Explorer

chijmes

cathedral of the good shepherd

What I love about living in a foreign country is the feeling that I am always travelling.

I know Manila. I've lived there all my life. Sure, there are a lot of new developments but life is routine and places are in general familiar.

Here, there's something new and undiscovered around the corner. There are still a lot of places I have never treaded upon. I like the feeling of just walking and getting suprised at what is on the next street. (Of course, the nice thing here is that one can actually walk and roam the streets. It's harder to discover and revel in discovering new places while inside a car peering through tinted windows as we do in Manila. Maybe that's part of why I like travelling - to satisfy the explorer and the walker in me.)

Take one weekend for instance, I wanted to visit Raffles City since I don't really go there plus to scout a hotel for a friend. I went around the mall, ended up going to Chijmes (an old convent school turned into a F&B complex) which I have only visited once during a rain shower. I was there during sunset when the place was bathed in the yellow light and it was quite beautiful. A street away, I found a church, decided to go inside and lo and behold, a service was just starting so unwittingly, I was able to attend Mass for the first time since I got here.

Another weekend found me running errands to buy cookies for my sister then stumbling upon the hawker center in Esplanade, sitting down for a snack admiring the bayview while a concert started up.

I love the spontaeinty of suddenly just finding myself do something unplanned and on impulse. Back in Manila, things aren't so quite up in the air. We eat here, shop there, drive here. It's all so specific and sometimes, there is joy to be found in being lost. There is a sense of wonder in stumbling upon something. Losing the routine, losing the schedule, losing the map, losing oneself in the streets... and afterwards, realizing that getting lost means a chance of finding the unexpected.