i know what you did last holy week

Or rather I know what I did. And you shall too.

Holy Thursday, Day One.

• We set out at 4:30 in the morning because my Dad believes in leaving margins for error. Meaning, in case we get lost... you get the picture. We didn't get lost. We did get landsick. I never get landsick, that is, dizzy in car rides, but with Edoy the Reckless the Driver at the wheel, well, there's a first time for everything. We actually didn't need an extra driver because Lucas could have driven, but Dad decided to ask Edoy to drive us because he's my Dad's mechanic and it would be good for him to be around in case either of the cars breaks down mid-mountain. See what I mean about leaving margins for error? I thankfully was able to sleep halfway through, which is weird because I hardly ever sleep during car rides. I only do so when I'm very tired or lack sleep. Thank God Mikah came over last night, bearing Spirited Away on DVD.
• The drive took only about four hours. I remember it used to take six or so, but then that was 12 years ago when the roads weren't paved. They are now. I also remember being sick in the car because Daddy would play Pink Floyd and Ozzy super loudly. Ironic, don't you think? We took the roro to cross the ocean to Polillo, which took three hours, according to Jacqui, "the longest three hours of my life." But we didn't get seasick, so it's no biggie.
• Reaching Polillo though, well, let's just say that the end justifies the means. We got there at lunch and headed out to the beach after our meal. It is GORGEOUS. The sand is so fine (not quite white, but, well, sandy) and the water so clear that you can see your feet when you're swimming. This photo will probably say it all.

Damn, I'm the color of labanos.

• The only bad thing was I became embarassingly aware that my bikini bottom is too big for me. I lost that much weight, I guess. Jacqui panalo hirit of the day: "Joe, passe na yung tanga." Bastos!

Good Friday, Day Two.

• March 25 is my Dad's birthday. Happy birthday, Daddy!
• Guess what. It rained on and off all morning, foiling my Dad's plan of staying at the beach all day and foiling my plan to be a different color by Saturday. I'm guessing the Lord does want us to remember what happened to His Son so that sins may be forgiven. We instead spent the morning becoming better acquainted with our relatives (we couldn't do anything else because the electricity on the entire island operates only from 2 in the afternoon to 6 in the morning. Which is a welcome change from when there was no electricity at all. Ah, those were the days).
• We stayed at the house of my Dad's cousin instead of the hotel, which was fully booked because this year was the scheduled alumni homecoming of Mount Carmel High School. I remember clearly the house we stayed at, even if it didn't used to be the house they lived in the last time I was there. It was the house of another relative who died; they had moved into it sometime ago. I have cousins who are now so grown up it's shocking and disorienting (I have nephews!!!!), although after a while you discover they're the same people we used to hang out at the beach with some time ago, who used to say in their accented speech that we can't swim today or else we'll turn into stone. The biggest difference is they now drink. This seems to be the pastime of the island: they work all day and drink their heads off at night. I'm thinking, that used to be understandable when there didn't used to be electricity, though my mom surmises that it had become a habit. Ah, to live in a land where lambanog is 10 bucks a bottle.
• We went to the beach after lunch, when the sky cleared a bit. The wind was cold so I didn't swim, just waded around a bit, collected tiny seashells and helped Lucas build a sandcastle. It's actually more an Egyptian city. I liked this day at the beach as much as I did yesterday, so it was all good.
• Strange thing, I realized today. I have no desire to use the bathroom for number 2. At all. And in Manila, I never skipped a day. I guess when your body becomes traumatized from holes in the floor, it never forgets. Though, to be fair, they have actual toilets now. A lot can happen in 12 years. Still didn't make me want to go, though.
• Of my Manileno second cousins, one of them is now a resident of Polillo, with a wife and kid and thriving living entering cockfights. When we were younger, his brother kind of had a crush on me. Half drunk (they all drink, even the women), he whips out his phone, dials a number and says to me, "Joelle, kausapin mo o." It's his brother. Guess you saw that coming. He is on his way to Polillo tomorrow. I leave tomorrow. I'm thinking how cool that is.
• Back at the house, with everyone sort-of-drunk-but-not, my cousin Roy puts in the DVD of The Passion of the Christ and we're all gathered around watching. I never watched it before because I heard about how painful it was to watch. Now that I've seen it, I'm thinking it wasn't all that painful. I guess I think that because I've more or less believed in all the pain and passion He had gone through to save us from the fires of hell. And I've always been grateful.
• I was also distracted by the fact that the guy who played John looks like a certain guitarist with blue eyes. Omygod, what color.
• Panalo hirit from Roy, while watching Jesus fall for the second time, with the cross toppling on top of him: "Eh talaga yang mabigat, iya'y dalawang troso."

Black Saturday, Day Three.

• We go home, catching the 6am ferry. It's the ferry this time, not the roro and is only supposed to take 2 hours instead of 3. But boy are the waves fierce. We used to always sit outside the cabins and now I remember why. I threw up out the ferry door in the middle of the ocean and my Dad immediately displaced us to sit at the deck of the ferry. Jacqui said to me, "Sumuka ka? Cool."
• More dizziness in the car, with Edoy the Reckless Driver. I swear, he's so fired. Ha, as if I had the power to. Anyway, Infanta (where the port to Polillo is, the same Infanta that was in the news for massive landslides and troso and dead bodies that littered the ocean and beaches) is dismal, which got me more depressed and sick. I was feeling bad also that there are more bald spots on the mountains than I remember. When I was younger, Mommy used to pull out plants from the sides of the mountains to take home and I used to think she was gonna pluck the mountain bald one day. Illegal loggers beat her to it! It was a high point when we stopped at a plant shop on a mountain road and Mommy bought a fern.
• At Pagsanjan, we stopped at Ernest Santiago's restaurant for lunch. He's this good friend of my parents from the 70s and the rents' disco days; he used to own a notorious club called Coco Banana. Since then, he retreated to Pagsanjan and has made it his business to beautify Pagsanjan and the neighboring provinces. I love him. I hardly meet people as cool as he. His restaurant is also a gallery - if you like the furniture you're using while having lunch, you can buy them. And he has such beautiful furniture. Actually, everything is beautiful. We looked at his garden (his restaurant is outside his home), and it's like a small paradise in his backyard. It kind of reminds me of the Gallardo household, but on a bigger scale. Then, when we finish lunch, he whisks us over to Lucban to look at his current project - a Lost Horizon type garden restaurant overlooking the most majestic lake I've ever seen live. The garden is something else - more grand and gorgeous than the garden behind his house. I can't describe it adequately in a short paragraph, you just have to take my word for it. I'll take you there some time.
• After all that gorgeous sightseeing, I go back to being dizzy and dismal as we continue our journey home. It actually got worse. Reckless Driver Edoy has taken over the CD player and has put on Scorpions. Oh. My. God. I realize though, that maybe it wasn't really Ozzy and Pink Floyd that got on my nerves all those years ago, it was being in a car for a very long time. Cabin fever. I think I may have killed Edoy during the chorus of one of the lesser known (read: more irritating) songs if I wasn't getting text messages about being missed. All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
• (In fairview, Edoy's okay. He's just better at fixing cars than he is at driving them).
• Home sweet home!!!! I hit my laptop as soon as I had the chance and tried to start my thesis proposal, the one that had been, all this time, unstartable. After wrestling with it considerably, I was asked out and I happily spent the night meeting "the friends" and learning how to play Tekken. It is so romantic when your boyfriend lets you win.

Easter Sunday, Day Four.

• I spent this entire day slaving over my thesis proposal. It turned out great (according to my Research Prof, during our class' marathon 6-hour final meeting the next day at her house) and I can start requesting for a thesis adviser from the Department. I'm excited. And happy.