UP Fair 2007, Part 2 – The ‘Eerie’ Experience

OK, as promised, I’m going to tell the rest of our UP Fair 2007 experience.

After beeing spooked out by the power outage during the fair and the delay that the stage went ‘on-line’ again, Nina, me, and her friend decided to call it a night and go home. We didn’t know if we can still catch a jeep to the outside world, so all of us decided to walk from the fair grounds to Philcoa, where we plan to take a cab, get Matt from her lola, and head to the south.

There were very few souls who dared wander about, but the three of us didn’t mind the stillness of the night. We even stumbled upon strange, eerie things near the Carillion:

What’s that thing called in tagalog?…. I remeber watching how you make one on Batibot

A Sarimanok…. that’s distinctly….

Engineering! (a collaboration with Mech Engrs and Elec Engrs!

The rest of the walk to Philcoa was long and arduous… I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. But we made it safely – a rather uneventful walk at that.

So we took Matt, who was asleep then, and headed home. Since it was late, Nina’s friend stayed over for the night.

This was a early Saturday, and I have work a couple of hours ahead! (good thing I wasn’t late that day – I still hate Saturday duty).

OK, so a couple of days, I download the pictures from the point-and-shoot camera to prepare for these blog entries. Then, I started getting the creeps. I’ve already deleted the picture from the computer. I’m loading up the sane photos here, but it’s related to the shots of the Ferris Wheel.

One…

Two…

The third shot featured a guy staring directly into the camera shot. He was the only clear image. Everybody…E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y was looking elsewhere. The guy was holding a baby in fatigues and a blue cap… even the baby was looking at the direction of the ferris wheel. The guy had that strange look. Why would he look into my camera? When I showed Nina the pictures, she recalled that it wasn’t until later did we notice babies in the fair (since it reminded us of Matt). Then, we particularly remember that we took notice of the baby in fatigues and he was crying when we saw him. The baby was being carried by the mother…

It gave us the creeps… so we deleted it.

Of course, there may be a more sane and rational explanation. There could have been a father and son there… but still…

We offered a short prayer for the baby and the guy (whom we presume is the father).

Anyway, UP Fair 2007 was worth the effort. It’s now stamped on me and in this blog, so that I and other people won’t forget about it.

UP Fair 2007, Part 1 – The ‘Normal’ Experience

Nina and I knew that it’s UP Fair Week. It was always UP Fair Week during V-Day. But we never intended to go… Until that Friday morning when Nina got a call from her college friend, Sarah, who invited us to go with her.

How can we resist?! (Turns out both Nina and I were just waiting for the perfect ‘excuse’ to go to the 2007 UP Fair! hehehe)

And so my wife made arrangements with her mother to leave our son with her while we visited the fair. From work, I went to Speaker Perez to meet up with them. We had to sneak out the house in order for Matt not to notice that we’re about to leave him, but he couldn’t care less since he’s happy playing with his cousin, Kiana.

We arrived at Philcoa by 8:30pm to meet up with Sarah. We were able to enter the fair by around 9:00pm.

Um….I don’t know how to put this…. but it’s just my 2nd time to be inside the actual fair… (Oh wait, I have a completely valid excuse – I’m an engineering student! Cursed, evil overlords at Melchor Hall ususally schedule midterm exams during this week!)

After getting in with our P 85.00 tickets, we headed to a delectable UP cuisine – isaw! There were lotsa isaw vendors and we decided that we’ll try all, if not most.

[A blurry scene at the ihawan]

[at last! f-o-o-o-d!]

After our first helping of isaw (P 2.00 for about an inch and a half of it), we went around to explore the various booths. We were all particularly drawn to abubot shops – those that sell trinkets, rings, necklaces, and other curiosities.

To sum up all our wanderings, here’s what we ended up buying / eating / seeing:

• isaw, longer isaw (we liked the smaller isaw), Yellow Cab pizza, shawarma, mango shake
• Nina’s ethnic journal, my ethnic ring, an igorot/ifugao musical instrument (a piece of flat bamboo, about 8 inches), Nina’s unicorn earings (which she will use in her scrapbooking!)

[The 2007 Rockestra stage is lit, with a gigantic lightsaber!]

• There was one time when i looked out the fair walls and saw the crowds in black and i told Nina “so this is how it feels like in the ancient days, when you’re inside a walled city and see the barbarian hordes ready to burst through the gates!…”
•  The lights went out in the ferris wheel and on the stage for about 15 minutes and we laughed at the people stuck at at the ride. They had to manually pull down each carriage for people to disembark. But we didn’t think it was funny when there was no music coming from the stage, even if we didn’t know it. The ambiance of the UP fair was shattered in those 15 minutes without the noise, er, music.

There was, however, something eerie that happened that night, as we decided to go home and walk all the way to Philcoa. And one other ‘thing’ that we wouldn’t discover… until we were able to download the pictures from the digital camera…