Crossing Ayala
Just a little story about life in our country.
I was invited to have lunch at Ayala Triangle Gardens. It bears stressing at this point that Ayala Triangle Gardens is the very heart of the heart of the central business district of Makati. It’s the core of coolness, the epicenter of wealth and sophistication, the innermost point of the concentric circles of beauty. All the men here wear slim fit dress shirts under suit jackets two sizes too small. The women radiate power in nothing but the latest fashions. These people do not make art. They buy art. They are art.
Obviously, I had never been there. From EDSA, I drove down Ayala Avenue and slowly turned right at Paseo de Roxas, not knowing where to go next. When I nosed my car onto the ramp of Ayala Triangle parking, a security guard disdainfully pointed to his little auction paddle that said “Full Parking” as if to say Can you read? I am usually not intimidated by blue guards, but I meekly backed out onto the driveway and returned to Paseo where I took a sharp right to Makati Av where another entrance to the hallowed basement of Ayala Triangle was blocked by a guard with a discreet paddle. Parking also full. This time, with less scorn but equal authority. I felt unwelcome.
Parking at Nielson Tower wasn’t an option. A couple of slots always occupied. Apparently, only people with drivers—uh, chauffeurs—eat there. The pay parking lot nearby had a line of over ten cars with blinkers on, waiting to get in. Who has the time to wait in line forever like that? Drivers probably.
I went on down Makati Avenue deciding with some relief to park beneath good old Greenbelt. Surely, at 11:00 a.m. on a Thursday, the underground parking of a huge mall would still be relatively empty, right? I go down at the little rotunda between Greenbelt 3 and 4. Not a vacant slot in sight. I wandered around the labyrinth, squeezing through unfamiliar portals, until I found a passage down to another basement where off in the distance there were unoccupied parking spaces. Hallelujah!
When I alighted from my car, however, I realized I didn’t know where I was and how to get back to the surface. I had gone through a time tunnel and ended up in a dystopian future where fires ravage the suburbs, snow falls in the tropics, and humans survive alone in concrete bunkers. No, it couldn’t be. I was in Makati 2025. I eventually found an elevator hidden behind a crate in a glass enclosure and emerged into the bright lights of Greenbelt 5. Now all I had to do was figure out how to get from here to the fabled Ayala Triangle Gardens.
The main objective was to cross the Ayala, like getting over the Rhine meant a straight shot to Berlin. The most logical spot to traverse Ayala Avenue was, of course, at its intersection with Makati. I used to have an office at the Locsin Building overlooking the Rizal Theater, admittedly in the 1980s. How much could have changed? Ohhh, stainless steel Kung Fu fighters in front of the PLDT building. And there’s an entry way to a pedestrian underpass . . .
Reminded me of Singapore, the city that works. Oops. Spoke to soon.
The escalator wasn’t working. There seemed to be scaffolding everywhere. New stone steps, already cracked, sloped slightly downwards. This is dangerous, I thought, but I have to cross the Rhine. Some other people were also in the underpass. It was plainly in use while being renovated. I followed the path of newly laid tiles (the edges had not been cut to meet the walls) to the other end of the passageway and climbed three flights of stairs. The escalator wasn’t working. Sunlight! Fresh, less dusty air! I looked up. I was beside the Shangri-la hotel. Still on the wrong side of Ayala.
Horribly late for lunch, I looked around desperately for some other way to cross the road. No pedestrian lanes anywhere. I would have had to jump over railings. My only recourse was to go back down into the netherworld. More quickly now, I returned from whence I came, struggling up and down the 70 steps because the escalators were not working. As my glutes and quads protested, I almost asked for directions from an old woman incongruously sweeping the stairs, but real men don’t ask for directions. Thus, for the third time that day, I wandered aimlessly around until I chanced upon another underpass entryway nestled in some kind of pocket park in between the buildings. I descended into a hallway lined with dead TVs—a columbarium for televisions, symbolic representation of my career.
This time I breached in between the Gabriela Silang statue and the Makati Stock Exchange. Success at last. I made it across. I looked left and right. Again, logic told me to go left because the restaurants were on the other side of the Stock Exchange building which had an archway I could go through easily. Nope. Everything was blocked by white event tents. A quiet little sign said access to the Ayala Triangle Gardens restaurants was through the Makati Avenue entrance. I should have gone around to the right. In frustration, I froze silently in mid-scream just like Gabriela.
I know this was all my fault but let me just say that I used to love Makati and the people who built it.
Next time: a story about driving all the way to BGC only to realize I had forgotten my license, credit cards, and all my cash.
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