Misadventures In Good Intentions

2011-08-22T03:03:00.000-07:00

My biggest fear is that my love is not enough. I don’t think I have much else to offer. By the world’s standards, I am an ugly person. On a good day, maybe plain. I only wish I had a normal smile. Because I have felt happiness, but my exterior can never seem to accurately reflect these beautiful feelings in a beautiful way. Maybe that’s why I have fortified myself to be on my own. But maybe I am destined to be on my own, not because of my ugliness, but because of my pride.

I think I have loved well in those rare instances when the door was opened to me. I believe I can love well. For the most part, I've felt I've been doing my best navigating this world where I don't seem to fit anywhere. Maybe I've been wrong. But we just continue to do our best.

2011-05-23T07:16:00.001-07:00

wish i was braver.

Memoir

2011-05-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

My brother is lying on a block in Guadalupe. Some papers have to be fixed before they can attend to him. We have just brought him home from Palawan. Waited for his body to be unloaded from the plane along with suitcases and crates of mangoes and fish. The world has reduced my brother into cargo and it makes me angry.

Father’s day 2003. Though it is a Sunday morning, I must report to work at the military press office where I will scan through reports of car thieves and bolo hackings and hope that somewhere, something more exciting happens before my 5o’clock deadline.

Riding in the passenger seat of the jeepney, I ignore my phone when I feel it ringing in my back pocket. I think it is the desk reminding me to send my slugs in by noon. The ringing ceases and I receive a text message instead. “Please call. Something happened to Vier.” It is from my oldest brother, Francis.

I stop the jeep and run to a side store along Cubao. Xavier has been living in Palawan for three months now with my mom and youngest brother, Miguel. I worry that maybe he has gotten into a snorkelling accident.

My brother answers the phone. “What happened?” I ask.

“I think he killed himself,” Kuya Franz blurts out.

I take the MRT back to our apartment. The trains are almost empty and I get a seat with no problem. It is not as empty as I would like though. Tears are starting to form in my eyes but have not yet fallen. I can wipe them away in an exaggerated performance of fatigue and disguise my sniffing as a cold. A lady in the seat across watches me.

In the hallway to our apartment, I meet Kuya Franz. We hug each other awkwardly. He tells me that the caretaker found Xavier hanging from his belt from a beam in the loft early that morning. We take a silent taxi ride to my aunt’s house. Mom and Miguel still don’t know that Xavier is dead. They are still in San Vicente, about five hours and a boat ride away from the city. Xavier had stayed behind for a night out with some friends. I think about my mom.

We arrive at my tita’s house. She breaks into tears when she sees us. She hugs us tightly. I have not yet completely absorbed what is happening and I stand numbly in her arms. My uncle is more aggressive and methodical, wanting to scientifically approach the situation. He asks for the caretaker’s physical description and then gets a belt and tries to calculate Xavier’s height until my oldest cousin shoots an angry look at him.

It is decided that Francis will go to Palawan the next morning and that I will follow the day after, once I prepare an extended leave at the office. We stay at my tita’s house until early evening when we finally get a chance to talk to mom. I ask her how she is doing but we are both numb, and she snaps at me. Francis and I return to the apartment and begin the task of informing friends. We retreat to different rooms where privately as the night grows deeper, the loss begins to crystallise – the utterance and conveyance of the fact delivering the unimaginable into reality.

The plane arrives in Puerto Princesa late morning, full of tourists and balikbayans excited to explore this last frontier and reunite with friends and family. Francis and mom are at the chapel and Cynthia, my mom’s secretary picks me up at the airport. We take a tricycle to the house so I can drop off my things. This occasion is my first time to see the house fully completed – our first house after moving seven times in six years after my second step-father passed away. It was supposed to be my mom’s retirement house. Her gift to herself after years of losses, her chance to start over and rejuvenate after the death of another husband left her with too much to bear yet again. It held the promise of hope and happiness and now, all I can think is that it is the house that dealt the cruelest blow.

I don’t notice its Indonesian inspired architecture with a wide balcony and high-peaked burnt-red roof. I want to see where my brother died. The caretaker takes me to the foot of the stairs on the landing that leads to the loft. Directly above the stairs, an office chair sits below a beam, slightly askew. It’s the chair he used to play video games in. I climb the stairs slowly and examine the area. The offending beam is just a few feet from the ground. The caretaker tells me that his toes were grazing the floor.

I try to imagine those last hours. What he was thinking and feeling as he stood on that chair and began to adjust the belt over the beam. I try to imagine what the caretaker saw when he prepared to wake the house up to the early morning light. Later, whenever I visit the house, I will find that I cannot climb those stairs looking upward.

I take another tricycle to the chapel and enter a room filled with people I don’t know – a Palawan life I have not yet been introduced to. There is our neighbour, Tita Susan who bakes cookies and runs a women’s cooperative. She waited outside on the street for hours for my mom to arrive so she could break the news to her before she set foot into the darkened, empty house. And there is Ria, a cheerful girl my age who sat with Xavier as he was being dressed in a barong and who scolded the mortician for not applying the makeup properly. My mom is seated next to the door surrounded by friends who greet me with an almost shocking exuberance that I don’t know how to react.

Xavier’s heavy white coffin is at the back of the room on a small stage. I had thought that the steps to take me to his body would be difficult, marked by tentative measures as my ascent up the house stairs. But I realise that I stride confidently, with a purpose.

Through the glass and fallen flower petals, I see my brother lying in a white barong. His makeup is heavy and uneven. One side of his mouth curves upward as if he is smirking at an internal and eternal joke, to whose truth only he is privy. His lightly closed eyelids lend him a quality of worried sleep.

Where is the brother who once lay down across a patch of thorns when we were children so I could walk over him like a bridge? Where is the brother with whom I would make home movies starring our Chihuahua-terrier as a superhero? Where is the brother who would walk a few metres behind me to make sure I got to our shared apartment safely, even though he didn’t think I knew? Where is the brother who was always my team-mate whenever we played two-on-one against Kuya Franz? We were best friends once. And then we had to grow older and grow apart. But when did we all learn to stop asking for help?

You were always the strongest one. The reliable one. The tallest one. The best looking one. The most charming. Everybody loved you. I took it with good humour when they said they expected this from either me or Kuya Franz, but not you. Because it’s true. You had it all. What didn’t you see? Or what didn’t we see? Do you know how mom fell apart at your funeral? Could you hear her cries? She’s never cried like that, so openly, so completely. Not even after Daddy Efren, Joey, Tito Bunny or Lola Ave. I think she always had to save some composure for our sake. But what’s the point when it’s her own child now being laid into the ground?

We will fly back to Manila the next day. Tita Susan, Ria, Cynthia and other friends will stand with their faces pressed against the glass wall dividing the waiting area with the street outside until we board the plane to bring my brother home.

At the morgue in Guadalupe, I sit on a monoblock chair alone with him in a room. Mom and Francis are making arrangements for the wake and burial. Miguel, to whom it had been gently explained that his kuya decided to stop breathing, is with his half-siblings. The mortuary people are supposed to touch up Vier’s makeup but there has been a delay. He lies on a cold aluminium table. No white coffin encloses him now. I’m not sure what I feel. I feel sad. I feel angry. I feel lost. But I think I understand him somehow.

I watch over him for a while from about three feet away. Slowly, I muster some courage to stand up and walk closer to him. I stand over him now. His expression has not changed. But I sense a helplessness in the slight arch of his eyebrows. Or perhaps, I detect my own helplessness. I just wish I could help him somehow. Do something for him. I think that if I concentrate hard enough, I can will his eyes open.

I want to let him know that I’m there. But I’m frightened. Even though he is my brother, I have never touched a dead person before. I feel like to touch him would be beyond my rights. But I also imagine that Vier will suddenly jump up and begin laughing, getting the best of me once again as he did when he once convinced me that he was a vampire when we were kids. I inch closer, lifting my hand above him before I timidly rest my palm on his leg.

His leg is not supposed to be this hard. It should not be like a slab of metal. There is no softness. No give of breathing flesh. I keep my hand on him. I feel first the rough cloth of his slacks and imagine his bare leg beneath. I wonder if he can feel me. My hesitancy at this too late attempt at tenderness. My touch is light at first. Frightened. Ashamed somehow, that it is only in this cold morgue that I have willed enough strength to attempt to express some affection. Then I grow more confident and hold him firmly.

Xavier will be laid to rest at the Heritage park. Kuya Franz’s second son, Javier, will never meet the uncle whom he is named after. Xavier will appear to Miguel in a dream telling him to burn that belt. Mom will take counselling courses, begin a grief support group and edit a book on parents whose children have gone before them. And as for me, today I have written this.

Autobiographical Essay

2011-05-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

The President’s Premonition and the First Yawp
One rainy day in September 1978, President Marcos had a premonition. With his son and daughter flying from Laoag to Manila on separate planes, something made the strongman shake and place a call to his children's security detail. Within minutes a game of musical chairs ensued as, breaking protocol, the presidential children were transferred onto a single plane. My father, a member of the Presidential Security Group, moved to the ill-fated plane which crashed into a pond in Paranaque – beheading a young mother who was watching television as it plowed through a row of houses on its way down. Four months later, I was born and named after my Daddy Efren.

I’ve heard it said that the unborn child absorbs all the emotions of the mother while floating in the womb. Curled in her own little universe, the child is nourished by a banquet of joy, fear, sadness and all the other flavours of the emotional cosmos until she pierces the waiting world with a mighty yawp. Thinking of my mother, widowed all those years ago with two young boys and a bun in the oven, I think then that I may have been reared on a diet of uncertainty and tenacity.

Learning to Dream in English at the Expense of a Spoon
My mother remarried a stern Israeli businessman a few years after Daddy Efren’s death and we transferred from Malacanang Park (upon whose banks we would chuck stones into the Pasig River) to a sprawling home in Paranaque. It was under Tito Eli’s rigid watch that I began thinking, speaking and dreaming in English. We would have to come to dinners prepared to recite a verse from Shakespeare or ready to expound on a newspaper article of our choosing. A casual evening consisted of a few rounds of Trivial Pursuit in between bites of falafel. But for all the cerebral gymnastics we had to contend with, there were some things that were harder to learn – I also remember being severely scolded for insisting on using a fork and spoon to eat my meals, especially as my brothers had already learned to master the knife. At the dinner table, my brothers looked quietly down on their plates as my step-father glared at me – close to tears from hunger and shame as I fumbled with that damn knife.

China and Two Revolutions
Tito Eli’s work eventually brought him to China where my mom found a job as a cultural attaché at the Philippine consulate. China offered an idyllic if not sheltered childhood. At our school, we were a bit of an oddity – the only Filipino family. I remember a line of students waiting to try our transplanted pedicab in which I rode to school each morning (weather permitting) with my brother pushing effortlessly at the pedals. It was also in China that I recall first being publicly praised for my writing by my first grade teacher, Mrs. Dugal, an Indian lady who wore flowing saris and who lived just a few floors above our apartment. Even though her audience was just a bunch of rowdy, uninterested children, the incident was the first time I had ever been singled out for anything and though I was slightly embarrassed, I grew more and more intrigued at this business of words. Because she was my favourite teacher, it became something I wanted to be good at.

China in the mid to late 80s was a country on the cusp of embracing capitalism, but I recall it as a child’s paradise. Beijing’s parks were expansive tracts of land filled with temples, lakes, caramel apples, dumplings and legends of lions and monkey kings that sent me into a tizzy. But I suppose for children, any place can be a playground. I was also happy enough to walk to school each morning, if only to slide across a good portion of the street which would freeze over in winter or make little books on folded pieces of paper about a dinosaur named “Speed.”

Back home in Manila though, things were brewing and changing as the People Power Revolution captured the world’s imagination and attention. I did not know what was happening, but I remember people (Chinese and foreigners) waving to us on the street and flashing us the thumbs up sign. “Go Philippines!” they’d shout. And it made me as proud as a second grader could be.

In the middle of everything, our teacher assigned us to give a presentation on our home countries with our parents in attendance. I remember insisting on wearing a yellow t-shirt saying “I stopped a tank with my heart” sent from relatives back home to the presentation – but more because I hated dresses and other formal wear than for any symbolic statement. As I recited my report, I unwittingly elicited laughter from the parents when I read, “Ferdinand Marcos is not famous because nobody likes him.” And again, I became intrigued at how words and their speakers could affect people. (Just a few years later, China would try its hand at its own people power movement – and I still get chills whenever I see that famous image of a lone man standing in the path of a column of barrelling tanks and remember how the little Philippines once achieved something so inspirational.)

Symptoms of Dis-Ease
We returned to Manila after a few years where I finished my schooling. While I focused my energy on sports, I still received some attention for essays and stories written as class assignments. One highlight came when a short story I wrote in the fourth grade was anthologised in a CCP publication featuring young writers. I remember reading the story at the launch, this time surrendering to my mom’s urging to wear a decent dress. Even though the story was silly (revolving around “smushed” chocolate cake and roller coasters), mom still likes to joke that I was a published writer before she was and it was my first experience that people other than teachers could be interested in stories.

Although I was an average student, I managed to win a partial scholarship to a university abroad where after careful deliberation, I chose to study International Development. It seemed a noble choice, but I was almost immediately taken over by a sense of dis-ease when I entered the lecture hall for the basic course in Development Problems. I could also not ignore the irony of learning “development” from one’s former colonisers. While I had never considered myself anything but Filipino, I began to realise that I was a weak voice to speak on behalf of my homeland and offer another perspective to my mostly western classmates, since I was just as westernised as they were. But at the same time, my heritage stood out and was mis-interpreted. I was once roused from my sleep by a bunch of Caucasian dorm-mates who asked if I could speak “Asian” to a Korean student and convince her to open her door.

I also recall being assigned Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve. The professor asked us how the Indian villagers may have perceived Kenny – the white doctor who attempts to build a hospital in their community. I remember one blond-haired boy replying that the villagers probably saw Kenny as “the land.” He was the provider from which life could flower and I remember the broad gestures of this boy’s hands as he expounded on his ideas. I wanted to speak up and say that I thought that the villagers found him more like the tannery – a foreign institution which had turned their lives upside down but to which they had to submit despite their mistrust. But I was too timid. And it was a moment of cowardice and insecurity that I’m still looking to amend.

Finding a Thread and Another Revolution
My sojourn abroad however only lasted a semester. In the midst of the Asian crisis, I returned to Manila where after a year of drifting like a foetus in a harsh and barren womb, I enrolled at De La Salle University. Despite my mom’s concerns about my future, I chose to pursue a degree in Literature (which is ironic since she herself was a Literature graduate). To be blunt, I did not enjoy my university years. Older than most of my classmates, I had different concerns and preoccupations. For one, I wondered if my speaking, thinking and writing in English precluded me from being considered Filipino. My accent meantime compounded my natural shyness and I was uncomfortable speaking in class especially as it seemed to betray my westernised upbringing, which is precisely what I was struggling with. My goal was simply to get in and out of college as quickly and quietly as possible.

But it was in one of my major classes that I was first introduced to postcolonialism and where I felt that I had found a thread to follow in my attempt to reconcile my western upbringing with my being a Filipino. The ideas of otherness, neo-colonialism, hybridity, exile and subversion excited me and began to encourage me that I could be more than a vacuous voice with an amusing twang.
Meantime, in my final year of college the seeds of revolution again began to grip the country. This time, I was older and present and I wanted to be a part of history, rather than just a distant witness. I recall walking an hour from my house to the Edsa monument and joining the crowds in the rhythmic chants for resignation and at the same time worrying that the overpass would crumble from the weight of all the people.

During the first Edsa revolution, I had been a naive child in a different country. During the Tiannamen protests, I was still naive but could understand its gravity although again I was witnessing it from afar. But now, I was in the moment. And I recalled a paper I wrote for a Filipino History class in high school. Change will always happen, I wrote. All of us will be witnesses, some of us will be participants and perhaps one day, one of us may even be the catalyst that brings about that change.

Detours
After graduation, I naturally gravitated towards jobs that were centred around the written word. I got a job as a reporter at a broadsheet where I covered the justice and defence beat for two years. Again it seemed like a noble profession – to be history’s first witness. And I approached it with a certain degree of gung-ho. But the familiar feeling of dis-ease again began to creep in and I felt as if I was doing a disservice to the craft of writing and storytelling somehow. I became convinced that journalism was limited and by my experience of how media is practiced in the country, I again felt lost and disillusioned. Stories soon became quotas to fill before deadlines which were then quickly forgotten. Disasters such as ferry sinkings, bombings and typhoons were under my domain but the editor only wanted to know how many people had died and how many pesos in damages had been incurred.

One night, I had a dream that my colleagues were sitting on top of a dock in the middle of a grey body of water. Under the dock were bloated carcasses of people. My colleagues were eating them and calling me over to join them. I remember waking from that dream gripped with anxiety and guilt. It didn’t help that I was still grieving a personal loss and was physically overwhelmed after another bout with anemia that required my second round of blood transfusions. Burned out, lost and feeling like a failure, I eventually resigned.

I moved to a corporate investigative firm run by a former Israeli Mossad agent (possibly the only other Israeli in the Philippines after my first step-dad who my mom had long left). My stint in the defence beat had sparked an interest in security issues in me and I applied for the position of a writer whose task I thought was to analyse news reports. But on my first day, I was assigned to join a group of agents to conduct a surveillance on a target at a hotel. There we were in the parking lot, monitoring the target’s vehicle while another group was stationed inside the lobby. I stayed for two weeks but then again became uncomfortable. I was supposed to gather “dirt” on people for cases whose details I would not be briefed on and to use fake names to find my information. I remember sitting in the big boss’s sofa as I told him that I was resigning and returning my salary.

“Why would I care that you’re returning your salary? I made $1 million last year. People from the underworld have sat on that sofa. I’m not impressed with you. You’re never going to succeed because you have no sense of responsibility,” he told me as he leaned back on his chair. I don’t know how I felt about my chances of succeeding in life being compared to criminal kingpins, but I endured his tirade with tongue-and-cheek agreements, and then walked out and practically skipped down Ayala Avenue. It was my birthday. And the first thing I did was go to Time Zone. (While I emerged from the experience with an empty pocket and a bruised ego, at least I learned some techniques on how to evade a potential stalker – turn around and walk directly toward the person you think is following you. He will have to abort his mission. And how to tell the difference between a two-way mirror and a regular mirror – place your fingertip against the mirror. If the reflection of your fingertip touches your actual fingertip, it is a two-way mirror.)

Then began a slew of half-hearted attempts at different jobs. Emboldened by my “confrontation” with the Israeli boss-man, I felt no urge to stay in a job that produced any uncomfortable feeling within me. Sometimes I think I was addicted to that feeling of freedom after quitting a job and I justified it selfishly. I worked as a speech-writer for the military, an English tutor, a news writer for two different organizations, a commercial PR writer, a web writer, and an analyst for two different companies – usually staying only a few weeks at each position. Convinced that I could not tolerate an office job, I went into freelance writing but soon found myself disillusioned by the formulaic writing that I was spouting. I blamed it on the magazines but I wondered if perhaps I had lost my voice or if I ever had a voice to begin with. Or if I did have a voice, was I even brave enough to be heard?

I cringed whenever people asked what I did for a living. I could not stomach hijacking the sacred title of a “writer” simply because my words had seen print and I was suspicious and resentful of people who did. Or maybe I just sucked at writing and all those praises were just flimsy memories of a childhood long gone. Finally, I went into transcription and content writing, where I could still “write” but not have to think.

The pay was good and it was work I could literally do with my eyes closed. But I knew that it offered no growth and was not something I could do forever. As a writer, I felt I had fallen to the lowest level. Reduced to a monkey at the keyboard whose only talent were fast fingers. Since I came from a family of lawyers, I thought I would apply to law school – another noble choice. But I dropped out after the first semester. I realised that while I enjoyed reading cases, I did not want to be a lawyer whose sense of right and wrong were dictated by statutes, clients, and decorum. I wanted a creative life. Plus, I was on the brink of failing anyway.

The Lion’s Den
It’s been about three months since I entered the MFA program. I’m still a little dissatisfied with my writing but it’s good to be back in an environment that cares about words. Slowly, I think I’m returning to the fold.

Looking back though, I know I made selfish decisions and justified them with the easy alibi of searching for one’s self. I made some decisions out of fear and some out of laziness. But I don’t know how I could have done it any other way with the limited store of strength and knowledge that I had then. I remember asking my mom once how she felt when Daddy Efren died and how she managed to get on with her life after such a loss. Her two pieces of advice are what I try to live by.

The first is that you have to make decisions and live your life in a way that you can sleep well at night. The second is that everything happens for a reason and though you may not see it then, there is a lesson to be learned that you will one day understand.

I wonder how different my life would have been if Daddy Efren’s plane had landed safely and he had disembarked to kiss his pregnant wife and rub her full belly. I wonder where I would be now if I had had the chance to finish my schooling abroad. I try to think of the reasons that things have happened and the lessons that I was meant to learn. And maybe the lessons I can share. I think about how all our personal experiences inform the vocabulary of our imagination and the pitch, treble and volume of our unique voices. How our experiences train our voice to tell our stories. And I brace myself for more lessons to learn.

For several years, I vacillated on pursuing an MFA. Although in the back of my mind, I knew that I would eventually follow this trail (wherever it may lead), I kept its reality at a distance and instead explored different avenues. I think I was afraid. It seemed dangerous to pursue it at the first instance. What if I learned that I had no business trying to string together words or that I had nothing original or interesting to say? Where would I go from there?

Instead I stayed in the realm of safe writing where I could still be among words. But dead factory-ensemble words that couldn’t talk back and were cold to the touch. Like components of a machine. No wonder I balked at calling myself a writer. I think I was more of a mechanic – a technician who knew where each part belonged to make the sum operate.

But I think that a writer’s task is more like a lion tamer’s. It requires mastery, courage and a healthy dose of insanity because you know that you are dealing with living things infinitely more powerful than yourself, things that can eat you alive. If you succeed in directing its movements, it is not because you’ve imposed your will on it but more through a rare moment of harmony. I imagine that lion tamers and real writers both conclude their feats incredulous that they’ve escaped with their lives.

I’m still a little afraid but at least I’m in the lion’s den. And now, 30 years after that first yawp, I think I’m finally learning to speak.

One winter afternoon by ee cummings

2011-05-10T00:50:00.000-07:00

One winter afternoon
(at the magical hour
when is becomes if)
a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower.
Nobody,it’s safe
to say,observed him but
myself;and why?because
without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last)
mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i’ve
no word except alive
—that is,completely alert
and miraculously whole;
with not merely a mind and a heart
but unquestionably a soul-
by no means funereally hilarious
(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or etherally serious:
a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob, but a person)
and while never saying a word
who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him
self sang like a bird.
Most people have been heard
screaming for international
measures that render hell rational
—i thank heaven somebody’s crazy
enough to give me a daisy

Earthquake, Tsunami in Japan

2011-03-14T01:18:00.001-07:00

A 9.0 earthquake struck northeastern Japan Friday, unleashing an apocalyptic chain of events. Video showed buildings violently rattling for over 5 minutes, and sirens blaring over coastal towns warning of a coming tsunami. Aerial footage showed a clean line of waves barreling down on Japan's coast and tiny cars trying to get out of the way.

I found a picture today online of parents who had found their daughter trapped in the wreckage of a car. The caption said that the 18-year-old girl had been on a driving lesson when she was caught in the tsunami. Her mother gently touches her head while her father looks on.

The rescue of an elderly man who was swept nine miles out into the sea also made the news. The man and his wife had returned to their home after the quake to retrieve some belongings when the tsunami hit. The man survived by clinging to the roof of his house. His wife was swept away.

There are many more stories of narrow escapes and lives lost. Today, it was reported that 2,000 bodies had been discovered as they washed up on the shore.

Ampatuan Massacre 2

2009-11-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

Andal Ampatuan Jr., the prime suspect in Monday's massacre, is currently detained at the National Bureau of Investigation after "submitting" himself to authorities. In the meantime, more bodies have been unearthed in Barangay Salman, bringing the death toll to 64.

In the past few days, witnesses have begun to come forth with their accounts of what happened, coloring the landscape, which was alien to our imaginations. All the women were raped, one gunman said. They were merely following orders, another said. Their orders were to kill everybody.

Justice chief Agnes Devanedera said the women were discovered with their pants down and with shots fired into their genitals. Based on some tissue reactions observed in autopsies, a forensics expert suggested that some of the victims may have still been alive when they were thrown into the shallow grave and covered with earth.

It's very difficult to process all the information that is coming out.

Ampatuan Massacre 1

2009-11-25T17:55:00.000-08:00

Mindanao Massacre

I'm trying to react to the massacre in Mindanao of women, journalists and civilians.

It's been described as the worst incident of political violence in the country and the bloodiest day for journalists in world history. Bodies are still being dug up from a hillside grave where over 50 women, journalists and civilians were killed and buried.

The convoy, led by Buluan Mayor Esmael Mangundadatu's wife and sisters, was waylaid on its way to Sharif Aguak to file Mangundadatu's certificate of candidacy for Maguindanao governor. The mayor had received threats from a rival clan that he would be killed or kidnapped if he filed the COCs himself. Believing that the Amaptuans, adhering to Koranic code, would not harm women or civilians, the group was dispatched.

I try to imagine the convoy of seven or eight vehicles traveling through the lonely road before being ambushed by a small army of 100 or so armed men. How the group might have been forced out of their vans and what the victims might have been thinking as they watched their colleagues and relatives assaulted, killed and dumped in a waiting grave prepared by a government backhoe.

It's difficult to imagine. But it happened, in broad daylight.

Deadliest Country For Journalists

It's no secret that journalists are regularly killed in the Philippines. International groups have tagged the Philippines as one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists. Monday's bloodbath probably pushes us to the top. It's also no secret that election-related violence and clan wars are common, particularly in the country's south.

But Monday's incident is mindboggling in the sheer brazenness in which it was committed.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has of course issued the obligatory vow to pursue the killers and bring them to justice but like so much else that spews from her mouth, they seems like empty promises. It's probably more difficult to take her seriously when you know that the Ampatuans are her political allies who are largely considered to have delivered her Maguindanao in the previous election.

The incident is disturbing on so many levels, but maybe our outrage also reveals that for too long we have been complacent about the situation in Mindanao. Monday's bloodbath revealed a level of savagery that is simply incomprehensible and I think frightens us all.

Certainly we have been aware that the south operates according to its own laws and certainly we have heard the outcry of journalists clamoring for justice for colleagues killed in the line of duty. Maybe we became desensitized to news of a provincial journalist being ambushed by motorcycle-riding gunmen here and there.

Certainly, the degree to how much the masterminds believed they could get away with was influenced by how far we have we turned our heads in the opposite direction in the past. I think for this, the scale of the carnage is even more disturbing.

* photo belongs to rightful owners

At The 'Global City'

2009-11-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

Was headed to Market Market a few days ago. While waiting in line to enter the parking lot, this is what I saw:

A modified tricycle had been pulled over by a security guard. The tricycle was driven by a man wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Inside the carriage were three or four women, a child and another man. The middle-aged women were dressed in jeans, colorful blouses and a touch of makeup. The child with them might have been about 10 or 11 years old. He was a bit chubby and wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The women leaned out listening to the guard speak, their eyes wide as they clutched their purses to their bodies. I couldn't hear what was being said.

This is what I thought:

I imagined that they were out on a family day trip. Perhaps the women work in blue-collar jobs and had spent the morning dressing up and applying makeup, excited for a day out at the mall. Maybe it was an excursion they had been planning for a while. Perhaps the tricycle was the only vehicle they had. Maybe it's used for their husbands' delivery business. It is a very functional vehicle – the type usually used for delivering water or LPG canisters. Unfortunately, I don't think it's the sort of vehicle that is allowed inside the Global City. I thought that perhaps the family felt embarrassed as car after car passed by them to enter the parking lot. Maybe the security guard was telling them that they had to leave the premises and they were trying to convince him to just let them park as they were only meters from the parking lot.

The whole thing just made me sad.

Politics vs Public Service

2009-10-13T05:39:00.001-07:00

Have just read an article reporting that Teodoro was advised as early as February of the urgent need to purchase rubber rafts to assist during flash floods. Teodoro opted to submit the purchase to public bidding and hence no rafts.

Teodoro would seem like the most educated of the presidential aspirants, with his Masters of Laws from Harvard. As chair of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, the recent events would have given him a platform to demonstrate his leadership abilities. Instead, he has played his hand meekly, being only good for probably downplayed figures of deaths and damages.

I listened once to one of his press conferences over the radio. He took literally five minutes to say that PGMA had given him authority to seek international assistance. He began, "In my capacity as NDCC chair serving under PGMA... PGMA has given me, as chair of NDCC, which serves under Malacanang and PGMA, the authority as NDCC chair, which serves as the disaster coordinating arm of the Palace..." jeezums...

The elections are next year. Noynoy and Mar, Erap and Binay, Villar, Chiz and Loren... those are the ones who I know are running as of now although Escudero and Legarda have not made a formal announcement. I'm not sure who Villar's running mate is yet.

There was a lot of clamor for Noynoy to run in the wake of Cory's passing. My take was that if he had no plans of running before Cory's death, then he should not have run for president. However, if Erap did decide to run, then I would have hoped that Noynoy declared his candidacy. If Erap's appeal is as strong as it was when he first ran and we have still not matured politically, then I think it might only be countered by unifying behind Noynoy and the Aquino mystique.

One tandem that dropped out of the race to throw their support behind Noynoy was Pampanga Gov. Ed Panlilio and Isabela Gov. Grace Padaca. I was excited about the idea of their running. For me, they represented a new brand of politics. Public service.

I'm not so dissuaded by arguments of lack of experience or lack of visibility. I think Panlilio and Padaca have concrete achievements in their provinces. I think it's also important to remember that a president has to be the president of the country and not of Manila. But they're not running anymore so...

I don't need a president with a postgraduate degree from an Ivy League school. I don't need a president whose achievements are based on how often they're in the newspapers. I just want a president who's honest and who has the Philippines' best interests at heart. For once.

Teacher Rose and Teacher Melorine

2009-10-12T16:17:00.001-07:00

There were some aspects of our visit to Pasig that I was not able to include in my story, but stand out to me.

The first is Teacher Rose. Teacher Rose is a day care teacher at Liberato Damian Elementary School. She was stranded during the floods but took charge when hundreds of families flocked to the school for refuge.

She got the families settled into the classrooms and registered each of them herself. While some evacuation centers are marred by fighting over relief goods, Liberato Damian is quite well managed. When relief goods arrive, Teacher Rose calls on family representatives to receive the goods. She is also the go-to person whenever the evacuees need anything.

I mentioned Teacher Melorine. She handles preschool and Grade 2. The teachers were asked to wait for the arrival of UNICEF Executive Director Anne Veneman. Teacher Melorine entertained about 100 displaced children and mothers in her preschool classroom before and after Veneman's visit, reading to them and playing games. Before I left, she was leading them in a dance rendition of "Nobody" (clap clap). Her husband is also a teacher at the school.

At one point during the visit, two boys also began playing with empty donation boxes. I wished I could have included that in my story. I imagine that those boxes were filled with cans or other relief goods at some point. The children have nothing to do as they wait to get back to the lives they knew and no matter the circumstance, a child's natural propensity for play will emerge.

I also met Fortunata Serrano. She has two grandchildren. Carlo has down syndrome and only came to the evacuation center that day. Her other grandchild, Nicole, was involved in a hit and run accident about a year ago and still experiences involuntary seizures. Fortunata's 89-year old mother was still at their home. She had been bed-ridden ever since she had a stroke. Relatives take turns at the evacuation center and their house so they can watch over her.

the girl in mcdo

2009-10-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

i was standing in line for breakfast at mcdonald's yesterday. a girl in the other line was speaking on her cell phone through a bluetooth headset. something about a child who was hit by a car and suffered fractures. i don't know if the girl was the driver. then she said "hold on, i'll call you back. i'll just order."

Ondoy and Pepeng

2009-10-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

Landslides up north and Pangasinan is under water. Pepeng and Ondoy really did us over. Many breathed a sigh of relief when Pepeng decided to spare Manila, which is still recovering from Ondoy's floods, but the damage up north may be even more severe.

Officials operating the San Roque Dam are in hot water for indiscriminately releasing waters without warning. NDCC chief and presidential aspirant Gilberto Teodoro demanded an explanation, but I think the buck stops with him. Government has not shown at all that they are on top of disaster response and relief efforts.

In Manila, MMDA chair Bayani Fernando declined to discuss technical aspects of their flood control system which reports say were operational but obsolete and left to deteriorate. A few months ago, Fernando had announced that Manila's flood problem was solved.

Brgy Sta Cruz, Pasig

2009-10-09T02:46:00.000-07:00

They are in school, but they can't attend classes.

The flood waters that still inundate much of the Philippines' capital have become black with human waste and garbage, which seem to reflect the fear and hopelessness that many felt when Typhoon Ondoy struck the country on Sept. 26, 2009.

"We felt it was hopeless," said Jennifer Cortel who lives in a classroom with her six children, along with eight other families. "The water rose so quickly, but I knew I had to be brave for the children." Family members and neighbours helped Jennifer carry her children, who range from 12 months to 11 years old, to safety in waist-high waters and biting rain.

Jennifer's family is among 116 families who were evacuated to classrooms on three floors of the Liberato Damian Elementary School in Barangay Sta. Cruz, Pasig City. The city, in the eastern part of the metropolis, was among the worst hit by the killer floods. Many of the barangay's residents fought their way through rising waters and strong currents to the upper floors of the five storey building, and have been unable to return to their homes, which they left as quickly as the waters rose.

At the school, potted plants and chairs divide the hallways into the operational classrooms and those housing evacuees. In the hallways, children and babies sleep on sacks and cardboard while their mothers boil rice on pots and pans that their husbands were able to salvage from their homes. From the balcony, they watch as trash floats in the black shin-deep water. The rooms, which would normally seat 20 to 30 students, now house up to 14 families each. Almost every room has two or more infants. Many school-age children sit listlessly, waiting for the hours to pass and eyeing the sky nervously whenever the clouds begin to rumble.

The government ordered the resumption of classes a week after Typhoon Ondoy hit, but life is anything but back to normal, especially as many schools have been converted into evacuation centres.

Jennifer's son, 8-year-old RJ Carl Ashley, sat crying softly on the cold concrete floor of Room 19 on the fourth floor because he wanted to attend classes. A Grade 3 student at the school where he has been living for almost two weeks, RJ, like many other children in more than 500 evacuation centres throughout the capital, escaped the floods with only the drenched clothes on their backs.

"All his clothes were destroyed. His uniform is gone and his bag and notebooks are covered with mud," Jennifer said. She has offered to do the laundry of fellow evacuees in order to pay for just a few notebooks and pencils so that RJ and the rest of her children can study again. This means having to brave the brackish water to a barangay hall around the corner to fill a pail with clean water, and then making the trip back.

Jaime de Venecia, a 6th grader at Liberato Damian, fled to the school on Saturday morning with his parents and three siblings. His dream is to graduate from school and get a good job so that he can help his parents. He spends the days anxiously waiting for the waters to recede.

"When the flood waters go down, I really want to go back to school already but I can't also go back because I don't have school things and clothes which we were unable to save in the rush to save ourselves from the onrushing flood waters."

Typhoon Ondoy's aftermath ushered in a great wave of volunteerism and goodwill toward those affected by the deadly storm. However, while most efforts have understandably gone toward filling the immediate and material needs of affected families such as food, shelter and clothing; the specific needs of children must also be met.

"In times of emergencies, concerns of children are not given enough prominence," said UNICEF Education Chief Ma. Lourdes de Vera. "From the point of view of children, what they need is normalcy. We need to ensure that they have creative experiences. That's their world. Without it, their world crumbles."

Although classes have resumed, teachers and school officials fear that it will take some time before any sense of normalcy can return. On the first day back, teacher Melorine Gallardo, who handles preschool and Grade 2, said none of her students were able to attend. On the second day, two students managed to come to school. In addition, many teachers were also affected by the floods and some have become evacuees themselves.

Principal Arsenia Soriano said that overall, only about 7 to 10% of the school's 1600 student population have been able to go back to school. Although they are a safe refuge for many evacuees, many school buildings were also damaged in the storm and several remain flooded. In Pasig alone, 34 out of the city's 40 schools were affected by Typhoon Ondoy, with 21 serving as evacuation centres. At the Liberato Damian Elementary School, nine classrooms were devastated and hundreds of books and basic school supplies such as chalk, were destroyed. School officials estimate that it may take months before things get back to normal.

"We know school performance will go down whether we like it or not," said Ms. Soriano. "Many of the students come from poor families and we're afraid they might stop coming because they can't afford to anymore."

While the streets remain flooded, even children who were not displaced by the storm are struggling to resume their studies. Many now have to pay 20 to 60 pesos for one trip on makeshift boats just to travel the few hundred metres from their homes to the school – precious funds that many of the daily wage-earning families must also set aside for food.

However, damage to buildings and roads can be rebuilt. Typhoon Ondoy's psychosocial effects on children may be more permanent and difficult to repair, if not properly addressed. Aside from losing their homes, belongings and even nearly their lives; the first sounds of raindrops falling on tin roofs now trigger fear and panic in many children. However, regaining a sense of normalcy does not mean going back to business as usual and sweeping the traumatic events under a rug.

"The more it's ignored, the more it stays with them – the scar, the trauma. We need to help children unload their fears or you don't know what might happen to them," de Vera said.

In line with its advocacy for a more comprehensive disaster response, UNICEF has not only replaced damaged school supplies but is also addressing the psychosocial needs of child victims of Typhoon Ondoy. Aside from distributing early child care and development (ECCD) packages consisting of books, toys and other learning materials to affected schools and evacuation centres, UNICEF is also providing stress debriefing and psychosocial counselling through creative modes such as art and play therapy to affected children and encouraging the creation of child-friendly spaces in evacuation centres.

Despite their ordeals, Typhoon Ondoy has not dampened people's wills to survive or the children's resilience. By continuing to nurture the children's creativity and valuing their education even in the most extraordinary circumstances, they will realize that when the waters finally clear, their dreams have not been washed away and that they can weather any storm.

Ondoy In the Words of Jaime de Venecia

2009-10-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

Ang Bagyong Ondoy sa Aking Buhay(translated)
Undoy, the storm and my life

It was Saturday morning and I was dressing up to go to the church for the soup kitchen . I was part of their Bible study class . It was starting to rain quite hard and my siblings and I did not proceed anymore. By ten am, my family and I were starting to get scared because the water was rising swiftly .

One by one, my Mama gathered us and we hurried to this school, in Liberato Damian. The first night we were here, we had a hard time adjusting – so many different kinds of people, noisy and troublesome. I could not sleep so what I really want to happen is for everything to normalize. I wish the flood waters would subside so that we can go home, go to school and go back to our life.

This is my Ondoy experience

My name is Jaime de Venecia of 6-3. There are three siblings in the family and we are all studying here at Liberato Damian where we are temporarily housed due to Ondoy.

I really wish the flood waters would subside so that our house will not be totally destroyed. You see, this is made of flimsy material – just stuff that my Papa asked for from his boss at the construction. It was wood and stuff just patched up together , this is how we got to have a house. If the house gets destroyed all the way, then we will no longer have a home.

When the flood waters go down I really want to go back to school already but I can’t also go back because I don’t have school things and clothes which we were unable to save in the rush to save ourselves from the onrushing flood waters.

My big dream is to graduate from school so that I can helpmy parents and siblings . I can see my father having a very hard time, his body is not as strong. My ambition is to have a really great job, even as a janitor so that his work will not need to be so hard. He and my mother are so hardworking and they really take very good care of us, especially our schooling so we will not end up like them, uneducated, without a nice home.

But still I am grateful that we are together as a family even if we are poor and lacking all the necessities in life.

thoughts

2009-10-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

Any help is good. I will begin by saying that. But I have some observations. I have been trying to find ways to articulate it fairly because I already anticipate some of the offended reactions. Generally, I am irritated with what I think is a superficial approach to volunteerism in the wake of Saturday's floods. While FB has been useful in mobilizing people and informing them where donations can be made, which areas are dangerous, etc., I think we can do without the self-aggrandizing status updates.

I found some comments, although innocuous, disturbing upon further reflection. Many people have talked about how "good it feels to help" and that those helping should feel "proud" of themselves. First of all, I don't think one should feel good after helping. One should feel upset and concerned that there's never enough that can be done. To say it feels so good to help seems to me a bit self-satisfied, re-directing focus on the person giving rather than the calamity and those in need of help. It's a bit sickening. There's no reason to pat ourselves on the back for giving someone a can of sardines when they've lost everything.

thoughts

2009-09-30T06:40:00.001-07:00

i read an editorial suggesting an investigation into the government's failure to adequately prepare and respond to major disasters, particularly the latest -- Typhoon Ondoy.

i agree with this suggestion. of course, it's tempered with an awareness that investigations do little good in this country. i feel like government is showing more and more how irrelevant it is, especially when civilians have to pick up the slack even after they have been greatly cheated and robbed.

i think investigations have to be made by a body of taxpaying citizens. civilians. not allies and cohorts of those being investigated, or those who gain political mileage by looking affronted in front of cameras. investigations into why a thing has failed have to be led by the people who are most affected by its failure and not those who failed.

2009-09-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

a red dust storm in australia, unprecedented floods in southeast asia, a tsunami in samoa and an earthquake in indonesia all in a span of a week. it's time to be scared.

Tuesday

2009-09-30T02:33:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, I met D who had been staying with friends in Marikina when the floods came. She asked for help in towing her car which had been submerged in flood waters.

We drove through Marikina. The roads were packed and we passed a line of people waiting for relief goods. The mud from the rivers on the street had begun to dry and filled the air with dust.

In the car, D told me two carabaos and a pig had floated into their neighborhood from the river. The neighbors ate them. Another man was also swept along the river, clinging on to a water tank. They saw the man again later, carrying the tank on his back.

She showed me the Marikina river where the waters had risen about 20 feet, completely submerging a statue of "Marikit", the muse of the city who usually floats upon the waters. A janitor fish flopped on the bridge.

We were waiting for later hours to tow the car. I asked D how close Provident Village was. She said it was just a couple of blocks down. We decided to walk there. It truly was like a disaster movie. Most cars were leaving the area and a few army trucks were entering. Muddied and barefoot people walked the streets clutching plastic bags of food and clothes. The police stopped two boys who were carrying a refrigerator and tried to determine if they were really the owners.

On the road leading to Provident, we decided not to proceed any farther and turned back to her house.

When we returned, we learned that neighbors had just found the bodies of two market helpers who had locked themselves in the building by pulling the gates down, thinking they would be safe from the rising waters.

the guy at 711

2009-09-30T02:29:00.000-07:00

While waiting for the van with relief goods to arrive, I sat outsite a closed 7-11. A young man, maybe in his early 20s, came around the corner. He was barefoot, muddy and had a lost look in his eyes.

"Sir, do you need anything? Food? Water?" I asked.

He just shook his head and walked back around the corner. After a few minutes, he returned.

"Sir, are you sure? Is there anything you need?" I asked again.

The man shook his head again. But then looked up and smiled.

"A Slurpee," he said.

day after the flood 3

2009-09-30T02:22:00.000-07:00

Volunteered at Red Cross Shaw Boulevard Sunday. An old dormmate, Kaye invited me. Arrived late evening and was immediately put to work packing canned goods and rice in plastic bags. There were a lot of young people there. My guess is they were students from a nearby university. They were very well dressed and fresh-faced.

After about an hour, they told us that a Red Cross canter would be delivering and distributing goods to a village in Marikina "where the action" was. Kaye and I decided to go. Volunteers filed into five cars and waited for about an hour before we actually left. We were part of Team D. Apparently Sir D directed a quite highly acclaimed independent film about a gay boy growing up in the Philippines. He speaks slowly in a bit of a confused manner.

In our car, someone asked to begin a prayer. The girl assigned to lead the prayer whined a bit and then began to ask for everybody's safety. She then prayed that "sana the people we help will be touched by what we give them." I did a bit of a double take.

We arrived at the village at about 12 midnight. The roads were wet and dark and filled with abandoned cars. There were other volunteers there who I had seen preparing to leave when I arrived at Shaw. I think all in all there were about 50 of us.

We waited again and some of the volunteers passed the time gossiping. I got angry at one group who were singing and dancing outside the darkened village. It was irritating to see that some people still did not seem to grasp the magnitude of the floods. For some, it seemed like it was a field trip. They did not seem to appreciate that there were people trapped in their homes where outside they were singing, "Tonight's going to be a good night..."

After about another hour, Sir D gave us our instructions. When rescuers brought people out of the village, we would meet them and guide them to the van where the relief goods were held. We would then escort them to a documentation team to record their names and contact numbers. Then, we were to bring them to a waiting military truck that was supposed to take them to an evacuation center. The military truck never materialized.

A few people began to straggle out on their own. Sir D's instructions did not seem feasible in the situation. Instead, while they were being documented, another volunteer would run to get them food and water. Some people who left the village were picked up by relatives while others returned inside the village after getting enough food for their families. One elderly lady was carried out by a Coast Guard man and put into a waiting ambulance. It took some time for the ambulance to leave though because they were blocked by news vans interviewing senator and Red Cross chairman Dick Gordon. I wondered if that's what they meant when they said that's "where the action was."

Another Coast Guard team entered the village with a boat and we waited again. After a while, some volunteers said they were going in. I picked up a box of bread and carried it in knee high floods to a commercial building about one block from the guardhouse. There were about 10 of us who went in. On the second floor of the building, there were about 20 people camped out in offices. Most were sleeping.
A village official who was with us demanded that they wake up because "the volunteers took the trouble to get here." I found that a bit upsetting.

One lady told me that they were not really residents of the village but had sought refuge in the building from nearby. She had two young boys with her, one who was mentally disabled but seemed to be enjoying himself. Another woman asked me if we had medicines for coughs and betadine for cuts. All we had was food but I told her there was an ambulance outside and we would come back.

I went back out of the village and approached a lady in a Red Cross shirt to tell her that people inside were requesting medicines. She told me to coordinate with the ambulance. Another team was going in and I asked a volunteer with a first aid kit to drop off the medicines at the second floor.

At about 3 a.m. most of the volunteers had already left. There were about 16 of us left. More people were coming to the van, not necessarily from inside the village but from nearby areas. It was difficult to come up with an effective system to distribute the goods and make sure there was enough to go around.

Sir D told us that when the goods ran out, we should never tell people that there was no more food. Instead we were to tell them that another van was on its way. Some people waited, including a pregnant lady with a sick girl. Others left. We waited about four hours for the next van to come back. It was about 8 a.m. Monday.

The goods in the van had not been packed yet so six of us sat inside unpacking and repacking the cans and noodles before immediately handing them out again. A man with a baby tapped on the window asking if there was a place where someone could give his child a checkup. The ambulance though had not come back. All we could do was give him some extra bottles of water.

There was a limited supply of water so we tried to make sure that families with babies were prioritized. It's next to impossible though to ensure that this was the case.

When the food ran out again, we were told to tell people that another batch of supplies would be arriving at the village's clubhouse and to proceed there.
After about another hour, a team prepared to go back in to rescue someone. We joined the van entering the village and they dropped us off at the clubhouse where we packed some more goods and distributed them. Inside was a little bit more orderly although the supplies were even more limited. We finished distributing the goods in less than an hour.

the day after the worst flood in Philippine history 2

2009-09-30T01:24:00.000-07:00

It's sad when a little rainfall can cause so much fear now. The sun is finally out but yesterday, it seemed as if the rain would fall forever. Reports say that we received a month's worth of rain in six hours. It wasn't even a strong rain which is even more concerning. What if the rain had continue to fall? What if the rains had been stronger?
Videos showed the Ayala underpass completely filled with water, a woman climbing out of her car as cars banged into each other in a school parking lot, children and elderly women trying to get down from slippery roofs and a van flipping tail over front before sinking in a foundation pit.
A friend in Marikina called in a panic, saying the waters had already entered the house. Last night, the radio was filled with calls for help from family members whose loved ones still had not returned home or were stuck on rooftops. Tita Livya was kind enough to let me stay with her even as she was trying to get in touch with a friend from Provident Village, one of the worst-hit areas. She told me two friends had also went to work that day, leaving their five-year old son at home with their yaya.
The rains are nobody's fault but one can't but feel angry at the incompetence of certain government officials. MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando and Defense chief Gilberto Teodoro were too busy campaigning for their presidential bids to do their jobs. I really hope people remember this when the elections roll around.
We also have to take responsibility for the garbage we have thrown in the streets and which clogged the drainage system. We have to think that every piece of garbage we throw in the streets could kill a person, or add more inches o a flood.
The rains were just signal number 1. What if they had been two or higher? We've had much stronger rains with higher winds but I think yesterday showed that our drainage systems can't take anymore. Media reports say that 71 people have died with more than 20 missing. I think the figures are underreported.

The Day After The Flood

2009-09-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

The day after the worst flood in Philippine history. This post will be a narration of my experience of the flood. If I'm writing this, then it means I've been fortunate because our house was not affected and we still have electricity. Many people were not so lucky and still need help.
I reported for my 5 a.m. shift Saturday. The rains had already been falling but did not seem to be any cause for concern then. My shift ended at 12:30 p.m. and mom called to say that the car had not been able to leave the village due to floods. Since I had a 10:30 p.m. shift later that evening, I prepared to just wait it out and crash on one of the sofas in reception for the meantime.
At about 1p.m., Ate Mai, our office's pregnant cleaner, told us that people across the Marikina river were already moving up to their roofs, trying to save their possessions. From our office on the 9th floor, we could see people standing in the rain on their roofs, the Marikina river, filling with debris and moving fast between us.
We went out to grab some lunch and load our phones. Many of the restaurants and stores were closed or closing. When we got back to the office, the elevator had been shut down to ease the burden on the building's generator. It was eerie climbing the dark stairways with the sound of rain beating outside. People moved slowly, with only their cell phones as flashlights.
There were only eight of us left in the office. From the fire escape I watched as the river got stronger and angrier. I watched a dog on the debris of a destroyed house get swept away. I heard there were reports of dozens of people on floating debris who rammed into a bridge. I hope they're ok.
After a while, security told us that they were shutting down the generator as water was beginning to creep inside. The office stands on the banks of the Marikina river. We left the building and settled in at one of the 24-hour restaurants overlooking the driveway of the mall next to the office. After a couple of hours, the driveway began to fill with light brown mud and water from the banks of the overflowing river.
A Korean lady was also looking for a way out. She was clearly panicked but still had the decency to cover me with her umbrella. Thank you Korean lady. Her little son seemed to be enjoying himself though which exasperated the lady. We then decided to go to our boss's condo in Eastwood. We decided to take the long route to avoid the flood, which had reached thigh high in our area, even though the condo was just across the street. We stayed there a few hours and then I moved to a family friend's condo next door where I spent the evening.

3am Wednesday

2009-09-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

It's about 3am Wednesday.

Apparently some dude just broke into the house. I was sleeping in my mom's room as mom and Miguel are both in Palawan. The bed is under a large window with a rather flimsy curtain. I heard a noise at the back and a voice. I let out a perfunctory "Oh?" and then checked the clock. It was 10:33. I heard two voices. I assumed it was the driver with a friend since he said he was coming in at 10pm. Then I heard some shuffling. Didn't worry about it.

Unable to sleep, I decided to play some Typing Maniac. After a while, Manang Letty and Jun appeared at the glass door at the patio. Jun said that a man had been peeking into the window. He only described him as rather tall. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" Jun demanded.

"I'm just looking at ate," the man replied.

Jun kicked him and the man ran off, picking up his bag which he left by the kitchen door.

I called the guardhouse about an hour ago to report it. I didn't like their attitude. They seemed to be doubtful and just took our names so they could blotter the incident. They also seemed to be suspicious of Jun since he's new and they're friendlier with the old driver. I didn't appreciate that.

We're thinking it might have been someone we know since they seem familiar with the house. I can't think of who it might be.

It was a little disturbing. I keep turning my head at every noise behind me. We put Chelsea out at the front of the house. I hope she can forget her sweet self if a stranger tries to come in again.

"Ana"

2009-08-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

If you saw her, you’d have thought that she was just another carefree girl enjoying her youth. That’s what I first thought when I met Ana. But first impressions can be deceiving and barely scratch the surface of a young life that has already experienced unimaginable horror and hardship.

For it wasn’t long ago that Ana was walking home from work at a sardine factory. Still aching after 11 gruelling hours filling cans with ingredients to help support her family, Ana was accosted, dragged to a secluded area and raped at knifepoint. She was just 14 years old.

Although physically and emotionally traumatized by the experience, Ana had no choice but to continue working. Since the death of her father two years prior, Ana was the sole breadwinner of the family and she shouldered the responsibility of sending her twin brothers to school. Despite the incident and her emotional burden, she continued to rise every morning to walk the four kilometres to the factory, buoyed only by the hope of building a better future for her family. Then she found out that she was pregnant.

In order to keep the pregnancy from the community, Ana was forced to drop out of school. Sitting alone in her house, cradling her growing belly and fighting feelings of anger, shame and guilt over that helpless horrific afternoon, Ana’s hopes for a better life for herself and her family began to fade.

Then, thanks to you, a second chance came.

In 2004, Ana was among 500 children and youth screened for the Alternative Learning System (ALS) program being offered by the Laura Vicuña Foundation (LFV) through the Community Mobilization for Education (COME) program. While grateful for the opportunity, doubts still plagued Ana. “I’ve been out of school for two years. Can I still make a better future?” she asked herself.

But with extraordinary perseverance, Ana overcame the obstacles to become one of the most promising students in her class. Despite having returned to the factory, Ana would still visit the LFV Centre to borrow modules and other reading materials in her free time. When the centre closed, she would pore over the books at home teaching herself high school level math, science, English and other subjects while her young daughter slept soundly nearby. In 2007, Ana took the ALS Accreditation and Equivalency Test for Secondary Level and passed.

Ana’s hard work had paid off but more doors were still waiting. Doors that have been opened by donors like yourself.

By completing her ALS, Ana had qualified for the Youth Career Development Program (YCDP) implemented by LVF and UNICEF Manila. With the YCDP, Ana would now have a chance to receive hotel and restaurant training at some of Manila’s premier hotels. But first she had to hurdle the interview, and she was nervous. “I’m just an ALS graduate and everybody else is college level. What chance do I have?” she thought.
Nevertheless, while the new batch of YCDP trainees were still being selected, Ana knew she could not rest. As tenacious as ever, Ana continued to work, this time at a pharmacy to continue supporting her family. And when the call came in that she had been accepted for the YCDP, Ana bid goodbye to her family and made the trip to the capital for the five month training program.

Training at one of Manila’s most prestigious hotels, Ana learned about cultivating a professional image and began to boost her self-confidence. She also learned the ins and outs of the hotel business, gaining hands on experience in housekeeping, the kitchen and even engineering.

“At first it was hard. I felt out of place. I had to get used to different kinds of people. I felt uncomfortable and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do,” Ana says. Overwhelmed by the loud, bustling concrete jungle of Manila, she also missed her family and the peace and quiet of the province. But after a few weeks, Ana began to adjust and while other batch mates lost courage and dropped out or surrendered to circumstances, she remained as tenacious as ever, refusing to let her second chance slip away. “I can do this,” Ana began to realize.

Again, Ana’s hard work paid off. Even before her February 2008 graduation from the program, she was already hired as a contractual worker for the hotel – the first among her batch. Recognized by the hotel management for her perseverance and good work, she was also entrusted to care for the hotel president’s office. Yet even with a stable job, Ana chose not to rest on her laurels. With newfound confidence and an eye on the future, she recently accepted a transfer to another rising hotel, knowing that her chances to succeed would be even greater if she broke through her comfort zones. “I wanted a new environment and I knew that I would have more opportunities if I was part of the opening team,” she says quietly but confidently.

Now, as Ana looks over the city’s skyline, I wonder what she’s thinking. Just 19 years old, she has come a long way from packing chilli and tomatoes into sardine cans. A long way from a terrible, abusive experience that unfortunately, waylays many young girls’ futures.

Today, Ana boards with a YCDP batch mate in Pasay City and commutes everyday on the mass railway system to her work in Ortigas. With glowing recommendations, she has now been entrusted to care for the office of the nationwide president of hoteliers and also receives personal guest requests for housekeeping. “I like housekeeping because we’re the first people that the guests encounter,” Ana, the girl who was once so concerned about being a simple lass in the big city, says.

As independent as ever, she still supports her family back home and her two brothers are in their final year of high school. In her spare time, she enjoys going to the mall with her friends or reading the newspaper to catch up on current events. She’s even thinking of going back to school to earn her degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Just like any girl enjoying her youth, but one who has faced incredible obstacles and triumphed.

“Don’t think you can’t do it,” Ana said when I asked her if she had any words of encouragement to other young people like herself. “You have to believe you can do it. Think of what you want to achieve and go for it. Don’t give in to negative thoughts,” she said. More than just saying it however, Ana has lived her words.
Ana has become a role model and an inspiration to many young people, not only in her home province of Negros Occidental but in Manila as well. She has given hope to many young girls and women like herself who have been sexually abused and who believe that their futures have been taken from them. It was you who gave Ana that hope and it’s you who can continue to help others like her with your donations.

The YCDP is just one of UNICEF’s many projects in connection with partner NGOs which are designed to help sexually exploited girls and young women regain their self-worth and dignity. By sending your help as soon as possible, you can ensure that the program keeps running and that more girls and young women from the province can have a second chance to reclaim their lives and futures.

Barangay Pananawan, Masbate

2009-08-25T11:16:00.000-07:00

To reach Barangay Pananawan, one must travel down a long, lonely dirt road to the south western coast of Masbate and then take a short banca ride through a thick mangrove. Here, some 345 families live on the edge of the Visayan Sea. In their coastal isolation, they make their livings mostly by fishing in nearby waters or farming in the interior mountains.

Among the barangay residents is Rose Marie Cabigas. A 40-year-old housewife, Rose Marie devotes her time to her eight children including 7-year-old Eugene and 4-year old Seny Rose. A typically curious second grader, Eugene enjoys his lessons in the nearby elementary school and also makes time for his favourite past-time, drawing. Like any other boy, he enjoys climbing trees with his friends and recently had to be taken to the health centre for a nasty fall from one of his latest adventures. With shy eyes covered by brown hair lightened by the sun and sea, Eugene was also born without legs and must pull himself across the hot, stony ground of the village on his thin arms.

Rose Marie’s husband, Senin, tills the land of a non-resident of Panan-awan, earning a percentage of the rice palay harvest. When the season begins to slow down, he also fishes and looks for odd jobs to help put food on the table. Recently however, he has had to leave Rose Marie and the younger ones to attend to the burial of his mother in another island.

While previously, Rose Marie might not know where her and her family’s next meal might come from, she now breathes a little easier with the assistance extended to her from the government’s Filipino Family Social Welfare program (4P) and conditional cash transfer (CCT) initiative. Since December 2008, Rose Marie has been receiving P1400 ($28) a month as part of the government’s conditional cash transfer program.

“It’s a big burden off my shoulders. I no longer have to borrow money to just buy even the necessities,” Rose Marie says in Cebuano. While empty fishing nets would have meant that Eugene, Seny Rose and their siblings would have had to go to bed hungry, Rose Marie can now always make sure that the family has at least three meals a day.

In addition to food, Rose Marie has also been able to pay her children’s tuition fees for the coming term, buy the necessary school supplies and medicines for her family. While Eugene is excited to return to class with his clean new notebooks, his little sister Seny Rose will begin attending the newly built day care centre in the village.

With additional guidance coming from parental effectiveness and financial literacy seminars, Rose Marie has also been able to set aside a small amount each week. “I save about 20 pesos a week, every Saturday. I’d like to be able to save more as time goes by. Maybe 50 pesos a week, and then maybe even P100 a week. But no Saturday goes by that I don’t set aside at least P20,” Rose Marie says.

Her dream is to finish building their little wooden home and hopefully begin a business, such as selling food. She also hopes that a high school will soon rise in or closer to their barangay before Eugene graduates so that he won’t have a difficult time travelling to attend school in the neighbouring village. In the meantime, she hopes to find a pair of crutches for Eugene so he can move around more easily and build his self-confidence. Although Eugene enjoys school and his teachers single him out for his enthusiasm, he is also a sensitive boy not immune to the teasing of his classmates. Sometimes, he would rather stay at home to avoid their hurtful remarks, Rose Marie says.

While the future is still uncertain, Rose Marie is more confident about facing the challenges ahead with the skills and attitudes being fostered and developed by seminars implemented by UNICEF together with the CCT program. Even though two older children had to stop school to help their father, Rose Marie is now confident that Eugene and Seny Rose will be able to complete their studies.

“We’ll become more used to handling money and when the 4Ps is finished, I think we’ll know what to do,” she said.

However, while the CCT program is helping some families such as Rose Marie focus on the future; some families are still overwhelmed by their current situations.
Delia Moralde and her husband Domingo live in a small hut along with their nine children near the village’s coastline. Their hut is divided into two sections; a sleeping area and a cooking area. Firewood is stacked on one end of the home, near a crude oven. Thin native chickens pick at fallen grains of rice on the dirt floor and used foil sachets plucked from the sea have been placed strategically between beams to support the makeshift roof. Inside the sleeping area, an elevated portion of the hut blocked off by horizontal wooden planks, seven-year old Arnel lies stretched out observing the sights around him. The size of a one-year old, Arnel was born with Down Syndrome and is unable to walk or talk. While survival continues to be a challenge for the Moraldes, the family at least now has a fighting chance. Before the introduction of the cash grants, six of their children died due to preventable causes such as measles and hepatitis. Now, all their children have been fully immunized.

Domingo earns about P150 a week, mostly by ferrying people up and down the estuary and to nearby islands. Lately, however Domingo has been sick and unable to earn the needed funds to keep his family afloat. While Delia receives P1400 a month in assistance, the money is already stretched to pay for her children’s food and schooling and to take care of Arnel.

Delia however tries to ensure that they always have rice, which she mixes with corn to feed the family. A large portion of the assistance meantime goes to buying sterilized milk for Arnel who is unable to digest solid foods. Out of the P7000 she received in the last five months, P4000 has gone towards the children’s tuition fees, supplies, and clothes while the rest went for food. With all the financial pressures bearing down on her to simply get through another day, Delia has no opportunity to save even a fraction of her funds.

Sensing her parents’ helplessness meantime, Baby, their 16-year-old daughter who is in the fifth grade says that she would like to stop her schooling so she can work as a helper in the city to earn some money for her family and herself. Baby and other adolescents like her, are the target of UNICEF life skills seminars that aim to prepare potential migrants to live and work in the country’s larger, congested cities where trafficking and child exploitation still run rampant. Aside from instilling “street smarts” in the children, the seminars would also provide vocational skills training to expand their job options beyond the realm of domestic help.

When asked what their dreams are, Delia and Domingo just laugh sheepishly, searching the air for answers before settling into silence with resigned smiles on their faces. When the assistance stops coming, they’ll just do whatever it takes to survive, Delia finally says quietly. In the meantime, dreams for the future have no place in this seaside hut, where every ounce of energy and resources must go towards getting through the day.

Delia and Rose Marie are just two of more than 100 CCT beneficiaries in Barangay Panan-awan. But more than just the beneficiaries themselves, the community as a whole is benefitting from the social welfare program and the values they promote. For example, Barangay Panan-awan officials have become more receptive to new ways of improving their community and are no longer deterred by obstacles to pursue the important projects that will benefit the families of Panan-awan. Even the youth are getting involved with the SK willing to put up a P50,000 counterpart for the renovation and construction of school rooms in the community. Barangay officials meantime are also gaining valuable experience in resource mobilization, planning and collaborating with different levels of government.

With the CCT helping to provide for many of the families’ basic needs and stirring a spirit of entrepreneurialism and a new realization that the cycle of poverty can be broken, Barangay Panan-awan is a village hungry to develop themselves and use the help they’ve been given to become more self-reliant.

People. Power.

2009-08-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

Former President Corazon C. Aquino passed away over the weekend. I was in the province, enjoying a slight reprieve and had purposefully and happily denied myself any communication devices. I only heard about it over drinks with Cyril late Saturday evening at Natalna.

Since returning to Manila, I have gone over the tributes, watched some videos and listened to the news. This afternoon, I watched her September 1986 speech before the U.S. Congress as well as some videos of the 1986 Edsa Revolution. On the radio in the taxi, I listened as throngs of supporters did a sort of pilgrimage, accompanying Cory's casket and retracing the major landmarks of People Power before heading to the Manila Cathedral.

When Edsa 1 was playing out, I was a seven year old in China. I remember people on the street waving to us, giving the thumbs up sign and yelling "Go Philippines!" I remember giving a speech on our home countries in school, wearing a yellow t-shirt saying "I stopped a tank with my heart." To this day, nothing brings a tear to my eye like watching videos of that great time in our history when the Filipino was at her best.

To me, that is what Cory represents. The best of the Filipino. Not because she was the best Filipino herself, but because she became a symbol of great aspirations of a very humble people. In those three days in 1986, the aspirations were realized.

With her passing, I pray for an awakening – that the spirit of Edsa 1986 be rekindled. A spirit of hope. I pray that Filipinos realise that People Power was not just about Cory. After all, it was the people that rallied around her and who put their lives on the line for her. People Power was about the people. The women who tied themselves to ballot boxes to protect votes, nuns who faced down tanks armed only with rosaries , children who offered soldiers flowers – every Filipino who wanted change and fought for it and inspired the world. While Cory gave us hope, the Filipino gave her courage. The Filipino gave Ninoy and Cory a reason.

Some would argue that we squandered Edsa 1. Perhaps it is true. But at the same time, the history of this country is not yet finished. A recent Time magazine article concluded by asking whom will the Filipino people march with now that "their saint has gone to meet her God?"

I think the time has come to march with our best selves without the impetus of a symbol. If we squandered Edsa 1, let us not squander Cory's death. I hope that the what Edsa 1 symbolized can finally be realized. That as we grieve the loss, we also realise what we are capable of. Maybe her passing can help us reclaim People Power by reminding us of our best selves.

Inspiring, heroic, brave. Filipino.

why i sometimes think there's no hope...

2009-05-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

Good grief. Doesn't the senate have anything better to do than to devote taxpayers money to investigating a sex video? How is this a national concern? It seems that our lawmakers have no idea what to do with their time and our money. Never mind that corruption, unemployment, poverty, and so much more goes unchecked... what a joke. And we expect to be taken seriously by the rest of the world?

Sure, crimes against women. Okay. Or maybe just an opportunity for Bong Revilla of all people to look personally offended and practice his well-practiced look of justice for the downtrodden for the cameras. How about the OFWs whose rapes have been videotaped and then shown on the news and then quickly forgotten? My God.

Insecurity Guards, Creepy Cabs and Presidentiables

2009-05-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

They all piss the living bejabbers offa me.

junkapalooza

2009-04-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

The CA has acquitted Daniel Smith of rape. I have not been monitoring the reaction to this news for sanity's sake, but will do so soon when I'm feeling a little less distracted and maybe a bit stronger. Honestly, I'm a bit hesitant to get sucked in to that vortex again. I don't think anybody though was surprised with the decision in the wake of Nicole's controversial affidavit.

I completed the first semester of my MFA a couple of weeks ago, which was followed by a nice surf trip to LU during the Holy Week. (In fairness, I refrained from going in the water on Friday.) I arrived in San Juan at about 4am. Mosquitos congregated around the lonely lights of Sebay. I think it was a happy moment. Quiet, early, pre-dawn hours with nothing but the sound of waves breaking in darkness. I walked through Surf Camp and onto the beach where I hijacked a little spot under a commercial tent. Using my bag as a pillow and my jacket as a mattress, I was happy.

Was directed to a pic of me surfing with the caption: "Frina, the Fil-Am girl from Lingsat enjoying the whitewater to the shore." I wonder where they get their information... I ain't no Fil-Am dammit.

We were hit by a terrific hot spell about a week ago. Now, the rains have come somewhat unexpectedly. The weather is so confusing.

I bought myself a classic bicycle a few days ago. I forgot how much fun riding is. I've fitted it with a basket and some side mirrors. I really enjoyed tinkering aroudn with it and may have gotten a little carried away with some screw tightening action. Am considering painting the bike which I haven't named yet.

I've been trying to work out a bit more regularly the past few days to capitalise on my gains after my last surf trip. By gains, I mean weight reduction. I haven't had softdrinks since I returned and have been pretty disciplined with my exercises. I don't know if I'm feeling my age, bu I know I need to work harder now. Now if I could just quit smoking. Damn, I'm thirsty.

A Taxi I'm Glad I didn't Get

2009-04-02T07:16:00.001-07:00

Interesting day today but one thing at a time.

Met with Tita Girlie at the Fort this evening and was waiting for a taxi to take me home. I walked to a nearby ATM to get some funds for tomorrow (Chelsea's ear surgery) but the ATM was closed. A couple of taxis passed by which I was lazy to flag down. One taxi cut in front of another taxi just a couple of metres away. Nothing too malicious. Just trying to squeeze in to make a turn as it was a red light. However, the passenger of the other taxi - a man sporting a sando, shorts and a beer belly alighted and confronted the other taxi driver. They argued for a few minutes and as I feared the situation might escalate, I flagged down a taxi to escape the scene. We were directly behind the two taxis and I saw the man plop his messenger bag on the hood of the taxi he was riding and remove a handgun. I don't know what he planned to do but I was really hoping my taxi would drive off already. The taxi driver the man was threatening meantime managed to make his turn and leave the scene and the beer-bellied man got back into his cab where his driver had sat silent the whole time.

It was a little frightening. You know that there are truly violent people walking the streets who have no qualms about confronting any perceived slight. People walking the streets with weapons who may be itching for any situation to use them. Stupid man.

Tired...

2009-03-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

Good grief, I'm tired. My sleeping patterns have been erratic lately. Usually get to sleep around 6am and then wake up around 11:30am. The other day, I tried to take a power nap before doing some work but had a dream that I ran a marathon. So I woke up even more tired. Geez. I just want to lie in bed with a Calvin and Hobbes and eat a bag of Poore's Brothers salt and vinegar chips. Or Kettle-cooked chips. Or marshmallow popcorn.

still more

2009-03-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

One of the posters in the forum I'm engaged in asked the few of us who are still standing up for Nicole, "who and what are we fighting for?" My reply.

I’ll just speak for myself. But I’m “fighting” against our dangerous tendency to uncritically assume whatever is presented to us which makes us so predictable and easy to manipulate. Especially knowing that we have a government that is famed for its duplicity in maintaining and pursuing its self-interests and self-preservation even if it means trampling on individual rights.
The “recantation” which has triggered this backlash has already been shown to be dubious and not even a recantation. Yet, from a lazy reading of it or by depending on media’s interpretation of it, people justify their condemnation of Nicole. I still don’t understand why people are condemning her.
This brings us to the issue of women and rape. And it’s frightening to see what kind of notions and attitudes are emerging, mostly following a trend that women must have done something to deserve being raped or it’s not rape if the woman wasn’t acting properly. I think that’s worth fighting against. Like I said, I don’t understand how we can condemn her in this culture that we’ve created, at least not without condemning ourselves in the process too.
And on people thinking she sold out. We call her a hypocrite but how many people have already left and how many want to leave this country? Why do they want to leave this country? We call her a “prostitute” and a “whore” but what are the conditions in this country that have reduced our women to that? And if ever, who are we to judge these women for trying to survive in these conditions that are stacked against them?
it seems to me that the irony is that another country (even the one of one's abuser) would be more preferable and more of a safe haven than one's own country. ok, people have been very vocal about what they think that says about Nicole. but what about what it says about us? or are we happy to just let Nicole be the villain and exonerate ourselves for letting this kind of culture persist that makes not just Nicole but so many others want to leave the country?
and since it was an exchange, what about the issue of who offered the US visa? why aren't they being crucified or even being considered? i think the US is the only one that can give a US visa. Now why would they want to give a US visa to some girl who's accused one of their boys of rape and got him jailed? why aren't their motives being considered? isn't that the more worrying aspect? or is our venom only reserved for one of our own, the easiest target?

my intention is not to stop people from crucifyng her, but to at least get people to ask why this is their reaction. so when your last nail is pounded, then can we ask these questions?

And to the lady who labels Nicole a prostitute for being too weak to stand up against the US, I think that sends a dangerous message. First of all, she did stand up. And she was villified for it from many camps. it seems to say to our women and future rape victims, if you can't handle being a symbol of the country and stand up against the world's most powerful country, then you're just a little whore.

yes, people did support her. but people also used her for their own agenda and people also maligned her from day one. i don't blame her for wanting to take her destiny into her own hands.

time out

2009-03-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

I'm detoxifying from the last few days. Just took a day for myself to wander around Cubao, checked out the books and other knick knacks. Scouted around for a bicycle.

Chelsea's ear got better, then it got worse. The doc says it's nothing to really worry about though.

Trying to think of a thesis proposal for the Lithis requirement. Got pissed off trying to log in to register online for next term.

Haven't really checked the forums and other blogs where I'm engaged in a lonely battle, but feel a little more vindicated after reading Conrado De Quiros's article on the topic. Some snippets.

"I don’t know that I can bring myself to judge Nicole too harshly. Of course I hear the cries of anger and dismay from a public that feels raw and shortchanged. Of course I hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the people who took up the cudgels for her, defending her as much in the court of public opinion as in the court of law, when the other side took care to depict her as a woman who did not need coercing to part with her virtue, or whatever else she had left to part with. Of course I hear the lamentations and vituperations of the women’s groups that refused to stop until they roused this country, its mind too numb to reel from yet another iniquity and wanting only to fall into the embrace of sleep, into wakefulness—like the prince in Ibong Adarna by rubbing calamansi on wound.

By why should Nicole choose the heroic path, or just the honorable one, when there is nothing in this country to support that choice? Everywhere there is corruption, rottenness, cheating, lying, stealing, murder, rape, looking out for oneself, dog versus dog, every man, or woman, for himself/herself, the devil take the hindmost. Of course there is the example set by people like Jun Lozada who have taken the honorable and heroic path amid the greatest adversity. But that example also says that there is a steep price to pay for it. That example shows that in this country the wicked are rewarded plentifully and the good are punished harshly. Why should Nicole, who has endured the burdens of the world, want to endure more?

Of course she had responsibilities, having become the symbol of purloined honor, or national debasement, but she has an example there too. No one has more responsibilities than the person currently occupying Malacañang, and shirking them—no, scuttling them—has not harmed her, it has benefited her. A society has a right to expect decent choices from its citizens only when it can enforce decency. A society has the right to expect moral choices from its citizens only when it can enforce morality. A society has the right to expect its citizens to routinely do the right thing only when it can routinely reward the right thing and punish the wrong one. That is not true here. The opposite is true here."

why i'm afraid

2009-03-19T01:04:00.001-07:00

i'm supposed to be studying for my comprehensive exam this saturday but i've just been so bothered by the Nicole issue. there are two things that frighten me most. First is our tendency towards uncritical assumption and the vicious impulsiveness it triggers. Second is what the reactions to the situation are revealing about our culture's attitudes towards rape and women.

through media's limited vocabulary and sensationalizing tendencies, Nicole's affidavit was headlined as a "recantation" or a "reversal". Mr. Conde has shown that upon close reading (or perhaps just even a simple reading of the text), the affidavit actually never says the rape didn't happen. i've already talked about how worrying it is that people have simply taken the affidavit at face value without considering whether it was done under duress or as part of a political deal between Malacanang and the U.S. to effect Smith's release and consequently scurry the contentious VFA under the rug. this is a government famed for its duplicity in maintaining its self-interests and self-preservation. i know i may be accused of conspiracy theories here but i think better a conspiracy theorist who asks questions than a pavlovian dog who is so easily manipulated. Nicole has been cast as the villain. And only Nicole. The woman upon whom was thrust this burden of being the symbol of Phiippine sovereignty and of rape victims. Now, because of a lazy reading of the affidavit, we say, "Yeah, she deserved whatever she got."

It's mind-boggling to think how people are so quick to crucify Nicole for "giving up" or wanting to/accepting a chance to leave a country that believes that it's okay to rape women for whatever reason.

The reactions have been really frightening, driven by backwards notions of rape, fueled by a macho society for whom there is only one image of a "proper Filipina". A drunk woman deserves to be raped. A woman of loose morals deserves to be raped. I was reading in another forum a thread on "Nicole has damaged the image of the Filipina." What? How? With or without Nicole, it seems that many Filipinos already have such low regard for women.

“That whore deserved it.” By that logic can we assume that if a woman drinks a little and wears a mini-skirt, it is alright to rape her? Let’s go to a bar right now and wait for the women to get drunk. Then you can point out the women that deserve to be raped. Can we assume then that it is only through the graciousness of men that we escape the punishment of rape which otherwise would be justifiably meted out? It’s alright then for a man to rape any woman if she is not conducting herself “properly”? this may be simplistic but i tend to think that someone who thinks any woman deserves to be rape, probably has the potential to be a rapist. Or at least stand by nodding in approval. but it's not any more simplistic or barbaric as equating a mini-skirt and a drunk woman to a green light for rape. And because this seems to be the attitude of so many of us, it’s fucking scary.

Back to Nicole

2009-03-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

Back to the Nicole issue. Two articles.

Deconstructing Nicole's Affidavit
By Carlos H. Conde

Nicole’s statement was not a “recantation” or a reversal of what she said during the trial. The media, of course, quickly concluded that, because this does not seem to fit with the earlier narrative, it must be a reversal.

But nowhere in the document did Nicole say that she was not raped. In fact, she even said, “I did not immediately tell my boyfriend that I was raped by Daniel Smith. All I said was that something bad happened to me.” She said she was too drunk and, as such, she “can’t help but entertain doubts on whether the sequence of events in Subic last November of 2005 really occurred the way the court found them to have happened.” She had doubts about the “sequence of events,” not on whether Smith had sex with or raped her.

She also said: “My conscience continues to bother me realizing that I may have in fact been so friendly and intimate with Daniel Smith at the Neptune Club that he was led to believe that I was amenable to having sex or that we simply just got carried away.”

These passages do not change the fact that 1) Smith had sex with her inside the van, 2) that she was too drunk to know, let alone control, what was happening and 3) that having sex with a very drunk person, as Katrina Legarda put it on ANC this afternoon, is never consensual. “Having sex with a drunk woman is rape. It’s like necrophilia,” Legarda said.

Indeed, Nicole’s narration of events based on her affidavit may even bolster her claim that she was too inebriated that night and Smith and his friends took advantage of her condition. Whether she found Smith attractive, whether they became touchy-feely with each other — this is all beside the point, which is that she was too drunk to know what was happening, too weak to control her faculties or rein in her impulses.

So what was the point of the affidavit?

Reading and rereading Nicole’s it, I am convinced that, more than anything else, it was meant to depict Smith in a benign light, that he was not the monster that this case has made him out to be. It also depicted US servicemen as a friendly bunch — “We treated them as family,” Nicole said, whose own family lived inside a military camp in Zamboanga where they interacted with US troops on a regular basis.

Without a doubt, the point of the affidavit was to influence the justices of the Court of Appeals. They could use the “recantation” angle to paint Nicole as a liar. But they will conclude from reading Nicole’s statement that Smith and company were not monsters, that they did not set out to the Neptune Club looking for prey, that they were just a rowdy group of middle-class American boys out to have some fun, that this was all a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding that, because of Smith’s conviction, has dire implications for the United States. The United States will never yield control of its forces to the authority of other governments, judicial or otherwise. That would be anathema to their geo-political ambitions and interests. Thus, Washington will never allow a “mere understanding” between drunk and horny people to mess things up by setting a precedent that can threaten the way America deals with other countries.

The Court of Appeals will look at Nicole’s affidavit, as well as the fact that she is now in the US for good, as an affirmation of the notion that she is getting on with her life and that this had been a mistake, a bad night for Nicole and the servicemen, who are not monsters after all, according to Nicole herself. They will think that the cost of upholding a conviction — the cost to Smith and to the interests of the Philippines and the United States — is too high a price for both nations to pay for a night of wild partying that went awry.

Which is why the Court of Appeals will overturn Smith’s conviction, and the Supreme Court ruling ordering the Americans to remand Smith to Philippine custody will be rendered moot, and everything will be honky-dory.

Which is why the United States will keep doing what it is doing.
http://www.pinoypress.net/2009/03/18/deconstructing-nicoles-affidavit/

Nicole is Not the Enemy
By Inday Espina-Varona

It was, in the parlance of negotiators, a lose-lose situation. Nicole, the woman raped by American serviceman Daniel Smith, the woman whose face the Inquirer bared cruelly on its front pages today, knew what awaited her.

And she was right. The insults, the slurs, the indignation rained as heavy as they did when PR hacks hired for the defense of Smith (and the government he serves) tried to justify a crime by painting Nicole as a woman of loose morals.

That Nicole practically damns herself the same way now does not excuse the stone throwing.

A woman of loose morals can be raped. Indeed, a woman seen by society as one with loose morals is most vulnerable to rape. A society that fumes at a woman’s attempt to live by her own rules will turn its eyes away and close its ears when men decide to impose the most humiliating punishment they can on this singular, defiant woman.

There’s a line in the Green Mile. To paraphrase: people who think themselves enlightened can perpetrate the most horrific deeds. By commission they do this; likewise, by omission.

Like many friends, I, too, would like to see a lopsided, onerous treaty provided rescinded. A country may open its doors to troops of a military ally if it helps build up its own defense capabilities; what makes the VFA unjust are the provisions clearly skewed towards the bigger power. Until the VFA treats erring American troops like erring Filipino troops, it remains unacceptable. (One might point out that too many erring Filipino soldiers have walked away scot-free but we can’t have everything and just a slight evening out of the field is enough for me.)

But yearning for a noble goal – abolition of an onerous treaty – does not mean it is right for us to drag Nicole through the mud once more. There is no more self-serving, selfish comment than to wail we’ve been had because Nicole issued an affidavit virtually clearing Smith.

So she crumbled. So she groveled before might and the power of the American dream. So what? A close reading of the affidavit shows she doesn’t say the rape NEVER happened. She just spouts what the defense wants her to say.

Many raped women have crumbled in the face of much, much less – say, the tears of an apologetic husband or boyfriend, or the pleas of a family tired of braving the sneers and leers, or just the mounting bills of a legal battle; or maybe just the pleas of one man’s mother, and/or the promise of marriage to make an “honest” woman of her — with all the subtext of she-was-asking-for-it.

We in the media and people’s organizations know of tortured folk recanting on earlier testimony. It doesn’t make them allies of evil men; it simply means there were factors heavy enough to crush determination and courage.

Was it naïve of Nicole to expect aid from the Philippine government? Maybe. But many Filipinos do expect government or government officials to help them. Why are there long lines of supplicants at the gates of mayors and congressmen and governors?

Besides, it’s not just the government. People’s orgs and NGOs – even the media – are there to succor the afflicted. But our attention spans are also as short as the public’s. We are not evil; we just have other, “more important” things to attend to.

How many times have we in media done a round of mea culpa when discussing human rights? We admit we cannot always keep the lights shining on one particular case – and that often starts the slide to defeat. That does not make us in the media bad; we know the many reasons for this situation. If we can accept this, why cannot we accept the loneliness and bewilderment of the violated, their impatience and their hopelessness?

Likewise, I have been around these circles of aid-givers enough to know that there is some residual middle-class desire to expect people we help to be docile and grateful, when in truth the task of working for justice does not guarantee good manners and right conduct among those we seek to aid.

Oh yes, there are many do-gooders who can barely mask their pinched noses as they go about giving aid, and there are those whose faces turn red and mouths turn down when they are met with less than obsequious thanks in their tours of duty or because the people they help just can’t be bothered by the higher isms of the day. That’s not to denigrate aid givers as evil; just to make them out as truly human, the same way the people they serve, Nicole included, are just as human.

The truth is, Nicole has walked a long, long way in this ordeal; longer than most women who have suffered rape.

Just a little over a week ago, I had to double check some documents from the Bacolod police because they initially seemed exaggeratedly negative. Of 36 cases of acts of lasciviousness report last year, only six were filed with the fiscal. Of 943 cases of violence against women, only 13 were filed in court. Of 26 rape cases, only six were filed. In the case minors, the ratio was nine of 34 rape cases ending up in court.

Nicole, at least, braved cross-examination and the harsh glare of the media spotlight, including the baring of her real identity name.

She mustered the strength for this because many of us supported her – whether because rape alone was enough to stir us to outrage or because she was a vehicle to reach a higher goal.

And now she has crumbled. Why are we so irate? How many friends do we know who voluntarily joined this or that cause but dropped out after sometime? Do we sneer and call them traitors? Don’t we even share meals with those who now serve the government, no matter if the thought of this government makes us puke?

How many on Facebook were once firm believers in this or that cause? Nobody pressured us to join those causes, right? Did we face a mob when we decided to leave?

Well, Nicole never volunteered for the cause. She had to be raped to join it. She never asked to be poster girl for nationalists; she was made one by virtue of rape.

There are a million and one reasons for despair and hopelessness. A noble cause cannot always hold one above the waters. Nor will a lynching make our cause more right.

Nicole is not the enemy. Let’s not treat her like one.
http://www.pinoypress.net/2009/03/19/nicole-is-not-the-enemy/

Chelsea

2009-03-18T10:55:00.001-07:00

Sarah warned me it would be dangerous to try and engage in some intelligent debate at the forums but I didn't listen. Now I have a hell of a headache. Which is funny, because really what I wanted to write about before this whole Nicole thing came out of the woodwork was my dog.

I took Chelsea to the vet yesterday and just as I came out of the gate, two kids passed by walking a little chihuahua (i guess there's really no such thing as a big chihuahua though). "Hey, it's Chelsea!" the little boy yelled out and they came over to the front of the house.

I love it that people in the neighborhood know Chels. When we used to live on a different street in the same village, a lady actually rang the doorbell to ask for Chelsea once. No kidding. One time Chelsoid wandered the village after someone left the gate open and was picked up by the patrolling guards. they brought her to the pound at the association and when we called to ask if they had seen a golden retriever, they asked, "Sobrang mabait ba sya?" Yah, that's our dog.

Anyway, the kids came over and the girl started telling me about how Chelsea apparently has a crush on her dog. And they introduced me to their three-month old chihuahua, Bolt. I really enjoyed that. Thanks guys.

Holy Fuck Reaction part 2

2009-03-18T03:42:00.000-07:00

The immediate aftermath of Nicole's supposed recantation has been quite passionate and as expected, quick to villify her. I've seen forums where her real name has been revealed and pictures of her plastered with captions of "hypocrite, slut, prostitute", etc.

As I've mentioned before, what worries me most is this uncritical assumption of the recantation which I don't think can be taken at face value. One knee-jerk reaction I've heard is "sabi ko nga ba, Daniel Smith is so gwapo, he doesn't need to rape anyone." That also worries me. It's disturbing to see the emergence of latent prejudices against rape and women. A good looking guy can't be guilty of rape. A condom equates to consent. A drunk woman is asking for it. While the recantation (whether done voluntarily or under duress) has implications for rape victims and woman in general, so do our responses. and so far our responses are disturbing in what they are revealing about our culture's attitudes towards women.

I don't think we can just take the recantation at face value and paint Nicole as the villain without examining the conditions that have made this situation possible. these include (to my mind) a government which values political considerations over individual rights, a culture with such backward notions about rape and women, and a country where a U.S. visa can be used as a bargaining tool. and i think the immediate villification of Nicole based on a document that i think is dangerous to take at face value is misguided and probably displays our own ignorance of our complicity in letting these conditions persist.

taking things at face value meantime is also precisely what makes us so easily manipulated.

Holy Fuck reaction

2009-03-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

While it will be easy to villify Nicole now, I still want to give her the benefit of the doubt. As having been a possible rape victim. I think it would be naive to take the recantation at face value and its uncritical assumption is dangerous, especially knowing how political manuevering in this country can so easily turn black into white, night into day. But as Barbs pointed out, the recantation now raises a question mark over future testimonies of rape victims which is disturbing. However, I think it has to be considered whether the recantation was done under duress, threats, out of resignation or voluntarily. I don't believe Nicole ever intended on being a poster child for rape victims or the rallying point for Philippine sovereignty and I think any judgment on her character would be hasty without closer scrutiny of the workings behind the recantation. I tend to think that Malcanang's hands are all over this. Secretary of Injustice Gonzales questions why Nicole just didn't go to Italy if she sincerely resented the U.S. I don't think the U.S. can issue a visa to Italy in return for Smith's release. If she was paid off, is she the only one whose motives we should doubt?

I think there are three possibilities. One, the rape happened and disillusioned with the possibility of real justice being meted out, Nicole took a deal (perhaps an expedited U.S. immigrant's visa) and recanted. Two, the rape didn't happen and Nicole is just one messed up girl. Or three, the rape happened but Nicole has been banished by Malacanang and the recantation is just the product of legal experts and spin doctors.

We're devolving into conspiracy theories here. I think I need to let this all sink in first. But it's sickening when the manipulation of justice and the trampling of a country's interests or a victim's rights are so blatantly played out. It becomes like a bad familiar play where the audience knows the lines and what will happen next... Everything can just be covered up with some carefully worded statements, ignored questions or by taking flight. But what does that say about us? Hopefully some of us are not too cynical or resigned to let it just blow over until the next performance and the next performance and the next...

Or perhaps I'm the naive one.

Holy Fuck.

2009-03-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

This shit is getting too predictable. I guess you're free to go Mr. Smith.

‘Nicole’ recants
By Norman BordadoraPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst
MANILA, Philippines—The Filipino woman who accused an American Marine of raping her late in 2005 and testified about her ordeal in court has recanted.

The sworn statement issued by "Nicole" on March 12 comes more than two years after the Makati Regional Trial Court convicted Lance Corporal Daniel Smith of raping her.

Nicole said she expected her motives to be questioned but maintained she was bothered by her conscience

“I expect many sectors to question my motives in executing this statement more than three years after the incident. However…I can’t help but entertain doubts on whether the sequence of events in Subic last November of 2005 really occurred the way the court found them to have happened,” Nicole said in her affidavit.

“My conscience continues to bother me realizing that I may have in fact been so friendly and intimate with Daniel Smith at the Neptune Club that he was led to believe that I was amenable to having sex or that we simply just got carried away,” she said.

“I would rather risk public outrage than do nothing to help the court in ensuring that justice is served,” she added.

Nicole said she practically grew up interacting with American servicemen in Zamboanga City “who treated me and my family very well.”

She also questioned her decorum when she met Smith at the Neptune Club at the Subic Freeport, saying she was so drunk she may have lost her inhibitions and did more than just dance with the Marine.

Nicole also raised doubts that Smith raped her inside a van at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone and suggested that she may have welcomed the Marine’s sexual advances.

“I told the court that Daniel Smith kissed my lips and neck and held my breast inside the van. Recalling my testimony, I ask myself how I could have remembered this if witnesses told the court that I passed out and looked unconscious,” Nicole said.

“How could I have resisted his advances given this condition? Daniel Smith and I were alone on the third row of the van which had limited space and I do not recall anyone inside the van who held my hand or any part of my body,” she added.

Nicole said all she could remember was the “very loud music and shouting inside the van.”

“With the events at the Neptune Club in mind, I keep on asking myself, if Daniel Smith wanted to rape me why would he carry me out of the Neptune Club using the main entrance in full view of the security guard and the other customers?”

“Why would Daniel Smith and his companions bring me to the seawall of Alaba pier and casually leave this area that was well-lighted and with many people roaming around? If they believed that I was raped, would they have not dumped me instead in a dimly lit area…to avoid detection?”

Nicole said with the amount of alcohol she had consumed that night and only a slice of pizza to eat, she may have lost her inhibitions and enjoyed Smith’s company.

“I had no opportunity to deny in court that I kissed Daniel Smith but, with the amount of alcoholic mixed drinks I took, my low tolerance level for alcohol and with a slice of pizza all night, it dawned upon me that I may have possibly lost my inhibitions, became so intimate with Daniel Smith and did more that just [dance and talk] with him like everyone else on the dance floor,” Nicole said.

“Looking back, I would not have agreed to talk with Daniel Smith and dance with him no less that three times if I did not enjoy his company or was at least attracted to him since I met him for the very first time on the dance floor of Neptune Club,” she added.

SIGH

2009-03-17T05:34:00.000-07:00

Some unprocessed reactions on a development in the Subic rape case. Apparently, "Nicole" has been granted a visa to the U.S. or has already been in the U.S. for a week. The news comes on the heels of Obama's personal phone call to GMA regarding the VFA. It's disturbing news on many levels. Because Barbs can't relate the news to food, I'm going to have a crack at this.

From a distance, I see the development as a reflection of so many ills plaguing Philippine society, stemming from a colonial history and tangled in current neo-colonial trappings. It also reflects the grim situation of the judicial process in the country as well as the unabated diasporic phenomenon in response to a hopeless homeland.

Here we have a U.S. soldier who forced himself on a young Filipina. Daniel Smith was convicted but continues to defy a Supreme Court order that would have him detained at a Philippine facility instead of the U.S. Embassy. Now "Nicole" has fired her lawyers and many suspect that the young woman was pressured into leaving for the U.S. Perhaps though it was her own decision. After all, how many Filipinos wait years for that prized visa? Perhaps it is part of a deal between the U.S. and Malacanang to broker Smith's eventual release. Maybe it's GMA's way of currying favor with Obama. Who knows. But it all smells fishy. And it's sad. And infuriating.

"Nicole and her family are tired of the case and they do not want anymore to be bothered by it because there is no justice in the Philippines," a statement from one of the dismissed counsel said.

Many people came to the aid of "Nicole" when news broke out that a Filipina had been raped by visiting U.S. servicemen and once again the controversial VFA came to the fore. For four years, people fought for justice and clamoured for Philippine sovereignty over the matter, is it too much to expect that one's government protect its own in one's own country and uphold its rights and interests? It seems however that political manueverings, disillusionment of the possibility of any substantial justice and perhaps the lure of greener pastures (even those of one's abusers) prevail...

There's still not too much information regarding the details of Nicole's disappearance - whether it was a voluntary or opportunistic flight or one of exile and banishment so that things can quiet down either for her family or for Malacanang. We'll have to wait and see. Smith may have been convicted and Nicole may understandably want to move on from that night but the rape of the country continues.

no title

2009-03-16T06:53:00.000-07:00

I remember now where I found my Jean Genet. Was in a street in Baguio. God bless Baguio. Also recently found a biography of Georgia O'Keefe in Bangkal. Yay Bangkal.

lousy tear ducts...

2009-03-13T00:25:00.000-07:00

I've gotten teary-eyed twice in the last few hours. First from watching Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel's performance of Defying Gravity during the 2004 Tony Awards and second, after reading an article about Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's revolutionary plan to protect its low wage earners from layoffs.

I knew I was going to have difficulty from the beginning when Glinda tells Elphaba, "Don't be afraid." And Elphaba replies with a voice trembling from newfound courage, "I'm not. It's the wizard who should be afraid... of me." It almost looks like Idina is about to cry herself. Damn. Then I really lost it when Elphaba flies above the stage, looking down at the throng who've misunderstood all her good intentions (hey wait a minute...) and maligned her... Damn. Damn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejGLmx7ZH0c

Meanwhile, on a more realistic plane... so the president and ceo of Beth Israel has come up with a new plan to save low wage earners from the fate of so many other workers today. Making rounds of the hospital, he noticed that it was the people bringing food to the patients and pushing their wheelchairs that were really in effect practicing a type of medicine that all the prescribed drugs couldn't achieve. They were talking to the patients and offering them some comfort and humanity. In a meeting with hospital staff, he broached the idea that in order to protect these people (mostly immigrants), those earning more would have to make some sacrifices. He had hardly finished his sentence when his audience, the hospital staff who would have to forego bonuses and take pay cuts, began applauding his idea. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/12/a_head_with_a_heart/

I don't know. I think I can keep my emotions fairly under control but I do get teary-eyed over random things. A friend likes telling the story about how I yawned pretty much through a sentimental weepy love movie but started crying during a computer-geek thriller when the main character confronts the evil IT mogul, declaring that "knowledge belongs to the world." I don't want to name the movies specifically. That would just further implicate me in my dorkhood.

save the artist, save the world 1

2009-03-10T22:53:00.000-07:00

As Once The Winged Energy of Delight
As once the winged energy of delight
Carried you over childhood’s dark abysses
Now beyond your own life built the great
Arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
In passing through the harshest danger:
But only in a bright and purely granted
Achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
Relationship is not too hard for us:
The pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
And being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
Until they span the chasm between two
Contradictions... For the god wants to know himself in you.
Rilke

I first read this poem for one of Dr. Marge Evasco’s literature classes. It has remained one of my favourites and fortifies me somehow when I feel like submitting to the cold metal cogs that turn this world.

“For the god wants to know himself in you.” I love that line. If there is something that I believe we have in common with God or however you want to describe the “master of the universe”, it is that we are also creators. It is sad to see creative pursuits relegated to the dark and mouldy sidelines in favour of technology and money. John Steinbeck once said that he wrote to try to remind people of their humanity. I think that’s what artists do, and I think that’s why we have to treasure those people who try to open us to new ways of seeing, imagining and being. The people who watch and observe and for whom the truth is sacred. The people who try to remind us that life in this world is terrifying, absurd, ugly, beautiful. People whose work slaps us in the face and then comforts us. People who create worlds out of whispers and colours and lines.
I can’t believe that some divine power would create us just to work 9 to 5 and to make as much money as possible.

Kicking My Ass

2009-03-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

My first blog post-creative-non-fiction requirement and all I can think of is how my dog knows whether something is edible or not. Damn.

Sadly, I've always known that I needed a kick in the ass to start writing. Otherwise, I'm liable to just let words and ideas float in my head and justify my apprehension of actual writing with the "I'm still processing" spiel. The blog-writing requirement was a nice gentle kick in the rump to get me started. To at least develop the habit of disciplined writing. Hopefully I can keep it going, or at least kick my own ass from now on.

The Conversion: A Murder Story

2009-03-07T04:01:00.000-08:00

J. Neil Garcia’s poem The Conversion is the account of a murder. It speaks of the sad details of the killing of a little girl by a group of men who commit the deed in the name of love and the little boy who tried to protect her but lost. The perpetuators’ justification lay in the fact that the little girl lived inside the boy; an unnatural spirit/being of which the boy must be exorcised and saved.

Garcia begins the poem in a straightforward fashion, describing the circumstances in which the offense was executed. “It happened in a metal drum.” The economy of the first line is powerful in its restraint, painting only a picture of a functional cylinder of rusted metal and initially keeping the horrific function that the enclosure will host at bay.

Before detailing the act itself, Garcia, through the persona of the grown man recounting the story, tells us of the careful preparations (the premeditation) that the men in the family undertook, bestowing upon the crime the aura of occasion like a baptism or a confirmation. It is an event that must take precedence over banal affairs as washing clothes, dishes, or faces. These can wait. The salvation of a boy is at stake. “The water had been saved just for it, that day.” Like the stench emanating from the neglected pile of soiled laundry, “that day” will leave a permanent stain on the persona, even as he has purportedly been cleansed.

More than an occasion however, the incident also becomes a spectacle, exposed to the curious eyes of neighbours and onlookers. That the men do nothing to conceal the event and even enter the scene “booming”, hints that what they plan to do is also in their own interest – to showcase and prove their own masculinity in its violent but “righteous” imposition on a weaker party.

The persona as a boy though, while innocent, is not naive. He understands his father’s and uncles’ intentions and that contrary to the older males’ justifications, he is not to be the object of their rescue. Instead, he is to be their sacrifice. Hiding “in the deepest corner” of his dead mother’s cabinet, whose scents and softness offers him safety and refuge, the reader discerns the lonely and vulnerable condition of the child. He has no ally to protect him from an impending attack.

The boy is captured and dragged to the waiting metal drum where he is viciously dunked over and over again. “Girl or Boy” the Father shouts, a demand for a choice to be made but whose correct answer, the only acceptable answer has already been determined. The boy is defiant at first, speaking his self, even as water curls under his nose. But he knows that the brutal onslaught will not end until he conforms and with each submerging, the girl inside sinks “deeper in the churning void.” He must renounce his self, banish the girl and emerge from that drum, reborn as a full blooded male.

The boy does convert and he learns how a man must act and feel. “I got my wife pregnant,” the persona now boasts, telling not of love but of an achievement. “Our four children, all boys are the joy of my manhood, my proof.” They are his testimony of his heterosexuality. He also learns that “A woman needs some talking sense into,” just as his father and uncles “talked sense” into him with the help of a metal drum. Purportedly, his conversion is his redemption and now, everything he does with the force of his newfound masculinity is vindicated, just like his Father’s deed.

But Garcia’s poem is also a ghost story. The image of the drowned girl that he was then helpless to defend and save continues to haunt the man. “I should feel sorry but I drown myself in gin before I can.” Through another variety of liquid, the persona deadens himself – his denial of the girl within him making him as hollow as the now empty drum, a ghost of a man.

on and on to the break of dawn...

2009-03-06T07:27:00.000-08:00

some are great and some are few
others lie while some tell the truth
some say poems and some do sing
others sing through their guitar strings

Francis Magalona died today, succumbing to leukemia after 44 youthful years. His death won't trigger world-wide tremors and while I have not shed a tear, I do feel the loss. It feels a little awkward to write this for some reason. Maybe because pop culture and entertainment seems far removed from the realm of ideas and other lofty notions. But I do think Francis M had a significant role in modern Philippine culture and arts.

Despite all his "yes-yes-yo-ing" to the break of dawn in his early career, Francis M was a proud Filipino musician who expressed his nationalism through his music, making it "hip" to be proud to be Pinoy. His album Yo! was actually the first album I ever bought and I remember memorising Mga Kabababayan Ko and playing it as a soundtrack to my daydreams of one day playing for the women's national basketball team.

While that was the only Francis M album I purchased, I heard how he matured through his future songs that were played on the radio, becoming more mellow and reflective but still loving Filipinos so intently and wanting Filipinos to love themselves as well, embracing differences in Kaleidescope World.

It's truly a loss to the entertainment industry. The loss of an artist who used his popularity to promote pride in one's self and culture particularly among the youth.

And Cold Summer Nights was a damn good song too. I don't care what anybody says.

Peace, Francis M. Thank you for the music.

sketch of a girl and her brother

2009-03-06T03:50:00.000-08:00

This is one of my latest sketches. Latest in the sense that although it was done three months ago, I haven't yet completed another. It's one of my favorites. My first with two profiles. It's taken from a picture in a book of portraits by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. I think the girl is the older sister of the young boy. They are waiting at a train station with just a shawl to cover them both. The girl has a look of tiredness an resignation. Her lips are slightly scowling or poutin, but more of a natural effect of probably a long wait. Her eyes are even too tired to blink. The boy on the other hand has wide eyes and an innocent mouth. They are looking in different directions. The boy looks as if he wants to be somewhere else and can't understand why he can't be there.

The Team

2009-03-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

I'm quite amazed at my nephews and nieces. They all have their own distinct personalities but are very much a cohesive unit. Benito is a character, charmingly naughty and fearless. His best friend is Javier, his little brother. They both always have the same haircut. Javier is more introspective though. Taken to quiet moods. His questions are surprisingly insightful. Tikya is the oldest. The Ate. She's very responsible, always in a good mood and reliable. Although she is only 10 years old, she helps cook their lunches and watches over the younger ones. Ching Ching is painfully shy. But the older children rally around her. "Don't be shy Ching Ching, that's your lola," Benito says in a singsong voice as we ride in the car. "She just doesn't know you yet," he adds. All six years old of him, brimming with wisdom and diplomacy. The youngest, Lucky, was born on 8//08/2008 at 8:08 am. Hence his nickname. He's quite a big baby with a full head of hair. He has old soul eyes and laughs easily.

On Aneurysms and Book Bins

2009-03-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

Oscar Campomanes and E. San Juan Jr. are this close to giving me an aneurysm. While their focus on Filipinos writing in english concern me and their ideas will be indispensable to my own studies and process as I try to express and reconciliate my own predicament/privilege as a Filipino writing in english, I'm really having difficulty deciphering their meanings.

Thankfully though, I have some rewards waiting with my latest finds at the buy one take one bin at Chapters and Pages. For 200 bucks, I got The Handbook of Non-Violence by Robert Seeley which includes Aldous Huxley's An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, Ismail Kadare's The Concert, Picasso My Grandfather by Marina Picasso and uh... Pipe Dreams, A Surfer's Journey by Kelly Slater.

I like that Chapters and Pages at Market2. That's also where I got my art books of Alice Neel and David Hockney. But I think my best finds have been Andre Gide's The Immoralist and Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal somewhere in Cubao. I'm not sure if it was in the Booksale there, the thrift shops or the surplus shop where books are scattered among football helmets and old bowling balls.

I have a small library of different versions of classics. I found an old edition of the Hobbit when the Lord of the Rings trilogy films were introducing a younger, hipper generation to Tolkien with an anxious looking Elijah Wood or defiant, smoldering Viggo Mortensen on their covers. I remembered my brother then. How he loved those books growing up and how I texted him when I found more expensive versions without those movie covers. "KICK ASS! GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!" was his text back.

I don't know how many versions of 30peso Shakespeares, Thomas Hardys and Jane Austens I have weighing my shelves down. I just feel I have to rescue those books whenever I see them unceremoniously dumped together with pocketbook romances and action thrillers.

Admittedly, among my shelves also sit books that I have not gotten around to reading yet. I don't worry about it though. I'm a big believer in impulse buying when it comes to books. I think there's a reason why you're drawn to a particular book. I think actually, the book calls you. It knows something that you don't. Something that you don't even know you don't know. But one day, when you're ready, you'll open its pages.

Monday Morning on Taft

2009-03-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

On Taft this morning. A straggler with saliva dripping from his mouth walked shakily down the middle of the avenue, oblivious to charging vehicles. On the back of a truck, two workers eyed him with amusement. At a red light, a jeepney slowed down next to him with two young ladies in the passenger seat. The straggler, about mid 40s and wearing an oversized torn short over wispy shorts, approached them. I could not hear what was said. The driver of the jeep leaned over, trying to scare the straggler away. But the man continued to shout, his lips exploding in saliva which would then stretch in long strands to his bare feet. The ladies giggled among themselves and tried to lean away from the man. When the light turned green and the vehicles moved on like a curtain revealing a stage, I saw on the sidewalk a heavyset man holding a holster striking another younger straggler who jumped to avoid the blow and ran down the street.

Can't Think of a Title

2009-03-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

It's been about a month and a half since I entered the MFA program. I'm still a little dissatisfied with my writing but it is good to be back in an environment that cares about words. Slowly, I think I'm returning to the fold, getting my bearings again, although I still catch myself falling into template writing for an imagined audience instead of for myself sometimes.

For several years, I vacillated on pursuing an MFA. Although in the back of my mind, I knew that I would eventually follow this trail (wherever it may lead) I kept its reality at a distance and instead explored different routes. I think I was afraid. It seemed dangerous to pursue it at the first instance. What if I learned that I had no business trying to string together words or that I had nothing original or interesting to say? Where would I go from there?

Instead, I stayed in the realm of safe writing where I could still be among words. But dead words that couldn't talk back and were cold to the touch. Like components of a machine. No wonder I balked at calling myself a writer. I think I was more of mechanic; a technician who knew where each part belonged.

But I think that a writer's task is more like a lion tamer's. It requires mastery, courage and a healthy dose of insanity because you know that you are dealing with living things infinitely more powerful than yourself, things that can eat you alive. If you succeed in directing its movements, it's not because you've imposed your will on it but more through a rare moment of harmony. I imagine that lion tamers and real writers both end their feats incredulous that they've escaped with their lives.

I'm still a little afraid, but at least I'm in the lion's den.

How the Magdalo Ruined My Dinner

2009-02-28T04:45:00.000-08:00

July 26, 2003. The text came in at about 8:30 in the evening between bites of lechon kawali. “Unauthorised troop movements reported,” read the screen. While a text message is devoid of emotion and cannot convey urgency as emphatically as a human voice, it has its own peculiar tone which is just as effective.

I retrieved the bag I had just set down a few minutes earlier, and again slung it over my tired shoulders. As a reporter covering the police and military beat, the working day does not end when banks and offices close or even when the paper is put to bed. Troops, police forces, insurgents, criminals and in this case “rogue soldiers” don’t operate on a 9 to 5 schedule.

With the remaining lechon kawali and some rice packed into Tupperware, I headed back to Camp Aguinaldo. A soft wind swirled in Edsa’s emptying lanes as most people had already returned home, unable to hear the rumbles of restive soldiers trooping to the heart of Manila’s business district as they sighed into their pillows.

The military headquarters was beginning to tighten up when I arrived but was still allowing some vehicles in. The mood was tense and guarded as I neared the press office behind the bleachers where a few nights before, we had heard the camp’s base commander emotionally exhorting a group of soldiers to desist from any destabilising efforts. But the sombre feeling was broken when I entered the press room and was greeted by an almost festive atmosphere with regulars of the Defense Press Corps and colleagues covering the Crame beat whooping it up. “Wisegirl! Welcome to your first coup!” the veterans shouted gleefully.

Little by little, drowsy reporters wrenched from their sleep or gimmicks straggled into the press room in varying states of dishevelment and on the other extreme, stylishness. Anthony stumbled in with his hair still unbrushed, wearing wrinkled shorts and Islanders while Joy made her entrance in a dress and heels; the arrival of each new victim eliciting cheers and good-natured teasing from the rest of us who had already been corralled. By now, the press room had turned into a carnival of camera crews and print and broadcast journalists with its own burgeoning restiveness.

I squeezed into an empty space on the sofa next to Manong Cesar; a quiet, bespectacled man who had worked with the same tabloid for some 20 years and who often ghost-wrote articles for his daughter who worked at a rival newspaper. Soft-spoken, serious and the most senior among us, Manong Cesar did not join in the ribaldry. “I was here in ’89,” he said softly. “We had to run for cover when they started shelling the camp. A rocket landed just metres from the press office,” Manong Cesar said.

In 1989, I was a fourth grader waking up on holiday in the province to find my lolo sitting on my bed with a handheld radio pressed to his ear as he told my brothers and I that we would be staying with them indefinitely until things in Manila “settled down”. I remember my excitement at my suddenly extended vacation by the beach but also recall being worried by Lolo’s obviously distressed demeanour and wondered what he meant. When I heard the constant mention of a “coup”, I was perplexed at how such an innocuous one syllable word like a sound from the language of pigeons and babies could trigger such anxiety in the adults.

On old desktops lined against the wall, some reporters focused intensely on Text Twist or played war games, firing on tiny approaching enemies with bored strokes of their fingers while waiting for their editors to tell them that that they could return to their beds or parties. Others began writing their articles – templates of different versions of a coup quelled or a government toppled with blank spaces to be filled in later. Most continued to mingle around gossiping with each other or like me, smoking outside to watch fully armed soldiers march through the road between the press office and the auditorium, the sound of their boots in a perfect march rhythmically filling the cold night.

At about 11p.m., then AFP spokesman Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero entered the press room, informing the reporters that Camp Aguinaldo would soon be closing its gates as a “precautionary measure” and that access in or out of the military base would no longer be allowed. He added that anybody who wanted to leave should do so then. The announcement sliced through the babble and I could sense each reporter in the room withdraw into themselves as the potential gravity of the situation began to sink in. The moment of sobriety and reflection however was short-lived. Realising that the crew from a rival outfit had not yet arrived, a perky lady reporter from a TV station piped up. “So no one else can come in? When are you closing the gates?” she asked with a gleam in her eye, happier to think that her competitors would be pounding away outside Aguinaldo’s gates clamouring to get in than concerned about being trapped in a possible crossfire between government and rebel forces. Ah, reporters.

Shortly after, we were called into the Press Information Office next door to await a word from then Defense Chief Angelo Reyes. Reyes strutted in, dressed in his regular short-sleeved barong and feigning exaggerated bemusement at the pencil and camera wielding horde waiting for him, facetiously asked, “Why are you all still here?”

Appropriating Lucero’s desk, Reyes then cleared his throat and waited for the cameras to start rolling whereupon he launched into a speech about the military’s mandate and how government troops would remain faithful to the chain of command. “That’s what he said during Edsa Dos,” I heard Raffy mutter under his breath.

“There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing significant is happening. Everybody go home and get some rest,” shrugged Reyes as if the whole affair was just a terrible inconvenience.

“Sir, if nothing is happening, why are YOU still here?” Howie asked, his unassuming and almost innocent tone greatly contrasting Reyes’s bombastic attitude.

Reyes’s eyebrows raised, obviously offended at this quiet audacity. “I’m here because you’re still here and you asked me to speak to you,” the defense chief sputtered angrily. “Now go home!” We filed out of the office laughing at Reyes’s loss of composure. Nobody went home.

Suddenly, Joel, the DPC president who had been talking on his cell phone at a distance hurried back to the group. “It’s real. It’s happening. Soldiers with red arm bands are in Makati,” he said, his expression serious and sending us scrambling to our computers like a fighter pilots preparing to take off on an emergency mission.

In the early hours of July 27, some 300 soldiers now known as the Magdalo group descended onto the Oakwood hotel and Ayala malls, planting snipers on the roof deck and rigging mines around the premises, which their leaders would later claim were merely for pyrotechnic value. Accusing the government and military top brass of rampant corruption and complicity in a string of Davao bombings, the group led by five charismatic junior officers, called for the resignations of administration and military leaders. After negotiations, the coup/uprising/mutiny/rebellion was ended without bloodshed and the soldiers were driven back to barracks 18 hours after their “peaceful exercise” began.

“Ang bading naman ng coup na ito,” Joel said, shaking his head in disgust.

After filing my last story and clearing with the desk, I again relaxed on the sofa but resisted the temptation to fall into a deep slumber as Karl and Francis were laughingly taking pictures of other reporters who had succumbed to fatigue, their mouths hanging open as if gasping for breath after the marathon. I reached into my bag to pull out my neglected Tupperware and sighed. I had forgotten to pack utensils.

Feminism's Relevance in the Philippines

2009-02-27T02:11:00.000-08:00

The regard for women and those with womanly qualities as sources of creation and creativity in pre-colonial Philippines and the absence of misogynist concepts in Philippine languages before the intrusion of foreign tongues indicates a culture that originally valued and honoured the feminine. The colonial experience however squashed woman’s role with a patriarchal agenda that not only relegated women to the bottom rung of its hierarchy but also began to redefine and modify her character, her usefulness, her worth. Even as the colonial masters have long sailed away, women remain oppressed and marginalised – an indication of a culture that is still moored in polluted waters. Feminism, as an eye and tool to catch and contest the machinations of patriarchy that intentionally or unintentionally subjugates the feminine is not merely relevant but imperative to ensure that women’s voices and stories will be heard and that women can re-define themselves on their own terms.

Dr. Marjorie M. Evasco shows how women are raising their voices through poetry to more authentically convey their experiences while Dr. Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz describes how the Philippines’ women’s movement through the “politization of women’s writings” has moved beyond upper-class concerns to sing for a greater population of previously silenced women – a chorus against oppressive patriarchal structures and more truly “songs” of themselves. Meantime, Dr. Lilia Q. Santiago examines the ways in which the so-called proper and ideal Filipina was constructed; how the mystical and intuitive babaylan was supplanted by the docile Maria Clara, particularly through male dominated readings and approaches in Philippine literature.

With Philippine literature an expression of Philippine culture and also a tool of social transformation, feminist writings and feminist readings must thus be vigilant defenders against male-biased appropriations of their meanings and messages, while simultaneously leading efforts to introduce alternative modes of perceiving the world beyond patriarchal preoccupations with power and supremacy and western binary models.

However, while feminism speaks from the margins, its objective is not so concerned with usurping the male at the centre. To replace one form of imperialism with yet another, even if helmed by women is not truly a liberating project. Instead, it is just the re-enactment of a tired story with new players. While patriarchy is founded on dominance, feminism is centred in balance and will be indispensable in correcting the unnatural one-sidedness in the country’s social, political, economic and cultural milieu.

Taxi Drivers I Have Met 2

2009-02-26T07:15:00.000-08:00

Met another cool taxi driver named Willy this evening. When I got into his cab, he commented on my beanie and I told him that my mom gave it to me for Christmas and that I sometimes don't like to brush my hair. He laughed and told me that another girl he drove left her bonnet in his vehicle and he said I could have it. It's dark grey with a short lid. He also gave me some tips on how to quit smoking. Thanks Willy and sorry, unknown beanie-less girl.

Ateneo accident

2009-02-25T09:37:00.000-08:00

A grade 4 pupil was killed when he was pinned between two cars at the Ateneo campus Wednesday afternoon. His name was Amiel.

From what I have gathered, the accident occured after dismissal and students were being picked up by parents, drivers and yayas. Amiel was on his way to his car with his yaya and siblings when suddenly, a van lurched foward, knocking the boy down. The 65-year old yaya, Tata Suarez, managed to push the other children out of the way but was unable to reach Amiel in time. She also sustained serious injuries. The driver of the van was a mother, Ma. Theresa Torres who was moving the vehicle after she had instructed her driver to look for her own child. Amiel's driver and 13 year old brother pulled the boy from under the vehicle. In an interview, the boy's driver said he shouted for help but nobody came to their aid, not even the Ateneo security guards. Another parent (some reports identify her as Mrs. Torres herself) helped bring Amiel to the nearest hospital where he was declared dead on arrival with head wounds. His last words were "kuya".

My heart goes out to the family of Amiel and Mrs. Torres. I know it will be easy to demonize Mrs. Torres but this is an accident nobody wanted to happen.

Sign of the Times

2009-02-24T18:12:00.000-08:00

Read a report today about an ex-convict in Taiwan who is pleading with police authorties to send him back to jail while there looks to be no end to the financial crisis. Why not? If he can be assured of regular meals and a place to lay his head, something that is uncertain with a free life these days. The police denied his request but bought him a box lunch.

The scenario may seem amusing but is also quite disturbing. It is however not the most extreme measure being taken by people as they lose their jobs, savings and pensions. One too many stories of fathers killing themselves and their families because they could no longer provide for them have plagued headlines recently. If people can consider that option, what would keep them from ensuring that they do go to jail if it is their last hope to eat? It's a bit frightening.

There are obviously wide canyons between developed and developing countries, but I think the prison system is a curious aspect. I'm sure convicts in "first world" prisons are probably better fed and accommodated than a working class free person somewhere else. What's freedom if you can't eat?

No Title

2009-02-24T06:10:00.001-08:00

I am trying to work on my memoir assignment for class. It is quite difficult.

shut up already

2009-02-23T14:18:00.000-08:00

Have just read an editorial in the Inquirer regarding the right of reply bill. I'm so tired of media arguing a "chilling factor" and obstruction of freedom of the press whenever any attempts are made to rein them in.

blah

2009-02-23T13:58:00.000-08:00

I think I'm in over my head.

Teary Eyed Over Sports

2009-02-20T02:49:00.000-08:00

Read a story about a high school basketball game this morning. The home team's captain's mother had passed away on the day of a big game with a rival school. The captain came late for the game and requested to suit up, wanting to forget his grief but since he was not on the roster for that game, it would have meant awarding two technical foul shots to the opposing team in a close game. The opposing team wanted to waive the shots considering the situation but the referees insisted that they take them. So one player volunteered to take the shots, intentionally missing both, allowing the bereaved captain to join his teammates without any penalty.

I remember reading another story of a college women's softball game where a senior playing her last game hit her first career homerun. Rounding the bases though, her knee gave in and she crumpled in pain on the field. The closest opposing player came up to her and together with a rival player, helped the injured player officially score her homerun by carrying her to the remaining bases and gently lowering her so she could touch each base with her foot.

I don't know why, but stories of sportsmanship always make me tearyeyed.

On Night Terrors

2009-02-19T02:55:00.000-08:00

My room in our old house in Paranaque was close to the street so I was not initially bothered when a mechanical humming noise like a motor revving broke the night's silence. The sound continued for a few minutes before things took an ominous turn. The revving sound suddenly mutated into maniacal laughter, and it seemed directed at me. I struggled to get out of bed but found that I was paralysed. I could not even scream. Even as I mustered all my strength to move just a toe or let out a small cry - I could not. Thankfully after a few minutes, I was suddenly released and I ran from my bed to the door. Though it was dark, I could discern in the corner the silhouette of a large figure. I grabbed the doorknob but could not turn it. A hot breath moved closer to me, and I felt a weight cup my hand. I think I was crying from fear by then. I was able to open the door and was welcomed by pitch black. Knowing that my mom's room was just a few feet down, I traced my hand against the wall knowing that it would eventually lead me to safety. But the wall kept going and going... and then I woke up.

From 2003 to 2005, I suffered from night terrors. Bangnungots. It got so bad that when I finally took a vacation, I set my clock on snooze mode throughout the entire night, sleeping in 10 minute intervals to ensure that I did not drift into a deep and dangerous sleep. I knew when it would occur. My body would begin to tingle, and I would panic and shake myself to stay awake. It was as if my body would fall asleep while my mind was still lucid and so I was trapped in a dream state with all my senses and faculties intact.

The first time it happened was in an apartment during my brother's wake. Sleeping on a cot next to my mom, I heard a buzzing sound and then it felt as if the air in the room popped. Suddenly, the darkness was filled with a crowd of mixed presences. I felt as if they noticed me and I literally heard a rushing sound and a weight on myself such that I could no longer breathe.

What was strange was that I was not transplanted into a dream-like world. My environment remained the same, mulling the boundary between reality and illusion. At least if I had seen a unicorn or something, I could have known that I was really asleep. But I never knew if I was awake or not.

I remember one time, it had already become so common that when I felt the tingling sensation begin to invade, I mechanically struggled and broke its power and would run to the door. But this time, it seemed that I was waking up in my dream and thinking that I was awake when I really wasn't. I remember breaking free and running to the door and passing the mirror. I had no reflection. Instead of being frightened though, I merely sighed. "&#$%. I'm still asleep," I muttered to myself and wearily walked back to my bed to try to wake up again.

On "Taming Waves"

2009-02-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

I remember the first wave I caught on my own. Was on a 7'6 NSP. White deck with orange rails and a flowery design. Surf Betty. There were just a few people. Jojo and I, and two teenage boys trying to learn on their own. Lying prone on the board and facing the shore, I heard Jojo's instructions to get ready. Without looking back at the approaching wave, I began to paddle - punching my arms into the water and pulling back as hard as I could. I could hear the wave's roar getting louder as it came closer. "Tayo! Tayo!" I popped up and wobbily rode the wave to the shore. When I turned to paddle back to the lineup, there was Jojo, chest deep in water, grinning and shrugging. "I didn't push you," he said, waving his hands to indicate "wala".

I hear people talk about surfing and "taming the waves." A couple of days ago, I caught my biggest wave so far. Sitting on my board, I saw it approaching, imposing and fast. "Son of a..." I gasped. I turned the board and began to desperately paddle. Panic and fear filled me but I tried to carve out a small space to focus and believe I could catch the wave. I felt it pick me up and I scrambled to my feet. Riding down the face, I kept low so as not to pearl and when I felt it stall, I turned to the left and again began to descend... I heard and saw nothing but the wave. When the ride was over and I tumbled into the water, I felt more relieved to be alive than stoked. As I recuperated near the shore, Christian, one of the locals, paddled up. "Your board's going to break in these conditions," he told me, half-warning, half-encouragement.

I don't think you tame waves. You just hitch a ride on them like an insect on the head of a charging elephant.

Notes of An Interview with Juan S.P. Hidalgo 1

2009-02-16T03:05:00.000-08:00

Last week, I had an opportunity to interview Juan S.P. Hidalgo - considered a mentor to many writers for his 30 plus year tenure as editor of Bannawag and as founder of GUMIL. I feel like anything I write will not do him justice so I would just like to take this opportunity to jot down some preliminary notes about the interview.

I arrived a little early for the 2:00 interview at his home in UP and was trying to look inconspicious as I walked up and down his street carrying a big red box of Red Ribbon ensaymadas. A few minutes before 2, as I was walking past his gate for the third time, a man in a sando and khaki shorts watering his plants called my attention with a simple raise of his eyebrows.

"I'm looking for Mr. Hidalgo," I called out, whereupon he smiled, pointed his thumbs at himself and waved me over to the gate. I was then led by Linda to the backyard where I sat, taking notes of the writer's home. There were about ten plastic chairs arranged in a circle, with a round table at the far end. On the table was an ashtray, a pack of Marlboro reds, Guitar matches and scattered papers with handwritten notes.

Mr. Hidalgo followed after a few minutes and we shook hands. He asked if I spoke the language of the Maharlikas and I stuttered, unsure if he meant Tagalog or Ilokano. He invited me to read a screenplay that he was editing (a translation of one of his works into Tagalog) while he took a shower. I scanned the neatly typed pages, specifically looking for his handwritten notes but only found a few corrections including one that crossed out the typewritten word "dinengdeng" and replaced it with "pinakbet" in a printed blue scrawl.

I spoke for a few minutes with his daughter Marie Sol and her husband Dexter, a film director before Mr. Hidalgo returned wearing a brown plaid polo, black plants and sandals.

Our interview was scheduled for three hours but stretched to seven such that we continued our conversation (or more aptly monologue) by candlelight. I still have three 90 minute tapes to transcribe.

Ode to Sisig

2009-02-15T07:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a poem I wrote in a TESOL class a couple of years ago:

For lunch I always eat sisig.
It's yummy and comes from a pig.
At lunch I always go to 7-11.
But their sisig is made out of chicken.

Yeah, I know, it needs a little work before I submit it to the Palancas...

On Visiting the National Library for the First Time

2009-02-14T04:48:00.000-08:00

I went to the National Library a couple of days ago for the first time. Which might actually be a shameful confession since I am a Literature graduate and all. I took the LRT to Carriedo and then took a jeep to Kalaw but got off too early so ended up having to walk even farther than if I had just gotten down at UN avenue.

I admit I was a little excited, giddy at the thought of finally visiting the library and exploring its books but after a long walk and then being turned away to get a 1x1 pic for the library card, I was a little put off. After all the requirements had been completed, I finally got to go upstairs and lose myself in its annals... meh. Not very inspiring.

You're only allowed to look for two books at a time and have to pass some sort of hierarchy of grumpy librarians who will check your call numbers before they let you near the shelves. I'd normally root for librarians but there's nothing like being treated like a high schooler to dampen any scholastic zeal, I think.

But then again, maybe I'm not giving it a chance, maybe my expectations were too high. We'll see how next time goes.

Oh by the way, happy singles awareness day.

Taxi Drivers I Have Met 1

2009-02-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

Certain taxi drivers really get my goat. Some are interesting and friendly while I just want to smash others in the face. I hate it when they're selective and ask you where you're going before they let you in. I get back at them by leaving the taxi door wide open and walking away when they reject me. I heard one guy cursing loudly once when I did that as he leaned over to try and close the door. Suck it.

I also hate it when they start making comments like "Naku, traffic. Mauubos gas ko dito." Or "Naku, ang layo. Walang pasahero pagbalik." A few nights ago, I was in a really bad mood and just told the driver to let me out if it was such a hassle for him. "Ay, malapit na tayo eh." Frack.

Just venting but there are cool taxi drivers like Johntrey who I've actually ridden with twice. The first time, we had a good conversation as he told me that he was trying to fix his his papers to go to Canada. A couple of days later I was flagging down a taxi when another driver sped up in front, veered in front of him and waved at me. And there was Johntrey smiling and telling me to get in. Cool guy.

Favourite Passage 1

2009-02-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

"For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars-and it is not yet enough if one may think of all this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises. And still it is not yet enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them."

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Reactions On A Talk

2009-02-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, we attended a talk on the need for the vernacular to be used as the primary mode of instruction for young children. There were two things that struck me about the talk.

First was the 10 minute powerpoint invocation. Really?

Second of course was the lecture itself, but my interest is not so much in the pedagogical aspects as its postcolonial/neocolonial implications. The talk was given by a Caucasian lady who grew up in Ifugao and is versed in its traditions, culture and language. She has spent the larger part of her career as an MLE advocate in a country where the two national languages are Pilipino and English. So basically, here's a white lady (not the ghost species) addressing a Filipino audience about an educational system which insists on ramming Pilipino and English down students' throats at the expense of their own mother tounge. Is there something wrong with this picture?

In my research for our regional literature presentation, one of the main concerns is the "genocide" of regional literature and the vernacular by the "Tagalog-ization" perpetuated by Manila, or the center. The oppressed has become the oppressor. And the former oppressor now speaks for the other oppressed. Would that be right?

When I was reading Ashcroft, I realised that it was difficult to see American literature as postcolonial in response to British rule. Especially as a Filipino who knows them as a former coloniser. Perhaps it is difficult for us to see ourselves as oppressors as well. Which I think opens a lot of questions regarding that character that has been hit, and now hits elsewhere...

I still have to think about this.

The Radical Potential in Four Essays

2009-02-09T05:39:00.000-08:00

The writing of any literature in English or the coloniser’s tongue risks perpetuating the native’s subjugation even as they attempt to assert their own identity. In their essays, four Filipino scholars investigate the ways Philippine literature can and does find its voice amid the tools of oppression, foreign and homegrown.

In their respective essays, Abad and Cruz examine how writing and reading are not only subversive acts but assertive acts as well. In his essay, A Habit of Shores, Abad suggests that the medium a poet uses is not as important as how he “reinvents the language”. Thus, the poet’s use of english should not be seen as a betrayal of the native or an acquiescence to the conqueror. Just as the colonisers scanned vistas on the horizon to claim as their own and upon which to leave their imprints, so must the poet discover and “colonise” language to his own specific ends. For Abad, language is not an embroidered costume the poet dons whether ill-fitting or not, but merely the raw material he uses to weave an original creation. By challenging the ownership of language, Abad makes english fair game for Filipino poets to speak for themselves.

While Abad focuses on the poet’s position in subverting language, Cruz hones in on the critic’s role in liberating Philippine literature from the “prison” of Western paradigms. Suggesting that Western literary theory is stunted due to its limited exposure to (and confidence in) other modes of thought and perceiving the world, Cruz laments the application of a myopic Eurocentric lens to the wild, tricky landscape of Philippine literature, especially by Filipino eyes. For a Filipino critic to see its own creations through Western eyes is not only inappropriate but indicative of a deeply penetrated subjugation which spoils and bankrupts a text. Through his lectures, Cruz warns against being wholly impressed with Western frameworks with the shocking suggestion that the native must think for themselves.

While Abad and Cruz challenge the residue of the American regime, Ramon Ileto in Pasyon and Revolution examines how a tool to encourage submission to Spanish rule instead excited the native to revolution. Informed by folk traditions and cultural values, the natives extracted their own meaning from a religious and colonial apparatus meant to instil subservience. Where the Pasyon commanded them to “sit”, the native found the call to rise and fight. Ileto’s description of the native’s exchange with the Pasyon demonstrates that in fact, although forgotten, the native can think for themselves.

Meanwhile, Legasto looks at how oppression has taken new shape in the form of State imposed notions of identity and nation from Marcos to Ramos who disseminated their own brands of Filipino-ness to bolster support for their administrations. Here, the oppressor is no easily identifiable white face but a compatriot, a native son who usurps the quest for a final defining Filipino identity for his narrow interests. For Legasto though, “there is no homogenous Filipino identity or nation. Instead, Filipino-ness might best be understood through Philippine culture and that by recognising and accepting these differences, a ‘negotiated unity’ might be brokered in the interest of creating a notion of Filipino-hood.” As these differences are articulated in the country’s culture or materials outside of the official line, literature again comes into play as a mode and vehicle of subversion and finding one’s voice. Her contention meantime of the lack of a homogenous Filipino identity or nation upsets attempts of potential tyrants to claim to speak for all Filipinos.

Through their essays, our four scholars show that the native has a mind and a voice, or rather voices, which creatively and radically subvert dominant power structures. From Spanish colonisation to the dilemma of writing in english to the new faces of a familiar oppression, those voices will be heard.

sleep like love

2009-02-08T02:45:00.000-08:00

sleep like love eludes me tonight
and if sleep like love holds the promise of a sigh
then unlucky me and my cursed eye
that beholds too much and that none beholds
and light is wary to grant respite.

sleep like love eludes me tonight
and if sleep like love holds the promise of your kiss
then deprived am i of this simple bliss
that deepens depths to fathoms fathomless
and whose silence soothes my wakefulness.

In the Name of the Father, the Mother...

2009-02-05T05:14:00.000-08:00

Every evening, my late stepfather would kneel down in front of an altar bearing the limang kadeusan, raise his right hand and recite an orasyon, beginning...

Sa pangalan ng Deus Ama, Deus Ina, Deus Anac, Deus Espiritu Santong Wagas; Deus ubod utak Karunungan ang Kalangkap sa dilim at buong liwanag.

(In the name of the Father, the Mother, the Son, the Holy Spirit; God source of all knowlege and wisdom that encompases light and darkness.)

It is only recently that I learned that he was a member of the Lapiang Malaya, who we had read about in our Lithis class, and that he had evaded a raid on their Pasay safehouse with the help of an amulet that reportedly kept him invisible even as policemen combed through the house for days. Supposedly a favorite of Valentin de los Santos, my stepfather would be assigned to buy lunch for the followers with just enough money for one jueteng bet and a winning combination chosen by the leader. My mom tells me the story with a laugh, remembering her own initiation into the group - an approval signaled by the appearance of flowing water in a lightbulb in a nondescript house in Sta. Ana.

She recites for me their version of the Sign of the Cross, and I'm struck by how beautiful and wise it is compared to the Roman Catholic Church's with its acknowledgment and honoring of the Mother and forces of light and darkness.

Remembering the Wowowee Stampede or Fuck You ABS CBN

2009-02-04T12:21:00.001-08:00

Three years ago, I was bedspacing somewhere in Ortigas. I woke up one morning and walked to the carinderia next door for breakfast. To my surprise, jeepneys were plying the street, their loudness incongruous with the relatively quiet neighbourhood which saw mostly pedestrians and lost vehicles. Someone commented that they had been rerouted. When I turned my attention to the television sitting above the trays of cold hotdogs and galunggong , I learned that just a few blocks down at the Ultra, something had happened.

Three years later, survivors and relatives of victims of the Wowowee stampede remembered the incident with candles and prayers at the gates where 73 people were crushed to death.

Today, the Inquirer ran a story on the anniversary, noting that the Pasig RTC has dismissed the charges against the ABS-CBN top brass. ABS-CBN News Online meantime had no mention about the anniversary but did have some pictures of Willie Revillame and the Wowowee gang cavorting in Dubai on their first leg of a world tour. Very classy.

Detoxifying

2009-02-04T07:40:00.001-08:00

I have been reading some classmates' blogs and can identify with their struggles to make a living out of writing. There is that gnawing feeling that you are on the verge of selling out or doing a disservice to your craft by wielding the pen as a renegade for hire. You learn how to write by template to suit the bubbly superficial temper of most magazines or the narrow requirements of newspapers.

There comes a point when you feel you can't write anymore. You don't want to write anymore because you know everything you write is crap. You hesitate and cringe at calling yourself a writer because you feel more like a monkey at a keyboard. And this is not what you had in mind or heart.

You feel a need to detoxify. You don't just want to make a living out of writing. You want to make a writing out of living.

Looking down at a dog looking up at the Buddha

2009-02-03T03:23:00.000-08:00

Although, I'm not much of a poet, I have an experience I'd like to try to explore through that form.

A couple of days ago, as I was studying (nax!), I leaned back to take a break and caught sight of my dog lying happily by my feet. Watching reclining dogs (especially sleeping puppies) relaxes me. I watched Chelsea for while before I realised her eyes were gazing up at a faded green stone Buddha my mom bought in Bangkal.

Looking down at a dog looking up at the Buddha. Who's the really evolved one again?

Note to Self 1

2009-02-02T01:02:00.000-08:00

When opening freshly popped bag of Caramel Apple popcorn, keep steam away from eyes. Combination is like pepperspray.

A Letter to Mr. Arturo Perez-Reverte

2009-02-01T08:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Perez Reverte,
First an introduction. I am a reader from the Philippines who enjoys your work and the worlds you create and convey. I am also an aspiring writer and like yourself (but to a much less notable degree), share a background in journalism.

With a knowledge of your career before fiction, some understanding of the journalistic mind and curiosity about the creative process, it was with immense interest that I read your novel, The Painter of Battles, and with some hesitation but great anticipation that I write you to pick your brain now.

In particular I am interested in your views on the act (or non-act?) of observing. In your novel, Faulques is a photographer who becomes a painter with an obsession to neatly define the nature of war or the rules of chaos. In reality, you are a war correspondent who has become a writer who in this novel depicts the nature of war and its effect on participants and observers (I apologise for my simplistic breakdown).

That you end the book with Markovic abandoning his initial goal of killing Faulques by implying that the latter is already dead inside suggests the dehumanisation of the observer. Is this the inevitable end for artists trying to make sense of the horrors of war through the instruments of their craft? Or is it a warning against obsession? If as Markovic says, "photographing people is the same as raping them", can any observer of war emerge innocent?

From behind the photographer' s camera, the painter's brushes, the journalist's recorder and the writer's pen; the observer's eye is passive but not unaffected. To be completely unaffected I think would be complete dehumanisation without even going through the process. However, in addition to dealing with the experience of war or seeing a war as a human being, the peculiar species that is the artist must also go through the creative struggle to process and express what s/he has seen – an experience that is no less tumultuous or dangerous, I think.

As a journalist who has lived conflicts, did you feel that traditional reportage was inadequate to accurately convey the story of lives lost and man's brutality unleashed ("The sound of a bullet as it bursts a skull. The laugh of a man who has just won seven cigarettes by betting on whether the foetus of a woman he just disembowelled with his bayonet is male or female.")? And how does the inability to do so feed the guilt and impotence of the observer? Does the writing of fiction somehow fill in those spaces of helplessness? Or is the presentation of the representation the safest vantage point from which to pursue the project?

If painting is the artistic cousin of photography and fiction of journalism, do you feel that journalism has too limited a palette to capture the essence of war? Or are all palettes limited to achieve that sublime?

I thank you for your time in reading this letter.

Sincerely,
Friena P. Guerrero

Ornithopobia

2009-01-31T04:57:00.000-08:00

While riding the jeep home today, two women and a little girl boarded with two trolleys of dyed chicks. Which would have been fun, except that I suffer from ornithophobia. Terribly. It's actually even difficult to write this post but it was the most atypical thing that happened today. I can't even write the word b$%d... it sends shivers down my spine.

I was sitting near the back of the jeep when we approached them. I didn't even see the chicks at first. Just the eyes of the lady trying to read the destination card of the jeep. I did see the familiar trolley though and that's when I got nervous. When it looked like the lady was about to board, I even thought of disembarking and finding another ride but she lifted her trolley onto the jeep and pushed it in front of me, trapping me. I turned away as nonchalantly as I could but I thought I would hyperventilate or vomit at the thought of those creatures just centimeters from my bare shin. Thankfully, she pushed the trolley to the front of the jeep but just when I thought I could make a run for it, the second lady began lifting the second trolley on board.

The ride home was nerve-wracking as worst case scenarios played in my head in the midst of incessant chirping. I didn't realise that I was practically sitting on my neighbour's lap trying to lean away from the little animals...

I really hate my fear. Why couldn't I have been scared of something like spiders instead?

On flutterbies, I mean butterflies

2009-01-30T06:31:00.000-08:00

My friend D, who is currently at a crossroad, has asked the universe for a butterfly.

Should she encounter a butterfly within the week, this will be her sign to pursue a track that she is excited yet anxious about. However, another friend of hers chided her for being too vague and urged her to make her sign more specific by, oh say asking for a pink butterfly. So a pink butterfly it became. Yesterday, D saw a white butterfly (which she has never seen before) and is now even more confused.

Don't test the universe. She's way ahead of you, D. :)

Palestine

2009-01-29T03:33:00.000-08:00

When I worked as a news writer for a TV channel, an editor called my attention to the use of the word 'Palestine' in a story about the Middle East peace process. "There's no such thing as Palestine. Palestine doesn't exist. Say 'Palestinians' na lang," the editor told me. And I felt sad...

on storing urine along taft

2009-01-28T04:02:00.001-08:00

This afternoon while smoking a cigarette at the Vito Cruz LRT station, I noticed a guy urinating in the corner by the stairs. Even if it is a common occurence in this country, one can't help but feel offended. Or perhaps we should be offended because it is a common occurence? Anyway, after he finished his business, I realised that he had urinated in a plastic bottle whose lid he was casually tightening as he walked past me. He was of middle age, reasonably well dressed with a polo and slacks but with a mid-day haggard air. The golden liquid tipped back and forth in the bottle as he walked just a few steps to one of those little kiosks along Taft. (I eyed him only because of curiousity and worry that he might offer the bottle to some unsuspecting victim). He then bent over to store the bottle in a little wooden desk, on top of an antique typewriter (is that redundant?), as if he was filing away a folder. I wonder why he stores his urine? Is the urine some secret ingredient in a magic potion? Does he sell it to drug addicts? Was he just embarrased about having to do his business publicly? Was he making the best of the lack of facilities in his place of work? Oh questions, questions.

Hanjin

2009-01-26T03:36:00.000-08:00

A Korean foreman was killed at the Hanjin dock in Subic. He is the first Korean fatality to be reported after a string of Filipino workers have been killed in recent years throwing the spotlight on Hanjin's safety record. It will be interesting to see what sort of measures the Korean run firm will implement in the wake of this incident, whether the death of a national will incite them to more serious action.

On Getting Hit By A Hearse

2009-01-25T06:25:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago I almost got hit by a hearse.

I was riding to the beach on my uncle's scooter, trying to overtake the procession when the hearse suddenly veered into my path as it turned into the cemetary. I steered sharply to the right and felt the bike begin to lose control but thankfully managed to correct the imbalance as I swerved around the hearse which had jerked to a halt.

With my adrenaline pumping, I sped away, not daring to look back at the shocked driver or the disrupted procession. It was only when I had shakily parked the bike and sat down with a cigarette that I realised the irony of what could have happened. And after two cigarettes, I was able to chuckle about it.

I remember a friend telling me that if she ever died by choking on a chicken bone, she would kill herself. Life is absurd enough, must our deaths be too?

journalism and literature

2009-01-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

They say that journalism is literature in a hurry. In our Literary History class, we have learned the role journalism and the printing press played in the development of Philippine literature. I know several reporters who are writers and several writers who are journalists.

Graduating with a degree in literature, I naturally looked for jobs that centered around the written word. I found being a reporter exciting and challenging, particularly with the beats I was assigned. I also make a distinction between being a reporter and being a journalist. I would not say that every reporter is a journalist. I consider myself as only having been a reporter.

Weaned on literature though, the requisite who, what, where, when, why and how felt stifling. I found my editor's constant reminders that the public have short attention spans and as such, we should cater to this perceived laziness, presumptious and offensive.

On Sketching

2009-01-23T04:49:00.000-08:00

I got into sketching sometime last year when my brother needed some help with a school project. I remember my first attempt at a self-portrait. It was interesting to see oneself as a creation of shades and lines and to realise more acutely that you cast shadows. It was in rendering a two-dimensional image of myself that I became more cognizant of myself as a three dimensional figure, a series of bumps and surfaces.

I have been practicing my sketching with the help of a book of portraits by the National Geographic photographer who shot the famous picture of an Afghani girl with mesmerising eyes. I have also found that I cannot draw happy, smiling people. I wonder if it is because drawing, like writing, is such an internal exercise... I cannot seem to find a connection with such a positive, fleeting emotion yet.

the president's premonition

2009-01-22T02:23:00.000-08:00

One rainy day in September 1978, President Marcos had a premonition. With his son and daughter flying from Laoag to Manila on separate planes, something made the strongman shake and place a call to his children's security detail. Within minutes a game of musical chairs ensued as, breaking protocol, the presidential children were transferred onto a single plane.

My father, a member of the Presidential Security Group, moved to the other plane which crashed into a pond in Paranaque, beheading a mother who was watching television as it plowed through a row of houses.

Four months later, I was born.

This is the story I have been told about my Daddy Efren's death. I have seen pictures of the President and the First Lady at the funeral, both looking very somber. In one picture, the President is looking at my then three year old brother with a mixture of sadness and amusement as pregnant mom looks down at the casket.

surfing as a mode of decentralisation

2009-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

Mang Jojo and Mang Abe are cousins who grew up in San Juan, La Union. Mang Jojo is a full-time surf instructor who dabbles in cockfighting while Mang Abe also teaches surfing part-time and moonlights as a company driver to make ends meet. For an hour of surf lessons, they get P150-200. They have the life I want.

On weekends and holidays, Manilenos troop up north to the small coastal barangay that has made its mark as "the surfing capital of the Philippines". With the surfing boom, other provinces have emerged as popular destinations, casting the spotlight on the locals who have been blessed to be born by the sea.

Geography results in these locals being the best surfers in the country and at the same time washing them in an automatic aura of "cool" particularly for Manila girls wanting to complete their carefully self-constructed bohemian images or for Manila boys wanting alternative credibility. Whatever the reason though, the surfing culture in the Philippines is at least one example of decentralisation and "power" shifting to the provinces and the locals.

I think it would be interesting to explore this aspect of the gaining popularity of surfing in the country, particularly with an eye towards regional awareness and development.

bubble gang to malacanang

2009-01-20T04:56:00.000-08:00

I met a guy the other day who used to work as a writer for the Bubble Gang and who now works in spin control for Malacanang. That seems so impossible and yet so fitting at the same time. I suppose that would be similar to a writer for MadTV suddenly becoming the mouthpiece for U.S. Pres. George W. Bush (who incidentally is spending his last few hours in the White House before Obama is sworn in).

That would make an interesting story. Absurd but true. That seems to be the overwhelming character of Philippine life.

blah blah blah

2009-01-18T04:29:00.000-08:00

I have a theory that provincial airconditioned buses are so cold so that people will better appreciate the Philippine sun. It is quite a funny sight to see people dressed in winter gear disembarking from a bus in a tropical climate.

There are lots of stories to tell about LU, especially the local surfing community. There are those that have been fortunate to grow up next to the water, and there are those that have settled here from far away. I think it's an interesting history to explore and document.

I would like to travel the coastal perimeter of the country, looking for waves. Explorers have always interested me. (I'm currently reading Wilfred Thessiger's Arabian Sands) and perhaps this could be a little travelogue project.

Filipino lives are cheap.

2009-01-17T01:37:00.000-08:00

I was reading some of my older posts and am interested in exploring an observation that crystallized thanks to the Sulpicio tragedy. Filipino lives are cheap. Victims of accidents or disasters are treated shockingly disrespectfully. Burdened with poverty and injustice in life, most Filipinos cannot even afford to be treated with dignity in death. I remember watching another video of another fire, The Station club fire, in Rhode Island. Firemen retrieving the bodies made sure that their grisly operation was shielded from public eyes with blankets held high by some of their peers. With the Ozone fire meantime, rescuers simply carried the bodies away in full view of relatives and spectators, practically parading the charred remains of the victims for all to see and gasp at.

Santika

2009-01-16T04:18:00.000-08:00

Bangkok welcomed 2009 in tragedy. A fire in a popular nightclub claimed the lives of young revellers, whose smiles were illuminated by the glow of sparkling lights just minutes before a wayward spark ignited their hellish end. I have been watching videos of the incident, feeding a morbid appetite within me to know their last thoughts. There are images of young women stumbling out of the burning building before collapsing, people in a tangle of limbs and fear reaching desperately for rescuers through bars; and shrouded bodies neatly lined on the parking lot. One video which contained a warning, showed a sea of barely distinguishable bodies after the fire was contained. A flashlight scans the area, catching the outline of a foot here, an arm there in the mound of bodies. Panning right, the beam of light exposes a knot of three women hopelessly entangled in each other. Their hair has been completely burned off and their faces are frozen in their last emotion. One's eyes spell fear, confusion and helplessness while another is caught seemingly in mid-scream.

Hours before, these girls were applying makeup and squeezing into deliberately chosen outfits to celebrate the last night of the year.

Lechon Or Why I am considering Vegetarianism

2008-09-29T03:33:00.000-07:00

I watched a pig prepared for lechon two nights ago. It is a slow death encouraged by a quick and deep stab to the jugular. I would ordinarily say that the pig squealed its life away but that is what pigs do. Squeal. It was more of a horrific squeal from hell. A hoarse high pitched trembling sound of animal fear and pain. I could not watch the moment of murder but I heard a sudden forceful thud as Bai thrust the knife in the pig's throat. From the sound of skin hitting skin, I imagine that he plunged the blade in completely as is also evidenced by the size and shape of the entry mark.

When the squealing abated, I rested easier thinking the pig was out of its misery but twice more, horrific sounds emanated from the creature as the blood drained out of its body into a waiting cauldron. At first loud and fighting and then low and gurgling. As if her cries riled the remaining blood in her body. Then the gurgling stopped.

Mang Jesse and Allan then carried the pig to what I shall call the staging ground. Simply a small open area of the house where I normally sit, smoke and watch the beach but now covered with tarpaulin. The boys then poured boiling water over the sow and used a spoon to deftly shear off the hair.

With the same hands used to deal the death blow, Bais carefully and expertly cut the animal open. Using light strokes with surgical precision down the pig from the throat to her last teat. Burying the knife even deeper and with both hands, Bai then sliced through the bones. "Slice" is perhaps the wrong word. Too clean for the snapping and breaking of defiant bone. I stopped counting after the fifth cup of blood was ladled out of the body and I wondered if the smell of blood is the smell of life or the smell of death. Either way, it is not sweet. Jesse, apparently in charge of the blood collection casually dipped his fingers into the cauldron and then licked them the way you would taste spaghetti sauce or hot fudge. "A dog's blood is the best," he nonchalantly told Allan.

Wanted: Inspiration in the new millenium

2008-07-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

Here now is my attempt to take a more disciplined approach to writing. Inspiration lives on a different planet it seems and I am left to my own devices. To reach inward, excavate and retrieve with only my bare hands.
This may be a last ditch effort at survival because truly, I feel that I am close to urging death to visit upon me.
I feel as if the time I live in is so crass. Caring only for technology and politics, money and success. Too sterile a tablecloth to allow the stain of passion to seep through and spread.
I am stirred right now by another world I wish I could live in. Characters I am in love with and in whose lives I plot to intrude in. It borders on madness but it keeps my heart beating beyond a regular pace and I must explore it.
It is a delicate situation however, because I know what I dream is impossible.
I will think of things I have seen and experienced that have moved me. They are few and small in this impossible universe but I know they were real. A poor lady rescuing abandoned kittens in a shoebox being eaten alive by ants. She placed down her plastic bag of fried bananas and had climbed over a leaning fence to the soft mews hidden in the brush. Another lady on the street with a young boy, a family member I gathered from the warmth exchanged between them, hunched over a book. The lady in garish clothes by our standards but her best in her world. I felt as if she was optimistic about looking for work and providing for this child. A little girl with a blind eye under a pedestrian overpass. The daughter of a cigarette and newspaper vendor. She waits for the rain to bring in some extra coins, so miniscule as to be unquantifiable in the world’s exchange but a windfall to her. She waits by the bookstore in the rain with an umbrella larger than her to keep you and I dry as we walk to our cars. I hope they are treated well by the world and are compensated for their suffering somehow. Yet I know if wish that, I must accept that I too deserve less when the balances are adjusted.

Fuck Sulpicio

2008-06-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

Fuck Sulpicio. I think Sulpicio should be closed down. Considering that they have figured in at least four major incidents (including the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster for God’s sake) with a death toll of over 5000 in just over 20 years or so... come on. I don’t think it’s enough to say they should remain open because Filipinos need their service. We don’t just need any service, we deserve quality service.

I was reading some forums related to the topic and while many others share this sentiment, there was one person who pointed out that Sulpicio offers a service and that hey "their ports are clean and you can number two in their bathrooms". Call me crazy but I don’t think the victims of the relatives would be consoled by this. Watdahell? How about just getting from point A to point B alive?! None of the victims deserved that kind of end.

Aside from their dismal record and the manner in which they are dealing with the victims’ relatives, the latest discovery that toxic pesticides were on board the passenger ship and that Sulpicio did not divulge this just underscores the company’s total disregard of its patrons’ lives and even of those who are trying to help clean up their mess. Even if they claim they did not know about the cargo, that only highlights their incompetence or hints at something more ominous. They are just trying to get away with as much as they can, constantly passing the buck and to nonchalantly shrug everything off by saying “They provide a service” just cheapens Filipino lives even more.

Hodgepodge to fill in last six months...

2008-06-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

Been a while since I wrote. Anybody miss me?... miss me... miss me... miss me... (the sound of my voice fading into the abyss).

Just a few random thoughts on some things without any thorough analysis although they have been on my mind lately and stopping sleep at the gates.

Firstly, the abduction of Ces Drilon and team by Abu Sayyaff bandits. Could care less. The only thing that pissed me off was ABS-CBN's plea for other media outfits to report on the incident with :consideration, caution and respect for the family members' privacy". Considering the channel's track record of irresponsible reporting and exploiting tragic situations and victims for their own ratings, the request is quite hilarious coming from them.

Anyway, after paying a hefty "board and lodging" fee Ms. Drilon et al. were freed after nine days. Currently the mayor of Indanan, Sulu and his son who helped mediate the negotiations with the captors and the victims' families are being held for their involvement on suspicions that they pocketed the majority of the ransom. $%#$@.

Secondly, the capsizing of the MV Princess of the Stars. As I write, hopefully there are still survivors and people being rescued right now. So far I think only some 30 people have been found alive out of the 800 or so passengers and crew. I could not sleep last night thinking about the disaster. The moments after the call to abandon ship played clearly in my mind. I imagine the panic and the fear as the waves pounded the ship, children crying and the elderly... The ship laid to rest just a couple of hundred meters from the coast of Sibuyan Island. Some bodies have been found on surrounding islands. Relatives await news at the Sulpicio Lines office in Manila.

Disenchantment with Media

2007-12-05T06:46:00.000-08:00

Now that that’s out of the way, some more thoughts.
I think a lot of people are rightly disenchanted with the quality of media here in the Philippines. It is a personality driven circus, paparazzi masquerading as serious journalists with rare exceptions. Pardon my language but I feel as if media are acting like pussies, filing a complaint against the police with the Commission on Human Rights over the incident and simply refusing to even acknowledge the possibility that they may have overstepped some boundaries. As I said, from my own reading of the “pulse of the nation”, many people believe that this incident has showcased the arrogance of our media but unfortunately are unable to have their say because of course, media controls the mainstream sources of “information”. I suppose it would be too much to expect to read a headline saying “Media Admits Lapses In Coverage”.

Editorials in the aftermath of the Makati Standoff continue to hit the police for alleged harassment but none that I have seen have even made a substantial examination of the concept of “press freedom” or delineated their responsibilities in a democracy vis-à-vis law enforcement operations.

Media has also been talking about a “chilling effect” in the wake of the confrontation, saying that journalists feel threatened that there will now be impingements in the way they gather news. What’s the impingement? That they have to follow the law? Granted that there are many dangers to real journalists, I don’t believe that the Makati Standoff is the best platform from which to cry “press freedom”. If anything, I think it’s an opportunity for media to step back, conduct an honest assessment of themselves and reign in their excesses in the interest of restoring media credibility in this country or even just granting their profession the respect it deserves.

As seen from the footage, media attached itself to Trillanes, forming a shield around him and refusing to evacuate even after being warned that an assault was about to take place. Media were even heard cheering along with rebel soldiers when police General Barias left the building after pleading, “Come out. Please help your police”. Incredibly, media even showed live footage of the positions of the Special Action Forces as they prepared to storm the building.

Today, security officials and media representatives held a dialogue to air out their sides and while I only caught the tail end, I was dissatisfied with the conclusion offered by the executive director (and I paraphrase) that government had agreed to adjust to media practices. Now that’s the chilling effect for me, given the level of media we presently have.

Resorting to clichés, I am a strong believer that media is an important pillar in our democracy. But in the same vein, an irresponsible and unprofessional media is just as guilty of practicing and encouraging a ‘culture of impunity’ that other sectors have been accused of. That media claims to be doing this in service of the public is something I take strong exception to and while the pickings are slim, this one faceless member of the public’s respect will go to the media outfit that admits that coverage of November 29,2007 was less than desirable and exceeded the bounds of press freedom.

Media Coverage of the Makati Standoff

2007-12-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

First on my plate is the recent Makati Standoff and particularly the manner in which the media conducted itself during the incident and in its aftermath. Frankly, I feel as if Trillanes and the media wasted everybody’s time that day and worse, used the incident to make themselves look like heroes.
I’ve joined some online discussions on the matter and am including here some of those posts, just so I can go on to my further thoughts on the matter.

My problem is with media practitioners acting as if they are above the law. I have no problem with journalists just ‘doing their jobs’ but take responsibility if your actions endanger others around you, makes a dangerous situation more volatile, or hampers the ability of security forces to resolve the situation. Media is there to cover news, not to be a part of it. I personally see no problem with police questioning media after the incident, to try and weed out rogue soldiers who may have embedded themselves in the swarm.

Security forces had warned reporters that the situation would escalate and some left and some stayed. I wouldn’t gauge one’s commitment to journalism on their decision. While I can applaud some for their bravery (even though I see this more as hardheadness) to stay, I can also commend the maturity of others who may have decided to let the soldiers do their job without pestering them and cover events from a distance even if they knew that their rivals were getting more ‘exciting’ footage.

I could care less about network wars for pete’s sake but I think media has to know its boundaries. Imagine what a laughable situation it is to have police trying to arrest a fugitive or terrorist but can’t because media is swarming him for interviews. Or imagine what a tragic situation it would be if media aggravated a hostage taker to the point that he would kill his hostage.

I have heard the term “freedom of the press” being batted around but not a great deal of examination of what it should provide. I don’t believe that it means to gives “journalists” free reign in the way they get their stories and absolve them from any responsibilities of consequences that arise as a result.

I've also heard some people saying that police should have known who the media personalities were and taken their IDs and onsite vouching by media members at face value in the immediate aftermath. Personally, I find the idea that media would expect concessions and exemptions from police SOPs because they consider themselves as personalities (even celebrities) disturbing, and frankly disgusting.Other people have also said that if it weren't for the media, we wouldn't know what was going on. But there is a difference between being updated and being informed. There is more to journalism than getting good angles and dramatic soundbytes. If the media is going to force themselves into a situation to "cover" it, they could at least ask critical and intelligent questions instead of simply following Trillanes up and down the stairs and parroting back to the viewers what he says.

I was with media before, both print and broadcast. I understand the drive to get the story and I can say with confidence that no Filipino reporter would hesitate about jumping into the fray to get the story. That’s why I personally see the stepping back of some media outfits as a positive indicator that some maturity is entering the practice of media. I think however that some journalists are using ‘the freedom of the press’ as a license to do whatever they want as if it lends them an air of immunity. Journalists perform a noble task but they have to act responsibly. Just as they were doing their jobs, so were the security forces. Their main priority is to resolve the situation and not to babysit reporters who have already been warned to evacuate. I’m actually happy to see them for once following standard operating procedures instead of cowing to personalities. As a reporter, I know of some colleagues who took potential evidence from the Oakwood mutiny as souvenirs.

Aside from journalists being more responsible, I think viewers also have to expect more from their media in the sense that they should not condone just any means to get information, especially when it tramples on other people’s rights or sets them above the law or when it is purely for sensational purposes but does not add depth to the story and instead prolongs a situation needlessly. I do agree that the presence of media is preferable to the absence of media which is precisely why I think concerns of irresponsible journalism have to be aired.