Rediscovering Manila

The first time I heard about Luneta is when I’m in my kindergarten days, when my Mom and her friends go to Luneta Park with my little sister and it was 19 years ago. I envy my sister during that time when I came home and saw their photos taken from the place. I was in my first year high school when I got the chance to step in the place and it’s 12 years after I saw their pictures. I really missed the chance to get there when I was a little one but for me it’s never too late. I remember that time how our teacher in grade one appreciated and loves the place, according to her (Ms. Francia L. Canoza my favorite teacher) we should appreciate the place as part of our being a filipino, it’s the place that we should be proud to other country. The place was so festive and busy when I had my first visit in the place, the colors of balloons and kites from the sidewalk’s vendors will add more colors to the young eyes. Photographers and other remembrance stuff are all over the place ready to take some photos for you, I must say Luneta Park is a sign of a busy and healthy community, the small business in the place is so alive. Now 13 years after my first came over to the place, I came back to Luneta Park and wandered the place like a lost insect looking for its insectopia - happiness perhaps. I realized that it still as the same place as my first visit, aside from the additional attraction and other commercialize buildings around the area, I can say that Luneta Park has came from a long way, it’s more beatiful now and I can say one of a must-see places in Manila. I feel at peace and relax in the place and yet the sign of busy people at the place was not there, it’s only the birds, trees and the sun are the familiar faces I have seen there. I clearly saw the effects of the commercialization to the place, malls and other attraction somehow lessen the number of its visitors. Photographers of the place are still there, but the advance technology killed their business, digital cameras are now man’s best friends and most of the people in the place has their own digital camera on their hand - cellphones to be exact!

Luneta Park is one of our identities as filipino, it’s a place where change and progess are in. Change and progress that the we never realized for a long time, but it happened for years… There’s a lot of reality in this place, reality that we opt not to realized. Who would have known that you need to pay for the used of C.R in that place when we already paid the people who maintain the C.R.’s through our taxes we paid every month? Who would have noticed that we have 2 fellow filipino people who work in the place under the sun to stand and guard the monument of Dr. Jose Rizal, which show how hard to earn a bucks in our country… remember we’re in tropical country and we’re not like France where they have a fine and cold weather? Who would have known that the place is really great when nobody wants to talk about it, because they always have this motto: “Luneta Park is such a cheap place, it’s the place for PROMDI (from the province) people only” and they’d rather go to SM Malls? Who would have known that vendors who don’t have stall in the place will be apprehended by the authority once they’ve been caught (I asked the girl whom I bought a sweet banana que and maruja)? Who would have noticed that the Memorial Clock was sponsored by BULOVA and now has a BU–VA the LO from the word has gone and it’s pronounce as BUVA? Who would have noticed that the two iconic statue of the animal near in the Memorial Clock are came from two different kind, one is a “carabao” and the other one is a “tamarraw”? None of these things you will know unless you opt to know. Sometimes its our obligation to know things that surrounds us so we will see things with our own rationale.