Year of the Philippines - Pasalubong

This entry has been stalled for a couple of months now. Actually, longer. When I came back from my trip to the Philippines, I didn't want to write about it right away. I wanted for time to pass until I was back from one of the most profound adventures I have undertaken. So I started writing this in July.

But I had so much to write about trying to describe the experience that I couldn't put into words as I was experiencing it, I had to stop in the midst of the entry to come back and finish it. I couldn't finish it in one sitting. That was back on July 20th.

Well it's actually September now with me writing this. And I scrapped everything I had written previously. It dawned on me how futile it is to put into words what I already deemed indescribable. It was a complete emotional journey for me, emotions that I don't think I'll ever forget, and so I won't need a transcription to remind me of it time and again.

I'll never forget it.

So instead, I'll just immortalize the few photos I took during the trip at random, for what's a photo worth anyway if not a thousand words?

 

Year of the Philippines - Of Nostalgia

"I didn't realize you were so nostalgic."

Said my oldest sister to me not too long ago, just days before I booked my flight to the Philippines. She remarked that during a discussion we were having as to why I felt so compelled to make my trip back to the Philippines in my terms; no balikbayan boxes, no plans to travel within the country, for just a duration of barely a week.

I'll admit, my terms are unorthodox. I'm well aware that when Filipinos go back to the homeland, it's to enjoy the fruits of their labor having gone overseas. With the USD perpetually strong against the PHP, it also makes it more than feasible to truly enjoy what the country has to offer now that Filipinos who have gone abroad can afford it. And the balikbayan boxes, filled with gifts for friends and family that remained in the country are further testimony to that, as well as a token of appreciation for those we love but left behind. I'm well aware of these conventions, but my trip isn't conventional.

I am a nostalgic person. I've always been, or why else would I be up-keeping online journals for over a decade now (well before I even got paid to)?

Call it nostalgia, call it dwelling, call it a practice in narcissism - I don't care what it is and what we ought to call it. I appreciate where I've been and where I've come from. I write my blog for me to re-read time and time again for a look back into the years I've left behind and the things that I've done. They remind me of how far I've come and in some ways, push me to keep going and keep reaching further and farther in the days ahead of me. They remind me of what I've accomplished now, by offering a peak into where I used to be and what I used to have a month, a year, maybe five years prior. Sometimes what I accomplish now feels so perfunctory in the moment, that it takes reading something I wrote before to realize that I used to hope to achieve what I just did. Looking back at my life before helps me to appreciate where I am now even more.

This trip of mine back to the Philippines is just one big look back at my past. I may not have written about it anywhere - not online or on paper - but it remains etched in my memory to this day. I left the country when I was thirteen years old. That's thirteen years of vivid memories that have remained with me and they are so palpable I can still see everyone and everywhere that I grew up with, even twenty years since I left them all.

I want to see how much everything I still remember has changed. I want to stand across the street from the house I lived in and see for myself if it's any different, and whether or not my connection to it is still there. I want to juxtapose everything I saw with my child eyes to what I'll see with my adult eyes now and realize not just how far everything I remember has come, but how far I'Ve come as well. My childhood in the Philippines has had a major influence in my values now as an adult in the US, and though I may have shunned a lot of traditional Filipino values, there is a lot in my core beliefs that have been founded from my time growing up in the Philippines. I'm not a rich man because of money, but I am because I live a life so charmed I couldn't even dare dream to be living it while growing up in the Philippines.

So even if there will be a disconnect now between myself and what I remember once I return, I am forever grateful for having spent the first crucial years of my life where I did. Because my time back in the Philippines whenever I look back on it makes me thoroughly appreciate all and everything I have in my life now.

My time in the Philippines was the most important thirteen years written in my head, and it's about time I go and have a look back.

Year of the Philippines

I'm going to keep this short, but it probably won't be because it's me trying to keep it short. (See?)

I'm still in slight disbelief that in seven days, I am finally returning to my birth country, the first time I get to since leaving it twenty years ago. Two decades ago. That's how long it's taken me to make this trip happen, and it's not by intent or for a lack of trying to do it sooner, but somehow my circumstances in the last twenty years just never found me making this trip happen.

But I am now.

To this day, remains the only stamp in either of my passports.

At the realization earlier this year that 2015 marks two full decades since I left, I just cannot keep this trip waiting for me to make it happen, even if I am probably at my least able to make this trip happen now. I have children now - a toddler and an infant - that I'll be leaving with my wife to take care of for the ten days I'm gone. No, they're not coming with me, not for this trip. Even the concept of that is unheard of for any married, family man. But this is how I need to do this trip. By myself, and in just ten days.

Typically when Filipinos return to the Philippines after being abroad for a number of years, it's for the balikbayan experience, complete with balikbayan boxes filled with gifts for family and friends still remaining in the Philippines.

But not my trip. Not this trip of mine.

This lone and short trip of mine is strictly for the purposes of finally returning home for so long, and to simply walk that very long lane inhabited by my memory.

Memories of my childhood in Philippines remain with me, and I have been waiting for this chance to reconcile it with the reality of the country now, twenty years later. Everyone who has gone back and forth to the Philippines - be it friends or family - in the last twenty years always tell me how much everything has changed. Each time they do, I'm left wanting to see just how myself. Even worse, I get mad at myself listening to friends' trip to my home country, when they weren't even born there. So why haven't I returned to my native land? There are reasons, but no excuse really.

That is all about to change now though, finally. Now I get to go, and my excitement is dwarfed only by my relief that now, I finally get to.

Putting my US Passport to use before it expires next year.

This has been a long time coming, and it's now coming.