Filed under: art
It’s not everyday one loses a friend.
Today is one such.
Fresh from a week-long video training gig in the Visayas I finally got to read a letter sent to me by this (now former) friend. It was about his long-running quarrel with an officemate that I previously said was out of our hands to mediate. My reply this morning was more of the same.
Within minutes of sending my second reply I received a riposte from the guy saying our office’s decision was gravely mistaken. His anger was as obvious as my beer gut—huge. He also wrote we need not be friends anymore.
I again wrote to him it was his decision and that I wish him luck. His reply was: “There’s nothing to talk about anymore!!!” (Note the three exclamation points!)
Now, this guy I admired very much. His name is in the legal and human rights books when he went up against Martial Law’s main bowwow, now Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. He is also a major poet, which was why I became friends with him in the first place. I am also ninong to one of his daughters and I am good friends with another daughter.
The stories this former friend bandies around about his number one enemy makes my close-cropped hair curl. On the other hand, the things I heard about this former friend makes my close-cropped hair positively kinky. What have they been doing in their past lives?
But that’s just it. All these alleged things happened in a previous life. Why should we be dragged into it? Some other group has looked into it and has decided accordingly. According to set processes and after judicious consideration of things, one was subsequently booted out of the organization and one remains to be in good standing. Who am I to intervene, especially when I myself have doubts about a party’s intentions?
When I lose friends I sometimes ask myself if I was at fault. This time I was surprised to realize I am not bothered at all. In fact, this afternoon, I napped twice and then Pom and I went shopping. Tonight, in lieu of dinner, I drank a couple of light beer while wolfing down a hundred pesos worth of isaw. Suitably tipsy afterwards, I played with Panda.
Filed under: Human Rights, politics | Tags: cebu city, expensive dinner, gloria macapagal arroyo, le cirque, new york, Philippines, raymund b villanueva, tuslob-buwa
A few months back, I wrote about knowing Cebu—its entrails, nooks, crannies and real face. http://www.facebook.com/raymund.villanueva?ref=name#/notes.php?id=1293317554&start=50&hash=fbf48670aaf915c65e2c26f87d2e4264
Following up on said training and workshop we are back for more advanced exercises that again required some of our teams to visit Cebu’s urban poor communities.
We visited Barangay Pasil in downtown Cebu this time. This is just about the most feared community in all of Cebu and I wonder if any Osmena, Rama, Garcia, Lhuiller or Koreans have been to its innermost alleys and shanties. It felt like Back of Matimco, Payatas, Estero de Magdalena, Veterans, Valenzuela all over again. If you have been to communities like these, you know what I’m talking about. If not, I won’t bother trying to tell you. It’s beyond words.
Three things struck me the most on this visit.
First, the alleyways have banks of computers lined against the dark walls. You put a peso coin into the slots and you can have internet for six minutes. For five pesos, the womenfolk can chat with dirty old foreign men looking for desperate Filipinas for thirty minutes. This is the contemporary twist to Dingdong Avanzado’s 80s ditty “Tatlong Bentesingko”.
Second, they have drinking water stations that have coin slots as well. Put in a peso and you can fill a glass or a soda bottle. The water they get from their taps is just no good.
Third, they have this street food called Tuslob-buwa. They dip nipa-wrapped rice balls (puso) in vats of boiling pig’s brain with bits of liver for taste. They do not pay for the dip. They only pay for the puso, which is PhP2.50 each (less than 5 US cents). This unique street food is definitely hepatitis-bait but is a popular way of staving off hunger pangs.
It’s been three days since I took pictures of these kids eating Tuslob-buwa in Barangay Pasil and I can’t get them off my mind. How hungrily they ate those rice balls is seared so deeply in my mind that I have had two nightmares on this already.
http://www.facebook.com/raymund.villanueva?ref=name#/photo.php?pid=30604165&id=1293317554
And then yesterday, I read this: http://www.nypost.com/seven/08072009/gossip/pagesix/eat_and_drink_183333.htm
Looking out on the beautiful hills of Talamban from my room’s balcony, I am filled with so much love for our beloved President, Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Ate glo, we love her so much. It’s okay that many Filipinas feel that dirty old foreign men are their only hope for deliverance just as long as she has finally met her US president to legitimize her presidency. It’s okay that many children can only eat boiled pig’s brain as long as she has caviar. It’s okay that we have to pay a peso for a sip of water just as long as she can have bottles of Krug.
Long live our President! Mabuhay!
Filed under: Human Rights, history, politics | Tags: Corazon Aquino, Cory, death of Corazon C Aquino, death of cory, gloria, gloria macapagal arroyo, Philippines
I woke up to a bad news today—Corazon Aquino, world democracy icon and former Philippine President, died at 3:18 this morning.
I first saw it on BBC. Then I frantically punched the remote commander and, sure enough, ABS-CBN and GMA were at it again, trying to outdo each other’s spins on Cory. Suddenly, an epiphany in Philippine broadcast journalism was happening before our very eyes—that closed mortuary gates and drawn windows require full coverage and running commentaries over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Then, once in a while, they would put a reporter before the camera and ask the same questions that have been answered and reported on barely thirty minutes back. As their version of a fast ball a reporter interviews Cory’s parish priest about the late President’s favourite church chair and makes her pitch to make her report be made part of the growing ammunition to the expected sob fest that is sure to follow.
When GMA managed to air gloria’s message about Cory’s passing first they made sure we know we got it from them first. Methinks it’s akin to being Brutus’ first megaphone after Julius Ceasar has been butchered on the marble steps of the Roman Senate. Big deal.
How sad.
I then woke up my wife and drove to the CERV office. I had the compelling urge to smash Thor’s mallet on the screen and make myself to be a buffoon so we had to be outa there pronto. I am only consoled by the fact that since I will be virtually cloistered in the next week or so I will be able to escape most of this inanity from our two biggest networks. Cebu, here I come.
There are several questions for Cory I would gladly have given my left eye for.
- What really happened and what were your thoughts right after the Mendiola Massacre?
- Ditto the Hacienda Luisita Massacre?
- Ditto the atrocities committed under Lambat Bitag I and II?
- What and/or pushed you to recall Prof Jose Maria Sison’s Philippine passport forcing him to seek asylum in The Netherlands?
- What was really the plan about the GRP-NDFP peace talks in 1986?
- Why did you not use the inherent powers of your revolutionary/newly-established government to order a genuine and general agrarian reform that could have ended the ongoing civil war and pushed this country towards genuine development?
- What made you risk your reputation to support the extension of the Military Bases Agreement with the imperialist United States when you know the people already wanted out?
- Why did you not punish the soldiers who launched nine coups against you and nearly killed your only son?
- What made you choose FVR over Mitra?
- Did you pen a call to the Filipino people on what we should do against the next woman president after you who has turned to be as worse as the dictator Marcos?
These are questions that our networks are very hesitant to ask and seek answers to. In fact, it took the CNN to ask the first probing questions about Cory’s legacy, which the ABS-CBN’s senior reporter deftly skirted around instead of answering directly.
I have always been critical of Cory. The first nine questions gnaw at my mind when I think about her and her legacy. I only started to like her some when she spoke out against gloria. (Finally, she admitted, she could no longer stand her as it reminds her too much of the satan she helped oust from power 23 years ago!)
Let me be Filipino in ending this piece: I am sad that Cory died, more so that most Filipinos wanted the other woman President to go first. Compared to our current Madam President Cory was all the saint the world makes her to be.
