Walking in this city
To those who like walking, this city offers a choice between getting sideswiped by a jeepney or contracting lung disease. If you want to stretch your legs in the open air you have to take your walk inside one of the ghettoes (Forbes, San Lorenzo etc), eliciting the suspicion of security guards (Not only are you a stranger, but you’re not driving!), or wait until the weekend when the Makati business district is mostly empty.
The UP campus is a great place to walk; getting there in this traffic is a tribulation. (By the way, has the crime situation been dealt with?) We end up going to the mall and walking back and forth, forth and back, seeing the same stores and the same displays over and over until we buy something out of sheer boredom.
A few weeks ago, to relieve our tedium, we decided to take a walk at Bonifacio High Street. The weather must really be broken because this summer is balmy, not infernally hot. Lately it’s been cloudy, which is our favorite weather for walking. We were walking down the street when we noticed this.
We felt like Balboa on first seeing the Pacific Ocean, yes our lives need excitement. The High Street has been extended! And the new complex is actually nice, with wide paths and lots of places for people to sit (Serendra is cramped, fussy and the artworks are too big for the space; the older High St looks like an outlet mall in Nevada).
The new restaurants look interesting: Italian, Japanese, Mediterranean/Asian (Mediterrasian?), Filipino, desserts, juice. We had the Reuben sandwich and the red beet burger, both very good although Ricky thinks the red beet should be served as a wrap rather than a sandwich. Last night Otsu had the salad with caramelized onion tarts and we had the beef belly, both very good. For dessert we had the Cecilia: meringue and coconut cream works.
Another suggestion: The stairs leading to the fountain are nice, just the right height, but at nighttime the edges are hard to see. They need to put more lights (but that would take away the effect of the lights under the plant boxes) or attach some sort of fluorescent thingy on the edges so people with poor depth perception (points to self) don’t stagger.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 29th, 2012 at 08:39
Walking is one of my hobbies. I can walk and walk and walk. I remembered walking all over Makati City back in the day. It takes my mind off things. It’s like therapy without going broke lol!
I loooove what they did with Bonifacio High Street!!! For me, it’s like Greenbelt 5 but in Taguig hahaha… I’m a big fan of wide, open spaces. I hope I can say the same for Eastwood City but no :(( Claustrophobia lang ang peg, grabe!
March 29th, 2012 at 10:10
I like walking around the MOA complex. I know it’s a mall but it’s so big you can still get lost. And sometimes, I can forget that I’m still technically in the metro. Best times are weeknights a week before or after payday when the crowds aren’t so big and the seaside walk isn’t too dirty.
March 29th, 2012 at 13:04
I have the same problem with those stair edges in the High Street extension. I keep tripping. Better lighting would be nice.
March 29th, 2012 at 19:46
RE: The crime situation in UP Diliman. After my laptop conveniently “disappeared” on me not too long ago (and by “disappeared” I mean “inabangan ng masamang tao na makakarma din pagdating ng araw”) I’m convinced that the criminal elements are pretty much around, especially during the evenings. That hasn’t stopped folks from walking the circle, though, and some of them have even started wearing fanny packs. The only upside is that University police now have plain-clothes personnel going around the circle on mopeds to watch for suspicious activity, and all of the gates (aside from Philcoa) now have a “no sticker/no entry” policy.
Most of the UP-system murder/assault cases (I count the Elbi assaults as two from UPLB and one from Open U) started with criminal elements eyeing important stuff such as laptops and smart phones; in Lordei Hina’s case, she may have been using one of the three ATMs at Vinzons Hall while the bad guys waited for her. (That case is still pending prosecution; of the other attacks, only Given Cebanico’s case in Elbi has been successfully solved.) A friend of mine said it best: “Pag may nasaktan sa Quezon Hall, yun na.”
Other than that, incoming and outgoing traffic to UPD still sucks.
March 29th, 2012 at 19:52
Also: I never get tired of walking through Trinoma, though I’m afraid that I might end up memorizing the place by next semester. SM North bores me, especially the Annex with all the scary glass railings. The only compromise is the SkyGarden, even though it gets crowded and the carousel drives me nuts.
March 31st, 2012 at 11:44
The new complex harbors rats (I only saw one cross my path, but I doubt it doesn’t have a peer group) behind its perfectly trimmed shrubbery. Oh well, even Paris has ’em.