The Banig of My Childhood

It was no thicker than two cartolinas and measured two by three meters. Yet it was big enough to contain the memories of a languid childhood and siestas in the afternoon.


A colorful banig from Basey, Samar

Many years back when we were still between the ages of nine and thirteen, every afternoon on school breaks, my sisters and I gathered in the sala and set aside the sofas to spread out the banig on the floor. We packed our then still slim bodies across it and tried to catch the sleep that proved to be elusive in the wake of anticipation of the playtime that was to come. So we closed our eyes and pretended to sleep when Mama would come around to check or else forfeit the snack that was to be our reward for taking the afternoon nap.

Then on weekends, my cousins, aunts and uncles on my mother's side would converge at lola's house and the result would be one fun ruckus. We slept on the floor, on banigs rolled out in the sala while the adults played mahjong.

We bought the banig from from the stalls lining the street immediately after the post office building, just below the Gran Hotel that never was. There you would find(and still find) all sorts of banig (sleeping mats) made from the "tikog", a reed plant that thrives in swampy areas. There were the colorful ones which are more expensive and then there were the simple mats which could only be rolled as it was too thick to fold unlike its more colorful sisters. All these mats were sourced from the small coastal town of Basey, Samar, the place where the paraglaras (women weavers) make the banig beneath its cool caves.

The banig we used to sleep on many years back has long been tucked away and is now frayed at the edges. It has since been replaced by the new one I bought, and like in my earlier years, my daughter now sleeps in it for afternoon naps after being lulled to a slumber by the tv and a bottle of "susoy" (milk). The banig of my childhood has now come full circle.

(Photo courtesy of Bimbo Tan of OTOP Phils.)

My Blue Ocean

I am a baby to the world of blogging having discovered the joys of "at-the-click-of-a-button" online publishing just this July. In the beginnng words like "html", "css", "widgets", "templates" were as comprehensible to me as French, meaning none at all. In time I could talk about them with the working knowledge of wannabe techie. I learned by assimilation and I learned by osmosis, visting other blogs and different help groups and fora. I posted my queries and got my answers in nanoseconds (a new kind of time division in the virtual world)

I started with a very personal blog, one that contained mostly musings, ramblings and occasional rantings. Then I made one that had a specific market in mind, a niche, you would call it, catering to people of my hometown who have gone on to search for the veritable greener pastures and have uprooted themselves from the place they called home. But then a technical glitch occured forcing me to make but yet another blog. Just in time as I came upon a discovery in my blog surfing, my niche was not a niche after all. So many blogs were made for the same purpose and contained similar posts that my site was drowning in the ocean of millions of blogs. It was time to create my blue ocean. My blue ocean in a sea of "waray waray" blogsites.

So what is to be expected from this blog? As its title suggests, it shall contain stories uniquely "waray-waray", of what makes him tick and what sets him apart from the rest. A post shall be a story in itself and, if time and inspiration permits, worth retelling. I do not have yet the means of how to achieve this, what I only have now is the vision. But as they say in the movies, "it started with a dream...".

HOme is Now Also Here...

Welcome to my new home... I decided to add this new blog as a technical glitch happened in my earlier blog.

I'll be building everything from scratch and the task is quite daunting. Stay with me as I still have to get my bearings. Just like moving out in real time and in the real world, moving in the virtual world means a lot of adjustments to make.

But I will continue to make posts in everything waray until waray in the city gains enough viewership. Just like a mother hen, the former will still be very much around until her chick, waray in the city, can cluck on her own. Or I might decide to continue maintaining both blogs so do visit both.

To all that have taken the effort to click on the link from everything waray, I'll endeavour to make this a better blog. Hope you return for more. Till my next post...