Shortwave

When I was in college I used to break the monotony of listening to my cassette tapes and FM favorites by tuning in to shortwave radio. Much of what I caught was unintelligible gibberish but once in a while I would hear music. The ones I enjoyed most were instrumental Chinese music that I could only describe as eerily beautiful.

I miss these surprise discoveries that open up my mind to wonder beyond the here and now. For the last few months I’ve been fiddling with the dial and impatiently rifling through my collection of good old reliables. I can’t sit still long enough to finish a song. Either that or I loop the same song for days. It seems that I’ve exhausted my playlist yet again. I must get back to the unexpected joys of shortwave soon.

I wonder what’s on.

Tailor Me Mine

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”
- George Bernard Shaw

My former colleague, Mel, thinks it’s funny that I have a tailor. Women, she said, should have a sastre—not a tailor. But a sastre just doesn’t cut it for me (pun intended). A sastre does not have the same gravitas, the same quiet dignity of a tailor, no matter if that sastre was also your mother’s.

I am amused by my tailor, Nomer. I love that he dresses in well-cut shirts and pants and that he hardly speaks except to quietly recite my measurements to his staff. I love how he smiles with benign tolerance whenever I suggest another new-fangled idea for my shirts. I love that he keeps my shirt patterns year on year. We have a relationship, this Nomer and I. It’s one of mutual respect, tolerance, discretion and patience.

Like an old friend, a tailor takes you as you are with no judgment and will always make adjustments.

...the point is to discover them

There ought to be a sign whenever a major epiphany is about to take place. That way, you’re not caught, literally, with your pants down, i.e. while you’re taking a dump or shaving your pits in the shower. An epiphany deserves some dignity after all. But such is my life of gracelessness that my epiphanies have always taken place whenever I am at my most unglamorous. This last one happened sans underwear, my hands covered in paint. I even have camel toe photos to remember it by. Sweet.

My colleagues call it The Picasso Incident.

Suffice it to say that it was a test of will and vision. Mine against theirs. It was also my first test of true leadership. And I failed miserably. On the day my promotion became official. Mortified and contrite cannot begin to describe how I felt. Servant leadership died that day in Boracay. Sorry guys.

The thing is, I was prepared for people to get angry at me. That’s what happens when you’re fighting for your Big Idea. I was prepared to get bruised and bloodied for mine. What I wasn’t prepared to see was hurt and pain. As my boss chided during karaoke hour, “there’s no easy way to break somebody’s heart.”

It’s funny how we stumble on personal truths. I’ve been searching for mine for a very long time. Little did I realize that I would find it on that island where, a mere three months before, I had almost died.

And now I am alive again.

As Celie put it in the Color Purple, “I’m poor, I’m black, I might even be ugly, but dear God I’m here! I'm here!”

Sing it with me now, “Reflections of the way life used to be…”

Had digital cameras been invented during the 1990s we would have had indelible evidence of bad hairstyles and even worse fashion, from helmet hair to St. Michael socked feet (yes that was what it was called before it became Marks & Spencer) stuffed in Cole Haan shoes, or derivatives thereof, and of course, a whole rainbow of Giordano shirts.

More importantly, they would have captured:

• Baba in his Intsik white sando strumming Dust In the Wind as I, with wet hair and no bra, played lead singer
• A drive to Batangas City in Baba’s old Ford, singing along to sappy mix tapes, the music blaring out of a home-made boom box
• Many, many drunken nights in Faces and Mars with the Barrios brothers (Rica as head Barrios brother, of course), Sean and Mike, Karrie and the rest of the Assumption girls, and the Pinoy Montessori boys
• Drinking tequila during school nights in Lola Becky’s office-by-day-party-palace-by night unit at the corner of Legaspi and Rufino streets
• Getting thrown out of a party in Alabang
• Baba and the rest of the boys chanting, “Free Billy!” outside Billy Boy’s house
• Drunken breakfasts in Whistle Stop
• Baba regularly exhorting us to please behave like normal, decent girls and cover ourselves
• Beer and beach in Batangas followed by more beer and steak in Tagaytay
• A limping, bloodied Paolo, Baba singing “Reflections” and Karrie and I tittering madly even as a dangerously angry Manang Rica spewed invective and promised bodily harm to all of us
• Baba describing a magical moment with Lee that involved beer and a bonfire somewhere near the vicinity of Palace In The Sky
• Partying ‘til morning while the house and the rest of Metro Manila turned into a winter wonderland thanks to Pinatubo’s volcanic ash
• Drunken kulitan in Alpa Hotel (wrong spelling kung wrong spelling!)
• Baba and Ariel dancing “U Can’t Touch This”
• Panny smokes with Chill and whoever cared to share
• An infamous night in a BF garage with a hog-tied, badly bruised party pooper
• Guns and Roses and beer fest in the Barrios brothers’ den every Friday
• Baba in his forever Intsik white sando driving me home at 9 in the morning because we had, once again, gotten ourselves blind drunk the night before
• Bacon breakfasts and dinners with Baba and Tito Len
• Baba sleeping in that peculiar way
• The rest of us waiting for Joanna Lee in Sta. Rosa with a nervous Baba keeeping the beer and jokes flowing all night

I can’t quite remember the rest right now. And anyway, wishing that we had digital cameras back then would have been pointless. We would have lost each and every one soon enough. Instead all we have to show for our friendship are a few faded photos and a heart full of memories.

I will miss you Babs.

And the final is me

In a fit of self-righteous pique I determined that I would win every pitch that came my way. Now I have three new accounts—upping my accounts to a grand total of eight—and a burning desire to leave it all behind and just blog for a living. Why is it that whenever I get what I want, I end up not wanting it after all? Just last month I wanted to burn all my recently-acquired worldly goods and methodically trash my apartment. The same apartment that, three months before, I obsessively and methodically slaved to fix. Why, because when I finally moved in, I realized that I wasn’t as happy as I thought I would be. It’s very confusing. In late 2007 I awoke from a deep coma and discovered single-mindedness. Since then, I’ve been single-mindedly going after what I thought I wanted, and with great success too. Job in dream company, check; car, check; apartment, check; marquee accounts, check; promotion, check. I thought I’d be ecstatic by now but I’m not. There’s something missing or I may have lost something along the way. Could it be…me?

The one-celled organism as pocket of tuwa

Sometimes we meet people whose emotional and intellectual processes are so simple that we are tempted to compare them to one-celled organisms. It is not their fault. Many things shape thinking and feeling—family, friends, schools, colleagues, books, music, etc—and all of these contribute to a person’s taste, inclinations and actions. The one-celled organism, on the other hand, acts and reacts according to primeval programming. A person who is akin to a one-celled organism is therefore more instinctive than analytical. Thoughts and actions are geared towards two basic goals: survival and self-satisfaction.

It’s a wonder then when we find ourselves interested in these simple life forms. Perhaps we see the one-celled organism as a break from ourselves and everything that our life represents. Or more prosaically, we’re bored and want something different. It’s a novel way to pass the time.

But by doing so, do we compromise ourselves, even if momentarily? How far can we go before we get lost? To what degree will we regret it?

Postscript: Had a brush with an old one-celled organism. I was disgusted and I was cruel. Damn these one-celled harlots to hell!