Laking Las Piñas Ka Ba?

from left to right: Florence, Leslie, Lyn Antonette, Elisa, Felicianita and Josefina (1981)

Scrolling my Facebook page yesterday, I came across a fan page that sort of caught my attention – "Laking Las Piñas Ka Ba?". Thrilled to become a part of it, I immediately checked out the said page and got disappointed to find an empty page with only 52 members to brag about. And yes, 52 members was all it had and nothing else. No news, no postings, no nothing. Sob.

So what’s the catch?

I spent 2 wonderful years of my childhood in Las Piñas – from April of 1980 to April of 1982. I could still vividly recall how my mother shed tears at my father’s exciting news of having been promoted at work and us moving to Manila in the summer of 1980. Aside from having just moved in from Bacolod barely 2 years earlier, it must have been too hard for my mother to leave our then 6-month old, newly built house in Cebu, My eldest sister Ites got herself caught up in a dilemma too. Sometime in August of the previous year, she took effort in convincing our parents to allow her to study in UP Diliman for college but our ever conservative parents never entertained the idea of sending their children away for school. My sister took the UPCAT just the same but obediently applied for Cebu Campus instead. I totally had no idea how they came up with such a ridiculous and contrasting decision – of leaving my sister behind, under our Lola’s care in Cebu, while everyone else in the family moved out to Manila. Overheard our parents just days, maybe weeks after (?) saying it’ll be better for her to remain temporarily in Cebu while our father sought out a good school in Manila. What?! Anyway, after the first semester and perhaps a rather tough stay at our Lola’s, they finally decided to enroll her at a nearby school – Perpetual Help College of Rizal – Las Piñas. Aw naa ra man diay na!

My father, being a salesman all his life, has a special thing with promptness. He is always either early or too early in everything. Perhaps that is one reason why he opted to look for a house in faraway Las Piñas rather than in Quezon City or somewhere else nearer to civilization. I always thought the long and exhausting drive from Las Piñas to his office in QC was a joy for him. With our school (Las Piñas College in Pilar Village, Almanza) still a few kilometers away from our rented house at Gloria Diaz St., BF Resort in Pamplona, we had to be on the road by 6 am, lest he’d be caught up in traffic at the then South Super Highway. Everyday. And the earliest he’d be home at night was at 7, again, thanks to the bearable Manila traffic of the early 80s.

Being a new student had always been difficult for me. Speaking tagalog was even harder. But thanks to my fellow bisaya classmate Florence, who befriended me at once and made me comfortable sooner than I thought. And then came Lyn Antonette, Felicianita, Elisa and Josefina – these five girls made me a natural tagalog in no time at all. That was Grade 4. In Grade 5 came Simonette, Jona, Rommel, Jorge and everyone else. Even my adviser Mrs. Legaspi was extra nice to me (I had the privilege of keeping/getting to and fro her class records in a hidden box at the back of the room of Grade 6 section-I-could-no-longer-remember).

For 2 long years, I savored the adventures of a 10-year old kid in the laidback yet urbanized community of Las Piñas – riding a schoolbus (or jeep to be more appropriate) full of sweaty children everyday; eating lunch (from my masking taped-lunch box) either in school or at a classmate’s house nearby; endless bike rides with my barkada on weekends both in Pilar Village and BF Homes Almanza; after lunch and afternoon gatherings at our designated tambayan (a stumpy concrete street marker at the corner fronting our school); an exciting camping event in school that I wasn’t allowed to stay overnight; basketball games with my brother and his friends (oh how he hated me for tagging along but was always delighted to add me whenever they needed 1 more player as salimpusa); climbing our rooftop through our waist-high “swimming pool” or pasong at 2 o'clock in the afternoon; Friday family movie nightouts at Manuela Cinemas; bumpcar rides and video games at the back of RFC; swimming at the Philam Village pool; eating puto bumbong and bibingka outside the Philam Village Chapel at Christmas time; chasing dragonflies in school and hunting for fireflies in our frontyard at night; and so on and so forth.

And did I mention the suspense of riding our schoolbus with a drunken driver who expectedly hit an old lady at the corner of Almanza and Zapote-Alabang Road? Despite being blocked by bystanders, the driver still went on careening like a madman, then chased by a patrol car until he eventually stopped when a policeman finally pointed a gun at him! All of us kids were screaming upon seeing the gun! I was so stunned I was speechless until I arrived home, only then did I cry out of fear. Drama.

One time, Mrs. Ortiz (the schoolbus owner) thought we didn’t have class that day and so we (me, my classmate and neighbor Evelyn, her sister Rosemarie and 2 more younger boys) were left in school till dark waiting for our ride home. Payphones weren’t available then so we tried talking to another kid who seemed to have also been left out, asked her a favor to take us all home if ever her parents came to pick her up. Moments later her parents arrived at last – in a police jeep! We found out her father was a police officer who was good enough to offer us a ride home, and so all 6 of us kids cramped into their (or rather the government’s) beat up jeep. Trouble was, they still had to drop by the supermarket to buy some stuff before heading home. And so our delay was extended even more. You could only imagine how my mother reacted seeing me get off the patrol jeep at our doorstep! Haha! Comedy!

How I dreaded the time when my father got promoted again and had to uproot the family once more to a remote Davao. Adjusting anew to another environment and people was quite tough. And it was truly upsetting for an 11-year old kid who thought of nothing else but growing up with all her barkada around. Happiness at home was abruptly cut short to make way for a new, happy home.

I must say those 2 years of living in Las Piñas was even more blissful than my 7 years in Bacolod – for the simple reason of being already old enough and having the liberty to recall and enjoy every single moment of it. I will forever be grateful to my friends who made me feel at home and to my family for making it our home even for just a short while.

It took me 17 years to set foot again in Bacolod and 24 years for Davao. I haven’t had the chance yet of going back to Las Piñas ever since we left 28 years ago, which now takes me back to considering becoming a fan of “Laking Las Piñas Ka Ba?” – if only to be home again.