My Mind Has Wheels

reading dan brown.

2009-10-30T13:27:00.000+08:00

Just as he had done for the past two times, he did it again.

I reluctantly pushed my nocturnal limits to an ungodly two-thirty in the wee hours of the morning, eagerly devouring the last few pages of Dan Brown’s latest novel The Lost Symbol. In the who’s who of bibliophiles, I don’t classify myself as a sprinter; but perhaps it merited some measure of braggadocio to have also wrapped up two of his other books in record time: The Da Vinci Code in ten hours, Angels and Demons in about twelve – apparently good enough response for someone whose writing has been dubbed by critics as clumsy, and whose works have been diversely labeled as inaccurate, fanciful, abstruse, slanderous, even sacrilegious.

The question is not what causes us to gravitate to the pull of his fiction, but rather, why we gravitate to them. Like millions of readers, I turn to Brown’s books for the primary purpose that he wrote them: entertainment. His masterful thrillers provide a sought-after adrenaline rush, and a much-welcomed change from the humdrum of deadened routines. Through his stories, he has concocted a delectable compendium of just about everything that piques my interest – history, geography, art, literature, science, mathematics, even religion – seamlessly crafted into one gigantic, smashing, rollercoaster ride. Best of all, he toyed a bit with my fascination about Harvard (although I more than duly content myself with being currently schooled in the Harvard equivalent of the Philippines.)

Reading Dan Brown is, in every sense, experiencing the inexperienced, expecting the unexpected, initiating the uninitiated. Villains become heroes, and heroes become villains. When I first plunged head-on into the then uncharted waters of the polemic The Da Vinci Code five years ago, I was instantly thrown into his clandestine world of arcane symbols, antediluvian legends, mystical phenomena – the plot thickening with every page, the secrets revealing themselves with every twist of the story. The thirst for unbridled momentum was infectious. As I picked up Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol later on, a hazy pattern began to emerge.

Somewhere that’s neither here nor there, Brown writes of a well-loved savant getting killed or kidnapped. He brews forth a terrifying madman, the unraveling of an ancient controversy, the pursuit to solve the mystery hurtling at full speed towards an electrifying climax. The meandering paths seemingly trail and coalesce downhill to an incredibly simplistic resolution, interjected with a handful of profound lessons that leave you thinking much more than just the way his fantastic tales ended. Because yes, there’s more.

In a world beset with societal woes and plagued with problems from every side, Brown’s irrepressible characters have given us hope that we can always be unlikely saviors of our own generation. With his protagonist, Robert Langdon, he successfully painted the image of a renaissance man, the embodiment of someone imbued with messianic potential without actually realizing it. Langdon is hardly the epitome of a perfect individual. A noted historian and cryptologist, he waxes idiosyncratic philosophical for the greater part of his presence, oftentimes bordering on being overly quixotic. Desperate times call for desperate measures, however. Langdon promptly springs to action at the flick of a finger, whipping up a plausible solution faster than you can mouth “Eureka!”

Fortunately, his moments of epiphany are as good as ours. Not content to sit back and let fate steer its sinister course, we gamble the odds with his every move, brainstorm with his every impediment, and silently rejoice with his every triumph. Indeed, Brown’s novels are thoroughly enjoyable not so much stark anthologies of facts as they are exercises in ingenuity. You exit his enigmatic world with no exact objects, locations, or explanations in mind; only the pleasant aftertaste of an enriching, gratifying, cerebral experience.

I should know. Once upon a time, I, too, sat down in Philosophy class blatantly asking for the moon and the stars. What is truth? What is man’s destiny? What’s after forever? In the end, much like Brown’s novels, I was trained instead to strip myself of any existential pretensions and focus on the intangibility of human inquiry, to proffer the questions without waiting for the answers.

In this regard, his novels incidentally helped me discover that hindsight can only yield so much insight. A stir of familiarity struck me upon mention of German painter Albrecht Durer, evoking unmistakable images of Humanities class as our professor engaged us to probe deeper and to scrutinize each artwork beyond what’s merely concrete and abstract. In between lines of an archaic riddle, in between elaborate depictions of The Louvre or The Washington Memorial, I surmise that this is what Brown tells us with overwhelming audacity: To look. Heightened observation, after all, serves as the very antithesis of perceptive mediocrity.

There are heaps to be learned in the minutest and most puzzling of details, in the most insignificant of entities. There is more than meets the eye in those picture-perfect postcard panoramas of St. Peter’s Basilica, Westminster Abbey, or the soaring dome of the US Capitol. There is more than greets the mind behind the Mona Lisa’s captivating smile, the obscure markings on Raphael’s sculptures, or closer to home, the sacred texts of The Bible. Who knows? Our world is a world of possibilities.

Yet akin to the celebrated Holy Grail or the fabled Ancient Mysteries, Brown’s works have never been about claiming that coveted trophy of the ages or that proverbial pot of gold at rainbow’s end. The spotlight is always fittingly passed on to something of far humbler, far higher substance – a quest for prayer, an affirmation of belief, an attempt to rescue an honorable reputation. Most importantly, his novels have aptly demonstrated that it takes a person of solid, unwavering faith to effectively hold his own against the persuasive tides of crafty reasoning, against the evidence-based debates of logic and scientific thought. What is faith, as Brown candidly put it, but the “acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove”?

In literary context, I guess it takes a similar amount of faith, then, to keep the real from the unreal and still accept, albeit fleetingly, that which is imagined to be true, yet which cannot be proven. When all else stands unlocked and laid bare, Dan Brown’s saga of codes and secrets ultimately boils down to shedding light on the world as it is – rich, vibrant, unique – and being supremely thankful for it.

And just like that, just as he had done for the past two times, he did it again.

gold, spice, and everything nice.

2009-10-26T12:20:00.001+08:00

Now we're talking.

beyond yellow.

2009-08-05T18:27:00.007+08:00

I first saw Cory Aquino in person during the premiere night of “Cory: The Musical” last November 2008, that loving tribute of songs and stories written in the eyes of and exclusively penned for her by close family friend Bing Pimentel. At the end of the production, when lead star Isay Alvarez and the rest of the main cast led the way for a thunderous applause, the 75-year old former president struggled up from her seat to give a few words of thanks and inspiration. It was almost clear then that her fragile state could not anymore hide the fact that this icon of democracy was, in fact, suffering from the terminal stages of colon cancer. It was almost clear, too, that I may well be seeing her for the first and the last time alive.

My parents were not even married when Ninoy Aquino was killed at the height of the Marcos regime in 1983. I can plainly say with all honesty and naiveté that I never went through the odious years of Martial Law era, never felt the stirring emotions of a unified People Power in EDSA I, never experienced the harrowing loss of democracy in the dead of night – only to have it resurrected by an unlikely heroine-of-a-housewife more than a decade after. To stretch the gap even farther, I never had the privilege of shaking hands with the woman once famously chosen by Time Magazine as Person of the Year, never knew how it was to work alongside this Fulbright Awardee for International Understanding, never had an inkling on how it felt like to be a doting grandchild to “one of Asia’s most influential leaders of the 20th century.”

What I have, beyond a few surreal meters of plush theater rows, is the lingering memory of having been able to vicariously trace her origins back to the old ancestral home in Quanzhou, China, eight years ago. More matter-of-factly, her husband Ninoy was also my exact natal predecessor of 55 years, a boon we share together with our noteworthy ears, academic inclination, and keen literary fervor (the idea of assassination has not occurred to me in my wildest dreams – yet.) Ninoy was the yang to Cory’s yin, the articulate voice to her lending ear, the convivial soul to her kindred spirit. With his death, she had to be yin and yang at the same time. As he watered the tarmac with senseless blood that fateful day in August, so must she sensibly redeem it three years later with a bloodless revolution in February. As his death sparked the flames that sent irate millions into a quest for democracy, so must her death fan the same flames that brought back the lessons of history.

And so I write, because to write is sometimes all one can do in the aftermath of a nation’s sorrowful outpouring, in the aftermath of unabashed, unexplained grief. Because to write is to proffer the humble gift of words, served on the simple platter of reminiscence and tendered in the hope that heaven reads the muffled lips of a now orphaned people. Most importantly, because to write of the life Cory Aquino lived is to write of snippets of each and every Filipino’s life – and incidentally, mine as well: grim shadows of the past, firm reminders of the present, hopeful exhortations of the future.

Fr. Catalino Arevalo, SJ, in his poignant eulogy, quietly pointed out how “selflessness, faith and courage” have always remained at the forefront of Cory’s life, the indelible trio of principles that constituted the bedrock of morals by which her whole life was founded on. Selflessness, manifested in the concrete hierarchy of “God, country and family”, has been her battle cry for living for others, for the continuous betterment of those around her even in her darkest, most painful days. It is with this realization that I marvel at the frail gallantry of Cory as a human person, and if only to generalize – to the extent by which the lot of ordinarily extraordinary persons make themselves extraordinarily ordinary. Courage, by way of defying fraudulence and a feared despot with the striking candor of truth and sincerity, places her in the league of a modern day Joan of Arc – shining sword traded for rosary beads, blazing red for canary yellow, final martyrdom on the stake with serene acceptance of disease.

Cory, however, is not Cory without the unwavering and almost saint-like faith that shook mountains with a single prayer, and yet, in itself, was virtually unshakeable. (If a “Hail Mary Squad” so much as existed, she would have been, hands down and without question, ringleader of the gang.) As someone once put it: “Before, I was not too entirely convinced of a woman who brandishes prayer as her prime weapon; but it never budged under duress, and now she has made me a total believer.” Even as she reluctantly ascended the silver steps to Malacañang, and even as she voluntarily exited the chief commander’s throne with paramount grace, she knew her real power – and wielded it effortlessly across an archipelago mobilizing an army of sorts that rejoiced as she rejoiced, wept as she wept, and fought on even as her strength slowly succumbed to the dreaded Big C. We again swarmed out to the streets when she called for a defaced president’s ouster. We rallied behind her as she sought asylum for rebelling soldiers. We marched with her, church to church, school to school, when she took a stand behind the reputed underdog of a boiling political scandal. And now, more than ever, we raised the cudgels for her with her recent denunciation of the infamous Con-Ass, read aloud by a grandson as she lay stricken on her pristine hospital bed. All of which prompted me to ask: What is it about her that moves us? Rather, what is it about her that moves us into action?

The celebrated Pablo Picasso believed that “some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, while others transform a yellow spot into the sun.” Yellow, of all colors, permeates the darkness the easiest and the most; the veritable, elemental mother of light. Cory, who took up painting in her twilight years, must have wisely understood the connection and so chose yellow to initiate the illustrious spectacle that dramatically engraved itself across the surface of our nation’s history, conveying a people’s shared sentiments and brilliantly capturing that tearful moment of joy once victory has been claimed. In a country barely holding its own under the dark for so long, yellow was a refreshing change, the gentle impeding strand that could, the provident beacon slowly but surely leading the way out of the proverbial tunnel. Yellow depicted the outrage of the angry throng of two million escorting Ninoy to his grave, and yellow, too, emblazoned the banner bearing our tireless crusades for deliverance. For all she’s worth, and for the “crosses and roses” patiently borne for the sake of an ailing nation, we thank Cory Aquino for transforming a yellow spot into the yellow sun of Philippine colors, for her legacy of light and the things that stood beyond it.

But even in the light of one’s best and most noble intentions, one cannot please all, and at all times. There are those who attack her feeble handling of fiscal policies, the lackluster response to communist insurgents, the burgeoning energy crisis, the way she opted to tread the path of honor and hard work by politely shunning the World Bank’s offer to absolve us of our debt-rigged dilemma. Even then, in the midst of a thousand detractors, it is all too easy to single her out with her signature smile, shrugging her shoulders as if resigned to the fact that she was, and will always be, limited. A classmate of mine, a not-so-ardent fan in the spectrum of Cory fanaticism, once dreamt of her “on her knees, pleading for forgiveness for whatever errors she may have committed.” And it occurred to me that perhaps, it has always been her nature to forgive: Gringo and the numerous grisly attempts to throw her out of office. EDSA II and the eventual reconciliation with Erap. Bitter factions right smack in the Cojuangco clan. Daughter Kris and her rocky romances. Conrado de Quiros, the very same writer whom Kris once rued as being “so mean to my mom”, would later mean what he said and say what he meant when he called her “one damn good person.”

With her passing arose a great many speculations about the theory of goodness, goodwill, good people. Sometimes, it meant introspectively looking at the fundamental basis of human nature and discovering that moral lodestar deep within. Other times, it rested on the more profound grounds of relativity, on cautious, unbiased deliberation of graded evilness: greater evil, lesser evil. In his speech at the start of “Cory: The Musical”, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III described his mother as being “so different from the powers that be that govern us today”. Without being unjustifiably cynical, I have come to consider her death as the unofficial end of an era, of bygone days where public service was an untarnished honor and personal integrity was still in vogue. No one would argue when I propose that for most of her life Cory played the part of a much lesser evil, her flaws a mere speck in the rancid frays of the contemporary political arena already marred and marred still, her shortcomings presumably given in to inexperience that had much to do with coping with gargantuan responsibility and generic demands at the same time. I once fielded such a question to my aunt: “How good was she?” To which she readily answered, “Well, I say she was good enough, wasn’t she?” For most of this country’s 80 million denizens, there was no doubt. She was good enough, damn good enough.

In burying Cory, we give tribute to her simple yet significant contribution to the restoration of a free Philippines, tainted as it is by the unbecoming forces that threaten to break its cornerstone of nobility. In accompanying her for a straight, sacrificial eight hours to her final resting place, we commit ourselves to the perpetual cause of upholding democracy that she so adamantly fought for for much of her widowed lifetime. In braving the corporeal embodiments of searing sun and roaring rain, we testify our solidarity as a Filipino nation cloaked in mourning, sealed in love, and bonded in hope.

“It is good to see the (people power) spirit still alive,” one person commented, no less than struck short of awed at the heartwarming sight of a million Filipinos flooding the flooded streets of the metropolis in a desperate attempt for last minute glimpses, tributes, and farewells (plus photo-ops.) It was definitely larger than life; the wonderful frenzy now fondly referred to as “Cory magic”. I was inclined to think that in this age of ephemeral transitions, just as pages yellow away and persist beyond the mortal days of their venerated authors, so shall the robust yellow of “Cory magic” elude death in its agelessness. After all, way after she stepped down as president, I was a personal witness to how a catchy Hiligaynon jingle (sung to the tune of a then popular jukebox dance hit, the title of which I cannot recall) continued to gain popular acclaim back home, ingeniously crafted as follows:

“Everybody/saka sa lubi/
Kung mahulog/singgit lang kay Cory…”

(“Everybody/climb the coconut tree/
If you fall down/just call out for Cory…”)

The creator’s first intention, I would suppose, was certainly and primarily for amusement (as if anything else mattered more to a five year old kid.) But for those who knew better, it was more than an act of endearment, more than an acknowledgment of trust that goes well beyond embracing her as president, wife, and mother. With her passing, it is in confidently affirming that we can always count on the Tita Cory we knew to bring the country back to its feet, albeit in spirit, and to bring us Filipinos back to our feet, whenever, wherever, and always with a pleasing, soaring sense of heightened national consciousness.

Twenty-three years ago, as the newly-instated president of a republic on wobbly knees, she beseeched the joint Houses of Congress to “join us, America, as we build a new home for democracy; another haven for the oppressed so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nations’ commitment to freedom.”

Twenty-three years later, as a medical student of an institution sailing past its centennial year, I entreat my fellow countrymen to “join us, Philippines, as we build a new home for democracy; another haven for the oppressed so it may stand as a shining testament of our two heroes’ commitment to freedom.”

the speech that almost was.

2009-04-28T22:14:00.004+08:00

I could have very well titled this entry “The Speech That NEVER Was,” and it would still be 100% accurate.

But on account of good ole Schultz philosophy, I chose not to.

Traditionally, the honor of delivering the valedictory speech in behalf of the entire graduating class goes to the undisputed summa cum laude. No one but the revered intellectual among intellectuals deserves such a privilege for finishing with the highest honors in the country’s premier school of hard knocks. It was an honor I had always dreamed of achieving, yet knew well enough that being in an especially formidable course puts the stakes at close to sheer impossibility.

But – surprise, surprise.

UP Manila has NO summa cum laude this year.

When I was informed by Ate Lucy last month that I was one of the four University magna cum laude chosen to vie for the title of valedictory speaker, my heart palpitated in leaps and bounds. The record for the College of Medicine last belonged to a certain Vince Faustino who made the cut way back in 1997, and since then the College has been suffering from a jinx for the longest time. If you were in my shoes, you’d be as giddy as Mary being showered heavenly tidings by the Archangel Gabriel.

I have been speaking before audiences with surefire gusto for as long as I can remember. I was the bibo kid eagerly clutching a microphone in kindergarten school, tasked with and happily giving the opening remarks, the closing remarks, or coaxed by a prodding teacher to host the program altogether. I was the precocious declaimer in grade school, the starry-eyed narrator and storyteller, the unwitting performer of various shows and productions that had me gripping the limelight even in its wake. High school refined the fringes of my presumably verbose future. I spoke before teachers, students, and fellow citizens as editor-in-chief of the school organ, as a CAT officer, as a youth city official, as a young leader awardee – minute-long instances that taught me about the workings of the world as much as I imparted my own thoughts to others.

Upon entering medical school, however, I found that the predominantly academic thrust somehow keeps you indefinitely holding your piece, save for the generic reports and case presentations that required more austere objectivity than artful eloquence and technique. Whenever I was tasked (or allowed) to speak, I felt “like a bird being finally freed from its cage,” and my classmates (particularly those in my own block) would readily attest to the palpable change in my stolid demeanor. Deep inside, I hungered for the sporadic opportunity to do non-scientific talk, once again.

Now my multi-awarded brother recently delivered three excellent speeches to three different audiences last month, all within a week’s time from each other. The constellations must have decided that my turn had come.

To cut the long story short, there was simply no blowing my chances away. I was determined to bring the honor back to the University’s oldest and perhaps most venerable College, to prove my mettle not only as a budding medical student but as one tendering a self-styled return into the realm of public speaking. I completed the page-long draft of my speech in just a couple of hours – on Black Saturday, to be exact – the sophisticated result of a premature burst of ideas that spontaneously fired like missiles the previous night. In stark contrast to many of my earlier, rawer, more heavyset speeches, this one was surprisingly light and humorous – even poking fun at a common and well-loved University emblem.

I had always believed that a good speech informs, entertains, and enlightens at the same time. It must have an impact, one subtle and substantial enough to leave the audience sufficiently satisfied, yet gut-wrenchingly wanting for more. At the slightest hint of boredom, the speaker understands that he teeters on the road to perdition. This philosophy guided me in the days that followed, as I constantly buzzed around improving my finished product – reading and rereading, editing, reconstructing sentences and paragraphs, reciting lines in the shower, practicing before a whole body mirror, making sure equal emphasis was placed on diction, clarity, projection, modulation, facial expressions, eye contact – just about the entire gamut of essentials said to comprise the perfect, foolproof, winner’s speech.

And then…it was time.

Barely a week into summer break, I soon found my way back to the big city, part-nervous and part-excited. Hopping on the first plane at the crack of dawn, I was up and about before the appointed time, fussing over and fumbling for a smart enough attire, rushing my way through the perpetual Taft traffic threatening to send my hopes down the drain. Only one thought raced through my mind that sweltering April day: Get yourself late, and there goes the promise of a good impression. I wasn’t about to gamble what could be a lifetime’s bet over something as trivial as a petty temporal malfunction.

That fateful afternoon, in the glaring sunlight, the hallowed interior of the UP Manila Board Room became a menacing microcosm of its magnified neighbor, the real life Supreme Court. Four “judges”, all smug and poker-faced, will decide the fate of four contenders in a miniscule audition now clearly reigning supreme over the current hit, hot American Idol season. Having arrived early, I took the prerogative to go second with the coy excuse of “a little jet lag”, retreating to the back room for a few uneasy minutes before a sharp knock on the door cut my introspective musings to a halt. As the first speaker wrapped up his stint, I silently took a breath, looked all four “judges” in the eye, and opened my mouth.

There is something almost romantic about the way you start the first word, or the first phrase, or the first sentence, for that matter. As the spotlight furtively moves into view, you are left alone to contemplate the veil of muted silence, a baptism of fire into the vicious verbal arena. I caught a hint of a smile quivering at the corners of the lips of one “judge” as I delivered my first two paragraphs, which had previously sent both my mom and my aunt in ROFL mode. The rest, however, remained attentively impassive. I turned the game a notch higher as I settled comfortably into gear, confidently going about the remainder of the speech, stressing main highlights, nimbly swinging the mood from serious to comical and somewhere in between, rolling slippery syllables with so much as a smooth, clarion lisp. At one point, I saw all four “judges” nodding, exchanging cognizant glances, and took it somewhat as a good sign. Three minutes is all I have to make it happen.

The following morning, Ate Lucy’s words were the first to greet me upon waking up.

As her voice cracked over the phone, my groggy disposition was in no state to probe what would happen next. And so when she awkwardly spilled out the disheartening words – “Nalulungkot ako”, “Better luck next time daw” – I rhythmically nodded, rubbing excess sleep off my eyes, and told her I understood. The conversation was over in less than one minute.

It was the longest one minute of my life.

What took place thereafter was a surreal pattern of events. The world around me seemed to spin as I stared into space, motionless. And then the full brunt of the realization hit me like cold, heartless iced water: I was well headed for Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s inevitable five stages – and mind you, it takes me a very, very long time and perhaps twice the amount of effort (plus thrice the amount of pain) to reach that last, definitive stage. It was hard slaving away four years of medical school; harder still, to have had ignited a hope so fervent and killed it just as instantly. Everything flashed before me in blinding reminiscence: The pursuit of the rare privilege to speak before the vast populace of the country’s flagship university; sacrificing a day of entertaining vacationing classmates; getting myself sick; spending thousands on promo airfares; sparing myself a week’s worth of extra appointments on the side. Suddenly, the little piece of paper that could remained a little piece of paper for good, tragically destined to become part of the dusty, yellowing family archive.

Like a neurologist localizing an organic lesion, I searched high and low for a possible gap in the master plan: What went amiss?

Theory # 1: I should have crafted a speech in Filipino.
(Theory debunked. The instructions read: You can deliver the speech in English OR Filipino. Since the issue comes down to giving your best, I naturally chose to draft one in my preferred métier.)

Theory # 2: I should have memorized the entire speech.
(Theory debunked. Oh yes, I did memorize my speech and can ruddy well measure up to the job if asked. But the thing is: I was asked to READ.)

Theory # 3: I should have delivered a more serious, more radical, more bombastic speech.
(Theory debunked. A speech is different from an oration. Julius Caesar can fire away all he wants, but that won’t cost him a seat in the Roman Forum if his speech is as vacuous as a wailing siren. Contemporary times call for contemporary measures.)

Theory # 4: I should have served the main dish, not just a sleazy appetizer.
(Theory debunked. From what I understood, we were asked to make “a speech”, not “THE speech”. And all in three minutes.)

Theory # 5: I should not have included Jesus Christ in the picture and committed undue sacrilege.
(Theory debunked. By all means and intentions, Jesus had been depicted in the best of light – as a noteworthy academic, as a forerunner of truth. This I swear by the Second Commandment.)

Theory # 6: It is time to give chance to others.
(Now this one I have yet to disprove.)

But back to Schultz and his ideals.

For all his life, the famed Snoopy creator advocated the idea of looking at the glass half-full, instead of half-empty. Upon reaching that unmistakable halfway mark in a marathon, one must consider the fact that the battle is already half-won and the race half-finished, instead of saying that the battle is MERELY half-won and the race ONLY half-finished. “To be happy,” my grandmother stressed, “is to look at the less fortunate.”

What could have happened had I not been offered the chance to formulate a speech, at all? Unlike Mikaela Fudolig, I am no 16-year old summa cum laude graduate of the State University. Unlike Patricia Evangelista, I am not an English-speaking world champion. Unlike my brother, I don’t have 11 gold medals in public speaking to my name.

After I sloppily remarked that they “now have one less reason to attend my graduation,” my mom reprovingly shook her head and replied, “Remember that we are attending for the sake that you will be graduating, and graduating with honors at that. The speech is just extra icing on top of the cake.” But for the proud, prodigious denizens of a record-smashing INTARMED class (at least for those who knew the real story), news of a fallen flag-bearer stirred a perceptibly more intense reception:

Reactor # 1: “Argh. Eh di sino ang napili?”

Reactor # 2: “Weh. Whatever. Sigurado akong luto yan.”

Reactor # 3: “Dapat si Greggy talaga ito. In our books, you’re still the speaker.”

I clearly remember that in one of his impromptu speaking conquests, my brother was adjudged the silver medal to everyone’s open-mouthed surprise. However, it was hardly the end of the story. The audience’s general dissatisfaction at the unexpected outcome bypassed the official verdict when he was given a rousing standing ovation during the awarding rites, far eclipsing the proclaimed champion’s meager applause (no audience factor here). True, he may not have gone home with the golden bacon dangling around his neck, but in the eyes of many, it rightfully belonged to him.

Fast forward to the big day where, clad in my black toga, I had just settled onto my seat after graciously shaking hands with UP President Emerlinda Roman. After basking for a few seconds onstage and receiving a glinting gold medal, after the numerous (and exhausting) smiles and photo-ops (some of which embarrassingly featured my beneath-the-toga matted hair resembling Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men and Drew Barrymore’s creepy stalker in Charlie’s Angels), it was time for my personal moment of truth.

The chosen student speaker took her place on the lectern and the reel rolled away before my senses.

Yes, her speech was in Filipino. But it was neither near bombastic, radical, or memorized. She took off with a short narrative about ceramics and clay pots, how these supposedly undergo thousand-degree centigrade transformations before emerging into the light as objects of high human intrinsic regard. “The same can be said of UP students…”

And then it hit me.

There are times in our lives when God wants us to listen, even when all we want to do is talk. There are times in our lives when He wants us to pause, even when our voices are screaming for unbridled momentum. And there are times in our lives when He wants us to look inside – when all we want to do is focus on the shady exterior. With the student speaker’s message, I realized that He was bringing me a message of my own. I was about to enter one of, if not the most challenging phase in a medical student’s life, one that brings along with it a multifaceted challenge: physical, mental, emotional, social, even spiritual – a key turning point in the long, arduous journey towards becoming a licensed healer. I was the clay pot, clerkship is the fire – no, inferno – that threatened to make or break me. The message couldn’t have been more apt and timely for one who is about to (and who dreaded to) be a clerk in, well, a little over a month’s time.

Ergo I wasn’t this year’s student speaker for the 100th Commencement Exercises of UP Manila, but I learned something else. Beyond clay pots and ceramics and the series of thousand-degree transformations awaiting me, I learned to be a little less afraid. The speech that never – or rather, that almost was – lived up to its job: It made all the difference.

celebrating toxicity.

2009-02-26T21:58:00.001+08:00

(After a year's wait, INTARMED 2011 will finally march down that elusive graduation aisle. In commemoration of this glorious milestone, I was commissioned to write an article paying tribute to that collective four years of blood and sweat, of joys and tears. This piece will appear in the forthcoming yearbook to be released this year - hopefully.)

At first glance, the thousand-page tome must have been too much for his scrawny, bespectacled frame. He sits by his lonesome on a secluded corner, studying intently to his heart’s content, when his solitude snapped with a sudden smack on the back, replete with the scornful mockery of someone screeching, “Ang toxic mo!” Almost reflexively, he whips around and retaliates in a most defiant tone: “Hindi ah!” Better yet, he raises the bar. Keeping cool, he lifts one sophisticated eyebrow and calmly lashes out, “Mas toxic ka pa nga sa akin eh…”

Such phrases must have grown over the years to become classic bylines among INTARMED 2011 members, the types that lend themselves more to affection than sarcasm during stressful times. After all, toxicity – that four-syllabled entity governing the mechanisms of our behavior – is something we have worn up our sleeves like a badge. The term historically referred to the idea of quintessential nerds slash geniuses with pitiful lifestyles, but in the context of forty close-knit youngsters harboring mutual dreams and ambitions, it has slowly evolved into a multifaceted concept rooted deep in the core of a collective spirit.

There’s the toxicity of academics. The outside world unmistakably views us as the lucky crème de la crème who excelled in their respective high schools, aced the UPCAT, and are now poised with fiery enthusiasm to prop themselves up the highest trellises of medical achievement. We have been called high school students on an extended tenure of secondary school, who never had and who never will get a real taste of college. We have been dubbed humanoids possessing the most swollen eye bags on campus, for want of many a good night’s sleep.

Sadly, that’s only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Enter a bunch of top students from different parts of the country, destined to spend the passing years in each other’s company. Toxicity spilled over in bloody fashion from day one as we buckled over the lethal synergy of math, biology, chemistry, and physics, glossed over the linguistic acrobatics of history, and incessantly faced the ominous consequences of impending memory overload. Incidentally, it also meant trudging over mountains, splashing down rivers, entering temples, conquering beaches, and wolfing down food – perhaps the most significant experience for a batch notorious for its gluttonous appetite, whose idea of carpe diem was to study hard and party even harder.

Celebrating toxicity is giving tribute to that unique microcosm that is INTARMED 2011.

It translates to smiling at the mere mention of someone else’s birthday, at the numerous lakwatsas, study sessions, Lady Meds, and Lantern Parades that evoke a relentless outpouring of recollections. As if these weren’t enough, a written document, christened “Nerdovia”, even attempted to chronicle our own distinct personalities with its pantheon of gods and goddesses, royal bloodline, scheming barbarians, and thriving citizenry, the saga mirroring the joys and woes of a class bent on fulfilling its quest for peace and unity, that utopian Pax Nerdoviae. In retrospect, the past four years were far from perfect – the ride was a little rough, the winds portentous, the storms unforgiving. But it was the “toxicity” of trust and companionship that kept us going, the resonant tunes of “Toxic ka!” providing unconditional reassuring pats on the back.

Change, of course, was also “toxic” in its own right. Four years witnessed the dramatic transformations that triggered the unlikely metamorphosis of high school hipsters into mature individuals cognizant of their roles in society. Even the physical embodiments that accompanied us down our journeys couldn’t escape the waxing and waning of the tides. Oversized shirts and baggy pants became pristine white uniforms. Frogs turned into cats, and cats morphed into cadavers. Acquaintances deepened into friendships, some of which blossomed into minute bliss. We laughed, we cried, we loved, we lived. These changes weren’t always expected, much less welcomed, but we all agreed: They made us wiser, stronger, better.

Whereto, then, after BS BMS? More importantly, whereto after 2011? If the wizened stargazers were right, fate would see us continually burning the proverbial midnight candle, poring over endless pages of edible print to consummate communal expectations. Much like how stories could have random endings, Nerdovia could go on to culminate in sweeping jubilation, or tragically end with the gods being banished from the heavens, the kingdom disintegrated, the populace thrown into discombobulating anarchy.

Then again, as Prof. Esguerra himself told the class years ago, “I see it in you.” We do have the “toxicity” of passion, which overpowers everything else. The bespectacled, scrawny boy may still be rightfully “toxic”, but now he has learned to weave his own gift of nurturing and healing others. Who knows? It may be all he’ll ever need to reach that elusive happy ending.

To 2011 and beyond!

top ten peeves you wouldn't want to meet in mass.

2009-01-04T21:24:00.002+08:00

What I have observed as one of the good things about Christmastime is that it brings us back to the very place where it all began – church. With the nine wonderful mornings leading up to Christmas day, the grandiose celebration on Christmas eve or on Christmas day itself, the feasts of the Holy Family and the Holy Innocents, New Year masses, and Epiphany wrapping up the whole package, we are all drawn to the Lord in many ways, cleansing and purifying ourselves before the child in the manger. Once in a while, however, we unwillingly get sidetracked upon encountering a few annoying booboos that leave a particularly ugly smudge on an otherwise unblemished spiritual experience.

Christmas or not, here are the top ten obstacles that will most probably bar you from becoming holier than thou:

10. Masses that are hot. Literally.
And you used to think December weather is always freezing. Now you are distracted from concentrating on the wonderful rites taking place because you have been tragically resigned to furiously fanning yourself, or wiping the giant beads of sweat forming on your nose, or wondering why the brand new electric fan beside you isn’t working, or isn’t on, or both. Trust me – it’s really hard to don a heavenly aura when you feel more like burning in purgatory yourself.

9. Masses that don’t start on time.
6 pm is 6 pm and not 6:30 pm. And no, the fact that the church doesn’t have a clock, or the priest doesn’t have a watch, or the whole city has lost track of time, doesn’t seem such a valid excuse. Parishioners shuttle their way from private affairs just to attend mass, and after mass they’re off again. Punctuality is only a matter of respect and consideration.

8. Masses that prematurely breeze through and those that lovingly linger on. And on. And on.
Masses usually last around an hour on weekends; are a bit shorter on weekdays, are a bit longer on special holidays. Thus said, I really hate it when they are precipitously rushed through like some wanted convict on the loose, and similarly, when they are painfully extended till time immemorial. A short mass makes you feel incomplete; a really long one will drain the hell out of you.

7. Lectors who give your six year-old cousin stiff competition in reading class.
Obviously, we’re not all sleight enough of tongue to deliver the readings like a seasoned newscaster or an orator, but at least we should try to read the passages in a way comprehensible to the competent mind. God’s word is meant to be conveyed to every listening ear with the hopeful intent of informing, enlightening, and if possible, moving others. But when the words are thoughtlessly strung together to become an unlikely lullaby, we have a real problem.

6. People who think mass is one big helluva party.
Therefore, what do you wear to one? In a generation ruled by crazed, self-righteous hedonists, you see a visual stampede of gaudy halters, spaghetti tops and tubes that show more skin and attitude than decency. Sure, mass is a celebration in itself (that’s why we call it the Eucharistic celebration), but do spare your ultra-conservative lola the risk for an inopportune heart attack by quickly stuffing her inside the car trunk when these vainglorious creatures arrive. Please.

5. People who can’t make their children behave in mass.
Children are God’s little angels, but you’ll soon find that they easily morph into their devilish alter-egos replete with tiny horns and wiggling tails when they mercilessly kick your pew, jump on your seat, drool on the floor, and scream like there’s no tomorrow. What’s more, you see their fairly amused parents laughing away like they’ve just seen some of the best games on earth. Which I must aptly call “Revenge of the Imps.”

4. People who think mass is the perfect place to gossip the day away.
Yep, we know you miserably spend five days a week rotting away in your solitary workspace, swamped with just about anything except the latest issue of the local gossip mill. So off you tromp to church to reunite with other wagging tongues and catch up on those juicy rumors. Guess what? You’re better off finishing those succulent stories at the home of an aging relative, cursed to forever become an old maid because she wasted her precious youth feeding away on other forms of communion.

3. People who sing to the highest heavens in their preferred key.
It is anyone’s sacred – and legal – right to sing praises to God, whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want. But as the old saying goes: Your rights stop when you hit the rights of others. Or in this case, the eardrums of others. Believe me, braying like a demented donkey at the top of your lungs with half the church congregation staring at you with dagger looks isn’t sheer admiration at all. On the contrary, it’s murder most foul in the works. Better start running.

2. Priests who deliver homilies in totally alien languages.
By alien language, I’m referring to any other language outside of the intended language for the mass. By Jove, that’s why it’s called an English mass, or a Filipino mass, or an Ilonggo mass, for that matter. Merely assuming that everyone in the audience is a versed linguist is plain inanity. Of course, there’s always the excuse that the faithful can better understand things in the vernacular. What was that again? Hindi ko naiintindihan ang mga sinasabi mo. Indi ko maintindihan ang mga guinahambal mo.

1. Priests who don’t prepare homilies. At all.
This has to be the most tragic story of them all. The homily is undoubtedly an integral part of the mass, even proving to be its heart and soul. That’s why a completely vacuous homily never fails to make me feel robbed out. While good homilies are generally supposed to be spontaneous and free-flowing, it’s an altogether different story when they are distastefully vomited out to your face. It’s like buying a huge box of Oreo cookies and discovering, to your utter dismay and horror, that none of them are cream-filled.

the case of the impacted tooth.

2008-09-08T23:03:00.006+08:00

Unlike many kids my age, I enjoyed going to the dentist as a child. My parents reveled in the exceptional luxury of bringing along a perfectly obedient youngster – minus bribes and tantrums – to the one great bastion of all childhood nightmares. And why not, I suppose, when all you will ever get is the smug satisfaction gained from the sight of the dentist fawning over your teeth (“So rare to find teeth like yours these days!”) The usual sessions established themselves in an orderly triad: general inspection, cleaning, and perhaps a filling or two of amalgam. I invariably looked forward to the pleasant cycle of friendly hellos, quick checkups, and words of encouragement – after which it was “off you go” in a span of around half-an-hour, at most one hour.

But the scourge of an impacted molar (read: wisdom tooth) is entirely something different.

“You won’t be able to eat like a king for a week,” colleagues told me, those who have successfully become veterans of an ordeal where even the most intrepid brutes cower and back down. Because it won’t be like any other ordinary tooth extraction – call it minor surgery, maybe. The dentist makes an incision, takes out the erring tooth, and seals the wound with a suture. All in two hours. Twice that if you land yourself the unluckier sentence of having two misbehaving teeth. Or three. Or four (the ultimate apocalypse).

It’s actually more the thought of temporarily having to resort to a quasi-hermetic lifestyle that urged me to reconsider my options. Previous victims have meekly shut themselves off from civilization in the confines of their homes awaiting recovery, subsisting on nothing more than clear soup and ice cream (this weeklong diet actually sort of wracked up my digestive system). Seeing the results of my panoramic X-ray, however, it was clear that I had no other choice: Have the tooth extracted in a jiffy or face the unglamorous prospect of resembling a male Ugly Betty in the near future. God forbid.

And so I just found myself nonchalantly going down to the dentist’s one sunny afternoon with thirty minutes’ worth of waiting time before she came barging in the door, cheery and bright-eyed, all set and ready to roll. In no time I was positioned on the reclining chair facing the concrete wall that had a huge rectangular aquarium perched atop it, where thick-lipped goldfishes swam idly by, peering out from behind their crystal enclosure with bulging eyeballs and almost mouthing, “Thank heavens for evolution! Long live us toothless creatures!”

No, I wasn’t having paranoid delusions – just a fickle stretch of wild imagination. For additional self-amusement, I had to conjure up something big and toothy. Quick.

David Archuleta with gopher-sized incisors! (Better yet, molars. Third molars.)

American Idol was fresh off this year’s season, and the choice seemed apropos enough. But before I was able to settle comfortably with a toothy Archie inside my head for entertainment, the anesthetic was drilled into the base of the malpositioned tooth accompanied by a sharp pain that radiated around the area. Slowly, numbness enveloped the vicinity of the tooth, spreading to the adjacent gums, and I felt my sensory faculties start to falter. After a few minutes, I touched the right lower part of my cheek but felt nothing. Sensation at the left, upper and anterior parts were however intact. Could it be? My closest guess is that she had infiltrated a tributary of the right posterior branch of the mandibular (V3) nerve.

My dentist was, of course, completely oblivious to all these riddled thoughts. She was content to hum along with jukebox hits bouncing off the radio, while her hands moved dexterously in a medley of fine incisions and stitches. I, on the other hand, busied myself with other things – shuttling my consciousness back and forth from checking the time on the wall-mounted clock to intentionally staring at (and therefore blinding myself with) the overhead light. At the same time, I was faintly aware of the acrid, salty taste of blood, the feel of loosened oral mucosa, the ubiquitous whir of those complicated dental machines.

And now, the highlight.

Minutes earlier, the smile on my dentist’s face told me she had seen a part of the prodigal tooth hinting at the surface. Now, the same smile told me things were finally ripe for extraction. In preparation for the maneuvers ahead, she tried to work out the optimal position. Twice with her blood-stained gloves she steadied my skull and warned me of an impending crack as she attempted to extract the stubborn tooth. A brief second to gather momentum – then a rough cracking sound – after which a vanquished crown came into view, followed by a root, and the other root soon after. It was over in just a little over an hour. Record time!

Before I was sent home on antibacterial prophylaxis plus tons of good-natured advice, I was let in on a fascinating piece of dental trivia: Patients taking pictures of their extracted tooth! Let’s just say I wasn’t in the mood then to count myself an exception. Which only means…

Another unusual piece of trivia (which served as a warning as well) is the fact that the Chinese are inherently hematoma-formers. In other words, expect a sizeable one up your cheek the next day. I was lucky I didn’t have it in the genes. When I woke up the next day, the most I had was a puffy right cheek and a throat all briny from swallowing blood-tinged spit overnight. I wasn’t spared a Sufi’s lifestyle, however, and the following week saw me losing touch with the outside world, diligently heeding the cold compress-warm compress routine every so often, forgoing planned appointments and missing two dinner parties. I would go on to undergo manual removal of impacted food particles twice, a painful re-suturing of the wound, and the agonizing sensitization of the adjacent second molar.

It’s been more than three months after the operation, and the gap hasn’t fully closed up yet. What with adverse conditions as sleeplessness, stress, and fatigue inadvertently taking their toll, I was told that the healing process could take as long as one whole year! For the meantime, therefore, I have to patiently make do with extra care on the chewing, plus the occasional job of irrigation should any food particles go wayward. All’s well that ends well.

Moral of the story?

If you happen to be around the same age as I am, and have experienced a dull, intermittent pain somewhere at the back of your oral cavity, consult your friendly neighborhood dentist as soon as possible.

Before you give the sandtiger sharks a run for their money.

Before you incidentally end up in the next season of Ugly Betty, without so much as an audition.

And worst of all, before you squish your chances of becoming the next American Idol – all because Simon Cowell thinks you’re better off modeling rabbit dentures.

lessons from canossa.

2008-08-09T21:30:00.009+08:00

(As part of our rotation in Family Medicine, we immersed ourselves for a week at the Canossa Family Health Facility in Tondo. This piece was submitted as part of the post-rotation requirements, bearing solid testimony to the amount and depth of insight the experience taught me.)

My very first malingering patient was also my very first patient on my very first day at the Canossa Health and Social Center. With all the energy and excitement expected of a first-time ICC, I enthusiastically leapt to her chief complaint of numbness at the fingertips, deciding that a test for sensation is necessitated. The usual instructions were given: Close your eyes and tell me if you feel anything. A nod, and then a cheeky smile, after which she proceeded to cover both eyes with an arm pretending to comply with the procedure. But from where I was seated I could spot an unmistakable twinkle of mischief covertly peeking out of the corner of her eye. Right there and then I knew Canossa was about to teach me my very first lesson: patience.

There are going to be many more such lessons.

The first time the name “Canossa” was mentioned during the orientation was also the first time I heard of such a place, never mind that I live only about 15-20 minutes away from the area. It was described as a haven of health in the midst of the urban squalor that is Tondo, a sanctuary of wellness for the residents living in the area. I envisioned it as such, and hoped much that in the days to come, I would be able to make a least a small difference in the lives of the patients I will meet along the way.

Kindly picture me then: the incredulous newly self-proclaimed champion of poor people’s health, smug and overly satisfied for having been able to prescribe Cotrimoxazole for a female pediatric patient with recurrent UTI. Thanks to my ever-dependable MIMS, I even went a step further and got the recommended dose and treatment duration verbatim, not missing one presumably vital phrase from the book. Imagine my disbelief and chagrin when, upon seeing my prescription, the attending doctor exclaimed, “Compute! Compute! Never forget the patient’s weight!”

Second lesson: humility. It was all that’s needed to burst my prematurely swollen rubber-bubble-of-a-head and make me realize that there are a lot more bitter melons to devour before I properly earned the right to strut my stuff.

In a resource-poor setting like Canossa, for instance, it is never enough to dabble in the highfalutin rhetorics of medical lore. One must know the diagnosis and the treatment, yes; but far more challenging is the task of having to utilize the social determinants of health – in particular finances and environment – in streamlining the proposed therapeutic regimen to the needs and capabilities of the patient. That goes with prioritizing which laboratory tests to order, or which drugs to prescribe, one small step at a time.

Once I found myself dealing with an elderly female, a recent TB graduate, who came in consulting for arthritis and hypertension. She was hooked on Accupril® (Imidapril) but her BP remained obnoxiously high and non-responsive. A mix of theory, research and common sense told me to suggest shifting to Accuzide® (Imidapril + Hydrochlorothiazide) which seemed an appropriate enough drug for Stage II hypertension, and I reluctantly scribbled the therapeutic plan on a sheet of paper. Lo and behold – when the patient emerged from the (true) doctor’s office, prescription in hand, nothing changed – down to my last sentence of treatment duration!

I must say incidents like these provide the rare silver lining on the gray cloud of any aspiring medical student, and I am immensely thankful to Canossa for raising my confidence to greater, nobler heights. Little, puny medical students like us might consider themselves inept for the job, but for the lines of patients awaiting their turn at Canossa, it didn’t matter. You were the doctor. You were THEIR doctor. Or at least, they see you as one.

My third lesson: faith.

It is faith that has steadfastly remained at the helm of everything else, all through these years. Faith in oneself, plus faith in the belief that a modest health center rooted right smack in shantytown will stubbornly defy the years and persist. Such faith, I believe, goes more than just the fact that Canossa is nun-run. Every morning and afternoon, before activities kick off to their usual flurry, a hymn of worship is offered to the heavens, accompanied afterwards by a short reflection on the day’s Gospel, a fitting act of thanksgiving to the One who has constantly and faithfully heaped blessings of good health, longevity, and success.

Because in itself, Canossa is a success story of success stories packing in more success stories. The volunteers in the “Lingap Lusog” program who administer the DOTS regimen to TB patients were once TB patients themselves, having undergone the same pains of abiding by the arduous six-month DOTS commandment of having to report for daily shots without fail, but which served as the ultimate pot of gold beyond a bleak and potentially endless rainbow.

The entirety of the experience could only prove too humbling for someone who has only begun to learn wearing the sophisticated shoes of the clinics. Our inexperience readily gave way to the subtle expertise of the midwives who could detect fetal position, lie, and stance in the blink of an eye where it could’ve taken us minutes to even just manage a decent educated guess. And nothing compares to the vast opportunities waiting in store for one outside the four walls of the classroom: The indefinable joy of listening to the faint whiff-like beating of a fetal heart inside its mother’s womb. The unspoken wonder of witnessing the gift that is neonatal screening being gently performed on a frail, crying bundle of life. The self-induced catharsis of listening to a patient interject family woes in between symptoms of a yet undiagnosed condition.

All the while trying to be as professional as possible.

As we left Canossa on our last day, the words of Ate Nila somehow came ringing back to haunt my troubled thoughts. “Many doctors have promised to come back but they never did,” she commented, shaking her head. There was a hint of sadness in her voice. “The few who did return, like Dr. Josie, are our heroes. They are true heroes.”

Which prompted me to ponder: Does Canossa really need a hero, after all?

Perhaps it doesn’t.

Those heroes already exist in its midst, empowered and strengthened by a community that’s determined to win the raging battle against disease, at any cost. I’m definitely proud to say I had been one of those heroes – if only for a while, through giving back to my fellow countrymen the best I have, the best I can, and the best I am.

storms of our lives (part II)

2008-06-27T15:11:00.004+08:00

Frank

"With Typhoon Frank's course altered between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. Saturday, Panay Island was suddenly on its path…”

Three hundred miles between Iloilo and Manila –
Three hundred times half-wanting to bridge the distance between.

Signal number three.

Here and now, time fleeting as I parse the final verdict –
news spawning hushed terror from across too many islands.

Like a bolt from the blue.

Before dawn, before morn. A storm stalking over slumber –
hands of clocks not even reaching twelve full strikes of an hour.

I want to know.

The kilometers persisting tell no tales of their own –
save the silences that linger, themselves aching to be filled.

Thousands stranded.

A bus conks out at midnight, in the middle of nowhere –
mud-infested waters rising steadily to the waist.

Houses covered.

One man teeters on the rooftop, waiting for salvation –
frantic pleas drowned out in the cascade of rain and thunder.

Worst nightmare.

To come home pale and dripping wet, eyes bloodshot and sunken –
the look on his face ashen in the waning candlelight.

Roads impassable.

Empty avenues now laced with swirling eddies of death –
traffic halted to a standstill in this city of grids and blocks.

A very sad day.

But no sadder than when talking to a voice over the phone –
“lost a home”. “future uncertain”. “back again at step one.”

State of calamity.

Soon a forgotten piece of history, fine print, black and white –
guilt-smudged fingers tainted with the blood of those yet missing.

All storms blow over.

The woes of a city struggling to stay afloat on its knees –
words whispering pure hope, a newfound litany of faith.

We’re all right, we’re all fine.

the leaves in our midst.

2008-02-25T14:36:00.001+08:00

(The following article was written for and appeared in the very first issue of the ICCHS Alumni Newsletter, launched at about the same time as the 96th Founding Anniversary of the school.)

A tree shedding leaves is arguably one of the most enchanting rituals of nature. From the largest branch to the tiniest twig, the sight of a fragile leaf drifting off these wooden appendages to join a thousand others on the ground evokes an unflinching sense of wonder and curiosity in the bystander. Of course, biology has its own scientific way of explaining this phenomenon; but I prefer to look at it differently, from a perspective angled beneath mere logic and reason.

For one, it amazes me how these falling leaves – no matter how dry or shriveled – can always make themselves useful. Pressed between pages, they make fantastic decorations for artwork. Campfires and compost pits count them an indispensable component. And if you watch closely enough, you might even espy some animal stealthily coming around to gather the leaves as materials for a nest, or simply to feed.

But what fascinates me most is how these fallen leaves never stray too far from home. Except under extreme conditions, they are just within the vicinity, ubiquitous leaves in our midst, crowding around the parent tree and surrounding its roots, as if somehow implying a gesture of return.

In her poignant autobiography, “Falling Leaves Return to their Roots”, Adeline Yen Mah immortalized these leaves coming full circle. She wrote: “All people have roots that reach far back in time that contribute to the legacy that makes up one’s life in the present. As we get older, we tend to go back to our beginnings.”

It almost seems uncanny how Hwa Siong alumni can share these same hazy beginnings. We are certainly a diverse lot, the native Ilonggo finding himself joined by a hodgepodge of personalities pouring in from all over the country and beyond. Our student lives took shape in the form of reluctant leaves huddled on the branches of a tree: thick, thin, frail, faint-colored and even underdeveloped leaves, all receiving protection and nourishment from the tree’s roots. In time we grew, sharing the same hardships and impatiently looking forward to that moment when we would be finally shed off into the outside world. The ultimate goal was to get a diploma, take a bow, and become full-fledged Hwa Siong alumni.

There are people who say you aren’t really a bona fide alumnus until you have attended your first major class reunion. Imagine the endless stories flowing their way around, adding spice to the occasion – of life in college, of newfound friends, of falling in love for the first time. Or if the reunion took place much later – of new jobs, of changing values and priorities, of our plans for the future slowly unfolding into place. It is intriguing to know that these stories will eventually wind up into a single path. The last giddy hours will find us thriving on common soil, digging common plots and tackling common themes, nostalgic voices echoing the same shared sentiments.

How we routinely sang the Alma Mater song with improvised lyrics. How an inspiring teacher taught us the real meaning of education. How our well-crafted misdemeanors took hilarious wrong turns. How we resolved to make “Diligence, Sincerity, Loyalty, Courage” our credo for life.

Like falling leaves, we too, ended up returning to our Hwa Siong roots.

Incredibly, one such return to my grade school days reminded me of how choosing which leaves to use in art class could spell a subtle difference. Not all leaves produce the desired effects; some decay quickly into indistinguishable forms even before you finish handling them. Moreover, there are leaves endowed with a more combustible composition, allowing them to burn better in the fire. And needless to say, animals prefer sturdier, more waterproof leaves for a home.

These instances all drove to a single point: Leaves reflect the identity of their source. In the same way, alumni also reflect the identity of their Alma Mater. The coconut is known for its ever-reliable leaves; the Hwa Siong graduate is known for his fluency of the Chinese language, expertise in math and firm set of values. But good impressions can only do so much. Our crucial roles stretch beyond cheap talk and fond memories, requiring us to harness mind, body and soul in unselfishly contributing to an exponential pattern of growth and advancement. We are the most effective and valuable resource Hwa Siong will ever have.

The Great Fire of 1966 goes down as an enduring witness to this undoubted fact. My grandfather, himself a former president of the Alumni Association, used to recall how the whole school was literally razed to the ground, along with it the hopes and dreams of its students. The prospect was depressing. Everyone was fast losing heart, and suddenly the alumni became the last shining beacon of light to those who needed it most – working with tireless zeal to rebuild the school, soliciting funds from the Ilonggo community, seeking temporary shelter for dormitorians, some going as far as to voluntarily take in a few students per household for the meantime (our modest dwelling one of them.) Their remarkable efforts showed to the world once and for all that they were no ordinary leaves. They were leaves of the highest caliber.

Times have changed. For the last forty years, we were lucky enough to have had eluded catastrophes of similar destructive magnitude. But in a world slick with modernity, another challenge rises to the helm: that of keeping up with the bizarre pace of life, with the arbitrary, sometimes erratic, compromises of society. Whoever it was who said that alumni are the antennae of the school aptly captured the heart of the matter. We are the ones who traverse the floors of academes, banks, offices, hospitals, courtrooms, even the silver screen – trying to keep abreast of change. We are the leaves that stayed on the ground long enough to sense when lightning threatens to strike the tree, or when an earthquake lurks underneath to shake its very foundations.

Yes, being an outstanding leaf isn’t easy. The risks far outnumber the rewards. We are under constant attack from the harsh elements of nature, subject to the whims of controlling forces, capricious weathers and cruel pairs of feet only too mindful to reach their respective destinations. But we are also fueled by the uplifting thought that the more we stick to our Hwa Siong roots, the more we realize that though we came from different walks of life and parted on different ways, we were all watered by the same substance that runs deep in the tree. And this affirmed oneness, borne on a shared passion to conquer greater heights, is what will steer our common goals for Hwa Siong to fruition. After all, no single leaf can make a bonfire. One leaf will not create a nest, or a meal, or a stunning finished work of art.

Today we are roused by the same clarion call to summon the “falling leaf” spirit in us and bring what we do to the highest possible level. Whether Ilonggo, Tagalog, Cebuano, Negrense, Mindanaoan, mainland Chinese, Japanese or Korean, let us all prove ourselves that we are the same exemplary leaves in everybody’s midst, the same priceless pieces of a grand old tree best known for her unending cycle of selflessly nurturing and then tenderly releasing quality leaves into the world.

Then, and only then, can we truly say that we have indeed come full circle and triumphantly returned to her roots – by heart.

flaws.

2008-01-14T00:29:00.000+08:00

In grade school, I once had a teacher who never gave a perfect score.

“A perfect score,” she reasoned, “means you have no room for improvement. And the young graders that you are, you certainly have more than enough room for improvement.”

That is, of course, her opinion. But deep inside, I was head over heels in consternation and somehow thought she was losing her mind. This puny 9-year old is one hell of a perfectionist, and if given the chance, he’d have everything picture-perfect, thank you very much. So goes my erstwhile self-imposed 3-mistake rule in taking exams: 1 mistake – satisfactory; 2 mistakes – straighten up your act; 3 mistakes – CODE RED, CODE RED!

Anything beyond that was too horrible to even think about, a macabre contemplation on the Hadean waters of academic suicide. My mortal enemy was Alexander Pope’s venerable epigram: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” Every time someone casually mentioned it, I would silently cringe in derision and invariably come down with momentary tinnitus. Talk about radical perfectionism.

Imagine me, then, enforcing this gruesome concept, Hitler-style, over the years. Failure was simply not an option. I vigorously pursued everything at stake, and the extremely high standards I set for myself soon became a reluctant comfort zone, something I unconsciously imposed even on others. It didn’t help that I had typical Type A personality – prone to nervous breakdown, heart attack and chronic headache. My mom would sometimes shake her head and say, “You are competing with yourself,” but the mere shrug I gave almost implied the fact that perhaps, that’s just the way I wanted it to be. Soon, however, I realized that the whole get-it-100%-right thing is slowly taking its toll, ultimately ricocheting back to its original owner with a magnitude ten, nay, even a hundred, times greater.

The culprit: flaws.

Little, seemingly insignificant flaws.

Whether we like it or now, they come creeping into our lives one way or another. I used to metaphorically call them “the unseen gatecrashers of humanity” for the simple reason that they do just that: they gatecrash. Right into your head. Right in the middle of a succulent yet frivolous endeavor. And right smack into your own personal ivory tower so it’ll crumble and send you tumbling down, level-headed and feet planted on ground. What’s more, they force you to abandon spilt milk on the floor and proceed to the next best thing: Forgive yourself and move on.

Pope and his words.

Instinctively, the easiest way to face everything is to laugh it off. Think overused cliché: “Laughter is the best medicine.” No antidote like a well-deserved belly laugh till you roll over your seat and tears stream down your cheeks. In my case, I tend to intellectualize more, preferring to direct my energies towards understanding and shedding light on the issue. More often than not, however, I end up digressing and abandoning the cause. Inasmuch as I hated it, “perfect” had to fly out the window.

Because sometimes, you can never get quite as seamless as you would like to be. Because sometimes, it pays to pick the right battles. Because sometimes, just to survive, you have to play stoic and indifferent.

Not to say the road to remission had always been a smooth one. Sometime in high school, I scored 99 in a Trigonometry exam. The test was no piece of cake given the time constraints, and the appropriate emotion should’ve been one of smug satisfaction, not utter dismay. Mr. Conlu merely grinned and said, “You know, in many ways, 99 is the ideal score. Almost perfect, but still not there yet. That’s where the motivation is at its fiercest.”

He was right. It was a case of fanning the fire with more flames. The situation could go either way: The flames could rise higher and the fire could burn brighter, eventually morphing into an unstoppable, raging inferno. Or fate could pull off a sudden surprise by sending along a single whiff of air and snuffing things out into one big cloud of smoke.

For me, inferno sounds much better. And lucky that I kept the motivation running strong till the zenith was reached.

In many ways, I’m still a perfectionist. I continue to demand a certain level of performance from myself, and without knowing it, from others as well. The difference now lies in the way I have come to view flaws as friends, rather than fiends. And good thing, too, for med school is where you’ll see all your flaws laid out to no end, leaving you hanging on the edge of a cliff for dear life. To all the doppelgangers who have unwittingly played part of the Tampo-Zuniga firing squad, you make us wholly human. Erring humans. And nothing goes beyond that, unless we raise the bar higher in transcending mea culpa towards holistically and perfectly accepting our imperfections.

Which, by the way, is REALLY perfect.

in memoriam.

2007-11-01T16:43:00.000+08:00

All Souls’ Day

“Here lies his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown,
For Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.”

- Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

It all started with memory, how our talks
gave way to silence. You are making sense
of letters etched on cold and lonely stone

and of the good earth beneath it, spinning,
unspoken pleas mouthing resurrection
and regret. The afterlife, you mumbled,

when we move on to the next. It is strange
how we fear dark, frail moment of blackness,
sudden light emerging at the height of redemption.

Do you still remember it? The last time
he spoke, the breeze betraying your murmurs,
you had pushed back an answer, attempting

no goodbyes. He replied, flesh and bones –
nothing thereafter. Those words and white noise.
What you really meant, however, was not

"ashes to ashes", or "dust to dust", or
it would have been too easy. Slab of stone,
bunch of flowers, this piece of hallowed ground.

Over the grave we watched over, kept free
from weeds or tidied, even nature knows
its places. The sparrows have alighted

on the branch of some tree, perhaps seeking
deliverance, their wings flapping in time
to the rhythm of prayer. And the candles

are burning, bearing fiery witness, red sparks
and wisps of smoke, melted wax approaching
ruin. They have ways of telling stories,

little wind-secrets to your ear. So listen well:
hear them calling. And pardon the voices
if they whisper loud enough to the grass

at your feet. Maybe the sparrows will hear.
Look, they are now ready to take flight,
half-rising into the sky, perhaps already knowing

how it ended.

ave maria.

2007-10-29T14:44:00.000+08:00

It was close to midnight, but the number of people easing their way along the front-row pews is nowhere near dwindling. Each time a row of healed, enlightened parishioners stood up to leave their seats, hastily making signs of the cross as they strode out, another batch – equally eager, equally hopeful – would arrive to take their place, brimming with anticipation for the touch of an elderly woman clad in white, as immaculate as that radiant, glowing image magnificently enthroned on the altar, a halo on her head and cherubs at her feet, her arms outstretched towards the faithful, a contented smile reflecting pure adoration of her children.

A decade before, I had seen myself in a similar scenario: the same pious crowd, the same kindly woman in white but perhaps younger, the same beautiful image overlooking the vast multitude from her place atop the altar. My most vivid memories, however, were composed of figments in the realm of the extraordinary. Clusters of blooming rose petals were wondrously transformed into hosts, some forming religious caricatures as if carved into existence by an invisible hand. A huge container of water poured out fresh oil, and in many instances people suddenly collapsed on the floor, hysterically screaming “Jesus! Jesus!” And of course, there were certain individuals, including my family, who identified themselves with “Our Mother of the Eucharist and Grace.”

In his stirring homily, parish chaplain Fr. Edwin Castillo called it a name above any other name. “No other woman can achieve the same title as Mary, for she is truly Mother of Christ and the source of all Grace.” Such a title, he pointed out, is as intriguing and as mysterious as the woman who rightfully holds it. For someone to be Mother of God and serve as wellspring of Grace at the same time, there had to be an unseen connection bridging faith and understanding, to some extent even defying the most sophisticated tenets of human logic.

Tracing back time sheds a hint of light on this little semantic riddle. On August 15, 1991, an apparition of our Lady appeared to one Puring Fruto in Quezon City, a rosary dangling from her right hand and a scapular on her left. She was dressed in a robe of pristine white, and on her chest was an unmistakable image of the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart of Christ – which she explained symbolized her body as the sole source of Christ’s human nature. Her purpose was clear: She was beseeching humans to pray for the salvation of souls in purgatory, urging people to harness the tremendous power of the rosary as a weapon to achieve world peace.

It was the first of a series of manifestations that eventually came to include the archangel Baraquiel and an additional appeal to pray for the beatification of Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo as the first Filipina saint. Armed with conviction, Sister Puring promptly started her mission. There was no stopping the message Mary wanted to propagate, and a core group of staunch devotees was formed. Miracle after miracle took place – some right under the noses of doubting ecclesiastics – and the movement traveled to far-flung places as Cebu, Iloilo, Tacloban and Pangasinan. These, plus the media giving Mary her own share of the limelight – what with the exclusive interviews and extensive news coverage provided by ABS-CBN and similar news channels – had more people flocking to witness our Mother’s saving Grace, some firmly believing, others inspired beyond words, most going home with a newfound sense of hope.

Of course, pomp and circumstance had no measure on my nine year-old self back then. The first time the beloved Mother visited Iloilo City, deigning in our humble home, Sister Puring had asked my little sister and I to close our eyes and state our most fervent request. Then she gently laid her hands on our heads and muttered a little prayer. What took place thereafter was a surreal experience. All at once a light warmth began to envelop my insides, and I was filled with a force steadily pushing me towards a different level of consciousness. After a few seconds, she asked us to open our eyes and out of curiosity, inquired about our wishes.

“Perfect scores in all exams.”

“A third eye!”

It made her smile; clearly amused. Mary intercedes all our heartfelt yearnings to her Son, both the spoken and the unsaid, however childishly ridiculous they may be. But eleven years and much contemplation later, I realized we still had a lot to learn.

One of the things I discovered, incidentally, was how faith can be so immensely phenomenal, standing up against the ravages of time to remain as one of the last few great equalizers of men. Devotion to our Mother is no different. Her heart has found the well-off converging with the poorest of the poor, devout women hobnobbing with the newly baptized, the crippled elderly on wheelchairs alongside feisty toddlers on trams. As I learned years before, “True faith will find a way to survive.” Perhaps it is precisely because of the devotion’s divine nature that it has become what it is today: a genuine faith devoted to a genuine source.

And so when our Lady visited Iloilo the second time around – right smack in the middle of semestral break – I felt that she was drawing me directly into her fold, to be more than a mere spectator of this joyous occasion. During the evenings that followed her long-awaited arrival, I was able to serve as commentator, lector, rosary leader, choir member, distributor and assistant, in no particular order. The night I unwittingly found myself doing a round of Josh Groban’s You Raise Me Up, marveling at the thought of having hit all the high notes in the right places, Tita Myrna had told me: “Sing like you are singing for her alone. Sing like you are singing for no one else.” And I remember telling myself: For my Lady, everything. Because you have already done everything.

In 1994, my formerly hard-drinking father was diagnosed to have liver cirrhosis with esophageal varices, a grave complication of the disease. However, it was two years after when the dreaded event materialized: the varices ruptured and he began to bleed profusely, losing so much blood he had to be airlifted to Manila for emergency management. The prospect was extremely poor, had it not been for a family friend who advised us to visit Sister Puring, where the true healing began. My father recovered in no time and was hailed by doctors as a miracle, though deep inside we knew Mary was the true miracle, the source of all Grace.

The following year, my father started his annual pilgrimage to our Lady’s feast every September, and has never missed it since. In return, she continued to bring us a sheer abundance of Grace, her shining rays of love penetrating every aspect of our multifaceted lives. Both my grandparents met their timely deaths without much suffering, while my aunt was given a second lease on life after being struck with pulmonary embolism. Our family business surmounted many a crisis, and my siblings and I enjoyed a clean academic record. Other families who have experienced being uplifted by the same comforting arms of our Lady thanked Sister Puring for bringing her into their homes. Some even hailed her as a living saint, a label she is quick to refute. “I am just an instrument,” she corrected. All of us are instruments.

How do you explain the old woman who, despite aching knees and brittle legs, managed to hobble to Church for the nightly mass? Or the stores that closed down early on purpose, just so workers could experience our Mother’s healing touch? Or the simple rural folk who left their fields in the sun, trekking miles to reach the parish, unmindful of sweat and dust? We are her children, after all, and a child’s universal instinct is to cry out for its mother.

Thus when time finally came for our Lady to depart, my emotions were decidedly ambivalent. It’s a feeling that stemmed from not having had enough of her presence, at the same time acknowledging the fact that thousands more yearned for her, desperately needing her as much as we do. Amid the throng of devotees singing praise to the highest heavens, kneeling before her in awe, I looked up and saw that her smile was the sweetest one yet. And it somehow occurred to me that this might just be the real essence of devotion – a journey for truth, for salvation, for words hidden beneath those fitted lips, for answers waiting to be unearthed by someone who wanted perfect scores and third eyes and who may have finally found the meaning of Grace, at last.

microcosms.

2007-06-12T18:06:00.000+08:00

Dust

Somewhere they assemble, fragments in space
gathering into a mound, dissolved and defying nothingness.

How it’s never noticed: one swirling cloud of matter
eddying to the ground. We only give it names – dust,

dirt, mess, filth – avoided, scorned, evaded, detested,
swept up into the tangles of someone else’s broom

along a sidewalk. What is quickly spurned is barely
seen by the naked eye: transient particles of life,

touched now and then by streams of impeccable sunlight.
So what if this turns up into someone else’s world,

those specks suddenly magnified, figures breathing dust
from our everyday lives? We may never get to know

how the invisible exists, after the sweeping,
after it’s gone. Listen: There are whimpers behind us,

the terribly asthmatic, helplessness mingling
with ways of the unknown, the last remaining pieces

swept away all the same, vague illusions in their place,
perhaps second-guessing, coughing sputum in its wake.

at the core of my being.

2007-06-08T17:09:00.001+08:00

(Today is Filipino-Chinese Friendship Day. First celebrated last 2002, the occasion gathers Chinoys from all over the country for an evening of food, camaraderie and superb performances. Incidentally, this year also marks 32 years of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and China - two countries separated by a mere strip of water. The piece below was written for the Fil-Chi digest Tulay Magazine and came out in its special Fil-Chi Friendship Day issue last June 14, 2005.)

If I look back on where I was a year-and-a-half ago, things would have been different: One, I would have been dead set on enrolling in a different school; and two, going to UP would have been the last thing on my mind.

It’s not hard to see why. Just take it from someone who before was not allowed to, who all his life had not been encouraged to, and who naturally, had never thought of becoming a Maroon – but ended up being one anyway. At first, my parents didn't think going to UP was such a good idea. They have frequently droned on about how difficult life in the University would be: from having to contend with eccentric professors to carrying placards in the searing heat by day and lining up in some abandoned basement for a fraternity initiation by night. Patiently enduring the long talks, I do appreciate their concerns; yet somehow these just don’t do the trick anymore.

You see, I’m what many people would call a “Chinoy”. If the word doesn’t ring a bell, think of it as somewhere along the line between Mr. Zhang and Mang Pedro – you get the picture. I’m the modern-day product of a few old Chinese chaps who immigrated to the Philippines sometime in the early 20th century, tried out their luck and eventually got settled. Essentially, I’m made up of two identities – a “Pinoy” one and a Chinese one (thus the term Chinoy.) The “Pinoy” one I can readily see day through day, thanks to some 80 million “kababayans” scattered all over this archipelago. But since only about 1 million of these have so-called Chinese identities, with the number all the more smaller in UP, I half-surmised that my parents feared it would be all too easy for everything to disappear into thin air, for a clueless guy like me to have his Chinese identity peeled off in just a matter of time.

Perhaps this is the reason why ever since childhood, our parents saw to it that we grew up knowing this Chinese identity, which I initially had mixed feelings about. On one hand, the trips to Chinese temples and grandiose celebrations of the Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival brought us much enjoyment. Our imaginations widened as we engrossed ourselves in Chinese stories and myths, munched “siomai” and “chopsuey”, acquired trained eyes for Jackie Chan and Jet Li and relished the soothing melodies of “Yue liang dai biao wo de xin”. Those were the days, I suppose.

On the other hand, we were also made to speak Chinese at home (though among us siblings we mostly don’t) and attend Chinese classes alongside English ones until high school. I could still remember my late grandmother as being the greatest influence when it comes to the language game. Once when we were small, she even instructed one of our house help to learn simple Fukien so we could converse with her in the language! But being young, my mind was filled with a lot of questions, as to why we have to talk in Chinese at home when vernacular seemed to be the most convenient way of communicating, as to why we have to take extra pains and headaches in school learning another language when we could be outside playing and having a good time. Numerous times my parents have tried to explain why everything is so, but my stubborn self turned many a deaf ear and only now did I understand the meaning and significance of it all.

Our nation has been and remains a huge melting pot of cultures, where all around us people with similar “Pinoy” identities but are of different ethnicities and nationalities can be seen hobnobbing each other day after day. As I’ve stated before, Chinoys comprise only a minute fraction of this enormous hodgepodge. It is precisely because of this that I am all the more taught to be aware of who I am and of who I must try to become. By taking care of our Chinese identity, I realized that we gave ourselves a sense of individuality in this vast “Pinoy” sea. Since in our everyday lives we interact with myriad people, some of whom may be worlds different from us, our opinions, ideas and beliefs are greatly influenced, which in turn may also influence who we are and who we perceive ourselves to be. Steadfastly holding on to a true identity does not easily permit that.

But still we are Chinoy, and because of this our parents also wanted us to grow up enjoying our freer, other “Pinoy” side, supplementing our Chinese identity and completing our overall Chinoy identity. We are devout Catholics. My siblings and I enjoy Jollibee as much as we enjoy Chowking. We listen to pop music as much as classical Chinese songs, and tales of Maria Makiling and Juan Tamad are very much present in our lives. This is because my parents, inasmuch as they wanted us to retain this distinct Chinese identity, do not limit us there; rather, they allow us to observe and experience things from a perspective that is truly “Chinoy” – one that encompasses both “Pinoy” and Chinese points of view, one that is uniquely ours and theirs as well. This way, we are able to expand our horizons and enrich our knowledge and culture from both sides of the fence.

Now that I’m in UP, I get to really go through what being a Chinoy brings about, especially since there lies an obviously major difference between the environment of an austere, nearly puritanical Chinese school and that of a much politically inclined state university. Of course, things went on fine with my ”Pinoy” identity primarily taking over. But soon my Chinese one gradually showed up and I have to admit, my first few days in the Oblation grounds were a period of much revelation. Though already expected, I was still nevertheless stunned by the sudden change of atmosphere, seeing students casually enter in shorts, slippers and even nightgowns! Furthermore, my monosyllabic surname would always stand out during a roll call, and you could bet that any mention of a Chinese word would elicit “oohs”, “aahs” or plain confused stares from my classmates.

Yet in spite of all these, I’m grateful that I’m still able to live a relatively normal life in the University. I’m even more grateful to have had the privilege of being born into a society where Chinese assimilation has become one of, if not the most, stable. I am fortunate enough to have been able to learn and speak my ancestral tongue in all my thirteen years of schooling and practice centuries-old customs with nothing to fear or be ashamed about. Most of all, I’m free to raise my head and chin up in simply being Chinoy.

With China already an “awakened dragon”, having sent its first astronaut into space and gearing up for the 2008 Olympics, and with an increasing demand for Mandarin speaking jobs to cater to billions of Chinese around the globe, I am finally able to see my parents’ intentions in a different light, as their words now echo like nuggets of wisdom, convincing me to come to terms with my Chinese identity and polish it with dignity. Whatever I do and wherever I find myself in, I know that I will always be who I am – thanks to what they have instilled in me, one that is forever bound to be at the core of my being.

the ten joys of summer.

2007-06-03T16:13:00.000+08:00

Summer has come and gone. The unbearable heat of the noontime sun is gradually giving way to the thick black clouds of the rainy season, and storms – whether we like them or not – are once again looming over the horizon. And here I am, psyching myself up for classes and bracing for the incessant deluge of monsoon (and exam) rains. But if only to look back on the happy, carefree weeks that were, who can deny that summer had been a real blast? Below are ten reasons on why I personally felt my summer had been a swell one, no regrets:

1. Holy Week
As a child, it used to be watching the grandiose candlelit processions of saints that went deep into the night on Good Friday, serving in church and doing the rounds of the Visita Iglesia with my family as I grew older, and most recently taking part in the liturgy of the Word for the second consecutive year. I was up to the challenge: Deliver the Passion as if the congregation were witnessing the actual suffering of Christ, and partake of Easter as a celebration of life itself. Beyond the petty excursions people crave about during this time of year, a simple personal reflection is sometimes all you really need.

2. Business
Our store was severely undermanned over the summer, resulting in everyone moving and rushing double-time to get things done twice as much, and twice as fast. I wasn’t spared from all the hurly-burly, at times having to attend to different matters all at once. But I learned some new skills, not to mention the understated importance of being an efficient multitasker. And of course, there’s cultivating the work ethic that will prove invaluable in the years to come. Not at all a bad way to keep yourself productive.

3. Bank Tellers
I guess my innate charm hit the mark again. An invariable part of doing errands for my mom consisted of trips to BDO-Iznart for updates, deposits and payments. And how can you not resist meeting and befriending the colorful people who kept the place running: Tito Joel (the manager), Ma’am Ruby, Joy, Ann, Conchita, Emily, Cherry Ann and newest addition Nessie. Bills and passbooks exchanged for jokes and pleasantries, my presence readily given away whenever I wore those rubber slippers that noisily clicked as I made my way along the shiny tiled floors.

4. Weekends
Studying in Manila, I had a lot of catching up to do when it came to good old high school classmates. What better way to spend warm weekend nights than meet up for a nice dinner or a movie, followed by a leisurely nighttime stroll along some quiet downtown street, and afterwards a refreshing cup of coffee? Our pockets were limited but the stories were endless and the camaraderie incomparable.

5. Going Places and Playing Host
This included attending my first real fiesta ("Hopping on a Bus, I Reveled in a Fiesta One Weekend in April") at Ralph’s place an hour away from the city. The journey revealed a nice, budding countryside that brought back to mind the words of my Canadian cousin Edrea: “You should get to know your country first.” Fiestas are almost synonymous with good food – which didn’t leave us at all disappointed. We also had a mini Iloilo-Bacolod exchange program with our classmate Trick, and last summer was Level I: the basics. Hopefully next year, we will be able to move on to Level II: the hinterlands.

6. Voting
My sentiments were voiced out in an earlier post (“The First Ballot”) but I thought it worth mentioning again as the first ballot is such an important milestone for every law-abiding, civic-minded citizen of this country. The elections in our place were generally peaceful and clean, yet I can’t help thinking of the far-flung barrios where people voted in silent fear or submission, unable to exercise their right through a simple exertion of will. There were those who sacrificed more – their freedom and even their lives just to uphold a genuine democratic cause.

7. Algebra and Trigonometry
Well, I played mentor to my brother and got my wish, too. I had been missing Math for quite sometime, and was therefore amazed that I still got a satisfactory grip on the principles with a little recall now and then. What students usually learn in the span of one school year, we crammed into just about 3 weeks. And no doubt it was a great mental workout, being both teacher and student at the same time.

8. American Idol
When the dust finally settled, Jordin Sparks was the last performer standing. I was rooting for versatile technician Melinda Doolittle, with Jordin placing a close second on my list. It’s not everyday that you get to see a promising 17 year-old fresh from high school who endears the world with her thousand-watt smile and who can belt out songs to the sky with a voice defying the force of gravity. Ever since I got hooked on the show after watching Fil-Am sensation Jasmine Trias on it, I’m always looking forward to the next season.

9. APO Hiking Society
They were a feisty, middle-aged trio of boundless energy who gave it their all, conquered our hearts and sang like there’s no tomorrow during their packed concert in Iloilo last June 2. An incredible singing prowess peppered with wisecracking remarks and upbeat humor kept us glued to the stage and elicited rales of laughter from the audience. Champions of OPM, the APO is a true testament to Filipinos as first-class entertainers. And they continue to hike their way up the world, still, to bring the Philippine flag to even greater heights.

And the best reason…

10. 8 Hours of Sleep!
‘Nuff said.

the first ballot.

2007-05-14T14:14:00.001+08:00

"That's it." I told myself when I finally got up from my seat to submit that delicate piece of paper, running its written contents in my head. Minutes later I emerged into the sunlight with a purple smudge on my right thumb and indelible ink on my right index finger – two telltale signs that I have just perfected my duty as a citizen of this country.

As a classmate put it in her blog, "I was happy. I voted." And perhaps rightly so, especially when you're one giddy first-time voter who has just turned 18 within the last three years, and who hasn't had the previous excitement of seeing his/her name posted on the door of some precinct, foolproof evidence laid out for the whole world to know that you have finally acquired the power to choose the leaders of the land.

The experience was surreal. And strangely real, too. Seated in a secluded spot far from the prying eyes and stretched necks of those who strained through the window panes for a glimpse of democracy (or what comes close to it), since voting is what makes a democracy after all, you suddenly find yourself an unlikely judge shut off from the outside world for a few private minutes by the mere shadow of a secrecy folder, time seemingly at a standstill as you finalize the list you have been attempting to assemble over the course of weeks or months, resolving an internal crisis on whether to fill up that last empty space with some lucky candidate's name or cross it out in haste (and disgust) altogether, making sure you had done yourself justice in writing down what you stood for and believed in.

Because that is what voting is about: standing up for your beliefs. It’s the ultimate hidden power every true-blue citizen wields, ready to be dished out at the call of civic duty. It is also a great equalizer – former presidents getting no more than the same one vote as the poorest of the poor. And not just any “voting” will do – it has to be wise voting, informed voting; the freedom of choice coexisting with the responsibility of knowledge.

Such has been the clamor of all who, in one way or another, have been seeking out every possible means for a holistic picture of each candidate. A common ground is almost always shared in the lack of information, practically leading to a less-than-informed, if not haphazard, choice. People resort to racist and/or religious biases, forgetting the more essential platforms and track records. This may partly explain the observed low turnout of voters, who, dismayed and tired of voting for nothing, have somehow made it their mission to keep some precincts relatively uninhabited. My dad, who is in Manila for health reasons, wasn’t able to exercise his right. But it is the least of his concerns. It’s just one vote, anyway. Many people I know too, who have either failed to register or who simply considered it a waste of time and energy to troop to their assigned precinct, have preferred to do other things more worthwhile. It’s just one vote, anyway.

One vote?

One single, tiny, utterly insignificant vote?

And we go back once more to the story that I believe has been around since the time elections were invented. A lot of historical fallacies have been circulating in the web regarding the astounding power of a single vote, like how some states allegedly became part of the US by virtue of one vote, or how a major political figure was removed or put into power by that same single vote. Though I don't exactly commend these sites for their sheer failure to verify their sources, the message they bring across is loud and clear: Never underestimate the power of your vote. It IS enough. And it IS important. It counts. Assuming you don't become the unwitting victim of some nameless, faceless shenanigan, that is.

I am reminded of the time I registered as a first-time voter in the Comelec last December. The miniature office was already bursting at the seams with the throng of youths shoving and elbowing their way through the narrow gate, prompting a cacophony of mixed yells, cries and shouts of anger, desperation, frustration – sometimes all at once. It didn’t help that the guards deployed to maintain order were in a brazen fit themselves, hurling their own tirade of threats and intimidating anyone who got too stubborn-headed.

But again, the message was clear: The youth are there. And they sincerely WANT to vote. To think people have been too keen to say that the youth are slowly becoming apathetic to the plight of this country. Nevertheless, the situation was so dismal that it merited the attention of no less than the city mayor, who was himself already reeling from the outpouring of complaints from concerned citizens. This would have to be a stern warning to the Comelec to straighten up their act, or they won't be seeing much of new voters in the coming years if the nasty trend continues.

And what of the fancy anomalies digging right into the electoral process itself? One disheartened columnist in a major daily chided the sanctimonious show of glib candidates strutting their showbiz-styled stuff on TV, saying the polls have become a mere competition for those who hold the clout and the means for an assured victory. Sadly, there indeed lies some truth to this statement. Sometime last week, my mom casually asked one of our regular customers in jest, "Any bills yet?" which I initially perceived to be the profitability of business with the upcoming elections. Imagine my shock and great surprise when I found out that she actually referred to the sordid process of vote-buying, and talking about it as if it were the most natural thing in the world!

Why not, I half-concluded after some minutes of self-realization. It's time to wake up to the present, and if you're one of those who find themselves assailed with a daily dose of bad news, sculpted across the front page, what's not to expect? The arithmetic of dagdag-bawas, the superb flying acts, the dead returning from their graves – these will come in their own time, perhaps not with our own eyes, perhaps not with our own ears, perhaps not with anybody else's – but they're there, definitely.

So maybe with that one single vote I cast, I may not make a difference. Well, I suppose not yet – the latest news on TV show the members of the leading pack ahead by a few thousand votes over their closest rivals. Or perhaps, fully unaware of it, I turned out to be that unwitting victim whose ballot has fallen prey to deceitful hands. A thousand possibilities exist, and to accurately predict the fate of my one true ballot would be to say that it hovers somewhere between being safe inside a bonafide Comelec box and being left floating (perhaps already dog-eaten) in the murky waters of an underground estero. But the fact that I was able to vote with a clean conscience is enough to keep me sleeping soundly tonight. My first ballot was cast, and proud to say I cast it with my dignity intact.

blackout sessions.

2007-05-10T23:10:00.000+08:00

Lights off.

Only, this isn't a theatrical production, or a simple bulb-switch test for that matter. You know it the instant the electric fan also stops humming, the instant your beloved PC switches off without warning. It's every urban denizen's regular pain in the neck – a blackout.

Or here, what we usually refer to as a "brownout" (Honestly, how did the term come about?), one of two unwanted phenomena we've been getting a lot of lately (the other one is intermittent water shortage.) Last April, we experienced almost weekly blackouts, most of which just struck from out of nowhere. The worst one – lasting almost a hefty 30 hours – put the last straw on the patience of the otherwise mild-mannered Ilonggos, creating such a huge public uproar that the city government, under attack from angry complainants, threatened to slash the budget of the National Power Corporation (Napocor) should the latter fail to put its act together in the nick of time.

Fortunately after that the frequency of blackouts was significantly reduced – until yesterday that is, when we found ourselves enduring not one, not two, but THREE successive sessions in the dark, a pitiless cycle of lights on-lights off and jubilation-frustration episodes that took place arbitrarily in the store, at the dinner table, and in the bedroom, all unexpected and much more unwelcome when you already see yourself drenched in sweat and intensely yearning for that moment of electrical reemergence to show up like an oasis in the desert.

But that was too much of wishful thinking, I guess – not necessarily a good thing lest “wishful” turns to “wistful” in the long run. If there’s a side to blackouts that people don’t readily acknowledge, it’s that it can make you realize that electricity is such a huge necessity, but that we can also do without it – many thanks to emergency lamps, flashlights, and the trustworthy candle whose services to humankind cannot be simply undermined. True enough, as I stole a quick glimpse out the window into the next household, I beheld a lone candle bravely permeating the otherwise bleak monotony of a powerless landscape, its own steady strand of light defying the harsh environment. And again, you realize that contrary to what your own childhood made you believe, the dark isn't so frightening after all.

Blackouts take the edge out of our perfect everyday routines. It can give you the opportunity to make proper use of your time, having the conversations you never had, picking the chance to reflect and pray, taking a leisurely walk around the house, listening to the sounds of nature predominating. And it just struck me how the night could seem so much purer and unspoiled when there are no sounds of technology to clog your ears, when all you hear are crickets and birds, forgive the occasional vehicle passing by.

For almost five redundant hours, we waited eagerly for that ecstatic shout of joy from neighbors proclaiming the good news, which would then be accompanied by the welcome glowing of streetlights in succession, and ultimately, the resumption of life temporarily driven to a slight yet sudden pause with the (non) electrical interference. What irked us even more was that rain suddenly fell, prompting us to close the windows and get deprived of the infrequent summer breeze. When the day is hot, the rain is even more humid; and the raindrops didn't exactly alleviate the situation as they made their way onto the pavement, falling at the height of the sweltering summer heat.

It was almost midnight when power was finally restored, but long before that I had already made up my mind to just sleep it off till morning. And far from knowing it, someone next door might still be fully awake, perhaps already rejoicing, that lone candle perhaps already extinguished.

mang nick revisited.

2007-05-01T22:24:00.000+08:00

The first time I encountered the story "May Day Eve" written by the indefatigable Nick Joaquin, let's just say I was a little short of being blown away. The enchanting atmosphere permeating the plot, the magic realism employed, the skillful use of language - all contributed to a total feast for the senses. This time around, I gave my own shot at a poetic interpretation of the hard-drinking, no-nonsense writer's most famous magnum opus. I hope I have given it justice.

May Day Eve

“If all goes right, just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry."
"And what if all does not go right?”
"Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you…because you may see the Devil!"

A hint of brilliance in the dark, a hand piercing
through the blackness. Candle-wielding fingers,
shedding light into a room that speaks of emptiness
forgotten. Here, a spot by the old mirror where
the moon casts a glow with its ghastly shimmer,
a slight breeze murmurs its phantom whispers.

This indecent hour of night when witches start to
forage for some rumpled mortal flesh, for victims,
the scent of someone courting what’s forbidden.
Somewhere, dogs are howling, shadows on walls
shuddering in fright. They are in another place,
another home – and she shrugs these thoughts off.

Tomorrow, the flowers bloom in their pompous
magnificence, but tonight, her young heart beats
with a love yet uncertain, with a longing finally
freed from its shackles, emerging into the light.
The urgings of the soul giving way to the first word.
And “mirror, mirror show to me him –

whose woman I will be.” She hesitates, her voice
trailing off into muteness, the chant still resounding
within the confines of her head. Farther off, her knees
buckle from the weight of the unfamiliar, skulking
towards her like an unseen spider. But there is no
turning back, and she repeats the incantation

with pleas thrown to the wind, bated breath, half-
heartedly anticipating the final instruction: look, look
closely. And gazing into the mirror, excitement
intensifying with each tread towards the unknown,
towards a shot for true love, the inescapable arrival
to a secret discovery. True enough, it is there:

a face white and pure, unblemished and radiant –
hers. A blink, then a second look, and suddenly
saw an image that could’ve made her scream, a
hair-raising shriek spilling over trees and roofs
and rousing the household from its slumber.
That earsplitting disruption of the stillness

is her option. Only, it is not taken.
For the night remains untarnished, the same
enchanting elegance, punctuated somewhere
by a gasp of sheer terror, a soul perhaps claimed
in the name of love, or in the fires of hell.
Which is which, no one ever knows.

This question remained unanswered, the one
her child keeps on mouthing. The innocence of youth
peering out from two curious eyes, waiting for
salvation. But she was staring past those eyes,
forgetting herself, succumbing to the subconscious
world of the infernal. The present is a blur.

Decades apart, generations in between –
The warning stays. The daunting task for those who dare,
who defy the ancient admonition. Folks quietly stirring
the legend, rekindling it back to life. Far from
oblivion, something thrives in antiquity, the silence
caressing stories that almost become actual

when he closes his eyes and grasps the old summer air,
as if looking for something, someone he once loved.
He opens the windows, takes in the whole setting,
regret overpowering him like the weather.
The vision flickering in his graying mind, of her –
now imagined, now real, now
a tombstone.

an inkling of iloilo (part II)

2007-04-30T13:54:00.000+08:00

Sunset over Iloilo harbour. This was taken atop an old porch overlooking the Iloilo part of the Guimaras Strait, the lens aptly capturing that final brilliant dazzle of light just before the sun retreats back to its nightly abode, the grayish clouds of early evening in close pursuit. What more can I say? One picture is enough to tell a thousand words.

urban going rural.

2007-04-23T14:58:00.000+08:00

Hopping on a Bus, I Reveled in a Fiesta One Weekend in April

So you have the same old story: city-dwellers yearning
for a taste of the country, shedding concrete skins,
casually yielding to that caprice called adventure.
And so it happened that one Saturday morning,
randomly hopped up a bus, and heeded a whim
called the impulse of youth: the longing of the flesh
for the world around it. Or at least a piece of it.
We took off to an incredible pace, past dirt-lined
roads that shook us to and fro. But the wonder on
our faces would tell you otherwise, anticipation
up close, betraying any trace of the awfully familiar.
How soon do you discover that home contains so much
obscurity? The native finds joy in unraveling secrets,
and we are seeking it: that undisputed, yet undiscovered,
happiness. What we really needed was a sense of
direction: keen, brusque, the gift to distinguish turrets
reaching out into the sky, or of the conspicuous azure
at a corner of the highway. This was neither the
Spanish era nor the turn of the last century;
no rainbow-colored flaglets levitating in the wind,
or bands parading down streets, no veil-clad ladies
waltzing to the tune of a kundiman.
There is only a slice of history, the age-old legend of
how everything began, the honored patron saint,
hidden beneath layers of lively conversations,
the crisp clanging of utensils breaking white noise.
And we are simple witnesses to the geniality of life
unfolding in the doorway: greetings and goodbyes,
enter and exit, the oft-repeated joke, some
unscrupulous candidate adding handshake for ballot.
Around us, walls tingle with the strain of laughter,
an ephemeral gaiety, easily given in to the monotony
of tomorrow. Why does nature allow such revelry,
only to fall back into place? And why does the rustic
sunset glisten, only to plunge back into night?
The road home speaks of unhurried contemplation,
the slowing down to omen, the prelude to profaned
warnings. So we must write of discovery, this awakening
to culture, inevitably leading back to that unseen history
of the urbanite, his union with tradition, his oneness
with himself.

360 degrees.

2007-04-11T22:31:00.004+08:00

When I finally caught the blog bug (or should I just say “blug”?) exactly a year ago, I knew it was going to be the start of a new, albeit different twist in the sphere of the printed word. Online, anything goes – the risk and the freedom existing side by side. You are free to write anything in as much as people are free to view and comment on what you have written, and heaven forbid – even steal your ideas. But soon I discovered that the intention, and perhaps more so the passion, overpowered the fear, and in a while had me putting up this blog, trying to keep in mind the fact that you get as much responsibility as freedom for your posts. This writer envisioned the mind as a dynamic machine on wheels, loaded with tons of ideas waiting to be refined, processed and eventually shipped out. “My Mind Has Wheels” was born.

And so you have a newbie, fresh from his first post, smug and overly satisfied for having officially marked his presence in the big blog world. As I mentioned in that historic first post, the lure of having at least a piece of personal space comes at a time when say, “you’re inside the shower staring at the bathroom walls and suddenly a barrage of ideas comes knocking at your mind’s door.” What better topic to talk about than this newfound joy? Enlisting the aid of a funny Archie episode, I dwelt on that most elusive thing called happiness ("The Real Breakthrough to be Happy") and even attempted to enumerate some of the finer things in life that would’ve been cause for nirvana, only to find out that the list unbelievably goes back to what one already has. The bottom line: happiness = contentment.

I moved on to my love of books ("I, Bibliophile"), and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Right smack into Holy Week, I juggled Sidney Sheldon, Jane Austen and The Bible into an amazing bibliophilic escapade. There was a trivial issue on the use of the word “passion” ("A Passion for Lent") and I had my fair share of amusement – not to mention insight – from it. Vacation mode kicked in and I found myself unveiling grand plans ("Summer Bummers and Carpe Diem") that I vowed to accomplish during the two-month long respite from academic toil. But if only to set the record straight, you know the real story behind those fancy goals and New Year resolutions. Unusual dedication is needed if you’re bent on making it past the halfway mark.

Memory lane urged me to write of the tutoring experience I had with public school children during my summer as a university freshman ("Bringing Out the Tutor in Me"). I was fortunate to have had received a few positive comments, two of which came from no less than respected columnists Manolo Quezon III and Susan “Toots” Ople (My heartfelt thanks.) Sometimes, simple things like these are enough to fuel a writer to reach the top. My blog being a relatively obscure, hard-to-find one, I was surprised people were still able to dig it up (Again, online, anything goes.) I followed it up with a post on luck ("Luck is a Four-Lobed Clover Leaf") – a good post is definitely good luck!

Add to this the rare fortune of getting published in the Youngblood section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Sometime in May, I decided to try my hand for a column in one of, if not the country’s biggest daily, an account of two-left-foot me ("Dancing") and my tribulations on the dance floor. I must say that not since winning the Palanca and seeing another article appear on the pages of Tulay Magazine have I felt such highs from writing. At first, the weeks merely came and went and almost left me to conclude that my entry must have proven too lame and too trite for the country’s top editors, and must have already ended up rotting in someone else’s email trash. Just imagine my sheer delight when I was proven wrong after a month’s short wait.

I was writing from home, a place I am away from several straight months at a time. I only deemed it fitting to write of Iloilo City ("An Inkling of Iloilo") and how it has changed through the years – from small, quaint town to big, bustling city yet retaining its old world, historic charm. And just like any keen-eyed, adventure-loving resident, I always try to make it a point of discovering the magic at every turn of this tiny stretch of space called home. Now, no matter what, I think I’ll always be one proud Ilonggo. But who knows, the wanderlust in me may perhaps opt to travel far and wide, bringing back to mind the time we sojourned to the mystic Mt. Banahaw ("Banahaw and Rizal's Legacy") as a field trip for our Rizal course. It was a day spent not only on meaningful communion with nature, but also with open-minded talks on the significance of faith and religion.

Having written in prose for the greater part of my writing days, I tried going back to my roots as a writer with the rediscovery of poems ("From Poetry and Back") since poetry, after all, has always fascinated me with its distinctive style and approach to readers. But while my younger days insisted on a total rhyme scheme, I wanted a fresh take on writing poems – not so much on form as the emotion and the mood. I wrote on a variety of topics ranging from R-18 ratings to sunsets ("Contemplating Sunset"), and largely on the weather (I wonder why?) with the three-part “Weather Talk” series.

Speaking of the weather, 2006 left a huge impact with the onset of super-typhoon “Milenyo” ("Storms of our Lives") which was probably one of the worst natural phenomena I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. Three straight days of making do with the basics and of fearful, faithful, contemplation on the unpredictable really brings you back to reality only a super-typhoon can. Hovering over you scythe-armed and menacing, struggling with fear can be a fearsome job in itself ("The Sum of All Fears"), but sometimes all it really takes is a bit of self-psychology to do the trick. I was greatly flattered at the request of Mr. Darryl Gudmundson to write a review for their new show "Sleeper Cell: American Terrorism", unfortunately being outside the United States, I wasn’t granted access to the show online, let alone get to see it on TV (My sincerest apologies.)

Halfway through my blog-year, I turned 19 ("19") and mulled over the matter with some ambivalence. As I write this moment, many of my classmates have already graduated from the teen age, having hit the big 2-0, and I myself am also poised to do so a few more months away. More than worrying about one's age or the unmistakable fact that time is indeed fleeting, it made me feel even more grateful for the gift of life, for the chance to live every day the best way I could. The season to be jolly arrived, and it was Simbang Gabi time once more ("Rediscovering Mornings"), the Yuletide spirit keeping us rooted in the hope of sailing smoothly though the waters of 2006 did come across as a little too turbulent ("The Most Wonderful Time of Year")

New Year ushered in the usual plethora of resolutions and promises, and I got something else – new hair! ("New Year, New Hair") Okay, so I didn't exactly go about sporting a patchy Mohawk top; but the change was there, and I welcomed it rather heartily. A couple of months to go before my Year Level 3 stint concludes, and I was somehow prompted to reflect on my status quo as a medical student ("The Future Beckons"), four years remaining in the countdown till graduation. February beckoned me to come home with the 95th founding anniversary of my Alma Mater, but alas I had to be contented with taking part in the merriment 300 miles away ("Nostalgia from Afar") When school finally ended, we emerged more enlightened persons with a talk on death and dying ("Thanatopsis") - something we didn't really expect but which underscored the importance of a holistic healing touch to our patients in the future.

One year, 360 degrees. In the same way that birthdays and anniversaries are celebrated, this mini-review of the year that was is a solid testament to the unique world of writing, that it can truly be a blast of a journey with a bit of imagination and experience, anytime, anywhere. When I wrote my article on books, my last line was a confident declaration that “if it be a lifetime of reading, let the reading go on.” In much the same way, I guess, “if it be a lifetime of writing, let the writing go on.”

My mind has wheels. May they keep on turning.

thanatopsis.

2007-03-18T15:58:00.002+08:00

A famous anecdote of Alexander the Great tells of the great hero once finding a scholar meticulously studying two sets of bones. Out of sheer curiosity he asked the latter what he was looking for. To which the scholar replied, “That which I cannot see: the difference between your father’s bones and those of his slaves.”

Take note that this took place during a time when kings were literally worshipped, where palaces kept trains of servants and slavery was still the norm. And I am reminded of the oft-spoken ode to death, the all-powerful equalizer: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” We begin from nothing, and to nothing we shall end. Whatever we have here on earth, we leave to our loved ones and to those whom we will.

We had a pretty much similar experience last week during class. It was supposed to be just another ordinary lecture on death and the dying process, but what took place thereafter was beyond a medical student’s usual expectations for we did not only tackle biological matters but had heart-to-heart group discussions on how it would’ve felt to die, on how one expected to die.

Suffice to say the activity elicited a variety of reactions – surprise, discomfort, nonchalance, fear – a few even regarded it as fun. One of my classmates joked, “Why, of course I’m afraid of death! I don’t even get to have grandchildren!” The truth is we were all caught unawares. It’s not as if we go around thinking about the day we die every minute of our lives, otherwise it completely erases the essence of living. Death is a subject long regarded as culturally taboo, but which is now being laid out so openly for us to dissect and relate with.

Surely everyone wants to die a good, and if possible, painless death. What, therefore, constitutes a “good” death? Then rose another interesting debate on how death is to be considered “timely”. How do you characterize a “good” and “timely” death?

Semantics can sometimes exert a formidable influence, as there lies a great deal of difference between “good” and “timely”. Take for instance martyrs who fought for a country’s freedom – what kind of death did they die? Good, because it was a death transcending a far higher purpose; at the same time, untimely because most, if not all, died at the prime of their lives.

In a way, I am led to think that somehow, having a concept of death enables us to have a concept of life. Eternal existence without meaning is pointless; it is only when we realize that our days are numbered (more so with not knowing where this numbering will end) that we truly wake up to our feet and attempt to accomplish a myriad things while the day is not yet done. Thus we have a cliché I personally keep and repeat over and over to myself: “Carpe diem”, seizing the day, the way to live life to the fullest.

Yet however hard you try to stretch each day to the very last second, time will not always be enough. And this goes without saying that no one is ever really prepared for death. Like lightning, it may strike at a time when we least expect it, or during a moment when we thought leaving this world is the last thing on our mind.

Medically speaking, managing a dying person essentially devolves into two aspects of the healing process which must go hand in hand: curative and palliative. The first has something to do with treatment of disease and preventing its complications; the second focuses on improving or at least maintaining the quality of life. What seems to be the point here? For one, we have always been so preoccupied with the curative aspect. And this is easily demonstrated in situations where families and doctors try to utilize every method and resource possible just to prolong life, oftentimes not minding the fact that the patient himself is actually ready to die. But enter the palliative aspect where empowerment of the dying and preservation of their dignity is the main concern – and you have the touching picture of patients dying with a smile on their lips.

As it was explained during the one-hour talk, it is not so much the fear of death per se, but more with the process leading to death: an overwhelming feeling of weakness, noisy and rattled breathing, breathlessness, difficulty swallowing. One of the lecturers shared her ordeal with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a malignancy of the lymph nodes – and she remarked that going through and eventually triumphing over the ordeal made her understand and empathize with dying patients more.

We were also told of a certain tribe in Indonesia that actually celebrates death! As with birth, marriage or any other celebrated occasion, death is seen as a milestone where one is shipped off into another new dimension. How plausible this may sound can only be deduced if we try to look at death as some sort of transition: In the same way that the fetus transits from the relatively quiescent environment of the mother’s womb to the outside world, so do individuals make the same journey to the great beyond.

And perhaps history does celebrate this journey just as much as life itself. What with the age-old mysteries of mummification, of Egyptian artwork portraying Pharaoh’s death as a grandiose journey on a magnificent ship, of Hades and his boatman Charon ferrying across the sinister rivers of the netherworld. Myth has its basis. After all, as the Egyptians once believed, death is only the beginning.

nostalgia from afar.

2007-02-23T23:51:00.001+08:00

(Sometimes, circumstance can only be so cruel. At this exact moment I should have been home in Iloilo watching my siblings perform in "Mulan" and preparing my speech for the Grand Alumni Homecoming. But here I am, studying instead for a Pediatrics exam on Monday. The piece below is my testimony, written upon request, for the Hwa Siong coffee table book which will be released later this year. Happy 95th Anniversary, dear Alma Mater!)

The French have a term for having the right word to express something. They call it “mot juste” – ‘exact word’ – the embodiment of the proverbial tip of one’s tongue. And that, I suppose, is precisely what defining Hwa Siong is anything but. How do you compress into a single word an institution that has stood ground for a venerable 95 years? And as a relatively fresh inductee into the alumni nest, how do you straddle the fence of time and change – too young to resurrect the harsh stories of “Hwa Siong in World War II” and “Hwa Siong and the 1966 Fire” yet away from school sufficiently long enough to be oblivious to say, the newest programs for preschoolers?

To speak of Hwa Siong merely as a place where I received my kindergarten, elementary and high school education would be a severe understatement. In fact, the correspondence borders on being Pied-a-Terre, a second home. My grandfather, the late Gregorio Yu Sr., was Chairman of the Board of Trustees sometime in the 1980’s, the big-hearted old man who was only too eager to juggle official duties in between introducing his toddler grandson to colleagues in school. I accompanied him whenever opportunity permitted it. Imagine the whole student population noisily shouting “Huan ying! Huan ying!” (“Welcome! Welcome!”), amid an entourage of school administrators and distinguished guests from Mainland China entering the gates – plus an innocent-looking little boy cluelessly tagging along! So goes the funny anecdote that I was mistaken for one of the guests, and was even dubbed the progenitor of the mythical Shaolin with my nearly-shaven head!

Revisiting history 16 years back fully relives everything. The first few preschool years were formative. Hwa Siong was privy to many of my “firsts” in life, bearing witness as I reached milestone after milestone. Central to this is my first ever role in a stage production that made me the youngest performer of the 80th Founding Anniversary. There was this lady they fondly called Miss Peacock – she trained dancers for the exquisite Peacock Dance – who upon seeing me suggested they put me in the play as someone else’s young son. My flourishing star status was further elevated when, at the age of 4, I did a song duet of “Tong Fang Zhi Zhu” (“Pearl of the East”, my reputed signature song) with the Chinese Consul-General himself, sitting on his lap. To top it off, my kindergarten teacher Chiu Sian even recalls that the Chinese Consul-General reportedly forgot the lyrics of the song, to everyone’s laughter!

Eventually the rest of my other “firsts” followed suit: listening to my first lesson; beaming over my first Very Good mark; contending with my first punishment where I had to stand in front shoeless the whole morning; and of course, who could forget my daily crying tantrums once it was time for mom and ‘yaya’ to go home?

Elementary years were an eye-opener. I committed my first grave misdemeanor in Grade II where out of irritation I hastily glued my seatmate’s lips with a bottle of paste simply for being too talkative! It also proved the ideal venue to expand horizons and to harness hidden talents. I had my first taste of a sweet victory in the ILOPRISAA English Declamation Contest at age 8, joined the Student Council for the first time, and became the pioneering editor of the Budding Graders/Junior Chain. High school rolled in and added more responsibilities: the editorship of The Chain, being part of the historic Constitutional Commission, giving politics a shot during my stint as City Mayor of the Boys and Girls Week.

I must admit reminiscing times like these make me wonder how Hwa Siong education has always been an incomparable experience. Education, it is said, takes place when the student develops his mind. And this by no means restricts the pupil to the measly four walls. Indeed, it is outside tedious sessions in the classroom that some of the most important lessons were gleaned. At the frontier of this category is everyone’s rallying motto of “Diligence, Sincerity, Loyalty, Courage” that kept me and countless others going. It was the unseen conscience that pervaded our hearts and minds, the much-respected reminder to give it your all, do what is right, stick to your side and face the music without fear. As if somehow breathing life to the slogan itself, activities inside Hwa Siong translate to service personified: We took required scouting subjects in the elementary grades, went through the “hok bu” system from first to third year high school and had regular CAT instruction in fourth year high school.

It was Hwa Siong’s trademark “hok bu” system that set us apart from other schools in the country. Here, one is assigned to take care of a certain area of the school for a whole day each week. Twice (during my sophomore and junior years) I was appointed overall student head for a particular day, and can really say that the emphasis on discipline and industry rubs off handsomely.

Nevertheless, I believe the enormity of Hwa Siong’s indelible mark on her students would have to spring from something else: the realization of a dual heritage. As in any true-blue Filipino-Chinese school, we delved ourselves in an intensive Chinese, English and Filipino curriculum and celebrated Buwan Ng Wika alongside Chinese New Year; but what took place in the process was even more significant: the seamless integration of Chinese and Filipino values that guided us to our rightful place under the sun. We learned the highs and lows that came with being at the crossroads of two equally rich cultures, exposing and enabling us to appreciate one that is uniquely Chinese-Filipino. Such complements Hwa Siong’s academic and sporting renown, amounting to a holistic and well-rounded individual no less.

There could be no better example for this than the late Mr. Ty Eng Liong, considered as one of the best Chinese teachers of all time. Out of the corner of my mind’s eye there he was, the gentle giant greeting students at the gate during dismissal time, his stature a fitting semblance to his reputation as a noteworthy pillar of Hwa Siong. I was fortunate enough to have personally known him when he was still alive, and far more honored to have had the privilege of being the sole representative of the whole pre-elementary department in paying due tribute to his achievement as one of Metrobank’s outstanding teachers, offering him a rose and a Chinese song number (“All Mothers Under Heaven Are The Same”).

Come 2012, the second oldest Chinese school in the country would already be a grand centenarian. To this, I can only picture out our fourth year class adviser Mrs. Janet Escubio piping her favorite line: “Everything changes except change.” The wisdom behind her words rings well and true. It is always hard to leave a place you have come to love in a span of 13 years. Harder, still, to return after some time and find it a gleaming oasis of pedagogy with a brand new digital scoreboard, modernized facilities and a sea of unfamiliar faces. But behind this pristine exterior will always be the Hwa Siong I knew, the enduring vestiges of yesteryears quietly tugging at the senses and the catacombs of memory lane. Peeking hues of rusting red-and-white paint, strict bespectacled teachers roaming the corridors, black-and-white computer screens that evolved in sync with my transition from youngster to teenager.

During my valedictory speech three years ago, I described graduation from Hwa Siong as a “thousand-mile journey where we find ourselves both on the starting line and on the finish line.” For each Hwa Siong student nurtured under the vigilant eyes of his Alma Mater, this journey will always be of the same substance every well-lived life is made of – a saga of unforgettable moments, of unending departures and returns, of the vibrant intertwining of memories and experiences that have molded me into what I am today: a product of her long, epic past; a testament to her glorious present; and hopefully, a part of her expectant future.

Now who could ever exchange all that for good old “mot juste”?

new year, new hair.

2007-01-07T22:32:00.001+08:00

It’s New Year time once again. Amid the traditional kickoff of everyone hurrying to write down resolutions and fulfilling (at least trying to) some of them throughout the year – something else has been getting quite more than its fair share of attention lately: my hair.

The billion-something strands on my head, made larger than life with this first 2007 post. And just because I had a haircut two weeks before fireworks season officially climaxed and the clock chimed the noisiest hour anywhere. Days after the revelry when classes resumed, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment I strode inside the lecture room for the first time with someone exclaiming, “New hair!”

More or less, “new” is a passable adjective. If I guessed right, everyone around me would have already tired their eyes out with the green, green grass of old, the one I had since I was a tot: short and neatly-clipped, poking straight out like rays of porcupine quills if I failed to get myself a decent trim in the time being. Not to say that the style perfectly stuck it out through the years, what with the slight change of barbers I had been getting recently – but you still get the overall picture. The first barber I had, the old one whom my grandfather faithfully adhered to and who took care of all the boys in our family, has already passed away. Then there was one near our store back home who did the job more than satisfactorily, and now here I am in Manila where I finally learned what I wanted: the term is “ crew cut.” You want crew cut? You get crew cut. Just make sure it’s done well. And better start praying the barber doesn’t chop your ear off by accident while you cooperate at best by staying as motionless as possible on your seat.

I suppose that like any other haircut, having short hair has both its pros and cons. The obvious advantage is that you readily adhere to the law of the land – especially when you’re studying in a school where long, matted hair is an absolute taboo, the necessity all the more heightened when I had my CAT instruction in fourth year. But upon entering college where suaveness takes on a new definition and freedom of expression is hereby advocated, things began to roll differently. Your hair inadvertently reflects your personality and preference.

“It’s time for a new look,” some of my classmates say. And a few do so with matching apologetic expressions as if suggesting the idea that “You could certainly do better.” After all, the billion-something strands on your head spell a big deal. More often than not, it’s the first thing people notice when they meet you, or one of the criteria being considered when they evaluate your grooming and personal appearance. How else could bald fellows with greasy unkempt sideburns become such popular objects of laughing stock?

Indeed, the importance of hair cannot be simply undermined. Even the English language affirms its rightful significance with the common idioms “missed by a hair” (a really frustrating thing to happen) and “let your hair down” (show those lovely tresses and let people know you are relaxed.) Many times over, I have seen it the subject of disputes and disagreements, of desolation and despair. That’s not even counting the limitless, and sometimes wild, measures and risks people are willing to take just to be able to bask in the splendor of having fabulous hair.

Which brings me to a particularly memorable incident that took place during one of those times that I had begun to sprout the porcupine-like growths owing to a supposedly delayed session to the barber. When it comes to matters like these, my mom remains my number one critic. She’s the first to comment on how my mane is already growing way too long for my own good, to be followed by a series of reminders that’d go on one after another, to march down the barber’s and “fix the problem” once and for all. It could’ve been that she has finally grown exasperated from her endless recaps that she just let me in on a piece of the day’s paper – the horoscope page – with Sagittarius (my sign) bearing the words: “Today, your hair is your crowning glory.”

Well, I don’t exactly believe in horoscopes – let alone read them – but that one somehow did the trick. And voila, it proved an effective antidote to finally get me moving on my two legs and have a nice little rendezvous with the immortal comb and scissors.

So I am now sporting a new set of hair. Not much different from the old one but somewhat longer, a more refined and laidback modification. The shooting porcupine sparks of the past have started to fade out, replaced this time by bangs that run forward and spill to the sides. Perhaps that’s just the way I wanted it to be: serving a practical purpose – lest I find myself trapped in a spate of exams with no time to spare and I still wanted to look decent. My answer to the lure of hair dyes and funky looks remains a vehement no – unless along the way I decided to abandon my pursuit in the medical field and pick up a career as a rock star instead. And funnily, they do say the new mop on my head makes me look…younger.

Thinking it over in accordance with the season leads me to believe that having new hair may also come to symbolize a new start, a new leaf. Each snip of hair cut off paves the way for new strands to grow and take their place, much like how we could always mend our crooked ways and change for the better. New Year is resolution time, after all.

the most wonderful time of year.

2006-12-25T14:41:00.000+08:00

When September 1 officially made it to the calendar earlier this year, one of my classmates sent me a message bearing the words:

“Merry Christmas!”

At first, this merited a bewildered look: Knowing that the world celebrates Christmas at more or less the same date with the Philippines being of no exception, I surmised that somehow he could have been pushed over the edge by a fit of overexcitement, or has lost track of the time, or both. Little did I know that like him, millions of people have also marked the start of the much-anticipated hype, the great countdown.

One doesn’t easily forget that in a country where the mere mention of “Christmas” generates endless connotations, the celebration starts with the onset of the “-ber” months. And that’s a feat no other special holiday or occasion can ever beat. You hear Christmas carols being played on the radio even before petitions for souls of the departed are requested, and you see shoppers juxtaposing lists of lanterns and decors with Halloween costumes. Even the perennial Scrooges of our times start to show a potential for niceties once the mood turns up on sleigh rides and winter wonderlands. For most people I know, Christmas is a festival of epic proportions, no doubt; and it’s supposed to get bigger and grander every year.

I’ve been observing quite the contrary, though. As much as it is hard to admit, signs of the season have become harder to come by year after year. Slick traces remain of the once ostentatious interplay of lights and trees, and the melody of Christmas carols fail to reach their typical ubiquitous state. Even the so-called materialism, the superficiality moralists and clergy are forever going against, isn’t working out as well as expected. Storeowners groan of aching losses as the lure of brisk December sales loses its usual touch, with shoppers carefully sticking to a tightly-screwed budget. On top of these, one can’t help but contract a portion of the lingering dreariness. Or if feeling gloomy deep down isn’t bad enough, you hear people say, “It’s not like being Christmas”, or “I don’t feel Christmassy at all”.

The year 2006 is hard hit especially. If you have a bunch of super-typhoons perpetually striking various parts of the archipelago (and leaving some areas dreadfully battered) and tragically amplified by a series of volcanic activities and socio-political crises, you also have people persistently harboring misgivings on whether the whole Christmas thing is such a good idea after all. Is 365 days of unwanted misfortune really a valid excuse to keep the Yuletide spirit at the sidelines for a while?

Well here’s the catch: The first Christmas wasn’t perfect either. As our parish priest explained during his homily on Christmas Eve, “the first Noel came at a time when the world was in turmoil, marked by wars and general unrest. It is precisely this imperfection, the presence of a void in people’s hearts that made the arrival of a Savior very timely.” Come to think of it, what need would there be for a Messiah when everything is in place, when the world is so engrossed in its flawlessness?

It is when we realize that something is missing, and duly acknowledge such a fact, that we begin to discover what Christmas is truly about. I have classmates whose homes are right smack in the so-called typhoon hot spots, and though at present electricity continues to be a thing of the not-so-distant past, this didn’t stop them from being part of the most wonderful time of year. I guess far more important than having the physical means to eat, drink and make merry is to possess the right spirit for it.

Which is why I prefer to celebrate Christmas the way it should be – simple and with the ones you love. We had the traditional Noche Buena and gift exchange before attending the highlighted midnight mass, finally capping the night with a short prayer. And it just occurred to me that sometimes, the best way to feel blessed is to believe that right here, right now, in our midst is the most wonderful time of year, no less.

rediscovering mornings.

2006-12-22T06:42:00.000+08:00

I never thought I would come to enjoy mornings again.

To think this statement would have to come from someone who was hands down a morning person as a child – strictly made to stick to a bed-by-8-up-by-6 regimen tailor-fit for school. Back then, I worshipped every ritual of the morning kind to a tee: prompt early breakfasts, weekend morning walks in the park and my tanning doses of Vitamin D (Like any credulous youngster, I unwittingly believed that the sun directly gives you your much-needed supply of Vitamin D.) Unfortunately, just as one progresses in age and takes on more responsibilities, academic or otherwise, so the duration of wakefulness inevitably strays farther and farther into the night.

In my case, the load from my studies somehow forces me to become the unintended nocturnal creature that I am now. The compulsive crammer in me suggests wrapping up everything in the dark as an assurance of both quality dozing time thereafter and saving grace the next day. It was an unhealthy habit that made me wince at every mention of the simplistic aphorism “Asleep by 9, awake by 5, and you’ll live to 99” and elicited countless urgings of “Go to bed” from my mom, even rightfully earning me the moniker “night owl” from her. Other than these, however, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. My mind is somehow set to activate its riggings the moment sundown takes place and the world’s flurry diminishes to inactivity.

And, oh – the scourge of writing! I definitely write better in the night; it’s when everything else is in deep slumber that gushing waves of ideas find their way in undisturbed. Lying awake in bed, I could whip up a concoction of myriad thoughts and string them together to make a swell story – or an essay – and presto, one finished article for posterity’s sake. The itch could prove way too overpowering to ignore.

Not to say that there are no pitfalls here, of course. The downside is that you wake up the following day slouchy and scowling (that’s why I detest 7am classes), making you disregard the beauty of the whole morning bit. Moreover, life gets to be a bit shorter, sometimes. There are instances when I get horrified at the thought that my mornings have become little more than mere extra time slots to stretch, take a bath and get dressed just in time to see the clock chime the hour of noon. Almost like magic, half the day is gone before you know it. It’s as if someone wound an hourglass and made it accelerate to twice, even thrice, its speed.

Well, until Simbang Gabi season came along and broke this misconception once and for all.

My dad – who completed all nine dawn masses for the first time – is the perfect person to attest to the wonders of being an early bird. “It leaves you feeling fresh,” he says, and that’s something I never thought my insomniac-of-a-father can ever declare, a good number of times at that. Upon finishing mass, he tucks in a few hours’ worth of shut-eye and then leaves for work, but all the same it’s working out wonders for his health and well-being.

The freshness is certainly a far cry from the sticky grogginess of waking up just in time for lunch. It’s a freshness emanating from the innocent tranquility of early morn, a stillness that gradually gives way to the increasing hustle and bustle of day. The cool morning breeze simmers with the rising of the sun into warm daytime puffs of air, as everything comes to life: from the drone of a single motorcycle to the noisy honking of passenger jeeps, the growing number of pedestrians emerging from street corners, and the brisk unlocking of shops opening up for another day. Nature too, awakens and joins the heralding of a new 24-hour epoch, dew-soaked grass all around.

But the best surprise in itself would have to be the fact that time is finally at the palm of your hand. I call it an emancipation from a (day) of haste breeding waste. You can do a lot of things, and you can do them nice and slow at the same time. Returning from dawn mass one time, we made several stopovers on the way and still reached home before 6 am. I fooled around, ate breakfast at a leisurely pace and sang Christmas carols and it wasn’t even 7 am! I joked with my siblings, leafed through some magazines and watched some shows and my watch didn’t even read 8! Plus, I could have a nap if I wanted and it would still be only 9 or 10 am!

Credit this to the disparity of life in the big city and in the smaller, more rustic provincial capital. Bright lights, big city means neon glowing 24/7; in the province, it’s a different story. Dusk translates to evening approaching, and evening translates to closed stores, few people walking down the streets, and everyone shuttling home to retire. Whereas staying up and waking up late in the metropolis would be perfectly fine, my body clock automatically shifts to an earlier routine upon reaching the province leaving me no choice but to comply – else there would be disastrous effects.

Nevertheless, I still enjoy the quiet of the night. Once in a while, I’d sneak down for some quick surfing before hitting the covers, or for some minutes of late night TV, perhaps not too late for my own good. I still despise waking up at the crack of dawn, and if given the choice would rather have a few more zzz’s with sunlight streaming through the windows. But rediscovering the joys of morning – that I cannot deny saying what a superb feeling it truly was.

19.

2006-11-26T23:29:00.001+08:00

Breaks aren’t there for nothing.

That’s what exactly entered my mind, being now happily blessed with the time to finally tinker away at my keyboard for another post – something I’ve been longing to do for the past two weeks but haven’t had the time (again, blame the barrage of exams.) After the academic smoke cleared at the end of the week, I moved to focus on something else:

Turning 19.

Tomorrow.

And I don’t feel like it. Which could be attributed, perhaps, to the fact that I wanted to enjoy my 18 year-old self a little bit more, relish writing “18” on data sheets a little bit longer. (Hey, isn’t a year supposed to be enough?) But whatever I do, the truth remains: With the ticking of the clock, it will all be just history in a couple of minutes. And fast forward into the near future, exactly 365 days later, I would then have to say goodbye to the suffix “teen” and enter the age of the dynamic twenties, marking another milestone in my timeline.

So how do I react to all this?

A few months back, I remembered asking a classmate of mine who just celebrated her 19th birthday on how it feels to be another year old. To which she just shrugged her shoulders and quite nonchalantly replied, “Nothing different, I guess.” Perhaps, she may be right. You don’t feel 19 right away, or even 20 for that matter. It takes getting used to, much like sleeping on a new bed or entering a new school year as a student one level higher. Heck, I don’t think I’ll even be surprised if someone casually comes right up to me, asks me how old I am, and throwing caution to the wind, instantly tell them I’m 18 forgetting that I just turned 19!

In many ways, ambivalence is the word. It’s a toss between the childish enthusiasm of burbling “Wow, I’m 19!” versus the midlife despondence of mumbling, “I’m already 19!” Or better yet, just leave it at that and go on with the world, letting time take its natural course with as much ado as listening to a chatterbox-of-a-DJ on the radio. Young people, that’s where I’m supposed to belong; and very well stuck in between, too: Mature enough (and having known better) to impatiently rush the aging process, yet definitely having a lot more to experience in life to lose interest in it so easily.

Birthdays are definitely more than just extra notches on the calendar. Like a tree stump accumulating rings year upon year, everything’s all inside you – happiness and heartache. I may not be an ancient as a Californian sequoia, but at least all the years I’ve lived are in those invisible rings inside of me. At times, I may feel like binging on sweets or throwing a silly tantrum – that’s the four-year-old me resurfacing; other times I’m wont to be overly responsible for the doings of the whole world that I may actually (appear) to age more than I really do.

Still, I believe nothing beats making one’s birthday worthwhile than a quiet contemplation on the previous year, on all the years of one’s life. Many times over, birthday or not, I realized that it always boils down to the one same thing: Living each day to the fullest, not knowing when you will hit a dead end. So it is for this soon-to-be celebrant who shares his special day with renowned physician Dr. Fe del Mundo and the late Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., as well as the feast day of our Lady of the Miraculous Medal: Reflect on all 19 years of my life, relish the memories and embrace the future with open arms.

To 19 and beyond!

the sum of all fears.

2006-10-31T11:30:00.000+08:00

Last semester, one of our neuroscience professors threw us a question: “What is man’s greatest fear?” If you hadn’t previously read the self-instructional module she had given earlier, you wouldn’t have easily guessed the answer.

And yet it turned out to be so simple, such that most of us were surprised at our wits’ end.

Celebrating this annual scarefest perhaps brings out the bottom line in each one of us: Whether we admit it or not, we have our own fears. It’s something we just can’t do without since fear is part of our psyche, one of man’s most basic emotions. And while humans generally share the same set of nightmares – seldom do we find someone taking pleasure in meeting ghosts, for example – the trend is said to vary throughout one’s lifetime: Children are more accustomed to develop fantasy fears (monsters, ghouls, etc.) while teens are expectedly more preoccupied with social fears (non-acceptance in a group, etc).

These days, with burgeoning advances in psychology and related fields, the vocabulary has even grown to include all sorts of common and newly-coined -phobia terms ranging from arachnophobia, fear of spiders; to xenophobia, fear of foreigners, each named after a certain thing or object that supposedly triggers the anticipation of doomsday in a person. Think of the most absurd thing to be afraid of, and most probably someone out there is indeed afraid of it.

Something once struck me as an irony, though. Why is it that most of us enjoy watching horror flicks at the expense of screaming at the top of one’s lungs and nonstop hand-covering-the-eyes gestures? Freud’s followers recently discovered the answer for this: We don’t enjoy the fear itself, per se; but it is in the aftershock, the wave of relief we experience after that “fearful” moment where we get to have the genuinely gratifying feeling – both for having gone through the time of dread and for that time of dread itself to be over. It just shows to say that conquering one’s fear is surely a satisfying reward, but where do we actually start?

I read somewhere that the key is to face your fear squarely. It’s all about initially trying to identify the emotion and afterwards dealing head-on with it. The first time you encounter the object of trepidation, you ask yourself: “What is it in that object that scares me?” and then, you try to figure it out introspectively, step by step, addressing each issue with an appropriate action. Upon crossing paths with the same object the next time around, your instincts would then be able to react in a more sensible manner. Over time, you become rational enough to have gotten rid of the fear element.

Back then, I used to have a fear of failure: failure to meet the expectations of people around me and ultimately, those of my own. But throughout the course of time, I eventually discovered that failure may be a good thing in itself, after all. It can make you emerge a better person, teaching you lessons that can be gained via a failed attempt alone. To be honest, sometimes I even remember concepts better when they come out as mistakes in exams (wishing of course that I’m not wont to repeating them over and over again.) It’s the case of standing up if you fall, and of putting in mind not to fall the same way again.

It also helped that I found consolation in an adage that said, “Today is the tomorrow you’ve worried about yesterday.” The saying stuck in my head for a while and I realized, how true. There’s really no point in being overly anxious unless it’s justifiable for a number of reasons. But even then, one can always do something about it, something much more than just crying over spilt milk. Hopefully in the future, through giving the intrapersonal process of fear elimination a good shot, I’ll be able to finally dispose of my fears once and for all.

By the way, what is man’s greatest fear?

Falling down.

contemplating sunset.

2006-10-26T17:45:00.001+08:00

Twilight Zone

With the sunset around, I think I’ll always have my muse.

There seems to be something
about the way things subside:
a slow and sluggish yielding
of the day into night. And we
struggle with our senses, lest
the spectacle before us disappears
out of sight, a keepsake

of the moment. It almost seemed
so easy to think it would last
forever: a hushed, haunting ritual.
The rustle of trees, the hum of crickets.
The rays seeping shyly
into each lilting leaf, each branch
swaying gently into night, towards night.

We are held speechless, bathed
in golden splendor that was not ours
to keep – some seaside evanescence
detaching us from reality.
But this is not Manila Bay, and we
are not lovers walking straight
into the sunset. If only we could hinder

the decay of dusk into that vanishing point,
the surrender of beauty, the transition of
manifold things into dark. All the while struck
by how order resists meaning: That final and
sententious deluge of light. The day returns
everything, the formless, into place. And there’s
no use wishing how the past could be relived –

I am alone, you are alone,
the pangs of regret unwillingly
rushing back as all before.

the future beckons.

2006-10-25T13:53:00.000+08:00

Question #1: What is an antioxidant?

Question #2: How could excessive intake of aspartame a.k.a. Nutrasweet® be harmful?

Question #3: Upon entering a ward, which of the following should you do first: check for breathing, temperature or pulse?

We had a late Moon Festival celebration/dice game cum extended family gathering last Monday evening, and all I expected to do was to have some jolly good old clean fun. Never did I imagine that in the short run of two hours or so I would find myself pelted with all sorts of medical questions ranging from the simple to the bizarre.

I guess things like these always come with the fact that everyone looks up to a medical student – never mind that he is only in his first year – as some sort of budding yet know-it-all doctor-to-be. It’s definitely something to be proud of; yet one cannot also help but feel the pressure mount year after year, as the time left before acquiring the prized M.D. title diminishes faster than you can say “schizophrenia.”

Nothing really beats the exaggerated anticipation you get from people around, prodding you on to study fast and graduate even faster so that they could rush in line to be your first patients (never mind the lack of experience). This is perfectly fine with me; though whenever I’m faced with this kind of situation I’d simply smile and coolly remark, “There’s still a long way to go”. Almost immediately, they’d give a cheerful reply: “But oh no – there’s only four years left to go, see?”

Indeed, their light-hearted optimism may be right. When you’re studying medicine preparing for exams week after week, burning midnight candles and consuming books with indescribable voracity, you just don’t notice the time passing that easily. All you see before you is the insistent need to at least obtain satisfactory grades and get a backstage pass to the next year level. Somehow, it is only during breaks that you are able to get a real foothold of time’s fleeting existence. Half a year from now and I would have to change ‘four remaining years’ to three-and-a-half, then to three, and so on. Each time, I’d wonder in amazement how I managed to survive what others termed as the most drastic of pressures, replete with emotional potholes, mental roadblocks, physical exhaustion – the list just goes longer as one climbs the rungs of the caducean ladder.

It doesn’t end there. In fact, many doctors would tell you that after graduation, you are merely getting yourself started – the beginning of a lifetime of healing and more learning. During a recent get-together with high school classmates I casually joked that should we meet again after a few more years, some would’ve already brought along spouses and babies, swapping stories of the workplace, and I’d still be studying. You don’t master the whole anatomy thing overnight; it takes years of repetitive study to make sure you have firmly grasped the concepts and their practical applications.

Yet if there’s a side to the profession that some people might not readily understand, it’s that you don’t only deal with drugs and diseases, though these of course constitute your primary concentration. You also try establishing rapport with your patients, connecting with them, nurturing their humanness – while at the same time meticulously planning your every move lest one minor error earns you an unwanted malpractice suit. You grapple with finding the best vernacular term that comes closest to “cerebellar ataxia” at the same time running a differential diagnosis inside your head.

So goes the truism that doctors are amazing multi-taskers, and that’s what cuts them off from the rest. You attempt several things at once, and you have to make sure you’re fast. I’ll never forget the first time I witnessed a CPR being performed on a critical patient inside a PGH ward. The moment the red signal went off, doctors and residents in the vicinity dropped whatever they were doing, rushed towards the bed and began performing the necessary lifesaving measures. I was only a spectator, but needless to say I felt an unexplained sense of urgency, and I don’t think there ever was better evidence to the fragility of human life.

I know I won’t be able to carry out everything impeccably on the first try. It’d take years of experience to do that, without getting reasonably demented. For the meantime, I’ll have to content myself with answering simple “aspartame” and “antioxidant” questions, without being too technical. And of course, all the while keeping a healthy love for what I’m doing.

The passion stays.

It’s just a matter of time.

storms of our lives.

2006-10-19T17:40:00.000+08:00

(I know this is a little late, but after a long hiatus from blogging and another hiatus from academic stuff, I figured it would perhaps be timely if I break my silence with a recollection of the not-so-distant past – and what more significant event to talk about than the recent ‘millennial’ storm?)

When you’ve just come home after a long exam and you got another one coming up, anticipating a days-long blackout would perhaps be the last thing on your mind. But when it suddenly strikes and you discover that the next best thing to do is to wait, you also realize that it’s not the end of the world, after all.

In a nutshell, the onslaught of super-typhoon Milenyo could be summed up in the words of famed writer Charles Dickens himself: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” Sure, many of us, hard hit, were at our worst states physically, emotionally and mentally during what almost came close to the actual apocalyptic event, but needless to say the deluge also brought out the best in us – our ingenuity and resourcefulness, showcasing the best of man at work in his time of dire need.

As for me, I didn’t even have the slightest idea that a typhoon was coming at hand. All that’s racing inside my already spent mind that late rainy afternoon was the grim fact that one night is all that’s standing between me and pages of exam material plus a still-to-be-assembled jigsaw puzzle of research substance. And then a text brigade heralding the good news (“No class”) would just have to come so casually, so abruptly it left me overwhelmingly ambivalent, not knowing that the day after I would be greeted by a stretch of empty darkness and the not-so-pleasant howl of a roaring gale whipping up a tumult outside. The time for vigilance had arrived.

Milenyo’s rampage was also the time to take a break, to reflect on those aspects of life that had long been overshadowed by what I thought were more important matters concerning academics and an eventual career. Over breakfast, lunch and supper by candlelight – and in between as well – I found out that I finally had the spare time to assess things concerning the way I was living my life, my relationships, and most importantly, my spirituality – the crisp shattering of glass and the dull thud of flying iron sheets serving as an uncanny backdrop, making one feel very much at the mercy of God. And then it suddenly dawned on me: In this life, there will be many more Milenyos to zap you back to the world of reality, making you see the essentials when you almost thought there’s nothing else to it than the same old boring routine of everyday.

That’s how I thought things officially went, but even in its aftermath, Milenyo seemed to have left other tricks up its sleeve. While some would agree that having no electricity is somewhat okay, few (if ever any at all) would readily think through the prospect of having no water – an inevitable consequence for most of us who rely day and night on the whirr of the motor to keep our tank constantly filled. Thus when the dreaded day came, I felt like someone thrust into a brand new reality show ala “Survivor” where they nastily get to eliminate your necessities one by one. Fortunately, we had some emergency supply of water - but when are these going to last?

Still, I reckoned even bigger problems lie ahead. The day after the huge outburst, Manila was a deforestation scheme in the making. One can only be amused at the sight of cars playing “patintero” all over the streets, ever so carefully dodging one or another fallen tree or lamppost, precariousness always rolled in between. Nevertheless, pity and regret entered the picture as one beheld the sight of an almost century-old tree, torn from the roots with its branches grotesquely snapped. Here, Joyce Kilmer’s lines sting with the acerbity of a grapefruit: “Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.” How true – for it would take decades or so before another majestic product of nature can be seen standing proud once again. One more message hard earned: Enjoy the things while they’re still there.

But the trees that they are, I believe they stood for something much larger than themselves. Passing rows of felled robust trees now only good enough to stoke fire, it was almost unbelievable to see the smaller and less mighty ones still standing, most especially the fabled coconut which appeared to be relatively unaffected by the atmospheric surge, a true testament to the supposed pliancy and resiliency of the “tree for all seasons.” It struck me that sometimes, playing low-key’s the key. It is better for one to be flexible, to stoop down and harmlessly go with the tides rather than to uselessly battle it out with a stubborn foe.

For Milenyo had no preconceptions when it struck: It was unmindful of who we are, of where we stand, of how we will deal with the consequences. We had electricity three days after the storm, but my aunt’s driver already had power in his abode that very same stormy night. So it goes with saying that while some remote, relatively shabby parts of the metropolis rejoiced over the quick restoration of a normal, functional life, many areas in plush Makati and Ortigas continued to pass the time with fingers anxiously crossed.

Things like these will make you wonder how fate intriguingly tips the scales from time to time, as if giving evidence to the whole story of life as a wheel. But whatever the case may be, I’m quite sure Milenyo will forever leave me feeling a lot more fortunate than before. I’m pretty thankful that a humongous billboard or Ministop sign didn’t crash right smack into our car, and that rainwater didn’t flood into our dwelling, and that we were spared the extra agony of an extended vacation in the dark with a depleted water supply. Bereft of petty material indulgences, it taught me to concentrate on prioritizing and conserving the things I really need. For citizens of the alleged SMS capital of the world, this surely entails down-cutting measures in texting especially when one has nowhere left to recharge one’s phone.

Almost a month after having our nerves tested with one of nature’s powerful elements, we continue to read in the papers stories of the extraordinary kind, stories of faith, hope, courage and bravery; of heroism and of mankind’s intense will to survive whatever the odds; stories that will continue to inspire each and every one of us, a seeming reaffirmation that wherever destiny brings us, there still remain in this life things worth living for.

Which leads me to ponder that perhaps, sometimes, all we’ll ever need is a storm.

weather talk (part II)

2006-07-27T20:49:00.001+08:00

Weather-Weather Lang ‘Yan

Perhaps there exists some truth
to this adage they call
a phrase too commonplace:
rushing into conclusion,
a communion of mouths
and words all muttered in haste.
Yet it’s a fact we must face –

in ephemeral silence; dismissed
like the drunkard who loiters
in wait for the second round
of swigs, eyes swollen and red.
(They say he’s here now and then –
perhaps today, perhaps tonight)
toasting beer glasses. Does this

remind you then, once, of things
that got away? When what spilled out
of our senses was nothing else
but a phrase – tearing down walls of
expectation. That was your share
of consolation. We know we’ve
had enough of the proverbial Erap joke

growing trite with each encounter,
much like fate impinging on fortune
that was almost ours. So perhaps now
we understand why there’s scarcely
cause for punctuation, a dilution of our
foibles rolled into whispers

of peripheral contention - lest we succumb
once again to fondness, reminiscence,
whichever. Or should memory cough up
figments of our erstwhile consternation
hardly salved by what they tell us: a phrase
we half-believed was meant for smooth
transitions, strokes of simple reason

we’ll try to comprehend in time. For now
it is a question we will dodge, clueless,
another time, another try. As we make
sense of things falling into place,
we think: They could be anything.
No use insisting on something, an intention
not even so much as a silhouette

suggesting symptoms of
return. Or perhaps imparting
cycles, breeding weathers from a phrase
that has never found completion.

that's not how we do it.

2006-06-12T18:23:00.000+08:00

Can a children’s animated film like “Pocahontas” really contribute to such a hefty concept as world peace? More specifically, can it actually help lessen racial discrimination as a major step to achieve this goal?

It all started when we were made to watch the flick as a Social Science class requirement. In the movie, Pocahontas was an Indian princess caught in the crossfire between her people and the Englishmen, which arose from overzealous suspicion of differences. The copper-skinned natives didn’t trust the white invaders and vice versa, the ethnic tension mounting in a tight-locked race for supremacy. One particular stanza from the theme song “Colors of the Wind” effectively echoed such strained sentiments:

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew

Memories inevitably rushed back like meteors. I remembered a female classmate in grade school who was offensively dubbed an “aborigine” because of her ebony-dark complexion. I am also reminded of a teacher from China who was the object of taunts in the classroom as she failed to correctly pronounce words in the vernacular. Hindu passersby were frequently shunned by people in the street, and a former Korean schoolmate was regularly laughed at because he had unconventional ideals and wore his clothes differently. It’s always the same case each time. Members of the mockery bandwagon thought, “That’s not how it is. That’s not how we do it.” Or that perhaps, the only people who are truly “people” are those who “look and think” like us – isn’t this ethnocentricity in a nutshell?

The altruist in me opted to look at things differently. “That’s not how we do it”, indeed; but “if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew.” Three years ago, I walked the footsteps of many strangers and learned back many things in return, when I was chosen as a national delegate to a Root-Seeking Camp in China participated in by Southeast Asian youngsters. Sure, we all had one thing in common – our Sino ancestry – but save for this we were as disparate as a bunch of farm animals. There I was, one of four Filipino faces amid a sea of Thais, Burmese, Laotians, Cambodians, Malaysians and Indonesians. While we were brought up and exposed to diverse cultures, there were no biases and prejudices against one another because we set aside our differences and learned to get to know each other first; we merely listened.

People call it the easiest and hardest task at the same time. You need not do anything except give the speaker your full concentration (No wonder we were taught that the listener is the most important element of communication.) But the words of my professor add something more: “Listen, but listen with an open mind.” To free oneself from any preconceived notions that might be the source of false interpretations, she said, is the true liberty of listening, and only then can you achieve genuine understanding. Understanding in turn, gives rise to empathy as we assess the other person’s situation, placing ourselves in their shoes should the tables turn and others tell us, “That’s not how we do it.”

Once I stumbled across a beautiful line that said, “The greatest gift you can give to a human person is to see him as he really is – a human being.” It had such a profound impact on me since I know that we really can’t reconcile all our differences at once, but at least we’re similar in that we belong to the one same human race, born to live and die under the one same sky.

It’s this very idea of human equality that I will try to uphold as I study on to become a doctor in the near future – a profession I consider as an epitome of non-discrimination since a doctor’s job is to heal everyone, regardless of race, skin color or social status and not just the ones who look and think like himself. Somehow it occurred to me that doctors are capable of healing more than just the physical aspect; they can also reach out to help remedy the social cancer that is racial discrimination by sending out ripples of awareness to every person in this world: No matter who you are or where you come from, you are entitled to the gift of life and good health.

But I guess you don’t exactly need an M.D. to do your part. What’s more significant is that you live out the message of Michael Jackson’s hit single “Man in the Mirror”, where he urged all of us to start our humanitarian quest with the “man in the mirror” and make a change with ourselves first. For how else can we get the peace wheel to start rolling if we personally don’t give it the initial push? How else can we assuage the brunt of bigotry except by selflessly planting the first seeds of tolerance?

Certainly, we can only move on towards establishing harmony among races and nations if we stop giving too much weight on “That’s not how we do it” and take the phrase with a grain of salt instead. We can only realize our dream of a “brotherhood of man” (as the immortal John Lennon put it) if we brush off the fixed impression that every Muslim is a terrorist, or that every Palestinian is a potential suicide bomber, or that every Chinese is a die-hard communist freak. The difference lies in four simple words.

Listen. Understand. Empathize. Heal.

Start with your own “man in the mirror”, and just like Pocahontas, walk the footsteps of many more strangers. You’ll definitely learn loads of things “you never knew, you never knew.”

weather talk (part I)

2006-05-29T19:08:00.001+08:00

Overcast

Dark skies tell us something else
of unspoken warnings: a threat
to impede our sunny disposition.

Along with it, perhaps, our peace of mind.

What looms above our heads isn’t
exactly picturesque: Circling shades
of gray, retreating to a stretch of

burgeoning blackness. That’s rain at a distance
anytime soon. The weatherman says
it’s another monsoon. Puff upon puff,

clandestine clouds make their way
to a rendezvous – celestial convicts
on the loose, ready to strike with the first

drop of rain. Will it be just a slight drizzle,
or perhaps a thundering torrent?

We do not know.

The impending darkness blurs our thoughts
and turns off the sun, downing rays
one by one. They disappear

into the void. The air around us quivers
in the infinite silence, only to be shattered
by reluctant raindrops. We’re a little beyond the present

here. But then, all we really need
is a little intuition to predict what’s near.
I hurry to close windows, just in case.

You prefer to keep still, a glum expression
on your face. Your mood is overcast
just like the sky.

Rain begins to fall.

from poetry and back.

2006-05-28T11:58:00.000+08:00

You Should Be A Poet

You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways.
And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery...
Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever.
You're already naturally a poet, even if you've never written a poem.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

I confess I was a little taken aback when I read the results of this test (I seem to be having this thing for Blogthings lately) not because poetry never crossed my mind, but because it triggered an instant nostalgic feel – almost like returning to my writing roots, actually. My very first entry into the literary sphere, armed only with a keen interest, was indeed through writing poems, mostly on nature, banking on grand hopes of eventually having these land on the pages of the school paper (luckily they did, three of them on one issue alone). That was way back to an eight or nine-year old me, and being raised on cassettefuls of nursery rhymes, I insisted on the typical, classic rhyme scheme; free verse was a total no-no.

Funny that almost a decade after, it was the complete opposite: I began experimenting with what was previously my childhood taboo and found out much to my delight that the name said it all – it made me “free” and allowed me to better explore the more distant horizons of poetry. This time around I wanted to cast my poems on vessels of thought and interaction, to somehow provide an audible voice to our hearts’ rumblings. It surprised me that topics just naturally drifted out of my head one by one – from the pains of writing an excruciating hand-written report to a faked bomb threat in school, from a next-door fire days ago to my personal chagrin at the R-18 label of the “Da Vinci Code” (unfair for prodigy minors like my younger brother). More to come, I guess, for flexing my poetic fingers that have finally broken the surface.

As for the test results, here’s what I really think: I believe everyone’s “naturally a poet”, even if one has never written a poem. You just need to write from the heart.

The Businessman

Who says making business is all bed of roses?

Nowhere was this a simple matter
to reckon with, not just mere counting
coins or bills that flow in and out.
It was a game of chance not even
you or I could keep up with, unless
acumen and alacrity pulls
us to our catch. So let’s see how things
work in this dog-eat-dog match

to rake profits. Here there’s no room
for error, nor is there space for
second chances. A single wrong move
can earn you pity glances. Therefore
it’s a must that you keep this in mind:
That before you raise prices, or fix up
the sale that would draw in more faces,
think of what lies beyond these surprises.

You are, after all, engaged in a trade
where there’s no knowing what comes
of the deal that you’ve made. As you stare
at the sheets that await your approval,
so too do you wonder if you’ll
strike gold, or find things plunging
down tenfold. Your signature is all
that spells the difference. Still it’s

business as usual, and everyday lies
in the palm of your hand, an option
to gamble those shares or not. If
the die is cast, there’s no turning
back to the step that had witnessed self-
contemplation; straddling the fence
between claiming your prize, and paying
the price, in this dog-eat-dog bout –
counting coins and bills that flow in and out.

R-18

The MTRCB has stamped an R-18 label on “The Da Vinci Code”, claiming that the movie is bound to shatter the faith of young Catholics. But I say otherwise, in behalf of those children whose faith and thinking are resolved enough to be easily shaken by just another supposed thriller.

It was clear from the start: They were
equivocal, blinded, blinkered,

lopsided. No philosophy
explains this, a question unasked –

though I’d say it was no more than just
a privilege of age; a secret

attempt to curb the hungry mind.
In between pleas and discourses

they never sought to know what you
had long known; except for the fact that

you’re not yet eighteen (or at least
that’s what they think), and because few

ever read the silent story,
they’ll settle for a label both

you and I detest with a firm
conviction. Sadly, no one bothers

to shake this hostile proposition.
As hoary adults saunter their

way to cushioned seats, we are never
content with our invasive sneaks – through

eyes that startle, divulging the lie
that could have easily earned us our

ultimate chance for a moment
of rapture. But now we must contend

with this corporal fixture: A face
barely lined, and hardly weather-beaten –

that if one of us dared touch and
caress it in earnest, the query

of time would erase itself and sink
beneath a sweaty forehead. Who cares,

by the way? Age was never an
absolution, except perhaps

a token for admission, an
issue of second thoughts that would’ve

otherwise led to a truce, an
agreement. But no, it was always

a cause for some infringement, a bone
of contention. While lawmakers dwell

on the pending criterion, we
linger at a loss and seek mutual

emotion. Though eyes and lips sealed and
muted in convention, our minds spin

wildly with the promise of a vision:
Should we get past those guards and hurdle

the gates with tickets clutched tightly,
we’ll find ourselves seated on rows

and seats, swapping bottoms too many.
The movie starts rolling, and all that

has been, is a somewhat blurred envy
of those not yet eighteen.

Next-Door Fire

Around early afternoon of May 25, 2006, the storage fan of our adjacent establishment caught fire and spread a cloud of smoke over the neighboring stores, generating public panic. The flames were fortunately halted a while later and there were no serious damages done to property.

At someone’s first mention of the
dreaded word, nothing was at a
standstill. One blurt was enough to buzz
in people’s ears, echo in their minds
and confirm fiery fears; symptoms of
a monotony unwillingly

broken. What we thought we hear only
of heroes and firefighters, we see
before us, tumbling from fire trucks that blare
with sirens decibels too alarming.
So starts another round of hormone-pumped
motions, adrenaline implosions,

a drastic plea for action. Though high-pitched
voices consume us faster than the flames,
we know there’s more than just smoke billowing
from across the next-door building. Nothing
here is certain: Since it’s almost well-known
that this zone’s fire prone. Perhaps even walls

may fail to do the job here, wooden as
they are. Otherwise we’re left with something
better than regret: The last reckless race
for a roundabout rescue. Yet suppose
it were all just déjà vu? A tinge of
news items safely tucked within our heads –

crossing the familiar: Smoldering homes,
fleeing families, tentative shanties –
going down in smoke. This time it’s for real.
We may have seen similar scenes, or felt
the same misgivings; an unforgotten
remembrance, somewhere in our histories.

Each time is always different, almost
another deterrent – extinguishers
dousing fire. Everyone’s eager to know
the story of what has sparked the first spark,
while time remained sleeping; afternoon naps
taking over full stomachs. Who hinted

the combustion sprouting minutes after?
A thousand possibilities conspire
for an answer, concealed out of sight in
the sweltering wake – mere wisps and whispers –
fires telling their own stories, constructing
theories, leaving behind embers in
someone else’s memory.

strumming the strings of life.

2006-05-12T18:06:00.000+08:00

You look real serious. Try to relax.”

My instructor’s words instantly brought me back to earth. I had no idea how grim I looked, only that I was too focused on getting those chords right to notice anything else. Intense concentration almost made me forget that I was practicing my guitar, not studying for an exam. Unlike the latter, there are no failing marks; only words of encouragement.

Accordingly I loosened up and took a deep breath. I tried again.

With nearly everyone bitten by the acoustic bug, I knew I just had to learn to play the guitar when some of my classmates began showing off their jamming skills one after another. “It’s easy,” they remarked. “You try it.”

Hooked on the idea, I was convinced that I’d breeze through my lessons without much difficulty. A wave of excitement gripped me at the prospect of my first foray into musical instruments since age four, during which I almost left my piano teacher incapacitated by banging down the piano cover during my very first session.

Luckily there were no more pianos to destroy this time. After watching my instructor pertly move his fingers with the gait of a master, producing rich tones in the process, I expected I could easily do the same. Do-re-mi is supposed to be child’s play.

How wrong.

My initial attempts were a little more than total disasters. Upon giving it my first strum, a dull twang vibrated off the guitar and filled the air. Strike one.

“No, don’t place your fingers directly on the frets. Allow for around 1 mm of space.”

My hopes for a faultless start were immediately dashed. Still, I heeded my instructor’s advice and proceeded to try again. A slightly different sound emerged, but nevertheless just as lame. Strike two.

“Press harder. Look, your middle finger is barely pushing the string down,” he pointed out.

I hesitated, and then pressed as forcefully as I could until I felt a cutting pain as the nylon strings dug into my skin. I realized that my wobbly, inexperienced fingers were no match for what appeared to be effortless, uncomplicated actions that in fact required much skill and deftness. I strummed once more and listened.

Being too preoccupied with my left fingers, I was unaware that my right thumb was plucking a different string. I only discovered my blunder the instant “do” came off as “mi”. Strike three.

So went a vicious cycle of frustrations and repetitions. Before long, I was staging my own comedy of errors, my pathetic hand-eye coordination earning me the lion’s share of embarrassment. Deep inside, my patience was running out and my self-worth deteriorated with each silly mistake. I wondered if learning to play this instrument was such a good idea after all.

Vestiges of my first session manifested themselves in deep red marks on my left fingers and a sore right thumb. My thoughts didn’t help much, either. Here I am at step one. Success lies at step infinity.

It was more or less a similar scenario back home. Doing the suggested hour’s worth of daily practice only rubbed more salt to an already bleeding ego. For several minutes I remained stuck in a quandary, trying to make sense of the myriad noises I was unconsciously producing, poring over pages of notes and staffs in vain.

I just couldn’t understand. Music was supposed to be some form of relaxation, a temporary breather from life’s stresses. What then am I doing with a guitar that gave me more headaches than happy thoughts?

After what seemed to be an eternity of alternately plucking and groaning, I could stand it no longer. My pent-up frustrations found release in the form of a scream that echoed throughout the whole house. I was ready to smash the instrument into pieces.
My mom came down and promptly gave me a telling-off.

“That’s the problem with you. Always in a hurry. Remember, there are no shortcuts here. Go ahead and practice some more.”

Her words rang like alarm bells. It was true that many times in my life I had played hide-and-seek with the success game which fortunately had cheeky detours. It looked as if my smart-guy-of-a-guitar doesn’t want to be outdone, too.

Frowning, I reluctantly picked up the instrument and practiced again. No luck. The notes bounced off like a six-year old blowing his New Year’s trumpet. Not to be discouraged, I checked my fingers, firmly placing them where they should be, and strummed. Better. Prodding myself on with each tiny bit of improvement, an hour passed and before I knew it, I was coolly producing C-majors and A-minors and getting the hang of it. Sighs turned into chuckles, and there were no more agonizing screams. Suddenly, learning to play the guitar was such a good idea after all.

From then on, it was a promise of patience and optimism that I kept to heart every time I drew out my guitar and practiced. Less grumbling and swearing, more persevering and stretching of my patience for as long as I can hold it. I still commit mistakes and my fingers would hurt after every sitting, but I have come to accept them as part and parcel of the learning process.

As I stare at the set of notes before me and position the guitar on my lap, I had a heartening insight: Whatever step you’re in, step “patience” will always be there to lead you to step infinity.

I began to strum.

banahaw and rizal's legacy.

2006-05-06T11:48:00.000+08:00

(Around this time last year, we trekked to Mt. Banahaw and interacted with members of a Rizalist group, learning all about their ways of living and their idea of religion. I must say it was truly an enlightening experience.)

The road leading to Mt. Banahaw is not exactly an appetizing one. After a butt-scraping two hour bus ride from the metropolis, you alight at Dolores town in Quezon and board a jeepney plying the thirty-minute uphill route for a nonstop spectacle of dust, dirt and disconcerting bumps. You instinctively whip out your hanky as the vehicle chugs and teeters along the narrow potholed lane, and finally when you get off relieved and visibly shaken, don’t forget that you still have to endure the walking part – certainly not for the weak-kneed and faint-hearted. But all this becomes nil when you see it before you: the real thing, the mystical marvel.

That’s what they often say, that Banahaw is a mystical mountain, and they’re not saying it for nothing. If this were so, how then can the feelings of awe and wonder be explained as one slowly beholds the sight of this peak towering up into the clouds? How else can one not reach its summit, not even set foot on its slopes yet still become very much inspired and captivated by its grandeur from a distance?

It's one of the holiest and most revered places in the country. Holy in the sense due to the mountain’s aura of sanctity and stillness, making it a favorite site of pilgrimages from all over; yet holier still if one sets aside communing with nature and admiring the scenery per se for a sneak peek into the beliefs and traditions of a people who have made Banahaw the core of their being, whose ways of living have given rise to a striking and perhaps subtler definition of the word “holy”.

Enter the Iglesia Ciudad Mystica de Dios, a millenarian movement centered on the area. From the name itself (“Mystica”) it might sound a passable inference at first, though greatly unsupported, to say why the movement was based around Banahaw, and conversely, why Banahaw until now remained largely mystical. With tenets primarily ascribing to nativistic Christianity, what’s conspicuous about them is that they emphasized the heroism and invaluable contributions of Dr. Jose Rizal, considered the Filipino epitome and who appeared to have taken over Christ’s place in 19th century Philippines preaching and promoting goodwill among his compatriots. A sprinkling of other heroes follow suit, a select few reckoned to really stand out and were termed the “12 Lights of the Philippines.” It might be interesting to note that as I perused the pictures of the 12 Lights in their chapel, erstwhile president and revolutionary general Emilio Aguinaldo was obviously absent, as the movement did not consider him a true hero for being the master brains behind the treacherous murder of Katipunan Supremo Andres Bonifacio and his brother.

The group was founded during the American period by a woman named Maria Bernarda Balitaan, believed to be sent by no less than the Lord Jesus himself to the world in preparation for his second coming. She lived during a time when the Philippines witnessed Rizal’s martyrdom and suffered successive foreign hegemony, her lasting words an assurance of religious salvation: “That a white dove shall descend from above and land at several chosen places to sow the seeds of change; that one day, a piece of bamboo would suddenly shoot up from the top of Banahaw from which a golden Philippine flag shall emerge, and from which a New Jerusalem similar to that of St. John’s vision would be formed.” To the ordinary bystander who knew not an inkling of this prophecy, it seemed grand enough; and I was only able to gain a satisfactory foothold, fortunately, when someone from their lot patiently explained the course of things.

The bamboo symbolized the concept of genuine brotherhood, which essentially revolved around natural worship and heartfelt prayer; while the golden flag represented the act of reaching out to the populace about this true concept of religion. True religion, we were told, is founded on a spirit of selflessness and wholehearted dedication to God, since it was pointed out that the pre-Hispanic native religions didn’t exactly base a large chunk of their worship on fiestas and processions, and on religious ornaments and images of saints (except the wood carvings of anitos, perhaps?) Ironically, this brings to mind the memory of what I had seen earlier that day, somewhere back along the heart-stopping stone steps leading to the Sta. Lucia River where a statue of the saint stood surrounded by numerous floral offerings and myriad candles burning in the wind.

But whether or not to tolerate images of saints, I guess that’s a thing best left to experts. More than that, I learned about the group’s principle of doing good works on earth by merit of conscience and pure intentions and not out of fear or sheer force. Most of Ciudad’s funding relied heavily on its members who felt it their duty to shell out some of their blessings and share it with the community. They also believe that man only does what he is meant to do, i.e. merely work out things on his own and has neither the right nor the responsibility to judge others. It is God who punishes; He alone can see one’s true intentions deep inside. So whenever they feel that a certain member has not been aptly performing his duties, they leave it all up to Him to carry out the necessary retributions.

Although the Ciudad Mystica de Dios is still a form of Christianity, this does not mean that they wholly and blindly accept the present Bible as it is, what with the centuries-long revision, restatement and deletion of items in the original version which were deemed offensive and detrimental to the growth and progress of the Church. (I'm getting shades of Dead Sea Scrolls cum Gospel of Judas here). This is one aspect of modern-day Christianity which the movement hopes to rectify. They have attempted to modify the Bible in such a way that its deviation from original sources is more or less minimized, which together with the teachings of Rizal and the other heroes, serve as the group’s collated ideology and guidelines for living.

While this ideology serves as the group’s cornerstone and furthermore keeps them aiming for a “reform” in religion from a materialistic and concrete perspective to one that is more spiritual and abstract, its mosaic nature does not necessarily make it intact. On my part, it would be hugely unthinkable for one to successfully reconciliate the doctrines of Rizal and most of our national heroes who were liberal freemasons with that of the Church which adheres to its strict, unbending and conservative doctrines. Add to this lack of coherence the fact that a realistic movement would endeavor to “seek a major and rapid change in society”, but the Ciudad does not – for the change that it seeks is rooted passively, one that it believes must come from every individual and shall reach its crowning zenith at the given period stated in the prophecy.

Indeed, everything was all about change. And for this particular experience, it was especially a change of heart – change of heart towards one’s outlook in religion, towards discovering once again the significance of true worship in its simplest, least elaborate form. Just like the people of Ciudad Mystica de Dios, I know that Banahaw will continue to leave me pensive, with its trademark imprint of mystery and sacredness. I might not have raced to its summit before sunrise just to drink in the breathtaking view from a decidedly vantage point, or even just stepped on its hallowed slopes for posterity, but then, I was there. I had succeeded in deciphering the silent yet all-encompassing message which it brings to humankind.

Rizal couldn’t be any happier in his grave.

a word on egalitarianism.

2006-04-30T23:20:00.000+08:00

“If I were in doubt as to the wisdom of one of my actions, I should not consult Flaubert or Dostoevsky. The opinion of Balzac or Dickens would carry little weight with me; were Stendhal to rebuke me, it would only convince me that I had done right; even in the judgment of Tolstoy I should not put complete confidence. But I should be seriously upset…I should worry for weeks and weeks, if I incurred the disapproval of Jane Austen.”

In short: Expect nothing but the best from the great Jane Austen.

There could not have been a better introduction, and a staggering one at that, to Pride and Prejudice than the words of Lord David Cecil in his Leslie Stephen Lecture at Cambridge University, when he paid homage to the English writer and esteemed her beyond the ranks of peers and fellow word masters in his stirring speech. Another article I’ve read years back described the author’s prowess as “needing no Spell check; every word is perfectly formulated and the syntax is impeccable.”

Thanks to endorsements like these, I already have a hunch as to what to expect even before encountering the novel’s initial line, another candidly mind-blowing sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

The unbelievable frankness of this woman leaves me simply stunned.

Now that I have reached the opposite pole and concluded the final chapter, I must say Lord Cecil’s words cannot come any closer to being wrong than do saints approach the fires of hell. When all else is said and done, my opinion stands as finding the novel every inch intriguing and just as flawless in its exposition.

Strange thing is, upon first acquainting yourself with a summary of its 61 chapters, the concept of “pride and prejudice” just wouldn’t be the first to enter your mind. The plot is a swirling cycle of life’s upbeats and downbeats revolving around four main romances, and perhaps you might wonder whether what you are about to read is indeed the renowned magnum opus or merely another piece of romantic fodder.

It has often been said that the ability of a novelist can be measured in the way he/she is able to maintain the central idea without fail while conjuring up various caricatures at the same time. In this test of literary multitasking, Jane Austen earns herself flying colors. It struck me how she effectively made the whole idea of “pride and prejudice” echo throughout every nook and cranny of the book, well-hidden within descriptions of characters and settings, skillfully inserted within witty dialogues, always leaving behind a discomforting feel of the predominance of its evil.

Though she was clearly talking of 18th-19th century Great Britain, one can’t help believing she created her masterpiece as a reminder for humanity for as long as society exists. In this world, in this time, there will always be clamor for equality.

Some of the most common ones we see today are aptly addressed: favoritism among children, preference for the high and mighty, falsely construed interpretations and one-sided judgments. Her staunch belief in egalitarianism should ring well into the depths of a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, where those with power and connections reserve the right to do magic tricks and where organisms with ultra-inflated egos thrive on the edge of reason.

Fortunately the heroine overcomes all adversities with her wit and charm, and as expected, gets her well-deserved happy ending. I hate to be so corny; but yes, love moves mountains. It tugs harder at the heartstrings than do pride and prejudice.

It conquers all.

dancing.

2006-04-27T23:43:00.000+08:00

(This piece appeared in the Youngblood section, Opinion Page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last June 17, 2006. No greater joy is there for a writer than to see his own work get published, albeit in one of the nation’s biggest newspapers.)

It is a fact well-settled that some guys just can’t dance.

Unfortunately, I belong to this group of poor old chaps who could only sit by a corner, helplessly staring at the more gifted ones prancing away with prize partners in tow, wishing all the while that the phenomenon of switching shoes (and abilities) were possible. You’d probably think it way too ambitious for someone who hasn’t even tried and tested the grooves yet, but trust me when I say that I’ve tried just about as much and as hard as anybody else. The last time I publicly showed off my dancing talents onstage was during my junior year, and it ended up with one student approaching me afterwards to say in hushed, stiff tones that I resembled a bewildered robot skidding off course. Hands down, it was a bad enough experience; that’s when I finally decided it’s about time I give my clumsy old awkward self a well-deserved break from causing more humiliating fiascos, at least for the meantime.

However lousy I could get with steps and strides, I wasn’t exactly born having two left feet. You see, the art of dancing somehow goes well and good in the family: My parents could throw in a step or two, my siblings could also carry on with the beat, and as for one of my aunts – well, dancing IS her life. My precocious childhood even had its own share of the jiggling and the wiggling, carefully preserved in indelible photo frames and providing evidence to the whole story lest my current inflexible rod-of-a-body suggested otherwise. There I was at the forefront during kindergarten days, grinning and eagerly leading the class in mixed song-and-dance numbers. I suppose I can still do the singing part just as fine; but the dancing aspect seemed to have vanished altogether. What had happened in between?

Perhaps it would have something to do with how I prioritized things as I moved on to grade school. At that time, stakes were high for skills in speaking, singing, the visual arts and academics. Being the insufferable perfectionist that I was (and sometimes still am), I wasted no time in vigorously pursuing each of these disciplines, even attempting to excel in all of them. Dancing would be sometimes present but on fairly rare occasions, and since I didn’t see it as much of a necessity, it was shoved further and further out of the checklist as the years rolled by.

With the onset of high school, focus was thrust again on studies and on joining school organizations; and this meant even less of cha-chas and cartwheels. Only after some time did I realize that I was no longer the one performing – instead was reduced to the lowly spectator in the audience whenever shake-your-thing numbers entered the scene. I was headed for a typical non-dancing future.

Fast forward to college. Just when I thought nothing out of the blue was going to take place, along came first semester of second year that landed me in a social dancing PE class. Distraught and dreading the prospect of possibly flunking my first course (embarrassingly a presumed no-sweat one at that), you can readily bet that I was one of those who initially objected to the sheer idea of strutting your stuff for a grade – in vain. My only recourse left was to convince myself that it would be fun, that things wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Optimists often credit half of the learning process to a positive attitude. In much the same way, sufficient warm-up provides athletes with maximum power for a stellar performance. Though I am utterly sure I never did dance exquisitely enough to be considered “stellar”, what really fueled me and kept me striving to master the cha-cha, gain control over the slippery steps of the boogie and sway along with the swing was simply enjoying myself in what I am doing – part of internalizing the dance and harmonizing it with my emotions, or so our instructor said.

It didn’t take me long to see what she meant. Unexpected epiphanies helped me rediscover long lost delight on the dance floor. The more I progressed, the more I understood the parallelism of life and dance. It occurred to me that life itself constitutes some form of dance: You live it according to your own rhythm and require proper breathing, grace, flexibility, balance and focus in order to succeed. Moreover, you get a plus factor in communicating with your partner sans the burden of words. It is a pleasant feeling to know you are able to connect with someone else.

The funny thing right now is that months after reluctantly doing a bit of center stage stuff, I have been entertaining thoughts of finally qualifying to hit the ballroom, armed as I am with my newfound skill. However I believe the legacy of dancing goes more than just that. It’s about revisiting a world I had far left behind; of rekindling a thrill deep within, of looking at life face-to-face through a miniature model. Although I can claim to be (ahem) relatively adept at going through the basic routine, I confess I still can’t execute the more complex moves expertly and elegantly, much less effortlessly. Heck, I’m bound to end up worse than a robot; and at the moment can only content myself to sighing and having this envious admiration for the lucky guys who can do so.

Such green-eyed respect will sometimes drive a person to reach for the stars no matter what. Recently while channel-surfing, the idiot box showed a pair of Latino terpsichorean virtuosos giving it their all onscreen. It was an exhilarating sight, no doubt, and it made me realize that there’s certainly much to go before I catch up with the likes of these fabulous superstars. But I guess after all this ruckus of not knowing how to dance and eventually taking classes in it, what really matters is not how well you shake your bootie, but how well you make the most of whatever you can do with your bootie. What little dancing genes I have left, I’ll do away with splendidly. Which means I’ll be awaiting life’s greatest dance yet.

an inkling of iloilo.

2006-04-24T23:04:00.000+08:00

There’s more to it than just meets the eye. This true-blue Ilonggo tries imparting the indulgence with a modest introduction.

At first glance, Iloilo strikes you as an urban enigma – humdrum yet delightful, unassuming yet elegant. It has neither the frenetic hassle of the metropolis nor the rustic charm of a mountain village but somewhat borders in between, a seamless intermingling of both worlds. Even for a seasoned Ilonggo who has practically spent all his life in the city, exactly how to classify it or maybe just comprehend a few of its elusive mysteries would prove to be a challenge.

But there are no intricate complexities, surprisingly. Take a casual stroll down any of its time-honored streets and you’re sure to hear omnipresent tones of renowned Hiligaynon, ever melodic and languid as if bearing testament to the unhurried pace of living in this city and the gentle character of its people. You’ll find that literally speaking, buildings have stood their ground for quite sometime, and to further preserve this historical significance the city government has recently enacted a law declaring any edifice over fifty years of age to be a cultural heritage site.

And why not? History has always been the city’s claim to fame, taking precedence over anything else. It’s the reason for the crowds of tourists annually flocking to its grandiose churches credited with their own unique styles, to the vintage mansions and enthralling plazas that number a dime a dozen, to its spirited festivals, and to Museo Iloilo, a foremost historical and archaeological haven in the region. We’re talking here of the second oldest city in the country (after Cebu) and to this Iloilo boasts of almost five hundred years of peaceful existence, becoming evident once one discovers that some structures – Tigbauan Church for instance – indeed attest to having been around that long, most of them juxtaposed in differing and oftentimes contrasting shades of baroque Spanish, definitive American and native Filipino tastes.

Not that all of this has gone unnoticed though. One such Christian pantheon, the Miag-ao Church with its ornate limestone carvings, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site; and similarly presenting themselves as one of their kind are the sister cathedrals of Molo and Jaro that lord over their respective well-known districts, the former a repository of all-female saints, the latter strictly of male ones and serving as the seat of the Archdiocese as well.

It’s sights like these that await you as you alight from your plane at the Mandurriao airfield (soon to be replaced by another of international standards), after you spot the gigantic billboards that dot many a corner in the horizon, SM’s humongous welcome sign, and the spires of St. Anne’s Church solemnly looming at a distance. But then again in this city, there’s no such thing as “distance” as everything comes into view for at most 20 minutes, and to speak of one hour would mean taking you far off deep into the hinterlands, provided there’s no traffic – one of the growing plagues the city pays as a price for progress.

True enough, progress it is for this thriving regional center that lately grabbed the distinction of being one of the model cities in the country. Undergoing a dramatic facelift over the years, I am a personal witness to how acres of swampy farmland were cleared into malls and plush subdivisions and dirt roads paved into concrete highways. Add in the increasingly energetic nightlife and favorable business potential and you have a city continually wooing the call of advancement, attracting curious investors with the alacrity of a preppie. From the row of painted balustrades lining Muelle Loney to the brand new bridge spanning Iloilo River, hip Smallville and the shiny, gleaming Provincial Capitol, there’s always room for pleasant surprises. All the more for one who is now pursuing further studies in the big city and who never fails to come home seeing and experiencing something new.

Nevertheless as with any other city, you’ll agree that the pride of Iloilo perhaps rests on its greatest assets: its people. Blessed with a genial countenance, amiable mien and traditional southern hospitality, its denizens possess remarkable frugality and an unusual love for industry that has catapulted the city to where it is now: sizzling, vibrant and always on the move.

A visit to any obscure neighborhood will eventually prove this. Amid the flurry of piña and sinamay weaving in Arevalo and of creating gastronomical concoctions in the form of the famous La Paz Batchoy, Pancit Molo, top of the range seafood and the all-time favorite treats of Biscocho Haus that have marked the city as a gustatory paradise, its four hundred thousand inhabitants still manage to retain their relatively busy yet stress-free lifestyle, most preferring to hie off after school or work to the cool interiors of the many malls sprouting one by one, or to the numerous clubs and coffee shops that have arisen in sync to the tune of modernization. A decade before when these things practically sounded alien to Ilonggo ears, it would mean an escape to the tranquil recesses of Fort San Pedro and nearby Rotary Park (which sadly is now on the verge of ruin) and to the endless stretch of beaches that line just about any seaside town, offering hopes of an alternative respite to any jaded, worn-out city bum fed up with the crowded sands of Boracay.

But to talk of Boracay, that’s explicitly another story. Guimaras, visible downtown and just a five-minute boat ride away, would also need another spotlight of its own. Still it’s no meager feat to say you’ve breathed enough of the Iloilo air to have had truly gotten the whole picture. Most probably, it’s just another mere glimpse into the daily workings of the former Queen City of the South, fast gaining ground with everyone doing everything possible to snatch the title back. And I daresay there’s no doubting it will. After all, it has produced great patriots like Martin Delgado who initiated the first anti-Spanish resistance in the Visayas, able politicians in the form of the late Vice President Fernando Lopez and Senate President Franklin Drilon, and world-class performers like violinist Gil Lopez Kabayao. It’s a city that will forever leave its taste in your mouth, long after you have washed it down with a glass of water and gone on to other journeys, a familiar sensation almost akin to déjà vu.

You won’t know it then. Well, at least not after you step out of your cozy alcove and drink in the warm afternoon sun, passing hordes of flourishing textile and hardware establishments, noting the easygoing demeanor of the people and occasionally rubbing elbows with some, in between bites of a tasty Ilonggo homemade delicacy, your ears abuzz with the incessant drone of passing jeepneys and motorcycles. At any point in your life some fond reminiscence of Ilonggo origin might randomly occur to you inside your mind, and you’d readily acknowledge that once you had been there, and that somehow you’ll gradually find your way back again.

Trust me – it won’t be long.

luck is a four-lobed clover leaf.

2006-04-21T08:39:00.001+08:00

I think I may have found what I just needed.

No, it’s not a four-lobed clover leaf (as evidenced by this title) or any other kind of leaf for that matter, but I simply chose to designate today’s entry as such because I believe it’s about time I address the long baffling issue regarding that most elusive thing we call luck.

The idea of four-leaved clovers as indicators of good fortune can be traced back to the European Middle Ages, when this botanical peculiarity, by way of an extra leaf, raised many an observant eyebrow. Not long after, people resorted to stuffing a few of these extraordinary biological creations in their pockets, just in case they really do work.

As time passes, so we gradually pitch in yellow butterflies, falling stars, and multi-seven digits, and the “lucky” cast is almost complete. You name it, the world has it.

I know this may all sound like a fanciful old wives’ tale, and indeed it is for there’s no sufficient scientific proof to sensibly support the claim of these objects’ being capable of turning poor old unlucky you into a brand new lucky someone. Then again, they say it’s all in the state of mind: I can only wonder in amazement how serendipitously finding such items can throw the supposedly lucky person into a fabulous floundering fit, even make him/her readily offer heaps upon heaps of praises to God.

Inasmuch as I would have liked to consider myself a rational person, I have to admit being fairly exposed to the wealth of zany beliefs and superstitions on the luck element surrounding me as I grew up. Like many children my age I too had my share of the wishing and the praying that one day or another these things would come my way, especially when the need arose for a lucky me (Nope, it’s not the noodles.) As I discerned more and shifted my mindset from fantasy to reality, it was only logical to gradually dismiss them as sheer inanity, except for one: RED SHIRTS. At present, I have quite a collection of these; and so to speak they have not failed to do the job during competitions and examinations. This summer, I have added something new for a change: a white shirt with the Chinese character for luck (“hok”) imprinted on it.

You might ask why wonder of wonders, I had to choose something so simple as a shirt, not even a red one, as a purportedly lucky symbol when all it can boast of is just that: the luck symbol displayed on its front. Opening our yearbook one time, it intrigued me to discover that one classmate’s slogan is “It is not enough for one to have the luck of talent; one must also have a talent for luck.” –Hair-raising declarations that at length caused me to examine myself for being possibly in want of a talent for luck. Perhaps if I really am, would the huge luck character on my shirt somehow rush to the rescue and get to duly drive away any negative vibes?

Quite a number of serious-minded people I know believe there is no such thing as luck, though. They brush it aside as a mere figment of the imagination, a byproduct of dawdling and daydreaming in the sun too hard and too often. We see how this is clearly concretized in the Filipinos’ time-honored “bahala na” of a fatalism as a rallying banner to eke one’s days out, and on that indolent Chinese farmer in the fable sleeping under a tree waiting for some lame rabbit to bump its head for an instant meal. Thing is, what if “bahala na” somehow lost its efficacy? What if that soon-to-be-dead-meat rabbit you’ve been waiting for all along never came?

The sages cite ample industry and right timing to compensate for, even attempt to explain, the workings of a convincing godsend. With proper faith, however, it would actually be a godsend; and more or less you have in your hands the straightforward formula for success. I know it because this is what my parents and some saner person around me would implant in my head whenever I peeved them with another exasperating episode on why I consider myself plain ill-fated. Almost in tart retaliation, their responses in the form of phrases like “You’re not giving it your all” or “You should strengthen your faith” would constantly zap me back to solid ground with the unfailing effect of a pail of ice-cold water.

Some days I still get the urge to hurl my usual endless tirade of lucklessness at no one in particular whenever I just had gone through a bad day. Heck, in moments like these the sight of the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the Google home page is even enough to make me cringe in derision. But I guess the sages were right. There’s no sense in catching yellow butterflies or looking for four-lobed clovers when they’re just not meant to be found, and similarly there’s no telling when joining the queue at the lotto or sitting it out in bingo games would earn you big bucks either. Still, we can always opt to choose alternatives more worthy of our time and energy. After all, it's a case of a half-empty glass or a half-full one - but I'm not wasting any more time on such trifling debates. If I can't get myself a bottle of Felix Felicis, I can always count on a little faith and a little effort to do the trick.

Wish me luck!

bringing out the tutor in me.

2006-04-19T14:21:00.000+08:00

(Almost a year has passed since INTARMED 2011 was offered the opportunity to tutor graders from a nearby public school. Little did we know then that what we took to be tedious pedagogy actually teemed with something much more than what it seemed, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.)

At first, it was nothing else but a whim. We have readily accepted a deal from our PI 100 professor that the final exams would be scrapped, provided we spend the rest of our five-week academic summer tutoring elementary public school kids. Which is not bad, I initially thought, doing the ABCs and 123s sans the teacher’s uniform. For three hours each week, you get to Aurora A. Quezon Elementary School, meet your tutee, engage yourself in an hour or so of droning (and sometimes even playing), leave promptly and afterwards feel free to strut your own stuff, period. What’s more is that you aren’t facing any genuine pressures: You are told to teach on specific learning areas, literacy in particular, and according to a specified manner, but that’s just about it. It’s really all up to you to play the game and you even get to do it at your own convenience. Plus, you skip the finals!

No sweat.

Inasmuch as everyone would have liked the entire duration of their tutorials to be like that – almost perfect and ultimately effortless – I must admit that the whole thing would have already turned mechanical in nature by then. Our tutees would have been like programmed machines, not normal children, whom we expect to absorb quickly and completely anything we teach them. But since this didn’t happen (it never happened!) and because teaching is never a smooth and hurdle-free process especially if one’s wards proved to be a challenge, tutoring time eventually brought out the teacher, nay, tutor, in each one of us.

When I first met 10-year old Renand LeAngelo “Gello” Manuel, I found myself wondering how I would fare in this meager test of mentorship. Fortunately I needn’t worry further for his positive attitude was all I needed to push myself off the diving board. Comparing him with the rest, he would have scarcely been a red mark if others were a pain in the neck, judging from the horrendous accounts of some of my classmates who seemed on the verge of giving up. We began our journey together through session after session of spelling quizzes, vocabulary enrichments, grammar lessons, letter-writing and storytelling; and before I knew it, I was connecting with him, establishing rapport and thoroughly enjoying myself as well.

Enjoyment perhaps stemmed from the fact that you get to become an enlightened person. You do not merely teach; you observe, you feel and you learn as well. For me, keenly observing my tutee while working on an assigned task allowed me to closely monitor his progress and spot any potential difficulties. What greater joy is there than seeing him fix his own errors, sometimes without any help at all? It is in cases like this that I’d applaud his feat and encourage him to do more.

I was also able to detect any possible areas of difficulty via observing his attitudes and reactions towards a certain topic, feeling his elation while beaming after a “Very Good” mark or his frustration while silently groaning over an extraordinarily mind-wrenching lesson. I once read that children do better when praises are heaped upon them, and I readily made sure I was generous in doing so. As for waterloos, I reckoned spending more time on the topic would suffice, coupled with the right teaching strategies, constant practice via exercises, and utmost determination.

But the road to comprehension also had its own share of bugbears. Many sacrifices had to be made on my part, like taking time out for one hour and a half appointments or so of tutorials when I could be comfortably ensconced at home reviewing my lessons. It also meant following strict priorities and studying at a pace twice faster so as to be able to tutor freely without dreading the premonition of failing a major exam hours later. More importantly, it required a really long patience. This translated to maintaining a great degree of self-control, keeping one’s cool and trying hard to calm down whenever you feel that enough explanations and examples have been given yet your tutee still seemed confused. Most of all, I was taught a thing or two about punctuality. My tutee definitely didn’t encounter this problem for he just lived blocks away from school. But me who had to come all the way from Binondo (okay, it’s not that far) had to try beating the usual morning jam, even getting red-faced one time when upon arriving, my tutee approached me and said that he thought “I wouldn’t be able to come” because he had already been waiting for almost half an hour! That, I guess, is another hard-earned lesson for good old tardy me.

Yet these are just some of the trivialities. On a much wider scale, tutoring opened my eyes to the more startling reality that is the educational system in public schools. Whereas we tutors naturally have free access to the place, we were sometimes forced to do our tutoring under the shade of some tree, or worse yet, under the scorching heat of the sun due to lack of available classrooms. Other facilities are just as deplorable: The absence of a canteen is decidedly obvious, poor ventilation marked the onslaught of furious fanning and odorous restrooms kept us from properly responding to nature’s call. But the worst situation would have to be education in itself. One classmate of mine was shocked out of her wits upon learning that her tutee, an incoming sixth grader, could hardly master the alphabet! This awakened me to the alarming truth that if we were to be tutors, then we really have to do some SERIOUS tutoring, albeit to the best of our capabilities, and make the most of our stint for the kids’ sake.

With this thought at hand, I believe the experience made me see life from a perspective that is totally brand new. It put into a different light my being fortunate for having had a stable educational background, going to good schools and sufficiently armed with knowledge for later life. Even more than that, it redefined the meaning of “carpe diem” – seizing the day – by making us realize that the best way to spend one’s day, or summer in this case, is through reaching out to others in need. I guess that instead of taking the PI finals, it was all tutoring could do to be a much worthy alternative because sure enough, and I say it once more, it brought out the teacher in me.

Hmm…I think I’ll have to make that “tutor”.

Postscript: Being one of the tutors of these children cannot make me any prouder than I am now. Two months after our encounter with these kids, we learned that freshly honed, they aced an aptitude exam given by the city government as a standard check on the quality of education in public schools. Ah, the wonders of teaching. I mean, tutoring.

summer bummers and carpe diem.

2006-04-18T00:15:00.000+08:00

Now, I’m officially a summer bum.

After regularly tromping to church during last week’s frenetic mishmash of Lenten hustle and bustle that culminated in colorful Easter fireworks, I’m once again back to my usual vacation self – sluggish, torpid, taking time to smell the flowers one day at a time, as languorous and unhurried as the pace of living in this city.

Perhaps it’s just the unbeatable heat taking its toll on me, or maybe it’s really my unknowingly switching to super-sloth mode that satisfactorily did the explaining on why it took me at least half an hour to lift my lazy frame off the bed and another additional hour to finish breakfast and hit the showers.

Pardon me. Some days can just go pretty nauseatingly slow.

For obvious reasons though, “slow” does present a much-welcomed change for someone who was previously stuck to a hype-and-hysteric lifestyle for three months, a payback period for worn-out med wannabes drained to the bones of vim and verve. Out of the corner of my mind’s eye there I was, all spent and stressed and anticipating a nice long respite as vehemently as a weary traveler yearning for an oasis. With these things coming to pass, I am bent on reminding myself that now is the time to reap the fruits one has sown, to replenish a long-gone sleep account temporarily remedied by loans in the form of bit-sized cat naps, extra helpings of go foods and trendy high energy drinks.

Still, that’s only looking at one side of the issue.

Before I find myself dangerously falling into the clasps of one of the seven capital sins and get myself severely chastised for it, I take heed to remember that summer is also the perfect time for living out “carpe diem”: for seizing the day and taking it as far as you can go; that is, out of bedroom confines and into the deepest recesses of this world.

For my part, I may not even come close to conquering Everest (Go RP Team!) or swan-diving into the benthic abyss of the Marianas Trench, but in my own little way, this translates to making do with whatever I could, whenever and wherever I could. Before the big break formally kicked in and restored our former spirits to properly kick ass in return, I had made a shortlist of things that I expected to accomplish during the period. With a bit of wishful thinking, I am expecting that by the onset of another grueling school year I could at least brag to have had given some justice to the concept of “carpe diem” in that I was able to aptly turn my two-month long sabbatical into a myriad assortment of worthwhile tasks, to wit:

Actively take part in Holy Week activities (Been there, done that)
Visit relatives and former teachers (These people really matter)
Take guitar lessons (The acoustic virus is just way too irresistible)
Spend more time at our store (It’s a family responsibility)
Hit the beach and the great outdoors (Hey, what’s summer for?)
Have another major class reunion (There’s nothing like reliving good old memories)
Read, read, read!!! (So far I am on my third book in two weeks)
Write, write, write!!! (This blog’s enough evidence, I guess)
Further explore cyberspace (We’re not called a world of push buttons for nothing)
Just relax (Need I explain?)

Well, so much for plans. As mentioned, I am keeping my fingers crossed right now in the hope that somehow they’d go a little farther than being mere Midsummer Night’s Dreams. But kidding dreams aside, I do believe the summer experience with the greatest “carpe diem” effect on me came from last year’s novel stint on tutoring public school children. Indeed it was an experience like no other, and I have treasured it so much I am saving my next post for a recollection of my thoughts and opinions on it as well as of the wonderful things it has taught me.

Now that’s what I call passing Summer 101 with flying colors.

a passion for lent.

2006-04-14T14:21:00.000+08:00

Today, in church, I will be reading The Passion.

And I will try to read it with passion.

After all it is a celebration of the Lord’s Passion.

Therefore I call it a passion for the Passion.

It’s the first time the job of animatedly bringing to life the drama of Christ’s Passion comes to rest upon my shoulders (Think Atlas Shrugged) and already I feel the pressure mounting, that of not letting the faithful down – at least not on this hallowed day.

It’s no enormous or greatly challenging task, actually. I’ll be playing the part of the good old narrator (which is essentially no big deal), but this translates to a straight 11 pages of no-nonsense dialogues and nonstop babbling in front of a presumably bored congregation for fifteen minutes till your voice starts to croak and your mouth finally runs dry. Plus, the responsibility comes with implicit extras: The narrator controls the pacing, juxtaposes the lines with the background music, and makes sure a smooth transition is called for between changing moods and settings.

Whatever happens, there just had to be no room for flops and blunders. Not after how I patiently went through session after session of intense, rigorous practice without fail.

But then again I'm only too glad to do my part - with passion, of course.

At this point I know I'm already guilty of abusing and overusing the word "passion" - something countless people all over the world have had the passion to do. Partly blame it on the plethora of connotations it conjures up at the mere mention. Passion of Christ? Passion to succeed? Passion in bed?

Even at this time of year, folks have been more or less displaying their own unique interpretations of the passion concept. The more religious people I know have been answering their Christian passion with strict sacrifices, while the more hedonistic ones made sure their passion for a well-deserved summer escapade is amply satiated by a quick hop to Boracay. Me? I guess I'm into the whole passion thing too: Aside from a passion to give my all in The Passion, there's curtailing my carnivorous passion, nurturing a more profound passion for prayer, and getting involved in my family's yearly passion for the Vista Iglesia.

More importantly, on this day of great mercy, I'm completely overwhelmed by the sweeping passion for solemnity that I'm sure also pervaded everyone's hearts and minds. Save for echoing tunes of Mary Magdalene’s I Don’t Know How to Love Him which is typical of my passion for religious songs, things on Good Friday usually strike me as having the passion to be simple and somber. It’s a day of utmost self-introspection indeed – to examine our conscience and show our deep, abiding passion for the Lord.

The greatest human passion of them all.

Postscript: Unfortunately I had a migraine as I arrived in church at about half-past three in the afternoon. Fighting the biting temptation to bang my head against the nearest wall and have this over with, I stuck it out until the very last rite. After the mass our parish priests and several nuns congratulated my partner Charles and I for a job well done. Looks like all the passion's still worth it, after all.

i, bibliophile.

2006-04-13T14:25:00.000+08:00

I just finished Sheldon's 400-page Are You Afraid Of The Dark? in a record-breaking six hours.

Yeah, I know that's nothing for many people. Why, back in high school, I even had a classmate who could consume similar pages of Cartland in a heart-stopping two hours! (Yup, during Chinese class).

But all the same I'm mildly congratulating myself for having achieved this small feat, which equates to having had a faster reading rate: I finished The Da Vinci Code in about ten hours, Angels and Demons in about twelve. Not to say that it was the book's innate charm that kept me glued to the pages though; hell, no. I'd even go insofar as to say that my expectations were a bit downplayed; the great Sheldon seemed to have lost some of his former touch here - failing to match the astuteness of If Tomorrow Comes and the allure of Nothing Lasts Forever. But then again, count me out to discuss these books for I'm definitely no Sheldon aficionado - I'm just up for grabs at whatever's new and hot from the latest bookstands and then I try to see for myself later.

Like most toddlers I grew up with my usual dose of once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters, so much that I even experimented with my own versions of beginnings and endings just to break the pattern and keep myself amused. But don't get me wrong: There was, and there still is, magic in the air. Every word and phrase continues to be wonderfully transformed into a touch of fairy dust that comes live in my head.

Later, my childhood years saw me digging up basic encyclopedias and well-loved children's classics as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as well as the detective Hardy Boys series, and with these tomes came a strong inclination for adventure and exploration. That was when I first developed a keen interest in travel (which, incidentally, also "infected" my brother), and in time I was helplessly drawn to inflight magazines featuring exotic and faraway places. I had also begun scanning major dailies for any interesting travel articles - that's how I started my daily news habit - and further along the road, I stumbled upon National Geographic and Reader's Digest which immediately piqued my youthful curiosity.

And the rest is history.

You might suppose that with all these ramblings about my reading "love affair", I'd be quite a connoisseur by now. Unfortunately, my bustling engagements with the printed word have to be cut short by more important matters in the academe. For one, I rarely read nowadays (except when you take into account the monster textbooks that are inevitably obligatory, then this statement is readily negated.) Much of my leisure reading is deferred to "breather" times as this, and even so I can't assure myself of quality hours of peace and quiet especially with my involvement in the flurry of activity going on.

Yet I do believe keeping this healthy love for reading indeed benefited me a thing or two, aside from the fact that I simply enjoyed myself in what I am doing. I found myself a rare gem of a book in the form of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, which chronicled the account of Chinese-American families trying to survive the stumbling blocks of a dual identity. Hands down, an uncanny parallelism exists with what Chinese-Filipinos have experienced and are experiencing, and many a time I even found it slightly painful to read for I understood every inch what the characters are going through, knowing that my own heart goes out to them with the very same beat.

This Lenten season, I am having an intimate encounter with the most inspiring book of all, one that I know will nourish holistically - mind, heart and spirit. It is only fitting that this Holy Thursday, as the whole world falls on its knees to start the commemoration of one man's suffering, we try to keep in mind that amid all the books that have made us laugh and cry, one book towers above everything else, overflowing with the promise of eternal life.

If it be an eternal life of reading, let the reading go on.

(My favorite book list can be viewed in the profiles section.)

the real breakthrough to be happy.

2006-04-12T22:50:00.000+08:00

"What's happiness?"

This is one question I have always pondered on during the few moments when my mind gets to be free from the usual clutter of everyday thoughts - that is, when I'm not engrossed in some busy banter or preoccupied with finding the most effective way to pass an exam while getting my daily shots of eight-hour zzz's. Other times it'd occur to me in the midst of devouring novels with sappy 'happiness' themes or while slouching on my seat watching silly no-brainer movies. Once I even came across a certain Archie comic edition where everybody at Riverdale High wore statement shirts emblazoned with eye-popping "Happiness is..." phrases, the ellipses filled in according to the wearer's notion of what happiness is. The whole thing sure caught my fancy, and I even remembered asking myself what particular shirt and message I'd end up telling the world if such was the case.

So what's the real score?

For one, happiness is not a thing to be searched for, they say; either you find it or it finds you. I had always been intrigued and fascinated by the fact that many people have given up lots of sacrifices, even risked their lives, just to be happy. Quite a crowd gave their all and still died unhappy. In the past (and even up to now) I had been stupid enough to believe that there is such a thing as "happiness as an expected end", that if only you were persistent and determined enough to pursue and keep your flickering hope alive in something until you have it in your hands, you're sure to be happy.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

It dawned on me that I was just another victim of the happiness game, another poor old chap who had fallen for an expected misunderstanding of the whole happiness thing. Not only did I wind up sorely frustrated, but I also found myself embarking on many more missions with the same empty promise of happiness: Do this, do that; think of this, think of that. What I had evidently failed to see was the vacuity of it all, the palpable folly of my actions. And it drove me to realize that all along, I had been too focused on my one-and-only "goal" to see the many other sights along the happiness highway and spot any alternative routes or even destinations in the process. On this dreary summer night I gathered up my wits and thought of possible "happiness" sources:

Getting 1.0's in all subjects (I came so close last time! Missed it by a hair's breadth of 0.03, damn Chem 14)
Winning a Palanca gold medal (I only settled for second place last time)
Having math back in my life (Boy, med school is a whole big world of sciences)
Being a future Nobel Prize for Medicine awardee (we'll see...)

Well, I guess you can readily classify me as a dreamer. You might even add to that "unrealistic". But then it hit me a second later: Why think of farfetched fantasies? Why ask for greater pomp and glamour when in fact, with the many things I have in my life right now, I can choose to be happy? Eventually the alarming truth forced me to believe that if I were to pick an Archie shirt, I'm bound to fail - unless I provide myself with a wardrobe of these, each printed with a different wish.

Yet come to think of it, what is happiness, simply put? Eventually the following list tallies:

A roof above my head
Three meals a day
Adequate sleep (Make that EIGHT HOURS. And I suppose it applies to this summer only.)
A loving set of parents and siblings
Good health
Making it to Intarmed Class 2011
Having your younger brother beat your record in the MTAP (and he beat Pisay too!!)
High school reunions and get-togethers
Writing
A close relationship with God

There, better. Now I'm sure if I were to wear an Archie shirt myself, it'd go on like this:

"Happiness is...CONTENTMENT."

You'd probably agree.

at last. finally.

2006-04-11T12:14:00.000+08:00

Finally, my own blog.

Suffice to say I've been wanting to do this for a long time ever since I came across similar hullabaloos of the kind. Only that I never got the time to do it until now.

You know that feeling? When you're inside the shower staring at the bathroom walls, or just plain idle lounging around counting cobwebs on the ceiling and then suddenly a barrage of ideas comes knocking at your mind's door. Problem is, you're trapped. Helpless. And you ask yourself, "What to do with all of them?"

In the past I'd usually try to keep my resolve to write down whatever I could for posterity's sake, but by the time I picked up the nearest pen and paper or got myself comfortably settled in front of a humongous MS Word screen, suddenly they just aren't there. And I realize, perhaps they will never be.

Funny, strange, philosophical, foolish even - but it's true.

Yet this blog will be more than just a granary for these ideas. It's a (somewhat) secluded area, a virtual extension of myself, another "hemisphere" of my cerebral hemispheres where I can freely rant and rave and go wild without anybody ever giving a damn.

I suppose to sum it all up without needlessly inserting any more superfluous detail would be to take a few lines from that good old Carpenters song:

“Inside my head wheels are turning,
Hey sometimes I’m not so wise.”

My mind has wheels.

May they keep on turning.