When my friends Jean and Yani decided to relocate their family to Bacolod, fellow college friends immediately made plans to have a sort of “despedida trip”. We all agreed to book a flight to Cagayan de Oro (CDO) to try white water rafting.

When I woke up this morning and heard the announcement of another scheduled brown out, I knew I had to get out of the house -- pronto! What to do? Go practice shooting! I quickly grabbed my camera, a bottle of water and my cellphone.

Oh, by the way, I live in Lipa, Batangas. Lipa is 78 kilometers south of Manila, about two and a half hours travel time using the Southern Luzon Expressway (SLEX) and Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR) Tollway. Exiting from Santo Tomas, it takes just 15 minutes to reach Lipa.

The city was once renowned for its coffee which she supplied the world from 1814 until 1888. Coffee brought money and culture into the homes of Lipeños. In the modern times, roses wrote Lipa another page in her history. The mystical shower of roses in the Carmelite monastery brought throngs of people praying for a miracle. Lipa is indeed a story of materialism and spiritualism.

First stop: San Sebastian Cathedral. When I was a kid, my mom used to take me to the Cathedral to hear mass on my birthday. I never really paid attention to the priest because I was busy looking up at the ceiling. To my young eyes, the paintings of the winged angels and saints were simply amazing. Of course, afterwards, my neck hurt from twisting and turning this way and that. And I was a bit dizzy from all that inspection of the vaulted painted ceiling.

The cathedral is 144 years old.