Ortigas Center Archives - Page 4 of 5

Meralco’s Bright Christmas

January 1, 2015 by The Urban Roamer

Christmas Day and New Year’s Day may have passed, but until the feast of the Epiphany or the Three Kings, (though they’re not actually kings but Magi or Wise Men) it still is a good excuse to still celebrate the Christmas season. And if you are looking for a place to celebrate the last days of the Christmas season, then you may consider visiting the Meralco Complex along Ortigas Avenue and check out the Liwanag Park.

For all evenings during this Christmas season until January 19, the area surrounding the Meralco headquarters has been converted into this mini theme park of sorts that is illuminated with hundreds of multicolored bright lights. After all, it’s not called Liwanag Park for nothing.

Library Roaming: The Ortigas Foundation Library

May 30, 2014May 30, 2014 by The Urban Roamer

Part of being a possible volunteer for the Wikimedia Philippines’ Philippine Heritage Mapping project is the research work that needs to be done not only to gather information on the landmark you will be writing about in Wikipedia, but also finding the sources of such information that can be used as a solid foundation of sorts for that article in the sense that those sources that will be cited are reliable and thus, verifiable.

In the course of such research that I have been doing, I found myself visiting again a haunt that I sometimes visit during my student days, the Ortigas Foundation Library.

the food bazaars at Ortigas Center

August 3, 2014November 12, 2011 by The Urban Roamer

It’s been a while since I wrote about Banchetto. And a lot have happened since then.

Foremost of which was the end of the Banchetto at the former Emerald Avenue on May 7, 2011, which according to one of the organizers, was a result of “collateral damage” between the area’s barangay government (Brgy. San Antonio in this case) and Ortigas Center.

For a time, the Banchetto Fridays were held near the Forum Robinsons Mall in Pioneer St. in Mandaluyong, where Banchetto has been holding an overnight food market every Wednesday and Thursday nights.

that brewery named after a saint and a suburb

July 30, 2014October 2, 2010 by The Urban Roamer

It was September 29, 1890, which happened to be the feast of St. Michael and the rest of the Archangels, when a fellow named Enrique Barretto y Ycaza opened up a brewery in the Manila suburb named after the aforementioned saint. With a royal grant from Spain, Enrique decided to name the brewery after that suburb where he has lived and worked. So began the history of Fabrica Cerveza de San Miguel, the brewery which would become the San Miguel Corporation we would know today.

The document which bore that royal grant had the old seal of Manila insigned with a crown above it. Seeing the significance of this seal, Enrique adopted it as the logo for his brewery, which is still seen today as the current corporate logo of the company. The seal is known as the escudo, which means shield; incidentally, it was also the name for once Spain’s old currency before the peseta and eventually the euro.