2023 Roundup

 

2023 Roundup:

This year it’s all about clarity. It’s about moving past the pain and refocusing my energy on myself and enjoying life once again. Last year was tough, it was like trudging through a waist-deep mud…every step was exhausting me, this year I could see the lotus flowers start to bloom in the mud. There was a lot of good news this year, overshadowing the no-so good ones. A lot of health issues revolved around those people close to me, including myself. This year was about a renewal of my urge to start living the best possible life I can provide for myself.

Top 10 Bacolod Pasalubong (Food Edition Part 1)

What do you hear when you go to Bacolod? It's food, more than the Ilonggo accent or the Masskara Festival. We have what I would consider hearty soul food and addicting sweet treats. As the capital of the largest sugarcane industry in the country, it's no surprise that most of what we can offer is made out of sugar. 

First off, some on this list are not the usual products you'd expect to hear from most vloggers or bloggers. There are also those that you'd probably read or heard about due to popularity. As a local in Bacolod who lived in Manila for more than 14 years, these are some of the things that I consider bringing a piece of home whenever I go to Manila. And it's not Bong-Bong's, or Merzci, or Felicia's, or Aida's, or Roli's, or Bailon, or Virgie's. Oftentimes, other brands have been overlooked, but here are a few of my recommendations.

Scary Stuff: Part 8

This year, I unfortunately had a pretty paranormal-free life that I have no stories to share. Either that or I have been too dense and preoccupied to notice. Though I did have my fortune read by two different card readers plus a palm reader in Vietnam, all of which were consistent and came true...which is amazingly out of the ordinary.

Courting with an Elemental Mistress

Have you ever heard of a case wherein there's a spirit attached to a person? Or an elemental falling in love with a human? I've heard this story before, many times in documentaries and other times from people I know. I've been told three accounts of this so far: one from my nanny, one from my uncle, and another from a friend.

The story I'm narrating this year is the one that my friend told me about what happened to her years back. I'll use her alias, Marie, for this story. When she was in college, there was this a guy who courted her, and it turned her world upside down...more of...from the right side down. Her days became out of the ordinary that moment a guy she met in school started pursuing her romantically. It was three months of torture when it seemed as though another entity was trying to scare her. She'd see a lot of shadows moving in her peripheral vision, and many nights my friend would experience sleep paralysis where she'd see a shadow of a woman watching her sleep.

The first of her three major-traumatic experiences happened in her house wherein she woke up one night and heard a loud bang on her window. She woke up and saw the shadow of a dog outside her window. It didn't make sense how she could see the dog because, one, they didn't have a dog; two, her room was on the second floor with no ledges where the dog could stand outside the window. It was more than a fourteen-foot drop from the ground with no possible way for a dog's shadow to be seen from where she was sleeping because her room was located far from the street as well. That night Marie covered herself with a blanket as she slept.

The second time something paranormal happened to her was another random night when she asked a friend to drive her to one of the bars far from the city. On their drive to the bar, right along the highway where the infamous Tres Marias trees stand, she saw a jeepney stop on the side of the road where a person got out of the jeep while a woman got on. Marie described her as a girl dressed in a period white patadyong and saya, having long straight hair that reached down her butt, barefoot, and a blank pitch-black face. The weird part was that the woman rode the jeep without stepping up the platform. She just walked straight through the middle aisle of the jeepney and stopped right behind the driver. My friend squirmed to the driver, grasping his arm and exclaiming, "Did you just see what I saw!?" She asked for confirmation of what she just saw, but the guy dismissed her story as contrary to what he saw as nothing out of the ordinary. A little further out the dark highway she saw what seemed like a large-black-wing-like shadow hit the windshield, one so big that it covered half of her car's front hood. We don't have black birds that size. She screamed, asking if he had seen it that time, but he denied seeing anything. She then ordered the driver to turn around and call it a night even if it meant cancelling their party plans that night. 

That evening, Marie had sleep paralysis that was unlike her usual paralysis experiences. She woke up seeing a shadow of a woman standing at the foot of her bed, and with every blink of her eyes, the shadow crept closer and closer until it was hovering above her, their faces just a few inches apart. She described the face like seeing an unframed a static TV screen wherein the details of face were smudged out, no distinct feature could be seen save for her long black hair. Her recounting a smudged-static like face made me believe her since her description was exactly the same as what I saw when a full-bodied apparition glided less than two feet from where I stood. It was like a glitch in the 3D world, and I couldn't explain what I saw other than it was something that veered more to the paranormal realm than the physical. 

Marie couldn't scream or move, so she closed her eyes and repeatedly prayed all the prayers she could think of. When she was finally able to take hold of herself she ran to her brother's room and slept there for the night.

The final straw was right after she went home one night after partying with the cursed guy and she saw the same figure of the woman waiting for her by a tree outside their gate. The woman this time was dressed in red, her claws dug deep into the trunk of the tree as her limbs twisted like a creature crouched in preparation for an attack. My friend could see the creature-woman staring her down, this sent chills to her core. Luckily, she was with a chaperone as she was driving that time. 

She flinched the arm of the girl seated right next to her. "LOOK! That's the girl that's been haunting me!" she exclaimed, pointing at the spot where the tree stood. 

Her chaperone peered from inside the car scouring the darkness she was directed to stare at. "Ma'am there's nothing there. I can't see anything!"

"That can't be, she's right there!" Marie insisted.

"Ma'am seriously, I don't see anyone," the girl reassured.

My friend honked frantically for the gate to be opened. The thing remained motionless but followed her with its stare until the car entered the garage. Marie must've said all the curses she could mutter until she was able to safely enter her house. She asked her chaperone to accompany her in her room that night as she slept in fear that something might strangle her in her sleep.

Immediately the next morning my friend told the guy not to pursue her any longer since it wasn't a good idea to compete with a creepy-stalker-ghastly-woman for his affection. The horror she had to endure wasn't not worth the flirty exchanges. With that, the hauntings stopped.

She learned soon after that all the women he tried to court turned him down. It's probably because of the jealous spirit attached to him. The woman must be willing to put up with a cursed life to be with him. This year a common friend of ours tried to see if the guy was married or with someone out of curiosity, but there was no trace of any relationship with a woman based on his profile for years. Perhaps the irony of having a "guardian" following you 24/7 is when it's overly possessive of you that it'll make you belong to no one but him/her/it for the rest of your life.          

Doméino: Dome Suites (A Memoir)

 

This year, today marks the 2nd anniversary of a small glamping resort that my family, friends, and I built. This was one of those farfetched dreams I had as a kid. One of those that crossed my mind many times, yet at the back of those thoughts I have accepted that it wasn't possible for many reasons. I'd of overhear my aunts conversing that if they own a resort they'd be set for life...which I can now attest that's not necessarily true. Over twenty five years later an offer fell upon my lap, and it was one of those that took me a few days to think over before going all in. When the project finally started, I was in disbelief at how this vaguely haphazard dream I had with a 0.3% chance of ever happening had manifested itself to me. The moment I said "GAME!" things began to unfurl and there was no turning back. This was a childhood "what if" that miraculously presented itself at the right time. In principle, I believe that timing is everything when it comes to making major life decisions as it dictates how easily things fall into place. This amazingly fitted into my life as if this was the natural course of how I'd latch onto the business of tourism and hospitality.

2022 Roundup

 

I describe this year as a rollercoaster of emotions. This is a year started calmly, and then went on a high before dropping down, then up, then down, then up, then down that I didn’t care anymore by the end of it. I just wanna get it over with and start another year, one that’s not as much of a letdown. I feel like I’ve been pretty fragile this year, allowing myself to take in a lot of burden and pain. I can’t say up to what point it was that my hormones played, but it happened often enough that I can’t fully blame it on hormonal imbalance. This year I took a bit of a beating that I wasn’t expecting it to turn my head upside-down. There’s a specific reason for the cover photo that I used as it perfectly represents my year. What seemed like a perfectly well curated photo and promising at the start turned out to be a big disaster in the end. 

Scary Stuff: Part 7

 

Performing an Exorcism at Home

It was last December 25, 2020 at 3:00pm when my grandmother died in my room. She was 99, ten days short of celebrating her 100th birthday. That day devastated a lot of people, but it was those who lost their mother that were hurting the most. She had thirteen kids, two of whom left before her. My aunt (my mom's younger sister) was the one who spent the most time with my grandmother the last couple of years of her life. In the few months that my grandmother got sick and was bedridden I noticed my aunt deteriorating as well. The lack of sleep, stress, and anxiety of knowing that it was a only a matter of time before she'd lose her mother took a toll on her. She lost a lot of weight, her eyes deepened with eye bags, her hair unkept, her skin aged, but worst of all her mental health went into shambles. Immediately I noticed this the first time I saw her after almost a year of not being home due to the pandemic. She gave out a blank stare, her voice inaudible, and her thoughts clearly out of the norm. My first thought on our first conversation was that, what happened to the aunt I knew? So was her case. At first we thought that it was because of the situation of having to deal with a dying mother that messed up her head, plus the severe lack of sleep. We expected that she'd be able to recover after my grandmother had passed. Unfortunately it didn't happen, in fact, it turned into something...paranormal.

Atok Flower Farm in Benguet

 

Last April I had the luxury of going on a mini-adventure with my friends to Atok's Northern Blossom Flower Farm. What was supposed to be a beach trip to Zambales to accommodate our friend who arrived from Australia ended up an instant trip to the mountains of Cordillera...leaving our balikbayan friend in the process. It was one of the best decisions we made.  

To get to Atok, we left Baguio at 5am to reach the Northern Blossom Farm before 7am. The road was pretty fun to drive through the zigzag, so fun that I was holding myself from throwing up as I was driving. Getting to the farm is easy as it's situated right next to the highway. The only hard part would probably be the parking as the road is tight and not a lot of space to navigate with. 

As soon as you arrive, you'll have to go down a steep driveway and register your names at their center. You'll pay the entrance fee of Php250 per adult; Php200 per senior or PWD; Php50 per kid between 6-10 years old, this will include a snack and unlimited brewed coffee at the end of the walking tour. They also charge an additional Php20 for the environmental fee.