Cebu

Roselynne picked me up from the airport and we cabbed it back to her place, which isn't far at all. The airport is on a small island adjacent to Cebu the big island, and her place is close to where the bridge lands back in Cebu City proper. Ours was to be a common sight in the coming weeks. Two strange foreigners. The white guy/hobo, and the Cebu Doctors student with uke in hand and song in voice sitting in the back seat of a cab oblivious to the point of apathy on the way to some awesome happening or other. She's here in the P.I. studying medicine at Cebu Doctors University.

Cebu is completely different than the Manila area, or even the rest of Luzon. People are much more friendly, the atmosphere is slower and more relaxed, the air is cleaner, and people stare more shamelessly. The jeepneys (a Filipino bus with an 8-peso (16-cent) fare that seems to bear the burden of all Filipino creativity) are also totally different than Manila. In Luzon, they look like the WWII jeeps; true to their heritage of recycling American vehicles left in the country after the war. In Cebu they're like toys, with much less creativity bolted into their frames or painted on their outer panels. Cebu is simultaneously the mecca for martial arts and for natural healing. It's also world-famous for its mangoes. The language is the Visaya dialect Cebuano, which has a lot of Spanish influence.

Roselynne and I spent the first two days catching up, I cooked and slept or did pushups, and then we'd go to the mall. If it's just the two of us, I'm straddled on the back of Roselynne's motor (motorcycle/scooter thing), with my alabaster legs almost reaching her knees. Daphne is the name of her motor, and Daphne finds me too heavy compared to Roselynne's girlfriend, Karen who hovers around 90 lbs. We of course spend time in the malls here, which I think are nicer and less manic than Manila's malls. I met Karen at Ayala Mall, where the three of us hit it off easily from the get-go. We bought 4 different kinds of dried mangoes at the grocery store and opened them all at once to see which was the best brand. We all agree that dried green mangoes and "Philippine Brand" are the best.

Roselynne's cousin Andrew is here as well. We celebrated his 21st b-day two days in a row, and spent some time with a lady friend of his from San Diego who arrived in Cebu two days after I did. Spending time with Andrew and Roselynne together, I realized for the first time that somehow, people who grew up in our area since birth have a unique style and shared understanding that's hard to explain. People born and raised in other small specific areas have similar similarities, but it was my first time feeling it myself. I guess I noticed a slight awkwardness to conversation, misplaced competitiveness and unused odd-ball skills, a love for reflex-based card games, and a certain sheltered, bottled energy that doesn't know where to go. Strange but interesting.

Food here has been so much easier than it was for my first week and a half. Roselynne is an alien in the kitchen so I have free reign. There's an outdoor produce market nearby, so I eat the vegetables I want to! Squash, okra, kangkong, camote, mung beans, peanuts, coconut palm heart, green beans, potatoes, rice... I'm in heaven! The vegetables are nothing compared to the fruits though. I'm going to be so spoiled when i leave the land of tropical fruit. Papaya, pineapple, guyabano, lysones, rambutan, bananas of all varieties, mangoes; love it all. So I've been teaching Roselynne the value of vegetables. Her girlfriend is a great cook too, and together Karen and I made epic vegetable lumpia (like egg rolls but rice wrapper). It came out sooooo good! So many ingredients too. That would be good, and that, and jicama, and bell peppers, and coco palm heart, and the list goes on.

 I almost took that first weekend to go with Andrew on an expenses partially paid trip to neighboring Bohol, but when I move on, I don't really go back and I only just arrived in Cebu, so I decided not to go. Instead, Karen, Roselynne, and I, the terrific trio, went to a play. Now, Karen has lived in Cebu for 11 years, Leyte before that. She also ran a 5-hour heavy metal session on Saturdays for 3 years with the biggest radio station in Cebu. She's well connected. We went to this play that is the first play about "gender inequality" (Karen's friend, the director's words) in the Philippines. It's even become an assignment for Roselynne in one of her Gen Ed

The Inconspicuous Traveler's Journal

classes. The play was awesome. The language was Tagalog with random bits of English and Cebuano, and colored lights made the moods of each scene extra-dramatic. The play was about one boy coming out as gay to his family and rifts related to Filipino culture that make this such a harrowing process.

After the play, we the trio went to an awesome place called the Turtle's Nest, which was a house turned into a hostel/bar. It's the place where the subversives and artists hang out. There's a huge bookshelf inside, and the first book that caught my attention happened to be an impromptu journal where travelers leave messages. I couldn't resist leaving a message too. The novel itself was in Swiss or something. Later we joined some friends of Karen's and Roselynne and I had a long discussion with this guy about his being comfortable living in perpetual internal conflict regarding religion. He had rejected the church and all it stands for but still attended mass, believed in God, and agreed with most of Catholic doctrine because he grew up with it, not because he logically agreed with it. We enjoyed stretching this guy's mind a bit.

I had several opportunities to drink my fill of Red Horse beer and sing karaoke. I'm not a fan, but it's hard to avoid here. Filipinos love karaoke and singing along to songs. I don't think I've ever been somewhere that so many people can not just carry a tune but do it justice. Tone-deafness doesn't exist here. They have music in their bones. And the musicians know so many tunes because they learned music entirely by ear. It's really something to behold an entire country of the world's best cover bands. People here also listen to music completely differently. You can see it the way they tap their feet or sway with the music. Even mosh-pits are sort of half lost in the music, half wanting not to get too much into it.

When we're together, the three of us take taxis or jeeps to where we're going. When I'm alone, I walk. To many people here, Cebu City seems huge and sprawling and not worth the sweat of walking. I can see so many things and make it back to Roselynne's apartment having only walked 5 miles total. I could circumnavigate the borders of the city in a day if I left early enough. There's no such thing as a street grid here, but I've spent enough time in the wilderness at this point that my sense of direction hasn't failed me once. Even if I don't find that one tiny street or place I had been looking for, at the very least I always know how far I've walked and can always get back home.

I've had so many interesting walking adventures! I have found myself walking down random enclosed produce markets, passing cemeteries with tombstone engravers actively working across the street, and watching basketball games in the slum. There's one particular day that was an unusually unique adventure.

That tome on the table is one of 3 huge karaoke tune books at this place

I think of the water as bottom of my mental map, and the hills as the top. Roselynne lives near the water. I walked over to a mall where I found a random market full of handmade things and jewelry. I bought one made out of clay for 20 pesos that I thought was interesting. Then I walked up towards Fuente Circle and the Capitol Building. In the mall across the street, on the fourth floor, there were four chess games going on. Timed so that each player had only 4 mins of play time. Money was involved so all the players were sweating and moving incredibly fast. I'd never seen anyone play chess these guys were playing. Rarely was there a checkmate, but these guys must have their moves planned out 5-10 steps ahead. So familiar with exactly what's going on with each and every piece. Crazy. In that mall, there was also a woman who claimed she'd seen me before and wanted me to hook up with her daughter. Sweet lady though! That mall also had a sign out front saying it's about to be a dog-friendly mall and host a dog walk. This is such a step for the P.I.! Even affluent people here don't keep pets the way we think of them. Pets are street animals, or dogs are guard dogs kept in small cages so that they bark when an intruder comes near. Jason's family experienced tons of break-ins until they got dogs, when the break-ins stopped completely. From Fuente Circle, I walked back down towards Carbon, an open-air produce and flea market. I met a guy as we crossed an especially treacherous intersection together who lived and worked in California for 20 years and came back home to retire. I could tell he was nostalgic for his time in the States. After we talked, I had a local treat. Banana fried in oil and sugar. So tasty! Apparently that particular variety of banana has to be cooked to be eaten. While making my way through downtown, I stumbled across this lot that was lined on either side by artists souping up motors with colored chrome, neon lights, details, paint, accessories, and who knows what else. They all displayed their work in front of their shack-like stalls. I was totally impressed so I walked down to the end and kept walking expecting to find an alleyway out. Instead, the lot was circled entirely by tall buildings. In a back corner, there was a crowd gathered. I kept my eyes peeled for flying feathers from a cock fight but instead saw a flying ball between softball size and volleyball size but sounded as hard if not harder than a tether ball. It was a volleyball game with three people on each side hitting the ball overhand back and forth across the net rather than underhand setting up a spike. It was very fast paced and there were a lot of big bills being passed around wagering for the team most likely to win. The referee's stand was awesome. It was a shanty-style structure with a tin roof and the words "referee decision is final" spray painted in white. The ref moves a little ring back and forth on a bamboo pole above his head to indicate who's serving, and a team can only score if it's their serve. The score is kept with spray paint-numbered metal plates that scrape over a metal ring and clink down when they hit the plates already slid down. The ref himself was a balding old drunkard looking guy with droopy eyes roving back and forth with the ball, a blue shirt, lazy movements, and a cigarette threatening to fall from his mouth. Totally illegal-looking situation and I didn't stay longer than a very memorable 30 minutes. I walked back out past the bike stands and kept heading towards Carbon. But I overshot by one street. Instead of ending up in Carbon, I ended up in a vast maze of a neighborhood that was once tightly-packed Spanish-style colonial houses now populated by several families each. People asked each other loudly if I knew where I was going. Kids were high-fiving me everywhere, saying "up here!" Prostitutes subtly asked if I was interested in a lay, moms were breast-feeding babies everywhere. It's the most colorful place I've seen in the P.I. so far. Horse-drawn carriages with their wheels falling off traveled up and down the streets. Only the smallest car made it down those streets with its mirrors barely missing the walls on either side. A group of 20 guys tried to get me involved in a coin-tossing gambling game. I stayed and watched but didn't put any money down. I stumbled on a basketball game, and while I was watching i noticed this kid just in front of me playing with a spider in just the same way as Jason's uncles did. This spider looked like a black widow with bright green highlights on the legs. Gnarly. It was just running all over his hand that was holding a bamboo food skewer. He coaxed it into the portioned matchbox by blowing on it, just as Jason's uncles did. He had two more spiders crammed in there with room for ten more. I was totally captivated. I ended up at a dead end at the water, so I came back out the way I went in and found Carbon soon enough. I picked up some produce, took photos of the fort and made it back just after dark. What an awesome day that was.

I was again reminded how masterful Filipinos are when it comes to games when Karen took us to play ping pong at the YMCA. Not only was she amazing at this game (she schooled Roselynne and i big time), but the matches happening at the tables next to us were like tornadoes you hoped wouldn't pass near your house. They were practicing for competitions, and each player had a style of their own. Blows my mind. It seems that skill and fascination for these kinds of games come and go like fads. My grandfather told me about pool and other games when he lived there. Now, the sport is badminton. EVERYONE plays badminton. Then basketball is next. No soccer happening here though. Still not sure why it would be big in a place like Jamaica but not here. 

These are the highlights, and there are so many other small moments and awesome experiences I've had with Roselynne, Karen, Andrew, and even Karen's son Red.