Iloilo City- Performance 2010

11-11-11: Last year of the same date, I went to my mom’s province for the first time in 15 years: Iloilo City. It’s rather unfortunate that I didn’t get to blog about my experience at the time, so I thought of sharing it today.

November 11, 2010 at around 1 a.m. my cousin, mom, and I were busy getting ready to go to the airport and making sure that we didn’t leave anything that we will need on the trip. Some time in September, my mom and my cuz were asked to perform at their school in Iloilo for the alumni event. They were always asked to perform because my cousin’s an amazing singer and my mom’s a fantastic ballroom dancer. And in early October, out of constant persuasion from my dear cuz, Angel, I finally agreed to also perform for the said occasion. My cousin’s a natural born singer (she’s like a Whitney and Celine Dion combo) so I agreed to sing a duet with her because I thought her spectacular voice would drown my poor excuse of a singing voice. We chose a pop song by Lady GaGa & Beyonce called “Telephone”, which was a real hit during the summer. 


We actually didn’t practice much during the break. But just one week before the event, we decided to go to a recording studio to record our duet because we had also decided to do a choreography for the performance.  There wasn’t much dancing, it was just mostly acting out to the song and we had our placings. Thanks to my mom’s dance instructor, Jaja, btw, for the simple yet, far from dull choreography. So we had 4-5 choreography practice sessions at nights after school. Talk about last minute, huh. I guess we really work better if we cram—most of the time. We also added a few of our own moves for the performance—a little creative opportunity.

Anyway, back to the trip. We went to the airport around 2 a.m., as of I remember, and we met Jaja there. Angel and I roamed around the airport and took photos of ourselves for our album. 

We finally went aboard to the plane around 4:40 a.m. (I think) and I was so excited to reach our destination. Whenever the plane takes off or lands, it always frightens me a bit—that’s why I listened to my mp3 at the time. (Yes, I’m one of those stubborn passengers who do not abide to the rules when inside an airplane). Finally we were off, and I continued to listen to music to soothe my nerves. Soon after, the sun rises, and I was mesmerized by the breathtaking view outside the window. Yeah, I’m one of those people who appreciate the beauty of nature—it never gets tiring. I started to secretly take photos of the clouds in the sky, despite the constant reprimanding of my cousin. Lol.

When we finally arrived at the Iloilo City terminal, haha, everything was suddenly, small… but in a good way. Iloilo is such a small but a happy city. Despite its size, the city is kind of complete in a way. It has malls, shops, stores, beaches—I mean, wow! I love the fact that you can get to a beach within a half hour, more or less! It felt good to be in another place—another city besides the daily humdrum that Metro Manila offers. Iloilo city may be quiet, but I enjoyed every minute of my stay there because I got to visit my grandparents, I got to see the Villa Beach and eat the most fresh and palatable seafood dishes and of course, I was excited for our performances.

We went straight to my grandparents’ house the moment we arrived in the humble city. I remembered the house to be a bit bigger the last time I went there, or perhaps I was just smaller back then. Their home was already dressed with Christmas decorations—courtesy of my grandma’s artistry expertise. Unfortunately, I didn't get to take a picture of all the decors.

Our first day in Iloilo City, my mom was already busy with planning for our performances for the event on Nov. 13, 2010. She was busy making appointments with the transportation, the beauty salon, the video, the school, and her two own dance numbers to deal with. My cousin and I just relaxed and enjoyed the days ahead, and of course, the seafood galore. I remember that it was lunch, and there was a plateful of prawns, and a plateful of alimasag. I was busy devouring the prawns and Angel was busy consuming the latter.

We also got to visit a few malls during our three and a half stay in the city. And in our second day (Nov. 12), we got to go to the Villa Beach. Our grandparents went there with us to have our lunch at the Breakthrough restaurant. More seafood came pouring in and we were soon engulfed with every bit of the delectable delight. There was also this particular seaweed called gato that our taste buds took pleasure in. It was so fresh and scrumptious! Our trip pretty much consisted of eating a lot of seafoods—which was a dream to me. We also had a few picture-takings!

That night, we attended a party at the school—the alumni event was for three days but our performance was for the Saturday shindig.

                                                                 Angel & my sexy mama

I was quite surprised when around 9 p.m., the party was over and a lot of people were leaving! Usually in Manila, parties will take until around midnight. Guess I forgot that we were in a province, but it was good timing because at least we get to have a good night’s rest for the big day ahead.

So, third day came, Nov. 13, 2010, and it was like a hurricane for my mom. It was finally performance day and everyone was really busy. We already went to the beauty salon early in the afternoon. 

                                                                          Angel- the singer!

                                                                          my grandma
Around 5 p.m. we were all finished with being made up and we went back to my grandparents’ house. We wore our shoes for the performance and rest there for a bit. Around 6:30 we finally went to face the music. The event started around 7 or 7:30 p.m. and there was a huge crowd. 


There was a number of performances and my mom was the first of us to perform. Backstage you can see her really nervous and panicky. She started with the Rumba and it was divine. 

There was an intermission and then it was Angel’s turn to enchant the audience with her extraordinary voice and her charisma as she performed a Chinese song for her solo. You can watch her fantastic performance here:  

After another intermission, it was my mom’s turn to perform her second and last number: the Samba! She was on fire!

After her number, there was another intermission and Angel and I were supposed to go next, but after a turn of events, we waited so long at the back stage—we waited, and waited, and waited until a few minutes before midnight and we were suddenly called to go on stage! Imagine how exhausted and sleepy we were while waiting back stage! 


The moment I went on stage, I wasn’t sure if I could remember all the choreography; my mind was asleep. There I stood, waited and waited until after 30 seconds, the music went on! Wtf!!! 

Soon, the music finally started and Angel went to the stage and there we were-- performing in front of a huge crowd that we hoped were still in the mood to watch our number. Because of the exhaustion from waiting, I forgot a lot in our choreography and I also forgot a lot of my own actions that I conceived before. But I tried my best to get all the energy back inside me. And so I went with a mood to kill and  I tried to give everyone a kick-ass show (even if I had no ammo to fire).

The performance was like a blink of an eye! It was so fast! Imagine a month of thinking about it, and a number of rehearsals and wow, it was finally over! I couldn’t believe that we were done.

You can watch our performance here: (I was sleepy & exhausted at the time so please excuse my poor performance! lol.)

After our performance, Angel and I weren’t certain if our family loved our number because we weren’t that up to it and I made a lot of mistakes in the choreography (Fortunately, I managed to adlib a bit… I hope it was good enough). Angel was naturally, AMAZEBALLS!!! So anyway, surprisingly, they loved it. 

We went to eat at Chowking (of all the places) afterwards because my cuz and I didn’t get to eat dinner (I wasn’t really hungry but our grandma cajoled us to eat). We finally got a good night’s sleep after the chow.

Nov. 14, 2010- Our flight to Manila was around noon. Angel and I woke up around 7:30 a.m. and we hurriedly got ourselves ready and went to the beach to get last minute picture-takings because we didn’t have ample time 2 days before.

It was already 9:30 and it was time for Angel and I to go back to our grandparents’ home and see my mom. Time check: 10 a.m. and it was time for us to leave. My grandma and my mom cried when they said their goodbyes, I tried to control my tears.

When we arrived to the airport, Angel and I had a few picture-takings to kill time before our flight. We ate Bulalo for breakfast.

Finally, it was time for us to board the plane and away we flew.

And after 45 or so minutes, we were back home. I guess it was good to be back in Manila, but I felt like a part of me was still in Iloilo. 

I really could not believe that our performance was finally over. Despite a few technical difficulties of the music and the fact that we waited for two hours back stage, it was a fun performance. I hope there would be more soon. There’s never a doubt that Angel will have more performances because she’s really a singer (she always joins and wins at singing competitions). After a few days, the photos and video of our performances were delivered to us and I’m glad that we have a memento of the exciting night that we all had. Hope there will be more performances soon because I feel like a different person when I’m on stage—a better one (even if I’m not). Lol. So, till then for another adventure!


PS. Happy birthday to my dog, Bouncy!!!