Foot and Fire

When one is past her infancy in travelling, she learns to choose her steps carefully because time has more meaning now than before. It is not about ticking off the number of items in the list anymore. It is more about retracing the steps taken and carefully trailing the steps to be taken because space takes on a different dimension now than before. April of last year, Osmena Peak of Dalaguete, Cebu colored my summer. The first thing you will learn while going up the Peak is that Dalaguete is not pronounced as Dumaguete. It is silent E as in palette. But of course, when you reach the peak, the first things you will experience are: Fresh air, summer breeze, ocean salt feel, grassy hills, rocky cliffs, pretty karsts, short and long climbs, provincial scenery all conspired to evoke country songs in my mind and the paintings of Amorsolo of fields and golden colors. While taking in everything, you will also think of a thousand enormous and tiny karsts of Halong Bay as well as Tam Coc ...

One of the admirable traits of this house is its being built for a fairy tale, wherein the goddess of a verdant forest has to remain true to her environment despite her being placed by her circumstance in an urban setting called a subdivision in the heart of Bacolod City. Only a child by heart can appreciate this house made to dance with and among nature. Visit and delight yourself with a house made of stones to withstand the typhoon, open-walled in some areas to welcome the air, glass windows to let the light come in, growing pine trees along the winding stairway design so as not to cut the same, a semi-underground amphitheater with stone walls, walls with colorful paintings, vines occupying the floors, a hilltop view on top of the roof. Endless.    While this is not a museum or ecological site or a sanctuary, they are all like that for a home actually habited by people. Yes, there are residents there. Of course, the admirable fact is that the house is also ...