Everybody's friend
Visiting places becomes fun and very productive when you have a friend who resides in the area or is familiar with the areas to be visited.
Our recent trip to Luzon was blessed with the presence of Delfin, our friend since the 70's. It was our sister Marilyn, his officemate then, who introduced him to us. He would visit us in our home and we, in turn, would visit him in their home in Cavite. When we went to Japan, he also came to visit and stayed with us. Now, that we are back from Japan, we visited and stayed with him recently and learned so much more about him, his family, and more about the various Luzon places we visited.
Their former Bacoor, Cavite home has grown into a palace, we teased. Gone are the wooden houses, the rice fields surrounding the houses in their neighborhood, the rustic, rural ambience. Stone and cement houses and cemented roads are now common in the area. They remain blessed, however, to be living among extended family members in the same street or in nearby areas. At the corner is a bakery with fresh delicious pan de sal ready for breakfast. A few steps away is their Parish Church, with daily Masses for their spiritual nourishment.
Cavite appears wider to us now, though still deeply class-divided, as we moved, by car, from Bacoor to Silang and towards the nearby province of Batangas. Travel to Cavite from Metro Manila has been shortened by expressways. Businesses have also moved south, followed by workers, to Cavite, to Batangas, to Laguna. These three provinces are slowly giving up their agricultural lands to factories, to tall buildings, to subdivisions. Commercialization has also taken on a similar face –with chain stores, fast food establishments, and hotels as common landmarks of so-called "progressive" cities and towns.
For example, while Tagaytay has retained its natural lake and volcano, hotels and restaurants have pushed away what used to be a beautiful, natural landscape. Traffic has also accompanied this so-called progress. Commuters know when they are in Los Baños, Laguna, because of the traffic. From Magallanes to Cubao, expect at least a 2-hour traffic jam, we were told.
Unlike progress, friendship, gratefully, remains untouched and even deepens through the years. Also, despite distance and traffic during our various Luzon trips, laughter and exchanging of stories among friends completely eased the long hours of traffic and travel.
Our friend Delfin regaled us with his stories about his various jobs before retirement, his visits to various countries, and happily introduced us to radio stations that carried songs that we all enjoyed when we were younger. Then we realized that he was not only a friend to us –he is everyone's friend. Wherever he went or worked, people naturally warmed up to him because of his cheerful, generous disposition. Delfin made Senator Joker Arroyo smile because of his thoughtfulness and thoroughness in his work as his chief of staff. His jokes are unforgettable. While working in Congress, he remembers how a legislator asked about "unfulfilled" positions or when another tried and after several attempts finally reached the correct statement–"when the President had been dead," when the President has been died," "when the President died!"
He gets endless invitations to be ninong and to visit his friends in London, in America, in Japan, in Singapore, name it, he has friends all over the globe! And he always has time for every friend, us included. Never ever a dull moment with him, Delfin is a gift from the Lord for each and every friend he shares his time, thoughtfulness, humor, laughter, and tears with.
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