factor to measure national productivity, you think?

so after some very unproductive browsing at Tower Records (just a few minutes lang naman), we went to Cibo, the Italian resto, to meet Dani Rose, another professor from UP who's on her way home to Rizal from her "raket" job at Leon Guinto. pia got to sample her first SMB but dani and i only got fruit shakes. (good girls, hehehe) i didn't get to ask her how SMB was--maybe later--but i told her that a lot of people in europe think it's a spanish beer, but no... it's philippine-made. we chatted about ESSCA, angers, the people we all knew, things pia can do in the philippines, etc., etc. i remember how it was when mikoy and i were in angers and were slowly taking in all the new things that we see happening and, well, just sitting there and being... around us.

after dinner we went home to my house and pia got to know my parents, my cousin, my ate inday, my cats and my dogs. our dog lester kept chasing her--he's not really a people person. but our cats JB and Bituin were all over her, rolling over the floor, the table, the sofa, essentially doing everything they can to be noticed. they were all over the place!

later, we're going to DLSU for pia to enrol in her subjects, and looking for hotels/hostels for her to stay until we can find an apartment for her next week. i'm so excited for her! she's got eight whole months ahead of her to explore the philippines, to explore asia! travelling is really an amazing experience--gives all of us a sense of maturity, a sense of presence, that we won't be able to get elsewhere and in any other way. haaayyy... not that i'm being sentimental or anything, is why i'm talking this way. maybe it's because i'm just griping: i have NOT yet been outside freaking METRO MANILA since i arrived here from Europe hundreds of miles away last June. hmp hmp hmp.