1. Visiting museums. Firstly, the Quezon Memorial Shrine. This houses the mortal remains of the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines (a commonwealth being, in this sense, a kind of half-way-house between colony and independent state), as well as a museum detailing his life history. The shrine is surrounded by a pleasant park known as the Quezon Memorial Circle. This, in turn, is surrounded by a multiple-lane highway, which seems a tad odd to me... (There is, if you look carefully -- which, last week, we didn't -- a pedestrian access tunnel. Plus, the metro line that they're building is going to have a station right in the park. But even so...) On a Sunday morning, the park is a hugely popular place to walk, jog, do fitness-dancing, play badminton, watch the fountain, eat, drink, and shop. After enjoying all this bustle for a while, we toured the museum, which added a few more touches to our impressions of Philippines history.











We also visited the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, which very movingly documents the period of martial law under President Marcos and the suffering it caused.















2. Making the most of the University of the Philippines Diliman. What a lovely campus for a start... So vast and green and park-like. This week we briefly toured an exhibition at the Asian Center called (Com)Modified Bodies, which focuses on different ideas of beauty, and the lengths we go to (cosmetically, surgically, and/or ornamentally) for the sake of having the body we want. Related to this was a book launch on "chemical youth", featuring research carried out in the Philippines and Indonesia on the ways young people use chemicals to alter their bodies. Later in the week I went back for a roundtable/forum on Filipino nurses and care workers in Japan. Another fascinating piece of the people movement puzzle.







3. Enjoying more good food. This week's samplings: Crepes and galettes from our local branch of Cafe Breton; palabok (noodles topped with a shrimp-based sauce, crunchy bits of something, and boiled egg) from Teresita's; and mango and sticky rice from Via Mare, next to the Asian Center. And it turns out the Wheatberry bakery/cafe, just near our hotel, not only does exquisite dulce de leche cheesecake, but also offers corned beef sinigang (sinigang being a tangy, tamarind-accented broth) and lumpia salad (all the veggies and crispy bits from your lumpia, but without the wrapper).







4. Celebrating. We had Valentine's Day lunch back at Romulo Cafe. I really love this place. It's Filipino cuisine at its finest in my book, and for what you get, not too expensive. As it was 14 Feb, we kind of pushed the boat out a little... For the record: Smoked bangus pate (nearly as good as kipper pate) served hot with pandesal croutes; chicken cooked adobo-style with coconut milk (gentle but with a flick of spice); crispy deep-fried pork cooked with tomatoes and bagoong (sensational, definitely food for grown-ups, and if you're wondering, bagoong is a fermented seafood paste, with a "salty, aged, rich fish flavor" that makes it "the blue cheese of the sea"; it is a relative of similar products in other parts of Southeast Asia); lumpia hubad (again, all the stuff that normally comes inside a lumpia, with two sauces to pour over). As we left, they presented us with little Valentine's Day roses -- marshmallow, surrounded by cake, coated in chocolate, and decorated with hearts. Super-cute!



And we celebrated Lunar New Year (with most of the Philippines, it seemed) at the SM City North EDSA mall. On the agenda: Chao fan with dumplings at Chowking (don't snear -- it was pretty good); Philippines coffee (from Ampucao) at the very sophisticated Dark; lots of lion and dragon performances (which was good, as I'd been feeling a bit deprived of CNY festivities); and an amusing interview by a group of students who were doing a project.









5. Just snapping the streets....