Being an Ayala Boy is not a choice I had growing up, but even if I did have the choice, I would still choose to
be one. Call me anything by being one of the 15,000+ residents of the slum area
beside this popular mall, but one just cannot deny the glitter I have all over
me being one of the kids who grew up seeing the forehead of the Pag-ibig tower
every single waking morning.
#5. The Fireworks
Christmas, New Year, Chinese New Year,
and Sinulog—these times of the year call for a quick climb on the roof, laying on my back facing the sky and waiting. Because any minute then, the sky would be
filled by hundreds of stellar colors branching to every direction and pattern.
It had been an annual sight during these festive occasions that the Ayala men
would spend thousands to put on a minute of light show against the evening canopy. How happy were Cabantan’s
les miserables for these annual sights.
And during the third or fourth year of
the new millennium, a foreign group emerged and took Philippine TV by storm. Prior to them had done the Mexicans. But upon the arrival of this new group,
they nearly wiped out to a trace the likes of Monica Brava and Marimar from the Filipino's fervent taste. Of course, who would not fall for these new faces, these boys behind Meteor Rain and “Oh, baby, baby, baby” whatever the title of that
one was.
I brought that one above up because I
wanted to tell you that as I was watching the fireworks above the Ayala
skyline, I was stroking my hand at the same time to the beat of Meteor Rain a
la Domeng fucking Su.
#4. The Jogging Gabi
I was a fierce basketball enthusiast
when I was younger. Waking up, seeing the shiny forehead of the Pag-ibig tower,
and leaping out of bed, the first thing that goes into my to-do list is not
breakfast, but taking my daily dose of Vitamin D in the basketball court. I
played voracious basketball, and wouldn’t mind the amount of time I had spent
playing. I wouldn’t even mind that the sun was no longer giving me Vitamin D,
but instead scorching me with UV-fucking-rays. This insatiable greed for
basketball games had anyway given me a glimmer of vanity. There was this 3-on-3
league years ago where I was awarded the “Best Player” for the elimination
round after bringing my underdog team to the finals, eventually losing in that
round to the team who had the MVP for that tournament. But hey, at least I had
an award, right? He he. It turned out the whole awarding ceremony became more
like a recognition day for a Kindergarten class—everyone brought home an award,
including, among many others, “Most Honest Player” and “Best in Uniform.”
Keeping up with the hunger for daily
playing meant that I had to keep a fit body—albeit being consistently lean as a
Chinese bamboo shrub. The solution to having the stamina for the demanding
games? Jogging. Me and my friends turned to this fitness habit sooner as we realized
that basketball was every kid’s life. And guess where we jog around for hours
starting four in the early morning until when it was bright enough to start
playing hoops? Cebu Business Park, I hear you.
Jogging had been a habit of us circle of
friends for years, and we only slowed down and began missing set days in the
summer when we eventually realized that basketball was just a pastime and not
the life that we look up on it to be. Of course, if you stop growing at 5-foot-fucking-3, basketball is but a hole in the wall. But still, the memories of those early
mornings are still fresh in my head—and I will never forget that one
time when we had painit in a funeral
wake held in our sitio’s chapel after a morning of determined jogging.
#3. The Sambag Business
The whole Cabantan street resembles
almost the Carbon market. Why, about more than half of the residents there are
entrepreneurs of varied businesses. When I was in Elementary, my mother was
selling shakes in our neighborhood. I also had friends who sold luthangs and fighting spiders. And I
even was the best person to go to for text cards and POG’s needs. Living in
Cabantan gives you a huge chance to want to pursuit a business.
And there was this business also that
was only open during rainy seasons. I did not take part of it, sadly, but I had a lot of
friends who did. Standing by the jeepney stop near Ayala, these mamayongay boys offer commuters coming
off the jeepneys umbrellas to cross from the Pag-ibig side to the mall on the other. It was five pesos per head per crossing. It was a promising business
indeed, given that a person who had no umbrella would have no choice but to
rent one. The demand during those seasons was just tremendously large.
But the business I did have a share was the sambag business. For those of you who don’t know, there had been a time when sambag trees surround the area of the Cebu Business
Park like a forest. And having none to do one time, walking casually along around with my
friends, one of them suddenly spotted a large sambag tree. I believe it's still standing there presently—the one behind the new building beside
the Ayala FGU. The tree was bursting with life and was bursting with sambag hanging on its branches, and my
friend immediately climbed his way up on them and picked the sambag all like
they were boogers inside his nose. We had a whole plastic of sambag harvested
before the sikyu finally noticed us
and pretended to give a chase. And we ran away with our treasure.
At first we ate to our stomach’s content
the sambag we had collected. But then we found out that we actually had
harvested more than we could consume. So we did what one logical Ayala boy
would do with the extra sambag. We packed them in plastics—the one
used for ice and ice water—and sold them for five pesos per pack. We picked an empty spot inside the public market—which was at that time also our
playground—and hang the packed sambag on hooks that were meant to hold meat
and sausages. After an hour or so we were able to earn a little amount of money,
but were left still with a lot of the sambag, as we only attracted boys and
girls of our age as customers and none of the grown-ups to trust the fruit we
were selling. I had a large plastic of sambag for dinner that night.
#2. Brownout? No Problem!
One of the most disappointing nights to
spend when I was a kid—or even until now—was when we had to spend it amidst a
barangay-wide brownout. It’s hot, it’s dark, and the mosquitoes seemed to be
having a fiesta on our skins. I’ve missed a lot of Bubble Gang shows before to
power outage—a problem too tiny now compared to missing a night without an
updated Facebook status and drained cellphone battery because of a failure to
recharge it when there was a chance before the brownout. But it’s dismaying, all
the same.
The disappointment was more so if the
brownout happened during the day and during the hottest months of the year.
These were days when no matter how many times you pour yourself with water
in a bath, the heat still managed to penetrate your skin, and boy! did that
feel insanely uncomfortable.
But the people in our barangay had found
a solution to this discomfort. Brownout? No problem! Armed with nothing but the
sheer need to refresh ourselves from the heat of the day, we would march down
our way toward the mall that was just a stone-throw away from us and window
shop our eyes off around its air-conditioned premises. At that time, Cabantan
was nothing more than a ghost town void of any proof of human occupation.
#1. Occasional Bragging Rights
Of course, Ayala Boy is what an Ayala
Boy is. I went to Mabolo Elementary School during my grade school days, with no
classmate coming from Cabantan—students there were going to the much nearer Bo.
Luz Elementary School instead. And so when I told my classmates that I lived
near Ayala and had a chance or two to share the perks of being an Ayala boy, I
became an instant though fleeting celebrity.
Want a sambag?
aNg gAliNg mU pHo k0yaa!! :)
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