Georgia on My Mind : Finding Mtskheta

I'm not a big fan of travelling in big groups, but I would say there are good sides to this. One of that is being forced to move your lazy ass and make the most of your day, the other is basic economics. After checking in at the hostel, getting some breakfast and walking around Rustaveli, we decided to spend the afternoon at ancient capital Mtskheta , about an hour away from Tbilisi. 

To get there, we took a Subway train to Didube bus station. The metro station was a close 5 minutes picturesque walk from our Hostel. Like all metros, you can buy a Metro card and fill it with minimum 2GEL, the ride to Didube would cost only 0.50 GEL. 

Now, it is no secret that I am a big fan of trains and train stations, old European stations are the best as far as I'm concerned.   We took the long escalator down a  rabbit hole on to the platform for Tbilsi metro.  It has more stations underground that my claustrophobic friend was almost to the verge of tears while I just loved every  minute of it. The train was an old remnant of Russian engineering, but I would say its  80% faster and sturdier than the Dubai metro.

Upon reaching Didube Bus station, we were told to look for the mini-buses or “mashrutkas “ going to Mtskheta. Now this is when things got interesting as the station close to a mini market, had lots of people, but we couldn't seem to find anyone who knew english, except for the taxi drivers who are fighting to take us for a grand price of 100Lari. Do not panic and fall for this.

Check out the Cherries.

A good thing, one of myDubai Couchsurfing friend Ron has been to Georgia before and he gave me his Georgian hosts' number, Beka, in case we needed any help. So I called up Beka using my Geocell number (buylocal sim cards, i paid 3Gel for the card, extra 10Lari for Data, Geocell has the best signal). Beka, on the phone, told me to look for a guy who is NOT a taxi driver and to give him the phone. 

They exchanged a few Georgian words, and a minute later the old man was guiding us to the ticket counter for the Mashrutkas to Mtskheta. We paid an amazing 1Lari each and soon we we're on the road, out of Tbilisi and on to ancient capital of Msketa.  

We reached Mskheta a little around 1pm. The goal was to go to Jvari Monastery. Mtskheta is small enough that it is possible to see the entire town on foot. The one exception to  this rule is Jvari monastery, which is far from the town center and located on top of a mountain.

There were a handful of taxis, and we found one small souvenir shop were a lady knew english. She helped us booked a car - 25 lari per car, going up the hill to Jvari.  Being Pint-sized asians, we manage to squeeze 5 of us in each car, so that ended up to only 4 Lari per person. Travelling with a group of Asians has its perks. 

Yes, they use good ol' Mercedes "chedengs" as Taxis. 

I have warned you about Georgian drivers, flatland or uphill, they don't seem to go below 80. Do not question their driving - Its Georgia! 

Finding Jvari Monastery is a little close to finding the Sound of Music set and you can't help but want to spread your arms and sing "The Hills are alive...." 

My friend Harvey and his funky hair got instant celebrity status. 

Certified Asian Tourists that we are, We took a thousand pictures buta strange thing happened when the kids started asking us to take pictures with them. Little did we realize, we just turned from tourist to becoming tourist attractions ourselves. 

A wedding was going on inside, this was the first of many weddings that we will encounter on the trip. Georgians are 80% Christians (mostly Orthodox), much like the Philippines (mostly Catholics) but perhaps the similarities stops at demographics, because unlike us who are mostly Christians in paper, the Georgians seem to be more in touch with tradition, more conservative and generally more...peaceful.  

I had the general impression that to them, Religion was a way of life and not merely an irrelevant accident.   

On the way down, we walked towards the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, one of most sacred places in Georgia and, along with Jvari Monastery, founded in 1010. 

It was mid afternoon, a wedding was also going on, and for a moment there I just felt like I literally stepped back in time as we reached the façade of an Old tavern where a horse-drawn carriage is parked. 

You're just like a dream...The Svetitskhoveli Cathedral has been there since the 4th Century. 

Stumbling upon medieval times. 

Our late lunch was definitely worth the wait. Grilled pork, potatoes and their amazing homebrewed beer at Old Taverna. Georgian Folk music was playing loud in the background and the happy pretty waitresses were willing to teach us how to dance the Georgian way.  

Pork barbeque, bring your own vinegar!

Dance lessons from Georgian waitress.

I know the days will pass, we will soon go back to pick up our  daily routines, our endless responsibilities, and inevitably our good memories might soon to be replaced by other travels, but for a moment there i wanted to stay in that magic bubble. To live in the sacred  memory of drinking draft beer in a beautiful, medieval place one lovely afternoon. 

Madloba Mtskheta.   

Gaumarjos!

To be continued....(up next the great Road trip to Kazbegi)

Also check out my previous blog about landing in Tbilisi.

Georgia on My Mind : A Taste of Tbilisi

Taking a 3-hour red eye flight on budget airline Fly Dubai, we arrived in Tbilisi early, at 5am on a Thursday morning, a big tour group of 11, all Filipinos except for one Dutch guy. Tbilisi Airport was a quaint little efficient airport in a middle of a sleepy town.

With hardly any line at the immigration, our shiny 1-week tourist visas were issued quickly upon paying 50Lari (around 120dhs) which we took happily, considering how pretty it looked on our passports.

The door going out had a huge sign saying “Tbilisi Loves You” and from that moment on, I somehow sort of knew that this was gonna be a good trip.

Taxi drivers were waiting outside, speaking in broken English and a mix of Russian, and Georgian,  we negotiated a fair price based on what we were told – which was around 25-30 Lari per car, which can hold a maximum of 4 people, going to Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilis's main avenue, and where our hostel was located.

The trip to the hostel took less than 10 minutes, while we buckled up on the backseat thinking Tbilisi Drivers must have been retired Formula One racers.  Soon we had our first experience of the Georgian highway and got acquainted with their speed limits or lack thereof. 

BHM hostel was a nice decent place right across the grand Marriot Hotel along the famous Rustaveli.  Bahman the Iranian owner and operator was nice guy who helped us settle in, gave us tips on where to go, how much to pay, what to try and arranged for the next day’s road trip.

Across our hostel, the Rustaveli Theatre, the largest and one of the oldest Theatres in Georgia. 

There was a bookstore below the hostel, and it was just perfect.

As Neil Gaiman writes - Cities are not people. But, like people, cities have their own personalities. 

As for me, every city I've been to has its own unique smell.  The crisp old-world smell of Tbilisi's  Rustaveli Avenue on that bright Thursday morning was exhilarating to me like the smell of an old book being opened. It was love at first sight. It was my kind of place, a thousand-year old city, charming, brimming with culture and history, and best of all -  non-mainstream.

We were most probably the only Filipino tourist at the time, as we kept on getting stared at and asked if we were Chinese. Anonymity is freedom and frankly a great retreat from  the  condescending cosmopolitan Dubai.

Dobre Utra! Read all about it. 

The tourist / hipster Cafe.

Gorgeous Georgian women. 

Our neighbors whispering about us. 

We spent the morning wandering around, as I soaked in the old architecture and the lovely little pieces of sculpture and street art that lurks at almost every corner.

I'm not a big grocery fan, meaning I don't really like grocery shopping, but I have to admit, Groceries in foreign places are the best way to take a crash course on its people and culture.  Two minutes in a Tbilisi grocery and I discovered the great Georgian spirit, (or spirits)  -

All kinds of Alcohol. Name it and they have it, 2 Liters of beer is only 4dhs, ut the best ones are homemade.

This and pork. Its truly a piece of heaven for deprived pork & beer fans like us coming from Dubai.
History has it that Georgian's discovered wine and that Tbilisi's landmark statue, the Mother of Georgia overlooking the city holds a bowl of wine in her right hand to welcome friends and a sword to ward off enemies.

At this point, I was ready. I was ready to embrace Mother Georgia (ok, and maybe the hot Georgian men)  and drink from her sweet bowl.  Jeff Buckley's version of Lilac wine plays on my mind as I learned one very useful and important Georgian word that came handy in many later situations : Gaumarjos!

(to be continued..)
Up next, the Ancient Capital, Mtskheta...

Island in the Sun

Summertime always make me think of home - the roadtrips with friends, the weekends out-of-town, sand, surf, barbeques, mangoes, fresh air, fishballs, corn cobs, the dirty ice cream in the street, drinking coke out of plastic bags,  sipping fresh buko juice or eating halo halo on a hot summer day.

These flood of memories makes me yearn to be back in the Philippines, to be embraced warmly by its familiar, welcoming shores, to leave the cruel indifferent desert-concrete jungle of Dubai and once again be treated as a golden island senorita. Yes these are the stuff of my summer daydreams.

When people, foreigners, ask me about the Philippines, I always ask them back "Do you like the beach?" If they say yes, I immediately brighten up and become a little miss unofficial tourism ambassador, happy to go on talking about the places I loved the most, Boracay, Palawan, Batanes, Pagudpud. The list goes on. If they say no, well there's always San Miguel Beer, Sisig, Balut and Karaoke.

There are usually so many good things to say, that sometimes I wonder why some Filipinos choose to brood over or highlight the bad things. 

I think of home in the summertime and I hear a song in my head that goes – On an Island in the sun, we’ll be playing having fun, and it makes me feel so fine, I can’t control my brain…

Minsan: The Eraserheads Reunion Concert in Dubai

 “Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.” – Don Draper, Mad Men

The heads with Sancho, old time collaborator, friend and third guitarist, who Ely introduced to the crowd
as the “fifth Eraserhead. 

I was 13, on my first year at a co-ed highschool when I first saw the Eraserheads play at the UP sunken garden. It was my first ever real live concert. I went with one of my best friends and her cool older sister who was at the time, studying at the same University.  There were plastic balloons flying around which I later learned were called “condoms”. We know pretty much all of the songs from Circus, Ultraelectromagnetic pop and Cutterpillow, but even if you don’t have the records there’s no way you can escape them on the radio. Honestly, who can resist Ely Buendia and his witty common-guy lines about sem-break and heartache?

Such was the pull of the Eheads, it wasn’t just the music per se. In a way, there was a reason why they were always being compared to the Beatles. They were our generation’s (our country’s) Beatlemania. It was a cultural thing more than anything. They had too much influence in fact that everyone, young and old, even the resident “tambays” at your neighborhood sari-sari store would most certainly know the lyrics to  Pare Ko.

I moved to Dubai in 2009, like many other pinoys, in search of better opportunities. As a music fan, and having spent most of my adult life working for the “pop machine”, the news of the Eraserheads Reunion in Dubai was just too good to be true and when it was confirmed that they will be playing at the annual du Music Festival, all of us “Kabayans” based here were psyched.  It was collectively agreed, on all our facebook accounts and twitter feeds, that we HAVE to see them. 

When you work outside the country and your monthly budget is limited, divided into remittances, loans, and other responsibilities, you think twice about spending precious hard-earned money on concerts, but the Eraserheads Reunion, was not just a WANT, it was a NEED. We needed to be there. We needed to see Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Markus play our favorite songs. We needed to belong to that special place again. We needed a piece home as we remembered it.

The Eheads reunion couldn’t have come at a better time.  It was on the same week we launched our first Tagalog / OPM FM station in the Middle East, Tag 91.1 and all streets had banners of either the Eheads or Tag 91.1 that said “serving 645,000 Filipinos in the UAE.” It felt like, for once, the whole of Dubai, was nodding at our Community with respect, and we are finally getting the recognition we deserved.    

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the press conference and while waiting for the band, I met another Filipina, Maggie Lafuente, who came out there with her husband. She skipped work for the chance to meet the Eheads up close. She was trembling.  

 “I was working in London at the time of their first reunion concert in 2008, I badly wanted to go.” Maggie shares.  “I was ready to book a ticket. My sister had to stop me and told me it wasn’t practical. Then I heard about Ely’s heart attack, I CRIED, they just mean that much to me. I never thought I’d see them live again. You see those girls on old footages screaming out, crying over the Beatles, they look crazy but I’d be one of them for Eraserheads.”

Of course, 90% of the media representatives in room were Filipino. I came with former Pulp photographer and good friend Brutal Grace and for a second there I felt like I was at home.

We were told not ask “personal” questions and only stick to the “music festival”. There was a bit of awkwardness at first, but Markus, the more laid back member of the group, put everyone at ease with his clever one-liners. I asked them the most standard thing I could think of  - what was their impression of Dubai, of the place, of the people.

Buddy was quick to answer,  “We are impressed by the camaraderie of the Filipino Community and the incredible presence and support.  We also experienced a bit of the diverse culture in Dubai, like last night we tried Ethiopian food, which was really good.”

When asked if they learned to say any Arabic words, Markus came out with “Kebab, Kebab Dylan, Kebab Marley”, that cracked everyone up and after that the questions just came pouring in until finally somebody was brave enough to ask the obvious    - why a reunion? and why in Dubai? 

Raymund playfully sang “reunited coz it feels so good.” Buddy replies “how many Filipinos are now in Dubai? 600,000? So we have 600,000 reasons to play here and finally Ely spoke up with a cheeky retort – “peer pressure”.

More than 10,000 fans in the UAE came to Dubai Media City to see the Eraserheads perform live on stage again. 

“It was simply natural progression.” Ely explains further.  “We are all doing our own thing for awhile now and then there was this clamor to get back together again and play, especially for those who are based outside the Philippines, and have not seen us play live yet. We are music fans ourselves, and we know what its like to love a band and grow up with their songs. We are just grateful that our songs still resonate with our fans.”

About the songs that they packed for the concert, Raimund shares, “we picked the ones that we enjoy playing. We didn’t really think much about what people will like, or what other nationalities will be there to see us play, pinili namin yung masarap tugtugin.”

I would say this decision just paid off big time. There is simply nothing better than seeing your favorite band enjoying themselves on stage while singing your favorite songs. I was there during the first reunion in 2008, I didn’t feel as connected to them as I was at the Dubai show. Perhaps it was the “homesickness” but I would say the Eraserheads Reunion concert in Dubai, was in the purest sense, about “connection”, about all of us, including the band, sharing the familiar songs and the memories.

The band kicked it off aptly with “Walang Nagbago”, then went on to perform 27 of their best hits, among them the well-loved songs -  ‘Maling Akala’, ‘Ligaya, Huwag Mo Ng Itanong’ , ‘Kailan’ ‘Overdrive’, ‘With A Smile’, ‘Julie Tear Jerky’, Magazin, Minsan and Super Proxy which they dedicated to the late Francis M, who were with them at their last concert in Dubai back in 1999. With over 10,000 fans in attendance, the Eraserheads Reunion at the du World Music Festival last 4^th April was one of the biggest, and possibly the loudest, Dubai has seen this year. 

A friend wrote on his facebook status the night after the concert –

"The best thing about watching Eraserheads is not about the band itself, It's about having the greatest time with your friends, friends that mean the whole song to you, people who you can sing and relate with, banging and just having a great time!Thanks mga pare ko!"

He is right. There was this magic moment, when everyone out in the open field of Dubai Media city was  all singing along to “With a Smile”. We all knew the lyrics to the entire song by heart. It’s hard not to get sentimental, coz the song was about us, about my friends, old and new, about every single struggling overseas filipino I've ever met in Dubai, including myself. 

Lift your head, baby don't be scared / with the things that could go wrong along the way.
We'll get by with a smile / We'll get along with a little prayer and a song.

What does OPM Mean?

This is a question I’ve been asked many times, and frankly a question that I have been struggling to answer every time.  As an acronym, it refers to Original Pilipino Music, but the more difficult question is what does "Original" mean? What does "Pilipino music" mean? and more importantly, what does it mean, to me, personally.

Ever since I got here in Dubai, I have been blessed (and sometimes cursed) with the opportunity to work on, one way or another, distributing and promoting OPM. 

I am certainly no expert and I can only speak for my behalf. The truth is I am just another fan trying to get as much I can.  

So if you ask me what does OPM mean to me?  It is not one thing, but rather a flood of memories, of  familiar songs and tiny take-away moments like ....

...Rivermaya singing Himala to a small hopeful crowd at Gotham in Malate on a rainy night 

....or watching the Eraserheads live for the first time at the UP Sunken Garden with my High school friends

....hearing a blind man with a guitar singing Freddie Aguilar's Anak on one of Manila’s sidewalks while walking towards the jeepney stand

....catching Cynthia Alexander play at Fete de la Musique year after year and always taken away by how really good she is

....or simply hanging out in some dingy club in Espanya or in Saguijo watching 20+ bands plug and play. 

...or this one day at work, huddled in the boardroom, listening and getting  excited by  this unique take of one Filipina singer on Bossa Nova

... or finding a club in Dubai and being able to order Sisig and San miguel while watching the versatile all-pinoy line up go from Pop to Rock to R&B.  

... recently OPM meant singing Eraserhead's "Minsan" and being overwhelmed with that strange liberating feeling of singing along in your native tounge with your best buddies and 10,000 fans on an open field in an alien Middle East City such as Dubai.   

OPM is my cause, my community and a large part of my identity. OPM is alive, but I do believe it needs and deserves support, more than the stupid Gwiyomi or Gangnam or Harlem Shake videos that don't mean anything. 


OPM means we are one.

"Sasalubungin natin ang kinabukasan, ng walang takot at walang pangamba, Tadahana'y medyo overated kung minsan,....one of my favorite singer-songwriters Rico Blanco in Dubai October 2009.

Comfort in your strangeness... with Cynthia Alexander, another one of my OPM heroes, back in the day. 

EPIC. Me and Brutal Grace with the Heads backstage after their sold-out Reunion concert in Dubai.

Support the OPM Means movement : www.facebook.com/opmmeans Your favorite Filipino hits are now available for download in the UAE on www.musicstore.ae

Waiting for Spring

a bird was freezing in the longest winter

he hasn't flown

he hasn't seen the dawn

a little heat was all he needed

to forget, to go back to sleep

in the dead cold winter night

a flower grew in the garden

she stretched her arms

and smiled

she was waiting for the sun

a little heat was all she needed

to feel alive, to leave behind

the dark cold winter night

it wont be long, she said

it will be long, he said

the spring, she said

the winter, he said

if only i can fly, she said

if only i had roots, he said.

Stumbling upon the Dubai Underground

Back in the 80s, when you say “Middle East” it immediately conjures images of the desert, oil riggs, construction, 24carat gold, strict Arab masters and of course, our lonely OFWs. The Gulf war in the 90s and 9-11 terrorist attacks didn’t seem to improve that image much, but that didn’t stop the diaspora of pinoys in this region, especially the “open” city of Dubai.

See, I had been warned about Dubai, fake, pretentious, boring and removed of any of real soul, but lately I’ve been finding myself checking-in at more and more good art and music venues enough to make me reconsider.


Today a new cultural movement is emerging from the underground, and with that a new breed of talented pinoys are again at the forefront. We caught up with one of them one night, Filipino artist Darwin Gueverra, while he was working on this huge graffiti in some 5-star hotel’s parking lot along with other international artists who flew in for the occasion.

We went further inside, a world-famous DJ was playing, the cool crowd was trickling in and as we took a seat in the gutter with our beers, we thought to ourselves - well look at that, Dubai is not what it used to be. Ironically, despite its array of swanky places, it was there in that parking lot that night that we stumbled upon the city’s real pulse, faint but alive and definitely a sign of good things coming.

*cool photos courtesy of Brutal Grace