"There used to be a rice field there," Tiya Maria, our landlady, said as she pointed to an area away, parallel to their old wooden house.
I looked in the direction where she pointed but the area was being blocked by a three-storey building.
"Yeah, I've heard. My Dad used to say that back in the 80's they used to shoot a lot of movies here - especially scenes that are supposedly 'in the province'. He used to live somewhere nearby when he was still studying in UP Diliman."
Lie number one: Dad didn't board in Krus na Ligas in the 80's. Lie number two: Neither was he enrolled in UP Diliman. He was an economics major in UP Manila before he flunked his subjects, lost his sholarship grant, then joined PMA. He had a few subjects in Diliman though (I wonder how light the traffic was then).
Lying to an old woman wasn't the point. At that moment, I just wanted Tiya Maria to continue talking about the old Krus na Ligas. I was curious of how it was before the buildings like the one in front of their house crammed along the narrow streets of Bruk Na Ligwak (As I and other members from UP Babaylan call it).
"It was a lot different from before."
Krus na Ligas is a sleeping city, literally. It's a sea of boarding houses and dormitories with an economy built around the meager budget of students, transient laborers, etc. (Rich kids stay in Loyola Heights or UP Vill, duh!).
Nothing fascinates me more than the redundancy of establishments in Bruk. Along the main street where the tricycle route passes one can find an internet cafe, a laundry shop, a carinderia or two, a pharmacy, a sari-sari store and another sari-sari store abundant of school supplies. And they appear again after every thirty steps or so.
<oops! off to PELANGUI. to be continued!>
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