Dispatch #07: Memories from Manila
Before living in London, there was my life by Manila Bay
Courtesy of my Uncle
I used to wake up and see the ocean. The bit of the South China Sea that pooled into Manila Bay. From January to December I watched fiery sunsets and lighting crack open the sky, battering winds break palm trees and mighty waves engulf the flooded promenade. From where we lived, I watched the hum of traffic and listened to the cascade of beeping car horns and the quirky, distinctive sound of Jeepneys speeding along Roxas Boulevard.
If you looked out the window from the living room, you could casually watch people, almost at arm’s length at the Grand Boulevard Hotel. A mix of foreigners and locals sun-bathing poolside. As a child, I’d watch the water erupt as other children like me, canon-balled in and observed the adults tentatively wading through the water, taking a break from the relentless heat. I remember the sound of their joy float into the room, mixed with traffic horns and street vendors shouting from the busy streets below.
The apartment building itself is a living and breathing relic, steeped in so much history. History blurred between facts and he said she said. The apartment blocks, North and South Syquia were built in 1939. A pair of veterans towers surviving the Battle of Manila in 1945. They remain seemingly unscathed, just a bit of wear and tear from time passing. But if you look closer, you might find shallow holes and grooves in the concrete. The adults tell you, that apparently they’re bullet holes from a violent time so unimaginable at 6. Unlike the former heart of our city, Intramuros, they stand, tall and unwavering, just missing total annihilation.
I understood later on in life, that the buildings in the 70s and the 80s were home to Manila’s bohemian, artistic crowd. Which makes sense, when I think of how we got there, my parents always looked for a richness in character in people and places. I obviously don’t remember the notorious parties that these apartments are famous for but I remember the people, the sense of community and the electric environment that encompassed living in Malate. The slowly dimming centre of Metro Manila, vibrant and always alive, always beating.
I remember people like Mila, greeting me every morning and every afternoon after school, taking me up and down the building’s hauntingly original elevator. I remember the kids me and my brother played with, they came to our birthdays, played with us on some humid afternoons after school - there was always someone to ride your bike with in the small concrete parking lot. I remember trips to the local store, Aristocrat, with my late Yaya, buying ensaymada and stuffing my face with this cheesy, buttery, soft Filipino pastry and saving the radiantly purple Ube Puto bumbóng for later. In my mind, it’s easy to recollect buying garlands of dried sampaguita from street sellers by the church across the road to hang around the neck of the saint that perched in our room. In the centre of old Manila, of organised chaos, I made my first memories. Life as I knew it was vibrant and a mix of the old colliding with the slow development of the new. It was the comfortable in their high rises meeting the poor at their front door. I think in me it instilled a love for fast paced big cities, and even now in London, nothing really compares.
I have visited a few times since we left and moved to the suburbs. My uncle still lives there, Mila still sits at her desk on the ground floor. I’m not sure where some of the kids are and I’d like to think they romanticise this short intertwining of our lives like I do. So much of me feels held there, a big part of my history and my life. A few fading but important memories of people gone, that I miss so much still today. Plenty of moments when the world felt uncomplicated, and the worst thing that could happen was my brother ripping off the head of my Barbie as revenge for breaking his Power Ranger.