Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Bloody Brilliant Birthing Process, then broken into mobile status messages
23 June, the year of our Lord 2010. It's also the year of the Johannesburg World Cup (and having you felt like a golden goal). A few days after your birth, our country will inagurate our 15th President. In your coming-into-this-world we are compelled to believe not only in the hope of our country's progress, but in a grand gesture of hope, in a re-affirmation of life in general. Even if I grew up reading some Schopenhauer, a lot of people nowadays, myself included, are concentrating on what's workable and positive.
These are very interesting times, I.
Aside from the plethora of new technology, we've also empowered women, we've somehow quelled racism, and we've elevated our environmental consciousness. There's a lot of good music, good books, good places to go to and good goddamn beer. There's alot of posts: post-rock instrumental and postmodernism, post-colonialism, post-event parties, post-fight interviews, Facebook wall posts. There's always a new gadget here and there that has made the world a global village. Somehow we've also built these invisible bridges that allowed us to observe each other microscopically. We've created virtual spaces and a proximity that make us love one another just a little bit more intensely.
And there's a lot of nostalgia to come back to what once has been. Postcards, old architecture, revival music, bound pages yellowed with age, anything that would bring back or make us cling to that fine mesh of authenticity and a wonderful memory.
There's still a lot of povery to alleviate, and there's still lot of violence, hunger, ignorance, cruelty and basically just a lot of sick bastards out there.
But obviously, anak, when you were born your parents were on a high. Fortunately for you, unlike the hippies of the Sixties or Seventies we aren't drugged (anesthesia excluded) or hallucinating and giving you names like Dust, Dharma or Dream. Not that those names are bad.
We are lucid. When you first sniffed the air today, you've also opened a door to a new perception (to borrow from Jim Morrison).
From here on out, our lives are going to take a pivotal turn. And one day, (to borrow from your mother's favorite Chilean poet), you'll make your own way - deciphering that fire.
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Sunny, golden, luminous and enlightening as a good novel's ending. It's your last day in the womb. See you in a bit!
June 23 at 7:56am
Admitted to the birthing room and still all-smiles, but will not be too posh to push today.
June 23 at 9:56am
Labor's official. Dilated at 5cm.
June 23 at 10:30am
J. is wearing an oversized scrub suit and listening to the baby's heartbeat on the live monitor.
June 23 at 11:13am
It's going to be bloody brilliant!
June 23 at 11:29am
Still laboring. D.'s been managing powerful contractions so well. Man, I'm married to a very strong woman.
June 23 at 3:53pm
Very shortly now, a miracle's going to happen.
June 23 at 4:42pm
I., 7.87 lbs strong, arrived shortly before sunset on 23 June, 2010. Hello World.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Notes from the Call Center Piece I
Historical Background
It’s 11:15pm in the year 2001. I’m twenty years old and fresh out of a top and therefore overpriced University where I earned a Philosophy degree. I’m aboard a cab en route to the Valero Entrance of PhilAm Life Tower in Makati. The driver’s tuned in to an AM station. Other than AM and the mechanized hum of vehicles and rubber rolling on the asphalt, the streets turn tranquil. It’s a few minutes before midnight and I’m neat as a necktie-wearing 9am-5am office worker. Except that I don’t have to wear long sleeves and a tie. We’re probably the only office in the building who allows (if preferred) their employees to come dressed in shorts, beach sandals, hats, or in the most or least amount of clothing.
Like most obtrusive cabbies, this one asks, what’s my line of work? In 2001, nobody’s ever heard of a call center before. It was a pain to explain. Who would have thought that so much business from the land of milk and honey would come to Ayala corner Paseo through the thick undersea pipes and cables of broadband technology? So I try not to sound condescending and just say,
“Computer.”
With a brush of the familiar, the cabbie lets out a knowing “Ahhhhh.”
“This is only temporary.”
It’s 2010. I, for one, have been working in this billion-dollar “Sunshine Industry” for over nine years. More than being a thriving milking cow, the call-center lifestyle has been re-interpreted in music, literature, invented its own fashion, and even has its own college curriculum. Nowadays there are kids who dream of becoming call-center agents.
We were unknowingly creating a new sub-culture, my so-called wave-mates and I – newly grads who were all riding these cabs or driving their parent’s cars to Valero back in 2001.
Now the cabbies are all over where the call centers are, and I no longer need to explain what my line of work is. Now the conventions are sketched less vaguely.
As call center tunes play along, everyone still thinks this is only temporary.
I also once wrote, “In the trickle of time’s eternal hourglass, in this little existence of mine, something must have even a smidgen of significance; something else must be worth trying.” Oh, I’m going to be a philosopher, sure.
I’m part of an industry that sowed its beginnings in my own time and I often wish I didn’t have anything to do with it. Slowly, wearily, I’m scaling myself down and realizing that this is probably what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.
Nine grueling years. Like all the once wannabe-or-never-was-artists, writers, engineers, nurses, rockstars, architects, and all the ex-real estate agents, airline-reservationists, teachers, we are all literally going to endure the long, long night.
It’s 11:15pm in the year 2001. I’m twenty years old and fresh out of a top and therefore overpriced University where I earned a Philosophy degree. I’m aboard a cab en route to the Valero Entrance of PhilAm Life Tower in Makati. The driver’s tuned in to an AM station. Other than AM and the mechanized hum of vehicles and rubber rolling on the asphalt, the streets turn tranquil. It’s a few minutes before midnight and I’m neat as a necktie-wearing 9am-5am office worker. Except that I don’t have to wear long sleeves and a tie. We’re probably the only office in the building who allows (if preferred) their employees to come dressed in shorts, beach sandals, hats, or in the most or least amount of clothing.
Like most obtrusive cabbies, this one asks, what’s my line of work? In 2001, nobody’s ever heard of a call center before. It was a pain to explain. Who would have thought that so much business from the land of milk and honey would come to Ayala corner Paseo through the thick undersea pipes and cables of broadband technology? So I try not to sound condescending and just say,
“Computer.”
With a brush of the familiar, the cabbie lets out a knowing “Ahhhhh.”
“This is only temporary.”
It’s 2010. I, for one, have been working in this billion-dollar “Sunshine Industry” for over nine years. More than being a thriving milking cow, the call-center lifestyle has been re-interpreted in music, literature, invented its own fashion, and even has its own college curriculum. Nowadays there are kids who dream of becoming call-center agents.
We were unknowingly creating a new sub-culture, my so-called wave-mates and I – newly grads who were all riding these cabs or driving their parent’s cars to Valero back in 2001.
Now the cabbies are all over where the call centers are, and I no longer need to explain what my line of work is. Now the conventions are sketched less vaguely.
As call center tunes play along, everyone still thinks this is only temporary.
I also once wrote, “In the trickle of time’s eternal hourglass, in this little existence of mine, something must have even a smidgen of significance; something else must be worth trying.” Oh, I’m going to be a philosopher, sure.
I’m part of an industry that sowed its beginnings in my own time and I often wish I didn’t have anything to do with it. Slowly, wearily, I’m scaling myself down and realizing that this is probably what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.
Nine grueling years. Like all the once wannabe-or-never-was-artists, writers, engineers, nurses, rockstars, architects, and all the ex-real estate agents, airline-reservationists, teachers, we are all literally going to endure the long, long night.
