Flowers From the Rubble: I AM S.T.R.O.N.G. Koronadal: The Calm Before the Storm

September 8, 2006.

Despite the arrival of my 2nd son Manuel, I could not beg off Dr. Antonio Torralba's invitation to speak for I AM S.T.R.O.N.G. in Koronadal, South Cotobato. I would love to say that I was challenged by the opportunity to address an audience that I rarely have the opportunity to be of service to, or with whom I seem to have very little in common with. But honestly, I was more intrigued by the fact that when I googled the search terms "Koronadal" and "Marvella Hotel", I got a grand total of four hits, two of them from blogs. I was amazed that I could get more hits with the search terms "progeria" and "Flannery O' Connor", than "Koronadal" and "Marvella Hotel". The lack of information on the capital city of South Cotobato, in a day and age where one could easily receive tons of information regarding the merits of "warp drive" as opposed to "fusion engines" on any decent nerd powered BBS, was, to my mind, inexcusable. And so, here I am.

There are no direct commercial flights to Koronadal City. The preferred route is via PAL, which takes you first to General Santos City, where one then takes a 45 minute drive to Koronadal. Before doing so, we dropped by the Dole Plantation in General Santos. In a country where adherence to international standards is more a function of effective public relations as opposed to the reality of the matter, I was pleasantly pleased to discover that Dole was ISO certified, and proud of it. Andrea de Guzman, my bubbly former student and co-speaker, was barred from entering the premises because she wasn't wearing closed shoes. Despite Andrea's impressive attempts to charm her way into the compound, the security guard firmly, but politely, informed her that she couldn't enter. Once inside, I was impressed not only by the facilities, which reminded me of a well-maintained private school, but by the professional demeanor of the workers we passed by. After dropping by the Dole souvenir shop, where I purchased souvenirs that my stomach will always cherish, at least for the 2.6 hours it would take for it to completely digest the mixed fruit cups and Pineapple Watermelon juice that I painstakingly selected, we set off for Koronadal.

Marvella Plaza Hotel is a cozy, comfortable place, with a warm and efficient staff. The rooms in themselves are nothing great, but the facilities are clean and the service is top notch. When I started unpacking, I discovered, to my dismay, that I didn't pack the adaptor for my Sony Ericsson charger. When I asked the staff for help, they immediately got one for me. Marlon, the all-around service technician of Marvella Hotel, even called me up in the room to make sure that the adaptor worked. Cool.

Once again reassured about the state of humanity, at least in Marvella Hotel, Koronadal City, I was in high spirits when Dr. Torralba treated us to a sumptuous lunch at Arpochi Seafood House, which is situated right beside the Koronadal City Sports Complex.
Arpochi (which was named, according to its proprietress, Mrs. Tagadaya, after her three pamangkins, Ara,Poging, and Chino), is a very charming, unpretentious carinderia-type of eatery that teases the olfactory pleasure centers with the scents of food so pure and unaffected that it recalls the delicious innocence that characterize Man before the Fall. Arpochi serves only five items: crabs, prawns, native chicken, squid and lapu-lapu. When we got there at around 1:30 pm, we were told that they had just run out of squid and lapu-lapu. Nevertheless, led by the wafting bouquet of culinary nirvana that Arpochi deliberately, and cruelly subjects all its customers to, we decided to order the crabs, prawns and the native chicken. What followed next was utter, delightful, joyful chaos. Never had so few, tried to ingest so much, with so much gusto and with so little regard for personal health than we, as mountains of crabs, prawns and chickens fell before our hunger like my brother-in-law Mike's manful self-discipline was eventually overcome by Adidas and Nike outlet sales.