Drinking Life Deeply

The upside to getting married out of town is that many of our preps and requirement-fulfillments turn out to be small-scale, quiet excursions. This is, after all, the making of our lives as a truly blissful trip.

The most recent trip was our Pre-Cana Seminar in Caleruega. The drive to Tagaytay was pleasant – around 2 hours including a brief breakfast stop in a coffee shop along the way. We sipped Dark Cherry Mocha in the car with a blend of contradiction in an all-too-commercialized red cup. It pumped some holiday cheer to our veins, but it also came with self-reproach for patronizing a company who may have disadvantaged coffee farmers in Ethiopia. We can only wish that our future marital arguments would be restricted to mundane matters such as these.

Back to the trip now, before we complete digress. Being in Caleruega again reaffirms our decision to get married here – the view of Mt. Batulao is spectacular, the flowers are in bloom, and you slip into an instant transformation towards serenity and sincerity. We half-expected the seminar to be a bookish refresher on The Seven Sacraments, along with an awkward sex-education/family planning forum with other couples who will also get married soon. We were too happy to prove ourselves wrong. Caleruega’s parish priest conducted an excellent and effective seminar which even came with entertaining bits. Priests like him make you extra proud of the Holy Orders: Father had a profound knowledge of the Canon Law, a sense of humor, gardening skills, conversational skills, a genuinely hopeful disposition towards would-be couples, a laptop, and (if J. sees it right) - Oakley prescription glasses.

So that’s Why Miracles are Made

D.’s favorite bit was when the priest encouraged us to come back here in the future, to have retreats as a family or as a couple and look back to the wonderful experience of Holy Matrimony. She imagined herself and her family, here, in the future. J.’s favorite bit was when the priest noted how the first miracle of Jesus was to turn water into wine during a wedding. Miracles are made, he thought, so we can have swig and drink life deeply.

After the seminar, we had booked the venue for our wedding preps. Logistically, it’s the perfect place - being a few minutes away from the chapel. The golf-course views would make a scenic background. The surroundings are peaceful and relaxing and the Presidential Suite would have enough room for us and our parents. (Thank you to Best Man Lloyd for another worthy recommendation).

Ferment Your Own Yogurt

We had a late lunch at a Greek restaurant along the Tagaytay highway called Mano's Greek Taverna. It was late in the afternoon, the weather was cool and we were famished. A hearty Moussaka was called for. The restaurant set-up was simple in its blue and white. It’s an elegant simplicity that avoids the formulaic concepts of overpriced shopping-mall restaurants. A family picture of Manos, who owns and runs the place, hangs in one of the walls. He himself was there serving salad with feta cheese to his guests, even guiding cars in the parking lot. We overhear him boasting, “we bake our own bread, we ferment our own yogurt, import the virgin olive oil, make our own patties, everything has no chemicals, no preservatives, no vetsin, no mantika.” We went yummy yummy yummy and ha ha ha.


We once saw how Greek coffee was made in Travel and Living. They use percolators but we couldn’t remember if the sugar was thrown in with the powdery Arabica. But we're confident that no Ethiopian farmers were harmed in its making. Greek coffee was delicious. There we were – J. and D., - drinking life deeply.

One more stop for our parent’s pasalubong - those assorted (pineapple/buco/mango/ube) tarts. And we’re off home from another blissful trip.

A Coffeeshop Commercial

"Ah, look at all the lonely people."

- The Beatles in Eleanor Rigby

Now, that entry is precisely the kind of coffeeshop whining people ramble and write about when they're out by themselves.

I, Forget

“…I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life.”

- from “The Fall” by Albert Camus

The nearness of December arrives with a wave of depression. This depression is a less familiar one, one that takes a retreat to writing.

D.’s Qatar project at work is seemingly insurmountable, and that’s just on top of the most intricate details she’s patching up for the wedding. We didn’t have that much disposable income or financial resources. It scares me to think of what people expect, that no matter how carefully we decide there will always be wicked tongues nagging.

The world doesn’t always repay kindness in equal terms.

My pledge was to keep a positive outlook for D. I want to take all her sadness, all her worries, and make them mine alone. I want her to continue to think that the wedding is a beautifully conceived process. I’m probably not helping with that recently. Sometimes all my meddling with the details makes everything twice as difficult.

All of a sudden, I ran out of positive scripting for myself. In this moment of weakness, my zeal to stay optimistic simply waned.

This sadness is a reminder and a remainder of my selfishness. Because I’m thinking of myself again. You’re only lonely when you think of yourself. Specifically, if you think of yourself alone. When you remember that you are that lonely island. I have to make D. happy
because my own happiness is hers.

Overcoming selfishness is a lot of overcoming. There’s just going to be a lot more trepidation, embarrassment – if I tell D. that I no longer think of myself solely. She’ll probably just laugh that off.

All this selfishness and sadness took on a different degree when I ran this morning. Running in my own homemade void makes me think clearly. During December, I even expect an air of holiday cheer to brush against me. But with all other things I couldn’t remove from my mind, this morning’s run was just a sad waltz with the wind.

One selfish thing begets another. It looms you further into your own infernal circles. You’ve got to snap out of it before you drown.

Some writers and some existentialists are in their own form of self-absorption, the kind that results to poor fiction or lousy philosophizing that ultimately denies truth, reality, aesthetics and
life-affirmation. If it were coffee it would taste nothing but artificial. When you’re drinking it, you know, none of it is real. Strawberry fields. Nothing is real.

I understand it now. You are just the loose change you rummage in your pockets. Forget your leftover self.

The Road Towards 2.22.2009 is 222 km long

'All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing.'

- Haruki Murakami, What I talk About When I Talk About Running

While I lavish her with love, D. understands that I'm not exactly a spendthrift. In fact, I'm leaning towards the opposite side of spendthrift. I wanted to squander on a pair of running shoes but felt guilty about chipping off the small amount that we just saved up for the wedding at that time. As my giver of meaning and everything I've always wanted, D. wrapped a pair of Nike Air Max last Christmas and gave it to me.


That paved a lot of new roads. For one, I discovered a way to make metaphors physical. Borrowing from Haruki Murakami, running lets me create my own wonderful, homemade void - where D. jumps along and joins me occasionally. Literally, of course, I'm running the roads - bay sides, hills, boulevards, and even cemeteries where you hear nothing but your own huffing and puffing and souls just humming you on (preferably with something like Wolfgang's Cathedral of Space blasting through the iPod).

While I think I've had some wins in life (D.being my most beautiful win), I'm used to losing and accepted it as a recurring theme. When I can't win, I thought I could aim for learning, losing gracefully, and moving forward. Running put all that in a refreshing new light. The focus is not centered on winning or losing but in defeating yourself. That comes when you learn to deal with your own adversity. That happens when you're able to command a cramping body to go farther or faster. Like what our beloved Haruki Murakami says: 'Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life - and for me, and for writing as well.'

I'm fantasizing that someone (other than D.) is actually reading this and you're probably asking now, what's this have to do with the wedding? The answer is: this is our wedding path. This is all about the building of the wedding's metaphors - physical or otherwise. This is the road we are in now. So I'm going to make a run for it.

Two-hundred twenty two kilometers (222 km) before our wedding date, February 22, 2009 (2.22.2009). The 222 km road towards 2.22.2009 starts August 31, 2009 when I completed my first 10k in the Nike Human Race (where 60 year old folks and 12 year old girls zipped past me). But at least I finished the race, got free dri-fit socks, the finisher's bracelet, and Nike had to donate to Unicef.

...

By the way, I finished the 10k in 1 hour and 8 minutes, ranking 142nd in the Philippines, 24,584th in the world.

222 km is equivalent to a little over four full marathons. Of course it's something that a more serious runner could easily accomplish in less than 5 months, but I'm just a novice runner who had to count on his girlfriend to buy him a pair of running shoes.

This is for D. This all started with you and you are with me every step of the way.

Our Last Summer as Boyfriend and Girlfriend

Capones Island with Secondary Sponsor and friend-for-life H.

Although the editing was done by H. using a Mac Powerbook, all the still and moving images in this video were captured by a now-Jurassic Nokia 6233. The resolution's on the low side, but the dreaminess is soaring high on the scale.

We once gave H. a birthday card with a Jack Kerouac quote, 'Happiness consists in realizing that this is all a strange dream.' It's how we honestly felt as we watched the video. We had such a blast on our backpack in that island - it almost seemed just like a strange dream.

We got re-acquainted through H. four years ago. And there we were, on our last summer trip as boyfriend-and-girlfriend. So it goes.

Right now, we hear the rain falling hard on tin roofs, accompanied by that perfect-for-the-weather song from the video. Jon Brion sings Here We Go. We exchange i-love-yous and imagine that by next summer, we will be husband and wife.

For You I'd Bleed Myself Dry

A few years back, we used to hang out a lot in this Makati Ave. bar that didn't have chairs. You sat down on the floor with your shoes off. They played a little house, some chillout and ambient. They served wine, beer and the whole lot of the North Park Menu. One of those night-outs when we tried to forget all the grinding pressures of our jobs, she took out a band aid - one of those mediplast ones you used tape your skin with when you had bruises after playing Black 1, 2, 3. She took a pen out and wrote an inscription at the back of the band aid, 'For you I'll bleed myself dry.' And in our minds, Coldplay's guitar chorus riffs made a blissful sonic blast, love bubbling up all over, with Chris Martin's voice almost weeping we were just so happy.

Reduced to wordlessness, he then confirmed then and there: this is the girl I'm going to marry.

1528 Florence in the eyes of a 14 year old

(Teenage angst/adventurism and coming of age in Sarah Dunant's Birth of Venus.)

It feels less different from what’s happening in 2008. The language is modern-sounding which makes you envisage the face of the characters, the story and the setting better. It’s just almost unbelievable that this could have been written this way in 2008.

Lost in Language Slurs at the Station Kopitiam

I made it a point to be lost and seek out some truths by myself. It's how I found myself trying out local-looking food at the Kedai Mamak, Rasa Sayang or at restaurants like Secret Recipe or Old Town White Coffee.

This morning, I had breakfast in a restaurant that probably catered to my own working-class crowd. It reminded me of how Filipinos spelled Softdrinks as “Sopdrink.”

The menu in this Kopitiam, which boasted of “Western Food” had Sausage as “Sosej.” I ordered it.

I asked the waiter, “Can I order?” He looked more Japanese than Malay, and he obviously couldn’t make out what I was saying. I repeated myself and carefully mouthed the words without being condescending and made a genuine attempt at understanding. He responded to me without being insulting and genuinely wanting to confirm my order he asked, "O-renj-juice?"

Mornings like these, I’m glad I decided to just walk back to the hotel instead of taking the Teksi.

Open Faithed

I genuinely felt happy about working in a multi-cultural environment, for or with people from different ethnic backgrounds who are mostly in their 20s. Waheeda was the Quality POC. She wore a white veil with subtle embroideries. The Quality Specialists were Jesvinder, - a Punjabi in a red Turban, Nickesh – a Hindu who supported the football club Arsenal, and Adrian – who was Chinese in ethnicity but we didn’t touch upon his religion.

They asked if I was Chinese and I said I was Filipino. I believe, I am Roman Catholic.

Punjabi, Hindi, Muslim, Buddhist?, and Catholic --- we all spoke the same boring call center lingo. They took me to the Rasa Sayang and Kedai Mamak that every corner in KL seemed to have.

In the Philippine office – the closest you’ll come to religious diversity would be:

1.) Catholic/Christian
2.) INC
3.) El Shaddai
4.) Born Again
5.) Dating Daan
6.) Loyal Noranian Fans Club (Pasay Chapter) since 1975.

Rookie Mistakes: Look (to your) Right.

In a right-hand drive city, you always come close to death when crossing the streets. Looking to the right may save your life. Moreover, escalators are on opposite sides. Groceries are at the top floor instead of the ground. The bowling alley is also in the top floors.

Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak is omnipresent in practically all eating places and establishments in KL. “Nasi” is fragrant rice, and “Lemak” is literally fat. It’s served with a salty-spicy red sauce, along with roasted peanuts and anchovies. It can come in a plate or shaped like a triangle in a banana leaf and brown paper.

It can be eaten anytime of the day. It’s sold in a fancy “Restoran,” by street vendors in sidewalks, and in 7-11s.

I remember asking one of the colleagues at work, Nickesh, what local food I should eat, he said: “Nasi Lemak, you can’t go wrong there.”

He’s probably right.

KL-style Lazy Sunday

After shopping for D.’s gifts, writing at a Coffee Bean kiosk and local food lunch at restaurant called Little Penang, John and I sit by the beach chairs at the poolside. I listened to a lot of the laid-back and ambient “Hotel” by Moby while reading a book.

The book is a recent local publication, a first edition called “New Malaysian Essays.” Bookstores have such power over me and I got this for RM30 at the Kinokuniya. I even got myself a set of Moleskine journals.

Profoundly amused by the interestingly-written book, I got a gist of contemporary issues in Malaysia. It’s also a taste of their critical writing, and other cultural idiosyncrasies that you don't pick up from Lonely Planet.

I learned, for example:
Kuala Lumpur was placed as the third rudest city in the results of that controversial ranking, which were published in Reader’s digest in July 2006.

I remember shopping a few days back. I looked at something that I needed time to decide on and told the saleslady, “I’ll come back.” Sensing that I was making up alibis not to buy, she responded with: “That’s what they all say.”

But hey, lazy Sunday afternoons like these, I really want to come back.

Bukit Bintang

My life felt like an episode out of a Discovery Travel and Living series.

I tagged along with John, a colleague from our company’s IT department, to “the biggest IT mall in Malaysia”. He’s getting himself a digital camera. We planned on having lunch in KLCC first, walk around Bukit Bintang and eat hawker food when the tables come out at night.

We took the bus to KLCC and had the Nasi Bojari in one of those mall restaurants in KLCC. Nasi Bojari was a humungous meal with tri-colored rice, spicy shrimp, shredded beef with a spicy paste, a fried chicken leg, cucumbers and a boiled egg all cramped and arranged in one plate. It’s value for money at RM20 at a decent place. We trailed it with a traditional Malay dessert – Ice Campur, which is like the Filipino Halo Halo. Ice Campur had a refreshing fragrance that hinted chrysanthemum.

With our stomachs full, we walked to the Monorail station. The trains were half-filled on a restful Saturday afternoon. BB Plaza was just a few stations away. The entire BB Plaza was Malaysia’s Gilmore in Greenhills. It’s an entire edifice of PC parts, gadgets, gizmos, cameras, and cases. John had a good buy for a RM500 Canon digicam with the free tripod, camera bag, memory card, and a backpack.

We walked down the street since the tables started coming out. The red lanterns are lit and it was time for non-halal food. We shared the roasted chicken rice and fried meehon with a lot of pork skin. It was excellent. It was especially all hyped with the bustle of street-food commerce, smoke for the grilling sweet pork, the broken English of waiters as they speak to foreigners, the slurps, gulps and the symphonic chatter of guests in many tongues. This was obviously a backpacker-food preference and it was wonderful food that wasn’t packaged with the shopping mall experience. Of course they issued these phony-looking receipts that won’t make it to our expense reports but what the fuck. I’m more than happy to dig this out of my own pocket.

I had a few bottles of Tiger. The cheers with John went, “Here’s to KL.” My life felt like an episode out of a Discovery Travel and Living series.

On our way back to the hotel the Teksi would fix a price a big as RM20 to Ampang. So we rode the Monorail and stopped by KLCC again for some obligatory night shots of the Petronas Tower and the Menara Tower with John’s new digital camera.

We even planned on check out one of the posh clubs along Ampang. At the entrance, there crowd looked all-too-young on a Saturday night and that made me feel old. Back at the hotel, we said hi to our other colleagues and since no one else drank I downed my big bottles of Heineken while watching Manchester United lambast Arsenal.

Well done.

Aloneness Summons

Whenever your aloneness summons, glorious afternoons abide by you wherever you are. After a quiet walk, roti kaya, carrot and wolfberry juice, I turn on the telly. Live on CNN, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performs at the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

They opened with the national anthems. Each musical note, for a moment, silenced the nuclear propaganda and blurred the ideological differences. These differences makes such violent waves. This music silences it with this glorious sonic boom of notes.

I remember having seen the New York Philharmonic perform live. It must have been too hot in CCP’s cockpit because save for the conductor, the entire orchestra had their penguin jackets off. A penguin-jacketless New York Philharmonic is the closest was the closest I got to New York.

This afternoon in Kuala Lumpur, it was different. It’s all happening now. Somewhere in North Korea, the Americans brought their largest cultural group to a communist state and played their music. For the first time.

Act III of Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. 9, then, Gershwin’s "American in Paris." By Americans in Pyonyang.

They focus on an Asian member of the orchestra who does the clarinet solo. They zoom in on the US and NK flags standing together on a stage.

When they played Arirang, a beloved Korean folk song, the audience’ applause thundered in a very long standing ovation. And the applause and the standing ovation kept on.

I was alone, weeping unembarrassed at this little peace.

Postcards from KL (3)

"Silently and with deliberation, the watchmaker practices his gentle craft and tames the tyrant of the modern era. "

J.K.,

Look at how this anonymous man work at the beautiful paradox of swimming the tide of times by setting the time right.

J.

Postcards from KL (2)

I present to you – the keys to the city! Haha.

Cheers from KL and here’s to people who hasn’t sold out – to the packaged and perfunctory ways of corporate slavery.

Just look at this man cut the keys precisely, deliberately, doing his job while taming the tyrants of the era. All that with an audience and with his legs crossed. Not a bad way of paying the rent.

See you all soon.

J.

Postcards from KL (1)

My D.,

One of the profoundest experiences I’ve had in KL was to sew a button to a shirt. I spent a full hour poking a needle to that poor, innocent button. Poor innocent button.

It was somehow relieving to discover that (according to this postcard) tailoring is a noble trade, and has been a practice carried on from generation to generation.

I think I even looked like the anonymous tailor in this postcard when I was sewing – glasses on, shirtless, (and butter cookies within easy reach?). Haha.

So much for the things I did without you. May we never be apart for so long again.

xxx Your J. xxx

Postcards from KL (4)

Ma and Pa,

KL’s wonderful! I’ve been having a lot of Curry, Nasi Lemak, Bihon Goreng and Roti Chanai. But I’m also keeping fit since there’s a pool and a gym in the serviced apartment where we stay.

KL, Out of the Office

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
(A week after we booked our wedding date)

On the way out of the office, the first thing you notice is the overpowering presence of the majestic Petronas Towers in its glittering steel, imposing itself in the KL skyline. On the ground, at 8 in the morning, a veiled Muslim woman skips out of a motorcycle being driven by someone who I assume is her husband. Every part of her body, except for her face and hands, is covered with her clothing. Islam is a fascinating religion. Seeing it up close in people immerses you in the context of the magnanimous self-discipline it requires. A wife shows absolute loyalty to her husband, with her flesh never to be seen by anyone else. While some may not see it as liberated, it is but absolutely sacred. Perhaps I am caught in the web of my cultural ineptitude. All I know for sure is that what I saw seemed like loving with unquestionable loyalty.

Before I digress, I go back to the morning I saw the veiled lady unmount from the motorcycle driven by her husband. She fixes the folds of her clothes. As she stands, with all her flesh covered, you notice the purity so bold in her eyes. She takes the hand of her husband and kisses it. She moves her head toward her husband and kisses his left cheek, then kisses his right cheek. Finally, she kisses his forehead.

Seeing all that, my own face went warm with the rogue of their love. I looked away, holding off the scarlet blushing its way out of me.

And then I ached with longing, now that emotions are unfeigned.

The woman I love was so far away.

Raise Your Dreams

While the deaf-mute carpenter repairs the ceiling. My life with you is the creation of pleasant spaces instead of settling for the absurd blanks. I thought of that when the deaf-mute but deadly-efficient and compulsively productive carpenter fixed your ceiling while we looked up at him in arched necks. He hammered an epiphany. Raise your dreams, J&D! Love each other some more. The skies are beautiful from up high.