A Bridge to the Future: The Tulay Ng Kabataan Foundation

Posted on 27 September 2011 by sheg4184

“There are thousands of children living in the streets of Manila who have broken all bonds with their families. Victims of violence and of drugs, they survive by begging, by stealing, by prostitution… living totally in the margins of society.”

The Tulay Ng Kabataang (TNK) Foundation was set up in 1998 by Father Jean-Francois Thomas to provide a safe haven for more than 1000 children living on the streets, in the slums or on the dump sites of Manila. Funding comes from several European charities and covers the cost of feeding, housing, educating and rehabilitating these children in twenty two drop-in centres across the city. For the younger children, the foundation provides informal schooling designed to bridge the gap between life on the streets and formal schooling. For adolescents too old to start school, vocational training is provided.

The ADBSA Social Welfare Committee visits one TNK drop-in centre in Quezon City every Monday to spend time with the boys.  There are currently twenty five boys in the classroom, but numbers constantly fluctuate. The boys are aged approximately between 4 and 14, although many don’t know their real age. Many of the boys have been living on the streets, others have been taken from parents who are either drug abusers, child abusers, or simply too poor to keep them. One newcomer has been quarantined with scabies. Some will climb the walls to run back to the streets, and a few are retrieved by their families but hopefully some stay on to graduate and go on to ‘proper’ school.

Last week I accompanied four fellow ADB spouses on my first trip to Quezon City. We were greeted by a room full of smiling, curious faces. Eventually one held out his hand and bravely asked me:

 

“Hello, what is your name?”

“Hi! My name is Alex,” I replied.

We shook hands, and suddenly there were eager hands reaching out everywhere. Several pulled my hand to their foreheads as a sign of respect. I asked their names, but I couldn’t always understand their answers. They would giggle and make me repeat what they said. Despite my best efforts to mimic them, it seems I wasn’t even close. Or maybe they enjoyed teasing. Luckily, their work folders were handed out, so I could read their names off the covers and finally decipher what they were saying.

“O! You are Jerricho! And Reymart! And you are Darwin?”

This week we arrived in the rain under huge umbrellas. I was greeted with cries of “Hello Ma’am Alex” as soon as I walked through the door. I was really touched that they remembered me.

They are really lovely boys. They have all had their hair shaved close to their heads, which emphasizes their beautiful big, brown eyes. Their skinny little legs are encased in rather grubby shorts, and their t-shirts are hand-me-downs, often over-sized and hanging like dresses from their narrow frames. But despite their scruffy appearances, here they can learn a few life skills, a little English, and some basic reading, writing and arithmetic.

The boys get very excited when Hema begins her lesson. Together, we count and clap and recite our days of the week and months of the year, and revise some common courtesies such as ‘you’re welcome,’ ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. My favourite part was watching Leni teaching them to sneeze into their elbows not their hands, so as not to spread germs to the next person they touched.

Last week, I was thrown in the deep end and asked to sing with them. ’ It was a little nerve-racking on my first visit, but great fun to lead them through several rounds of ‘When you’re happy & you know it’ and watch them join in cheerfully with the clapping, waving and stomping. The funniest moment came when I threw in “when you’re happy and you know it, blink your eyes.” One young lad climbed onto his bench and nearly threw himself into the next row showing me how well he could scrunch up his eyes! Afterwards they proudly sang it back to me in Tagalog.

This week Hema prodded me to the front again to lead them through three rounds of ‘Do Re Me’. I felt terribly grown up as I conducted the choir of joyful voices. Then it was time for exercises. Last week Leni began with a special exercise song. This week, given that I didn’t know the words or the tune, we adapted ‘When you’re happy and you know it’ to stretch and squat, star jump, dance and clap. They participated with huge enthusiasm, flinging their slight bodies around the rather confined spaces behind their desks.

Then they acted out a story with Colin. Last week’s story involved a conga line of characters around the classroom.  This week I got distracted by a boy called Moses, eager for me to help him with some simple addition. This involved a lot of finger counting and jumping to conclusions when it all got too hard, while the rest jumped about the room being goats and squirrels and other woodland animals. After the story they were giving merienda (snack). Apparently the peanut butter cookies are a firm favourite, and often get tucked into their shorts elastic for later, or to con us into believing they haven’t had one yet.

After merienda, it’s time for art. Last week we handed round small boxes of crayons and a new lead pencil each. The pencils were so new they hadn’t been sharpened yet, so I wandered round the room with sharpeners and chatted with the boys. Some were keen to show me how to work the sharpener, others insisted they wanted theirs to be pristine, and wouldn’t let me spoil them. This week they used their new crayons to join the dots to form a goldfish. Quite a few needed help getting the sequence right, but their concentration was breath-taking, and the twenty four beautifully decorated goldfish we stuck on the board afterwards were a sight to behold – and impossibly difficult to judge, when each of us was given 3 stars with which to judge our favourites. Our job done, we headed back out into the rain, with shouts of ‘Goodbye!’ and ‘Thank you for coming!’ ringing in our ears. Some of us responded with “You are welcome” as we had been taught in class. I found myself more inclined to respond as my mother taught me: “Thank you for having me!”

It throws your own life into such sharp perspective to see those boys so enthusiastic and grateful for our tiny contribution to their lives. It humbles me and makes me count my blessings for all that I have.  Not just belongings, but a home, a family, love and security. The foundation made a short film that you can watch on You Tube. At one point a banner announces “Blessed is he who preserves the heart of a child from despair”. But I feel I am the one who has been blessed, as I spend time with these warm, beautiful boys who have been given so very few blessings, but seem to gain such sincere and simple joy from our visits.

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‘Walk this Way’ through Intramuros

Posted on 27 September 2011 by sheg4184

As the title suggests, this is a walking tour. But for those of you who fear a long hot trudge through the streets of Intramuros, rest assured, your guide and entertainer Carlos Celdran is not so masochistic. This three hour tour is a gentle stroll around the park at Fort Santiago, a buggy ride and a short walk to Barbara’s Café. At suitably shady spots, Celdran invites you to sit comfortably on the grass in front of him while he takes you on ‘a journey through Filipino history for people with no attention span’.

Celdran’s performance is off-beat, irreverent, and unorthodox: a constant patter of fact and personal opinion. Dressed in an eighteenth century Spanish top hat and tailcoat, he begins the tour under the frangipani trees by encouraging all the locals to sing the National Anthem. A rousing chorus from at least 50% of the tour group follows. I do love the ability of the Filipinos to burst into song in public places without any qualms. It makes me feel totally at at home, as my mother always carols around the supermarket in exactly the same unselfconscious fashion.

The curtain rises with the arrival of the Spanish in Manila.  In Act 1, Carlos describes the building of Intramuros (literally ‘within the walls’) by the Spanish conquistadors in 1571, after ousting some 10,000 indigenous Muslim inhabitants from the banks of the Pasig River. Intramuros would become the centre of power for the Spanish government, the military and the Church for the next three hundred years..

Act 2 focuses on the national hero, Jose Rizal. As we wander past Rizal’s statue and through the Rizal museum, Celdran gleefully bursts mythical bubbles. This national hero is no gun wielding general but an elitist scholar with leanings towards Spain. Rizal wrote two books against theocracy in the Philippines: Ils Filibusterismo and Noli Me Tangere. He was later used as a scapegoat for the revolutionaries, and summarily shot for treason. ‘Suitably benign and even more suitably dead’, Rizal was apparently selected as a national hero, not by the Filipinos, but by the Americans.

Act 3 involves a change of location and costume, as Celdran replaces the top hat with a stars-and-stripes Cat-in-the-Hat number. Standing by the bandstand and encircled by a riveted crowd, this next monologue describes how the Americans attempted to convert the Philippines into a secular democracy and educated the masses in American English. The Philippines, he tells us, was seen as a decompression chamber between East and West, where the fusion of race, food and culture made Manila the first truly globalized city in Asia.

At this point Celdran invites us to avail ourselves of alternative transport at the gates of the park, and ride in a horse drawn cart to our next location. Beneath the shadowy mango trees we settle on plastic stools beside the hollow ruins of St Ignatius Church and an empty lot (once the University of Manila), bombed to smithereens at the end of World War II. The penultimate act is a somewhat vitriolic speech about the destruction of Intramuros through the combined efforts of the Americans and the Japanese, during which I was quite glad to be Australian, and thus outside the ‘circle of dis-trust!’

Celdran uses a lot of thought-provoking imagery during his performance. In the final act standing before St Augustine’s pink splendor, he describes the illusion that is Philippine culture: a walled city made of volcanic ash; St Augustine’s architectural trimmings copied from every age and corner of the world, and the gift-wrapped jeepneys. Filipinos decorate everything, he says, but while more imitative than innovative, he proclaims “this lack of originality makes us totally original!” To be Filipino is to be a mish mash, a fusion, a blend, a halo halo of world cultures… and the final curtain comes down in the courtyard at Barbara’s Café, with the grand finale of halo halo for everyone.

I have tried not to give away the whole talk – otherwise you won’t bother to go yourselves, and you should!  Keep an open mind and a sense of humour – and know that Celdran’s snappy patter even appealed to my fifteen year old son, something Celdran himself saw as a great achievement!

So who is Carlos Celdran?

His biography is well documented in Wikipedia, and he related the same information to me in the café almost verbatim, but in his own inimitable style and at breath-taking speed. Carlos Celdran is a renowned Filipino tour guide, cited in the Insight Guide to the Philippines and well-known to the expat community in Manila. Perhaps less well known is the fact that he was also a painter, a cartoonist, an actor, stage designer, director and a comic – and is currently described in the media as a cultural activist. Last year he became notorious after staging a very public protest against the Church for its opposition to the reproductive health bill… and for subsequently spending a night in prison, charged with “offending religious feelings.” I asked if he had anticipated such a response and he remarked that he had been very surprised by the experience.

Celdran says he is not a total atheist, but not a very good Catholic either.  But he says he likes religion, because everyone needs a little magic in life and knowing all the answers takes away the colour. He talks a lot about Intramuros as the soul of Manila with its multiple churches, and is clearly grateful to Imelda Marcos who took a hand in funding its rebirth after it had been decimated at the end of World War II.

Carlos Celdran grew up in Das Marinas, where he apparently led a very sheltered middle class childhood and developed a passion for plane spotting. When he was only fourteen, he became the youngest ever cartoonist for the newspaper Business Day. Here he attracted the attention of ‘Nonoy’ Marcello, a famous political satirist.

Once at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Celdran’s world expanded and he discovered Intramuros. Here he had a broad education in both visual and performing arts that led him to the Rhode Island School of Design where an allergy to paint forced him to change his major to performing arts. This change would later lead him to New York based theatre company, the Blue Man Group.

In 1998 he returned to the Philippines where he began leading tours for the Heritage Conservation Society, a non-profit organization for preserving historical architecture. The experience drew him back to Intramuros and exhibited his natural flair for performance. In 2002 he launched his own tour company.

Now in his tenth year of guiding, Celdran leads an average of 30 people through the streets of Intramuros three times a week. He also offers a walking tour of the National Theatre, Convention Centre and CCP grounds called ‘Living La Vida Imelda!’ which, his website states, is ‘a little bit disco, a little bit New Society, and completely Imeldific’. Both tours claim to have adult content.

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Chinese New Year in Binondo

Posted on 26 September 2011 by sheg4184

Binondo Fire EngineOur special Chinese New Year Edition will begin at 8am on the dot from the Binondo church on the edge of Chinatown. We reach the purple fire truck at 8:02am but can’t see a tour group anywhere ~ they weren’t joking about’ on the dot!’ While I make a couple of quick calls, my two teenage companions discover a basket full of fluffy chicks, dyed a multitude of bright colours. There are even some tiny, finger-nail-sized quail chicks ~ the Chinese version of Easter eggs. Luckily I track down our tour guide before I find myself having to rescue fifty psychedelic chicks, and we dash down the road to find our guide, Ivan Man Dy, and our tour begins…

Tour numbers can vary from six to twenty six. We are a monster-sized group of forty five for this special edition and I wonder how Ivan can possibly navigate the bustling New Year’s crowds without losing anyone. But Ivan is a pro.To quote his website: ‘conceptualized, manufactured, bred and educated in the city of Manila, Ivan is the feet behind Old Manila Walks.’

Our first gathering place is the New Po Heng Lumpia, a pink, al fresco restaurant hidden at the end of a wide corridor beside the HSBC Bank. Here we are served a little local history with our lumpia or spring rolls that originated in the northern Chinese province of Fujian or Hokkien. Lumpia are quite different from the bite-sized, deep fried spring rolls popular in most Asian restaurants. Made with pork, shrimp, lettuce, dried seaweed and crushed peanuts, this fresh spring roll are typically bigger and more savoury than its smaller, better known cousins, and is wrapped in a light rice flour wrapper that must be eaten straight away, after dipping it in a combination of vinegar, hot chilli sauce and a thick, warm, sweet sauce. Lumpia are made to celebrate the Spring Festival (we know it as Chinese New Year), hence the name ‘spring roll’.

Chinatown is just over the Pasig River from Intramuros, on the edge of Divisoria. Our tour meanders through its crowded, narrow streets with their distinct flavour of the Orient. On this, the first day of the Chinese New Year, red dominates, and miniature pineapples hanging in the centre of kiat-kiat wreaths are strung across the alleyways as symbols of wealth and prosperity. Street kids are also on the look-out for wealth and prosperity, but they are not at all insistent, pausing only to tap and nudge and hold out their hands pleadingly. Firecrackers burst our eardrums at regular intervals, and it is wise to be wary as they spit and smoke with unexpected vigour.

Our guide leads us skillfully through the New Year revelers to a narrow, rather dingy little side street where a small gem of a restaurant is tucked away in a quiet back corner. Dong Bei Dumpling can seat twenty people at four laminate tables with plastic chairs. Forty five keen foodies squeeze into every available nook and cranny. Popular with bloggers, the best thing about this tiny restaurant is being able to watch the dumplings made from scratch, or as our guide tells us, ‘lovingly crafted within these four walls by hands.’ The cooks perch precariously around a small table in the window, jostled by the crowd, rolling out circles of dough, and delving into 3 mounds of filling for this northern style dim sum. Two bowls of sauce are brought to each table with a glass full of what looks like metal knitting needles. Very soon, plates of freshly poached dumplings arrive and are quickly gobbled up – at least as quickly as I can manage. Trying to catch a slippery dumpling with knitting needles is no easy task, especially when we are wedged in so tightly. Finally someone loses patience with my fumbling attempts, and tells me firmly to ‘stab it!’

Chinese dragon

Our next stop is at a rather roomier restaurant on the first floor, with a great view over the street. Below us the crossroads is buzzing with excited crowds and Chinese dragon dancers, shaggy-headed Chinese lions gamboling amongst the onlookers and lady-boy dancers strutting their stuff. Staff serve us a simple soup of fish balls and cabbage and a bowl of Hokkien style fried rice that can be added to the soup… or the soup added to the rice… I am still not quite sure which way round it goes. Two lions come dancing up the stairs accompanied by a loud drum beat. Each animal is operated by two dancers like a pantomime horse. Their huge mouths drop open for donations that will ensure the giver a year of good luck and prosperity.

Starting to feel very full, we brave the smoke from a bonfire of used firecrackers, and head down Ongpin Street to a tiny stall making traditional Chinese merienda, that Filipino in-between meal like our afternoon tea. Here we are handed siopao (pronounced shiow pow): sweet warm buns reminiscent of jam donuts that are surprisingly not full of jam, but a succulent pork filling.

Finally ending the tour where we began, we are presented with individually wrapped pieces of tikoy or nian gao: a popular Chinese New Year’s Cake made from glutinous rice coloured green, purple or white, and surprisingly morish. It is eaten widely in the Philippines at this time of year, as yet another symbol of wealth and prosperity.
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It is well worth taking a break from Makati shopping malls to explore Old Manila with Ivan Man Dy. However, I would highly recommend organizing a private tour – or at least joining a smaller group. While it was great fun to be out on the streets for Chinese New Year, the noise of the crowds, the firecrackers and the size of the group made hearing our guide somewhat problematic, and I am sad to think I missed lots of interesting tidbits. Oh well, we’ll just have to go again…

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Downtown Manila

Posted on 26 September 2011 by sheg4184

It was my first adventure into the wilds of Divisoria. Wide, tree lined boulevards along Manila Bay suddenly narrowed into streets choc-a-block with pedestrians and push carts. The car was forced to a slow crawl, and eventually to a standstill, as our driver dodged peddlers and a proliferation of motorbikes. As we took to our feet, the streets narrowed even further, the buildings closed in and wreaths of electric cabling were draped just above our heads. I suddenly had an image of what London must have looked like before the Great Fire, upper storeys tilting in to greet each other and block out the sky.

This part of Manila is thrumming with life in a way Megamall doesn’t. That somewhat sterilized atmosphere of malls all over in the world disappears beneath a total assault on the senses. Sounds and smells and sights were all magnified as I stood on steps at a street corner trying to capture it on camera. I failed dismally. All the photos record is the impression of bodies crowded together and a total lack of breathing space – and yet I felt like I was breathing properly for the first time since arriving in Manila.

The streets wound on, hemmed with stallholders selling high quality fruit and vegetables, palm-sized baby rabbits (“dinner ma’am?”) sunglasses and t-shirts. Wandering peddlers were offering all sorts of things you could never have imagined needing – and suddenly could not imagine how you have lived without! We all peered, fascinated, at a tiny handheld sewing machine that looked like a staple-unpicker as it stitched a regular seam across a tiny piece of fabric. A ball gown might prove a little ambitious – but it should be OK for hemming hankies…which of course I do a lot!

Deeper into the maze of crowded alleyways, billowing bundles of brightly coloured chiffon had been piled onto the pavement, while a young man enthusiastically snapped a plastic table cloth loudly above our heads, and two men carried a basked of dried fish in a banana leaf basket. Tiny corridors led off these streets and as the crowds thickened and the heat rose, we edged sideways into these cooler spaces past party decorations, fancy dress stalls and reams of string.

Back on the street, men unselfconsciously rolled t-shirts up under their armpits and bared their bellies (what is that about?); an ancient but upright woman stood stock-still in a clearing for several minutes as if in prayer, clutching an armful of fans to her chest; and out of a sidecar, packed to the gunnels with cushions and baskets and boxes peered a small smiling face wedged in beneath all her paraphernalia.

Prices of course, were so far below anything I had seen in Power Plant Mall as to be laughable: a pairs of shorts for PHP 160 (AUS$4.00), a full length bridal gown for PHP 1200 (AUS$30). Perhaps the fabrics weren’t top quality, but the hours of work that had gone into trimming them with bows and frills and sequins were phenomenal. I just wanted to scoop up a handful for my niece’s dressing up box, so she could be a different Disney princess every day of the week. Instead I ended up very sensibly with two umbrellas, a bag of vegetables and some amazing memories.

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Pass the Sawsawan Please

Posted on 14 September 2011 by sheg4184

Does anyone remember the movie “When Harry Met Sally”? A quirky, 1980s romantic comedy, it was about the antagonism between two people evolving into acceptance, then friendship and ~ finally ~ love.  Now hold onto that thought.

Whenever I think about Filipino food, one scene from that movie keeps playing in my head: Sally & Harry, newly acquainted, are on a road trip across America, and whenever they stop to eat at a roadside cafe, Harry notices that Sally can never order straight from the menu, but always adapts it to suit her own tastes. This infuriates him and he accuses her of being high maintenance, mimicking her order and remarking that “On the side” is a very big thing for you.’

In my world, this is not only high maintenance, it would be considered the height of bad manners to mess the cook about like this. Mothers cry out in horror as their children drown their dinners in tomato sauce (ketchup). Some western diners at high class establishments are even wary of adding salt and pepper in case the chef is insulted by the insinuation that his or her dish is not quite perfect.

In the Philippines, fine-tuning a dish is not only acceptable, it is normal. In the Philippines every diner is expected to give the finishing touches to own his meal with what one food historian refers to as  ‘a galaxy of flavour-adjusters’.

These flavour-adjusters consist of a vast array of dipping sauces and condiments known collectively as sawsawan (pronounced sow-sow-won) that add depth to a dish by providing the accents of sweet and sour, saltiness and spice. The most common and popular accompaniments are patis and bagoong, salty sauces or pastes made from fermented fish and shrimp. You can also try soy sauce, vinegar, pickled green mango, native chillis and kalamansi.

And each diner mixes in his own preferred combination of flavours, enhancing his meal in an action so reflexive that at a recent workshop, most Filipinos were surprised when it was brought to their attention.

This participatory approach to food preparation is an integral part of Filipino dining, the key to Filipino cuisine, without which some dishes might taste a little bland.

On the other hand many of us non-Filipinos have come to expect that a green chicken curry will taste the same in Thailand, Tokyo or Timbuktu. This trend for homogenized dining began in France in the 19th century, when chefs began to write down their recipes for posterity and popular consumption.  Since then, the Thais, the Italians, and the Indians have followed suit. This standardization has become known as McDonaldization and it is a piece of marketing genius – which does not necessarily make it a good thing – but helps it to sell, as most people prefer to know exactly what they are going to get when they order from the menu.

This concept is totally foreign in the Philippines, where innovation is at the heart of Filipino cuisine. Doreen Fernandez, a renowned Filipina food historian claims that it is impossible to standardize the adobo, when every household boasts its own version. One local writer claims Filipino cooks have never been as innovative as they are today. Even as a group of celebrity chefs attempted to fulfill western expectations of standardization in the beautifully presented coffee table cook book Kulinarya, local restaurants continue to explore, creating imaginative blends of past and present, east and west. It’s what they do. It’s who they are.

Filipino cuisine is like halo halo: a mix of tastes, textures, cultures and colours. Or as local writer Molina A. Mercado put it so clearly:

Filipino food was prepared by Malay settlers, spiced by Chinese traders, stewed in 300 years of Spanish rule and hamburgered by American influence

Some call it the original fusion cuisine, but it is not the ingredients from different countries that are blended, as much as the entire menu: where sinigang, Hokkien noodles and paella may all sit together at the same table. And for 90 million Filipinos it is the best cuisine in the world.

Yet I have heard many Filipinos complain that foreigners don’t take Filipino cuisine seriously. They just don’t seem to get it. Many have had the cheek to insinuate that Filipino Cuisine is an oxymoron.  It seems to be one of the most misunderstood cuisines in the world

Personally I have had mixed experiences. Our first exploratory dining experience in Manila was a culinary disaster of fatty beef and tepid noodles. Since then, I have persevered, and I have discovered some dishes I thoroughly enjoyed, although there are still many I find challenging. However, I hope that is about to change.

At a recent food writing course, one exercise referred to renowned food critic Jeremy Steingarten, a fussy, faddish lawyer, with more food phobias than I’ve had hot dinners. The list of things he would never eat even if he was starving to death on a tropical island was longer than the list of things he actually liked. Realizing that he could hardly fulfill his new role as food critic for Vogue magazine with so many food ‘allergies’ he goes on a mission to overcome his finicky taste buds.

It’s a known fact – a standard Year 10 science experiment – that we can actually retrain our taste buds. No food phobia is innate. Force yourself to eat something you hate 8 times, and you’ll suddenly find you are enjoying it. As mothers, we’ve all done it to our kids: make them eat their broccoli and – short of power play – they will eventually like it.  I’ve even persuaded my husband to eat olives.

Now, in conclusion, I would like to take you back to that thought you were holding… remember? Like Harry & Sally, it is possible to adjust your taste buds and your expectations and learn to love something you thought you loathed. So, as Mr Steingarten suggested, I am on a mission to learn to appreciate the unfamiliar tastes and textures of sisig and sinigang, and to educate myself on how to apply the sasawan… I may have to draw the line at balut – “Avian infanticide” is just one step too far – But I already drink my kalamansi juice with-syrup-on-the-side!

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Tea with a Twist

Posted on 12 September 2011 by sheg4184


The first bowl washed the cobwebs from my mind –

the whole world seemed to sparkle

A second cleansed my spirit like purifying showers of rain

A third and I was one with the immortals.

Chao Jen, The Way of Tea, Tang Dynasty

 

It is my daughter’s eighteenth birthday and I wanted to take her somewhere special – a mother and daughter outing – to celebrate..

Now I have long had a penchant for a good old British afternoon tea, so when I discovered that the Manila Peninsula serves afternoon tea in the Lobby every afternoon, the decision was made.

Traditionally, afternoon tea was taken by the upper classes, a symbol of their wealth and position, when tea was highly taxed and highly fashionable. There are rumours that afternoon tea originated in France in the seventeenth century, tea having arrived in Paris almost twenty five years before it reached English shores. The Brits, however, claim it was their invention.

In 1717 Thomas Twining opened his first teashop for ladies in London. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Duchess of Bedford, who found the growing gap between luncheon and dinner quite enervating, had begun to make a social event out of a late afternoon snack. Consisting of bread and butter, small cakes and of course a pot of tea, it was served in the late afternoon (between four and five o’clock) and became very popular with the aristocracy. Eventually the habit drifted down to lesser mortals.

To me, afternoon tea whispers of a Georgian sitting room opening out onto an expansive English lawn; the scent of roses drifting through the windows; the gentle hum of bees; silver teapots, scones and cream and cucumber sandwiches. Or perhaps something ritzier at the Ritz or the Savoy with triple-decker cake plates, bone china and an optional glass of champagne.

I was hardly expecting to find the former in downtown Makati, but I hoped the latter might be a distinct possibility. We had not been to the Peninsula before. We were delighted with its understated elegance. Waiters drifted about in tailored Thai silk uniforms of chocolate brown. The tables were set with Minton Haddon Hall china and plain silver cutlery. The chairs were deep and decadent. Up on the balcony a flute and guitar duetted amiably.

Explanations – and drinks – were a little slow in arriving, but it eventually transpired that afternoon tea could be selected from the buffet whenever we were ready, and tea and coffee would arrive “in a while ma’am”. We also selected a lovely bottle of bubbles in honour of the occasion.

Wandering over to the buffet we discovered two tables laden with a profusion of dishes. The savoury table, while there was no sign of cucumber sandwiches, or even egg-and-cress, displayed baby quiches, crab cakes and bite-sized cannelloni, crab salad on slices of baguette, roast chicken sandwich fingers and tiny poppy seed rolls filled with roast duck.  A cheese platter and a fruit platter completed the display. None of these dishes were exactly traditional tea-time fare, but all fitted the bill of dainty finger food – except perhaps the huge dish of fettucine carbonara.

The sweet buffet was highly Filipino-flavoured. Apart from the ubiquitous scones which were served with lemon curd, whipped cream and a delicious strawberry jam, there was a rich chocolate pudding covered in flaked almonds, surrounded by a myriad Filipino-style cakes and slices: bikon pandan (think green gelatinous rice, like cold rice pudding squares, but surprisingly morish); cassava cake reminiscent of small slices of pumpkin pie; brazzo de Mercedes, which my friend Monique tells me is also called merengue and resembles the French dish ile flottant – an uncooked meringue roll filled with thick custard and definitely my new favourite.

Offerings can vary from day to day, but the tea stays much the same. At the Peninsula, they serve a variety of teas from chamomile and peppermint to Earl Grey & a range of special Peninsula blends. My favourite is the cinnamon tea. And if you are making a real occasion of it, let me recommend the Bridgewater Mill Sparkling Chardonnay – very tasty and decidedly cheaper than its French cousins!

All in all we had a lazy, luxurious afternoon. In the course of two hours, the tea pot was filled and re-filled , as were our plates. And it was a very peaceful and reasonably priced treat as a little time out for yourself or as somewhere special to take guests.

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Travels with My Daughter

Posted on 12 September 2011 by sheg4184

‘Gorgonians, black coral, shells, turtles, rays, grunts, jacks, snappers, and… soft corals.’ Luscious names that rolled off the tongue and tempted us to dessert the shopping malls of Metro Manila, rest our blistered feet and explore further afield. My husband suggested Eagle Point, a remote, unassuming resort near Anilao, Batangas.

It was mid-November. My daughter, her best friend and I had left Sydney with post HSC burn out, to join the rest of the family in Manila. The city was great fun, but not the R&R we really needed. Anilao sounded like a perfect retreat. We set out two days later armed with books, bathers, snorkel, goggles and my computer, as I would need to write smug emails to all my friends about life on a tropical island and cocktails by the pool.

On this, our first foray out of Metro Manila, our eyes were glued to the windscreen for the entire trip. Shop houses, rice farms, goats and caribou, provided a very different vision of the Philippines to the one from our 32nd floor apartment.  We loved the brightly decorated jeepneys and marvelled at how many people could squeeze into the low slung side cars of the motorcycle taxis.

Anilao is a brightly painted town hanging off the edge of a narrow, lush peninsula in southern Batangas. It is also a popular and accessible diving area, less than three hours drive south-west of Manila. A shuttle service can ferry tourists to and from Manila airport, but for locals it’s an easy drive, with parking on the road above the hotel and a hair-raising jeepney ride down the cliff.

It is a good idea to buy a package that includes all meals as access to other restaurants is limited. Luckily, the hotel menu proved to be surprisingly varied – for a short-term visit at least – and the bar was well stocked.

Eagle Point is not a high end resort, despite its claim to five stardom – if you are looking for luxury accommodation and kids clubs you may need to look further afield – but there is a water-slide, two split-level pools and a salt-water diving tank filled with grouper, baby sharks and a shy turtle that hides amongst the rocks.  We never found the games room, but apparently it has a dart board, table tennis and billiards; there’s an in-house masseuse and a tiny gift shop. A number of old aviaries houses some rather large birds including a horn bill and an eagle which may interest the kids.

We had been warned not to expect too much, so the rooms exceeded our expectations: simple, attractive and clean. Just make sure you are housed in the new part of the hotel and not in one of the old chalets. These were dark and run down and received a scathing review from one unhappy blogger!

While the girls relaxed by the pool, I set up house in the open air dining room with its panoramic views across the bay. (Well, I had all those emails to send!) With window boxes brimming with pink bougainvillea, a sea breeze drifting through wide open shutters and waves lapping gently below, I was in heaven. I discovered freshly squeezed kalamansi juice, ‘syrup-on-the-side, and the staff cheerfully armed me with a bottomless coffee pot. I typed happily for hours, distracted only by a rowdy gecko drunkenly chirping above the bar.

The beaches are not really beaches as we Aussies know them, unless you are familiar with England’s Brighton beach. Unlike Brighton, this rocky coastline is barely tidal, so the waves lap against the rocks mere metres from our balcony.  Hiding beneath the waves, right in front of the hotel, is a stretch of protected reef.

According to the website, the house reef was discovered several years ago by a British team of marine biologists. It is made up of ‘287 species of corals compared to only 50 species in the Caribbean and 250 species in our world-famous Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea.’  So the area is popular, not only with amateur snorkelers like me, but also with trained divers.

Snorkeling and scuba diving are Eagle Point’s main attractions. A dive shop concession stocks all the necessary equipment and internationally accredited diving courses are offered by qualified instructors. It is possible to dive here all year round, though, between July and September typhoons can cause choppy waves and poor visibility.

I have to admit I am not the bravest of swimmers, and was unenthusiastic about diving, but Eagle Point is an easy, unthreatening place to start: visibility is good, the sea is warm and there is a lot to see – although I was convinced that the rubbery-looking electric blue starfish had been strategically placed on the reef for our entertainment.

Having gained a little confidence close to home, we spent Day Two sailing out past Sombrero Island to Sepoc Point. Sombrero Island provides excellent diving, but you need to beware of strong currents. Unfortunately, the coral reef off the beach at Sepoc Point looked like a graveyard. Apparently a lot of the local reef has been badly damaged by explosives used for fishing and, sadly, old rubbish is all too visible. Nonetheless, the prolific reef fish (or ‘Nemo’ fish, as my daughter called them) kept us engaged for hours.

Our guides then cooked us a wonderful seafood barbecue on the beach, and as always it tasted better for the fresh air. Afterwards, we decided what we most craved now was ice cream. We headed back, happy and sun burnt, to the hotel fridge full of Haagen-Dazs.

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Signposts

Posted on 26 August 2011 by sheg4184

Hi! I am a travelling spouse!

I recently discovered this label in Manila and it mostly fits perfectly. On a bad day, though, it can make me feel horribly dependent and I begin to wonder who I am when I am not labeled ‘wife’ or ‘mother’. Five years ago I was yet again faced with that interminable, unavoidable travelling spouse dilemma. ‘What now?’

The yellow brick road had directed us back to Oz after 15 years away. We had chosen schools for the children and a house. We had unpacked a 40’ container, set up bank accounts, internet connections and our filing cabinet. My husband had started work. The kids were all at school. I finally had time on my hands, and it was time to get a job. But after years of traipsing the world through many countries that didn’t want foreign women in their work force, my examples of paid employment seemed horribly thin on the ground. As I tried to write an impressive and solid CV, none of it seemed to add up to much. My confidence was rapidly wilting. I crawled under the quilt and disappeared from sight for 2 days, drank endless mugs of tea and bemoaned my fate as an unemployable housewife.

Then, out of the blue, an old friend rang to see how I was getting on.

‘What am I going to do?’ I wailed from the depths of the duvet.

“Have you thought of studying’ she asked me.

‘Yeeeees, but what?’ I whined, querulously.

The answer made me clamber out from under the quilt with ears on stalks. A Masters degree in Gastronomy! Really?  Where could I sign up?

Now before you jump to conclusions, I will pre-empt a few common misconceptions. Firstly, I was not about to grab a telescope and become a stars-gazer. Nor was I a doctor wanting to specialize in stomach surgery. And I was certainly not aiming to become the next Nigella Lawson. I like eating, not cooking!

Gastronomy is an academic course that studies the business of food. My old alma mater provided a three year on-line course  that opened wide the gateway on the-world-according-to-foodies and showed me how Australian food culture had evolved in the two decades we had been away. We studied food history and the rise of TV cooking shows, we examined myriad international food writers, both fiction and non-fiction, and debated topical food related issues such as the effects of globalization on regional food growers. In the process,  it somehow validated a lifetime of disparate experiences and an eclectic employment history.It also, and most joyously, provided the perfect excuse for eating out a lot!  And it might just give me an entré into journalism, something I had always hankered after.

With students from  all over the world, coordinating different time zones for on-line tutorials was often problematic. But when it did work , it connected me to a lot of new cyberspace mates with a common interest in all things food-related.  The first two years were brilliant: academically challenging, intellectually stimulating and enormously confidence building.

The final year proved the highest hurdle to overcome: deciding on a topic, constructing a thesis, months of research, months of writing. My husband and children were endlessly patient with my regular breakdowns over deadlines, lack of direction and misdirections. I am pleased to say that I made it through, and my graduation was one of the proudest moments in my life. And just after graduation we moved to Manila.

So that signpost I came across while hibernating under my quilt may not have glittered like a disco ball, but it led to opportunities I could never have imagined! I have met so many fascinating people and learned so many amazing new things over the past 5 years. I have enjoyed numerous food and wine festivals, attended three Australian Gastronomic Symposiums and even  presented papers. The most recent conference was in Canberra earlier this year. The organizers asked for papers on, amongst other things, the effects of colonization on aboriginal foodways.  I spun this round to look at the effects of colonization on Filipino foodways.  Six months of research on Filipino food history gave me a fascinating insight into the culture, history and eating habits of my new host country. It even stirred up some interest from local food writers!

So I not only rediscovered my confidence, I located my pen and now I can’t put it down, having thought that part of me had long since been submerged and most probably drowned in the distractions of motherhood. I can’t promise you it’s any good, but it’s liberating, and I am loving it.

Sometimes life seems to get tangled up; plans go awry, and you feel like you’ve lost the plot. And then you find the page again and there is a wonderful clarity. All that has gone before makes retrospective sense –it validates that ticket you bought way back at the end of High School. It may not have been for the route you were planning to take at 18, but life is like that. Plan too heavily and it’s bound to go pear-shaped. But at half past 44, I have found a certain peace accepting where life has brought me. It has made me who I am and led me here. And it will presumably point the way to the next big adventure… because life is the journey, not the destination. Cheers!

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