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…”

I didn't like him | SunStar Cebu | Jan. 22, 2010

This was in one of those obscure islands in the middle of a strange seascape leading to a channel called Bucas Grande. It was lonely but beautiful, and its shores dove to depths of unimaginable life forms. But it was the journey going there that built the suspense.

There would be odds and ends of strange vegetation along the way, mangroves with a mighty hold, and just when the water turned deep green for you to think you were heading for perilous trenches, you’d see a man standing on knee-deep surface, holding on to a fishing rod.

The sea would turn calm sometimes, but just as suddenly would slap our outrigger and leave the engine with a muted drone. You’d see the water boil up, forming into pools of swirling bodies and swerve our boat in all directions.

In this boat, while the rest of the clique would tuck themselves in the small cover in the middle, there would be me and another man braving the cold rain in the open. To keep us warm, he’d nudge me with a bottle of gin, which we took turns in deep swig. Each time I took my shot, he’d laugh out loud, yell in the rain and give me a thumbs-up, “That’s my man!” Then we’d laugh, and it’d be his turn. I was fresh from college, and he was, well, some name in the public sphere already.

In the afternoon lull in the island, he’d suddenly slap my shoulder and summoned me to the outrigger. “You stay at the back, and just paddle,” he said and sat in front so he could steer our boat to wherever we wanted to go. “Don’t worry,” he said.

So I picked the wooden oar and dug into the greenish water. He did the same, and the boat moved swiftly into the open sea. This was a breath of fresh air and we cut through the tiny whirlpools along the way while the island behind retreated into a bluish hue. We were far from shore already, and in a moment, he fell silent and seemed restless. We were still moving on, and I stirred into the water just the same.

He held on to his oar and sat still, silent. I stopped, too, leaving our boat cuddled in the arch and sweep of the crossing currents, although it brought us farther into the open sea while the rain ate up every faint blue strip of land in sight. After a long pause, he turned to me, and said, “Do you know how to steer this thing back to the island?”

He’d tried steering the boat at the front rear to make a turn, but the swirling water made it impossible. I took his place, but just the same, we were moving further out, our souls being fed into the Pacific Ocean. Why not, I suggested, sit the other way around and sail the boat in reverse. He burst into laughter and threw me the thumbs-up again, “That’s my guy!” In a few minutes, we were back in the island drinking the rest of what remained in the bottle of gin and laughed our heart out.

I told him I was going to write a poem about what happened, and he said he couldn’t wait to read it. It was a brief vacation among friends, and we’d be back in the city. In the few occasions that we’d bump into each other, he’d always ask for the poem like a father would to a son about his report card, and I told him, I was still going to write it. I never really got down to writing it, and life’s strange currents pulled people apart.

Over a decade passed, and I grew to dislike the kind of politics he chose. He’d turn into a stranger I didn’t know. He’d be at the forefront defending a president I find so contemptible. Last week, I wanted to write something. There were a lot of things he said that I didn’t like, but I won’t name them now. But his life was quicker than my writing.

We now face this funny and painful rite of hauling out memories for the dear departed, and sure enough we’re all guilty of a few embellishments. That boat story is true, it is no allegory, even as it can be in many ways. I didn’t like him that much, but only because I didn’t know him that much. Cerge Remonde was real, still is, and deserving of all the fondness.

Alvin | SunStar Cebu | Jan. 19, 2010

I WAS in college when I first had a taste of real gin. By real, I mean, not the usual staple from the kanto store. Real, meaning the one that you buy in a real liquor store and needed a sizable pooling of the clique’s allowances. Although, don’t get me wrong, the other one, which had Amorsolo’s illustration of the fiery duel between a saint and the devil stamped on its torso, was still just as real. It was just usual staple. At that time, we were trying to become real men, and no longer boys.

It was my fellow staffer from the school paper, Allan Saballa, who took the first shot, while the rest of us watched him silently, awaiting for that singular facial twitch that indicated the rolling of fire in his throat. So we fell silent after he took a swig. He put the shot glass down, closed his eyes, grimaced tight, and froze. We waited. So how was it, we impatiently asked. After a long pause, Allan broke the silence, “It’s neither democracy nor communism!” We burst in laughter.

The sessions were rowdy. The whole time, we’d have a wide field to survey: politics, Dostoevsky, the US bases, the new campus queen who couldn’t spell, some stupid anti-communist youngsters, the Philippines Free Press to Levi’s 501. We thought ourselves a cut above the rest.

But there was that one person who stood out in that clique.

He didn’t drink, was prim and proper. Allan would tease him about not being able to get a girlfriend because, beside a girl, he just couldn’t stop talking about the US military bases, poverty, social justice, and end up with a dozing damsel at the other side of the table. But Allan would soon write about him in the paper, saying our good friend had the energy of five working committees rolled into one. At that time, we somehow knew our friend was going to be important someday.

After college, Allan would soon be setting up what is perhaps the most successful wine store in Cebu City. Today, our official gin-taster would be a first-rate wine connoisseur and businessman. I’d be caught between the academe and the press.

Our friend, on the other hand, confirmed our expectations.

He would soon be involved in various non-government organizations in the city. There were a hundred causes to pick, but he chose the one on governance—particularly, that concept that allowed the citizens a big role in the process.

Not a few communities in Cebu have seen the technology worked and transformed them. But later, ever the perpetual mover, he’d be traveling abroad and took wider causes, one of those was that of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Su Kyi of Burma.

A few weeks ago, the old clique met up for coffee. It had been all over the papers that our friend was joining politics, particularly the BOPK council slate. I didn’t understand.

He’d been all over Europe and Asia, why should he sit in those boring sessions and be broadcast live in an equally boring cable channel. Seriously, I fear for my friend, and it has something to do with politics being a famished dragon that eats up just about anything.

But my friend writes me an email instead: “I want to believe that the time is ripe for us to engage from within, with the people backing us. I hope to bring my ideals and the people’s agenda in the formal halls of power, but mindful of the realities that this system could either make or break us.

“In the long years of my NGO involvement, I could humbly say that I have earned a better understanding of what the people truly need. I have come to internalize the issues through participatory mechanisms and processes which proved to be very effective in empowering communities. I hope to impart and hopefully institutionalize these participatory technologies when elected into office.”

I can imagine my friend Allan tasting some fine wine this time.

Political animal | Sunstar Cebu | Jan. 8, 2010

EACH time I remember Aristotle’s “man is a political animal,” I think that we should just delete the word “statesman” in the dictionary. How can a slimy, scaly reptile with a tail that curls up like a phallus and has the coarsest of ways, be a “statesman?” The concepts are incompatible.

Some praying mantis outside my window says that “statesmanlike” suggests “civility” or “diplomacy.” A statesman, says this poor underweight fellow on my window, usually finds himself starting his sentence with “With due respect…” or “I understand what you’re saying…however…” But those lines are too flat for the “political animal.” With unprecedented skill and savvy, the “animal” will say “Grrrrrr…you’re autistic!”

Seriously, the phrase “political gentleman” sounds like an oxymoron today. In the boiling pot of politics, the first casualty is civility. US President Harry Truman was right.

“A politician,” he says, “is a man who understands government, and the statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.”

When the recent SWS survey came out, Manny Villar brings his fat heart into a presidential debate and hits Noynoy Aquino with a diatribe about his lack of experience. Aquino says Villar has never come up front to point a finger at President Arroyo. And so on and so forth. You don’t get surprised.

In the stretch towards May, the political narrative will go as inflammatory as your tummy.

I’ve been reading US President Barack Obama’s memoir “Audacity of Hope” lately, and stumble on one of the many lessons he learned about the dynamics of politics and the press. He says, “Indeed, part of what makes the juxtaposition of competing press releases so alluring to reporters is that it feeds that old journalistic standby—personal conflict. It’s hard to deny that political civility has declined in the past decade, and that the parties differ sharply on major policy issues. But at least some of the decline in civility arises from the fact that, from the press’s perspective, civility is boring.”

A polite statement from a lethargic news source will barely make it on paper. A mayor who would call a press conference to declare that he is leaving his fate to God will have all the reporters scrambling out before he could even finish his sentence. But if a source shifts into attack mode, hands down, he’ll get the press mobbing him. Reporters, says Obama, will go out of their way to “stir up the pot” and provoke the source into making a bloated response.

“The spin, the amplification of conflict, the indiscriminate search for scandal and miscues—the cumulative impact of all this is to erode any agreed-upon standards for judging the truth,” says Obama.

One of the more interesting exchanges in our political narrative was the saga involving Governor Garcia and Mayor Osmeña. The latter called the governor “Tandang Zora,” and the former went on to emerge in a press con in a Zorro costume to sic a chicken figurine supposedly to dramatize that the mayor “chickened out” when the Province offered to buy a piece of land at the SRP. The exchanges, reinforced with interesting photographs, simply fell as ideal staple for the press.

This is pretty tricky though. The conduct of governance, which is supposed to be where the real meat is, gets waylaid along the way in exchange for the rather cosmetic caterwauling of spin. The nature of deadlines and drive for revenue, says Obama, makes the press hospitable to spin. The “political animal” could hypnotize the press into forgetting its didactic role.

“But let us also say that principles can be inherited. An outlook to serve the people can also be inherited. Getting a sense of what’s right and wrong and what distinguishes the two are learned and inherited from parents.”
--Benigno Noynoy Aquino III

Unbeatable | SunStar Cebu | Jan. 8, 2010

FIRST day in office, she climbed the Capitol building to check its leaking roof, leaving a circle of photojournalists and TV crew scrambling after her. She climbed the ladder, paused on the ledge while photographers scuttled for the best angle.

Right that moment, you knew the papers’ banner photo was made.

All she needed then was to drop a few sound bites. She told a group of reporters huddled around her that she wanted to “hit the ground running.” She knew exactly what to do on Day One.

Right then, the next day’s news was already written. Second day in office, she was headline in all newspapers in the city.

It could have been a case of mutual feeding—the source feeds what media want, and media oftentimes coax the source to do or say what they want. With the governor, however, media doesn’t need to give the cue. She herself understands how it works and knows exactly what to do at the right moment.

In less than a hundred days in her office, I found myself working for the governor and made an AVP of her first one hundred days, which we made as an introduction to her speech at the Provincial Board. The whole time, from video to speech, I remember the PB’s session hall falling into a kind of awe.

It must’ve been the first time the crowd felt like they were at the Oscar awards.

The point is, the governor is one person who understands how things work in the public sphere. In 2004, I made the photograph of her first-day sojourn on the Capitol’s roof the symbol of the new leadership, and used the tag-line “bag-ong panlantaw” or new vision. The image shows her on top of the building looking down, and quite eloquently, it says that up there, it was altogether a different view of Cebu.

You go to the towns with the governor and you will see how the people respond to her presence. Here is a common scenario: women would huddle around her and give her a hug, and say “Ka-gwapa man diay nimo, Maam, uy!” The governor knows exactly how to respond, “Ay, sus, maayo ra gyud nga nianhi ko kay wala ko kadungog ana didto sa siyudad!”

You will see everyone around in a jovial mood. You will see how amused the people are in the towns. Sometimes, kids would run up to her and she’d get her purse, take out a few coins and send them to a candy store. When she chances upon a carenderia, she’d take the ladle and get a taste of her favorite dinuguan or paklay, much to the surprise of everyone surrounding her.

These are little details that escape the rather formal demands of news. But apart from the deliberately new brand of governance the Province has taken all these years, those small bits are what matters most to the people in the towns.

Here is one governor who doesn’t look and act like a governor, in the traditional sense. In the middle of a conversation, she’d hop into an outrigger and paddle all the way underneath a decaying bridge to inspect it from below—much to the horror of her close-in security.

She’s a relentless mover, and she knows when to pick the right moments. One official commented about how the governor looked “so un-gubernatorial” for frequently wearing denims while at work. Well, the next few days, the governor would be wearing jeans the whole time in office and in the field. She’d wink an eye and smile at her staff upon seeing another official whose pants climbed way over his navel.

The contrast becomes too stark when you hold her personality against her detractors. I do not quite understand where the confidence of Vice Gov. Greg Sanchez comes from. He’s a good man, don’t get me wrong, but when he delivers a speech, he’d put half the town hall to sleep. On that front, you simply can’t beat the governor.