Ely's Insight & Reflection

California Pilgrimage

It has been a long time since I started my pilgrimage to California, 15 November. It is now December 4 and I am just writing about it. Well, there’s a good reason. I flew directly to Atlanta from Oakland the 24th and spent Thanksgiving with the family at our daughter’s place. Drove back to Virginia Saturday with Jim, Weez and their three boys and Lomy of course, then got slowed down with the bug I caught in California. I am still coughing and hacking right now. Anyway, Pilgrimage is usually associated with visiting sacred places as an act of devotion. However, its short definition is journey or trip. My pilgrimage is somewhere in between, though I did not visit sacred places, except the churches I went to on Sundays. It was a trip of devotion, devoted solely to spend a short but quality time with my relatives and high school friends. After my triple AAA (abdominal aorta aneurisms) operation in February I realized that I no longer have that cloak of invulnerability and made me see life in a different perspective, that life is short and I much rather see the people I care about while they are still healthy and more importantly, alive.
As it has become my habit to include minor details during my journey, which may be inconsequential and of no interest to you, it would help me remember later on what transpired, especially if there was a lesson learned. For example, Lomy and I drove twice around Dulles Airport to find the door to America West (HP), and we had to ask someone to find it. There was no America West sign outside the terminal. And how did HP equate to mean America West anyway? Why not AW? Anyway, the entrance to HP is the very first door of the departure terminal at Dulles (IAD), then you walk around the wall, on the backside of the American Airline counter you will find the HP ticket counter. HP flight 702 goes to LA with a stopover in Phoenix, no food served. I had to get off the plane in Phoenix and grabbed a hot dog and a coke and had to bring it back to the plane to eat it. The food lines were so long because airlines do not served food anymore and people are hungry. The few airlines that serve food you have to pay for it. The plane departed IAD at 7:40 AM and arrived in LA at 12:20 PM. Dayo Basco; my nephew picked me up from the airport and drove me to my brother’s (Toto, a.k.a. Doc, Don, and Doming) place in Cerritos. After a light lunch Ching, my sister-in-law and I went to visit Aida and Pong Gatdula a few blocks away. Aida is Frankie Junsay’s sister and Pong is a fellow-Army soup from Fort Stotsemberg, later known as Clark Field. Sad and at the same time I was elated to see Pong doing well considering he was in the hospital for three months after his most recent stroke. According to Ching “isang bulate na lang ang hindi naka perma”. For my American friends the preceding tagarbage (I coined the word tagarbage-Tagalog garbage), but the phrase itself is a Filipino idiomatic expression loosely translated in English-it only needs the last worm’s signature to seal his death. In other word, Pong was just one breath away from dying. But like I said he is doing well now and I was glad that I went to see him. We had a good time reminiscing about our escapades in San Francisco Del Monte. He has a tendency to fade in and out of the conversation. It was obvious to see because he starts whistling and will be lost in his own world then comes back and repeats himself. His favorite story that he must have told at least ten times “paksiw na manok”—chicken cooked in vinegar. There is no such recipe. However, he questions why not? Then he starts enumerating the different recipes one can do with bangus (milkfish); tinola, perito, sinigang, paksiw and so on all of which can be used for chicken recipe except paksiw. It’s funny and sad in a way to see two elderly people whose biggest problem of the day is what to eat for dinner. God bless them, they are happy and content. What more could one ask in life.
Sunday the 16th—Ching, Toto and I attended the 7 O’clock mass at St Pius the 5th at Orangethorpe. We whiled away the rest of the morning talking about the good old days until Frankie Junsay and his wife Claire picked me up at 10 AM. We drove to Glendale to pick up Daisy Bobis Ateinza, one of our high school co-graduates from U.P. High. When we arrived at Daisy’s house, the door was ajar and we can hear classical music playing. We knocked and hollered but no one answered the door. After several minutes of knocking and shouting Daisy’s name and still no one answered the door I personally started conjuring scenes that could have happened all of which were bad. After all we were in LA. So we pushed the door and entered into the living room, calling “tao po” Another Filipino expression tantamount to “is anybody home” but when literally translated it means “person sir” it just doesn’t make sense. Who said being able to speak different languages is a blessing, not when you try to translate idiomatic expressions. Anyhoo (my son Beau’s favorite transitional phrase), Daisy was taking a shower. We did get a little anxious there for a moment. From Daisy’s house we went to the World Buffet in Freemont to meet for lunch with our other co-graduates from UP High who live in the LA Area, namely Araceli Reyes-Agoncillo and Vic Martin and their spouse, Boy and Erling, respectively. Prominently absent was Lualhati who was in Germany and Noli Maceda and his wife Connie who is recovering from a recent operation. We ate and talked for two hours continuously. We said our good byes in a traditional Filipino way, in stages with hugs and kisses. Five minutes of goodbye when we got up from the table. Another five minutes when we reached the front door and then another ten minutes when we reached the parking lot. And what did we talk about that we haven’t mentioned in the first goodbye? I guess you can say it’s a Filipino thing, right? As if we were not sated with all the food we consumed, the next stop we made, halo-halo at the Goldilock Restaurant in Vermont, minus the Agoncillo’s who couldn’t make it because of another commitment. We spent another hour enjoying the halo-halo and each other’s company and I can’t even remember what we talked about during that whole hour. By the way, Daisy paid for our lunch and the halo-halo. Thank you Daisy. We parted ways with the Martin’s after the halo-halo and proceeded to find our way to Frank Burcelis house somewhere in the temple area. Frankie Junsay was the only person who has visited Frank Burcelis so we were no help in locating the house. It took a while but we finally found the house. Frankie Burcelis is one of my dearest friends whom I shared some of my happiest days as a teenager. He used to stay at our house for days. He is actually my brother Diok’s contemporary. But since we double dated a lot because his girl friend is the sister of my first ever girl friend we became very close. Those were fun times. Anyway, he remembered Frankie Junsay but he didn’t recognize me at all. I was sad to see him the way he is now, frail with failing memory, just a shadow of what he used to be, a decathlon athlete of Far Eastern University. He used be what you may call a real hunk in his youth. Frankie Junsay asked him who I was and all he said was “his face is familiar but I couldn’t remember the name”. When Frankie Junsay told him “si Ely yan” he grabbed me and hugged me. That moment saddened me so much that I may have shed a tear or two. It was only two years ago when we last met and we had fun reminiscing about our adventures and misadventures with our girl friends.
We left Frankie Burcelis with a heavy heart but at the same time glad for the chance to see him again, hopefully not for the last time. We dropped off Daisy then went to the Junsay’s house in Stanton. We watched the rerun of the championship fight between Pacqiao, not sure of the spelling (Filipino) versus Barera (Mexican). Hurray for the Philippines, Pacqiao won decisively. After the fight Frankie and Claire drove me to Cerritos. I knocked on the door and no one answer so I went back to Frankie’s van where we talked some more waiting for Toto to come home. It bugged me to see why the lights in house were on. So after ten minutes I knocked on the door again and this time Toto answered the door. He was in the house all the time but did not here the doorbell or my knocking the first time. It has been a long wonderful day.
I will pick up from here when I return. It’s getting a little too long so take care and good night.
Ely