Villa by the cove

It seemed like it wasn’t going to be summer as I was still stuck in the university giving petition classes, attending planning workshops, and doing a lot of paperwork. On top of that, there’s the yearly art workshop I had to give at a gallery café and exhibits we had to mount.

Summer wasn’t going to be vacation time until last weekend when I finally had to decide to leave Cebu for Surigao City to attend the 40th birthday of my brother Charlo (Sorry, but I’m not telling if he’s  older or younger than me). After spending a night in an inter-island ferry, I was finally home.

It was only a year since my last visit but the changes in Surigao’s skyline is already noticeable from the deck of the boat as it approaches the city’s coastline on its way to the harbor. The old Tavern hotel rises with its new annex building, a sleek tower of shining glass and cement facing the sea.

The coastline, which used to be just endless rows of mangroves, coconut trees and grassy hills along white beaches, now glares with new resorts and vacation houses. I tried to scan the horizon for the new shopping malls my relatives had been talking about. But they were located in the outskirts of the city, near the airport, proof of just how fast the sprawl is going.

But if the view from the sea is refreshing, the city streets tire the eyes with its increasing clutter of tarpaulin ads, billboards, ugly new buildings, uncollected garbage, and dilapidated tricycles. It is the disorder of unplanned development.

The boom in tourism and mining  has  given Surigaonons fatter wallets. The price of lots along the coast has skyrocketed. My cousin, a policeman, is lucky. He was able to purchase a beachside lot few years ago. Now he owns a few cottages there and has even bought a speedboat.

Getting drunk is no longer the favorite pastime as young Surigaonons find more ways to hang out. Whereas few years ago, it was hard to find a place that sells brewed coffee, now even the funeral parlor at the highway has its own coffee shop.

There’s a gelato bar and Italian restaurant in the new Gaisano Capital Mall, which is always full of people taking refuge from the scorching heat of summer. Next to it, another mall is being built. I was told that fewer people now go to picnics at the old Luneta Park across the cathedral or at the beaches since the mall opened.

Luckily, we were headed to a beach in Punta Bilar, a coastal village some 30 minutes away from downtown. My brother  rented a private villa by the cove for two days and we had the small resort to ourselves.

My brother, a Manila-based lawyer with political inclinations, inherited the Paredes’ genes of strong clan loyalty. (In contrast, my own affinities hardly go beyond first-degree cousins.) He wanted his 40th birthday to be a reunion of close family members and his friends.

His wife surprised him by hiring a local band that played his favorite U2 and Beatles songs during the party. After a few drinks, some of us were called on stage to sing with the band. I was one of the first to take the microphone, pretending to be a tipsy Bono or John Lennon in what would be my 15  minutes of fame in  family history. The strong desire to sing also runs in the blood, though few in the family can  actually sing. Still, we couldn’t get the hang of singing and immediately started the rented karaoke machine  after the band left when it started to get dark.

So, in that secluded villa by the cove, we destroyed the zen with a karaoke machine. I tried to make up for it and beat the slight hangover the next day by taking a nap afloat a tire tube in the sea when the tide was just starting to rise. I could only hear the sound of  small waves and felt relief that at least I was surfing on a tire tube and not on Youtube.

The noise and silence was just part of the yin-yang called home.