Good Friday..

I have become too old for Boracay...on my 12th year of celebrating Holy Week in the island, my life has changed so much. I am now to geriatric to walk the 4 kilometer stretch of white sand. I am in bed by 12 midnight and I am up as early as 7 in the morning. I have stopped paying attention to the numerous beefcakes parading in front of me, and my pleasures have become more mundane. I rather be in the hotel and do this blog. I have ceased drinking and being too wasted from too much partying has become a thing of the past. Maybe the old Jake has died to give way to a new Jake, a person who was able to rise out of the inanity and hedonistic pleasure of what the island has to offer. The island has transformed from an idylic and rustic getaway of yesteryears to a bustling and overcommercialized extension of the mall, a cheap copycat of Baywalk, Malate and Megamall combined. Old friends who have made the island their Lenten retreat have decided to stay away from the Holy Week madness and will be around when the mammoth crowd has subsided. Maybe Boracay is already trite, and year in, year out, I made a promise not to go back, but anyway, maybe it is just the weather. It has been raining almost daily, and when I say raining, not a shower but a downpour. I have seen the island during the low season of June to September and the peak season of October to May, and I have seen both sides, the deserted Boracay and the jampacked Boracay, and I am here, left in the middle. It is a tug between the old and the new, the past and the future, and now I must admit, I yearn for the old, because old people do that a lot, reminiscing about something they won't be able to bring back. That is why I have aged, Boracay-style.