Today is the fourth of July.
In the US, that means fireworks, picnics, potato salads, and family neuroses.
In Saudi Arabia, it means an insanely hot, dry, day with a possibility of getting a free exfoliation treatment if you stand outside in a sand storm.
In Manila, today is Filipino-American friendship day, which is pointless because we’re not so much friends as we are Celine Dion and Luciano Pavarotti: I love you but I hate you.
This gets me to thinking about the cities I’ve lived in as a child and the ways we’ve celebrated independence day…
NOT
LOL. I’m not going to reminisce. If anything, all this travelling has made me realize that although I have itchy feet that need to be scratched in foreign tourist spots, I am happiest when I am home in Manila. My top three requirements for living in any major city are:
1.) It must smell like a mixture of piss, spit, barbeque sauce, smog, sampaguita, and polluted river water on a hotplate.
2.) It must be able to sell me anything I could possibly want (be it pig cheeks, a penis, or a Louis Vuitton weekender) in the strangest places (pig cheeks = any Dencio’s or Jerry’s or stall that sells SanMigLight, penis = malate or the Daisy Farm*, Louis Vuitton Weekender = Greenbelt4 or Greenhills)
3.) It must be filled to the brim with warm, loving, smiling, attractive people who are the most underrated romantics in the world.
And my city has all three. Happy fourth of July, Manila. MABUHAY!
*The Daisy Farm is what a strip on Taft Avenue was called, in front of (ironically) The Philippine Women’s University or PWU. It’s called Daisy Farm because you can solicit the services of teenaged boys: “daisy” sounding very much like the spanish prefix “disi” or “teen”. Daisy-syete = 17.
There’s gonna be a whole page just for Filipino-Faglish coming soon. 
