A Nice Manicure

Our country just progressively stepped into the digital age. We've got to give credit to everyone involved – the Commission on Elections, the creators of the PCOS machine, school teachers, the voting public, or even the current and the worst President this country had, for that matter.

The new electoral process is a first solid fix to one of the root causes of corruption and we just hurdled a huge hindrance to progress. Sooner or later we will choose the right leaders and do what we're really suposed to during elections.

It's probably indicative of a hope - that our children will have it better. We might not need to behead our leaders.

Surprise Left

“Surprise Left” is a literal translation of the operative term in Filipino when you’re supposed to drive a girl home but you suddenly take a turn to a motel. Now I know I’m really being a Daddy, because the masculine of our species are supposed to un-strategically understand this crap from their fathers, who want them to live their own lives but make them realize somehow that it’s not a gentlemanly way to go about girls. And that we are never good-looking enough to break girls’ hearts.

What I gathered thus far is that when you become a Daddy you also suddenly and un-reluctantly increase your tolerance levels for corny-ness. You can’t keep a better, self-deprecating sense of humor because you need to mold yourself into a role-model for your child. So your humor is favored to be corny than self-deprecating. This self-consciousness is beginning to come out like a scrambled slice of pathological narcissism. What the fuck is all this for anyway? I’m hoping at the right time, you will read this and that’s the only time it will stop from being just another tree falling soundlessly in the forest that is cyberspace. Now there’s another bad, forced-upon metaphor!

Let’s go back to the Surprise Left now, before I completely digress. It’s Saturday, and we are overcome with a liberating feeling that accompanies most Saturday mornings. It’s the beginning of the weekend. I pick up D. in Ortigas and we enjoy cheap but well-prepared tuna or chicken croissants, iced coffee and grape juice. Engaged in conversation, we naturally weed out our work-related worries. We while away all other uncertainties all-too-easily because the imposing presence in a mother’s belly induces the courage to dream a little more.

That’s probably what drove us to this Surprise Left. I didn’t drive the girl straight home. But we also didn’t go to a motel, especially not now that I already knocked her up. We took a Surprise Left towards the Ikea Store, to order the Sniglar cot, the tastefully inexpensive crib.

And we took home the Lerberg shelf unit. After spending a year on the boxes, the DVD collection is finally out. Like the books, and the music, we want our child to eventually be exposed to what we thought was good. Everything from Studio Ghibli to the Kieslowski’s The Color Trilogy to The Godfather, Amelie, Dead Poet’s Society, History Boys and so on.

One day.



Now don’t be reductive and dismiss that it’s a consumerism-based fulfillment. It’s the feeling of assembling a Lerberg or a Sniglar with on your own hands and how many experiences will flourish on what you assembled. It’s where the Surprise Lefts take you.

The Art of Excusing

Truly, we never run out of excuses to sit down and think rigorously. I can't write now. I can write now because I still have backlogs, or an early gig tomorrow, work later, running behind on chores and responsibilities, running behind on running.

Because of these and similar threads in our stories, our thought-processes are slowly being grinded into bite-sized pieces of new media such as tweets and status messages. It's no wonder how nowadays people can only afford a short attention span. It's also no surprise that nowadays people (or people like me) begin to think in bullets, instead of metaphors or figures of speech.

And for now, since I can't afford genuine thought, what I have are these generalizations and excuses. At least you can't fit this in a tweet.

Last Chance Dating as Husband & Wife

We’ve must’ve had hundreds of these fancy-restaurant lunches and dinners. But with a kid on the way, the last few dates taste more robust in our last-chance savouring. We happily realize that it might be a while before this again.

Of course a lot these dates has to happen in the morning, since we just spent Friday night working in our night shifts. Dates in the morning almost feel like a dream: nice post-work meals with high-noon cocktails (for the soon-to- be-daddy) in near-empty restaurants and no crowds to compete with. I even get to write and read.




This one’s a Japanese-inspired place with a catchy name: John and Yoko.

We started with a seaweed-filled miso soup, especially since seaweed should cover a lot of D.’s calcium requirements. No raw fish or wagyu beef, but definitely a lot of vodka cocktails for Daddy.

I’m comparing the cocktails I ordered and the lychee vodka is a whole world better than the lime vodka. It’s the balanced, fruity sweetness that seem to lick the taste clean without necessarily killing the alcohol. The waitresses who take the orders are wearing skirts that make their assess look shapely as 747 airplanes. The service water washed its hands with cucumber. The music’s very lounge-y, and it matches the cosmopolitan feel that the all-over pink and purple of this place is attempting.

Since we never go out dancing, and D. couldn’t drink, we explore different entertainments. Mommy turns the chopsticks-wrapper into an armband. Origami! And we had a few laughs.

Obviously, nobody reads me because I write for myself. And now, I write for you too, my child. Someday, you will understand, and maybe even appreciate.

After the meal, mommy decides to check out a nice maternity shop around Greenbelt 5. We are not very wealthy. Actually, we are not wealthy at all, but we want to give you the best we can afford.

While Mommy shops, Daddy stays on for another vodka cocktail while reading and writing. “Naked Lunch” by William Borroughs whizzes me away as I glue my eyes on the sick output that is the glorious work of Uncle Bill as a junky. It’s like reading through someone’s vomit, hysteria and delirium which complements the alcohol perfectly. In reading Naked Lunch, and seeing in that frozen moment, what’s at the end of every fork, I understand why some things are written so you never have to go through them yourself.

Like a lot of beat-generation literature, it's an adventurous expansion of experience, the "explosion of consciousness" and to put it in Burroughs' words, the "unlocking of the word hoard." It's going through that unexplored territory, and nearly writing everything as-is, rendering the metaphors and philosophical concepts pure.

Again, in Burroughs' words:

"Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book... Black insect lusts open into vast other-planet landscapes... Abstract concepts, bare as algebra, narrow down to a black turd or a pair of aging cojones...

How-To extended levels of experience by opening the door at the end of a long hall... Doors that only open in Silence..."

Yes it's like how the editor, Davd Ulin, describes this read as "T.S. Eliot on heroin."

I barely would have understood any of it (if I did at all), if not for the afterword, editors’ notes, annexes and introductions that made up half this edition.

Between sips of vodka and these words swimming through my eyes I wandered in a dream logic.

But wow, in the sense that I’m doing my favorite things: reading, writing, dating D., this really is a dream.

Three or four rounds, I’m not even sure. There are no windows but I know its high noon and I’m slightly- drunk-silly now.

I look around. The place is no longer nearly-empty since and some brunch/lunch-going guests have settled on the tables. Across ours, there are four girlfriends on Saturday brunch. I manage to observe them discreetly. They’re in fashionable clothes from a summer collection: beautiful fabric, nice cuts, prints, and colors that make the complicated seem simple. Or perhaps it’s really just skimpy clothing or my slightly-drunk-silliness that makes me imagine they’re the Sex and the City bunch.

In my all-too-vivid-mind, I imagine that they’re talking about me. With hushed gasps of breath they’re saying “What a handsome man with a pa-intellectual effect writing in his little Moleskine notebook.” Now here comes the part of the movie when they all stare at me, the Sex-and-the-City bunch eyeing the hunk, only to see my beautiful, pregnant wife kiss me when she arrives. And they go on talking about why they aren’t married.

Daddy will sober up by the time we do the groceries at the Landmark across Greenbelt 5. (And maybe drink some more later tonight).

The Disenchanting El Niño Dry Spell Read

In this summer heat, in this hypnotic heat that clouds your eyes with a white blaze, I decided to fight fire with fire. I read Butch Dalisay’s Killing Time in a Warm Place. I’ve read a lot his work and what he’s edited but I missed this one. I even wrote about his work, and I’d like to think he has a profound, positive influence on me. To an extent, we’re starting to pass this on, as I read a few passages aloud to the little one in D.’s womb.

D. got this sale copy in of the many book fairs where we went in frenzied shopping. I couldn't recall why I didn't read this before. Thinking about it now, it's probably because I had a not-another-book-about-martial-law phase.

But now. Now was the time to read it in this heat.

It was written in the familiar, absorbing language that spoke of the First Quarter Storm in the 1970s. It beautifully struck out the elements of our national and historical consciousness: family trips to Baguio, ginataan meriendas, J&B whiskey, Oxford shoes, mami, American Imperialism, the Metrocom, Cubao, matriarchy and so on. More importantly, it didn’t glamorize the First Quarter Storm as though it was all about heroism against a dictator. From that act of precise incision into our consciousness with a degree of truthfulness, came a novel that represented reality. And this reality thoughtfully surprises you with all-consuming twists.

It was too real, to an effect, that it disappointed me. It disappointed me because it was simply cowardice and compromise that  made it honest and eloquent.

In being conducive to thought and reaction, this becomes a good book and Butch Dalisay becomes an effective author.

Right now I am committing a sin in my failure to separate the persona from the author. I no longer wish to read anything about this compromise and willingness to be subjugated from an author who abandoned one set of principles for another and excused himself by writing about it eloquently. And he might have taught the same thing to many others. Like myself, I thought of him as a sell-out.  And I'm obviously wrong, because I'm merely making excuses for myself.

I am simply reducing my reading to this context I am currently caved in. I am growing up and easing in, exchanging one principle for another or for a few comforts. In this read I am objectifying myself, and I am dissatisfied with the reality it represents.

Pretty soon I will rethink my perspectives and change my mind. Maybe even as soon as the heat simmering us now, cools down my incoherence.

21k Devirginization

I prefer running on my own, but it's also a must to run organized races once in a while to measure up. The best chip-based time in an organized race I registered is 54 minutes on a 10k, which I thought was not too bad for someone who already pops a strong blood pressure maintenance pill once-a-day. On the Nike Plus gadget I use, the best times are as follows:


I thought it was time to train for and run a 21k.

Yesterday’s race was the organized one I ran with water stations at every kilometer-mark, sponges, and a refreshing Makati Central Business District route. As some reviews put it, this finish line had a nice "Singapore-y" or "Orchard Road-ey" feel. Unlike other recent races, there were none of those Brazilian models handing water at the stations. No beer too. But ultimately and most importantly, there's D. waiting for me at the finish line.

The precise moment my endorphins begin to gather and kick in began at 5.19 a.m. in Makati Avenue. It’s the countdown to gun start at the 21k coral. The adrenaline of more serious runners forms up and it seeps into you like a movement in a Jungian collective consciousness. An electric jolt surges through my veins and I look up to the SGV building and the Ayala Triangle. I launch the first song, close my eyes for a second, let out a smile, and set myself sailing.

Runs like these you see nearly all types of runners/people pass and fly past you: Kenyan elite runners, someone who looks like your Dad, your Mom, your Tita, your Lolo, Biggest Loser candidates, Fernando Zobel de Ayala, yuppies, hipsters, maybe even your kindergarten teacher. While the banners show that this is for the benefit of Habitat For Humanity, most of this is really for personal gain.

The first few kilometres were too fast for my standards. I peeked at the sports band and I was running at a 4'01 per kilometer pace. I wouldn’t have enough steam later on, I know, but I was quite thrilled just by looking at the packed bunch of runners making their way uphill (still sprinting) at the Greenbelt parking ramps.

I didn’t plan on hydrating until the 9k mark, but my first among many sips of the sponsored sports drink came in at the 4th kilometer.

The route's heartbreak hill was the Kalayaan (EDSA-Buendia) flyover. At one point, I never wanted to cross this bridge again. I said fuck it when I thought coming back here en route to the finish line. This was easier back in last year’s 10k run. Of course running’s not all metaphorical and dramatic. Like certain abominable or regretful portions of life, you don’t want to go through it again. Running is a Nietzschean test of strength, it’s a recurrence.

I was still running at a decent-enough pace (5'30 to 5'45) all throughout the 10k mark. The halfway point was at Heritage Park. For a while I paused the iPod to listen to my own huffing and puffing, the faint footfalls of others runners, and the souls humming us on. I managed another smile.

At 11k, cramps were settling at the back of my shins and the muscle groups around my gluteus maximus is acting up on me. Training pays off and I manage to run through this sort of pain. I soldier on around Fort Bonifacio.

On the way back, I did the most shameful of things in running and walked for maybe 30 seconds to a minute at the 16k mark. I was also disheartened that the sports band already read more than 17k. But I was certain, I can break through these walls and finish off.

Running on short strides now, I made my way to the finish line. The street was long and quiet until I heard D., calling me out, “Finish Strong!”

I’m happy with my inexcusable mediocre finish. 2 hours 9 minutes chip time. Just 9 minutes short of target, and infinitely behind the elite. Runners using Garmin counted more than 22k in this pleasant-yet-punishing route and my trusty and relatively cheap Nike Plus says I made 21k sub-2 hours. Nonetheless, the endorphins I secreted were countless and priceless. And this makes me more determined to run another day with an official sub-2 hour 21k finish.

Running is my metaphor made physical. What lures me most to running is how the literature surrounding it relates so naturally to my own perceptions of life. “Run at your own pace and make peace with the pace of others.” Now I didn’t just say it, I felt on my own two feet, and lived it off my own steam.

Chemically, it might be the release of endorphins, but you do get your all-natural and mystical high. What I really imagine when I run is that the last hour of my life is flashing past me if I had the strength to live it. I feel that to the bone, the piercing pain that surprises your joints and ligaments, to the failures that eventually prove themselves conquerable, to the brief triumph and the eventual sense of accomplishment. In that hour, there is a lot of thoughtlessness you lose yourself to, along with celebrating and meditating with the music accompanying you.

For the first time, in a rather good race, my life just went by in a 21k run.