My Humps (well, Alabang's actually)

For 19 years, I’ve lived on number two Polillo Street, the corner of Luzon Drive; a few paces away from Madrigal Avenue – the main street of one of my most favorite places on Earth: Ayala Alabang Village.





Yes, Ayala Alabang is the premiere gated community South of Manila. It commands images of large houses in contemporary architecture, with large lawns and swimming pools. Within is the Alabang Country Club, still posh, especially to those who have lived there at least as long as I have. Then there are the schools, the most notable of which are Woodrose (exclusive girls’ school) and De La Salle Santiago Zobel. Schools for the rich kids, both of them.

I trumpet the poshness of the village, because I lived there as an anomaly: I actually am a scion of employees. White-collar, to be sure, but definitely of rank-and-file stock. My dad worked for Ayala companies: Makati Leasing, then for the Bank of the Philippine Islands. It was due to his employment in Ayala Corporation that he was able to purchase the house and lot with a long-term layaway plan.

The area where we lived (District 2, Phase I) used to be exclusively called “Housing”, because it was part of the housing program of Ayala for its employees. These days it is less apt because a lot of the residents are not Ayala employees, mostly due to the former owners selling and moving out of their homes. Still, whenever asked where I lived, I would say, Ayala Alabang.

Even though there was no distinction in terms of services and location (actually, living in our area is more advantageous due to its proximity to the exits and the commercial and business centers), there is a massive gap in terms of income and quality of living (ours wasn’t bad, theirs was just much better). When I first saw the houses with two-car garages, I was truly awed, being an inner-city urchin from Sampaloc, Manila whose only experience with automobiles consisted of jeepney, bus, and the rare taxi cab ride.

Some trivia: People who grew up in the village only refer to it as Alabang, while everybody else refers to it as “Ayala.” I guess there is some kind of innocent arrogance in their thinking there was no Alabang outside of the village. Residents who insist on referring to it including the “Ayala” in Alabang are somehow shown up as poseurish and noveau-riche (while most of them truly are such). I began to learn about this in high school, which was outside the village and where it was common to ask people where they lived.

What really distinguishes our area from the rest of the village (what some of us grew up calling “millionaires’ row”) is that the lot sizes are much smaller, the units were initially bungalows, with duplexes and even row-type houses with communal parking spaces. Also, the architecture was initially uniform, white concrete with red Spanish tegula tiles for roofing. Very rarely would there be a garage, unless the owner built one. No swimming pools, no basketball courts on the driveways, but there was something that a city boy like me found truly amazing: grass.

Houses had lawns with soft grass and manicured shrubs. In Manila we had trees and potted plants and even flowering shrubs and vines, but there wasn’t any grass. At most we found moss crawling over rocks and walls. I learned a lot of distinctions for grass (carabao, Texas blue, Bermuda, and the Talahib that covered the then-undeveloped areas in the village).

Alabang's sosy sari-sari store - Rustan's in Cuenca

Back to the distinctions: District 2 had (and still enjoys) a village cooperative (there’s one in each phase) that served as the town sari-sari store. If you lived deeper in the village, you would have to stock up on groceries and dry goods as well as own and drive a car (or employ an on-call chauffeur), because you would be far from everything. Even when Rustan’s opened a convenience store in the Cuenca community center area, it was still far from your house. I don’t care where you say you live. It’s far.

District 2 had a truly awesome convenience: tricycles. It was the quickest way out of the village. Especially in District 2, where a lot of people did not have cars. We didn’t have one until 1993, so the tricycle was (and still is) our primary mode of transportation. These tricycles had limited range and routes. They only reached as far as the corner of Luzon Drive and Madrigal Avenue, just a block away from our house. To travel deeper in the village, there were jeepneys. Chances are, however, wherever you did end up getting off will still be very far from where you needed to go. The village was (and still is) pretty big.

What I’m really trying to share is, even though I certainly wasn’t among the royalty of Alabang, I truly loved living there. Sure, more than a few times, I was guilty of leveraging my village address for the purposes of social mobility. But I really believe that by not being one of the truly privileged of the villagers, I felt, ironically, truly privileged to be living there.


I bet you don't have humps like these! uhhh!

Now I can go on and on about the many different things I love and find great about the village, but let me just share this: One thing very few people notice is how good our humps are. They are truly awesome. “Humps?” you say. Even when I was a kid I thought they were well planned, well made, and well-maintained. Now that I actually drive, I love them all the more.

Humps or speed bumps are placed on the streets to slow down fast moving vehicles to avoid accidents. The idea is that the bump on the road, if approached too fast, can cause damage to vehicles. Therefore, it encourages the drivers to slow down. Think of it as a failsafe against morons who won’t slow down for anything (visual signals) else but a real threat to their own vehicles. However, the quality of the hump is found in how smoothly it allows vehicles to go over it, while at the same time slowing them down.

In many villages or gated communities of comparable quality to Ayala Alabang, the dimensions of the hump are (approximations only) one meter wide (in cross section), the breadth of the street long, and about six inches high. Also, these humps are zebra-painted in yellow and black for optimal visibility, along with the matching street sign (inverted triangle warning). This is not bad, but this is not excellent - in my opinion. In most subdivisions, even in some areas of BF, the humps are atrocious. The dimensions are: about a foot wide, and six inches or so high. This means that no matter how slow you drive, it’s going to be painful. What’s worse, they are seldom painted. There used to be these humps along Concha Cruz in BF that we called “ninja” or “stealth” humps. You never see them coming.


Easy on the eyes, easy on your ride.

The humps in Alabang are seriously of superlative quality. Consider the dimensions: at least 2 meters wide, the breadth of the street long, and about six inches high. It’s the cross-sectional width that makes all the difference. The width provides a steady grade that minimizes the jarring effect of traversing the peak of the hump. So even if you pass through a heavily humped area like University Avenue in front of Zobel (De La Salle Zobel school), it’s easy on you and your vehicle.

There is one exception though. This particular hump on Madrigal Avenue right before the turn to Luzon Drive probably gives the most violent driving experiences in the village. Perhaps because it’s the busiest corner/intersection in the entire village, the paint job never lasts. So at night, many drivers don’t see it until it’s too late to sufficiently slow down. And since it’s a particularly big hump, perhaps due to the breadth of Madrigal Avenue, it seems quite high, compared to the other humps in the village.

During the Ramos administration (early 1990’s) when power outages happened every night I would walk to the then-vacant lot at the corner of Luzon and Madrigal and watch all the lowered cars fly off that hump with much screeching and sparks. I swear I could almost hear the drivers’ expletives from across the wide road.

That particular hump aside, I’m almost certain any driver can appreciate the quality of the humps of Alabang. No one really talks about them, but I really think it’s part of what distinguishes our village from all the others (Ayala Heights in QC is near-identical with Alabang though).

I recently moved to Pasig after I got married in December of 2006. There are many conveniences living here in the East over the South, mostly due to how centrally located we are in relation to anywhere in the metro. No prohibitive toll fees as well. Inasmuch as I love the new home and the life that I’m building with my bride here in Pasig, Alabang will remain my most favorite places on Earth. I miss it already!

I drove around Alabang (for the first time) the day before I started writing this, and I was arrested by emotions that I won’t pretend to understand. I really think that there’s something about having lived in the South. And I can’t thank my stars enough that I had the privilege of calling Alabang my home, even for a short while.