by Leonard I thought I'd follow up Alex's photo post with a old video clip that shows how Manila looked before it got destroyed in the World War 2.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvpbsyNcI3I]
I could see places that I'm familiar with - Burgos St., Dewey, the bridge over the Pasig River, Intramuros, the San Agustin Church - but most of these places look really different from what I see in the video. That's because most of it was destroyed by the War that brough Manila to its knees and affected so many of our families back in the day.
Seeing images like this make me wonder what the Philippines could have been like. It's true that you can't change the past, only come to terms with it -- but video clips like this, as well as photos like the ones Alex posted are really vital tools for us to at least try and dissect.
So much of Filipino history is connecting the dots and I think that's also a big part of finding identity -- but it's like anything else, if you don't do anything about it... nothing happens.