So when my neurologist, Edmundo Saniel, pronounced me well but in need of a break to stop two weeks of off-and-on migraine attacks, all it took were a few minutes of packing a bag and sending a sick leave notice to my school supervisor and I was off before you could say, "Biyaheng Baguio."
And my first moments there were spent chomping down a grilled burger at the Hill Station which is turning a year old in March. It is a local success in terms of adaptive re-use of a heritage building. The lighting inside the restaurant is soft so it doesn't trigger a dull, throbbing headache. While awaiting my order, I went down to Mt. Cloud and was gladly "robbed" of a few hundreds of pesos for books and stationery (I reserved some more for another visit).
One evening during this recent week-long break, my old man asked me to follow at Hill Station where he was having dinner with former colleagues Glenda Gloria, Ed Lingao and photographer Melvin Calderon. He hadn't seen them in more than decade, and not even Facebooking could replace eyeballing and reminiscing aloud about good old days in the old-fashioned newsrooms when reporters like Ed could be mentored directly by the desk person assigned to his copy. Today, newsrooms are not the noisy hubs they once were as all communications are done by cell phone or email.
Glenda and Ed were still around when desk persons like Rolly Fernandez and myself walked around with cricks on our neck (from taking long dictation of reporters' stories filed from the field by phone). They say there is little interaction between copy editors and reporters/correspondents these days, and this is one reason the latter don't improve and commit the same errors over and over. But let's not get into that.
I was quite pleased that evening because Melchor the waiter was by our table. He's an amiable fellow, and Melvin correctly guessed that he was named after one of the Three Kings and his birthday fell on Jan. 6. On both counts Melvin was right. Melchor added the info that his second name is Gaspar. Bingo!
Hill Station's moving spirit Mitos Benitez Yniguez brought out a plate of a dessert that was on try-out stage. By the time I return in March, I hope it's permanently on the dessert menu. It's no other than DARK CHOCOLATE brownies. Yes, no typo there. I emphasized decadently dark chocolate. The swift, trigger-happy photog Melvin made sure that the leftover brownies that go well with Benguet coffee were wrapped in a paper napkin and stashed in his camera bag.
After all that fine dining, I had to return the favor to the old man who had gallantly driven me around town and cooked three big meals on the Sunday when my art tutor Norman Chow, his son Chino and I did the final details on my paintings for next month's Nineveh Art Space show in Santa Cruz, Laguna.
I treated him to a Café by the Ruins lunch yesterday--the works, from soup to dessert. As for myself before I took the journey to Work Land, I just had to have my lemon chiffon cake and eat it, too. Sa muling pagbabalik (kain)!
Top photo by Melvin Calderon shows Glenda, Rolly, the blogger and Ed Lingao after a satisfying dinner.
Lower photo is the stuff of my fantasies: lemon chiffon cake
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