Baguio Centennial Celebration

The first major event I experienced while living here was Panagbenga back in February, and it was HUGE. There are so many people in town during that time that it redefined the law of physics, the one that says no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. You can actually get from one place to another without moving a muscle. And no, there's nothing magical about it. You just relax and let yourself be carried by the moving mass of people to where you want to go. Although the price of that is knowing what the person next to you had for breakfast (or dinner, if worse comes to worst). Burnham was packed with picnickers we had to scour almost the whole park in order to find a decent place to spread out our picnic mat on. Decent, at the time, meant dangerously close to an overflowing garbage bin, so the instant another group of people packed up, we jumped to replace them.


Now comes the Baguio Centennial celebration. Yep. 100 years of being the Baguio City that we all know. Almost 100 years (97 years, to be precise) of being the summer capital of the Philippines). And despite the fact that the name of the city may have come from its homonym "bagyo" (which is Tagalog for "typhoon") because of the seemingly unendless afternoon rains, Baguio actually came from the word "bagiw" (Ibaloi term meaning ‘moss’. Ibaloi is the the indigenous language of the Benguet Region, for the curious.) And yes, I did a little research on that. It didn't just come out of my head like Athena coming out of Zeus'. I don't even know the name of our mayor here, or I have heard of it but it refused to stick to my brain).

The celebrations started last week of August, but it's the September 1 parade and fireworks that got me excited. The last time Svet saw fireworks was during Panagbenga, and I was amused at her reaction I just have to have a glimpse of that again. September 1 will be packed full of activities. The centennial parade will start at 8 a.m. at the upper Session Road, for those who are planning to go. There will be a ceremony for the centennial awardees at the Athletic Bowl in Burhham Park at 11 am. They are busy building something at the park right now, and I can only assume it's the centennial markers that the city will unveil the same day. The fireworks will also be at Burnham, although I'm not sure what time it will start. We might be spending the rest of the day waiting for the fireworks at the park, so say hello if you're there.