The Long Lunch

After my mom died and shortly before Dad went, too, he gave me a sheaf of old papers tightly bound together with lengths of mottled yellow masking tape clearly meant to preserve the collection and also somehow indicate that it had been kept private, that the scribblings had not been read; but, of course, if that were true, how would they have known not to throw them away? They had most likely found the papers among the things I left behind in the rush to go off to college in the big city, and had kept them for decades through at least two moves to new houses.

It was sort of a journal. Written in bits and pieces, on scraps of ruled paper and partly in a hard-bound Work Ed blank book, in an inconsistent scrawl that never matured into penm...

At age 29 I was happily married with two children. Increasingly, however, young people these days seem to be postponing this next stage in their lives until they’re well into their 30’s. Let me be very clear: I’m not saying this is wrong in any way. In fact, I’m all for building a career and a bank account, accumulating post-graduate degrees and titles, and seeing the world and all it has to offer before settling down. To my own kids, I’m saying I’m in no hurry to have grandchildren and sleep beside a grandmother every night. Take your time.

What I was wondering about is why my generation got married so early; and while walking around our village in a futile attempt to lose weight, I think I found the answer. Blame it on the music.

Trudg...

My phone says it’s 35 degrees centigrade. Feels like 40. It’s so hot you can fry eggs on the window sill. I know because I sat on the window sill to try to catch a breeze. Aray. It’s so hot you wake up in a pool of sweat despite the airconditioner and two electric fans working full time on the highest settings. It doesn’t help that you’re waking up at noontime but, hey, it shouldn’t be that way, right? It’s so hot that I’m willing to risk facing the Night King and ten thousand white walkers just to enjoy the snow north of the Wall. To those who proudly say they don’t watch Game of Thrones: Go away. Mainit ang ulo ko.

But, seriously, it’s hot.

I want to get out of the city and maybe go to the Summer Capital of the Philippines—Japan. Every...

Visited the graves of my parents today. Bouncing around in my head was a question one of my kids had asked: “I’m turning 30 and what have I done with my life?”

Try turning 60 and having the same question.

My mom and dad passed on at 75 and 83, having lived lives that were, in my eyes, full of achievement, and yet I wonder if they ever asked themselves what they had really done. 

How do we measure a life? In terms of power, prestige or possessions? Hell, yeah! Don’t you want to be able to simply look at a guy and have him shrink in fear into nothingness? Aren’t you willing to do anything to amass more power than you have the competence to wield? You drool over that low numbered license plate. You want a yacht. You want another yacht. But t...

I didn’t realize I was doing it until recently: Before I sit down in church, I reach back to the pew to check the distance and steady the descent, then I slowly lower myself into my seat. It’s such a “Lolo” move. Something I remember my grandfather doing. Time was when at the barked command “Take seats!” I could instantly drop into a chair or onto the ground with all the other cadets. But my days as a Bro and even as a Tito are long gone. Waiters and cashiers everywhere routinely (perversely!) ask for the senior citizens’ card that I am not entitled to, yet. Something to do with my phenotypic age. My students, born in 1997 when I was already deep into my second career, respond with blank stares when my jokes require some knowledge of 8...

Are you the type who goes out with the gang but always excuses himself early to go home and spend the rest of the evening curled up with a book or watching Netflix? When you say you’re going to the restroom do people say goodbye to you because they know you’re about to make a French exit? When you get several invitations for the same evening do you usually end up ditching all of them?

Do you need time alone to recharge your batteries? Thus, do you enjoy taking long drives alone with the radio off? Savoring meals alone? Reading Time magazine alone? Do you sit in the very first row of the movie theater so that you can at least pretend that you are watching the movie alone, as in with no one else in the entire theater?

At the office do you...

I wish we had a central park, or a subway with stops everywhere, or red hop-on hop-off buses with tourists who feel the city is beautiful and clean enough to want to see it from the open upper deck. I wish we had a gigantic statue or a soaring tower or a church or a bridge or a clock that people can take selfies in front of to announce to the IG world that they’re here. I wish the late Anthony Bourdain had praised more than our lechon and fast food halo-halo.

But, no. Mega Manila’s claim to fame is that, from its core in the old City of Manila to the bedroom communities in what used to be called neighboring provinces, it is an extremely crowded place. Over 24 million people. Ranked fourth after Tokyo, Jakarta and Delhi in terms of popul...

When the daughter of a friend announced that she will be getting married and chose as her principal wedding sponsors two members of our drinking dabarkads* but not me, I was a little hurt. Actually, since there were only four guys in our group to choose from, it was pretty painful. Hahaha. [*dabarkads – a mutation of the word barkada referring to the group of friends who arrived on the same boat]

I guess I’m not the type of person that people readily think of as a good Ninong, which just tells you that people really don’t know anything. For the information of all concerned, I give the absolute best wedding presents. I may not give Christmas gifts or pasalubong but I take godfather duties very seriously. Plus—and here’s the biggie—all th...

In my mind we will always be eighteen.

We were standing in the dark, trying and failing to get out of the rain under the eaves of a Marcos-type prefab building, a few meters down the road from where we had been told to report for overnight indoctrination. We had been ordered to come in as a group, supposedly to build unity and esprit de corps in our batch. I don’t think they called it team building or bonding yet back in the 1970’s. I suspect they didn’t want us to arrive individually because an early bird or a latecomer might be singled out for special hazing. Our seniors were kind to us in that way. But they also required us to know the full names of all our batchmates. If one of us didn’t know the middle name of one other guy, we wer...

Call it my post-graduate short course in musical theater.  I was in New York City for a two-week intensive survey to try to determine what shows can be produced in Manila, what cannot, which musicals will make money, which ones might flop, and ultimately what plays have roles that will still hold some challenge for Mr. Nyoy Volante.

The oft-repeated remark that ‘it’s tough work but someone’s got to do it’ implies ironically that my job is easy, possibly even loads of fun. Granted, it is more enjoyable than preparing tax returns or carrying stones to the pyramids but, believe me, it is exhausting work. We had meetings every day, sometimes two or three, with producers, rights holders, licensors and creatives (as a non-creative, I skipped...