Home

The first sentence which I wanted to place here slipped somewhere into the clouds of my mind. But few days ago, as I walked down a hotel lobby in Ortigas, I was greeted by a familiar view of what used to be my neighbourhood nearly a decade ago. This was home, I once told a former professor in a farewell letter few weeks before graduation. “Of all places, why does it have to be Manila?” I no longer recall what was my followup to that e-mail. But eventually I would learn what she meant by that. The daily grind of waking up at least 4 hours early so you have an hour for shower and breakfast, the rest would be for travel. Once during rainy season when Shaw Boulevard was flooded, I came to work with my pants dripping wet, save for my shoes that was dry because I placed them inside my bag. Long story short, the home I called turned out to be hell. For that I returned home again and found myself happy for some four years, until it felt like home had to be another city. So I moved from one city to another, soon realising I may have made a fool out of myself by calling too many places my home. That morning, Jon may have thought of something when I was telling to a hotel staff how I missed Pasig, and that I remember those days when it was home. “Diba taga Davao ka?”