In the ricefields of Nueva Ecija

I'VE just returned from a two-week trip to the Philippines, where I spent most of my time with a friend and his family in Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija, and not as I usually do in Metro Manila.

Around three hours north of Manila by bus, Cabanatuan City is surrounded by miles upon miles of vibrant green rice fields. When I mentioned this to another friend, he replied, "Of course, you're in the middle of the rice granary of the Philippines!"

I stayed with my friend Marvin and his extended family in their comfortable house in the Camp Tinio barangay, just a 15-minute jeepney drive from the center of Cabanatuan City. Although everyone in the Philippines calls anything outside Metro Manila "the province," the Philippines is so densely populated that one is never really far from a large urban center, especially on the island of Luzon.

Cabanatuan City, or Cab City as the locals call it, has at least three malls complete with National bookstores, movie theaters, Jollibees and Chow Kings. True it's a small city, but it's still a city. We watched "Spy Kids 3" with silly 3-D cardboard glasses at a movie theater, but neither of us enjoyed the story of kids being trapped inside an evil videogame. When we took home the glasses to Marvin's niece and nephew, they had hours of fun playing with the glasses.

The only real indication that I was in the "province" so to speak was the fact that I couldn't get a broadsheet newspaper in Camp Tinio. Tabloids were the only newspapers on sale, meaning that a trip into the city was necessary if one wanted a more serious read.

Although landlocked, fresh seafood is plentiful in Nueva Ecija, so I enjoyed eating delicious fresh fish every day of my vacation. We also enjoyed a multitude of fresh vegetables, many of which are not available outside the Philippines. On the second day of my visit, a sweet old lady pulled up in a horse-pulled carriage outside the house selling all form of vegetables. Marvin told me that she has been coming by alone every week for years, but now that she was older had a younger male relative helping her.

This being the province, people hardly watched television. But one day I had an urge to watch the news so I went next door to Marvin's sister's house and sat down to watch a slew of chinovelas, the Chinese soap operas such as "Meteor Garden" that have taken the country by storm. The members of the boy band F4, the stars of "Meteor Garden," don't have any acting capabilities in them, but the young nieces of Marvin swooned over them when we watched their show, one of them declaring that she found all of the boys "guwapo" and to die for!

"Endless Love," a Korean import, but of course dubbed into Tagalog, was another favorite that even the adults seemed hooked on. A sappy story of a beautiful brother and sister, who are not really blood relatives, madly in love with each other, made me roll my eyes in despair. Perhaps if I understood the Tagalog dialogue I would have appreciated the storyline more, but I somehow doubt it. A tale of love that is borderline incest but not quite, didn't appeal to me.

In any event, after watching the mind-numbing telenovelas, it was time for TV Patrol at 6:15pm. As luck would have it, I chose to watch TV on Wednesday, Sept. 24, the day that Kris Aquino spilled her guts to the nation on TV, telling Korina Sanchez how her boyfriend Joey Marquez had abused her physically and mentally. We all sat there with our mouths half open in amazement as Kris went through her long list of grievances, capping it all of with the news that Joey had given her a sexually transmitted disease. Thank goodness, none of the children watching with me asked what an STD was, the term flying over their heads.

I found Kris' whole performance distasteful. Did the whole nation really have to watch as she lambasted Joey for being a two-timing SOB? Why couldn't she have just broken up with him and moved on? ABS-CBN, Kris' network, of course tried to milk every little drop of the controversy that they could, and they succeeded. The ratings for TV Patrol that evening shot through the roof, giving them a majority of TV viewers that night. Joey was on at the same time on rival network GMA, giving his side of the story, but we never switched over to watch him. Kris' performance was just too riveting. In the end, I felt sorry for Cory Aquino, who must have died of embarrassment at the Kris and Joey show, and for Kris' son Joshua, who must think his mom is mad for airing all of her dirty laundry on national TV. Poor kid.

A few days before flying back to Jeddah, we got caught on our way back to Manila in a huge traffic jam on EDSA. What is normally a three-hour trip from Cab City to Cubao, took six hours! We were stuck on EDSA for three hours! It was madness! Later, friends told us nonchalantly that two cops had been shot dead near EDSA, this supposedly being a reasonable explanation for the gridlock from hell.

I chuckled the next day when I read that EDSA had been named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, supposedly for being the site of the original People Power protest that toppled Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. EDSA is so congested, polluted and gray, that I'm sure UNESCO has made a mistake. Perhaps they have never been caught in a horrific traffic jam in a heavy downpour on this famous thoroughfare.

In any event, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority czar Bayani Fernando seems to have succeeded in clearing most sidewalks of those allegedly pesky street vendors. We all know what Nazi-tactics were used to achieve that: Burning their goods and thumping vendors over their heads. Now, large billboards declare in Orwellian tones that, "The Sidewalks are for the Pedestrians", and public urinals have been placed every few hundred meters in the middle of the sidewalks. Painted a bizarre shade of purple, these smelly urinals proudly declare that they are: "Public male urinals". Now, don't you think the male part of that description is redundant to the extreme? Since when were there female urinals? Think about it, it doesn't take much brainpower to realize that Fernando has got it wrong once again!

Comments or questions? Email the author at: manilamoods@hotmail.com. Visit the author's website at www.manilamoods.com to read past columns.