Pictures and Thoughts from a Break

During my last stay in Manila, a break I desperately needed, I took some photos of the area around the hotel I stayed in. Ever since childhood, I've always looked out the window whenever I needed to do some serious thinking. Somehow, the sight of all the life that goes on around me helps stimulate my mind. Although I'm going to present the photos I took, I'm not really going to talk much about the places shown on them. Instead, I'll write some of the thoughts and memories that came to mind as I cast my eyes on them.


The photo above shows the northern portion of Makati Avenue. This was the view from my hotel window. On the left is the Millenium Plaza Hotel. It looks spanking new but when the SO and I did some research about it on the internet, the hotel got some pretty bad reviews for customer service, safety, and in-house dining.

On the right side of the street, one will see a small white building with a maroonish-colored roofing and where the top three floors are all glass. That building houses the Great Eastern Hotel and the only reason I mention it here is that its first two floors also house the Aberdeen Court restaurant. This restaurant was a popular place for wedding receptions back in the 1970s. An aunt and a couple of cousins had their wedding receptions there at the time.

Back to the left side of Makati Avenue above, you probably won't see it but there's also a branch of the Barrio Fiesta restaurant where the SO and I had lunch one day. The kare-kare was still very good, exactly how I remembered it to be. We also enjoyed tall glasses of sago't gulaman.


Above photo shows the southern part of Makati Avenue. The SO used to work in one of the buildings shown, one where she got her start in the industry she's currently in. Yours truly used to work on Dela Rosa Street, right off of Makati Avenue. The building I used to work in is no longer around for it was demolished several years ago to make way for a high-rise condominium.

I absolutely love the area I stayed in. There was an abundance of 24-hour restaurants and fastfood places to pick from for a jet-lagged guy like me. So many changes have taken place in this town ever since I left years ago. No doubt that there will be more changes in the coming years for such is the way of Life.


I took the photo above to document, in my own small way, the passing of an old Makati landmark, the GilArmi Apartments. GilArmi was said to be one of the first serviced apartments and/or condotels (condominium-hotels) in Makati and in Asia. It was built in 1962 and was owned by the late Filipino millionaire businessman Virgilio Hilario and his wife, Armi Kuusela, who gained worldwide fame back in 1952 when as Miss Finland, she was crowned as the first Miss Universe.

Please accept my apologies but due to rather severe technical limitations, my camera wasn't able to zoom in enough to provide you with a much closer view of the building. It is the smallest building you will see in the middle of the picture, specifically the one immediately to the right of Rustan's, the one with a construction crane on it. You won't miss it while driving on Ayala Avenue because its demolition is in full swing. I believe that a high-rise hotel and condominium will soon rise on its site.


The photo above shows the stretch of Kalayaan ("Freedom") Avenue that lies west of Makati Avenue. Immediately to the left of Kalayaan Avenue, one will see the roofs of houses in an area that's part of the Bel-Air Subdivision. The vacant lots one sees to the right of the avenue mark the spots where the old International School of Manila used to stand. Kalayaan Avenue in Makati City ultimately leads one to the old Pasig Line in the neighboring Santa Ana district of Manila.

"Pasig Line" referred to a tram (tranvia) line that used to run on the entire stretch of what is now Kalayaan Avenue during the early part of the 20th century. The "Pasig Line" tranvia route began its operations in 1908 and commenced from Paco Station in Manila and ran all the way to Pasig. The destruction wrought by World War 2 permanently ended the line's operations. But as recently as the early 1990s, sections of that old tranvia line were still present on that stretch of Kalayaan Avenue that lies east of Makati Avenue and leading to what is now the Rockwell Center.

Going back to the picture above, a lot of the land around Kalayaan Avenue, specifically the sites of Bel-Air and the old International School of Manila (which opened its Makati campus in 1960) were developed in the latter part of the 1950s. Our family has had a presence in Makati since the 1930s back in the day when Makati was still part of Rizal Province. I was told by my uncles that prior to their development, a lot of the land surrounding Kalayaan Avenue consisted of wet fields of kangkong (water spinach) and rice fields.

It was a story related to me tinged with quite a bit of regret because some time during the late 1940s, way before the above land was to be developed into what is to become the Makati we all know today, some parties had approached my grandmother offering to sell some of the land for 10 centavos per square meter. My grandmother turned them down by remarking, "Ano ang gagawin ko sa kangkungan?" ("What am I going to do with a kangkong field?") Looking at the photo above, apparently a lot.

It was a lesson learned. For us, my grandmother's words have come to symbolize an opportunity lost and the need for foresight in planning out our lives. Thus, growing up, my father taught me to not only look at things the way they are, but to also consider the possibilities and opportunities that could arise out of them.


Above is one of the sights that greet me whenever I looked out my hotel window. Upon seeing it, I immediately thought to myself that here's another man's dream rudely interrupted. Except that I didn't realize until later how grand the dream was.

The property is now surrounded by GI sheets used as temporary fencing and on one of those sheets, hangs a sign that said "Eaton". Once I got back to the States, I did some research and found out that this was planned to be a 64-storey building and envisioned to be the tallest structure in Makati. 28 floors would have been allocated for a Holiday Inn Hotel and the rest would have been for office spaces, amenties, serviced apartments and residential suites.

I feel a certain sadness when I see projects such as this come to a standstill. Not only do I feel bad for the people who dreamt about it and planned for it but I also feel bad for the people who are desperately in need of jobs who could have found gainful employment in such a place. I hope for everyone's sake that the dream that fired this project up has not flamed out permanently.


Above is a shot of the northeastern view from my hotel. In the foreground it shows Makati City with the high-rise condos of Rockwell Center surrounded by homes. On the other side of the Pasig River is Mandaluyong City with its now impressive skyline. Took this photo mainly because my sister works in one of the buildings shown. The hills in the distance are the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains. It is in one of those foothills where the school I spent my elementary and high school years is located.


This photo of the Touch of Hands Clinic & Spa was also another sight that greeted me whenever I looked out the window. Given its proximity to Makati and Kalayaan Avenues and to lively Burgos Street, this place must be doing very good business. A Korean restaurant on its ground floor called Gela caters to the Korean community in the area. Although smaller when compared to other Korean restaurants in its immediate vicinity, it also attracts a fair amount of customers judging from the number of cars I always saw parked in front of it whether day or night.

Tucked in one corner of this property is a Money Changer. There seems to be a lot more of them all over the metropolis these days. It's a good sign really because of the convenience such businesses provide. It allows one to exchange one's dollars to pesos in a legal, arms length transaction and a lot of them stay open 24 hours a day. This money changer was my favorite because I noticed that its rates were often better than the others in the area. Plus, it always advertised its conversion rate for the day through a sign it hangs prominently on its front window.


Finally, a shot of someone who left his bakeshop for a few days for some much needed R&R.