May 30, 2012 - Dormitory Dwellings

The Busy Streets of Molino

I totally forgot to introduce myself! My name’s Elisha Deogracias, and I’m a Canadian-born Filipino. My brother is Elijah, which may make it a bit confusing, but I’ll try and distinguish us both.
…But little did I know that I would wake up three hours later. While I felt exhausted, I was ready to continue the day. Today we were heading to my brother’s school, De La Salle University in Dasmarinas, in order to check out his dormitory while he was at orientation with Grace.
When we were getting out of the street to head to the university, I spotted a stray dog checking out the houses on the street. “There’s usually stray pets around,” my mom explained, “but they’re pretty street smart. He’s just looking for something to eat.” Throughout the ride, I spotted a lot of dogs and cats; it would be kind of cool to adopt one (although it would be a bit illogical). We arrived at the dormitory of the university after having lunch with my brother and Grace (who had a break from their orientation). Afterwards, we went up and made a checklist of things to buy for his room, and headed to the local SM (shoemart) mall to get supplies. I wasn’t confident with my Tagalog skills, so I decided to follow my parents and relatives to the supermarket.

These things are huge! There were three floors (even though I only went to two stores), and there were tons of customer service representatives to help us, which was a little intimidating for me: silent mute mode it is. While I don’t have pictures, the supermarket looked reminiscent of a large Walmart. After we got the stuff, we headed back to the dorm where Grace and my brother were waiting for us. My cousin Erwin, who is currently enrolled at the school, was also present and helped us unload the materials to my brother’s dorm. The dormitory is a bit like an apartment complex, but more open-air. While my relatives stayed at Erwin’s dorm, I decided to go to my brother’s. He talked about a difficult pre-test he had during orientation and then started to doze off. I watched him sleep for a few minutes (it’s a part of my creepy charm, trust me) and then drifted to sleep on his couch. After we settled the stuff, we decided to get some dinner at another mall. Sometimes I just want to equate Filipino malls to supercenters, since everything’s in there. In SM Molino, we went to Max’s, a Filipino restaurant (which shouldn’t be confused with Mac’s, the Canadian chain of convenience stores) to eat some chicken, lichon, as well as halo-halo and some other foods I can’t recall at the moment. I wanted to check out the rest of the place, and my mom wanted me to buy some puto (a Filipino rice dessert), so I decided to head to the Goldilocks (a Filipino chain of bakeries) to try and procure some. However, while I was now confident to head out on my own, I totally choked on trying to pronounce what I wanted, and it came out as something like the word but... different. Let’s leave it to being a bilingual bonus if you know Spanish or Tagalog. The cashier looked surprised, but then I ended up repeating “puto” correctly and she seemed a bit relaxed. Perhaps I should brush up on my Tagalog, I thought. There wasn’t any unfortunately, so I ended up getting polvoron (which is a dessert containing flour and sugar; it’s a bit like a malt of flour). The day finally over, everyone came back a bit exhausted.