Manila, After Years Away

It’s been over a decade since I last set foot in Manila, and the city feels both like an old friend and a stranger. I’m here alone this time trying to connect and see what I can create of the situation I’m in. Spending time assisting my brother as he slowly get back his normal life. Between hospital visits, I’m learning to move with the city’s pulse—a rhythm of heat, noise, and endless motion. I move along from day to day living in Makati and seeing things as they come along. It is staying here with an enthusiasm to learn and trying to communicate.

This morning, I set my sights on the pickleball courts, curious to see if sport could be my bridge into the community. But even before that, the city threw me into its current. The MRT carried me toward Quezon City, its steel carriages rattling above a blur of rooftops and tangled electric wires. I memorized the route so I wouldn’t depend on my phone—choosing instead to trust my eyes, my memory, and the kindness of strangers when I inevitably drift off course.

Later, I climbed into a jeepney, its chrome panels catching the sunlight, inside a swirl of chatter, music, and the smell of gasoline. Payment passed from hand to hand like a quiet act of cooperation. Then came inDrive—my first time using the app. The driver wove through traffic with the kind of skill that feels both reckless and reassuring in the same breath.

Each ride, each street corner, feels like a slow reacquaintance with a city I once knew—an immersion in movement, in human connection, and in the small rituals of daily life here.