Legislate running | Sun.Star Cebu | May 28, 2010

I had cleared the bedside table of its usual residents—dog-eared books and Vicks inhaler. Last night, I had a neatly folded pair of running shorts, a dri-fit shirt, new pair of socks, and my running shoes, to take the place. My phone would drill its way into the pillow and wake me up by 5 a.m. I belong to that kind of sleepers who can’t be roused by birds chirping, sunlight falling or dogs barking. I need a bit of panic, say, a divine apparition or a tropical depression. I was going to try it out, brave the dawn and trudge a good stretch of the SRP, up to wherever lungs and limbs could carry me.

I figured if I could lift my soul in this first attempt, enlightenment is a matter of a 5K run. I figured if I could get into the groove, set a new default setting on my body clock, in no time, I’d have a six-pack to show off on Facebook. I figured I could probably be a matinee idol before Noynoy is proclaimed or put a sudden halt to the career of this guy Derek Ramsey. I figured I could be spending my life endorsing boxer shorts and hiding from groupies in mini skirts.

I was thinking that with a longer life and sturdier muscle tone, I’d be perfect with a century to waste to finally read through a backlog of old books. I’d finally be able to leap beyond two chapters in “Moby Dick,” “Ulysses” or “War and Peace.” I’d have the healthy mind to fully absorb philosophical puzzles in any of those untouched tomes on my shelf.

Dream on. And I mean that literally, because way beyond 5 a.m., in my dream, I was still Jabba the Hut wolfing on Talisay lechon. When I opened my eyes, I was the fictional character in Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”—the gigantic man-insect who couldn’t heave his bloated body off the bed with all the innumerable limbs working all at once. I gave it an hour, until the smell of adobo burst forth from the kitchen. It lifted me to heights unimaginable, like joy-riding in Shangri-la. Ah, paradiso!

Such is the redundancy of vice, its overwhelming weight on the lives of not a few of us. When president-apparent Noynoy Aquino said he is not considering giving up smoking, I thought that if the executive won’t be bent on conjuring up life-saving policies, the legislative can come up with laws requiring every citizen a five-kilometer jog each week.

That’s it. Let the citizens run, wring their necks into compliance. That will be way more efficient economically than spending your health budget on intensive care for citizens with the eating habits of a T-Rex. Noynoy, the economics graduate, probably understands that a citizenry’s oblivious appetite for pork and lack of exercise is directly proportional to a health budget.

The trick in this proposed law will be that if you don’t run the 5-kilometer-per-week requirement, you’ll go to jail, although in there, you’ll have a different level of physical fitness, courtesy of the late Michael Jackson. With my psychomotor incorrigibly haywire, I’d rather run the 5 kilometers than rouse Jacko’s soul into eternal unrest and earn YouTube fame. My genetic make-up left that part on grace in motion.

The morning, such as the one I just had, is one of those countless mornings of failing to keep a promise. Really, I’m just joking about the running law, although there could be a way to legislate for the health-being of citizens. Tonight, the Ungo running club, led by colleague Max Limpag, will make parallel travel through history in the city’s Kabilin tour. Since you can’t check on my six-pack yet on Facebook, you can seek details of the Ungo run there.

Sci fi Koalajeje | Sun.Star Cebu | May 24, 2010

In a galaxy far, far away, Captain Barbers speaks before the largest delegation of leaders in Planet Kewljeje, some 999 trillion light years from Earth. He had traveled through ten black holes and reports about strange sightings of Earth-like bears who, he says, could be intelligent life forms plotting to sabotage the otherwise invincible circuitries of Poll2010jeje, a device that ensures the universal and synchronized succession of leaders in majority of the planets under the UNjeje Treaty. The machines, created by an outsourced pool of turbaned geniuses from the southern cluster of the Alpha Centauri, had exponentially complex encryptions that made them function like human physiology with all its chemical configurations.

“Mr. Speaker, sir,” Capt. Barbers, an erstwhile cloud-dweller in Nebula XXX, begs for an audience. “I can beam this body a hologram image of these strange creatures. And I shall prove to you that there, indeed, is a glitch of damaging proportions in the integrity of our Poll2010jeje!”

At this time, shouting bursts forth across the hall.

“Shut your beaks, everyone!” The Speaker, a tusked old man from Deneb of Cygnus, calls out. “This matter is of utmost importance for the survival and peace of all planets under the UNjeje Treaty. It is then our biggest responsibility to cast light in every dubious corner of the Poll2010jeje process.”

Capt. Barbers doesn’t delay in beaming his shots of the strange creatures who he said have a comprehensive knowledge in the rigging of the universe’s electoral process. A sea of varied reactions rises in Housejeje Hall.

Congressman Loxy calls out to the Speaker, “Mr. Speaker, sir! That is a joke! That is a Koalajeje bear!” As it is beyond the heads of most people in the hall, Congressman Loxy explains the nature of Koalajeje Bears.

Koalajeje bears, he says, are shameless snub-nosed marsupials that thrive in the gaseous strips of many planets in the galaxy. These are galactic on-call bystanders who are usually hired as special operatives by disgruntled leaders out to spin planets off their usual axis.

Koalajejes, Cong. Loxy says, are dyslexic by nature and are poor in spelling. “As evidenced, distinguished citizens of the UNjeje Treaty, this Koalajeje beamed before you by Capt. Barbers is a phoney! He can’t spell the system correctly. It does not have a terminal ‘jeje,’ and is therefore a joke of nebular proportions! This nova is a super-dud!”
Noise erupts across the hall. A one-eyed elephant falls off the balcony. The marshals later report he was a politician from Pluto who spent his life’s fortune to buy votes. He lost.

“But it’s a reputable bear!” says Capt. Barbers, and went on to describe that in gaseous territories, cuteness is proportional to truth and honor.

“But a Koalajeje is not a bear!” replies Cong. Loxy, this time he has turned red and his vertebra is expanding portentously into spikes.

“It’s more than you can bear, congressman? Is that what you’re saying?” Capt. Barbers says.

“You’re a son of a Vitch!” Cong. Loxy yells at the captain. “Vitch” is a derogatory term pervasive in not a few planets, but of unknown origin. Professors from Hubble University say it could come from the word “Visigoths,” and it could be what came into Cong. Loxy’s mind as he looked at the hooded Koalajeje.

And so it was learned later that Capt. Barbers was in cahoots with the Koalajejes. He lobbied for anarchy, says Cong. Loxy of him later. He played a part in the grand and protracted plan to keep the old rule of corrupt leaders in the universe.

There is no assurance that the planets of UNjeje will live happily ever after. But at least they have rid themselves of the diabolical plot of the snucky Koalajejes and Vitches. They have also learned a lesson that Koalajejes, after all, are merely bear impostors.

Postmodern polls | Sun.Star Cebu | May 18, 2010

There is a large explosion across the street. A monstrous cloud billows over the neighborhood like an angry beast. There is fire everywhere, people spilled into the streets with expressions of shock and awe on their faces. Fire trucks arrive, but the fire arched over and licks another section across the street. You can see how powerless the firemen are against the hellish wave that gobbles every solid structure in its way. Such a gross dosage of hyper-reality, and from a distance you are looking at the whole spectacle with the heat vibrating against your face and body. There is screaming and wailing, and it is through them that you know some twenty families are trapped and are probably charred in the inner portion of the neighborhood. Because of the shouting, you also know there is fighting among people and cops and firemen and government officials. Everybody is here, except one: the media.

The day after, you switch on the radio to wait for the news program. But, no, there was no news of the fire. You turn on the TV, but no mention of it. The papers say the day before was thoroughly lackluster. Will you be disoriented? Will you for a few seconds doubt your grasp at reality? Will you think you were just dreaming the day before?

I pose these questions to my students in a class called postmodernism. A cultural theory asserts that in this day and age, there seems to be an aberration of the old concepts of truth. Reality is not what you can touch or see for yourself. The people’s grasp at reality lies at the mercy of an intermediary or the media. The copy, or “simulacra,” is what is real.

A friend of mine who was backing a candidate in his barangay in a southern town in the last election had a hard time convincing his neighbors about a certain issue. His neighbors, otherwise trusting in ordinary times, would rather believe in what a radio commentator, whom they hardly even knew personally, would say. They didn’t trust what their own neighbor was telling them.

I must have pointed this out in a column earlier during the campaign period. The old notions of machinery—where local candidates carry national contenders—have become passé. The battle is no longer fought on the ground. The skirmish takes place mid-air. Media’s power grows, not relying on reach alone, but because it has become the intermediary that practically defines and narrates what is supposed to be real in a postmodern society. As I narrated earlier, a fire that you saw with your own eyes wouldn’t be as real as when it is being narrated by media. If it didn’t come out in the news, you would have doubted for a moment whether the fire actually took place. The theory describes this as the “loss of the real.”

Villar stood a fighting chance when he bombarded the airwaves with his political ads until Aquino leveled up in both news content and advertising when the official campaign period started. The dominant message in the end put Villar in a bad light. Teodoro insisted on basking on the old notion of machinery, relying on the campaign of local candidates and didn’t invest much on media. He was practically thin air, and ran like a goat. If you believed in the surveys and closely watched it, you’d have seen that the ticks in the figures were triggered solely by what was happening on the airwaves, not by the dynamics of traditional machinery on the ground.

However, the shifting notions of “machinery” are not only brought about by this expanding role of the media, but by the change in the dynamics of power since the local government code. But let’s take that up some other time.

The great divide | Sun.Star Cebu | May 14, 2010

When 2010 opened, I was filled to the brim with optimism. At the very first waking hours of the year, I took my erpats and my six-year-old niece to the beach. On that breezy stretch, there was just the three of us, cozy until a slight argument ensued. The lolo wanted the little lady to eat her baon first before swimming. The niece said no, and I said let her go, she’d be hungry in a while. After a few minutes of battling with the waves, she returned to the table and said she was starving. I was right.

In the succeeding months, the great divide. The two of them became solid Gibo supporters. My niece had since stopped eating the yolk in her sunny side up because it was “yellow.” To demonstrate her loyalty, she tried eating pichay because it was green, but it was something her taste buds rejected. Green reminded her of goats, she said. Unable to ingest “green,” she suggested we should buy green plates instead. She isn’t one who easily gets conned by campaign ads that sounds like nursery rhymes, which was why Villar’s ads were beyond her. She hates nursery rhymes, in fact. You can understand. She has a problem with hitting the right notes and she’s given to insisting her own lyrics. Anyway, the dinner wares stayed white.

The old man was most dogmatic. The intensity was familiar, and he had the same firm resolve when he wagered for Oscar De La Hoya against Manny Pacquiao in 2008. When “The Dream Match” took place, while I screamed at the top of my lungs as Pacman beat De La Hoya to a pulp, I was wishing the old man’s pride and prejudice have gone black and blue, ka-blam on the canvas. He had all the tasteless arguments against my candidate, and the irony was I could trace them all to a radio program he listened to in the mornings, the one with Bert Empaces, verbal contortionist par excellence. My blood boiled each time, not because Bert attacked my candidate, but because unwittingly he put asunder a supposed father-son tactical alliance. Certainly, the niece would have been an easy swing vote. But the household had since become a tense zone, and nowhere was the line “Hindi ako tinanong ng survey” became so right than in our house. Had the SWS came, the surveys would have shown a different picture. Gibo was a sure winner in our dining room.

The old man said I was grossly crazy for using sentimentality or emotions in my choice. I told him that emotion is not necessarily an independent fact from intelligence. A family who lives by P80 a day will find news about a president eating P1M for a Le Cirque dinner very emotional. When you heave heaven and earth to be as honest as you can with your SAL, while you have a president who spends her time trying to get around with her own, certainly you’re not autistic if you become emotional. The rather loftier term is “social injustice,” so tell me if in the face of it you don’t discover fury that is a classic hybrid of the emotional and the intellectual.

But here are the more pragmatic facts, I told the old man. A politician who dismisses the emotional quotient in a campaign is a living blunder. I wrote in my earlier column about a study entitled, “The dynamics of emotions in political game theory.” A group of academics from the disciplines of psychology, mathematics, anthropology and political science have merged their theories to quantify emotion so they can gauge its contagiousness in a political phenomenon. Another study by the Democrats in the US inspired a different tack in Obama’s campaign, setting aside the cold policy arguments in more formal fora.

Emotion, issuing from Edsa and Cory’s death, did my niece’s leafy vegetables in. When I arrived home yesterday, she jumped and screamed, with all of her missing front teeth, that she was no longer for Gibo and that she will now eat the yellow in her sunny side up. I was sorry for the old man eating crow. Again, I was right.

Threshold | Sun.Star Cebu | May 4, 2010

I understood psychiatry a bit more squarely than my classmates in college. I loved the subject, and I must’ve told you that in an earlier column. As the topic persists in today’s social narrative, allow me to talk some more about it.

I do not quite remember how the topics were arranged in the syllabus then, but I do remember a diagram: it was a wellness-illness spectrum, and humans, unstable as we are, sway from one end to the other at various times in our waking life. The semester started on one end, which is the wellness end, and we talked of various forms of defense mechanisms humans employ consciously or unconsciously. Say, when you find yourself at the losing end of a survey, your mind automatically switches to “sour-graping” mode: “Surveys are bull! They should be banned!” Akin to that is the “sweet lemon” mode: “Oh, well, at least it’s not Manny Villar.” Or, perhaps, into the sublimation mode: you go ahead and rip a candidate’s campaign poster. Or denial mode: “We will win!”

These defense mechanisms may be employed, too, at the other end of the spectrum, which is the illness end. But let’s get to that later.

As the class went deeper into the lessons, towards the illness sphere, many discovered that, in one way or the other, certain degrees of those pathological traits were present in every one of us. It was not uncommon that every now and then, anyone in class would cringe secretly with a little bit of guilt in his corner when a lesson or two hit him.

I realized how blurry the line is between normal and mad. If a media personality consistently wears white, from top to bottom, that could be an indication of either a fetish or obsessive-compulsive behavior. But that doesn’t mean he had crossed the pathologic threshold, which is why I don’t propose he should get into a psychiatric test for fear of endangering the minds of the public that patronizes him. Should I push for a nuttiness check, the burden of proof will fall on my shoulders, not on him.

If you think you can heave the country’s famished body politic to a life of affluence, you could have delusions of grandeur, and you’re bordering on the mental illness end of the spectrum. On second look, however, there could be a blurry line between Don Quixote who fell into the obsession of titling windmills and a presidential candidate who wishes to salvage the country from a sea of filth. For one thing, there’s a blurry line between idealism and madness, although if you say idealistic things for the sake of sound bites, that raises you to another level of mental illness: psychopath. But I wrote about that already.

So, thank God, there’s the Psychological Association of the Philippines to tell everyone, unlettered in the discipline of mind-reading, to put some sense into the sordid mudslinging in the name of psychology. The PAP considers it an affront to the profession. Doubted as it already is as a “pseudo-science,” it may not help to reinforce our naivete on the discipline of psychology and the circuitous workings of the human mind.

All of a sudden, everyone is a psychiatrist. How can you tell that a person who comes into a cockpit is sick in the head? He’s bringing a duck. How can you tell the people are nuts? They bet on the duck. Just because it looks like a cock, some people want to dignify a dubious psychiatric report by proposing a head check. Too late in the day of the grand derby and funny, your cock is dead. But, as the song goes, “only fools rush in.”

Earth Warrior

Lawyer-environmentalist and Ramon Magsaysay Awardee Antonio Oposa Jr. and me. Photo taken on Earth Day, April 22, 2010, at the School of the SEAs, Sta. Fe, Bantayan. Behind is the "Sailing School of the SEAs," an innovative environmental educational facility that travels to the islands, shows films to the fisherfolk, brings a barangay ordinance template the community can adapt and pass, educates the community on the urgency and benefits of creating marine protected areas in their municipal waters, orients them livelihood with livelihood options and/or whip them with a stick if they don't comply with the law. Fair enough.

Testing Daybreak: Tides, poor signal teach ‘citizen-driven’ operations team lessons on enforcement

by Januar Yap | Sun.Star Cebu | April 16, 2010

Weekend operations in northern Cebu give volunteers a good look at the challenges of enforcing ‘green’ laws

Lawyer-environmentalist Antonio Oposa Jr. raises the need to move on from law enforcement’ and get more citizens involved in the campaign to save marine habitats and resources


“SWIFT, painful and public.”

This was the brief the Visayan Sea Squadron (VSS) took for itself when it geared up last weekend for what could be its biggest operation against illegal fishing.

The team is a composite of volunteer lawyers and citizens, backed by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 and special operatives from the Philippine Navy.

For months now, the coastal residents of Sagay, Negros Occidental have been complaining of blast noise from the sea. There had been reports that fishers from the island of Lipayran in Bantayan, Cebu have been using explosives.

The area had long been in the red list of the VSS for a couple of years, so that when reports of dynamite fishing persisted and were confirmed by the NBI 7, environmental lawyer and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Antonio Oposa Jr. and lawyer Ben Cabrido immediately sought permission from RTC Branch 23 Judge Generosa Labra to allow the VSS to search the area.

The team was granted 12 search warrants, making the operation the biggest offensive against blast fishers in the country, says Oposa.

He branded the move as “Operation Daybreak” and customized caps for the whole fleet with exactly those words.

Scrapbook

Oposa also instructed a group of law students to make a scrapbook that will document the operation and turn it into a model for environmental law enforcement.

It would take note of every detail—from the checklist for dry box contents (“You don’t want plastic on land, but you definitely need plastic in the sea,” says Oposa) to ensuring the chain of custody for the material evidence.

On the eve of Operation Daybreak, the group finally knew the exact location. All respondents of the 12 search warrants were in the island of Lipayran. The squadron, whose members would approach from different points in the nearby islands, was scheduled to jump off at exactly 2 a.m. and converge in the sea to wait for daybreak.

Experiment

The plan seemed ironed out down to the last detail, the tides and sea currents included. That was to ensure the “swift” part of the operation, and it was “public” enough with the fleet having about 50 volunteers on board.

“We want to emphasize that this is a citizen-driven operation,” said Oposa.

But as with any experiment, it was not free of glitches. “Reminds me of Murphy’s Law,” says Oposa. “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

A bit past midnight, one of the navy boats could not leave because it did not have a “directive.” This was a minor setback, though, as the bigger gunship was well on its way from Cebu City carrying two bomb-sniffing canines. The Philippine Navy had also sent a patrol plane hovering in the vicinity.

The boat carrying the volunteers was stuck for some two hours in shallow waters and unable to put its engine on full throttle, as the tide was unusually low.

The third and final glitch came when, nearer the targeted island past 4 a.m., all the mobile networks’ signals proved elusive.

This left the rest of the group with no contact with the NBI, who, it was learned later, went on anyway with securing the area and conducted the search as early as 4 a.m., although not simultaneously serving all the 12 search warrants.

It should be a lesson learned, Oposa said.

He asked: If, along the way, the dogs will detect an explosive in a house that is not a subject of a search warrant, can the operatives break into the house?

This left the paralegal volunteers discussing the matter.

A student’s question caused some comic banter: Can the dog’s actions be taken as personal knowledge?

Apprehended

The 12 search warrants yielded but one successful raid.

Samuel Jamili, 41, was caught with sacks of ammonium nitrate and home-made dynamite in softdrink bottles.

According to the NBI, led by agents Jose Ermie Monsanto and Arnel Pura, the amount of chemicals can make about 2,000 dynamite sticks and would cost about P15,000, net.

That amount of chemicals can sweep about 10 hectares of marine life, said Oposa.

Monsanto says Jamili will face three cases: violation of RA 8550 or the fisheries code; illegal possession of explosives, and the Comelec gun ban.

Jamili had allegedly figured in intelligence reports as the main supplier in the island.

Following the raid, a supposed delivery of more ammonium nitrates from Panay did not come.

Jamili, a father of two, suffers from paralysis in the lower half of his body and limbs. During the arrest, an NBI operative had to carry him out of the house.

Jamili broke down when his daughter wailed and tugged at his pants.

“Maluoy intawn mo nako, sir. Wa man gud koy ipa-eskwela sa akong anak (Please have pity, sir. I need money to send my daughter to school),” he said. His eldest daughter is now in junior year as a Hotel and Restaurant Management student in Cebu City.

The daughter cried and knelt before operatives, begging for them to spare her father.

Statement

Jamili was, however, turned over to Barangay Captain Orlando Aliw for custody until the case is filed in court today.

When the neighborhood gathered, Oposa scolded Aliw, and told him he could be sued, too, for negligence of duty.

He remembered Aliw committing to curb illegal fishing once in a gathering of barangay officials. He said he would have brought lechon to the island as a reward, but instead came with a whole fleet of law enforcers, following frustrating reports.

Oposa told the residents to help stop illegal fishing. “Unsa pa may makaon sa inyong anak kung hutdon ninyo’g pabuto tanang isda? (What will you feed your family if you kill all the fish?),” he said.

Some volunteer groups will go back to the island to show “Sangtuwaryo,” a Cebuano film that tells the story of dynamite fishers, and will educate them on alternative livelihood.

“I want a mind shift,” said Oposa, “we should be moving on from law enforcement.”

International observers

OD has brought along international observers.

Nicola Peart, who had been involved in environmental groups, says, “OD is not for the faint-hearted.”

She said young people abroad are also concerned with how the generations have “affected the environmental security” of their future.

“Operation daybreak is a lesson for young people around the world. As Oposa teaches us, the time for action is now,” she said.

When it turned out that the prime suspect was a paralytic and had so little means for a livelihood, Peart realized the social dimension of the OD.

At one point, NBI officer Monsanto suggested that there should have been people from the Department of Social Welfare and Development to take care of the community’s livelihood following the operation.

Impact

Although the operation was able to apprehend only one suspect, lawyer Cabrido says it is not significant. “

The success of the operation is measured by the impact it has on the community,” he says. Somehow, he says, it will impress upon the community the seriousness of environmental law enforcement and that they should begin focusing on alternative livelihood.

Comic relief

Back on the boat, the volunteers suddenly noticed a foul smell.

Oposa discovered he had stepped on something on the beach, prompting the crew to haul water to wash his shoes and the deck. Everyone laughed.

“You know, I should write something about this,” he said.

Someone a suggested a title, “Shit happens.”

Another suggested, “Swift, painful and with a little bit of dog shit.”

(A slightly shorter version was published in Sun.Star Cebu, April 26, 2010)

Bohol: for sale | Sun.Star Cebu | April 27, 2010

I should tell you more about Sta. Fe, Bantayan’s School of the Seas, but in another time. It has a house rule that says you need to remove your watches because in there you’re supposed to forget time. You just have to let, to use an Emersonian quote, “the universe pass through you.”

While the universe was trying to pass through me last week, I suddenly got a phone call at 7 a.m. from Jurgenne Primavera. In case you missed some news, Madame Jurgenne, as I call her, was one of the Filipinos who made it to Time-CNN’s 2008 list of heroes for the environment, specifically under the category of scientists and innovators. Her groundbreaking researches revolutionized the science in aquaculture and she had been a strong advocate for sustainable fish farming and mangrove culture.

Last week, I met her, of all places, in Ticao, Masbate, one of the country’s most vulnerable islands in the season of climate change. Very casually, she was talking about why some mangrove-planting activities failed, and she said because some species are compatible only to specific substrate. It’d be like transplanting your great kamunggay in the Sahara. But let’s go back to the phone call.

The officials of Bohol, she said, have recently signed an MOU with a Korean investor for a bioethanol research project. This is supposed to be good news, except that the scale in which the project will be undertaken had the hideous face of a polar shift. Or perhaps, had the hideous face of Joker of the Heath Ledger kind. I promised her I’ll try to go through the MOU. Something about the call made me opaque that the universe couldn’t get through me anymore.

A section in the MOU says that the Province of Bohol will commit a minimum of 25,000 to 100,000 hectares for the aquaculture site of the bioethanol project for fifty years. Bohol, it also says, will “undertake to work for the extension” of the project for 25 years. That will give it a sweeping 75 years, enough to turn Bohol into an ecological mutant. Given the cholesterol and sugar level of Bohol’s officials, the project will definitely outlive them.

I am not sure at which point now has the research gone on algae as a profitable source of ethanol, a renewable energy form. I leave that to experts. But two details in the MUO strike me: the 100,000 hectares of seas around Bohol and 50 years.

Let’s take the 50 years first. Our Constitution allows the State to go into agreements on the use of our natural resources, but “such agreements may be for a period not exceeding 25 years” and “renewable for not more than twenty-five.” If she hears the news, my grade school math teacher will give Gov. Erico Aumentado some good pinch in the groin. Or send the MUO signatories, mayors and all, sitting on the air.

Bohol has 643,000 hectares of seawater, and the MUO commits about 100,000 hectares to the project. I do not know how the LGU’s will share the pie, but remember that our fisheries code reserves 15 percent of municipal waters as marine protected area. But given that the committed area spares the 15 percent, its scale may alter significantly the ecosystem in these areas. It’d be like ripping an entire patch of vegetation on harvest time. Harmful or helpful, when you strip a significant portion of vegetation, and even periodically, it’d be like Pacquiao giving a foe a good dose of body blows onwards to a KO.

I understand environmental groups are mobilizing to file a Writ of Kalikasan case against the signatories of the MOU. By the way, environmental lawyer Antonio Oposa and volunteer lawyers have filed the first ever Writ of Kalikasan case at the Supreme Court last week against the national government for non-compliance of a 21-year-old law on water catchment. Meanwhile, let’s do tarsiers-in-barong-spotting.

Climate change | Sun.Star Cebu | April 21, 2010

I’ve opened a new folder on my desktop and called it “climate change.” A few months ago, I also opened “disaster” and in it saved articles on disaster management and risk reduction practices in different countries. That was after Ondoy. When I saved “climate change,” I’ve cut-pasted “disaster” into another drive. This is so because a few weeks ago, I found great excuse to get out of the city for a while. A scientific survey identified two of the most vulnerable areas in the Philippines: one, Ticao Island off Masbate; two, Gubat, Sorsogon. Both places seem to play like cusps against the yawning push of the Pacific Ocean. As I am writing this, my world has just made a brief halt from a journey from those two places. Small world, indeed, because at 11 a.m., I am now writing beside a window with a superb view of Mayon Volcano.

But let me tell you about Day One:

It was a humid Saturday night in Quezon City when I tucked myself into the cool Spanish music in Dulcinea. Meeting me that night was Maya, of the World Bank, and scientist CP David from the UP MSI. “We’ve met,” I told CP. It was a few years ago when Rock Ed Philippines came to Cebu. He was then finishing his doctoral studies in Geology and Environmental Science in Stanford University. At that time, I was also finishing my sixth bottle of beer with astroboy Lourd Ernest de Veyra and Gang of Rock Ed. Gang recalled how rock icon Bono of U2 smelled during a photo op. But let’s go back to Maya and CP.

“I was just mugged in Geneva,” said Maya, and showed us a few bruises on her elbow. Some guy sprang out from the bushes and grasped at her face. When she tried resisting, the attacker pushed him to the ground. She lost consciousness for a few seconds only to realize the attacker took her camera and bag. “Imagine, in a place like Geneva?” “Anyway,” she said, “let’s go back to Ticao and Gubat.” The World Bank is funding a project that will look at climate change in the eye with a rather holistic approach, and the best prototypes will be these two most vulnerable islands.

CP, on the other hand, had sent his invention, a mini-weather station, in these two islands. He had trained two people to man these stations. “I can text the machine in Ticao and Gubat, and I will get a response right away,” he said, and showed me a text message that showed exactly that minute’s wind velocity, temperature, and even amount of rainfall in Ticao. That, or the local weatherman himself can send the text message.

“How much does it cost to set up this station,” I asked. Just about P40,000, said CP. Either the stations in the Marine Science Institute in UP Diliman or Typhoon Preparedness Center in Naga will send the Ticao and Gubat stations weather updates. The local weatherman, in turn, will spread the news to the local disaster coordinating councils. With the monitoring going that quick and the information traveling faster than the storm, lives would be saved. “This idea should be sold to the LGU’s,” I said.

At this point, I was also catching the eye of the storm, swirling my fork on a plateful of green linguini. I felt the earth’s crust crushing in my mouth as I took the buttered toast. In the next few hours, I’d be taking the journey to Ticao and Gubat. By then, perhaps, I’d get a lesson or two about these most vulnerable islands in the country. It was almost midnight when I got back to the hotel, feeling like a vulnerable island in the quiet night. I needed a wake-up call, I told the concierge.

Psycho | SunStar Cebu | April 16, 2010

Junior year in nursing school was probably my favorite part of college life. We had a whole semester of psychiatry subjects and an internship at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center Psychiatric Ward. I don’t want to brag, but it was in psychiatric nursing and the subsequent exposure to the mental ward where I earned my biggest grades. What can I say, my clinical instructor, she with the Mona Lisa smile, told me, “Indeed, it takes one to know one, Januar.”

She saw the quick bonding taking place between me and my patient, a manic-depressed case who thought he was Balweg, the rebel priest, but wailed Rod Stewart’s “I don’t wanna talk about it…” at the top of his lungs at the first hint of C-D minor during music therapy.

Quite a wild mix of delusions, and of all the loonies in that ward, this single most violent case (with two red precautionary stripes on his ward chart) was assigned to me. A week before my round, Balweg gave another intern a right uppercut, and the latter gave him a big wallop in retaliation. The student earned for himself a month-long suspension.

When it was my turn, the bipolar Philip Salvador behaved like he was my aide-de-camp, rushing into every bit of errand he was sent to do. Psychiatric theory says bipolar people have low self-esteem, and the best way to feed their ego fat is to overwhelm them with tasks and give them their due pat-in-the-back after. So that was what I did for the rebel priest, although I had to remind him politely in between his fits of Cordillera and Hot Legs World Tour that he was neither Balweg nor Rod Stewart just to put his feet back on the ground. “Yeah, right,” he once told me, “and you are Aga Muhlach.” It was a tempting delusion, and for one moment, my mental equilibrium was in a crucial tilt. But thank God for my better grasp at reality.

So my stint in that psychiatric shelter was a rewarding experience. I was about to type “loony bin,” but that would have been cruel. Those were feeble people who turned to the better part of their imagination for safety and got lost in some nowhere thicket in the mind.

But there was one curious case held in a special cell. He was neither violent nor spaced out. You could tell he was lucid each time he’d ask any student nurse for packs of cigarette before he allowed them the required interaction. The students took his word when he narrated in detail how he got there. Well and good, and the student brought to class transcriptions of their interactions for psychiatric analysis, but only to find out later that the guy gave them varying versions of his life story. They’ve been conned by a first-rate storyteller.

I found the case curious for many reasons. Why was he in a special cell in the first place, while the apparently more hostile Balweg was free to walk around? What could be the diagnosis for his mental state?

He was a psychopath. A quick definition by Wikipedia puts psychopathy this way, “a personality disorder characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct, masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal.”

In a world gone grotesquely mosaic, hideous psychopaths dangerously roam like chameleons, shifting skin colors according to the day’s music. But here’s how to put that rather bluntly. Right here, right now, a little juggling of the news will tell you whose mental state fits the psychopath mold and, therefore, should be in a special cell because, of all the loonies at large, they are the most stealthy and dangerous. Back then, at least, the bipolar Stewart, unlike today’s hardcore psychopaths, had the temerity to apologize in a song, “I was only joking, my dear…”

1997 | Sun.Star Cebu | April 9. 2010

I WAS still in school when citizen Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo joined politics as a senator. She ranked 13^th in her first election and, under the Constitution, failing to make it in the first twelve, she’d have a three-year term. Determined to stay, she tried another shot at the Senate in 1995. That time, she used a photograph that made her look like Nora Aunor in her campaign posters.

I remember that one radio interview where she gloated over her Nora-look, “Eh, nagustuhan naman ng mga tao.” True, indeed, at that time, Noranians were probably an unbeatable fleet of 16 million all over the country. That was how much votes Arroyo hauled, making her top the senatorial race.

The glamour pose for a campaign poster was a fresh idea then—in the pre-Photoshop age of Philippine politics. You could tell how traditional politics was with the graininess of posters. You couldn’t even call them “pixels,” they were merely distortions on the theme of reality.

Around this time, someone else was trying to sneak his way into the public sphere. It was Manny Villar, in a binge of media ad placements for his real estate business. The ads, curiously, had to have side stories featuring the spectacular tale of his life. Little did people know then that it was just the beginning of a long and winding road that could lead him to the grand door along the Pasig River. Although, if you believe in surveys, he could have the river as a truer destiny. But let’s go back to Arroyo.

After two terms in the Senate, she gunned for the presidency. Believing she still had that Noranian aura in her, she thought, why not make another superstar pose as a ticket to Malacañang. Thinking there was no way to edge out Edgardo Angara, she along with an army of disgruntled hagibis bolted the Laban party.

A Free Press interview in 1997 asked her, “Given that you have a showbiz appeal, we can say that, unlike the presidential aspirants, you don’t find Vice-President Joseph Estrada much of a challenge?” Of, course, says Arroyo, he is a challenge, but said she believed in the intelligence of the electorate, “Otherwise, they wouldn’t find an economist as likable or even more likable than a movie star.” That was our president thirteen years ago as she poised herself quite doggedly for the presidency.

In that same interview, Free Press asked, “You mentioned four blocs that will more or less determine the president in 1998. The church, the media, the business sector and the pro-Ramos group. What exactly is that last group? Excluding President Ramos’s party and political allies, who or what group do you have in mind? Mrs. Aquino, for instance?”

To that Arroyo, replied, “She would be one. I also refer to the organizations made up of governors, mayors, village officials. The political parties are the overt players. The others are…”

Funny you could have guessed “covert players,” but the Free Press interview supplied a friendlier phrase, “Behind the scenes?”

She continues, “I look at the next administration as part of a continuum that started with President Aquino, who restored democracy and instituted political reforms, and started some economic reforms as well. President Ramos sustained her political reforms and also brought about critical economic reforms, which made us Asia’s new tiger economy. The next administration should sustain the political reforms that would (shall we say), spread the development that we have already achieved…Spreading the benefits of economic development is an end in itself.”

To cut the story short, she wasn’t able to run for president the following year, but she became the first woman vice-president. It was then president Fidel Ramos who talked her out of her presidential ambition and fielded instead Jose de Venecia Jr. But Estrada became president.

What survey organizations do you usually rely on, the Free Press asked. Arroyo replied, “The Social Weather Station. Asian Research Organizations. Newspapers. A group called the International Research Organization.”

This was 1997, in the age of innocence.

(januarinbox@yahoo.com)

After Holy Week | Sun.Star Cebu | April 6, 2010

When politics become unbearably funny, there is a parallel world that tilts the balance for me. While the surveys showed a reassuring lead for my favorite candidate last Month, I was writing the final chapter for my grad school thesis—some crazy paper on Cebuano poetry. Not the sort that redefines molecular activity, but definitely a saner refuge from a world full of freestylers claiming to have swam in rubbish. In a world going lazy about reading, my paper nitpicks pocket universes tucked in the verses of our own poets. Again, it isn’t the sort that buys me a ticket to China or something.

I won’t bore you with details about my thesis, no. But picture that mindset when the Holy Week put to a halt a life given to feigning intelligence. I tried to avoid writing anything about faith and religion last week. Given my wayward ways, poetry and noodles more or less define my parameters.

But the solemn week caught me off-guard. Bombarded round-the-clock by biblical allusions on TV, a thought came up.

Given the ways His “good news” still spread like wildfire through the centuries, Jesus Christ must’ve been one with a superb PR savvy. Certainly, it mustn’t be the truthfulness and universality of what he preached alone that helped His Word survive the times. Christ must’ve understood the public sphere and how to weave His Word across it. This is probably why His favorite instruction was, “Spread the good news” at a time when word of mouth addressed effectively what will today be called the “mass media.” With an approval rating surging to an all-time spike, His fame was a threat contrasting against an empire losing its mystique. He was a PR threat, and each time He did His stunt with yet another bread-multiplying miracle, it hurt the ears of the establishment.

I have yet to know if He ever performed a miracle without the crowd. I’ll leave that to friends to tell you. When He multiplied bread and fish for the throng that came to listen to Him, He knew it was maximum exposure for his Word. By so doing, He did not only multiply grub, but He splintered his Word in exponential forms. Those guys will be scampering home carrying the most amusing story to tell their neighbors and friends.

He did not only know how to send the message out. He was a storyteller with a talent for symbols. When he rolled his sleeves and started washing the feet of his disciples, He knew exactly how the word will go about humility when it’ll be the disciples’ turn to tell their tale. His ways were never lavish and extravagant, and any marketing guy today understands what “mixed branding” is—and Christ was just one image and Word. I’m not even talking about “lifestyle” yet.

I don’t know if thinking along that line borders on being sacrilegious or what. Really, what could I do? I had a good sleep last week. I think Christ was thoroughly modern in His understanding of media and communications, which is, of course, not quite a stunning piece of information given the magnitude of His greatness and the centuries of free and massive publicity, the Bible being a timeless newspaper. I know, I know, I was just tempted to say what you already know.

In today’s politics, lifting a clueless child or embracing an elderly in the presence of reporters and photographers is usual staple. It’s playing Messiah at the hint of a photo opportunity. But it reminds me of a famous line in a classic Filipino film, perfectly gushed forth by an emphatic Nora Aunor, “Walang himala!” Not even billions in campaign expenditure can perform miracles for you. Happy Easter, everyone.

Party Chromatics | SunStar Cebu | March 30, 2010

A “party,” as we understand it on a normal day, is that time when people gather to socialize, booze, wolf slabs of fatty sins, and unleash an entire discography with electrifying dance steps. A party, usually hosted, honors an occasion, say, a marriage, a saint’s birthday, passing the bar exam or an invented excuse, perhaps, when a pet Chihuahua conceives a quintuplet.

Well, that is not so for the last few months at this point in our national history. A party today, as you will see in the papers, is that photo of a grinning lineup of color-coded individuals who swears to pull you out of the rot you are in. Whatever that rot they are talking about, they are showing you optimism by the scale of a smile or the whiteness of dentures. The price Manny Villar has to pay for promising to end poverty or gaining power could not be gauged by the billions, but the regularity of Botox sessions. Gibo treads the labyrinthine alleyways of a shanty town and gets a dose of Philippine hyper-reality in the name of tagay. One local candidate had to shake hands with a man who just had a hearty bare-handed feast over dinuguan. Elections, indeed, can get that bloody.

Perhaps, at no other time, too, in our history has party chromatics been this psychedelic. There use to be a term, “traffic light coalition,” referring to a pooling of three parties. The term “rainbow coalition” is still around. Just how many colors does the arch have, you can ask your science teacher. But when you have a Bongbong Marcos and a Satur Ocampo in one party, you have a pretty intoxicating cocktail—a psychedelic overture. Or maybe, political chop suey.

By tradition, political parties assume colors for identity. Black, for example, was anti-clericalism’s official color in late 19th and early 20th –century Europe. In Germany and Austria, however, it is historically linked to Christian Democrats. I will congratulate any image handler in our side of town who will recommend black to a candidate. You’ll have a sortie that’ll look like the punks are coming.

Orange, says references, is sometimes associated with Christian Democratic and sometimes populist parties. Ukraine, for example, had their “Orange Revolution.” Unionism in Northern Ireland also had their “Orange Order.” I don’t know how the Villar camp picked orange. In Cebu last month, seeing yellow ribbons in the streets, his party sent its army scampering in the field to tie orange ribbons twice the size of the yellow ones.

Red is, of course, communism’s favorite color. You can brush up on Mao Tse Tung’s “red army” and “little red book” if you want red details. Erap’s camp uses red, although I’m sure the ex-president prefers a Johnny Walker Blue in a happy hour. He is not a communist.

Gibo wears green, although I think Nicanor Perlas is the quintessential green. The Nordic agrarian party uses green. Those who are fighting to keep the earth whole don green for a type-A uniform.

You can understand Noynoy’s yellow either through the eye of history or a song. In Europe, yellow is the color Liberals use.

The colors assumed, things are supposed to be pretty well delineated in the firmament of Philippine politics. But not so in the local level, which pretty much shakes up the entire chromatics and makes it all psychedelic. You look at the photographs of political line-ups and you pretty much feel like you had the worst shot of LSD. Man, lipong ko, man.

A political analyst will have a pretty tough job, like playing stacks of pickup sticks, at least in the local level. There seems to be a kind of arbitrariness in this mating season and you’re simply lost. But, really, what can you do. In the end, May 10 will have to be your private hour in the precinct with your ballot, beyond chromatics and all. All the partying becomes a joke.

Mugna Creative Writing Workshop

EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!

Today, I've successfully defended my potsgrad thesis! :-) That makes me Master of Arts in Literature.

Dukot | Sun.Star Cebu | March 9, 2010

Serguei, a Russian immigrant who wanted to be a cosmonaut as a kid, tells a familiar joke: “Everything they told us about communism was a lie…The worst thing is, everything they told us about capitalism was true.”

Serguei is one of those laid-off dock workers in the Spanish film “Los Lunes al Sol,” directed by Fernando Leon de Aranoa. Translated as “Mondays in the sun,” the term also refers to the thousands of displaced workers in Northern Spain who, stranded jobless, find themselves idled on Mondays under the sun and mooning for better lives abroad.

Serguei’s statement perhaps reflects the sentiment of many post-Communist Russians who were beginning to see more of the world. It was either that I felt old or I shared Serguei’s thoughts when I was watching Joel Lamangan’s movie “Dukot” over the weekend. The viewing came as one of the highlights of the social sciences celebration of the University of San Carlos.

“Dukot” is a movie about present-day desaparecidos, at the height of extra-judicial killings of journalists and activists. The story focuses on two sweethearts who were abducted my military intelligence operatives. At this time, the boy is deeply involved in the armed communist movement while the girl is trying to reclaim her life mainstream.

The movie begins with the abduction, perhaps living up to the title “Dukot,” but goes on with a series of flashbacks to give the viewers grounding. The girl’s father was shot by unidentified men while he was being convinced by protesting co-workers to join a picket. The year after, she confronts her mother and tells her she had become an activist.

On the other hand, the boy’s political awakening came somewhat too academic, as his father, the “liberal” in the family, told him once. Later, the boy would drop much of life’s prospects for a volunteer job in the mountains. Their commitment to the “party” would soon deepen, although at some point, that of the girl waned. Family needs softened her idealism.

While the movie keeps itself busy telling their story, there might have been missed opportunities. It didn’t show that political transformation, no matter its scale, is always personal. A viewer could not fully sympathize with their cause because the story treated the transformation as though it was just drawing a line between two dots.

Narratives run as cause and effect, and a good grounding on cause paves the way for maximum effect. To nail some pathos, the story used the relentless beating by their abductors to draw sympathy to the victims. In the end, the viewer pities the victims’ skin and limbs, not the larger body of context that brought them there in the first place.

Where “Dukot” failed, Lupita Kashiwahara’s 1976 film “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamu” succeeded. You’d know that when lead character Corazon de la Cruz says she is “Galit!” she hauls an entire history of reasons that pushed her to that end. You join her cause.

“Dukot’s” story assumed that viewers know why activists become what they are, and there’s no need to tell that part of the story, or perhaps tell it as a kind of token. Consequently, it might’ve chosen the wrong moment.

Instead of illustrating the anatomy of a transformation, it showed the spiral of death. In the end, a presumably clueless viewer still wonders about the nature of the characters’ conviction. You understand the scale of that conviction, the heroism and doggedness, but you’re left wondering what the cause was.

But it’s a courageous, and at best noble, effort to write and film “Dukot.” It trains our eyes to that which, otherwise, are merely crude inscriptions on the activist’s placard. In the season of “Wapakman,” “Dukot” is simply redemption.

(januarinbox@yahoo.com)

"Nelatch" | SunStar Cebu | March 5

“How could cheap hamburger costs as much as these kids’ innocence?” Student Cherry Claire Petiluna, a communications major from Cebu Normal University, asks at the last part of her groups’ video documentary “Nelatch.” The video wins the university’s CINEU Film Festival in the documentary category, and was likewise given the special Kapuso Award from GMA-7, which made them P5,000 richer.

In this day and age of endless wordplays, when coinages come and go, “nelatch” might just be another flash in the pan of subculture lingo. But not so for students Cherry, Nestor Moises, Charlette Cadavez and Tara Jane Miñoza, who, with sheer guts and enterprise, went out of their way with a borrowed video camera to doggedly pursue a story. In their sophomore year, this was also the group who produced “Jade Court Girls,” a documentary about the “karton girls,” which is worth another column altogether.

“Nelatch” is gay speak for “talent.” Just when you think you’ve had enough brief on the world’s perversions, this one’s different. The term also refers to boys who do it for gays. What gays usually do on men these boys do it on gays. One of the gays interviewed said the reversal of role brings him a different kind of “sensation.” The students’ documentary found a clique of “nelatch” boys in one of the municipal parks and was able to extract first-rate confessions from them. What’s devastating about this is that most of them ranged from 12 to 15 years old. “Para palit og hamburger,” said one of the boys who looked barely in his teens. As Cherry wrote in her script, “a hideous piece of reality,” but indeed it is one haul of hyper-realities for the aspiring filmmakers. She’d later say, “Indeed, it has changed my views, my group mates as well. I used to think that prostitution is just a NO, period. All those who engage in this are criminals, period. Then I learned that some of them should be heard and be given the chance to justify themselves. Not everyone is given much choice in life and not all choices given are fair enough. Most people who are in a better position in life should open their eyes wider to see a more realistic view of the world.” The idea gave me a rather interesting notion: filmmaking, or the documentary genre, as a rite of passage. Before they open up the minds of viewers, they first change the life of the filmmaker, and what better time to undergo through that than when you are young, robust with all the eagerness.

Travel is like reading 10 books in one week. The reportage gave them an education they could never get inside the classroom even for an entire year or course. Most of these nelatch boys wait for customers at the town’s park. The students asked a group of kids playing in the park if they know what the term means. The kids laughed and said they didn’t know about it. But one of them, after a while, confessed he had been one, and said an older brother taught him how. Did he tell his parents about it? No, the boy said. “Ikaw ra,” he said. With that, the team felt the weight of responsibility heaped upon it.

One of the gays interviewed in the documentary said nelatch boys are usually older in other parts of the province, but in this particular town, they’re way younger.

Cherry says, “At some point, we were afraid and unsure of what we were getting into. But as we got deeper into the interviews with the minors, we felt a mixture of emotions. We felt sorry and irritated that no one has helped them, not even their parents knew about it. We felt privileged but responsible upon knowing that we were the first people to know their experience. From being unsure, we changed and thought that maybe, if this was the least thing we could do for these kids, then we will do it no matter what kind of response we get.” (More next week)

(januarinbox@yahoo.com)

Bad shape | SunStar Cebu | Feb. 16, 2010

The two survey leaders talked about the fiscal deficit that will come after our favorite president shall have stepped down and will probably even become House speaker. Manny Villar says the deficit will bloat to P300 billion or about “3.5 percent of GDP.” Noynoy Aquino pegged it at P272.5 billion or “4.1 percent of GDP.” Hold your breath because that’s not what I’ll talk about.

It is pork, which, under my or our current state, is the root of all evil. It is not money. It is that sleek, shivery sliver on your plate. A friend has a name for it, “pork shake,” eloquently illustrated by that ominous morsel of humba shaking at every turn of your lazy suzanne. At other times, it comes as that scheming layer of white underneath your crispy lechon. I don’t know why, the craving for that fatty part could come as acquired taste, much like with sashimi—the taste buds eventually liking the erstwhile incomprehensible gustatory anarchy excited by raw fish and the wasabi. But pork fats are simply, dizzyingly divine on top of a hot haul of rice.

Talisay City, in the Joavanese era, still finds its redemption through lechon. As the food critic Anthony Bourdain said, the lechon is simply “the best pork in the world.” Better than Mexico’s, he said, although Mexicans can very well ignite their pork with fiery jalapeño. But our lechon, in the realm of the senses, is incontestably mystical. In the hollow of its belly transpires the miracle at every turn of the bamboo skewer, it is as though the bamboo itself is secretly exuding the ghosts of Malakas and Maganda into the hog’s fibers and unleashed a brand new creation story. It makes you dizzy.

Indeed, because dizzy is what you will feel at the first instance of reality check compressed in a little document your nurse will hand you. Just last week, I had my first dose of meteorite crashing into my oblivious eating habits. My sugar shot up to borderline and my cholesterol level had the wallop of Mike Tyson. You want political perspective? It’s like looking at a bloated fiscal deficit after an excess of pork. The karmic chain does not exempt physiology, and I hope the same goes, too, to a presidency.

And so there are cutbacks since then. Somebody said a diet is the penalty we pay for exceeding the feed limit. “If it tastes good,” advises one cardiologist, “spit it out.” Does this mean it will all be downhill from here? Not exactly, and while I was plotting out a regimen on the way to the office, I saw Joel Garganera, although for one moment I thought I saw Usain Bolt on P. del Rosario St. in full running gear. Joel, godsend, reinforced the idea, plus here’s colleague Max Limpag, persistent seller of the couch-to-5K formula. So maybe, one of these days, I hope I’ll run out of excuses and finally tread the miles. It’s one fighting chance against blood sugar and cholesterol, certainly. “To run against pork” sounds very political, indeed.

It’s all a test for one’s conscience. To milk or not to milk the country dry, that is the question. Are you going to agree to an immense annual budget and leave the next president with a severe ulcer? Sorry, but let’s get back to my current state.

It’s about a week now with no red meat and no sweet things. I used to coax a friend into partaking on a piece of cake and pass a jeer that should his sugar level rise, he could sing “This time I’ll be sweeter…” Now the joke’s on me, and the doctor said white bread, for which I’m such a sucker, is a no-no, too.

Woody Allen says that when we lose twenty pounds, we could be losing the twenty best pounds we have, that which contain “our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty.” Well, that’s poundage, not blood sugar or cholesterol. Besides, I don’t have the genius. I wanted to run last Sunday, but ended up with a half-pounder burger instead. It had nothing to do with the Philippine economy.

(januarinbox@yahoo.com)

Bobos | SunStar Cebu | Feb. 8, 2010

BOBOS is a portmanteau of bourgeois and bohemian. The term was coined by David Brooks in his book “Bobos in Paradise,” in which he tries to talk about the new breed of ‘90s yuppies. These are hybrid corporate upper class people, he said, who have the ‘60s idealism and the self-interest of the ‘80s.

By some stretch of the imagination, you can conjure up an image of a Beatnik in tuxedo—top-earners with the sensibility of a hippie. How is that possible? Brooks describes these people as indulging extravagantly in “inconspicuous consumption” (posh dwellings and profligate waterbeds), but at the same time deeply sympathetic with the working class. These people see money not as an end but a means to achieving something.

This new upper class, says Brooks, does not disdain mainstream society and are tolerant of the views of others. You’ll perhaps find these guys, sporting a Rolex, in an FGD segueing a presentation into an oratory on poverty reduction or saltwater intrusion.

Brooks says the trend is all about changing tastes and preferences of a preexisting upper class, and not a descendent of any social mobility. Brooks, of course, is describing an American phenomenon, although it’s curious if some similar pattern can be seen in our country—emergent and affluent yuppies who are as invariably animated about the future of the country as they are about a new car.

This was what came to my mind when I read about Michael Macapagal, who was introduced by journalist Lito Gutierrez of PDI very interestingly in his story’s lead: “Snug in the supple seat of his gleaming milk-white E Class Mercedes and tapping on the walnut and leather trim of its steering wheel to the beat of ‘80s soft-rock ditties, Michael Macapagal is a picture of the fulfillment of the American dream.”

This “stateside” Macapagal leaves the care of his escrow business to his wife in the US, and heads home to the Philippines to campaign, no, not for Arroyo, a relative, but for Noynoy Aquino. He plans to raise $2 million from Filipino friends in the US for his candidate’s campaign.

I can’t tell though if we have the likes of Michael manning the corporate skyscrapers in our own neighborhood while looking out the window and be moved by the stark contrast outdoors. I can’t tell, too, if we have our own version of Brooks’ bobos in our backyard—‘70s liberal and ‘80s rich.

There was a thread on Facebook that was launched by a comment against a presidential candidate. It was instigated by a left-leaning user and the thread, in fact, fell heavily towards that orientation. After reading all the comments, however, I noticed something.

There was palpable generation gap—the younger activists and those who have had their time in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The younger ones defended to the death Satur Ocampo’s decision to be under Manny Villar’s camp. The older ones criticized just that.

I will leave a fellow columnist who is lettered on the topic to give you context if he wants to. I find the differences curious though.

What could have changed the mindsets, transformed the preferences of the precursors? Could they be the local evolution of the bobos—the ‘70s, ‘80s front-liners who have gotten comfy mainstream, mellowed by family and time and now stand on balanced ground? “I’m voting again after 12 years,” a friend says, and he isn’t alone in saying that. “But I’m not voting for Satur Ocampo,” he says. To think that he was hard-line picket vanguard in his youth, it comes as a surprise. Has he read a better version of history?

I noticed not a few old-guards, former warriors coming out of their cocoons this season, mobilizing an old spirit. “All we need is an honest man for a president,” I heard one say, “We can take care of the country.”

The Fly | SunStar Cebu | Feb. 5, 2010

So there we were in some cramped nook trying to understand how this PCOS machine works. I could not concentrate. I was looking at the sample ballot, a card roughly longer than your legal-sized bond paper. Anyone who had taken a licensure exam would fall into a déjà vu. It looked like the answer sheet that compressed your entire college life in exchange for a small ID from PRC. But it was not what diverted my imagination. It was something else.

Looking at the machine, I imagine the 1986 Goldblum movie “The Fly.” In case Dolphy had bungled your memory lately, the plot had a scientist experimenting on a machine capable of what he called “teleportation.” It was supposed to transport a person electronically from point A to B. No sweat.

Just as my imagination was going through “The Fly’s” plot, the Smartmatic rep explained that the machine is so programmed to err on the side of safety. It was taught taste, meaning it knows fine dining it won’t overeat when the voter over-votes. It spits out your ballot if you treat it like a coloring book. You only fill a hole for each position, and the intensity of fill has a certain threshold for the machine to count it.

Does the machine have a USB port or something, I’d have wanted to ask. The machine will use the three major mobile networks to transmit results and I thought that if they’ll do that, it might need those USB dongles like how you use your Globe Tattoo or Smart Bro. If it’s built-in, you’d have a modem that transmits to three network options? I simply missed that part about transmission. If the machine has any portal at all, will it be possible anyone can feed a virus or a program to rig the results? I understand “encryptions,” but I also know how feeble they can be in the face of a clever virus. I remember Onel de Guzman, the diminutive college boy who fed a network worm that ate up about $5.5B in damages in major countries in 2000.

My mind flew again to “The Fly”: The scientist Brundle tells the journalist before he fed himself into the pod, “Don’t be afraid.” But something goes wrong with the experiment. A fly finds its way into the portal and is sucked into the circuits along with the human. A mutation takes place, although it is to be felt gradually later by Brundle. He notices changes and keeps himself in isolation. He develops fly-like traits, throwing up digestive enzymes into his food and leaps around and clings to walls and ceilings. Finally, the pregnant wife dreams she bore a maggot.

The thought of a maggot brought me back to the Smartmatic rep who at that point already sounded too certain about the machine and some parts of the room too sold out with the idea.

I thought that if the machine is spic-and-span a work of art, then there’s nothing to worry about. The training part for teachers may not even take an entire day; teaching a bunch of eggheads a lesson in math is definitely more complicated than learning to operate the PCOS machine. I can now hear the Smartmatic guy telling this bunch of journalists, “Don’t be afraid.”

What I am afraid, however, is when the president we have chosen mutates into a maggot with a severe propensity for flightiness. A candidate shows just such trait, and it’s scary. When you spend a billion to campaign, it’s like the fly spewing digestive enzymes to dissolve its food. In the movie “The Fly,” after the scientist makes the assurance that things will be okay, the journalist replies, “No. Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Ship of fools | Sun.Star Cebu | Feb. 2, 2010

1. WE stopped at Park Mall and walked all the way from the parking lot to the gate facing the CICC. When we were about to get out, we spotted Bert Emphasis. I told my friend we should say “Mano po,” but we were in a hurry and could be forgiven if we forego with manners. Already, there was a throng building up right at the gate, some wearing yellow, some green, some blue, and red.

2. We scaled the elevation leading up to the CICC entrance, thinking someone with arthritis will have an uphill battle. Do you mean the elections? No, but I must have, subliminally. We didn’t have a ticket, so we looked around for anyone who could possibly let us in. Some Chinese-looking man stood near the entrance, so we approached him and told him we didn’t have a ticket. He looked at us for a few seconds, groped into his jacket’s secret pocket and drew out a blue ticket. We said thank you while his face still sported an amused look. He was probably thinking he was just conned by two gutsy terrorists.

3. The left door led to a cordoned path to a room that had a widescreen in front. On the glass door a sign read: “Supporters, please proceed this way.” I was thinking if it was the proper door for us, but it didn’t ask for any ticket. We figured maybe we could just proceed the other way and present our ticket at the appropriate entrance. We could feign innocence and lie about being neutral. We took the escalator and saw the entrance for us, VIPs I supposed already by virtue of the blue ticket. “Please keep your tickets, sir, for the mock elections,” some lady wearing the Ateneo Business School told us. Okay, and I said to myself maybe they should just raffle off a plane ticket to Nigeria or something.

4. So we found ourselves in a big room, and host Bunny Pages was already explaining what was going to happen that afternoon. “Cebu’s elite are all here,” some reporter behind said. True, indeed, it felt like you were in a cocktail party minus the, well, cocktail. Nobody, of course, came in a cocktail dress. A quick survey would make you think you were in a salad bowl with a good dose of leafy veggies, with a sprinkling of cheese and carrot cubes. “Choices and Voices” was the show’s name. “It sounds so gay,” I told my friend.

5. In came the candidates. Noynoy Aquino came first, and there was good applause. I think Erap Estrada came next, and then Manny Villar, who was ambushed by some supposed fans for a photo opportunity. “That fan’s planted,” someone protested from behind, and he was wearing a green shirt. Dick Gordon and Eddie Villanueva walked in and the applause came in trickle. In came Gilbert Teodoro and there was wild cheering from the girls in many parts of the hall.

6. In the forum, Erap—deliberately or not—provided the comic relief. I don’t know if someone was directing the cameras, but they caught the former president in various awkward moments. For one moment, I thought it was rather cruel, but Erap seemed to love it. Good for him. “Now, to answer your question,” he said, but this was on the last second of his three-minute chance.

7. When the boy Trevor asked them how they intend to help those kids sticking their famished faces on his car’s window, the candidates gave their answers. I thought that someone with the savvy will level with Trevor and answer his question in his own terms. Forget the audience, talk to the boy!

8. Anyway, the forum ended and we did cast our ballot. Gibo won and you’d hear all those administration supporters gloating about the results.

9. Around this time, many of the businessmen, in another part of the city, was wolfing on P5,000-worth bowl of porridge. The money goes to a candidate’s campaign kitty.

10. So we went out of CICC and saw the poor crowd waving their placards and banners. It was an entirely different ballgame outside the ship of fools.

Chinese food | Meanwhile | SunStar Cebu | Jan. 31, 2010

SO I found myself one day with a Chinese-speaking clique partaking what could be the best pata tim I’ve ever tasted. The chef, a quiet fellow, sat across me, exuding a kind of mysticism present only among mortals who have the world’s best-kept secrets in their custody. He’s over seventy years old, said a seatmate, but he has to leave us to whip up some feast for us.

Pata tim is a kind of enlightenment after three meticulous steps, each of them having its crucial seconds when one can seize the right spirit and flavor. Cooking is no different from meditation, and spices and herbs are your keys to the universe. Done right, a dish could be the oozing Milky Way on a platter. When you eat, you’d feel the Emersonian “I become part and parcel of the universe” thing.

So this pata tim prepared for us by this septuagenarian mystique was simply cosmic, and to take it in bearable morsels, you have to tuck it in a pao, a bun that can pass for an angel’s pillow. A bit later, I realized this was the same chef whose great cooking I haved tasted in a famous restaurant when I was a kid. He had retired, possibly passing on bits of his secrets to younger cooks.

The circle spent the next hour talking about their favorite presidential candidate. “He’s a regular guy,” one said. He told me about that one Friday when he was with him on a very late night. “He told me he missed his bed and his sando that had holes on them, that was all he talked about, very down-to-earth,” he said. “You see, that’s the guy who doesn’t need so much, simple, and that’s how I know that this man is not the kind who’d steal our taxes.”

He was talking about Noynoy Aquino. This was the best quote he got from Noynoy, “Pasindi nga.” He was then holding his cigarette. Another in the group, one of the more active leaders in Cebu’s SME organizations, recalled Noynoy arriving at a forum venue and saw a glass of soft drink on the table before him. “Sa ‘kin ba ‘to?” He said yes, and Noynoy drank the whole glass and said, “Nauhaw ako.”

I took the knife and dug into the tender pork, the cut bringing forth a gushing of rich brown sauce that tasted like the history of China. With that in the pocket of a pao, I felt the succulence of a country without Arroyo. The business sector, he said, simply wants fair game. “That’s why we’re for him,” he said. “And these chambers are actually a minority.”

You do not, of course, measure a candidate’s worth by how he misses his sandos with holes or how he gulps a glassful of Coke. Worth, however, boils down to a candidate’s humanity. While all the other candidates are busy trying to play God and Superman, here’s one who kept his humanity with unfazed modesty.

I want to vote for somebody I can talk to, who doesn’t give me bull. I remember that one radio program where Leo Lastimosa, after an interview with Noynoy, said his reservations for him was reduced to 10 percent. He said that, off-the-air, the man was brutally frank, which is to say he’s not one who’d say one thing and mean something else.

But I was there to listen to this clique as we feasted on pata tim. There were attempts, but no cook in town has quite captured the taste of this hefty feast. This is a classic unto itself, stuffed with the spirit of meticulous tradition and history's greats. Oh, such could be the richness of people power.

Unscrupulous | Meanwhile | SunStar Cebu | Jan. 26, 2010

I DON'T mind singing his campaign jingle in the john, which is what usually happens first thing in the mornings when we’re usually autistic. I believe some of my friends also find themselves singing his jingle, too, while sashaying into the toilet. A classmate in college used to sing REM's “This one goes out to the one I love” while relieving his bowel of last night’s binge. This time though, there’s this one persistent campaign jingle that tops his toilet repertoire.

What should be in a jingle that makes it easy to remember, I ask a friend who knows a thing or two about music. My friend explains that it has something to do with the simplicity of the tune, when the notes are not too jumpy, something like a plateau sloping gradually only on three levels—like do-re-mi or mi-re-do. It’s the usual, simplistic pattern of pop songs, my friend says, that makes them easy to recall and really stick in the head like Bert’s wig. “Who’s Bert?” I ask. “I don’t know,” my friend says, “Ernie’s partner? In Sesame Street?” Uh ok.

My friend takes a pause and, as if some shining apparition fell before him, says, “It’s much like nursery rhymes, they’re simple and children can easily pick them up.” I see. So I got his explanation, and I go about my day feeling enlightened. But the day ends, and there is something else. On the first flight of stairs, I am singing the jingle again. Ah-ha, so there it is—children. The jingle, or the TV ad, comes across as a nursery rhyme—like Jack en Poy, or Monkey-monkey or Ambuchiki. Although, Ambuchiki is more like a battle-cry against Chip Tsao.

The supposed candidate wriggles his butt in between the children and sits with them while they chant his name. Its creative pool probably thinks it’s a stroke of genius, but that’s the price for selling your soul to the devil—one’s work becomes dispassionate, devoid of soul, lacking subtlety, and above all dishonest.

So what comes to my mind watching that ad? It reminds me of those manipulative protest marchers who would put children at the frontlines supposedly as shield. It reminds me of Middle East terrorists who would plant children on potential targets to soften an offensive. That’s what the campaign ad is like; it feeds innocent children into the mouth of this filthy beast of whatever name you call this season. At a time of need for deeper sensitivity to children’s rights, this ad is unscrupulous. Singing in that setup is no different from swimming in a sea of rubbish.

“What are they singing? His name, his frigging name! What is he, a diaper?” A friend rants on Facebook. He says you only use children in advertisements if the product has something to do with children. The candidate is not even close to Wet Wipes, he says.

Keep your cool, I tell my friend. But just when I tell him that, the country’s comedian appears on TV and endorses the candidate. When a comedian speaks in utter seriousness, you’re supposed to believe in him. His joke is as real as his claims to gravity. In fact, I long for the day when the comedian and the candidate would do one stunt together. Maybe a chase sequence around a coconut tree; ending only until the nuts fall on their heads. That will be the day, man.

The candidate says he’s using TV only to level the amount of exposure the other candidate, who he says has the better access, is getting. But the “infomercials” have been there since Adam and Eve, and mankind has been singing his campaign jingle since the discovery of toilet training.

Oh, and as I close this paragraph, the advertisement blares on TV again. Friends, countrymen, maybe for health reasons we should just stick to “Nobody, nobody…”