awesome

For those who don’t believe in love at first sight: I challenge you to walk the streets of Baguio, feeling the cold chill that raises arm hairs from time to time or the involuntary chattering of teeth — with your eyes open — fall in love maybe 80-90 times a day, watching residents who never seem to be bogged down by the heat (humidity?  what humidity?) but only if you keep your eyes open.  Or it might also be onset frostbite.

Let me tell you about Baguio: it’s what I think of when I dream about summers, or bicycles, or of pretty girls in jackets.

I almost lived there for college but decided not to at the time (it’s about a girl, and it didn’t quite pan out, as most high school romances go).  For the weekend, and as an impulsive person, there are lingering thoughts of staying there to study again.  (Did I watch Community to get inspiration to go back to school?)  Of course, this time, and for most other times in the near future: it’s about a girl.

Then again, it might be vacation high — I haven’t been here since 2008, and the thought of starting from scratch someplace new always has it’s charms.  Or I might have been drinking too much again.  Or it might be the strawberry-taho I ate upon arriving.

Thinking about it — new school, new faces, a different house to go home to every night (that I do manage to get myself home), drinking that coffee with a scoop of ice cream at Volante cafe while trying to warm up, or eating several 6” pizzas for maybe less than 300 pesos every week, or getting to hang out with Koreans (and meeting a few of them) at Red Lion pub, getting lost at Laoakan late at night, playing with my nieces and goddaughter every day, smoking cigarettes while trying to warm up, getting to wear jackets any day of the week (rain or shine) and not feeling ridiculous, ice cold water baths that feel like bathing in glaciers because I’m too lazy to wait for hot water, getting enveloped in a blanket while reading a book, walking down Session Road because there would be nothing to do and in that nothing will have to become something being the activity of walking, drinking ice cold superdry beer while watching other people leech off internet at that one place I went to the other day, hanging out with a local celebrity, watching the never-ending lines at McDonald’s in the very heart of Session, looking for old cameras at ukay-ukays, looking for that ice cream parlour (and I say parlour, not parlor) where I ate the best banana split I could remember, eating day-old chick beside the SM, learn parts of the dialect and get it right, getting whiskey dick because of drinking too much, looking for a new place that would cut my hair in the exact same way my stylist does, trying to enroll for all-morning classes so I could get some work done during the afternoons, or simply sitting at home, catching movies on that one channel that only they get — it all sounds so tempting and is cause for great consideration.

But I look out the window from here and think that maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world.

[flickr set]