On Fire Prevention Month: Let's All Save Lives & Property

According to the website of the Department of Interior and Local Government of the Philippines, March is the designated fire prevention month because the most number of fires happens during this month.🚒

And yet, on March 12, 2019, the second Tuesday of the Fire Prevention Month, all hell broke loose in the city center of Victorias just after lunch! Well, it was literally hell as a fire razed 14 houses and caused damage to three others in the city's Barangay 4 right next to a public elementary school, causing panic and grief to the students and the whole neighborhood.

The firemen and volunteers gathered 

at Quezon Street to help)

I experienced a fire in my neighborhood during my early years in Manila, Philippines. One was in Tambo in Parañaque City, where the third house from ours caught fire. It was a late Friday afternoon, just as I got back from work at Ayala Avenue in Makati City. There wasn't any fire truck in sight yet and Vina, our help, was crying when I got home; she didn't know what to do. I immediately got her upstairs, laid out a huge blanket, and put clothes on it: shirts, trousers, socks, underwear, towels and everything one would need in case you need to evacuate; and then tied them inside the blanket ready to be dragged out of the house if the fire came too close. I also told her to do the same with their own things. Fortunately, the fire didn't cross over to our fence but we ended up having a souvenir photo as the fire was razing the neighbor's two-story house along MIA Road. The next-door neighbor's (Tita Elsa Ardosa's) sofa was brought out into the street during the fire and we were already comfortably seated when I realized I had my film camera with me! Well, what do you do then? Take a photo, of course! Imagine this: it was early in the evening with no electricity on our four-lane road temporarily closed to vehicular traffic, the fire sirens were wailing, and the firemen were busy putting the fire under control. And there we were, sitting and posing on the sofa as the pedestrians walking past us were staring at the 'fire victims' who were having a photo shoot! In the middle of a fire! Ha-ha-ha!😆

(Students from a public school were 

nervously watching the fire from the school)

This time, however, at the Victorias City's fire, there were anguish and anger as the victims lamented the delay in the response of the local firemen. (Yes, I spoke to these crying victims as the fire was raging!). Witnesses even told me the city's fire truck didn't even have enough water in it, and it was the firemen and trucks from the neighboring cities and municipalities, including the Chamber Volunteer Fire Brigade and Amity Fire Brigade from Bacolod City, that successfully put the fire out. Thanks to all of them!🙇 Fortunately, no one was killed in the fire, only some livelihood of the victims who badly needed help after.

(Fire trucks from neighboring cities and 

municipalities came to help)

I would have enumerated the shortcomings of the local firemen's response but I was thinking they should know better how to tweak their system after the hullabaloo at the municipality of the neighboring Manapla when an early morning fire on February 15, 2019, broke out at their public market and the firemen had to be awakened from their sleep by a security guard of a neighboring convenience store and an empty fire truck had still to be filled with water. Sadly, all was razed that day. 😥

Compared to Manapla's, the fire in Victorias City was smaller. Here's the video of the fire:

It has been two weeks since the fire, and the victims have received a lot of help from their fellow Victoriahanons and are starting to get their lives back. Of course, local politicians were quick to grab the opportunity for a free ride on the publicity they could get using the fire victims for their political campaign as they posed for photos and uploaded these on social media. Well, this reminds of an American TV series titled 'Shameless'. Ha-ha-ha!😾 

I was thinking: these victims already lost their livelihood, but as local politicians were using them for publicity, the victims also lost their dignity.😡

(The yellow fire truck of Chamber Volunteer 

Fire Brigade from Bacolod City)

(The site of the fire has been cleared of some 

debris and burnt houses)

With help from private individuals as well as from the city and provincial governments using the taxpayers' money, the families are slowly rebuilding their lives and livelihood.

But you can still help them by visiting the area at Quezon Street (next to the public elementary school) where some of them have put up improvised shelters. You can just ask around where it is.😢

In the meantime, click this link on how to prevent fire:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/metro-manila/03/17/14/15-tips-keep-your-house-safe-fire

Dancing With The Cars: Meet Mr. Rene, Traffic Enforcer and Street Dancer

        (Street dancers at the Kadalag-an Festival)

The other day, I watched the 12 groups of barangay dancers that competed at the 2019 Kadalag-an Festival of Victorias City in the Philippines.

With their colorful costumes, make-up, and choreography set to upbeat music, they charmed and entertained the crowds lining up along the city's main streets. That night, the best costumed and choreographed street-dance performances went 
home with the top prizes.

(Graceful dancers in colorful costumes 

at the street dance competition.)

Strangely, a few days later and on the same street, a highway, actually, I chanced upon the most entertaining street-dance performance I have ever seen. This performance was unrehearsed and the performer was not even wearing any colorful costume unlike the dancers at the competition. 

As I was watching him dance, I told myself that if there's 'Dancing With The Stars' on television, in our highway, there's 'Dancing With The Cars'. I had to take his video!😛

The performer is Mr. Rene Abellano, an amiable traffic enforcer for 15 years. His traffic-enforcing-shift-slash-dance-routine was simultaneous with the dance number of a group of city employees performing at the plaza. The employees' music, blasting all over, provided something for Mr. Abellano to dance to.

And under the warm noontime sun, he gave the motorists, pedestrians, and me something to watch and enjoy! Carefully, the drivers of the passing vehicles, especially those big dump trucks and trucks carrying tons of sugarcane, kept their eyes on the road and not on his dance moves!😆

(Mr. Rene and his audience)

While he was giving out hand signals to the drivers of tricycles, transport buses, private cars, and trucks, his turns, side steps, and footwork were all synchronized with the beat of the music of Psy, Momoland, and other artists. Not only does he have traffic gestures, but he's also got rhythm!🙌

                (Traffic enforcer and street dancer)

After his performance, I had to run after him as he was making his way to another intersection. I showed him the video and told him that what he did was the real public service. He was not only effectively guiding the traffic but also providing light entertainment! Sorry to the winners of the street dance competition, but Mr. Rene is the best street dancer there is!

I'm not sure when I'd stumble again into's Mr. Rene's performance. But with traffic or no traffic, with music or no music, he is definitely the best street dancer this side of the globe. Or lane.😎

In the meantime, here's his performance:

Iloilo City's La Paz Public Market: Netong's Batchoy & Madge Café

The Philippines has a lot of popular merienda dishes and one of them is 'batchoy', a hot broth with noodles and a lot of other flavorful ingredients which I will enumerate later while salivating.😋

While I was growing up, I was never a fan of this dish because nobody at home seemed interested in dragging me to a 'batchoyan', the common name of a restaurant that serves this dish.  That's why batchoy never became a comfort food.😆

But over the years, whenever I got caught in a food arcade in Bacolod City where I didn't have any option but 'batchoy', I ended up slurping a bowl.

(Netong's is full)

In the menus and names of restaurants serving this dish, the words 'La Paz' always precede 'batchoy' because that's where this dish originated and these restaurants always claimed that their recipe followed the original one invented at La Paz, a district in Iloilo City, an old charming city in the middle part of the Philippines.

(Instagrammable Netong carrying 

a bowl of hot batchoy)

So, when my sister and I were in Iloilo City during the Dinagyang Festival, we made sure we got to slurp the real batchoy at the place where it was invented: the La Paz public market!😀

Right in the middle of the La Paz public market is Netong's, a batchoyan whose owner's great grandfather was said to have invented it by putting innards, noodles and flavorings into a hot broth from beef stock. Actually, it's more complicated than that.

                        (My batchoy and soda)

The real batchoy we were served at Netong's (the nickname of Leonito, the founder) was made of beef broth with bones (just like bulalo🐂) that has been cooked over low fire for hours, extracting the beef flavor, and added with fermented shrimp paste (bago-ong), with strands of egg noodles (locally known as miki) and slices of liver, pork, innards and cholesterol-high bone marrow, and topped with fried garlic, scallions and, my favorite topping, crushed chicharon!☝You can sprinkle black pepper or soy sauce, depending on your taste, and you can also have raw egg cracked into it for added taste and nutrition. 🐓

The feel of bits of crushed chicharon (deep-fried pig skin) in my mouth dancing in a spoonful of hot, flavorful broth mixed with innards was a lot different from the ones I tasted outside Iloilo City. This one was the real - the authentic - Batchoy!

(Outside the restaurant, they were 

cooking these innards for another dish)

At Netong's, you can pair the batchoy with puto, the kind that tastes creamier because it is made with coconut milk, although, for me, I'd rather have my batchoy with my favorite soda.

After batchoy, we wanted to neutralize the beefy flavor left in our mouths with coffee and dessert, and since we were already at La Paz public market, we headed to Madge Café, the market's famous and unique coffee shop.

As I ordered my go-to coffee drink of iced cafe mocha, the Madge Café waitress recommended cake to pair with it, and what do you know, she offered chocolate cake from Calea! Calea is a popular cake shop in Bacolod City and its popularity (and obviously chocolate cake) has crossed the Iloilo Strait! So we got a slice! 

But when she served us the chocolate cake, I had to tell her that we were from Bacolod City and that the best chocolate cake wasn't Calea's nor Felicia's chocolate cakes. It was Bar 21's! Yes, if you're in Bacolod City, make sure you visit Bar 21 and have a taste of their moist, chocolate cake with custard filling. 

Calea's chocolate cake and 

Madge Café's iced cafe mocha)

Madge Café, named after Magdalena, the wife of the original owner, has been there since 1951, and decades of serving good coffee inside an unassuming place right in the middle of a public market have turned it into an institution, attracting locals as well as tourists.

Well, after tasting Netong's, reputedly the best batchoy, not only in Iloilo City but everywhere else, my palate can now measure other people's batchoy version. 😄

So, if you're visiting Iloilo City soon, I highly recommend you drop by the La Paz public market to discover a real batchoyan🍲 and hang out at the city's most famous coffee shop☕.