Streets of Pasay City: Spending Christmas with my folks

We visited my folks for Christmas so the kids can spend some time with them. Took some photos to share it with the Steemit community.

This is in the Pilapil area of Pasay. I think we moved here when i was 13. And we considered it an upgrade back then. The other places we've moved to are Dongalo and Cabrera, to say that those neighborhoods are tough is an understatment lol.

our street

My pops chatting with our neighbors

My pops is a repairman -- a tinkerer might be a more appropriate term. He repairs broken television sets, transistor radios, electric fans and washing machines. My mom is a plain housewife, and yet they were able to send me and my brother to good schools through determination and sheer hard work.

My pop's workstation where a lot of old TVs and radios were given a new lease on life

My brother is now a gastroenterologist, and i'm not doing so bad either with my chosen path. I always bring my children here to show them where we came from, and the challenges that we have to face growing up, especially my daughter who's now a teenager so she can learn to appreciate more the things that she have now and not take them for granted. My youngest, Vedder, loves to play with the neighbor's kids. And Zepp, well, Zepp will be Zepp. 😁

I want them to learn the values of hard work, perseverance, studying hard, the importance of good education, as well as having empathy for the less fortunate members of society, so that they will see that the poor are not poor because they're lazy, sometimes it's just thay they are ill-equipped to handle the challenges life throws at them, that a lot of them work themselves to death and still not make it, and sometimes it's just bad luck. We were just fortunate enough to rise through it.

We've asked our parents, my brother and I, before, if they would like to move to another place, but they declined, i guess it's because they'll miss the daily chat with their neighbors, reinforced by the fact that they easily get bored whenever they're visiting our place.

Looking back, I don't think I'd be as tough as I am today had I not grown in those places. It made me more sensitive to the plights of people around me, and at the same time, hungrier and more determined to succeed.

My only hope is that I can impart those to my kids.

Thank you for reading. It's 30 more minutes before midnight of the 25th, so Merry Christmas! (Habol pa!)

Instagram: Special Needs Daddy

Shameless Plug

If you haven't read it yet, please do take the time to read the beautifully-written A Day In The Clouds which chronicles one of Zepp's misdaventures.