This slide show feature photos I took during my last Balikbayan trip last Christmas, 2002.
My wife's aunt works at the Manila Penn in Makati so she was able to secure for us a room with really cheap prices. We even paid in pesos not in dollars..Some shots were taken in the lobby..
Some more photos were taken at Nympha Salom's house in Urdaneta Village, just a stone's throw away from the Penn. She owns that life size ( almost ) Manger which rests atop of their stairs. We had a photo with her sisters Alejandra and Epifania.
Susan D. Santos joined us in some shots at the Penn inside our suite.
The slide show closed with my delivering a talk at the party hosted by the Delmendo Cable Company..
Visiting our country is easier on December because the weather is very comfortable. The hitch on the other hand are the exobirant ticket prices, since Christmas is a peak season and it seems every Filipino likes to be home for Christmas---#
For some unknown reasons, the song WHISPERING HOPE is considered a Christmas song. Only in the Philippines. It is not, but who cares? The words are about hope and angelic voices, the important elements of Christmas...
As early as September, some radio stations in the Philippines during the '50s would play the song and I would turn the volume control up then would shout.."Hey, they are playing Christmas songs already!" I would be in euphoria. Such is the blissful innocence of children . They are born with childlike joy and faith. Unfortunately, these traits get rubbed off ( more or less ) as we grow up to face the hard realitiess of life..
Thanks for the kudos to Annete, Icarus. Her infectious laughter, which could be heard at the start of the video is well known in Asingan. She is well loved by the townspeople. Never noticed any bad bone in her person and I guess that's why she survived all this time. I do not want to guess her age, nor ask her about it. All I know is that she is older than me by a few years.
I can not forget the lubi-lubi she made one time to treat us, the choir. It was made by pounding boiled cassava in an alsung under her house. And then it is mixed with brown sugar. Yummy..
Anyways..Let us enjoy this one..I confess I do not know ( or can not recognize ) Katy which you mentioned, Icarus. Maybe you can point her to us. Was she the daughter of the ex Chief of Police of Asingan?---#
post notes--
*Annete is the lady in green..Norma Pico is the the one with short hair sitting in the middle.
*This video clip was mastered with the highest speed ( more Megabytes ) but the new PC transformed it into a web-friendly file which is clearer in sound and in picture..Not much pixellation..
*It is just too bad weeks after I learned how to use the machine for video production, AOL decided to close down its Blog Department. Murphy's Law! When you do not expect something bad to happen, then it happens! AOL is still the easiest to use and it can accomodate videos, special text formatting..and other goodies which other Blog sites does not But what can we do?..We'll just enjoy it until the last day of October..:(
A caroling group came to our house in Asingan that Christmas.The song leader was Juanita Orpiano a long time singer at church. One of the singers I recognized was Norma Pico from Domanpot. She might have been one of my co-teachers at the Rizal Academy...
Going back to Juanita: she must be the singer with the longest track record as far as church singing is concerned. She was a teenager when she started singing at the Roman Catholic church in our town. She has a very fine soprano voice which never blemished through out the years..She started singing with my sister Aurora and that must be during the early 50's..
As far as I know, she has never stopped her volunteer work: singing every Sunday and church holidays. I heard and saw her again last December 2002 ( not 2003 as the video title says: sorry it is a typo and typos on video are hard to rectify ).She outlasted many of the singers at church. A few of them died already e.g. Josie C. Velasco, Erlinda del Rio and Editha Gante and maybe some more.
I think she might still reside in Dupac, near the Nitcha family's residence. Her sweet temperament and her sense of humour never diminished. She also worked as an offcial in the Barangay level here in our town at one time.
In a certain way, this video clip is dedicated to her. ---#
This home made clip was filmed by my late nephew Gildo Sampaga featuring his son, daughter and niece doing the SPAGHETTI DANCE, popular in 2002..This was shot Christmas eve, 2002..
