manila sights in sepia

the fotos featured in this video are the remaining photographs in my current sepia collection (all taken in one day). of course the number will grow should i take more fotos in sepia mode in the future. haha. but for now, i do hope you'll enjoy these. :)

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

note: fotos are taken with my fone cam, an SEw810i. all are in raw form, including the ones i featured on my previous posts (beautiful mess 1 and 2). too lazy to tweak pics. hrhrhr.

pagmumuni-muni

i wonder what he is thinking of at that moment.

* pagmumuni-muni means musing in english.

beautiful mess 2

i remember being a ten year old back in 1934. one day after school, my mother brought me along to visit her sister in the office building where she worked. upon arriving, my aunt took us to the building's cafeteria. the song you're getting to be a habit with me from the movie 42nd street was playing on the phonograph as we entered. on one side of the cafeteria was this long counter with several stools lining it. my mother and aunt allowed me to sit on one of the stools to drink the chocolate malt shake my mother bought me while they had their chitchat on one of the tables. oh, i knew i had to sit still and behave, but those high stools were such a delight that i began spinning, spinning, spinning on it until i felt dizzy; my mother stared in dumb disbelief while my aunt just laughed at my childish antics and said that it's a miracle i didn't lose my malt shake in the process.

i have almost forgotten all about that certain visit until i saw the cafeteria again on my 85th birthday last may, when i decided to drop by this building after so many years.



note: oh-kay, i'm kidding about being 85 years old. but seeing this old cafeteria sure stirred up the imagination. :) btw, the first pic is the original; the second one was tweaked to look a bit older... err, does it?

again, the date is on the lower right corner of both fotos. i'm not kidding when i said that it was on my birthday when i went to this building. hehehe.

beautiful mess

books and papers on the shelf and more of them are scattered on the floor--everything's peppered thickly with lots of dust... yes, the absolute mess in this room really caught my eye. and i love it. everything's just in place for one of the most wonderful spontaneous photo ops ever. :)

the first foto is the original shot, which i took with my fone cam.


some experimentations with brightness and contrast and whatever. if not for the graffiti on the right side, one might think this was taken in 1909 and not 2009. hehe.

some intramuros views

here are some pics i took while walking along the walls of intramuros. or at least, while walking along a part of it.

1861 or 1981?

smack at the center is the manila city hall and on your left is... sm manila. at the foreground is a part of the golf course just outside the walls of intramuros. it used to be a moat during the spanish colonial times, but when the americans came, they turned it into a golf course so that they could play golf all they want... not! lol seriously, the americans filled up the moat in order to curb the mosquito-borne diseases. but if you think about it, they're really hitting two birds with one stone--improving the health of the filipinos during that time and at the same time improving their golf scores. LOL

fill in the blank: manila city hall is _________ away from intramuros. (hehe. you'll know what i mean if you have also joined the old manila walking tours. :-D)

tunnel to puerta real, which is one of the entry gates to intramuros. at present, puerta real is one of the favorite places to hold weddings. in fact, one of my titos got married here. (in the garden, not in the tunnel. hehe.)

the inscription on the gate of puerta real.

Old Manila

have you ever wondered what old manila looked like before the war? below are two videos that show exactly just that. the first one is a collection of video clips around manila. one of the songs that accompany it is "maybe" by the ink spots (which i've featured in an earlier entry).

the second video is by andre de la varre, who created it in 1938 after he visited manila. it is entitled "manila, queen of the pacific."

many thanks to señor enrique for the heads-up on these vids. enjoy! =)

old manila



manila, queen of the pacific