MATABUNGKAY

Yes, this is late, and I know this blog has been a bit image-heavy recently, but that's tough, you crybabies. I'm still on a fucking dial-up so don't come whining to me. Anyway, on with the show...

Not much to say about Matabungkay. It was fun, I guess, but being trapped with your family and relatives can be tiring. It was a little disorienting to have neither a television, computer, or telephone anywhere near you. Thank Christ someone thought to bring a radio, and that I had a few discs in the car, or I'd have gone insane. For the 3 days and 2 nights we were there, I must've played around 400 games of Pusoy Dos. There was just nothing else to do after reading Chris's comics and JG Ballard's A User's Guide to the Millennium. The adults, instead of Pusoy Dos, had Mahjong.

Glowsticks do not float, but can be seen underwater. That's something I learned. And Tigerfish are really dangerous.

My cousins and brother all wanted me to take "Friendster userpics," wherein they would pose and I would try to take a flattering picture of them. Kids these days.

The soundtrack of this getaway was: DJ Shadow (Endtroducing... & The Private Re-press), UNKLE (Do Androids Dream of Electronic Beats? 3 discs), Nirvana (Incesticide, Nevermind, & In Utero), Sonic Youth (Dirty Boots EP, Invito Al Cielo with Jim O'Rourke, & Kim Gordon side band Free Kitten's Unboxed), and The Best of Hanna-Barbera.

This is my cousin Raffy asleep on the hammock. He wraps it around himself to keep mosquitoes from desiccating him.

This is my cousin Pia. I waited and waited but she would not look up. She doesn't like to smile for pictures. But she does like her shells.

My turn on the hammock, with my magazine of choice, the Lapidary Journal. You can't trust your precious gems to just any hokey magazine, you know.

Here's what we did when we weren't in the water.

Here's our parents' version of Pusoy Dos (closer to Tong-its, actually).

These are the balsas at low tide. They just wash up on shore.

This was our balsa. My first time to use one of these things, actually.

2 consecutive artsy-fartsy pictures of the balsa, this one with the negative space on top...

... and this one below. With an anchor, if you look closely.

Our ambience.

That's my dad and my ninong floating. The adults don't really swim, they just float and lounge in the water like hippos. I had to wait a while for them to line up so I could take this shot but man was it worth it.

This is an ice cream vendor with his cooler on a flotation device. He'd swim from balsa to balsa, family to family.

I was walking around the compound our relatives rented and came across this stack of black wooden crosses with garlic hanging on them. In October they line the driveway with these crosses to ward off evil spirits. Creepy. Thank God we didn't come here in October.

And a hallmark to end our post. Low tide sunset, my cousins collecting shells on the beach. All is tranquil.

Now back to life.