Like a dangling conversation

Like a dangling conversation

I LIVE in Ecoland where a vast tract is now occupied by towering condominium buildings. Farther ahead are landmarked Ecoland Properties, which used to be occupied by illegal settlers. You see these signboards going toward Times Beach.

Passing by Verdon Parc everyday and seeing the lights at the building at night, the thought that always crosses my mind is: There are more families residing there than the whole subdivision I live in. Seeing that the land claimed from illegal settlers is not that big, I know that the most likely development going up a few years ahead will be more condominiums.

Soon, my tiny subdivision will be dwarfed by towering buildings. We will be like the old houses you look down on when you’re in some hotel along Roxas Boulevard or the houses along Tomas Morato that have survived becoming commercial establishments. We will be part of the past, reminders that once upon a time, residential properties were on land. Mine isn’t even big; half of a regular subdivision cut because it’s a two-storey duplex where the other unit is occupied by my brother.

The nudge that made me realize Davao is now approaching the era when properties will be measured by square foot instead of square meters is upon us was when a friend described my house as big because it’s two stories high.

In the not-so-recent past, when Marco Polo Davao had just opened, the hotel brought in journalists and visitors from Hong Kong where the hotel’s main operations were and we were given the opportunity to mingle and talk with the guests. It was an exchange of business talks, of course, as Marco Polo was packaging itself as a premier business address. I remember that the major block to our conversation was not the language, never mind if they all had that distinct Hongkonger accent when speaking English. It was that they were talking in square foot and we couldn’t imagine how big or small that was since life and living was measured in square meters. And they were talking of living units measuring 200 square feet. Google wasn’t invented then. But even as I managed to compute how much that was in square meters, I still couldn’t imagine a condominium unit measuring 18.5 square meters.

Those were the days when small cuts of subdivision properties measured 150 square meters and 90 square meter cuts that would later become common were for shelter programs, not even in low-cost subdivisions.

The brain takes time processing that.

Enter the new millennium where I got to stay in a friend’s house in a posh Ayala property in Makati: a 28-square meter studio worth P7 million, and I was like, whut? I’m lucky my mom had the foresight of making sure we bought a prime subdivision property long before I could afford a house, and so I’m now amortizing a two-storey house that’s much, much bigger than that multi-million studio for just P2 million.

At that time, I was thinking how anyone would be willing to pay P7 million for a shoebox. Now, the shoeboxes are starting to be marketed in Davao City and my braincells are laughing and chiding me: That was almost 20 years ago, you know... one generation ago. And I can feel my white hairs becoming bothersome, reminding me that I have lived through almost three generations now.

I guess, in today’s generation when real estate property values keep escalating, they serve as markers of time...

In the background, the fluid poetry that is the lyrics of The Dangling Conversation by Simon and Garfunkel is playing as if reminding me of an age past, and I know, very few of those not my generation will understand what I’m talking about.

Email: saestremera@gmail.com IG: @saestremera FB: /saestremera TikTok: @stellaestremera

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