Suburban Scrawl

My schoolmate Vittorio wrote this post earlier this week to imagine, what if his family had pushed through with plans to move to the US?

Immediately, it had me imagining a similar scenario—what if my family had never returned to the Philippines?

What if, instead of growing up here:

Kalsangi, aerial view (Google Maps)

I'd grown up here?

Our old neighborhood, Fresno, CA (Google Maps)

I'd have gone on to the fifth grade and stayed on the spelling team. Maybe I'd have made it to nationals and been on ESPN (come on, who knows?).

It was in the fifth grade, here in the Philippines, that a teacher first singled me out for good writing. It was only then that I really thought I could be good at something in particular (well, aside from spelling). Until that day, my life had been about playing with my friends and wearing out my library card. Only after that teacher—and the teachers who followed—praised my writing did I begin enthusiastically writing stories and making up characters and worlds. Only after that did I join the school paper and make it my goal to be EIC in my senior year.

Would a teacher in my American schools have done the same thing? In the US, I was one of those Asian kids in advanced math and reading classes; I seemed to be good at everything. What if my teachers had pushed me toward the sciences instead, especially after visits to the Monterey Bay and Chicago aquariums introduced me to the idea of marine biology?

I still had good piano teachers then. In the third grade, I told my homeroom teacher that I wanted to be a pianist when I grew up. What if I'd run with that and tried to become a musician instead?

And speaking of running, I used to be on the track team. I have no idea if I had any real potential, but what if I did?

When I think about going on the middle and high schools there, I immediately think of the friends and crushes I left behind:

• The best friend in advanced class who was the lead in the school play and is now working happily for a Hollywood tabloid
• The other friend in advanced class who explained what virginity was and is now a food server
• The choir member best friend who treated me to my first slumber party and is now in a theater company, I think
• The blue-eyed spelling team crush who wrote me a sweet goodbye letter and is now—?
• The next-block neighbor crush who invited me to a pizza party and is now a missionary
• The two Joshuas: the now-married one who teased me in the lunch line and first called me Cat (when I wasn't Midget); and the redheaded, trouble-making one who is now—?

I could go on, but what I really think when I think of them is, would we still have been friends? Would I have been torn, in the style of teen movies, between my popular cheerleader / student council – material friends and my laid-back, average good friends? Keeping the high grades and not getting called a geek? Getting a boyfriend and not? Losing my virginity and not? What kind of choices would make what kind of friends, and vice versa?

Would I still have become a Christian? That's a really interesting question. My family had always gone to church, and I'd always gone to Sunday School. But it wasn't until my senior year in high school, here in the Philippines, that I started taking my faith seriously and trying to understand what being Christian meant. Would I have found myself asking to be saved? And if I did, would I still have left the church after years of asking other things?

Would I care as much about whether I was "Filipino enough"? As a third culture kid back in the Philippines, I've never been able to shake off the feeling that I don't quite belong in this or that country. In the States, though, I was part of a community with other kids growing up Fil-Am. What kind of ethnic identity would I have had as a result?

I don't know where I would've gone to college. The only college I knew of at the time was the local one, Fresno State. I'm sure in high school, a teacher would have put me on to UC Berkeley, NYU, Yale, or Columbia. Would I have cared about getting into an Ivy League School?

I think I would definitely have benefited from the US system in which college students don't declare a major until they know what they want. When I applied to colleges here, I thought I was charting the course for my future, but really, I was throwing darts. I applied to mass comm. or its variants at other schools, partly because I liked the idea of becoming a powerful editor, and partly because it seemed expected of me, school journalist whiz that I was.

I really wanted to put down creative writing, but my parents convinced me that I'd starve. At the Ateneo, I landed in a management course that was nothing I'd hoped it would be. I got depressed and stopped studying for a whole semester, but I managed to shift into communication before my grades fell below the requirement.

If I could go back now, I'd tell myself to take up humanities, computer science, or, yes, creative writing. Would I have been able to discern this, in the US? Or would I have found something else, like marine biology, architecture, urban planning, social work, or cultural studies?

I'm pretty sure I'd have been fascinated by the subcultures of the early 2000s. Would I have been emo? A hipster? Or would they have been too intimidating, like all these cool city kids were intimidating, when I went to college? I'd have been a city kid, too, though (or as city as someone from Fresno could get, anyway). Maybe I'd have been more confident than I was fresh out of high school.

Where would I have gone after college? Career-wise, if I'd still gone into journalism or the humanities, probably at a newspaper, ad agency, or art gallery. If I'd studied a science, then probably grad school, the academe, and a corporate research facility.

Other answers to where I would have gone include LA, San Francisco, Monterey, Chicago, and New York. Or just Fresno, still Fresno, because it wasn't a bad place to live.

It probably wouldn't matter once the recession happened, though. Then, really, who knows.

Would I still have had that mental breakdown? Again, who knows?

In some alternate world is a Katrina who is the answer to all these questions. At this point, I can't really imagine how life will go for her, because right now, I can barely imagine how life will go for me.

In the end, though, I don't really mind not being her. I just hope she's happy.

Bike Notes 7 - Now All I Need Is a Sword

The bad news is that after this post, I will no longer be biking to and from work. I stopped a long time ago for a number of reasons:

• Too many late nights meant too little energy to bike in the mornings.
• On the mornings I did feel up to biking, the weather wasn't on my side.
• Biking home uphill at the end of a draining workday stopped being fun.
• Biking home at night with four-wheelers who refused to share the road stopped being fun.

Now, not biking at all made me feel like I was giving up and therefore a chump, so I was determined to find time to bike and, if possible, bike far. The only time I had to bike, however, was on weekends, and I've been spending the weekends with my brother in Makati, where bikes are a little more welcome but where I didn't have my bike with me.

So, on Saturday afternoon, while traffic was light, I decided to ride my bike all the way from Cubao to Barangay San Antonio and leave it there for future weekend riding.

Part of me knew that this was a crazy, possibly stupid idea, and part of me worried that I would collapse from fatigue somewhere in Sta. Mesa. But I guess the craziness won out—apparently, I would rather bike all the way than take the bike-friendly LRT part of the way (people would stare at me) or take a cab with the bike in the back (the cab driver would make bike smalltalk or maybe steal my bike before I could get in/out).

I guess I now have to thank that one crafty taxi driver who, last year, took me and @patriciavalerio on this overlong route to Makati. I don't know where I would've ended up last Saturday if not for the memory of that weird U-turn past the seedy motels.

Here's where I passed:

I wish fear of being sideswiped hadn't kept me from taking out my camera, so these maps and notes will have to do.

It was about 1445 when I set out, so the sun was still hot, but along Aurora Boulevard, I rode in the shade of the LRT. Like I said, traffic was light, so apart from the stoplight snags, I rode unharassed (well, for the most part).

I know people in cars hate motorcycles, but I happen to believe that the weaving they do to get to the front at a stoplight is partly defensive. If you're on a bike or a motorbike, you want to (1) stay clear of the bigger vehicles and (2) stay where they can see you.

It's easier to do this by getting to the front at a stoplight; it takes cars a few seconds longer to get moving when the light turns green, so you have those few seconds to put some distance between you and some jerk's front bumper. Sure, they're going to overtake you in a bit, but at least when they do that, you're within their line of sight, and they can avoid driving too close to you.

Another point is that staying put instead of going to the front will have me breathing exhaust from at least two sides. Even with one of these pig masks on, I'd rather not take risks. I happen to like my lungs.

[image source]
Actual pig mask source: local hardware store.

And lastly, it's a little gratifying to eventually catch up to the same cars that overtake you. You may be fast, Mr. SUV, but we all end up at the same little red light in the end.

Now, this is a hidden turn to Aurora Blvd. for people who don't want to climb that crazy hump from EDSA:

I didn't actually ride against traffic; my Google Maps line is just crooked.

I am sad to report that I didn't see anything very interesting on the ride down to Makati; most of the time, I kept my eyes on the road. Much of Aurora Boulevard was a tall gray blur of shops and grime.

I did enjoy crossing this inlet, polluted as it was:

One of my worries regarding the bike route was crossing bodies of water, and the Guadalupe bridge was one reason I didn't take EDSA. (The other reason was, it's EDSA.) So, achievement unlocked!

Here's the neighborhood I had to navigate after I left Aurora Blvd. I almost missed the turn onto Valenzuela St., but something told me to bank right (left) then. Thanks again, sneaky cab driver.

This was my favorite part of the whole route:

I crossed the Pasig River and rode along the rails with a couple of human powered carts rolling with me. Then, I went up onto Padre Jacinto Zamora bridge, where I rode roof-level with warehouses to my left and slums with green railside yards to my right. Apart from a few cars and a group of neighborhood kids also out on their bikes, I had the bridge to myself. It was a huge relief from cramped and crowded Cubao and Aurora Blvd.; everything was quiet, and it was like riding into the sky.

I also got to pass by the old Paco train terminal, the beautiful, sad old thing.

I really hope it gets preserved.

All in all, the ride was smooth sailing to Makati. The only undesirable event took place somewhere on the home stretch:

I was suddenly aware of a guy on a bike beside me, and he asked me if I had the time. He could plainly see I wasn't wearing a watch, so I just shrugged and kept pedaling. Then I heard him saying something to me. "Miss, tingan mo ito. Tingan mo ito."

He had one hand on the handlebars and the other down his shorts. Both hands were busy, to say the least.

Unlike the last time something like this happened to me, I didn't feel freaked out. I didn't react. I just ignored him and kept pedaling, and he quickly fell back.

I didn't think about it anymore. I'd just proven to myself that I could take care of myself in yet another way. I wasn't going to let some jerk ruin the magic of my big bike adventure (but my grandmother's concerned scolding did a little when I got to the house, haha).

Now if I had a sword and a magic talking animal friend, I'd be set for life.

[image source]

Bike Notes 6 - Nice Neighborhood

Tuesday was only the second time I got to bike to and from work. The last time didn't really count because I didn't make it home without the left crank arm falling off, and I was apprehensive about another attempt even after the repairs. I wasn't 100% sure of my ankle, either, but on Tuesday morning, I figured it was now or never.

I left a little earlier this time to try a different route, crossing EDSA via New York Ave. It was a little longer yet a much quieter ride than if I'd taken Aurora; the streets were narrower and wound a bit, but it was early in the morning for what passes as suburbs in Cubao, so there was room enough for a small bike (and biker) among the tricycles and the four-wheelers taking a shortcut.

As I approached EDSA, though, my hunch about something I'd seen on Google Maps proved correct—you can't cross on streets that don't have that suggestive-looking pokey bit.

So, I made a left on Annapolis St. and went past the condo building where I would have lived if I'd been able to afford it at the time, and past a schoolkid who cried out, "Ang ganda ng bike!" (What a nice bike!), before rejoining westbound traffic on Aurora Blvd. As I turned the corner, another cyclist, this one in full Lycra regalia, passed me and also remarked how nice my bike was, and I smiled for the millionth time that morning.

Made it to work, washed up and changed my shirt, got through the day. I felt my heart beating harder as the end of my workday approached, though. Was my bike in one piece? I'd locked the wheel before leaving the garage, but that wasn't really going to stop something else from breaking or falling off. And if it was all okay, was I going to get home in one piece?

The last and only time I'd been able to bike home from work, I'd taken Aurora and gotten caught in the congestion between Stanford St. and 20th Ave., a good near-ten blocks packed with grouchy jeepney drivers, irate car owners, and tons of carbon monoxide.

Also the home of several girlie bars, a porn theater, a few hardware stores, some abandoned buildings, an interior design studio, and an evangelical church.

I didn't really want to go through that again, so I thought I'd try an alternate route home, too. I took Tomas Morato Ave., sailed (I really like this word for my bike notes; it's what it feels like) past all the cars lined up at the bottleneck, and turned right at Kamuning.

It was paradise in comparison.

I was immediately and pleasantly surprised by how few vehicles there were on that street, at that hour. On the one hand, it does cut through a "suburb" (I passed a small, nice-looking building for if I ever want to live in the area.), but on the other, it's in a generally high-traffic area and has its own jeepney route. Crossing EDSA wasn't scary, either, and Kamias, the street on the other side, was even quieter than Kamuning and much better lit than Aurora.

The only trouble I had was with the alternating uphill and downhill blocks; stoplights were often at the bottoms of slopes, so I'd have no bwelo for starting uphill once it got safe to cross.

Anyhow, I don't know whether it was before or after I crossed EDSA that this evening cool peace settled over everything. It was just so nice to travel without any machine trouble, without any fear that a bigger vehicle was going to hit me, and without anyone rudely honking, shouting, hissing, or whistling at me on the road. Everyone else just seemed absorbed in getting home without any trouble to themselves or other commuters. On top of that, the weather was good, I wasn't inhaling as much smoke, the lighting was kind of sweet, and the neighborhood took on its own sleepy charm. On two wheels, I felt as balanced as I was ever going to get, and happy.