Baguio and some "storms" in my mind

I went to join my family for a short vacation in Baguio last weekend. I thought I needed a break. When February kicked in, I realized that I was getting more depressed with the thought that I am not working hard and fast enough to "catch up" on so many pending matters at work. Sometimes I had to convince myself, I'm working as hard as I can... and yet, I couldn't seem to catch up with all that's needed to catch up on. Juggling essentially three projects (the third one being the organizational development that had to be set up), I felt I was not really accomplishing a lot for each project. It's been a nagging feeling since, for each day that ends and each week that passes.

On the more "leisurely" side, I have also been experiencing disappointments. My one true blog fan, BFF eon, has been ever so insistent of me updating my blog. And to think, now that we're housemates, my one true fan actually lives beside my room. What pressure. I couldn't imagine how other more religious bloggers manage to keep their "fans" happy with regular posts. How could they have so much to say? More importantly, where do they find so much time to blog? But the real disappointment lies in my on-and-on-again failure to post my thoughts when I actually think of them... blog fodder, as we call them. Somehow, I'm not in the right place when these blog fodder come. The right place being in front of the computer online.

I thought I needed a break. I was supposed to join the family Friday, but I've set an important meeting on Saturday. But the vacation, however short (or shortened), has to happen, or else I'd explode. So I arranged to take the bus to Baguio the very moment the meeting concludes. The family planned to go down Sunday afternoon. I asked to stay until the late afternoon Monday. I was with friends/housemates: short of one, I was with darth sanro and hastydevil (a.k.a. eon).

My Mom, who had the right connections (i.e., my ninong who was her best friend), had arranged a dreamy, ideal vacation spot. The rest house was my ninong's company's rest house, and it was such a dream! The house was allegedly built during the American pre-war era. Unfortunately, inspite of all dreamy rest house's allure, some work had to be done. So there I was, in the midst of all this beauty and restful ambience, working on my laptop to beat a report's deadline. As I would have expected it (but tried to deny it), not everything with the deadline was in order. Some of the staff were amiss with their deadlines; their delay was my delay. And as I was emailing the reports (in SM City Baguio's Netopia), something freakish happened with gmail that I had to attempt sending the reports many times for almost an hour. Not nice to be humbugging during vacation, but it was unnerving.

Luckily, I still had time to go around a bit... foremost priority was to make my usual pilgrimage to Cafe by the Ruins. I should have relished this rare dining experience, made more special supposedly with the company of dear friends, but my mind was not still quite attuned to the vacation feel of it all... some residue of work-related hassle haunted me. Isn't that such a bummer, when work-related thoughts never seemed to give up on you? One nagging thought was the web presence that our organization has to rebuild... some "competition" has already overtaken us with re-establishing awareness and education work online, maybe because they had more time (and resources) to work on it. Now I'm challenged to come up with a better strategy. The sumptuous pinikpikan was almost tasteless to me as I pondered how to get over this one. The resolve? I could work on it as soon as we get back to the house and boot up the laptop again. Pahamak 'tong laptop na toh!

Baguio was also not entirely inviting for soothing weary vacationers. As I found out from my Mom, Sunday was actually the last day of the Panagbenga Festival, and Baguio was made into one big market place, literally. Burnham and Session Road were filled with stalls and people, and traffic was a mess around the Plaza. I was initially thrilled at the prospect at seeing all sorts of goodies; the human traffic and noise essentially nixed all the pleasure. In the middle of a very slow walk up Session Road, I began to reminisce the good feelings I had for the city the first time I took a vacation. That was back in 1979, when Kennon Road still had narrow lanes (that upgoing vehicles had to stop by the shoulder to give way to downcoming ones), when the Lion's head was still a full head, when Wright park had everlasting flowers everywhere, and since that was November a.k.a. Canao Festival, when men dance on the streets in their traditional bahag. Well of course, even at a young age, I could appreciate flesh-and-muscle masculinities, particularly, mga pwet na hindi puyat (this expression I borrow from eon). Then back to reality: looking around, lots of people wearing unmistakably ukay-ukay fashions, not a few, resulting from hideous mix-and-matching efforts. Hay naku, in fairness, the weather was really refreshing.

Not all have been lost to the haunting drudgery of work. However short, I think I'd best remember this vacation for the house's charm. I almost didn't want to go out at all. Somehow, it was one thing I really wanted to hold on to. But eon impressed me with his indefatigable appreciation for tunneling his way into heaps and heaps of ukay-ukay. That appetite had to be satiated. And darth sanro also had craving for Good Shepherd strawberry jam. I was obliged to accompany eon Monday morning... as long as I could, every minute fearing I'd get a nasty bout of sneezing from all the dust and oldy smell of the stores strung by the old Bayanihan hotel. And I was obliged to make that Good Shepherd pilgrimage, where strawberry jam turned to be out-of-stock and had to settle for strawberry "spread." Darth sanro also had to work, so he had to stay at the house and write/work on the laptop.

I will also fondly remember this vacation for the weirdness of our preoccupation with our cameras. Eon just had his new 6630 camera-phone (thanks to a new credit card); darth sanro had my Cybershot I bought in Tokyo with my saved up allowances back in 2004 (his fiddling with it had brought him more know-how of its intricacies beyond what I could ever do in a lifetime); I had my trusted 3230. We were mad with our cameras, snapping at almost everything, and almost the same things in fact. Eon's more unique angle with the camera, of course, was his constant snapping of himself even in our humble bathroom and at the bus terminals. And speaking of angles, he continued this increasingly disdained "angling" of his personal headshots that's most notoriously proliferating in Friendster and the like. Even the most "truthful" of cameras can be manipulated to deceive -- chos!

What was my camera angle? Baguio was in full bloom, the flowers were the most interesting sceneries, much better than that Fiesta Carnival inspired lighting of Burnham park, a tad better from that cute waiter from Volante pizzeria (Manuel!), and equally good as Sunday night when after wearily surrendering from "creative block" on the web presence challenge I snuggled in bed, under the blankets was the embrace, warmth and reassurance of love. My camera angle was a tribute to Baguio's flowers, Nature's mute redeemers of feeling good in this vacation. This was, after all, a Panagbenga vacation.

(POSTSCRIPT: As we were on the bus going down to Manila, the news just mentioned yet another senseless "crackdown" of a street protest -- a symbolic protest, creatively, in the guise of a beauty pageant. My good friend, Dyesi, was detained by the police. We were still on Marcos Highway, somewhere in La Union, and yet, Manila caught up on us all too soon.)