Another side of Manila

On Saturday evening I met Tom Lee who is a cousin of Melinda, Mike Pucci's Chinese American girlfriend from San Francisco. Tom was born in the Manila but moved to California when he was 15 and lived there and other places until he was 50. He returned to Manila with his mother who wanted to live the end of her life there. He is divorced with 4 children. He had served with the U.S. Navy for 7 years and then worked in various companies related to Silicon Valley before returning to the Philippines. Now he lives "with the poor" in the Guadeloupe Viejo district of Manila where he runs co-operative business making soap, sausages, and other things while providing a bank of computers for people in the neighborhood in his living room. I went out with him on Saturday night and he showed me a few bars, one was a Japanese style karaoke bar and another was a salsa bar run by one of his friends. I met him the next day and we wandered the back streets not far from where I live to his district which was quite a contrast. I live in the high end high rises of Makati city and he is in a barrio like area where the jeepney drivers, those ex US jeeps and lookalikes, live. I took some pictures on the way there. A couple are of the back streets where the diner was right on the street and the other is a family eating out on the street. The street is more like a back lane. Another picture is of a make shift building where a new apartment building is going up. The makeshift building is where the workers live while they are working on the small apartment. Another picture of the manicured lawns is not 300 yards from the other area of people on the street. It is Rockwell and you could have dropped the shopping mall down from any suburban area in North America with Banana Republic, Office Depot, The Gap etc. There is not much distance between these areas but its clear who belongs where. There is usually lots of security around an area like this one. We kept walking but nightfall happens quickly here and by the time I got to his neighborhood it was dark. I took some pictures at the Church, which was built in 1645, where there were a group of kids running around who became particularly animated once I pulled my camera out. It was not clear if they were waiting for their parents or just kids on the loose from the immediate neighborhood. I got a movie of them but I am having difficulty getting it posted. The last picture is with Tom and his girlfriend Celestine in their kitchen after we just had dinner. The main dish was the chicken sausages they make and sell to hotels and restaurants. Tom says he provides about 10 jobs to people who may otherwise have difficulty making a living. Afterwards I took a "tut tut" which is a small motorcycle pulling a sidecar. We were going up and down the hills and I didn't think a few times that he was going to have enough compression in the engine to make it. He left me off in a transition area between the old section and the newer highrises and office buildings of the my hotel area. He turned around and went to where we had come from. I returned to the safe but somewhat deserted business district leaving behind the small back lanes full of people and the goings on of people going about their daily business.