incessant rambling

ask any filipino who is the patron saint of cebu and most would answer "Sto. Nino". the Sinulog, arguably the largest and grandest filipino fiesta, is dedicated to Sto. Nino and this reinforces the thought that the Child Jesus is the patron of the province. which is not exactly right. The Lady of Guadalupe, a persona of the Virgin Mary, is the patroness of Cebu. last holy week i took my boss to visit the cave in Langub where the original image of the Lady of Guadalupe was found by a local trapper of chicken sometime in the late fifties(?). the story goes that devout followers of the Lady of Guadalupe kept the image inside a cave up in Kalunasan to ensure that it is not confiscated and destroyed by Japanese invaders. after the war, the image was left to memory until that day that the local trapper stumbled across a cave overrun by shrubs that covered the entrance and the hills that surround it. if you're planning to do a trek to Langub, you may want to visit the Guadalupe ...

this one's really late. i went up Good Shepherd with my boss who was in town as he wanted to experience some of the filipino cultural and religious activities during holy week. i decided to have him go through the Stations of the Cross in banawa since i haven't been up that trek. it turned out to be a fantastic photo op as the place is gorgeous with rolling hills, trees, blooming flowers and life sized sculptures depicting the stations. the only disappointment is the array of vendors littering the place that turned an otherwise sombre experience into a fiesta. i'll probably schedule a visit when it's all settled down. enojoy!

if a picture is worth a thousand words then i probably have to use 3,000,000 words to describe the 3,000 or so pictures in my library. sifting through the collection made me realize that i have so much stored memories of places, events and people. unfortunately, i don't get to see myself that often in majority of the pics. i literally have a backlog of posts that i need to put up: Taal Vista, Guadalupe, Caohagan ad infinitum.   the holy week was literally a penitence as i probably walked, hiked, huffed and puffed through 15 kilometers of urban roads, mountain trails, highways etc etc. my boss was in town for the holy week and i (foolishly) offered to show him parts of cebu that would have been otherwise missed by regular visitors. heck, most cebuanos don't even get to visit some of the places that we visited. in any case, my boss didn't count on the fact that it was the holy week - i would have felt guilty if i let him stay in the hotel thursday to sunday, totally "...