changes...

Now I’m back from my trip to Negros...and what an eye-opener it has been! It is during this trip that it hit me that the last time I’ve been back to the province has been nine years, and that’s when my grandfather passed away. When my grandmother passed away five years later, I cannot get away from school so it’s only my mom who went home. And when my brother and mom went to visit two years ago, I was knee-deep in my thesis and have to be left behind.

We went there this long weekend to celebrate my brother’s birthday (my bro’s currently studying there – or what I termed as his “exile” phase LOL), and though I have noticed a lot of changes in him it’s not my story to tell. All I can say is, in this trip I saw a lot of changes – which made me both happy and sad at the same time.

I didn’t expect that pang of longing when I went back and found that most of the places that have sentimental value to me have changed. The side of our family home has lost most of its bushes which was a very good place to hide while playing hide-and-seek (or dyan-dyanay --> crap, I hoped I spelled that right). I went to my grand-aunt and uncle’s place and found the house was already cemented as opposed to the much cooler (as in malamig) hut with the chicken coop underneath the floor where I used to hide and also play tag with the geese and ducks. I’m amazed at how much my younger cousins have grown…especially the youngest one since it’s the first time I saw him and he’s now 8 years old. I remembered the times when I was young and cringe whenever I get paraded around older relatives whom I don’t know and they all say how much I’ve grown—now I try to pull myself from saying the exact same thing to my younger relatives LOL.

But at the same time, I’m happy about the fact that I get to visit at this point in my life (read: quarter-life) and also view things in a different light, see things that would have gone unnoticed to my sixteen year-old eyes. The mere sunlight bouncing off to highlight the green hues of the palay fields and see the endless sugarcane fields (which caused me countless of cuts when I was young) now excite me. I fell in love with the driveway going to the Sagasa cemetery (to visit my grandparents) with the palay fields on both sides and no one in sight. I was also glad that I was able to visit my grandparents at last.

So there, I hope I can go back again and enjoy the trip at a more sedate pace…well actually I slept a lot during this trip because the hot weather is killing me. But the continuous sunlight provided a lot for opportunities for good lighting in photos! For sure I’ll be back in a couple of years for my bro’s graduation.

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On a different note, I was supposed to use this trip also as material to enter a contest in the History Channel. At first I was skeptical about taking it on—for one, my TV skills are not tested and I know that there are more people fit for TV than I (although quoting Raj, I hope that “the camera loves me and I, it”), and the 3-minute film on a little-known but interesting history about your hometown entails a great deal of research.

But then I realized that what better time to enter when I’m about to go back to my province and I'm unemployed? My other home is Makati and the fact that it’s now urbanized doesn’t make great panoramic shots in the first place. I asked my cousin and she told me that twins were buried in our barangay’s cemetery before and since then most of the people who are buried there have deaths occurring in twos—that is, two people dying near each other’s date of death (sometimes for unexpected reasons) and being buried in that cemetery. I decided to run with the material. Sadly, the project has been aborted since my uncle was unable to locate the tombstones of pairs with the “weird” deaths. I’m trying to at least get 3 interesting pair of deaths and so far the one close to my lolo’s death is just what I have (the rest are due to sickness). This guy died four days after my lolo due to a knife wound during a hold-up in Manila and was buried in the same cemetery as my lolo’s. Other interesting deaths (e.g. one who slept, fell off the platform, then died instantly) do not have ample time to find out who their partners are, while others (i.e. those who were struck by lightning) do not have labeled tombstones (defeats the purpose if we don’t support the dates). So there, sad to leave this project behind but at least I got an interesting story to last in my head.

More pictures here.