There will ALWAYS be moments…
… that take your breath away.
… that make you feel that there is nothing else that matters, except you, and…
fireworks.
Real fireworks, i mean. Not the romantic, figurative kind of fireworks. Anyway, this is just a "hats off!!" to those people who’ve chosen to hold the Pyro Olympics in our country.
Nope, no pictures/videos here. A thousand snapshots or bits of film wouldn’t do justice. You have to see it for yourself. (methinks that line’s from The Matrix)
Type A people that my folks are, we decided to go to Mall of Asia at 4pm to get a feel of where to position ourselves for The fireworks. We parked our AUV around 3 blocks away from the Mall (para madaling makaalis later in the evening) and strolled to Italiannis to have an early dinner. We didn’t realize that that area of the Mall was cordonned off for the Pyro, and that you’d have to pay P100 to get a view, P1000 to eat. Yikes. Scrooges that we were, we left. And shopped instead. Haha. (but we ate at said restaurant a few minutes before the P1000 thingie kicked in)
Anyway, as we went back to where we parked, i saw hundreds, maybe thousands of people parked in their cars/jeeps/BUSES/pickup trucks, people having picnic dinners in the moonlight, children wearing devil horns and playing with their glowsticks. It felt great, because it seemed like nothing else mattered. Rich or poor, young or old, doctor or bystander, everyone was the same at that point in time: spectators waiting to be awestruck.
And true enough, we were. The line of sight was GREAT — we had an unencumbered view of everything they launched (we were right smack dead in front of The Source). I saw my mom with tears in her eyes. I felt myself at a loss for words as i saw the first few rockets of light. It all sounds exaggerated as i write this down, but oh boy, it’s not. Everyone was cheering, clapping their hands, or attempting to film the whole frigging display on their digital cameras/phones. Bottom line: i’d say everyone had a good time. (even though the way out of there was gruelling)
What was my point again? Oh. I feel very fortunate to be here, in this Third World country, which is very much blessed to view First World stuff like that. We may be burdened by economic problems, by religious wars, or by political upheavals, but we can be united by simple things. Like world-class fireworks. 
-nothing follows-
