Dawn and Dilis

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Sunday dawn in Makati brought the promise of morning mass near Charter House. Waking up was easy with minimal jet lag, since I hadn't really slept the night before leaving Durham.

The cafe on the second floor was simple, with only a few tables occupied by couples or small groups of three or four. the wait staff was courteous and prompt, with my parents ordering traditional Filipino breakfast, which consists of small dried, salted fish (dilis) served with fried rice and eggs. I swapped out the dilis for corned beef which, unfortunately was a little damp and likely from a can. My native food has not usually sat well with my Americanized stomach, much to the chagrin of my parents. Fortunately, the new environs emboldened the suppression of my usual pickiness, so I volunteered to try some dilis with vinegar and fried rice. The dilis I found very salty, but palatable, though I couldn't eat it in the quantities my parents had accustomed themselves too. Nevertheless, the though of eating whole salted fish for breakfast no longer seemed so abominable.

Morning conversation centered on Noli Me Tangere, the first and probably the most famous of Jose Rizal's novels. Speaking with my parents, I found that the legendary characters of the novel were not merely the subject of college studies; they had been elevated to archetypes of Philippine personality, such that echoes of Rizal's observations about the behavior of Filipinos and the Catholic clergy still resonate in the living people of today. More literally, many in the Philippines bear the names of the characters, including Crisostomo, Basilio, Cripsin, Maria Clara, names assimilated into the Filipino mindscape but foreign to anyone on the outside looking in (myself included).

I escaped to the internet cafe, Netopia, across the street to post some of my travel blog when my parents picked me up to go to the Greenbelt Chapel. The Chapel is a round dome, open in the sides to the air and to visitors who traverse the koi-filled moat to the usually already-filled seats in the interior. This day was no different, as it was the Epiphany. The Chapel nestles comfortably in the plant-adorned courtyard of Greenbelt, hailed by one awarding group as the best-designed mall in Asia. As we arrived, people were already exiting the Chapel, since there wasn't even standing room in the packed dome. People who arrived just in time for mass were relegated to the grassy knolls surrounding the church behind the moat, listening to the mass audible throughout the Greenbelt courtyard via an extensive speakers system as the Eucharist was celebrated in the shadows within the dome. The homily was about how the Epiphany was about recognition, rededication (I think), and redirection of one's life (just as the Magi returned home via a different route from whence they came, as they were informed in a dream). Children played nearby on statues of caribou, the black water buffalo.

After mass, we returned to Charter House to prepare to meet Tito (uncle) Roger and his family, whom I had not seen in over two decades.

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