The city just a quick eacraft ride east from Iloilo boasts of chicken inasal and the flour and sugar delicacies whose time-honored recipes have been shepherded by abuelas and spinster aunts and bequeathed to modern day businessmen. Its charter day in October is marked by a frenzy unrivalled in color and artistry.
For an entire week, everyone is in masquerade mood. Masks galore lord the streets and shopping centers and adorn every nook of the city. The monicker City of Smiles comes to life as the generally sedate convention city of half a million Bacolenos stomp the ground and dance in wild abandon donning masks of all silhouettes and themes.
Bacolod’s youthful mayor Evelio Leonardia cohosted with Negros Navigation the Anak TV group last week. He used the occasion to convince media that the avian flu being touted as having been detected in nearby Escalante town was only a cruel ruse. He also enthralled media about his beloved city’s strides in child welfare and kiddie recreation.
To prove his word, he offered chicken inasal snacks to all who cared and dared and sent the media contingent on a whirl of the city, annotated by the most articulate tourism drumbeaters in Western Visayas, Gene Kanaan and funnyman Nixon Yap, a future uncle-in-law of Kris Aquino.
Highlight was a tour of Negros Museum, one of the central Philippines’ most engaging museums where a youth chorale rehearsal was in progress, preparing in earnest for the football edition of the SEA Games which Bacolod was hosting.
The museum standard was a quick paseo through the city’s storied past, a breeze through the corridors of its colonial history. It was just like any other historical display. The roaring twenties turntable was in a decrepit state atop a donation box that only the most callous and jaded visitor would not part with a small contribution.
To call further attention to the collection’s need for more support, Raymond Bayot, the disarming and knowledgeable museum assistant had to insert a sewing machine needle and manually run the warping record to the combined thrill and pity of the visiting media group.
It was the collection on the first floor that took everyone’s breath away. Souvenirs from 30 years of travel of one Bacoleña to all corners of the world yielded an astounding collection of toys and dolls that have now found a charming home in that museum.
MTRCB Chair Consoliza Laguardia was part of the delegation. She was being ribbed by Eskwela ng Bayan/Pet Ko’s Espie Garcellano and Studio 23 cameraman Rouel that some dolls on display had huge mammaries that if shown on television would not easily win her approval.
Other stuffed toys looked like they were snatched from a witch’s lair. The collection was every young girl’s dream, every collector’s envy, every curator’s headache but every museum goer’s delight.
(To be continued)
