city on the verge

There is something fascinating about living in a city that is just on the verge of growing up. You get to watch the buildings grow taller than the trees, the night lights grow brighter than those from the fireflies you used to watch as a kid.

The river that runs through Cagayan de Oro has always throbbed with the promise of the city's booming, but now, it glows, too, with the lights of the young bridges and the new parks. The soil that flanks it has turned to concrete -- an urban jungle where old meets new: motorelas sharing the road with SUVs, typewriter services at the street corner just across the computer store.