This used to be my playground

I love the song of the same title but this is not what it's about.

I have lots of places that allow me to relish my childhood, the hectare wide or so General Textiles compound that is now sprawling with high rise condominiums and shopping enclaves that is now known to everyone as Eastwood City.

Over at the GenTex Frisco compound,I know the place like the back of my hand. I can still see it so vividly in my head. I know every nook and cranny of that darn place; what fruit bearing tree stood where, the stone pavement textures and where each pathway leads to.

Here's where i and my cousin would pick guava, chico, duhat, kamias, macopa, star apple, santol and mangoes either by climbing or shaking trees, sometimes we'd use a stick with a wire hook at its tip and catch our harvest on our shirts. There goes my farmville, of almost the real kind. I have a swing dangling by the avocado tree that nanay would tear down every now and then cuz i wanna be pushed high enough to rise over the roof. When i look back at it now, it really was kinda dangerous.

On bright days, we'd be trailing back to our grandmas with our catch for the day. Most times, a catfish takes our bait of swamp snails and then we'd relish our catch by slicing the poor fish in half to watch its tail wag before the cook Eddie plunges it into boiling oil. Some days, we'd bring home a pail of snails and have it cooked in coconut milk. There are days when we couldn't make makeshift fishing rods cuz we couldn't find sticks and thin wires and somebody kept the roll of thread from our reach; this is when the tadpoles experienced the wrath of 2 silly little girls. Eventually, the tadpoles grew into little ugly jumping maniacs and i couldn't get near the swamp anymore, froggy days aren't funny. It took me until biology class to get over frog phobia.

And then there was Ali Mall which is practically an extension of the Fersal apartment compound we resided at for a few years. Here's where i and neighborhood kids run to on weekends, blazing the vinyl tiles in Skatetown even before in-line skates or 'roller blades' was made popular. Our sometimes over-the-top 'taya tayaan' game would stretch from P.Tuazon st. To the mall.

Ali Mall was also an after school destination in high school to which julie, kath, sugar and i would frequent record bars for the latest music releases. This was of course at the time records are worth owning and cassette tapes weren't yet obsolete.

Back in the day, the mall was far behind on its interiors, it had orange tiles that were popular in the late 70s to the early 80s. Today, it's paved with modern gloss white tiles that give it a squeaky clean look. The lighting has changed and like a nursery classroom, Ali Mall looks smaller than i remember. The shops i used to go to are still in their spot and have all managed to slip in renovations to get on with the advancing times. The building now connects via a skywalk from SM, cool addition, very metropolitan and about time actually.

There goes my youth,revisited. Now, i'll relish happier times with a pack of jellyace minus the Rainbow Brite packaging design.

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