Thirty-three and thriving

In the morning, the small kids brought me a junior mallows cake. Here it is before it got sliced and gobbled up.


I had lunch with my dad at Red Restaurant in Makati Shangri-la. Fancy, eh? Dad's the guy in the long-sleeved blue barong, to my right. I would have loved to share the uncropped picture with the world but can't, for his sake. Nonetheless it was a nice, warm, meaningful, delicious three-hour meal. I'm lucky we have that much to talk about. This is my first birthday after the DNA testing...oooh I love my dad!


Here is the obligatory pansit (yay! long life!), actually, seafood fried noodles from Mann Hann in Trinoma, where the kids and I, together with Ate Helen, had dinner.


Elmo promptly fell asleep right where he ate. He had a slight fever, wawa...


Elmo and I are looking forward to the dinner here - but first we had to wait to be seated.


Fashion girl. On the occasion of my birthday, my otherwise tomboy of a daughter wore...a dress. She's here doing what she does best -- taking pictures and being photographed, at the same time.



Sophie and I just love good food! It's obvious here, I suppose.


I pose here with my brood -- whom I live for, really. A really happy day!


Upon coming home I realized Josh and I still did not have a photo of the two of us. SO here is the pahabol, we are both tired and sleepy -- and stuffed -- here.

Actually I just needed an excuse to post the pictures we took yesterday. For a change, I will let the images -- and the captions -- do the talking.

Ah, good times!

Tall order

published 23 Feb 2009, Manila Standard Today


A healthy dose of insecurity is the antidote to complacency.

The Internet is a vehicle for venting anything – pitches for products, the merits (or demerits) of public figures, jokes, conversations, social or professional networking systems, even one’s most intimate thoughts. But while there is so much information available, there is no easy way to ascertain the legitimacy or origin of whatever comes your way. Woe to the gullible who takes everything he reads at face value.

Moreover, since everything is easily made accessible in cyberspace, anybody can claim anything. Forwarding links and messages, perpetuating the chain, is a matter of a mouse click. The speed (real time) and scope (www is not “world wide” for nothing) with which the information travels, perpetuating the chain, is unnerving. Damage is just as easily done; “make or break” has never been so instant.

Then again, if you are driven to desperation and feel you have exhausted all means to achieve your purpose but are faced with a dead end, the Internet is probably your last resort.

Several weeks ago, I received an e-mail forwarded by an officemate who claimed her sister had a friend who knew the Zambales-based dentist who authored the original piece and narrated her experience in a Subic hotel. The dentist said her and her husband’s hotel room was robbed. Upon complaining, they were met with lukewarm reaction from the staff and hostility from the Korean owner.

Abigail Fernandez-Bautista alleged that this nightmare of sorts happened in May last year -- on her wedding night, no less. Assuming for an instant that her account was accurate, it was easy to empathize with somebody who married “the man of my dreams” and carefully planned her wedding to make it as special as possible. Instead, Fernandez-Bautista claimed that the actuations of the hotel’s staff and owner tainted her memories of her wedding day, possibly for the rest of her life. It was not so much the items lost, she said in her e-mail.

I was prepared to dismiss it as a variation of those chain letters one regularly receives. However, I was disturbed by the extraordinarily anxious tone of the author. On the other hand, if this were mere fabrication, it was grossly unfair to the hotel mentioned – the obvious message was to boycott the hotel for its poor security and customer relations. I sent an e-mail to the official address of the hotel as listed in its Web site, asking for a statement.

To my surprise, Vista Marina Hotel and Resort replied in a matter of days. Officer-in-charge Eva Gadin acknowledged that the robbery in Fernandez-Bautista’s room in fact took place. But she denied, and quite expectedly, that the complaint fell on deaf ears. Gadin said that the hotel paid the complaining party the amount of the missing laptop and the father of the groom, Mr. Edgar Bautista, “voluntarily signed the quitclaim [to] release the hotel from any and all liability and for full and satisfactory settlement of their claims.” Gadin added that despite this, Bautista thereafter went to the office of the president and “yelled at him [the president] right in his very office.”

The hotel officer said the circulation of Fernandez-Bautista’s letter caused the “severe crisis that befell the hotel.” Still, Gadin added that the incident gave rise to improvements in their premises to ensure similar events would not happen again.

**

I have been writing a column for a little more than two years already. It's amazing that I have managed to come up with topics to write about for more or less a hundred times (okay, I've missed five or six weeks and been threatened with a libel case). I know I'm still considered a novice compared to those who have been doing it for decades, and who write more often in a week than I do. I also still have a little too much naivete and idealism; sometimes I feel my middle name is Pollyana. But two years is two years. As I turn a year older today, this is something to celebrate.

Believe it or not, however, I still get the same feeling every Sunday night when I have to turn in my piece for the Monday issue. Last week I wrote about a sarsuwela I saw, on account of the National Arts Month. The week before that, I shared my thoughts on the stuff leaders are – and should be – made of. But if I had written about a personality I interviewed (usually on governance or women’s issues), shared parenting anecdotes (believing my concerns and insights universal) or reviewed a book, I still would have felt the same.

Fretful, insecure, scared. Worried I may have done irreparable damage, wondering if I could have done better, and always, always, towards the end, willing myself to quit obsessing after I’ve put my page to bed. What price do I have to pay for offending certain sensibilities? What if I bring upon myself and my bosses the inconvenience of a suit? What if I conduct myself in a manner I would later on regret? How much reaction will I generate this week compared to this week, or the week before that? During my maiden column in December 2006, I vowed to be a breath of fresh air, among others. Am I staying faithful to that commitment?

I wonder whether other columnists, or at least the up-and-coming ones like myself, feel this way all the time. Certainly this is different from writing editorials, which I do besides, and three times as often each week, because then I merely act as mouthpiece for my paper. There are no by-lines, no column name, and especially no picture.

I have always known writing was what I was born to do. And so much is expected of me as I use this gift. What if I take this gift for granted, squander it, laze around and die regretful? What of my dreams of making a difference? Falling short of one’s own expectations is not so easy to take.

I also landed on this opportunity upon recommendations. My late mother used to be a reporter for this paper and knew some of the people I am working with now. Hence there is a constant nagging feeling that I should shed these associations and justify that I’ve earned my place here.

Given this pressure, every time seems like the very first time. Every piece seems like the first submission.

But now that I’m supposedly wiser, I have decided that these feelings are not altogether bad; they are the antidote to complacency. If only for this, my readers can be sure I would be diligent, fair, ethical and honest – an apt reward for reading this column in the first place.

They deserve no less.


adellechua@gmail.com

Hearty

Bea and I are a picture of girl power. Here we have just finished a nice lunch. We would be able to shed the calories in the next few hours.


Josh appears startled as I took his picture. Growing boy, huh?


My Dark Temptation. I am here with the Axe mascot; hardly Mr. Right, but stil...

"Crass commercialism and all the cheese that goes with romantic love has made February 14 a day for gloating, for those who know better."

I would have said this last year. Perhaps the reader would cut me some slack. Not now, though. I did have a decent Hearts' Day date last Saturday. Two dates, actually.

Apparently it's never too late to learn a thing or two.

"Lagari" would be the appropriate term for what I did on the 14th, a Saturday, my day off. First I went to Trinoma with my daughter Bea, had lunch at Bigoli (Italian) and spent the next three hours looking at prom dresses. Bea's Big Night is on the 27th.

I had a reasonable budget for the dress but it's always a challenge to find something below it about which you will be happy nonetheless. Bea and I scoured the mall -- from signature stores to the eclectic ladies' section of Landmark -- with a vague idea of what she wanted in the first place, and were, for the first few hours, unsuccessful. We must have shed the calories from the pasta from all that walking -- and our legs were hurting already.

Bea was already frowning, already entertaining the possibility of not showing up at the prom altogether. Something was out there, I assured her, it was just a matter of finding it. We have certainly relied on hard work. What we needed was grace. Apparently Bea would not settle for anything passable, reminding me: Diba ikaw nagsabi, kung hindi ko gustong-gusto, wag na lang? (Mom, do you not always say that if I did not want something bad enough, I must not settle for it?"

In a less-enthusiastic stroll into Folded and Hung, on our third hour, she found The Dress: A black-and-silver thing that went perfectly with the shoes we had purchased a week before. It was at half-price. We rushed to the fitting room and Bea ermerged, all smiles. "This is it," she said.

Sigh. If only finding a suitable partner were just as simple and scientific.

On the way home, we took a cab, but the traffic on Edsa was monstrous. Indeed I was late for my second date, with Josh, whom I agreed to fetch at a friend's house at 4pm. I told him I wanted to go home and freshen up first.

The plan was to go to Gateway in Cubao. I still had a leftover gift certificate at Rustan's that I wanted to use for groceries. Of course, on Valentine's Day at 6 in the evening, traffic would be impossible everywhere. I was relieved when we made it to the MRT North Avenue station but stopped on my tracks as I saw the long line at the ticket booths. Oh well. We were here already, I thought. Fortunately my date was still in high spirits, his head bobbing up and down as he amused himself with his MP3 player.

We changed our minds and went to Makati instead. I imagined that Cubao would be crowded, that finding a cab home would be a nightmare, and that Edsa would be horrific. Instead, it being a Saturday, Makati might just be deserted. And the cab would have other options for taking us back North.

I was right.

Dinner was at Mong Kok (Chinese) in Glorietta 5, which I had heard of but never been to before. We then proceeded to the old Rustan's and finished our groceries in 30 minutes flat. The certificate was worth 5,000 and I did not want to shell out any excesses; my normal trip to the grocery for a two-week stock only cost a little over half of that.

I must be so talented: the total bill came up to 4,999.58. There was not a single item left in my pushcart.

Going home was a breeze. The driver, though he sneezed and sniffed all the way home, was smart enough to take the least-troublesome roads. We were home in less than an hour. Josh slept half the trip, and in the silence I pondered my well-ordered, predictable life nowadays. I concluded I liked it that way.

I am probably going to like it for a long, long time. For now I certainly can do without anybody turning my world upside down. Being alone is not a state of bliss, to be sure, but the occasional short-lived pangs of sadness are nothing compared to the horror, the indignity, of having somebody around to cramp my style.

Neither daunted nor wounded

published 16 Feb 2009, MST

‘I am seeing a sarsuwela,” I announced over dinner one evening. Nobody at the table said anything; the children kept on eating. Much later, my 14-year-old daughter Bea asked: “Isn’t that an old, old kind of show?” I told her it would be similar to a live performance of High School Musical, circa 1920s, although I wasn’t so sure myself.

That I bothered to find out first hand what exactly a sarsuwela was proved to be rewarding—even though I would be wrong as to my period estimates. The show that I watched at the UP Theater, only one of the many offerings during Sarsuwela Festival 2009, was initially performed in 1902. Yes, more than a hundred years ago.

***

“Walang Sugat” is a love story set against the backdrop of revolutionary Luzon. The maiden Julia was in love with Tenyong, who was being accused by Spanish friars of being a filibuster. Tenyong’s father, Ka Inggo, was himself a suspect; he was taken forcibly and ordered tortured by the same friars who were pretending to treat the prisoners well and show concern for their souls.

Upon his father’s death, Tenyong decided to join the revolution against the foreigners, heading to the fields of Bulacan. Before he left, he and Julia vowed to wait for each other and marry upon his return. But Tenyong was gone a long time and Julia had another suitor, Miguel, whom her mother favored over Tenyong. Arrangements were made for Julia and Miguel’s wedding.

Desperate, Julia found a way to send a letter to Tenyong pleading with him to come back and rescue her before the 25th of the month, the date of her wedding to Miguel. The revolution advanced. But Julia was made to believe that Tenyong had been killed in battle. On the 25th, Julia’s mood was funereal, garbed as she was in her wedding dress.

Just before the wedding ceremony began, an apparently heavily wounded and dying Tenyong was carried to the church in a stretcher. Despite this, Julia was elated that he kept his promise and came back for her. A priest was summoned to hear Tenyong’s confession, during which he uttered his “final” wish —to be married to Julia, even though he would be leaving her a widow so soon. Julia’s mother and Miguel relented out of compassion for the “dying” man.

After the priest pronounced Julia and Tenyong husband and wife, Tenyong got up from his cot and dropped the sheets that were covering him. He was not wounded at all (hence the title). It was an ingenious ploy to fight for the woman he loved.

***

Interspersed with Julia and Tenyong’s songs of love for each other are the undertones of love for country. “Walang Sugat” showcases the misuse of religion and the hypocrisy of those claiming to be men of God. It raises the issue of filial piety, sacrifice and the power of hope. It tells us men and women who truly love, not just another human being but their country and their cause, do defy all odds.

It also shows us that a sense of humor doesn’t hurt.

Members of the Barasoain Kalinangan Foundation Inc. staged the musical, ably interpreting the original words and music by Severino Reyes (of Lola Basyang fame) and Fulgencio Tolentino, respectively. The performance was directed by Armando Sta. Ana, while UP professor Chino Toledo arranged the music for the Sarsuwela Festival Orchestra.

Prior to seeing the show, I would have scoffed had anyone told me it was possible to enjoy anything from more than a hundred years ago. From the first scene, however, where cast members depicted Filipinos’ passionate adherence to the Catholic faith through dance, the audience was transfixed. Then began the first scene showing Julia and her friends embroidering in her living room, and she gushing about her Tenyong—in song. Soon spoken lines were also thrown in, all contributing to the building of the atmosphere that this was about love and something bigger besides.

While the focus was on Julia and Tenyong (charming actors and powerful singers, both) supporting actors were able to hold out on their own as they made their characters distinct and real. For instance, Julia’s mother, Juana, was not a typical domineering parent; she was torn between wanting to see her daughter happy and ensuring she did not break her heart nor endanger herself. Miguel, the spurned suitor, was effective as the rich eligible bachelor who was nonetheless undesirable, dependent as he was on his father for the most trivial of decisions. Lucas, the houseboy/ messenger, was loyal and brave one moment but fumbling at the next. His antics provided comic relief.

The words and songs were in Tagalog, but there were a few foreigners in the audience and I swear they were likewise applauding at the end of the show. Being from Valenzuela—which used to be part of Bulacan and which is still about 15 minutes from the first Bulacan town—I was lucky for my Tagalog proficiency that enabled me to appreciate the language used in the sarsuwela. The words used were those you would see in your talasalitaan back in high school. But the actors were able to utter these multi-syllabic words and extended sentences in conversational fashion (must have been tough to memorize these, much less utter them and sound effortless doing so) that you know what they mean, anyway.

It could have very well been the music. The orchestra was composed of young musicians handpicked by Toledo and brought together for the festival. The result was music that was upbeat or gloomy, serene or fiery, pained or celebratory all at the right time. It set the pace and created the mood for the actors and the audience alike. Toledo even took the liberty of using more contemporary tunes, Bayan Ko, for instance, in communicating Filipinos’ desire to free their country from the clutches of their colonial masters. And since songs were essential to any sarsuwela, the Sarsuwela Festival Orchestra, under the professor, was just as exceptional as any other main actor in the show.

***

Other performances and events are scheduled until the end of the month. The Sarsuwela Festival is a production of the College of Arts and Letters and the Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts of the University of the Philippines.

Entertainment need not be mindless or purely commercial. For inquiries, you may call 928-7508 or 981-8500 local 2105.

Cubbyholes

My little white Asus is perched on my new study table. Many late nights ahead!


Each child has three shelves. From left to right - Bea's, Joshua's, Sophie's, ELmo's


Our clutter-less living room. Beautiful!

When you like where you are,you don't stop coming up with ways to make it better. Ever.

For my birthday, and I turn 33 on Monday, I had initially planned on getting myself a new cell phone, a brand new Nokia 6300 (not the China version), sleek and classy with an FM Radio and a camera. I have been spending prudently and working hard; I certainly know when and how to reward myself.

But as I stewed over the idea, I began to like it less and less. I decided I did not need,much less want, a new phone. I am really quite ok with my worn-down Nokia 6230, which also has an FM radio and a camera, even as the battery dies on me sometimes and the longer messages turn out garbled and I have to ask the sender to resend, piecemeal. It gets my texts and calls across, and vice versa. All it probably needs is a nice new housing, which can be had for as low as 80 pesos from my favorite dealer just before I climb the stairs to the Monumento station of the LRT. Indeed, since I purchased it second-hand from Greenhills in November 2006, my phone has never failed me big time. I decided it was still worth keeping.

And I had begun wanting other things. Who cares for a fancy phone?

I was going crazy about the living room that was constantly cluttered with the children's things. Aside from their books,notebooks and stray papers from school, their individual interests also add to the items that must always be sorted and stored if I wished to come home to a neat ,serene house after a day at the office. Add to this the number of teenagers hanging out at our house every afternoon after school (my kids are just so gregarious they certainly did not get it from me.)

It did not help, too, that my new helper Aiza did not seem to have the tiniest sense of order. If there's clutter she has to walk over getting from Point A to Point B, she will ignore it unless you tell her to put it somewhere. I realized earlier on that I did not like the sound of my own voice ordering people around.(That was why I resorted to drafting a chore schedule to guide her...the problem is that I suspect she's a Hanna Schmidt. Not so much looking like Kate Winslet but equally lacking the ability to read or write.)

At any rate I also wanted the kids to be responsible for their own things. One could only fret over the house so much; and since I also did not like nagging them all the time to fix their stuff – in fairness, they do but not as perfectly as I would have wanted them to -- I came up with the brilliant idea of getting cubbyholes for each of them, similar to what they have in their classrooms.

I found a three level shelf, blue-and-white, on sale in SM the other day. BUY ONE TAKE ONE for 995 pesos. I purchased two sets so that each of the kids had his or her own cubbyhole. I figured I could give incentives for the neatest shelves.

But that's really not quite the birthday package yet, since it's theirs,not mine. The real gift was a wooden study table I could prop up right beside my two-month-old orthopedic mattress and which I could use to write on at night.

It was not just any table I needed: I wanted one with little shelves and divisions for me to place my stuff: Books, pens, post-its, photos and what-have-you. I already had a swivel chair; all I needed was a working area that was mine alone. I found it, too, on the same day in SM,and also on sale.

The total amount I shelled out for the shelves and the table, including the delivery fee of P180, was half the cost of the phone I was looking at. And now I am writing this piece on the table. (I had spent the last two hours just fixing it. It's weird but that's my idea of fun.)

I am so pleased at my decision. I really have grown wiser. It's a sobering birthday.

Picky, picky

When Aiza arrived at eight thirty this morning at my house, a workload matrix written on the white board on the dining room wall greeted her. Minus the lines, her welcome message looked something like this:

Monday - laba (AM), clean upstairs bedroom(PM)
Tuesday - defrost ref, clean electric fans (AM), plantsa (PM)
Wednesday - laba (AM), clean downstairs (PM)
Thursday - linis CR (AM), shoe rack,shoes and bags (PM)
Friday - laba (AM),cleaning upstairs and downstairs (PM)
Saturday - laba uniforms (AM), off (PM)
Sunday - whole day off

It was her first day and I got her under the auspices of getting a full-time helper to replace M, who demanded full-time wages for part-time and sporadic work.

It is a lie. I do not need a full time helper. I am perfectly ok with M's schedule (8am to 1pm on week days except Wednesdays) and M's work-- except that she is shameless and unreliable. There are still days she doesn't show up. I have often dreamed about teaching her a lesson, seeing the look on her face as I tell her she's been fired. And now I've let her go.

Today it was me who was nervous because I wanted so much for things to work out. I wanted a domestic arrangement that was seamless and systematic; such will relieve me of a great deal of stress. But I realize helpers are not robots but individuals with their own issues. Pluses and minuses and everything in between. Weighing these will determine whether they are worth keeping, bearing with, or firing altogether.

But I wanted,too,a universe of my own. I hated strangers. Especially strangers who acted familiar. I have never liked extra head count. I resent a body hovering while I try to enjoy some quiet time. The coziness of my home diminishes just a little.

I wanted,too,to expose the children to helping around the house, Big Brother style. They were big and able and smart. Surely we could strike agreements,schedules, assignments. It is so much fun working hard if family members worked hard together. And I really want to show them that while they did not have to be responsible for the whole house, they could be responsible for their own spaces. Of course it's easier said than done.

Worse, Aiza said she was a smoker.

Still, if she could just be the worker that I hoped she would be,perhaps everything would turn out nicely.

If the first day is any indication,however,I am doomed for disappointment. She followed the matrix but did not do her tasks thoroughly enough. Cleaning the upstairs bedroom only meant sweeping it. The pile of freshly laundered clothes remained. There was no imaginary sparkle that told you this room had been "processed." Something tells me neatness is not one of my new helper's virtues.

SOmething tells me this set-up will not last for long. I have to figure out acceptable arrangements. After all, it is my home. I am Queen.

And because I don't have a King, I am, well, Queener.

Musical manna

Sometimes manna does come down from heaven, even if you did not ask for manna or even believed you needed it in the first place.

In my case,it came in the form of a gift over the holidays-- a Philips GoGear Digital MP3 player. It's one of those things you think are nice to have but won't even make the effort to acquire, even you did have spare money. When I opened the little box at home, my bigger children saw the content and swooned. Well, both of them had their own MP3 players already and using them to the hilt. So maybe the little blue thing, if you really think about it, was destined to be mine. If destiny were true.

Even then I was not in a hurry to use it. I had been subsisting on the FM Radio player of my second hand Nokia 6230, although the battery dies on me sometimes and the headset has a life span of about four weeks after which it needs replacement again. My cell radio tided me through the two hours or so I spent in traffic every day.

Comes now this MP3 player. I stored it in my bookshelf, lovingly looked at it and could not believe I owned such a cool item (it's really small; it's a square thing just a little more than an inch long per side). But Bea borrowed the headset of my cell phone and misplaced it, and I needed some music as I traveled.

I tasked Joshua, my thirteen-year-old bass player of a son, who's a proud rakista and a closet jazz fan, to load my player with some songs or artists I had pre-listed. Suffice it so say I'm happy with the first batch. Two songs, particularly, I play over and over again. Let me share them with you.

1. Much has been said by Bamboo. This song is so cool you would not think it's performed by a rock band. Then again, Bamboo is not just another rock band. The lyrics are complex and three-dimensional while the music has a chill-out quality to it.

2. The fighting is over by Urbandub. It is easy to get distracted by the “over” that is at times pronounced “uver” if you choose to get stuck in the obvious (the guys are from Cebu, I think?). The story behind this song is also complex,very sad,almost grieving. The lyrics are heartfelt and real without being cheesy or trite. The “noise” with which all these is expressed is almost a camouflage. This is one of the saddest, most emotional songs I have ever heard.

It's great to know these great songs are performed by Filipino artists. Galing talaga ng Pinoy.

Prom pretty

Accompanying Bea as she shopped for prom shoes today made me nostalgic and made me realize that memory fails, sooner or later, and you're lucky if you are able to retain the things that matter.

My daughter,a high school junior, will have this event on the 27th, three Fridays from now. While the dress is quite out of budget range this pay period, the shoes take priority because dance rehearsals begin tomorrow, and nobody is born with the ability to dance in 2-inch heels. Oh well. She and her friends have checked out the pavilion, too. They say it is respectable.

Mine was held in the school grounds of good old Our Lady of Grace Academy, now St. Mary's Academy of Caloocan City. I must be really so old since I only remember it in bits in pieces. Curiously, I remember the date: February 26, 1993. I was in fourth year. But I am not sure now whether it was a Junior-Senior prom or a Graduation Ball. I don't remember having to attend anything similar the year before, but I do not remember whether juniors were present that day, as well.

A classmate, Lily Ann Salarda, designed my prom outfit, even though I pretty much knew what I wanted. We had a piece of cloth to work on -- my Lola showed me a navy blue-and-white polka dotted silk-like fabric which she says I could have tailor-made into a dress. In those days, I did not really have much of a choice -- certainly not a budget to go around stores to get a dress,off the rack! Armed with Lily Ann's sketch, I went to the seamstress. Except that the outfit was not really a dress. It was a one-piece torso-hugging rather low-neckline thing that tapered down into ...square pants. In those pre-Sponge Bob days, square pants were in vogue. They were decidedly more comfortable. My prom outfit swooshed nicely around my ankles.

No, I don't remember the shoes I wore. Nor do I remember dancing. It was an all-girls affair (pathetic, I know). I do remember hearing "Losing My Religion" by REM playing over and over again.

I remember being late for the event. Earlier that day I was in some school, PUP,I think, for the Valencia Memorial Awards for Journalism. I still had to go home and change. Certainly there was no time to get my hair or make up fixed in the parlor.

And my boyfriend, John (Bea's dad), was waiting for me. He was waiting at my house when I arrived from the competition. He was in jeans and the navy blue long-sleeved polo I got him for his birthday just two days before. Pretty dressed up for somebody who would just be bringing and fetching me. Upstairs, Lola was sulking. "Ibang tao na ang naghahatid sayo, (it's a stranger who's bringing you to school now!)" she said. I did not have the time nor energy to deal with that. I muttered something about having to brush my teeth.

Soon John and I were on our way. We took the bus, dressed up as I was. It was rush hour,too, so I had to stand about a quarter of the way.

The prom had to be over by 10pm. A few minutes after 10, I was at the gate, among my batch mates, all of us in varying degrees of dressed-up-ness. I was scouring the crowd for John. On the way home, we took a different route. We took a tricyle and a jeep. I remember thinking I was glad it was not raining. When I got home, Lola was asleep -- or was pretending to. A week later, I would learn I did not win the contest (I joined editorial writing and feature writing).

Everything else, I forget.

This time around, I hope Bea will have a lot more memories to recall. And a lot more lessons to learn.

Leadership and entitlement

How many of our leaders can admit, without cop-outs or disclaimers, to screwing up?

It appears the honeymoon is over; the end came sooner than expected.

Less than three weeks after being sworn in as President of the United States -- twice, for good measure -- Barack Obama must be realizing what a difficult job it is he applied for and got. Campaigning was rather a different matter. Persuading people to support you was a matter of projecting the right image, having a notion of what you want to do, and communicating your ideas well.

As history now has it, Obama's convincing victory was a function of his color, the platform of change he offered as well as his charisma and eloquence. It was the best of personality politics at work, something that's not so bad if you're talking about a personality that's not hollow or malevolent to begin with.

For the US President, winning must seem like years ago.

Some people were disappointed at his inaugural address. They were expecting the same rhetoric that gave them goosebumps and brought tears into their eyes. But there was none of that on that chilly Tuesday morning in Washington. What Americans and the world heard was a stark reminder that these were trying times and that Obama intended to deliver the change he had promised.

The challenges were early. The first occurred even before inauguration when the nominee for treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, was found to have failed to pay $34,000 in taxes. At that time, Obama stood by his choice, maintaining he was the best man for the job. Geithner was grilled during his confirmation hearing but got the post
nonetheless.

The nominee for health and human services secretary, Tom Daschle, acted differently, even though he committed the same offense (only that the amount involved exceeded $100 thousand). Daschle withdrew his acceptance of the nomination even before his confirmation hearings, saying he did not wish to distract the President from the real tasks he must attend to.

Accepting the withdrawal, Obama said: "I think I screwed up." Pray tell, does this now mean the President thinks he screwed up with Geithner, too but was forced to go along with his choice since the treasury nominee did not withdraw?

These early inconsistencies remind his swooning fans all over the world that President Obama is quite distinct from Phenomenon Obama, as The Economist so aptly puts it. Reality check: change cannot be effected as drastically and as instantly. Compromises are inevitable. But it does not mean you cannot start. Or that you should waver.

For instance, while Obama, on his first full day in office, signed an order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the actual closure will not be until after a year.

While he has made endless pitches for Congress to approve a stimulus package amounting to more than $825 billion to jump-start the economy, he still has to hurdle the realities of partisan politics in Washington. Some think he is being too aggressive; some are wary of the allocations, trying to "trim the fat" as one Republican senator put it. Undeterred, Obama goes around warning that the crisis could just as easily turn to catastrophe if nothing is done, and soon. “Don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped create the crisis,” he said. The Senate votes tomorrow on the stimulus bill.

And while the nation seems to agree with Obama's statements that hefty bonuses for executives of companies bailed out by US taxpayers were "shameful," not everybody applauded his move to cap the compensation of these executives to $500,000 a year. Some called him Big Brother, reminding him nobody does that anymore. But even if Donald Trump did not say he agreed with Obama, the President would have insisted on this manner of enforcing accountability for bailout funds. Failure must not be rewarded, he says.

If the early days are any indication, Mr. Obama's decisiveness should be a consolation, at the very least, to Americans in these dire times. Here is a leader willing to ruffle some feathers, do things differently from the accustomed (and failed) ways. So much of a
consolation indeed that he eclipses the Elliot Spitzers and the Rod Blagojeviches and the Geithners and the Daschles and all other public figures who simply felt they were entitled to behave the way they did, convinced a different set of rules applied.

**

The Philippines is not the place to look, either, if one is looking for inspiration from public leaders.

We never did acquire that habit of accepting criticism. Surveys with unfavorable results get dismissed as "mere perception" or "biased" or having "questionable methodology." If there's a shortage in cooking gas, you have an energy secretary that insists there is no problem and that it is "just a distribution problem." If pre-need companies fail, you have regulators who say they did not have enough manpower to do their jobs and a Palace spokesman who asks the public to give these fumbling regulators a chance.

If a chain of rural banks closes shop, endangering the life savings of thousands of depositors, you have a central bank which cannot do something about double-your-money schemes, claiming ingenious bankers have their way of circumventing guidelines. You have a state prosecutor who thinks he could get way with anything just as long as he operates in the informal economy. You have lawmakers who hardly show up at work or contribute meaningfully to discussions, even if they were there.

Why can't they just say they screwed up and then face the consequences of what they have done or failed to do? Oh I can go on and on with this depressing list and one basic idea will remain. They all feel entitled – to be greedy or lazy, to cheat, to demand special treatment -- just because they believe another set of rules apply to them.

Insulting, too, are their efforts to hide their smugness. Since election is just a year and change away, we now see this or that politician taking up this cause, calling himself Mr. This or Ms. That or styling himself as the agent of change this part of the world. Jeez, they don't get it, do they? They don't have to try hard to be so-called local versions of Obama. All they really have to do is remember who their real bosses are – the Filipino people – and try to be the best versions of themselves.

That is, if such a thing exists in the first place.

The Many Ways of Reading

There are at least three ways to appreciate The Reader, the book and the film. I have had the opportunity to experience both the novel,written by Bernhard Schlink (it was lent to me by a colleague, and I'd been gushing about how great it was,so that when my daughter saw a hard-bound copy at Booksale FOR SEVENTY PESOS, she immediately got it for me) and the film starring Kate Winslet,David Kross and Ralph Fiennes.

I will not even attempt to compare the film with the original novel. I believe each is a separate literary entity,each capable of painting a version of the dilemma put forth. I am not a film critic, either. I judge what I behold not from any fancy theory; I do the more crude and elementary "reaction piece." Literary criticism, however, has given this simple method a name, reader-response theory,if I remember correctly from junior year.

Here is the basic stuff: The two main characters, Michael and Hanna, meet each other at three points in their lives. In 1958,when she was 36 and he 15,they start a brief but intense affair. She disappears. Eight years later, she is on trial for locking up Jews in a burning church during the war (she was an SS soldier); he was a law student. It is here he realizes she is illiterate; that was why she always asked him to read to her in bed. WHen she does get imprisonedfor life, a sentence much graver than her co-accused got -- just because she did not want to admit she was illiterate -- Michael resumed his reading habit and sent volumes upon volumes of audio tapes to prison. Eventually Hanna taught herself to write. When she was up for release, in the 1990s, Michael was the only contact the prison could find for Hanna. They then ask him to arrange Hanna's return to the real world. They meet again, and talked about her impending freedom. On the night before her release, she hanged herself.

It's a love story. Michael has never loved any other woman in his life. But her rejection of him-- her leaving so suddenly -- damaged him; it would prompt him to remain distant. And indeed he never wrote her back, never gave her anything of himself except the tapes that contained his reading.

It's also a moral dilemma. During the trial, Michael knew Hanna could not have written the order to lock up the Jews. But Hanna chose to own up to this deed rather than give a sample of her handwriting and thus admit she did not know how to read and write. What is one to do,then, when one witnesses somebody in the brink of bringing danger upon himself. Must one step in, move heaven and earth? Or must one sit back and watch, out of respect for the other person's self-determination? Must one look away?

Last, The Reader reveals how a generation's -- or a people's -- acts can occasion a wide range of emotions. Guilt, shame, anger, absolution. It is true for the Holocaust, all those who participated or simply watched the horrors to save their own skin or lost their families or lost themselves.

All these are according to me, of course. The best thing about these books and these films is that they don't end. The questions linger, the characters haunt, and you are reminded that life is really as open-ended and inconclusive as that.

25 Random Things

A friend tagged me (whatever that's supposed to mean) in Facebook and I am supposed to perpetuate the chain by making a bucket list of sorts. I put it off for a few days but realized that writing my answers was a lot of fun.
Here is the list as it will appear on my Facebook page. I hope the reader will have as much fun as I did...

25 Random Things About Me

1.My life revolves around my children, my writing and my job. Everything else is secondary.

2.In 1984 when I was 8, I joined Little Miss Philippines in Eat Bulaga. My talent was a lip-synch version of Eartha Kitt's Waray-Waray. I won the daily finals but lost the semi-finals, where I lip-synched Kitt's “Come Into My House” instead.
In 1985, I was prevailed upon by mom and my gay uncle to join the same contest. I lip-synched Madonna's Material Girl this time. I brought along with me three boys (Dennis, Lawrence and Mel) who were a few years older than I was as accessories for the number. I lost.
I was a bit player for Ben Tumbling, a Lito Lapid movie, in 1985.

3.I like listening to rhythm and blues and jazz music. Some standards, too, the upbeat ones – not those you hear every Sunday morning blaring from your neighbor's radio or the kind they use in funeral marches. My favorite artists are Sting, trumpeteer Chris Botti, and Sade. I also like, in no particular order: Frank Sinatra, John Legend, Usher, Stevie Wonder, Eric Benet, David Benoit, Bobby Caldwell, Tony Bennett, Patti Austin, Paula Cole. Among the local artists, I like bands Bamboo and Urbandub. And Eraserheads of course, during my time.

4.I like cotton candy and popcorn (except caramel.)

5.I've kept a diary, either in longhand or electronic version, from 1989 to 2008, or a total of 20 years. Writing is like maintenance medicine, to keep myself together and make sense of the world. These volumes fill up a big travel bag. Nowadays I just blog. The thought that I might possibly have actual readers has made me up my standards so that any one entry that I write has a coherent structure. I don't ramble anymore – at least, I'd like to think so. My most private thoughts I keep to myself or, if I do have to write them, I save – NOT PUBLISH – them in my blog.

6.I get really upset when things don't go as I plan or when something (an appliance) breaks down.

7.I hate unreliable and meddlesome people. And show-offs.

8.When I am particularly upset or feel as though I am not in control, I rearrange the furniture in my house. That has never failed to get me back my balance.

9.I like to dance. Jazz and Hip Hop.

10.I like going to church to say a prayer but I have not yet appreciated hearing mass. This when I spent twelve years in an all-girls Catholic school and another four in a Jesuit-run university.

11. I am a loner. While I adore my kids, love my friends and have no problems with my colleagues, I like working and being alone. I hate it when people encroach into my personal space. Mainit ulo ko when I am surrounded and not left alone even for a few minutes each day. It is only when I am alone that I truly breathe.

12.I'm claustrophobic. I get chest pains when I feel entombed.

13.I read a lot but still not as much as I would like to.

14.I love getting massages and foot spas.

15.Flowers make me smile.

16.I went to Germany for a short course in 2007 (lived in Berlin for 7 weeks and traveled to Frankfurt, Hamburg and Dusseldorf for 1 week) and fell in love with it. Actually I'm in love with Europe. Don't ask me why – I don't know, too. When the kids are all grown up, I will go back there one day and see other places – Paris, Southern France, St. Petersburg, Geneva. I will spend hours and hours writing and daydreaming on board a cross-country train. I would also like to make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.

17.Prawns, crabs, broccoli are at the top of my food list. All other preferences depend on my mood. I like Italian food – pesto, aglio olio, herbed bread. On a quiet evening, I like munching on different cheeses and sipping wine. And then on the next day I could be equally enjoying tokneneng, squid balls, banana cue or pansit malabon.

18.I've been wanting to slim down forever. But I haven't been deadly serious about doing so. My motivation is really just to prove my level of personal discipline, that I can temper anything. Aesthetic considerations are secondary.

19.I share my bedroom with my daughter Bea. We put up a divider-- vertically chain-linked bears in brown, orange and white -- to delineate her area from mine. A small bookshelf stands beside my single-size bed. I keep my room and my closet neat at all times. My shirts and blouses are hung in a color spectrum.

20.I like ironing clothes. There is a method and a system to it and the results are easily perceptible. It also isolates you from the rest of the world. Aaaargh! If only it weren't so backbreaking.

21.I am in awe at landscape. I like feeling small and insignificant amid natural splendor. Beaches, mountains, trees always remind me they were there long before I was born and will continue to be there long after I am gone.

22.My favorite channels are CNN,BBC, Fox Crime and National Geographic (except the plant-and-animal features). I'm interested in world affairs; they remind me it is foolish to get soaked up in my own woes and that someday I should give more of myself to my country and to the world.

23.I'm a seasoned commuter. I have no qualms taking the tricycle,jeep, train or bus. I only take a cab when I am with kids,when I'm not feeling well,or when I want to reward myself. I am not afraid to get lost or try new routes. I am wary, though, of thieves and perverts so I force myself to be alert, observe my co-passengers and operate on basic survival instincts. Especially since I doze off easily.

24.Jewelry does not appeal to me – bags and shoes do. I adopt a simple principle when buying them: it is possible to be inexpensive but classy, sensible yet pretty.

25.If I weren't a journalist, I would have been equally fulfilled as a lawyer or a diplomat. At any rate, I would still be writing, whatever my profession was.

Boys' toys and Elmo's days

Elmo proudly displays the owl he has made from his Smart Cubes.



Elmo is busy with his new toy while I read a new book.



Kuya Patrick of Toy Kingdom shows him how to stack cups.



His hero, Lightning McQueen



Elmo here is undecided where to go.


I needed a wooden breakfast tray. The one with legs you could fold. No I was not being served breakfast in bed -- certainly not with a rose! -- but I wanted to maintain a decent posture as I stayed up half the night writing on my laptop while everybody else was asleep. First I went to our neighborhood mall, SM Supercenter Valenzuela. The saleslady was pleasant and accommodating. "Yung kahoy mam? Yung ganito kalaki (With a hand gesture approximating the size)? Yung may stand na natutupi?"

"Yun, oo nga!" I was made hopeful by the preciseness of her description.

"Ay mam, wala ho." Grrr.

So that's what brought me yesterday to SM North Edsa, which boasted of a good array of household materials. Somehow, Elmo was with me (the girls went over to their father's and Josh was indulging in computer games, something he could not do during weekdays).

He asked to be left for an hour at the playroom at the basement of the main building, right where the food court was. We had been munching on Dunkin Donuts -- he did not wish to have anything else -- when he saw the playroom, which indeed looked inviting with its giant tikes, bridges, tunnels, pools of multi-colored balls. We inquired and learned that the rates were different for weekends. Expectedly it was more expensive than My Playroom (the SM Val version) but still well within my reach. I decided ELmo deserved it, he qualified for three subjects in his school's Quiz Me contests without my reviewing him, and his eyes were twinkling like neon as they implored me to say yes.

At least I had an hour of relative quiet to find my tray -- I did and without hitch -- and pass by the stacks of books on sale at National Book Store. Of course I could not resist approaching, I was drawn to these things like a pathetic paper clip to magnet. And I did come up with two finds. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety (by Judith Warner whose column, Domestic Disturbances, I occasionally read at the New York Times) for 100 pesos. The second was a gem: It was Night, by Elie Wiesel, the Jewish philanthropist who survived the Holocaust. (He appeared on the CNN feature on genocide a few weeks ago and more recently was found to have woefully invested the funds of his charities with Bernie Madoff). Night was his firsthand account of his experiences at the concentration camp in Auschwitz. I had been reading and watching anything about the Holocaust since I read The Diary of Anne Frank in sixth grade. This one was as reliable a picture as one could have -- for fifty pesos.

Night deserves another blog entry. I will leave it at that.

Promptly 55 minutes later (I put my cel on alarm,) I was back at the playroom and Elmo rushed to put his shoes back on. He waved goodbye to a friend he had made -- a boy, Brian, told him to come back at noon the following day because he would be there again, and I marveled at the many friends and acquaintances children make but fail to keep in these playgrounds while wondering at the chances they would even run against each other, or recognize each other even if they did, at some later point in life.

Elmo was soaked from running around and I took out the spare shirt I had packed in my bag. I wiped his back with the dry portion of his shirt, made him rub his hands with a sanitizer, peppered him with baby powder and then put his new shirt on. I did not bring a big bag for nothing. I asked him whether he was hungry and he said he wanted more donuts, later. Walking hand in hand, we came across an image of his all-time idol, Lightning McQueen. We stopped to take pictures.

We hopped over to The Block, to Toy Kingdom. At the door Elmo became transfixed with a demonstration of Smart Cubes, differently-sized and -colored squares that could be put together to form various images -- animals, robots, trees, pyramids. After the demo, Elmo told the promo guy, as if to ask permission, "sandali lang po, papasok po muna kami sa loob (a moment please, we will just go inside)."

He pulled me by the hand to the boys' section. There he searched each shelf for Transformers, and when he found it, his eyes shone again. He knelt down and started examining the goods. He reached for a toy, read what was written on the label, turned it around and read the back label, murmured to himself or shook his head, made a face and returned the toy to the shelf. This went on for many minutes.

Boys. The robots looked the same to me! But Elmo was particular about the names of the characters -- Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Barricade are the only ones I remember -- as well as each robot's other forms. I had been standing there doing nothing, rolling my eyes at his preoccupation, so I observed other children in the section. Most of them were alone. Two or three were with their dads who appreciated the toys in the same critical fashion. Certainly there were no other bored moms in that part of the store. I started dreaming about the almond sans rival cake (Sugarhouse) I would get myself on my birthday.

"Eto na, mommy. Eto ang gusto ko. (Here it is, mommy. This is what I want.)" Elmo finally said. I looked at the price tag and put it back on the shelf myself. I reminded my boy that his budget was P300. "Do you know how to look at prices?" He shook his head.

And so began more minutes of scrutiny. ELmo soon enjoyed looking for the number beside the letter P on each item, and it seemed to him it was a test whether that toy was "pwede" or "hindi pwede." Finally he stopped. "Di bale na, (never mind). Sa graduation ko na lang, yung mahal na toy, pwede ba? Balik na lang tayo sa Smart Cube." And that's how he ended up purchasing an educational toy instead of the robot he originally wanted. He seemed equally pleased, though.

On our way out, Elmo again stopped by the door because another salesman was making another demonstration on the Speed Stacks section. Elmo broke free from my hand and approached the guy, whose tag said his name was Patrick. "Kuya pwede mo ba akong turuan nyan? (can you please teach me how to do that?)"

And so for another fifteen minutes I stood, first taking pictures, then just watching Elmo as he learned the basics of cup stacking. I thought it was silly, arranging cups into a pyramid, gathering them again and then timing yourself as you did so. But Patrick was fast and Elmo was eager to learn. Soon he was doing it too, although of course a little slowly.

I told him he could not expect me to get the stacking set for him. It cost P800. To my surprise, he agreed. "Lalagyan lang yan ng tubig ni Ninang. Sayang pera. (Ninang will just put water in it. A waste of money.)"

I was supposed to return him already to his dad's house, especially since I had been with him all week. But Elmo tugged at my hand again and pointed to GoNuts Donuts. He said he was hungry again. I was, too, but more donuts???

Elmo is weird. He likes strawberry donuts or candy-sprinkled ones. He gobbled up two of them while working on his Smart Cubes at our table. He did want to go yet -- "hindi pa madilim, o! (it's not dark yet, look!)" I was grateful for the chance to rest myself; I was feeling sluggish and I wanted to start reading the Wiesel book. For the next hour and a half, we sat there, both bent over what we liked doing best. He imitated the model structures on the accompanying magazine and interrupted my reading every so often to show me what he had done.

In the cab, Elmo borrowed my cell phone to compose a message to his dad -- to fetch him a little later than the appointed time. When we got home, I straightened out the house and heated the baked macaroni I had cooked earlier that day, I was so sick of donuts -- while he played on the carpet. We were like that, silent but perfectly in synch, perfectly happy with what we were doing -- until the buzzer sounded. It was time for him to go.

He would be spending the night at the other house, but he would be back the following day. Still, Elmo hugged me a little too tightly as he said goodbye.

Later that evening, as I tried on my tray -- which worked exactly as I imagined, by the way -- I pictured my baby playing with his cubes. Then I put away the tray and went to sleep, so that "tomorrow" could already be "today".