Deja vu.

RIGHT, A typical Manila street donned in a fiesta mood.

I've never attended town fiestas since I left Manila twenty five years ago until yesterday. Well, in Toronto, my cousin who grew up in Pasig organized a club of Pasiguenans and they celebrate the Pista ng Pasig every year, and I get invited to it. But it's not like a fiesta celebration done in the Philippines.

Yesterday, having been asked to do an offering at a mass celebrated by a Bishop, I had to wear my Sunday Best. It's a habit from childhood.

It brought back memories of childhood, like how my Aunt and my Mother used to dress us up in our best clothes and shoes for the Sunday mass. If it was the town fiesta or during special occasions like Christmas and New Year, we always had new clothes and pair of shoes to wear. Back in our hometown in Nueva Ecija, we snotty kids from Manila never failed to draw looks from the townsfolk for our "new, expensive-looking attire." Or it could be that our family was always late and had to do a "grand entrance."

Like a true blue blooded man of the twenties, my father always wore a 'fedora," and freshly-ironed shirt and de hilo pants. He favored pastel shirts, and didn't shy away from pinks nor maroons. He had a gold key chain hanging by his belt hook and hidden into his pocket, and for several years always carried a gun, and at one point, a riding crop with a concealed blade. My mother owned an "aparador-full" of dresses. During town fiestas or even if just invited to one, she'd always have a new dress to wear. At my graduation from elementary, she wore a pink mini-skirt and a jacket.

The parochial church, San Andres de Apostol, celebrated its first year of being a "parish." It is under the San Lorenzo Ruiz mother parish, and under the Antipolo archdiocese.

At eight in the morning, a marching band was making the rounds of the village, but unlike marching bands of yesteryear, this one was quite subdued. There were no kids nor dogs tailing the band, although there were still majorettes in mini,mini skirts.

I'm not used to this "offering stuff."

In Canada, my parish would ask for food donations during Thanksgiving and food drives, and for slightly-used clothes to be given to poor families and the homeless, but the parishioners would put them in front of the altar before the mass or bring them to a truck parked outside the church.

Yesterday, there was "palaro,' and a procession as part of the over-all fiesta celebration. In our youth, we watched all the events and were forced to join the "prusisyon."