Homesick

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, 1490-1500

Other than Brenda and Linda, there isn't much to complain about regarding my situation here, C. However, I'm more interested in how you're doing. During our last call, you sounded depressed. You mentioned yours and Fran’s anxieties got worse post-covid and that you two were having some kind of pre-elections blues.

Life here is the complete flipside of our life in Manila. Our work setup is now hybrid, and we are no longer in a state of total lockdown. Unlike Manila, the streets here are bustling, and the supermarkets, pharmacies, parks, and public transportation are fully operational.

Like a caged bird, I never truly knew freedom until I learned how to fly. I take full advantage of this by exploring the city after work and on weekends.

The city is beautiful, C. Probably too damn beautiful. It's killing me. Where there are bare public walls street artists can freely graffiti on or big ass laboratories filled with expensive gizmos scientists can tinker with to explore their neurotic minds, in other words, where there is a city congested with culture and creativity, there is life, so much life, and not so much room for darkness and depression.

God. I miss our awful country. I miss our jeepneys belching pollution and tuberculosis. I miss our public hospitals infested with rats and cats and necrophiliacs. I miss our education system, corrupting innocent minds. I miss our government. That's right, C. I miss our dirty government who, like the common pickpockets here in the first world, loves pickpocketing taxpayers' money. I miss their permanently plastered fake smiles on billboards and banners, claiming credit for the supposedly renovated public schools and basketball courts last summer. I miss the relentless rants of old cabbie's expressing their hatred for the government and vaccines. I miss EDSA traffic. I miss the early morning queues at the MRT. I miss class suspensions. I miss Manila's knee-deep floods, contaminated with the urine of dead, bloated, leptospirosis-infected rats. I miss damp school socks. I miss Manila Bay's technicolored sunsets and its coastline overflowing dolomite and garbage. I miss our humid air, thick with the pungent stench of the burning Smokey Mountain. I miss the tambays drinking kwatro kantos and kids sucking cheese-coated fingers after binging on Lumpia Shanghai. I miss bbq and isaw and betamax drenched in Jufran, soy sauce, Salmonella and Hepatitis A. I miss street kids in their best breezy Sunday outfits dating after mass and the sky high confidence of the pack of angry taong grasa ruling Ermita. But you know what I miss most, C? I miss, oh, I miss most especially those face shields, those damn useless China-made plastic face shields that diminish and fog up the world-class beauty of the Philippines.

God. What I would give for the first worlds to experience our charming country.