Reach the poor

This morning I took Toni Rose and two of her neighbors to Baguio City to eat lunch in a Jollibee restaurant and ride rental tricycles and boats in Burnham Park. I have wondered in previous outings if a pedaled boat would be preferable to a rowed boat, so today we went to the concessionaire who had royal blue-and-yellow pedal boats and row boats. I picked an open-top boat. more →

Today Mack walked upstairs to Mail And More in SM City Baguio to retrieve a copy of his birth certificate mailed from National Statistics Office. We ate lunch in Vizco’s beside Session Road (4-stars) then walked downhill to a UnionBank branch to open a EON Cyber Account for Mack. Afterward, Dominic and I paid our PLDT bill and I tried in vain to find a parcel sent via registered mail from Quezon City on Monday or Tuesday. PhilPost advised me that it may arrive tomorrow. I’ll be riding a bus toward Sagada tomorrow morning, so I suppose that I’ll see the package on Monday. I hate PhilPost. I had thought that the U.S. Postal Service in Bay County was lackadaisical. Philippine Postal Service makes U.S.P.S. in Cedar Grove look like FedEx. I’ve heard that Filipinos prefer courier services to PhilPost. But Mail And More/Air 21 hadn’t wanted to deliver to Mack, and 2Go, a U.P.S. contractor, didn’t want to deliver a parcel to my home.

We haven’t had internet access in home for two days until now. We still don’t have a working home phone. PLDT is horrible. Yesterday upon return from Baguio City, where I didn’t visit an internet café, I took down to Baguio Gold some grocery odds and ends, student supplies and money. Today Mack came up to this apartment, then he an I went into the city for lunch, a ten-minute visit to an internet café and grocery shopping. We returned home before rainfall. Dominic took Nikko and Dennis into the city for a meal and haircuts. Tomorrow Dom will go with Mack to a dentist office after he leaves school.

Charisse, Toni Rose and I walked uphill from Baguio Gold to Tuding Road to ride a jeepney to the big city to go to Holy Mass in the cathedral, eat lunch and ride tricycles in Burnham Park.

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Today Nikko (12) brought his sisters, Charisse (8) and Toni Rose (6) to the apartment, and after I ate breakfast and drank a cup of tea while they watched cartoons, we headed to Baguio City. I expected that we’d ride a jeepney, as is customary. But every jeepney that passed us as we stood beside Tuding Road was full. The folks out in the country like to go travel to the big city for shopping, churchgoing or selling their wares (handicrafts), produce and livestock. So we couldn’t get a jeepney to stop for us. We boarded one of the several taxis going toward the city whose drivers wanted a paying passenger.

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“Saturday… in the park” is a lyric from an old Chicago song that I’ve always liked. Today, after lunch in Leah’s and Mike’s home, I rode atop a jeepney to the Monterrazas Village entrance then walked down to Baguio Gold to ask the girls if they’d like to go tricycling in Baguio City’s Burnham Park. more →

Today is Charisse’s eighth birthday, and her family is too poor to do anything to celebrate. I doubt that they’ve ever celebrated birthdays ‘American-style.’ I walked down to Baguio Gold and went in their shack to blow up balloons while the kids were in school. I carried a bag of inexpensive gifts that I’d bought when I shopped for Nikko’s and Toni Rose’s birthdays.

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Nikko and his younger sisters came uphill from their humble home in Baguio Gold neighborhood hours ahead of the 4:30 Mass time at Turning Point/Fatima Hill. I think that they wanted the opportunity to watch cartoons on TV or DVD for a while before we departed for Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church.

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Nikko came up from Baguio Gold after his chores so that we could go together to Baguio City and register him for Taekwondo training in UFC Fitness Center. Upon arrival downtown, we checked my mailbox for his birth certificate again (not there, alas). Then we crossed Father Carlu Street, walked toward the cathedral and descended into the Porta Vaga Building that the diocese owns to go into UFC’s martial arts school. more →

Tonight Nikko came to the flat soaking wet, cold and shivering. He said that he had walked from Baguio City to Monterrazas Village. I asked why he didn’t ride a jeepney with 10 of the 20 pesos that I’d left for him. He claims that he lost it.

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Today I went shopping in Baguio City for more birthday gifts for Patrick, Nikko, Toni Rose and Charisse. I also bought gift tote bags, greeting cards and a cake emblazoned with the names Patrick, Nikko and Toni Rose. Then I went to 50’s Diner to await the arrival of the A/V/A family and Dominic to have a celebratory dinner. Today is Patrick’s seventeenth or eighteenth birthday, tomorrow is Nikko’s twelfth birthday, and Sunday is Toni Rose’s sixth birthday. Charisse will be eight on August 11. more →