I remember my En12 class. we were debating about the hottest issue of the season-- MMDA sweeps sidewalk vendors! (yes it has been that long.)
I had to take the pro side when i had this debate. i find it logical anyway. it is as if MMDAs would just brush them off the streets but they actually provide them stalls inside the market. The point here is responsive reponsible citizenship and RESPONSIBLE DISCIPLINED tax payers. legal selling with DTI permits and others. you know those legal and technical stuff to put up a business. but the more practical side of things, they do it because the freaking traffic is annoying! they stop you like you are obliged to buy from them. aparently in that debate in EN 12 class.. the con side won for social reasons.
Today i had the chance to be one of those MMDA.oh minus the costume of course! How did i manage to become a sidewalk evader? let me take you down memory lane-- specifically in the corner of maria clara and banawe.
I grew up in my lola's house. though i never really lived there coz my permanent address is the one 2 blocks from my lola's old house in ma. clara. (which is here in cordillera). I spend my mornings in Little Angels. My parents would drop me there give me a 2 pesos baon (yes yung octagon pa noon!!) for my "recess" i'd by those chikadeese and all that cheese rings and balls! witht hsoe free pop-ing toys and ghostbuster cards. at about lunch which is technically dismisal. either loleng or ato will be by the gate to fetch me. loleng and ato, maid and driver respectively, have been with the family since my lolo was still single. so they have been serving our family for 3 generations already. i'd be running towards them and then start to walk to ma. clara, wher my lola's house was. . i think it was about 3 blocks away from my lola's house.
i had to stay with my lola because my folks were in the offices, my siblings were in school. acky was starting his days in ateneo and my sister in st paul. so i would be there having lunch with my lolo, who came from UDMC, and my lola.my lolo would have pasalubong for me from the hospital--injections! hahaha without the needles of course! i'd fill them up with water and play with them as mini water guns. then i'd go to siyesta or if not visit my "cousins" in the apartment beside them.
oh days of yellow orange afternoons with the sweet smell of jasmine.... with a painful cheek from my lolo's pinching.. eating popsicles in a bathtub... i suddenly miss my lolo:(
4 units in one building. one of those units are my mom's and pop's love nest. yes haha sentimental much? not really. in time they got to build a house here in cordillera which was in 1980. they got married 1977. so eventualyl my lola had those units rented out. apparently to keept he long story short.. hello from 1980 to 2005 that is a long story noh! some of the renters of the units sub-let the units and built up so much cases!-legal cases at that! it took us a good 5 years to get them all out! with my mom's katarayan and all we got them out!! we won all cases. (kaya si kabobohan chicken lang yun!)
during that time being, we had to board up the units so that no one can trespass. no one trespassed nga but all these sidewalk vendors came infron of the boards! selling sidemirrors (stolen i'm sure), rubber mats, tints, keys, food.. banawe delight at its finest!. grabe kalokohan talaga ng mga pinoy. anythign for cheaper prices for the lack of quality!
so there. the first unit is now TCB. (btw local marketing officer at your service). then the 2nd one is still closed. the 3rd is agua vida and the 4th is still closed.
so today. we openned up the 4th unit, in my lola's term "coligado's", to drive these bad spirits away!! as in we removed the old wood the boards and all the garbage that they actually pilled up there! there was one stall lef though. with the "help" of the barangays..( i swear loc gov case studies makes sense now.. pag may problem hindi nila territoryo, pag taxes na territoryo nila!) then apparently the wife of the owner of the stall came with her newly manicured hands and soon to be pedicured feet. di siya makapulot ng maski pako! geeezzz!!! grabe now cleared out na yung frontage of the appartment! earlier though there was this van that read "law enforcer" oh yeah righ can i just add a sticker to our van that says "law abider"? i mean hello signs ar ealready there.. sidewalks are for people who pass and not for vendors. who the hell do they pay to for the space the use? (insert realization of lugar (fil11)) just beucase they are on property line? aparently these are in some how subletted (such verb) by the barangay. HELLO! katangahan in the nth power! i mean if in just the lower hierachy of local government have corruption this bad.. i am not wondering why the palace have such ultra bloated issue on corruption. (the Filipinos are still worth dying for. but come on. these filipinos have learned to be so apathetic about politics because of tee same off promises that each person who they elect for have oathed. WE DONT NEED ANOTHER EDSA-- (sa C5 naman! hahaha.. dang it how could i laugh with such matter). WE NEED TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT!!)
anyway.... beyond my inscesant political view on this matter,being there really made me remince those yellow-orange afternoons. sun light slipping through the blinds in my lola's guest room window. those day where my height was tracked down by the number of tiles in the kitchen wall. days when the pag bayo ng bigas where by the lanay leading to the garage. afternoons spent on red cemment tiles while reciting the poem " in the heart of a seed".
if i were to repeat my en12 class and have that debate all over again. i will still be in the pro side. i have experience to back me up.
... off topic...
to the bitter people,... GET A LIFE. beleive me there is more to life than living in the unreachable past!
...::The world is full of passing faces.
Our hearts are bruised in many places::..
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