{Where are you, Ecto?} Kate’s seven years old again. She’s entering the hollow of the notorious and oh so creepy banyan tree in the neighborhood. The tree, or the supporting one inside it, will be completely uprooted by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, but seven-year-old Rapunzel Kate Lapuz doesn’t know that yet. Outside of Concepcion Integrated Technology School (CITS), where the creek reigns supreme, the banyan tree is the fount of all horror stories and the ominous backdrop of Kate’s superstition and imagination-pumped childhood. With its tentacly aerial roots, like the tangled hair of a 20-meter-tall Sadako – rife with split ends and poised to snatch unwitting kids – the banyan tree plays a central role in the folk and urban legends of most Philippine communities. The inner caves and passages are believed to be the domain of fairies, dwarves and gnomes and to trespass is a grave offense punishable by black-magick curses. “Tabi, tabi po,” Kate says under her breath. It’s the phrase her m

When Kate was first dropped off by Camp Unplugged’s company van to become part of the second batch of “campers”, she thought the drive up the mountain road was exhilarating, what of the breathtaking volcano-con-lake vista and the ziggy-zaggy hairpin turns and blind curves, checked only by guardrails from a plunge down a ravine. When they arrived at the Courtyard and the particular street where Camp Unplugged rents its five adjacent houses, she thought she had stepped into a fairytale book because of the houses. One had bumblebee-yellow façade, shamrock roof and white window frames. The fairy tale ended there because soon she was provided three sets of Camp Unplugged’s official uniform and told that the laundry days are Wednesday and Saturday. The uniform is a polo shirt; pink for the girls paired with a knee-length pleated white skirt and light blue for the guys paired with pleated trousers. On the upper left chest of each shirt Camp Unplugged’s logo has been heat-pressed: the image o

Majority of the campers are boys because game addiction is their thing – to be exact, Dungeon Raydens-addiction. Dungeon Raydens is a sandbox-style MMORPG that’s a one-stop-shop for a lot of things. Kate remembers that, when Ecto was still around (darn, it hurt to think that), they did almost everything there except PvP and the MOBA-esque Battle Royale end game, which Ecto abhorred for their violence. They studied together in Academia mode to learn life skills such as alchemy, wizardry, trading, cooking and so on. They built their own house in Open World and then had it transplanted to Utopia, where housing was instanced but you could open your home to the public. This way, she and Ecto could play house and play shop at the same time with their NPC butler named Alfred. They purchased and raised their pet Direffin (Direwolf + griffin) named Max (short for Maximus Aurelius). They hunted, tamed and rode various mounts like dragons and unicorns, and used fake IDs at the Inn of Bedlem in t

“All right, well, let’s see… in a typical province, you’ll see plenty of green: trees, shrubs, flowers, a paddy field in your own backyard. There, we only had earth that turns to mud come the rainy season. And maybe some basalt pebbles that we gathered from the nearby beach and added to our patio. “Utility poles were few and far between and easily knocked down by typhoons, so huge swathes of land were unlit and most denizens hurried to be home by nightfall. And between kerosene lamps and flashlights, the dark was absolute indeed. Like a sea of ink. Or rather, like the end of the world had come in the form of two conical hats pressed bottom to bottom and brim to brim. I guess that’s why superstitions and folk stories were so persistent. “The hub of life in our village was a solitary mom-and-pop store owned by the wife of a retired merchant seaman. The family had a stainless Willys MB jeep that they hauled supplies on from what was already the nearest and biggest market at ten kilomete

In the past, you could see everything there was to see, or everything the Filipino family wanted you to see, at the altar of school diplomas posted on the wall of every Filipino home. These days, the wall has of course become virtual and the diplomas have borne fruit – of sorts. You can tell more about a Filipino family by looking at the gadgets and appliances they own (or are paying off in installments); which also say a thing or two about consumerism and the warped value of “keeping up with the Cruzes” in the typical Filipino family. In the case of the Lapuzes, they have a fridge and toaster but no microwave or blender, an ABS-CBN TVplus TV box (with eternally lousy GMA-7 signal!) but no cable, three electric fans and no AC. They don’t have a washing machine and have resolved to do the laundry by hand. They have a rice cooker and a stovetop kettle with the steam whistle, an iron and an ironing board (locally known as a “horse”) and a stove that’s fueled by an LPG cylinder. They hav