Cousins These Days

A., who's in his early twenties, finished high school and is attending College in Sydney. He is currently in the Manila as he tries to renew his student visa. During Christmas dinner, he prepared roast beef with a capsicum side dish. He made a mean leche flan, and in a country that's preoccupied with anything instant, he took time with ground arabica coffee using a French press. "A plunger" was how they called it down undah, he said. Our conversation revolved around the upcoming Phoenix concert, the musical development of Mishka Adams, and the crowd in Conspiracy.

His brother, D., will be watching a Dave Matthews concert in Sydney. D. also saw Pearl Jam, and we shared a fascination with JD Salinger. Now he's a breadwinner.

J. is in Melbourne now, but he remains both a significant part and enormous influence in my life. I end up calling him when I bump into a slump, as I did when I had trouble with grade 3 math - particularly rounding off a .5

E. has fathered three incredibly good-looking children, and boosted our family's confidence in the looks department of our gene pool. He came here on Christmas day, telling me (and not for the first time) that he's fallen on hard times. And every time, I remember how we kept me company and bought me a drink at the right time.

J., from my father side, is a cousin I didn't speak with a lot,Well, I didn't think he spoke very much. He's now based in Vienna and I see him instagramming Europe and the good life. I wished we actually talked more while drinking Pale Pilsen in the spirit of our grandfather. I imagine him telling me about those castles in Bruges.

Several of our cousins from the US, my best memory of which is how we spent their vacations either sneaking out to drink or go to clubs, are actually Honor Society students who eventually graduate from Berkeley or the University of Texas.

Many Christmases ago, I celebrated with these cousins of mine who are now spread out to Melbourne, Sydney, New York, California, Texas or Vienna. The frequency and population of those Christmas reunions scaled down, but I'd like to think our lives are all interwoven as we are all, somehow, cut from the same fabric.

When we were driving on the way home from our two Christmases last night, we asked our little what his favorite part of Christmas was. "Getting gifts" he said, all thrilled and bubbly even at one in the morning. His ironman blasters were strapped to his arms.

The little one added his second favorite part of Christmas, "Sharing with my cousins."

D. and I talked about how concerned you were with your Kuya E. when he had to throw tantrum. We knew you loved him.

Your Kuya Z. is also 9 years old. He just took his first communion a few weeks back. He also recently got his Tita D.'s pre-loved smartphone as a present. He made a comment about some songs we left there. He liked Jamie's Cullum's version of Radiohead's High and Dry. He liked the You and Me Song from the Wannadies. Hearing about his taste in music, my hopes sprang as sparkly as this evening's Christmas spirit.

That fabric will be woven quite nicely.

Like This, Like Now

We've attended several weddings in tranquil chapels and charming cathedrals which were followed by elaborate receptions in posh hotels or manicured gardens. Nothing though, comes more naturally than an aisle against the sand, sea and sky. The light came from embers of a sun that's about to rest. White cloth and orchids moved graciously against gentle winds.The waves, washing its hands with the sea came perfect with a tasteful playlist.

The bride herself made the sea-turtle knot on the guest cards. We were privileged to be among brilliant artists, and to see once again - the many people who touched our lives. To be drunk, and in love, and to witness more of love's wonderful unfolding between one friend and another. It all happened while we ate lechon and kare kare for the feast.

The sand took care of our little one, and its as if he understood that he need to be respectful of the ceremony. But truly, he was content with burying his hands and letting the infinite nature of the grains run through his small hands. Whenever asked, he told everyone his name was Sandman.

Our good friend F. hosted and used lines such as lubricated conversations, and H. was asked to deliver a speech where he both told a lovely story and  a subtle political statement to assert gay rights. "Use your freedom to promote ours" he says. We certainly look forward to attending the weddings of our dearest friends.

We spent another day or two at the beach after the wedding."Drinks on me" S. announced while sat in a half-circle facing the sea and the orange of a sunset. P.'s playlist was on via a bluetooth speaker (the natural evolution of speakers) and there was Zero 7, some ambient and some chillout. I often summon the "resolutely floating , aimlessly" feeling when I'm in the shoreline with cold beer in my clenched fist. But this time, I wasn't just happy for myself. I was happy for everyone.

The evening came and sky lanterns were rising up to the sky. We ate the leftovers from the wedding. And we found the perfect time to open the bottle of Patron, which stood in our shelf for so long, waiting for some real, shared joy.

We talked about the sky lanterns we saw flying last night. How Monday morning glittered with gold carved delicately in the water.

The Wise Trees

Old trees arch, leaves bow 
as they have learned resilience
looking up, you learn. 

Here's to Long Family Lunches

I knew we'd have to endure the Saturday traffic given that the coding scheme was suspended and the truck-ban was off. We braved it anyway and went out of our way to Quezon City for lunch.

Thaipan described itself as a fine-dining restaurant, though it felt more mid-range. I came in my maong shorts and they didn't really impose on having me wear long pants or a dinner jacket. They were right about the place being "reminiscent of home." Even better, it genuinely felt like somebody who cooked well invited you to their home and served you lunch.

The place was quite literally, formerly someone's home. They refurbished and re-purposed the house. The bedrooms were turned into private dining rooms and the wide front lawn became an outdoor dining area. We had a good conversation around that as D. says it gives an aura of preserving a heritage, the way families pass on good values to their children.

D. lived in Thailand for about a year, and she's always a good judge of food that brings her back there. I suppose this one does. The aesthetics in the presentation suggest that it was carefully and expertly prepared. The servings are generous and it would have been awkward if you're out on a date and you were to finish the whole plate of pad thai or bagoong rice on your own. But it's perfect for sharing especially if you are a long-time couple who wouldn't mind maybe even eating it in the same plate.

The little one has also began to develop his own taste and palette. He's got something going on for some of the crunchy stuff and he voted for the Catfish Salad as his favorite. He warmed up to the spacious former lawn area.

The afternoon breeze was comforting so lunch was long, delicious and filled with conversation.

I suppose I mentioned the traffic earlier because it sparked a memory of how a few years ago, we didn't have to go very far for good Thai Food. A place called Sala Thai was in Malate for more than a decade. It had to close and was converted to another fast food joint. D. and I had several dates there years back, and it was some of the best food we've had together. We remember hearing the cook barking orders back to the well-dressed waiters, speaking to them in Thai. I even remember the how even the elegant utensils and table top cloths all look like they were imported from Thailand to keep the authenticity consistent.

Some of our other favorite Thai restaurants end up closing down. Suko Thai's another one. So it's probably why there's an ephemeral element about the experience in Thaipan. We would have wanted more restaurants to conserve the good-looking houses, the same way that families pass on the good values and preserve heritage. And we wouldn't want it to close down.

So yeah, fancy that we brave the traffic and ate there while we can.

The Best Bar in the World

The best bar in the world is our dinner table

Fiction lay along a bowl of chips 

and my wife's homemade salsa

seasoned lovingly 

using himalayan salt balanced with parsley leaves. 

There was no talk of sports, but my three-year-old tells me, "Drink your beer daddy" 

as he sings to Mickey Mouse clubhouse. 

We dance. 

When the little one was put to sleep, 

my wife and I have more conversation: 

familiar, spontaneous, honest and heedless 

as conversations of married couples go. 

We play some more music 

I'm my own DJ, dancing randomly 

to Talking Heads 

and Lyke Li 

and Up Dharma Down. 

We drink some more 

grocery-priced beer 

This price makes it tastier 

No service charge either

and I don't mind washing up a few dishes. 

And oh, the bed is so close 

for us to stagger silly on the way up. 

Why Fiction?

An exposure to what is unfamiliar makes us know who are: the more we lose ourselves, the more we discover ourselves. Travelling sets us up for that realization. We step away from our comfort zones to the wideness of the world, and to the true bounties of discovering the secrets of life in the universe.

 

This was a golden nugget that got laid as I read Jennifer Egan's "Why China?" in her collection of short stories, Emerald City. I paraphrased some of the sentences I liked. While the story induced it, the thought it is entirely mine. Reading does that to you. It challenges you to either figure out or build your own metaphor, write your stories, transcend what fascinated you in fiction to polish your persepctives, maybe even change your outlook, and entertainingly so.

 

Otherwise, the Eloquence of Sunday would have been Unexpressed

We drink at home, and moderately on a Saturday night, D and I. At our early thirties, hangovers are not only overrated, but are also a nuisance parents like us cannot afford.

By 4am on Sunday, I'm lacing up for a run. After a stretch, I stand outside for a minute, waiting for a GPS signal to lock in from satellites that orbit the earth. The watch flashes "go" like an answered prayer. Violet coaxes with the thickening blue of the sky and it's as if the streets are air-conditioned. 1.4km later, I'm at Roxas Boulevard and there's an organized race. I will have to accidentally crash this race. It has a "run to the beat" theme and the speakers blared wildly while my heart thumped fast against my rib cage. It's the closest I'll get to clubbing. For a moment, I was tempted to fist-pump to Swedish House Mafia.

I went 16k and stopped at the statue of a Raja Soliaman in front of the church. Not my best, and I even ran farther and faster just 2 weeks back, and farther and faster many years back. Between the years, I've gathered that true wisdom is to concede that you will not always be at your strongest.

The sweat from my scalp floods my face. My hands feel wet like like I just washed them. I'm being beaded beautifully in my own salt. That's enough to make me soar through this morning in high spirits.

Coming home from a Sunday morning run is always like finishing the Boston Marathon. Little I. is jumping up and down the bed, saying "Hi Daddy" in a screechy voice. We watch his shows or get started on reading while D. makes a prized breakfast. Today is zucchini omelet, sliced pears, and french roast cofffee with caramel cream.

Breakfast music pipes in and the little one specifically requests for happy music.We play the Spider Man theme performed by the Ramones, some Beatles, and nursery rhymes. I took mommy's hand for a waltz, and felt an even better kind of drunk when we danced.

"Can I dance too, Daddy?" The little one asks. We let the spoons, forks and knives rest as we close in a circle and dance. We eat some more, talk some more. The little one asks an ambitious "Can I play the piano mom and dad?"

It's only 7:30am. I fill the washing machine with the first batch of sorted, soiled clothes. In a while, I'd be looking at the clothes line arranged with whites, coloreds and darks. I'll be so thankful with how the sun shines so brilliantly.

De Saussure

De Saussure. They were introducing a new Executive Director and the familiarity of the name struck me. We went through the motions of introducing a new executive. In the conference call, while the invisible handshakes were extended, I was hung up on the bell his last name rang. Ferdinand De Saussure: father of semiotics, or structural linguistics (I'm going to have Google). How often was this name mentioned in my readings in post-structuralism.

De Saussure. The name threw my mind spinning in a whirlwind of philosophical wanderlust. What else have I forgotten? What can I still remember? How did I corrupt my little knowledge of Philosophy and applied it to my daily functions of my supposedly quiet and boring but truly stressful and unfulfilling job?

There must be a valid parallelism and a sensible coherence between Philosophy and Business Process Outsourcing in the 21st century. But I'm obviously just getting fancy and humoring myself. Both the Continental and Analytical Philosophers must be shaking in their graves.

In truth, my comparisons aren't accurate depictions and would actually be more like scrambled versions of real philosophy. In another time of my life I would have said, 'I should have been a librarian, or I should have been a scholar or philosophy professor.' It's dawned on me, with a less dreamy maturity, that in order to make living possible I have to chase some numbers instead of actually chasing a dream. It would have been useless to regret and sulk.

I did not meet some of the expectations I set earlier in life, but I surprised myself with so many others I didn't even imagine achieving. Being a father and husband, along with the discovery of a humble, blissful selflessness is probably my profoundest accomplishment in life. And maybe later on, I'll keep chasing those other dreams. I couldn't lose in this solution. I could still be all that one day, while I won't mind if I won't be.

I recently came across an article in The Atlantic, "Why hundreds of Harvard students are studying ancient philosophy."

I'd like to think that my choices are a result of foundations grounded in philosophy along with what I continue to learn now. Along with being a father and husband, I imagine that this not a regretful but a joyful wisdom. It is not with the grand narratives or most pompous events, but with the little incidents do we understand ourselves and 'turn the world with the palm of our hands.

This One for the Books

There is no smell

The sense of smell is often the most neglected of the senses. You cannot let your nose dive into the pages of an ebook and recognize how new it is based on the fragrant crispness of the paper. You cannot smell how cherished it is by the hands that held it for hours, nor trace the lingering hint of a flowery soap, coffee, or cigarette smoke. The physical books develop their own character by being tucked between the shelves, maturing with a distinct moldy smell. 

Virtual bookstores are a bore

No matter how hard the think tanks, marketing miracle workers and spin doctors think it, there is no virtual equivalent of stepping inside a bookstore, visiting a library or seeing someone's collection in their homes. There are millions of books available online. But it's not about quantity. It's about the resulting circumstances that lead you to books by way of the bookstores. That's a story in itself. Someone bought a Kurt Vonnegut from a second-hand bookshop in Kuala Lumpur. He gave his extra copy of Salinger's Nine Stories. He gave his Nietzsche volume which he bought from his student-job salary, the same edition returning to him by way of his future wife. Compared to what the reviews of online bookstore recommend, there's also a healthy randomness in chancing upon whatever is in the bookstore or what your friends recommend. Your next read sparked from real conversations. It's a smaller, more familiar sphere of influence that's less inhibited by advertising analytics. 

Save a few Pennies

I compared prices on some of my most recent reads.

A Visit from the Goon Squad costs PHP465.90 online when I got a decent paperback for PHP300 excluding the 20% discount. Kobo also sells the locally-published Manila Noir for PHP465.90 and I got mine for PHP299 excluding the 5% discount.

Jumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies would sell PHP463.68 online when you can get it for PHP145 at BookSale. Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo is discounted online at PHP379.69 but I got mine for PHP125 at BookSale.

On top of that, you have to buy an ebook reader. A decent one is around PHP6,000. And you'll have to pay for shipping costs and customs taxes if you buy directly from Amazon.

Reliability, Sentimentality and the Long Run

At the turn of the century, I've downloaded several ebooks and kept the files. They're now stored in an obsolete and already dysfunctional 20GB iPod color. I saved copies of the files, of course, which are now in unrecoverable, fried hard discs. Those turn-of-the-century ebooks are all burned, dead cells now.

On the other hand, the J.D. Salingers and Irvine Welshes, Douglas Couplands and F. Sionil Jose's books are standing the test of time and has moved from one hand to another, one shelf to another after having been taken to restaurants, the beach, parking lots, airports or wherever else. They contain very same words that glued my gaze. A lot has changed now, along with the ideas I concentrate on, but upon seeing these things and re-reading the words, I attribute to them - who I am now.

A few days ago, the news feed on my social media app told me that the last telegram in the country was sent.

Time is such a goon. To everything.

But it gets even more interesting. The last couple of months a major ebook brand partnered with the country's biggest Bookstore chain and I concede that it caught my fancy. It's affordable, it's convenient, and the technology is slick. The printed books, I feel, are also coming to their end. I thought I should accept that, move forward and adapt. So I tried to justify with a rather unbridled enthusiasm that I saw in what I wrote now.

What truly convinced me to stay with my books was just holding it, looking at the cover, or any other reason that's more profoundly sentimental than it is practical.

I'm an old man who sticks to his old chair, thinking Lazy Boys and massage chairs just can't hit the spot.

Alone with Chickens in Bacolod

The locals ate their Inasal with their hands, breaking the chicken into bite-sized pieces, beautifully drenched in orange oil. The man on the grill looks like he's been doing this for most of his life. The chairs are nothing fancy and the menu has no nonsense. The place is open-air and old, and there's an air-con area for an additional 10% But who needs air-con when you get cold pale Pilsen for 37 bucks.

Chicken Bacolod has a subtle crispness and the meat is injected with a lovingly colorful flavor. The treatment doesn't feel rushed and processed. It puts the fast-food restaurants claiming the Inasal name, to shame. Out here, it's a sincere craft, as though they weren't just in it for the dough.

I've only been in Bacolod for less than two hours, arriving on a ferry from Iloilo. I was sick of work and hotels, missing my wife and child, so I jumped to the streets and launched the Around Me app for directions. I found myself here, made older and wiser by a few days travel, as if I was being consoled by fate. 

A Summer Afternoon Sigh

A comforting breeze 

sleepy summer sets in

and you sigh deeply

All the King's Horses

You might have been two years old or so when I told you, "I love Humpty Dumpty, anak. It's a tragedy." 

Oh how you were wowed. This was one of the first songs you took to memory and took to heart. Daddy and I.'s favorite song, you called it. This was your first experience of aesthetic contemplation, and the reason why you don't eat eggs. 

Conversations with a Three Year Old

We read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. You insisted that your toys, Cat in the Hat and Astroboy, read with us. Best I can, I explained the still-abstract concepts of humility and sharing. Grasping it amidst leaves and bugs and aphids and skunks and boa constrictors and lobsters and whales and fireflies dancing around the moon all boxed in the notion of time, you declared, "I'll sleep now, Dad."

Your Story of the Three Little Pigs

I arrived home and I asked him to tell a story. He tells the three little pigs, spontaneously, with a child's unpretentious candidness and passion, for a full three minutes, bursting into song towards the end.

Here we are.

My words cannot capture how you said the words today. No matter how many times I repeat it, I need to listen to it more.

Welcome Distraction

I'm at work and as a short break, I let myself be distracted by music. Chet Baker, when he sings or blows his trumpet, is a cherub on heroin.

Manila Envelope 4: The 699-Peso Patis

I was excited to unbox this rather phony package.

Back in April, one of the writers had a row with Rogue magazine. Whether it was sheer incompetence on the part of publishers, ignorance or plain arrogance on the part of the writer, the online discord aroused my curiosity. The same way our local actors and actresses conjure their controversies: cooked-up love teams or love triangles so they can promote their movies.

It was a couple of months before it landed on the bookstore shelves. When I asked if the staff if they had this title, “Manila Envelope 4…” they kept pointing me to the supplies section. I didn’t know what the cover looked like and nothing on it said it was the Manila Envelope. I suppose I got lucky and stumbled upon it at a Fully Booked.

The damage was 699 bucks. I also bought the last volume and its pictures were pretty, but the binding was poor. The pages got disintegrated. That must be a metaphor.

One can’t help but frown upon the flamboyance of calling it the “best” contemporary Filipino novelists.  “Contemporary Stories by Filipino Novelists” would have been fine, no matter what the “important precautions” say in the introduction. Some of the stories here would pale in comparison to something like Nick Joaquin’s Summer Solstice or Bienvenido Santos’ The Day the Dancers Came. But I bought it anyway, because I like reading supposedly well-crafted stories that with a proximity not only to where I am, but also to my heart.

Remembrance, Dean Francis Alfar. I immediately forgot about the monkey business of phony covers. Reading the first story is like the love I felt when I first swiped an iPhone. These words develop into their own dimensions, and for us here, it is a vehicle to peek at a collective soul. The Philippine president, cute as as a “Despicable Me” minion, recently delivered the fourth State of the Nation. He said, “Ang sarap maging Pilipino ngayon.” But he had all the wrong reasons to substantiate that feeling. It would have been true if he asked everyone to read this story.  And this story is a wake-up call.

Reading next two stories didn’t make me proud to be a Filipino.

The Sky Over Dimas, Vicente Garcia Groyon. A kid from Bacolod masturbates through the EDSA revolution. As it touches upon the theme of apathy, I stir up some more faith in this book.

It was a sleepy ride through the next few stories until I’m snapped back to consciousness, to my annoyance, with how Lakambini Sitoy’s narrator coded her vagina as “my sex.” I was even more vexed with how the characters where christened after airports: Narita, Naia. I loved the stories in Men’s Rea but the new ones sound like the author started running out of material and losing her passions.

“The Terrorists Have Already Won,” Miguel Syjuco. Miguel Syjuco picks up where he left off from his Illustrado. He’s back in New York and he's:

1. Criticizing and stereotyping his fellow writers.
2. Walking fast and snorting coke with his fellow Ateneo Alumnae.
3. Being the writer with a very respectable way with words, an arrogant tone and a seeming lack of advocacy.

I honestly didn’t even bother to finish Katrina Tuvera’s story and I’m glad I wasted no time to get to Bino Realuyo’s With Love, Sandra, Queen of Fish Sauce. It’s one of the stories that make you genuinely proud to be Filipino. It’s about patis as a symbolism for a mother , a daughter, National Identity, as it seasons with the multi-cultural quality of New York. It’s told in the genuine tone of stories you would have read from somewhere like The New Yorker. The first paragraph goes:

“Goya seasoning never works for me. It gets the Puerto Ricans to salsa, but it gives me weak knees a woman my age can’t afford to have. We Filipinos need our own brands. Our bones grow from the nutrients our tongues bring, taste that only fish sauce can kick.”  

Bino Realuyo’s story is worth the price of the cover.

Clear, Jessica Zafra. She still writes like she did in Manananggal Terrorizes Manila: with a funny whininess, like she never grew up. And that is cool, unlike when she becomes a walking advertisement for National Book Store.

On A Visit From The Goon Squad

Unscrupulous Politeness 

He paused at the words, “unscrupulous politeness.” The knife slices his eggs Benedict and it was heavy. His flimsy hands drop the knife and the clacking disturbs the quiet of the empty store. A waiter approaches with a new one wrapped in a napkin. He brings portions of egg, bacon, muffin and hollandiase to his mouth as the chorus of a song from Passion Pit sets in. He washes the food down with strong coffee. He thinks about 2005, writing in a Moleskine notebook in a CBTL in KL. 2009 reading Eric Gamalinda in Ortigas, playing songs in an iPod photo while waiting for lunch with his future wife. He remembers writing about those memories, the same way he is doing now.

 A nice, unfamiliar songs pipes in. He launches the soundhound app, and it registers a song by Sia. Looking out the wide, clear glass window he sees a bright day, sunshine warming up the bay. How many times he’s run along this bay, he wonders. He wonders how we can ever run the weekday mornings again, when the office keeps him. So much beauty brims over this view you’d find no reason to despair. He had the ability to see some clarity through whatever it was that was murky, and his realizations were clear as day. A wave of relief settles in, and he enjoyed the possibility of sustained mirth reading this book (and the resulting remembrance) will bring forth.

Hashtags 

 #StarkSimiliraties #Magnolia #DouglasCoupland #NickHornby #Singles(CameronCrowe) #LoveActually #Sideways #EmpireRecords #JaneAusten

In no particular order or emphasis.

Setting 

 It took you to New York, San Francisco, Naples, a safari in Africa, a country led by a dictator. So you took the first chapter in a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, the slide journal while having mint tea and honey at another coffeeshop near the office, at the dinner table one afternoon at home while having Lipton tea, the bathtub in Bellevue Alabang so the pages got wet, and finally the ending while slurping a pot of Taragon Tea in Tagaytay.

It was a happy day, finishing the book while celebrating the little one's 3rd.

The Proximity of the Greats 

You don't remember it, but you knew you read it from a story. No, it wasn't in Butch Dalisay's Penmanship. You thought it was, and you ended up reading the whole story again for the nth time but the line wasn't there. But it's in your mind. A librarian didn't become a writer because he read the greats and whenever he tried to write, "the proxmity of the greats humbled him." You feel the same way. You're not a writer because you're not good enough. And you don't need to review heavyweights such as this book. You leave that to the Guardian or the New Yorker.

Even your favorite quotes are somewhere in the internet.

But you try, at least to remember. That way you're not beaten by such a stealthy, sneaky goon.

Greetings From Your Kerouac-Quoting Father

"Nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old." -On the Road, Jack Kerouac. But right now, right now Anak, you seem really happy." 

Happy Birthday. Infinite love from Mum and Dad. 

Cuffs

I’ll be wearing cuff links tonight. The bosses from Denver flew in and I’m booked for an hour-long presentation. That calls for the smartest-looking long-sleeved shirt with the crispiest collar. I'll be

slipping on the 5-grand pair of hand-made leather shoes that I've maintained for four years. We saw seven episodes of Madmen’s Season 5 earlier this week and it always convinces you to at least try to dress better. If clothes didn't make a man, clothes certainly made that show.

Its ten thirty and D. is still in a conference call in her Ortigas office – one of the few times her actual presence was required since she turned work-at-home. I’m prettied up and ready to go. My mother will stay with I. until D. arrives in about an hour.

I have to go. I. says bye-bye and I love you and I don’t need any luck. I've already won. That’s all I need tonight. 

The bosses were onsite by midnight. Their plane landed just a few hours earlier. Only a shower at the hotel came between the office and the airport. I’m first to present to K., an E.D., and he is always in a polite, excited disposition but his questions always slice through any sweet or smooth talking so I always keep it honest while trying to be cunning. C., an SVP, walks in to the room to greet us, tells us about her connecting flights. She embraces K., then R., then walks towards me. There I was, awkwardly half-embracing an SVP who several other Directors advised me to stay below her radar. I’m not sure why they say that, as she’s been warm, analytical reasonable to me and I'm not even trying to suck up. Either I'm wrong or I’m lucky I don’t report to her directly. She takes her leave and I proceed with my deck. After a minute or two, C. slips back to the room and tells K. that she qualified for Boston. Now this is about me. And I’m a bottom-of-the-barrel manager who almost made a sub-2 21k.

I go through the rest of my slides, show how we climbed the numbers. It’s steady with good strides here and there. I didn't feel like I had to jump through a lot of difficult hurdles like I was expecting. I suppose it went well.

The most trying part came at the end of the day. Like a heartbreak hill feeling that's about to decimate the knees,  I end up asking, who am I? Like when I read Socrates for the first time, I went through a guilty realization. Only this time I didn't imagine myself as a budding philosopher. And this is why: it dawned on me that I've made a career chasing numbers over dreams.Not even money. Just numbers that justified me to keep my job. 

I drive home. I read a chapter of a good book. One chapter is a story in itself: generation after generation of dreams lost and won, triumph and desperation coinciding in an intelligible complexity as it is written in a lucid work of art. I figured that’s how it happens. Only when I come home can I tell how my own dreams are fascinating. How they are within easy reach and how they reveal who I am.

I take off my cuff links. To be truthful, they barely cost me anything. But if it locks in the dreams and the taste that simply can’t be purchased, they sure won’t look cheap.

Counting to Four

There is no other way to tell it, other than to tell it as is. No embellishments. Nothing fancy. Our first four years of marriage was a honeymoon. We loved each other purely.

It was still drizzling in the morning, as with the night before. When a drizzle turns into rain, he always remembers a Kerima Polotan story, “The Sounds of Sunday.” There’s a line that goes, (and I’m paraphrasing) rain falling on tin roofs like a thousand I-love-yous. Our music played on the empty, pothole-free Skyway to Tagaytay. We were married there four years ago. Running on 100 km/h on our inexpensive car, remembrances flash before our eyes but slowly. It’s as if we are in a space ship, feeling more fortunate than the millionaires in chartered planes. An iPhone connected to the radio played Sigur Ros.

Brosandi
Hendumst í hringi
Höldumst í hendur 

(smiling
spinning in circles
holding hands)

We chose Hoppipolla for our wedding video song.

At the back of the car, the little one sleeps soundly. He wakes up to the sight of Taal Volcano. Around here, the rain has cleared and he sees the volcano in full view.  “A volcano, like in Little Einsteins,” he says. He forms his memories, and discovers himself both through an inherent, curious fascination of the world around him and by imitation. He says things like he really means it: “You’re very pretty, mommy.” “Thanks for cooking, mommy.” Children his age may not always be intelligible, but they are spotlessly sincere.

We stop at a place called Cliff House by the highway. For a Friday, it was desirably empty save for a small Korean tour group, some Europeans with their girlfriends, then another family or two. The little one runs around but he sits with us to have margheritta pizza and salmon asparagus risotto.

We hang out a little bit more before we head to our hotel. We read a little, sit down to rocking chairs, run around some more and have fruits in ice cream for dessert in this perfect, crisp weather.

“You have the lake-view suite,” the concierge announces to us, handing out the key card, breakfast and drink stubs. We notice high school kids in suits and prom dresses at barely four in the afternoon. We learned later on that it was La Salle Canlubang’s junior senior prom night.

The suite was spacious. The little one jumps up and down the king-size bed. They go for a long bubble bath while I go out for beer, cigarettes, chicken pies, beef turnovers, and multi-grain pringles. It's raining cats and dogs outside, which will make it even more cozy inside. Back in Manila, we heard that Edsa on this rainy Friday a night was a huge parking lot.

By the time I'm back they are ready for the playroom. I go for a 10k on a treadmill. Walking around the hotel, we saw the halls and the prom is in full swing, crowning their kings and queens. The fellow who operated the machine let us wear the silly hats and we took souvenir pictures in the prom photo booth.

We order some more room service for dinner, eat the pies while watching baby TV on a 42" LED. We were also instagramming just a few photos from this perfect life. Nowadays, you have to make sure that the pictures were few enough to preserve the spontaneity.

By the time the little one sleeps, D. and I drink our Super Dry lagers on the terrace. The rain has passed, the skies cleared, the lights of stars and the houses below dance in the distance. That's one of the reasons why people come up here: to feel this cold, to be clouded int his fog. We had to wear jackets. I let cigarette smoke drag through my lungs.

Up on the terrace, we saw some of the prom folks far out in the lawn. We suspected and laughed at our assumptions, this is the night they finally became "them" as we saw a couple wrapped in an embrace while staring at the dark horizon. More I love-yous tonight, I'm sure. But it was really cold and I wanted to call out to the guy and tell him to give his girl that coat he's wearing. She'll be a pneumonia victim in that prom dress.

We drink some more. I smoke and we sleep in those thick white sheets. It feels like a thousand threads. The hugs are warm and tight as they could be. We have a perfect life tonight, and you can never instagram this, no.

We wake up and open the curtains to a sunny day with this view.

I read the last few chapters of a Kazuo Ishiguro in the terrace. Golden weather. The sun lands on the perforated, creamy pages of the hard-bound.

This hotel is among the first ones in Tagaytay, and some of the spots look old but it's big enough to take walks with excellent views. Especially after a heavy, buffet breakfast with tapa that's cooked with barako coffee, paninis, fruits and pretty much everything you can think of for breakfast.

Mommy and the little one dip a little in the pool. By the poolside, there's a young couple. The girl is crying, and we suppose it's probably due to an incident in the prom last night. If were that guy, I'd probably quote something from Kerouac's On the Road, "This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." Mommy remembers the crying she did in her teens, and I'm just glad she won't have to cry like that again.

We'll check out and drive around some more, eat again somewhere.

On the Pursuit of Ideals, Light, Madness, & Humility

(Subtitle: This is how we felt when we gave in and bought you an iPad mini.)

Fathers often wish to have children who follow their footsteps.We want our little ones to eventually fancy movies like Dead Poet’s Society, The Color Trilogy, or the History Boys. We want them to read Nietzsche, Camus, understand some Derrida and Foucault. We want them to listen to Pearl Jam, Phoenix, John Coltrane, and Chopin.

The children grow, and they discover the things we haven’t. Their futures beam even more brilliantly. Our children will not just be improved versions of ourselves. Yes, they will fall and falter, and all over again. But we are right behind, their very own Catcher in the Rye.

They will stand on their own. They will be fresh and crisp. They will be more elegant in their pursuit of their ideals, light, madness, humility. In their attainment of wisdom and resulting peace, they will make their own way, deciphering that fire, (paraphrasing Neruda).

In the meantime, my little one, mommy and I present the world to you. Let's build your core. I would never tell you though that we are now just growing up -- together. There are so many things I have just seen and learned.

Your Top-Shelf Books

The Sunset after our Sunday Ocenarium Scuba Dive

Groupers

You finally found Nemo

Drizzling

Belated post. 2.21.2013 

It's drizzling. We are celebrating her birthday in a dimly-lit restaurant, telling her in a hushed voice (some spanakpoita still in my mouth), life feels like a dream.

 

This little dream almost didn't happen. It's Thursday evening rush hour and we ran late. The restaurant called me and they were about to give our table away. I love it when this happens, because it makes Makati feel like New York. They held on to the reservation.

The Corner Tree Cafe is quite literally, in the corner and beneath by a huge tree. It looked homey and that took it to us. Inside, there's framed poster listing them on the Miele Guide. They served a wide range of vegan, glutten-free cuisine. We had Spanakopita for starters, spinach & mushroom lasagna, and baked tofu walnut burger. It must have been the lights on dim, the slow flicker of candles, but something compelled the crowd to keep the conversations on a low volume. While the setting was intimate, "children are welcome," their website announced. So we happily brought our little one along. There were ladies in office attire having cocktails while waiting for their takeout and they exchanged smiles with him. This pre-schooler sure is smooth. And I'm glad I'm smooth myself, but only to the birthday girl. It all flashed before my eyes, the birthdays of hers we celebrated in beautiful islands, the birthday I got her a watch, the birthday I got her a refrigerator. Every time, she was beautiful.

It's drizzling. It's just the right amount of rain to keep a cool breeze. The clouds maybe thick, but my stars are all twinkling tonight.

Gentlemen

The crossing of his legs gave emphasis to his otherwise unnoticed shoes. A pair of hand-made oxfords, perfectly pointed and well-formed, brushed clean as though it made him stand as a pillar of self-respect. A black pair of socks covered what would have been a revealed portion of his shins. He thought he understood the requirements of sock-length. He had some foolish, useless pride in telling an Oxford from a Venetian or a penny loafer. He thought his shoes earned him a modest, quiet dignity. So he thought.

We Need Less Parking Lots

For the rest of the week, this spot in Legaspi St. is a perfunctory parking lot. On Sunday, it comes into life, shaded in large white tents, lightly clouded with the haze of its grilled food. There is a gypsy-like feel, but some of the sellers/owners at the stalls look a tad too well-heeled to be gypsy types. Many of them were enterprising foreigners.  Perhaps it's more of an upper-class hippie vibe. It’s not fine-dining of course, but many of what’s served here tasted like food cooked straight out of kitchens who kept family recipes like treasures. The taste was more true to itself as compared to what’s available in malls and even restaurants. 

They are immensely proud of what they sell. “I baked it myself this morning” I overheard the French entrepreneur, insisting on having a potential customer try a quiche. All around, there are croissants, cabiatta bread and pastries. Another table sold organic mushroom burgers and when asked if I can try, he indulged  with a polite “please do” and most pleasantly showed me the mushrooms from which the burgers were 100% made from. Out here you can pretty much sample everything. The first time I was here, a fellow who would look as if he’d wear a tie on week days handed me a rockefeller oyster. Walking around is looking at the menu, or not just the menu – but the food and even its ingredients. When I seemed interested in a dish, they’ll give you a Popsicle stick and have you try that beef rendang. The spot for the Morrocan dishes also sold tajines. The Pad Thai was cooked on the spot by a guy who looked Thai (but probably wasn't), and you can watch how generously they throw in garlic and noodles. There’s lechon from Cebu, crabs cooked by Alavar’s, callos, paella negra, okoy and turon.   It’s a market – so there’s also fresh produce: organic lettuce, fresh seafood, bird houses (to our little I.'s delight) and folding bikes. There’s a stall for Himalayan salt, and this is also where we get  D.’s favored household “green” products:  the grapefruit laundry detergent, green tea and aloe dish cleaners, my herbal water sports spray, orange and mint disinfectants from Messy Bessy. More than the non-toxic products, we admire the sustainable, local sourcing, environment-conscious advocacy.  

The organic food in the market has their own area and tables, but while it looked good I’ve had a full fruit sandwich and it wasn’t as exciting as say, the baked empanada. The baked empanada was very reasonably priced too (four for 100), with a hint of curry in the beef variant, pervading olive and tomato taste in the vegetable variant. It partners pefectly with a strawberry or blueberry yogurt shake. 

It gets hot under these tents, and the visitors already know so everyone’s mostly dressed lightly, sunglasses on.  With the noontime heat, it’s always a perfect time for Merry Moo's sea salt ice cream. You will be thirsty and that’s when the pandan or dalandan iced teas work their magic. There’s pure sugarcane juice sold too, and ultimately – German beer. It escapes me how some of me my fellow country men, or even the balilkbayans who were just raised with electric fans, always complain about how hot and humid it is as though we didn't all spend our childhood in this tropical country. Look at all these beautiful drinks to quench that your thirst and feel refreshed on a Sunday. We are on the bright side, after all. 

We always take our little pre-schooler I. with us on all the Sunday lunches we have here. He seems to have figured out the map of the place. He swings on a lose branch of a tree. He lets small little hands tap to the beat of a store that sold Bongos. A lot of folks play the bongos too, and it serves as as an apt background music to the area that sold utensils with colorful gems, some artwork and books. There's also a small playground just right behind where we let him run around some more. We wish playgrounds and parks didn't have to be this small. 

Recently, many of the malls in the city started to adapt the Sunday Market concept. We tried one which was set-up in the park in front of Shangri-La hotel in Ayala. It's called Cucina Andare, featuring "meals on wheels" food trucks. There's some comfort in finding the local beers and locally-made bottled iced teas called "Bayani Brew." Spicy chicken wings were good too, which comes with a plastic glove so you can use your hands to eat. Everything else just seemed either too forced, or too rushed, and painfully too commercial with the familiar names that invite you to franchise. The paella was just glorified fried rice that they microwaved. There was live music which was just too loud. We were turned off with how it tried hard to copy and ended up as a wannabe at best. 

The Legazpi market has a sense of community that almost feels real, and realizing how this concept really sells, the imminent sad story is that it'll be all be too commercialized. Eventually, they will prioritize profit over that priceless Sunday Market sense of community. But there's still a good thing going on there, but as the way it is with things organic,  big and fast and profitable isn't always best. Otherwise, it'll be just another perfunctory parking lot. 

Nothing is Real

After the highways and the ascent through zig zag roads, a city pops up in the mountains, evenveloped in fog, unfolding right before your eyes. The afternoon sky bursts with colors gleaming on the greens of the mountains until it cools down to the early evening's grey. It's like a visual equivalent of a Sigur Ros song.  We close in and see houses, gas stations, pasalubong stores and the rest of a bustling city sprawled in a row of hills. Baguio is an urban dwelling among the clouds, the traffic heavily congested in some parts but the strawberry fields close by.

Nothing is real, it sings to you.

IN MEMORY OF BUGGERS

This city is capable of building the strongest connections in your psyche. These mountains hold and mold some of the firmest memories. It’s a collective childhood recollection:  getting dizzy at the zig-zag roads, bike or boat rides at Burnham Park, posing with the Igorots in Minesview, pine trees, jars of Good Shepherd ube or strawberry jam and sundot-kulangkot.

When I was a kid travelling up here, my father drove us himself. It must have been lot more difficult to navigate, let alone drive these roads back then. My mother being my mother, all three of us (I think even my cousin) were all in matching yellow Camp John Hay vests.

This is where you take those pictures.

You spend a good part of your life wanting to be the kid in those pictures again. Repetition longs and desires itself.

FARM-TO-MOUTH STRAWBERRIES

This trip was also the Panay crowd's annual meet and H.'s 32nd, Baguio-style. The couples with kids stayed in hotels, while the rest camped in F.'s place. Only a few years back, D. & I were drunken-ice-skating with F., having vodka jellies at 8 am, among other fond memories. Nowadays, we do wholesome cookouts, play Monopoly, and finish the drinking before 1am while the kids are in another room playing Nintendo Wii.

We had dinner the first night at a Japanese place called Chaya, a house-turned-restaurant where the tables were few and the kitchen was open and literally homey. The floors and high ceilings were wooden. There's a fireplace, a huge couch, and a piano. The chef-owner was Japanese and you find a curious warmth in a place that served complimentary green tea ice cream.

After touring the BenCab museum the following day, we had lunch at the museum's cafe. All the rice meals had the organic mountain-grown brown rice of Cafe Sabel, paired perfectly with cucumber coolers or lemongrass iced tea.

On the third day, we had lunch at Le Chef at the Manor in John Hay. "A Christmas tree place." P. called it. It’s December, and their Christmas tree was a real pine tree. Their garden had a playground where I.  insisted on playing in his make-believe train for over an hour.

Little P. and our little I. picked strawberries at the La Trinidad Farm in Benguet and we'd like to think this is the trip's highlight. We rinsed them with water from our bottles and ate them literally on the fields where they grew, so they were farm-to-mouth. We all had strawberry taho - the pang-instagram taho, as the slick taho vendor in sunglasses dubbed it, encouraging us to hashtag and become a follower.  

THE SEARCH ONLY APPEARS COMPLICATED

It took me sixteen years to climb up here again. The last time was when a National Convention sponsored us (the geekiest boys and girls) up here for 5 days. I formed part of the school Debate Team (led by H.) that made it to the finals. All of us were no taller than 5”5. How cute it was – an exclusive-for-boys Catholic school with a rowdy reputation versus an exclusive-for-girls Catholic school mostly from upper middle class families who were reputed to be smarter than us. All the young ladies of their debate team probably stood taller than 5”5. We debated the abolition of pork barrel in Congress and our school’s team won, mostly because of H. ‘s arguments and pre-conceived counter-arguments that we all rehearsed.

On the day we won the debate, among the audience were three other classmates who became my friends for life. Also among the audience was a young lady who was voted to be the convention’s National Vice President (the popular and intellectual equivalent of second head cheerleader), whom I married 13 years later. 

Here we all are, again, now. H. is completing his Ph.D in Berkeley. B., who won the convention presidency at the time, has been shuffling back and forth Manila, Melbourne, and South America with his Canadian astronomer-wife. We did not speak of it, but we are celebrating so many other wins as we sipped coffee sweetened by muscovado in the old Café by the Ruins. What we did speak of, was the weather and the wine in Santiago, Chile, triathlons in Melbourne, and a Filipino and his Canadian wife’s search for Argentina Corned Beef in Argentina.

I shared that I heard a story about a friend of a friend who looked for The French Baker in France. 

HIGH-ALTITUDE RUNNER'S HIGH

If we lived here, my favorite thing would be how the weather makes running outdoors conducive at any time of day. The towering trees, the clean pine scent (or the pollution) and just spotting a interesting-enough place for lunch or dinner during your run makes the uphill dares worth taking. Drunk the previous night, M. and I decided to head out for a run at 10am, but it still felt like running at 6am. 

We decided to follow the running route of Manny Pacquao, except that I imagined it to be in Lake Drive, while M. thought it was up in Camp John Hay. We lost track of each other somewhere around Session Road. So we were on separate paths, but must have felt the strange, laughable relief in knowing that we both got a little lost. I ran 5.5 km at a slower than usual pace, having to walk or stop at the crowded sidewalks. As I lost my way I discovered how so much of Baguio has also deteriorated, has been overcrowded and polluted.  But nevertheless, it’s a path you’d want to run again. 

On the way back, I saw M. a couple of meters away from the hotel. Inevitably, We head out at the same time, we both get lost, and he was right there exactly at the time to go home.