Not that I haven't been here for ages.

Only last year I was here, for work, in the middle of the swarm of devotees of the Black Nazarene. Which means I haven't really been here but to just a square meter of Quiapo or even less, moving only to where the limited space would let me move.

Today, however, Quiapo is back to its usual crowd with enough space for vendors and buyers, fortune tellers and vagrants and pickpockets. I join them and am now walking towards the same street I went to more than six years ago for one special mission. Something that would have changed my life.

Except for less vendors, nothing much have changed. I am now surveying the stores. Still the same but with more sophisticated signboards. I enter one store. I ask questions. I transfer to another one and do the same. And then I go back to the previous store. And do the same things with all other stores, just like what me and my dad did six year ago. He must have feared something may happen if I go alone. Little did he know that I've been here a few times before. To experience Quiapo, to observe its people, to talk to them and to write about them.

I enter one store for the nth time and have now realized how it changed. And so did the others. Stores are relatively more orderly now, though I can still sense traces of chaos that once proudly existed in them. Even the same distinctive smells that tell them apart are still there. They were probably from old stocks or from ageing walls and furnishings or from films and chemicals used for developing photos.

I enter Henry's which now sports a renovated modern interior. But still offering great prices for bargain hunters. I remember my dad and I entering this store with him asking store attendants most of questions before finally asking me, "will that do?" We had the same routine for all other stores in that block which extended to the next street where Mayer's still stand. We patiently looked for that great bargain to which my answer will be "Yes, that will do."

We didn't find one and in the end left with nothing. The few ones I liked were just too much for what's inside my dad's pocket. And so we left Quiapo agreeing that it would be more practical for me to just borrow someone else's equipment. I was to use it for just one semester anyway, he said. He didn't know I wanted to use one forever.

So for the next months, I held a strange equipment which I never really fully understood, which I wasn't able to grow with. Its full potentional I wasn't able to tap because it never really lasted in my hands long enough for me to play with. All because six years ago, I left Quiapo without my own toy.

Today, I return home with one.

Yes, I give in. After six years of resisting and convincing myself I am better off without one. And after vowing not to borrow one again. But I did last year. And so now, I hold one again - a unit from the same brand I used to borrow in college. But this time (yehey! ) all mine.