A Whole New World
Welcome to the big city. From O’Reilly’s via one pleasant but lost cabbie (we had to ask for directions twice) I arrived at "The Fort" & swiftly located the Bellisima Bar courtesy of Joel’s excellent directions. Joel had not arrive yet however, which set up a humorous bit of circumstance involving me eyeing a group of people who looked a bit like well dressed ultimate players & later I found out they were eyeing the dude in the corner with his Martini wondering the same (minus the well dressed part, or course). When I noticed that someone was stamping the hands of people as they came in I was pretty sure these were the kids I was looking for and so started a crazy evening of meeting people & learning about the Manila Ultimate scene.
It’s a wonderful group of people with a surprisingly few number of expats from what I know of the Asian ultimate scene & they took care of this vagabond with grace & style. After the bar I ended up heading home with Rob & another expat named Erick, who lives and plays in Singapore. Both are in their early 30’s. We picked up a bottle of Tanduay (rum) on the way home & ended up throwing disc, drinking & trading stories in Rob’s "backyard" which just happened to be a polo field until 7am in the morning!!
This was not, in fact, some new way of warming up for a Hat Tourney; which was good, as we did not rouse until 2pm. Exorbitant amounts of rain from a friendly nearby typhoon postponed the tourney until next weekend L . As sad as this is, it did provide an excellent chance to get to know some kids from the community here.
Sat afternoon, after breakfast at the polo club, we joined a practice of one of the local teams for a few hours. I know of no better way to deal with a hangover (besides avoiding them in the 1st place) than playing it off with some good disc. The rest of the night Rob continued his wonderful hosting & showed me around some of the town, eventually dropping me off at Dale’s house, another expat, around 1:30am for the night.
The cycle of communities taking care of their own came full circle here as Dale & his wife are both RPCVs from Cameroon in the early 90’s! They both teach now at an International School here & appear to be doing quite well for themselves. The life of an expat! Manila’s a big city, no doubt, but according to the Economist a few weeks back it’s a big city at 40% the cost of living as New York. Dale played for UC Santa Barbara back in the day & made a few urns at Nationals & also practiced for awhile with the Condors post PC. He happens to be running the team we practiced with. Ironically, for me anyway, the team is named Jeepney, and I wonder how many of them have actually ridden on one (Dale tried it twice). They certainly aren’t using them as their main for of transportation. My 1st impressions, backed up by Dale, is that the Ultimate community here is fairly affluent.
Dale is definitely into the disc scene up to his eyeballs & I picked up on a lot of the local gossip & battle lines from here throughout the day. No worries either way though as Jeepney appears happy to roster me, and I don’t live in town so I can hopefully avoid most of the politics. This gives me a place to play for the upcoming league if I’m ever in town as well as a team to play on for the next big international tournament, Manila Spirits, in November. If I needed anymore reason to get back into peak condition I’ve definitely found it here. Now all I need to do is turn that drive into reality back at site. If I pull it off though I should only need one tourney to earn my absentee spot on the playing field. It would be a great chance to travel South East Asia & meet a lot of cool kids along the way. That’s all a long way off though, right now I’m just happy for a place to play some disc.
The rest of the weekend was fairly tame with Dale & Sonali taking excellent care of me. I spent most of Monday camera shopping in the same HUGE mall I was in on Friday, think a sprawling version of the Mall of America that is, if anything, slightly bigger. After that, it was a great lasagna dinner (cooked up by the maid), and off to catch my bus home.
What a weekend for scoring on the material side too! Besides free lodging, plenty of meals and some alcohol I also ended up with:
It’s a wonderful group of people with a surprisingly few number of expats from what I know of the Asian ultimate scene & they took care of this vagabond with grace & style. After the bar I ended up heading home with Rob & another expat named Erick, who lives and plays in Singapore. Both are in their early 30’s. We picked up a bottle of Tanduay (rum) on the way home & ended up throwing disc, drinking & trading stories in Rob’s "backyard" which just happened to be a polo field until 7am in the morning!!
This was not, in fact, some new way of warming up for a Hat Tourney; which was good, as we did not rouse until 2pm. Exorbitant amounts of rain from a friendly nearby typhoon postponed the tourney until next weekend L . As sad as this is, it did provide an excellent chance to get to know some kids from the community here.
Sat afternoon, after breakfast at the polo club, we joined a practice of one of the local teams for a few hours. I know of no better way to deal with a hangover (besides avoiding them in the 1st place) than playing it off with some good disc. The rest of the night Rob continued his wonderful hosting & showed me around some of the town, eventually dropping me off at Dale’s house, another expat, around 1:30am for the night.
The cycle of communities taking care of their own came full circle here as Dale & his wife are both RPCVs from Cameroon in the early 90’s! They both teach now at an International School here & appear to be doing quite well for themselves. The life of an expat! Manila’s a big city, no doubt, but according to the Economist a few weeks back it’s a big city at 40% the cost of living as New York. Dale played for UC Santa Barbara back in the day & made a few urns at Nationals & also practiced for awhile with the Condors post PC. He happens to be running the team we practiced with. Ironically, for me anyway, the team is named Jeepney, and I wonder how many of them have actually ridden on one (Dale tried it twice). They certainly aren’t using them as their main for of transportation. My 1st impressions, backed up by Dale, is that the Ultimate community here is fairly affluent.
Dale is definitely into the disc scene up to his eyeballs & I picked up on a lot of the local gossip & battle lines from here throughout the day. No worries either way though as Jeepney appears happy to roster me, and I don’t live in town so I can hopefully avoid most of the politics. This gives me a place to play for the upcoming league if I’m ever in town as well as a team to play on for the next big international tournament, Manila Spirits, in November. If I needed anymore reason to get back into peak condition I’ve definitely found it here. Now all I need to do is turn that drive into reality back at site. If I pull it off though I should only need one tourney to earn my absentee spot on the playing field. It would be a great chance to travel South East Asia & meet a lot of cool kids along the way. That’s all a long way off though, right now I’m just happy for a place to play some disc.
The rest of the weekend was fairly tame with Dale & Sonali taking excellent care of me. I spent most of Monday camera shopping in the same HUGE mall I was in on Friday, think a sprawling version of the Mall of America that is, if anything, slightly bigger. After that, it was a great lasagna dinner (cooked up by the maid), and off to catch my bus home.
What a weekend for scoring on the material side too! Besides free lodging, plenty of meals and some alcohol I also ended up with:
- One Digital Camera! A gift from my wonderful, visually starved parents who would like proof their child is not starving J . I didn’t realize how excited I would be to take pictures of all this cool stuff!
- One International School dark green collared shirt that did not fit Dale.
- One Mangina cotton Ultimate Jersey. #2. Open Team from Regina Canada. Much thanks to Erick’s surplus on jerseys and generous soul.
- One borrowed book from Dale.
- One old school Gunnies Hat. Its not Che, but it will do.
- One Puzzle, again from Dale & Sonali.
- Life is good.
posted by george at 7:00 PM
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