bowling in Baguio City
……Nick came up from Baguio Gold after his chores so that we could go together to Baguio City and register him for Taekwondo training in UFC Fitness Center. Upon arrival downtown, we checked my mailbox for his birth certificate again (not there, alas). Then we crossed Father Carlu Street, walked toward the cathedral and descended into the Porta Vaga Building that the diocese owns to go into UFC’s martial arts school.
……I wrote an application for Nick, as he didn’t seem to care to write his name, date of birth, address, parents’ names, etc. I paid P3250 for a registration fee, one month tuition, uniform, punching pad and one month locker rental. Then we walked down the semi-famous staircase leading to the Porta Vaga building to Session Road’s east sidewalk. We crossed Session Road to Pizza Volante to have a lunch of pizza and pasta. We sat close to a huge, floor-to-ceiling ‘picture window’ beside the sidewalk, so we got to see the parade of humanity alongside us as we waited for our meal and I perused the newspapers.
……Several people noticed me behind the glass because I don’t look like an average Pinoy. One man, carrying five unframed paintings on canvas, stopped on a dime when he spotted me. He began showing me each painting in turn and pantomiming that the paintings could be rolled up. Because I didn’t ignore him in favor of a newspaper page but looked at the paintings of volcanoes and rice farmers and water buffalo, the vendor assumed that I was interested enough to buy one.
……Although I had never looked at his face, made ‘eye contact’ or gestured to him, he felt that he should come into the restaurant to sell a painting. Oh, boy. I hadn’t expressed any interest and hadn’t beckoned him. As he approached our table I buried my nose in a newspaper to read of the Philippine Olympians’ medal prospects. He was soon ushered out by a Pizza Volante manager.
……After lunch, Nick and I walked north to Tsiong San Harrison department store’s cell phone department to pick up two cheap Motorola phones that I’d seen days before. I had not found a cheaper deal on a new phone in Baguio City. I paid P1180 ($27.26) for each Motorola W156 so that Nick, Dominic and I can communicate with each other. A SIM with a 30-peso load & 25 free texts was included with each. So I didn’t have to pay 100 pesos for two S.I.M.s plus buy minutes right away.
……As we approached our favored barber shop, Nick asked if he could get a haircut. So while he got cut, I set up our new phones. I asked if Nick would like to try bowling “American style” in the ten-pin bowling alley that I’d found in Center Mall. He was game, so we zig-zagged to center mall and hiked up to the fifth floor. As an American, I wouldn’t expect to see a twenty-four lane bowling alley on the top floor of a shopping mall. But here’s one that I found a week or two ago.
……So we got shoes, walked to lane 22, away from the practiced, proficient bowlers, slipped on our shoes and chose balls. Nick is small, so we got three of the lightest balls, in bright pink, for him so that he could try the different grips that they offered. I got three dark green balls because they have much larger finger holes.
……In playing, I soon settled on one of the balls because it had the loosest finger holes. Although Dominic has said that pro bowlers’ fingers audibly ‘pop’ out of the holes, I wanted an easy release! In my fourth and sixth frames I rolled strikes. Nick, who is too small for his age, even as a Filipino, has small hands and little fingers, so he didn’t want to bother trying to grip the balls by using three holes. He just cradled the balls in both hands and tried different ways of swinging them and getting them onto the lane. He almost always bowled them from left to right across the lane and often got a gutter ball. If he tried, focused on the pins down the lane rather than looking at the floor twelve feet in front of him, he could manage to roll a ball all the way down the lane, somewhere near the center, and knock down six or seven pins.
……After one string he said that he was tired, so we returned our shoes, paid for the game and went downstairs to street level. We went through Shoppers lane to arrive at General Luna Road. We boarded a Tuding Express jeepney to return to Monterrazas Village. †