Thursday night. 7:05pm. The plane was making its final approach at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) as my boss Dave A and I looked silently outside the plane window, watching Metro Manila’s flickering lights coming closer and closer until the familiar thudding sound signaled the plane’s touch down.
It was the end of another business trip covering Cebu and Bacolod, Bacolod being the last leg of the trip where I again experienced the warm hospitality of Mr. Romie Cortez. Earlier that day, we visited his sugar central and particle board plant. It was milling season in Sagay and slow moving trucks piled high with sugar cane were occupying the roads. Once in a while, we’d run into trucks that turned on its side on the road, spilling sugar canes on the ground. “That’s a common sight during this time,” explains Mr Cortez. We topped the Bacolod trip with a visit to some of Silay’s ancestral houses. I do so love looking at old homes.
While waiting for our luggage (which includes styro boxes laden with crabs, sugpo and tuna courtesy of Mr. Cortez), Dave remarked that there’s no place like home and asked who’d be waiting for me. “No one,” I was about to say then replied that my dad was picking me up.
I call Metro Manila home but it no longer feels home. I don’t feel its welcoming embrace but rather its mocking atmosphere that says matira, matibay (survival of the fittest). Years and years ago, home to me was where my parents were, most specifically where my mom was. As long as I was with them, I was home.
Then I grew up, experienced things on my own and for a while called New Hampshire home for 3 years. New Hampshire became home to me because my heart was in it: I fell in love with the State and its people, the laid-back lifestyle, the time when foliage arrives and where everywhere I looked, there were so much bursts of color that you feel you are inside an oil painting. I was independent and I reveled in it. If you want some entertainment, Boston was an hour’s drive away, driving at a leisure 70-75 miles per hour.
Yes, I’ve grown up and I continue to have my share of strike outs and home-runs. But now, though I continue to live with my parents, it no longer feels home. Home is where your Heart is and while I was up on that plane, looking down at Metro Manila below, it felt like coming home to a big empty house.
It was the end of another business trip covering Cebu and Bacolod, Bacolod being the last leg of the trip where I again experienced the warm hospitality of Mr. Romie Cortez. Earlier that day, we visited his sugar central and particle board plant. It was milling season in Sagay and slow moving trucks piled high with sugar cane were occupying the roads. Once in a while, we’d run into trucks that turned on its side on the road, spilling sugar canes on the ground. “That’s a common sight during this time,” explains Mr Cortez. We topped the Bacolod trip with a visit to some of Silay’s ancestral houses. I do so love looking at old homes.
While waiting for our luggage (which includes styro boxes laden with crabs, sugpo and tuna courtesy of Mr. Cortez), Dave remarked that there’s no place like home and asked who’d be waiting for me. “No one,” I was about to say then replied that my dad was picking me up.
I call Metro Manila home but it no longer feels home. I don’t feel its welcoming embrace but rather its mocking atmosphere that says matira, matibay (survival of the fittest). Years and years ago, home to me was where my parents were, most specifically where my mom was. As long as I was with them, I was home.
Then I grew up, experienced things on my own and for a while called New Hampshire home for 3 years. New Hampshire became home to me because my heart was in it: I fell in love with the State and its people, the laid-back lifestyle, the time when foliage arrives and where everywhere I looked, there were so much bursts of color that you feel you are inside an oil painting. I was independent and I reveled in it. If you want some entertainment, Boston was an hour’s drive away, driving at a leisure 70-75 miles per hour.
Yes, I’ve grown up and I continue to have my share of strike outs and home-runs. But now, though I continue to live with my parents, it no longer feels home. Home is where your Heart is and while I was up on that plane, looking down at Metro Manila below, it felt like coming home to a big empty house.