Ok Pines, What If Ever!

Funny how my what-ifs come back to haunt me when I least expect them to. I bumped into He-Who-Busted-Me last week and he said he kinda misses me. Now I’m inviting him to watch a play this weekend. Kervs and I talked before about going to the beach or Baguio together, but now he and his new honey are going up North (where I’m sure they’ll be going down south with each other too, hehehe!)

Am I jealous? Heck yeah, that’s Baguio! I’m dying to go back there and see… SM Baguio! No, seriously. I think SM Baguio is the classiest, best-designed SM I’ve seen. It deviated from the usual shoebox design of their earlier malls. And it’s naturally air-cooled too! The wide verandas on all sides allow a breathtaking (and saddening) view of the former City of Pines (now it’s the City of Corrugated Steel and Bricks; you see only patches of green). And of course I want to go back to Café By The Ruins and enjoy their tofu, mushroom salad, strawberry soda and camote bread.

That city holds many great memories for me, especially with friends. I’ve been there with Leigh and Marlon the most number of times. I’m sure Marlon remembers me running down Session Road in slippers, shouting at Alice in Gelzon’s car. Or the time we all stayed in the FOIC’s cabin (Richard’s dad was in the Navy) and Marlon was the envy of all the straight guys because he got to sleep with the girls in their room. Remember how Ethel slept wrapped in blankets like a mummy? How about the time we went to Spirits Disco and watched a beauty contest wherein a candidate, for his talent portion, killed a live chicken in front of the audience?

Leigh and I stayed in Baguio by our twosome in the townhouse unit owned by Basic Advertising. It was supposedly haunted, so we both ended up sleeping in the sofa instead of the upstairs bedroom. We purposely ditched our watches; we ate when we wanted, slept whenever we felt like it, and shot frames and frames of each other with our cameras (Leigh, where are those series of pics—you smoking, you dancing outside in the fog?) Remember the night we stayed at this bar in Session Road (what was the name of that bar again?) and someone came in bleeding, with the police hot on his trail? The trips to the ukay-ukay, market and Mines View Park?

How about the Baguio Ad Congresses? The first one I went to, I remember dancing the Macarena on the ledge at Spirits Disco; a camera crew from a major network was there getting footage, and someone said they saw me in on the TV news the following morning. In the second Baguio Ad Congress, I was there as part of the said network’s contingent; I purposely avoided our camera crew. Unfortunately, Spirits was no more.

Haaay, Baguio. When our family first went there, my dad drove our old Ford Futura (bet you never heard of that one, huh?) all the way from our house in Marikina to Teacher’s Camp. We stayed in this quaint wooden house; I remember feeling cold the whole time. The next time we went up, it was me and my brothers driving three cars in convoy. We stayed in the house of Jim Paredes (yes, of the APO Hiking Society fame.) That was the last time my dad saw Baguio; at least he got to see Mines View Park, Burnham Park, Camp John Hay, the tourist spots.

I don’t know when I can go to Baguio again. Hey, have car, can travel up there for a weekend—Marlon and I have done it before. But not in the next two weekends; I’m watching a play and I’m going to join Leigh and Marlon for a weekend at Marlon’s farm in Pampanga.

As for the McVie family, my mom and my brothers want to go to Batanes next. Oooooh! That one must push through.

So I’ll let the what-ifs stay in their alternate universes, and enjoy the current universe I’m in.