an e-mail from my beloved godsister, NONNA,
brought back old memories.
she and her family drove to tagaytay to celebrate mother's day.
she wrote: "We went to Tagaytay for Mother’s Day Lunch last Sunday and it seemed the whole of Luzon and their mothers were there."
"Everyone now seems to drive to Tagaytay at the drop of a hat, for lunch, dinner, merienda or coffee. The whole ridge side is covered with restaurants and all crowded too during week-ends most specially." her e-mail made me feel like i was there at that instant, sharing her experience.
my recollection of tagaytay was a long ride up a hill over looking
a lake and some little donut looking island that was suppose to be a volcano.
my bias, i'm from albay province and MAYON is the only VOLCANO!
tagaytay was cool & windy and hardly any imposing structures around. just acres & acres of pasture land and fruit trees. that was decades ago, i was probably 6 years old, when i attended a yearly event hosted and held at the estate of HEREDEROS DE RUFINO, a "family day" for all thier employees. an era when most companies were family owned and LOYALTIES were rewarded.
unfortunately my "old country soul" longs for provincial ambiance.
i may be living in the past... but it's that "past" that holds my tie to pinas. expats like me need to hang on to those "memories" of the old pinas before it was "mall-ified" and turned into an urban "shoemart-land".
i've never been to tagaytay since.
my godsis description of the new tagaytay is beyond me.
friends who went to pinas and had the opportunity to
visit tagaytay have given it HIGH marks.
maybe on my next visit, i'll check it out too.
she continues: "We couldn’t get into the restaurant we wanted,
nor could we get into the second one we tried.
We finally ended up at a steakhouse, something we were not really
looking forward to — having fried tawilis and bulalo originally on our minds".
her e-mail gave me the cravings.
maybe this weekend i'll cook some bulalo.
no tawilis around here, but i will settle for crispy fried smelts.
set out a "cafe" style dinning on our small patio. eat al fresco!
it's still cold around here so i can pretend i'm in tagaytay.
hmmm yummy! tagaytay here i come.
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Please forgive me but having lived in Mexico now for over half a year, I am constantly reminded of how Tagalog has changed a lot of the original Spanish words. And so I have to correct your "typos". Recuerdos is spelled with a "c", Herederos is spelled with an "e" in the 2nd syllable, and the word for string bean is habichuelas, and not "bechuelas". Another word for bean is "haba", which in Tagalog means "long". Interesting, eh?
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