Las Islas Felipinas and fishes

Yoyoy Villame’s novelty song will be forever etched in my memory. Here’ goes (clap your hands and stomp you feet!)

March sixteen fifteen hundred and twenty one
When the Philippines was discovered by Magellan
They were sailing day and night, across the big ocean
Until they came and landed on Limasawa island

I can’t remember the rest of the lyrics but from one blogsite (http://www.motorcyclephilippines.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=7814) has more:

“Wen Magellan visitated Mactan, to kristianize them everyone...den da batel bigan at dawn... bolos end spers versos gans and kanons...Mactan island he could not grab, Cause LapuLapu is very hard..."

Lapu-lapu was on the one centavo coin. This changed to a fish in the 90’s if I remember correctly.

The fish we know as Lapu-lapu is called hammour in these parts of the desert. Inexpensive as opposed to Manila’s horrendous prices. Affordable thus more Pinoys here can bring it to the table and introduce it’s taste to the young. One convenience they’d find hard to do back home. But that’s just me going off track. hehehe :-)

Lapu-lapu, the man, however remains an enigma. Shouldn’t we try to look more into this intriguing fellow in our history to know more about him? Rather than immerse in the Korean teleseryes of the day?

Here are some sites off the Internet you get on Lapu-lapu, the man, just by a simple keyword search in Google:

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Harbor/1320/bbilapu.html
http://www.geocities.com/rolborr/lapulapu.html
http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/lapulapu.html

While searching, I also found this interesting site on the Philippines:
http://www.philippines.hvu.nl/index.html

As I reflect on the impact of March 16 in my life as a citizen of the world, and as a Filipino, my stomach yearns for the succulent white meat of inihaw na lapu-lapu. Better visit the fish market on my way home.