In the past few months, several famous artists, both local and international, have announced their intentions to have concerts in the Philippines. Some of the notable names include LANY, The Script, Calum Scott, and Billie Eilish.

One of the most recent and controversial concerts is the reunion concert of Eraserheads. This band is an OG in the Filipino music industry. Despite the expensive ticket prices (with P17,000 being the most expensive and P3,000 being the least), they still achieved a sold-out status. This speaks volumes about how famous they are.

Unfortunately, I do not have enough money to buy concert tickets and attend these huge stadiums. I am stuck here in my room, bawling my eyes out and envious of these wealthy event-goers. My only hope is that someone on the internet will upload video clips of the concert.

Rhythm and Lights featuring Adie

Recently, Festival Mall, one of the well-known shopping centers in the south, announced that they will have Adie perform on January 14. My younger brother and I live just 40 minutes away from the event venue, so we took this opportunity to see him perform live. This is a free event, so we are definitely going!

We arrived in Alabang around 4 pm. Traffic was starting to build up. By 5 pm, this road would be filled with red and yellow lights.

Anyone who has been here before will be familiar with this photo. It's the walkway to the mall, with a river beside it. Walking here gives a relaxing feeling.

Along the walkway, there are a lot of things to buy. The prices are incredibly cheap compared to the malls near our place, so if I had brought extra money, I would have indulged myself by checking and buying those items.

This is the front and main entrance of Festival Mall, but over the years the place has expanded and additional mall entrances have been added.

It started raining, so we decided to go inside for a while and buy some food while we waited. The place is an open ground, so standing there and waiting until 6 pm would have made us drenched. It's expensive to get sick nowadays.

We walked around to find something to eat. There are a lot of food stalls to choose from and I was kind of overwhelmed. I asked my brother what he wanted, but even he couldn't decide. Our eyes were wandering and scanning the place for potential mouth-watering food. In the end, we ended up choosing S&R.

We bought two burgers and fries and two drinks. I was surprised by the total price, but I guess inflation just hits hard.

Their food court is huge and can accommodate a lot of people. There were a lot of people present at that time, I guess they were also waiting for the rain to stop, or maybe they were just having their meriendas. Despite the large volume of the crowd, the place was maintained to be clean and comfortable. I could still eat my burger and fries without being distracted.

After finishing our meal, we decided to find a spot, probably near the stage where Adie would perform. Unfortunately, a lot of younger people had already filled up all the good spots. We had no choice but to choose another place, farther from the main stage.

We were already contented here. We could still see what was going on on the other side. Though the faces of performers were not that recognizable from here, I think this was still great.

At around 5 pm, the program started. A band started singing some famous songs like Jopay, Ang Huling El Bimbo, etc. The crowd was jamming with the band which hyped the mood of the place. Then, at around 6 pm, the program facilitator introduced Adie. The crowd went wild; screaming their "I love you's," and other compliments you would probably hear when a handsome man suddenly goes out on stage. The place also started to get chaotic.

For the duration of one hour, Adie serenaded us with his top-charting songs including Mahika, Paraluman, and Tahanan. Then, after a while, we suddenly heard the facilitator counting from 3 to 1 which made me confused at first, but later on, I found out that it was a signal for the fireworks display.

If earlier I was disappointed with our spot, I am now grateful because we were just near the position where the fireworks were being lit. Basically, the beautiful and amazing illumination from the sky was just above us. While Adie was singing, the fireworks continued to light up for almost 5 minutes. To be honest, it was romantic at some point, like in a movie.