Pinoy Penman

Flotsam & Jetsam (83) for February 5, 2009

THE FIRST Philippine International Writers Festival (Taboan 09) will be held next week, from February 11 to 13, in various venues (UP Diliman, Ateneo, Cubao Expo). For the full listing of events and participants, you can download the brochure here. (It's a pretty large file at 8.5 MBs.) See you there!

Flotsam & Jetsam (82) for Wednesday, November 12, 2008


I'D FORGOTTEN what fun it is to shoot with an SLR, having toted point-and-shoot cameras these past many years. I picked up a used Nikon D80 in the US, and trained it today on my favorite subject.

That's his usual surly self. He likes baths, though, which Beng and only Beng can give him. Since Beng was away for three months....


Towel time. Life is good!


But a wet cat's got to dry out--Chippy's killing time, you might say, in a warm place, along with the laundry.

Flotsam & Jetsam (81) for November 5, 2008



AS WE await the results of the historic election taking place this very minute in America—and I'm praying with many others around the world that Americans will vote for hope and not out of fear—here's a funny but tell-tale map of how some (let's be nice and not say most) Americans see the world, sent to me by an American friend:

Click on the image for a full-sized view.

Flotsam & Jetsam (80) for November 4, 2008


JUST BEFORE we left the US for home, Beng and I had a blast with Demi and her husband Jerry in San Diego, whose Gaslamp District downtown turned into a virtual Halloween carnival with hundreds if not thousands of people coming out in costume. Here's a couple of pics of people you might know, and a few more here of everybody else.

(If you must know, Beng took that second pic, once I overcame my natural shyness, and the demure ladies overcame theirs.)

Flotsam & Jetsam (79) for Thursday, September 4, 2008


You've seen all the Nigerian email scams, and you delete them from your inbox with nary a glance, but you'd have to admit with a smile that this one that I got today establishes a new low in scamming. Its title? "2008 Scam Victims Compensation Alert!!!" Indeed!

FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA/
NIGERIAN SECURITY DEPARTMENT
FEDERAL HIGH COURT OF NIGERIA.

Attention Beneficiary,

This to acknowledge you that we got your contact information was found among the list of foreigner that have been scammed by Nigerian Fraudster. It might interest you to know that we have signed an agreement with your COUNTRY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT during our first meeting last month with our PRESIDENT Commander In-Chief Federal Republic of Nigeria, ALHAJI UMARU MUSA YAR'ADUA and the AUTHORITIES to fight against this and to return all contract funds that has been stolen and people who has been scammed too.

We are delegated by Central bank of Nigeria from the United Nations to pay 100 Nigerian 419 scam victims (US$200,000) each, you are listed and approved for this payments as one of the scammed victims, get back to us as soon as possible for the immediate payments of your(US$200,000) compensation.

On this faithful recommendations I want you to know that during the last UN meetings held at Abuja, Nigeria,it was alarmed so much by the rest of the world in the meetings on the lose of funds by various foreigners to the scams artists operating in syndicates all over the world today, in other to retain the good image of the country, the President of the country is now paying 100 victims of this operators (US$200,000) each, Due to the corrupt and inefficient banking systems in Nigeria, the payments are to be paid by Central bank Nigeria as corresponding paying bank under fondling assistance by ATM master card.

According to the number of applicants at hand, 84 beneficiaries has been paid, half of the victims are from the United States and United Kingdom respectively, we are still having more 16 left to be paid the compensations of (US$200,000).

Name: Dr. Wasan Sege (esq)
Private E-mail Address: drwsnsg457@gmail.com
Direct Telephone: +234-806-207-4554
Thanks.
Best Regard.
Dr Wasan Sege
Federal High Court Of Nigeria.

Flotsam & Jetsam (78) for Monday, July 7, 2008
By Sarge Lacuesta
for the Inquirer, July 7, 2008


(To my pleasant surprise, a review of Soledad' Sister by fellow fictionist Sarge Lacuesta came out today in the Inquirer, but it appears that Sarge's review was truncated, most likely for reasons of space, so Sarge sent me the full, original text, which I'm posting here, begging his and the Inquirer's indulgence. I think it's a very generous review, for what I've described to friends as "my glorious mess of a novel" as many will no doubt agree, but I'm deeply grateful to Sarge for taking the time to try and make sense of what sometimes still baffles me. Maraming salamat! And incidentally, the book will be launched by Anvil Publishing at the UP Faculty Center on July 31 at 4 pm. Many thanks again, all.)

THE TITLE, at once dislocated and removed, is a tantalizing articulation of the story's tragicomic problem: a casket unceremoniously arrives from Jeddah carrying the corpse of a Filipina identified by the label on the crate as Aurora M. Cabahug, mysteriously certified by the Jeddah authorities as having died from "drowning." Uniting the body with the grieving family should be a simple thing, except that there is no one to claim her at the airport, and the woman in the box is not, in fact, who the label claims she is.

But even before that misunderstanding surfaces, Filipino bureaucracy and SOP take over. A missive calling for next of kin is sent to Paez, the woman's hometown, a backwater five or six hours by car Manila. Here, the real Aurora M. Cabahug lives, and languishes—she sings nightly at the Flame Tree, a KTV nightclub frequented by cops, the town's vice mayor, and the occasional gaggle of Koreans passing through. But if "Aurora" the corpse is aimless and nameless, Rory, younger sister of the titular woman, who has never set foot much beyond the leafy borders of Paez, is still caught in the Filipino dream, drunk on her raw, God-given talent and flush with wonder about the world beyond.

The unglamorous task of reuniting the two sisters and their split identities falls upon SPO2 Walter G. Zamora, a lonely cop who knows Rory to be alive: he remembers her during that one visit to the Flame Tree. Walter is himself a victim of circumstance, having found himself in Paez from Manila, by way of romantic indiscretion and a string of bad luck. But most significantly, Walter is a good cop, and the last time we saw a believably good cop was in Aureus Solito's "Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros," where Victor, the object of Maximo's affection, appeared a bit too green and soft to become much more than a clever plot device.

Precision play is perhaps precisely where Philippine prose has one over cinema. We see that Walter is not that green—and not that soft-hearted either. "He had just turned thirty-eight," Dalisay describes him "—an age that was neither here nor there, but at which point, with most lives, the future should have emerged with a certain clarity, an invitation to hurry and grab a hold of some great last chances." (Not that this reviewer doesn't happen to be thirty-eight, either.)

In writing him so, Dalisay performs an important trick—not just on our literary senses, but also on our Pinoy sensibilities. Why not a Pinoy cop who can suffer the mundane depths of worrying about the weight and waste of his age?

It's a tough trick, but if anyone can do it, Dalisay can. He even places his policeman in the role of a classical hero, charges him with an actual quest and even requisitions for him an ungainly mount (a pre-FX Tamaraw that, true to the discipline and economy found in the author's most celebrated short stories, finds its own significance later on). He asks you to note his clumsy attempts at chivalry, his trademark emotional scar, the stray cat he befriends and now tends to like a child in his apartment. In fact, even the most jaded reader will perhaps find himself, despite himself, aching to see him find some love.

As soon as Walter enlists our empathy, you breathlessly follow him (and you can almost hear the author smile broadly to himself) as he drives Soledad's sister from Paez to various points in Manila, with stops in Hong Kong and Jeddah, where the dead Soledad's itinerant memory takes us. Though the frame story takes place over only three days, the separate accounts of each of the main characters tightly bridge plot points and points of view, so that the novel easily gains scope and momentum as the van and its strange cargo of bedfellows covers more ground toward Manila—and many unexpected parts within. In the hustle of events that follows in the great city, Rory's strange reunion turns into a strange separation, Walter's unscheduled homecoming becomes a puzzle and a chase, Soledad's character sheds mystery and gains motivation, and a series of outside and past happenings and forces comes to a head, across a clever convergence of timeframes, crime scenes and cityscapes.

It is the city, of course, with its illusions of quick employment and easy money, that has lured millions of Filipinos out of small towns like Paez. In the novel, it is Dalisay's prose that lures us to stop and stare—whether it's Hong Kong, its harbor lights "like white letters on a black page" or Jeddah and its "stream of kaleidoscopic and cacophonic impressions." But what Dalisay makes us share most are his sharp observations on the bright, dark city of Manila itself, its vast, seeming omniscience, its near-complete sentience, where "the people themselves all seemed to know where they were going, or how they were expected to act in this massively choreographed, painstakingly produced performance, the pedestrians sure of step even with cellular phones glued to their ears, the motorists puffing blithely away on their cigarettes and tapping their fingers on their dashboards in tune to some muted radio, staring a hundred meters ahead."

Still, there is a special warm, fuzzy feeling touchingly reserved for the town and the townfolk of Paez, so that pages set in its confines somehow acquire the gauze and the veneer of a 1950's romance, furnished with all the right elements: the virgin chanteuse, the hard-boiled cop, the old songs laden with flowers and moonlight and promises. But while Paez makes for a quick and simple stand-in for that photo-album town many of us alternately cannot imagine to have lived in and secretly long to return to, this reviewer chooses to interpret the place as the dusty origin and never-forgotten hometown of the modern Filipino heart.

And there lies one of the most engaging attributes of Soledad's Sister. It stands firm and true however the reader might choose to see it—as a tale exquisitely formed and told, or as a page turner full of real grit and glitter. Almost unbelievably, and quite reassuringly, Soledad's Sister stands quite well and quite handsomely on both legs, and all of 194 pages. The book's slenderness, which may be seen by some as a bit too slim, is in fact what points us to its most singular and most difficult accomplishments: deceiving simplicity and breathtaking restraint.

Seasoned readers will be immensely satisfied by these discoveries in Soledad's Sister. And practicing writers will do well to note them, if at least to learn what separates the truly meaningful story from the ordinary anecdote or flight of fancy, and what distinguishes the writer who is being true—from the writer who is merely being creative, or, shamefully, self-promoting.

It is, I suspect, the novel's simplicity and verbal restraint that also allows Dalisay to introduce his vulnerable characters without fear. Why not, indeed, a Pinoy cop who can restore some love and bring back some faith in …Pinoy cops?—I don't know if even the most speculative fictionist will go that far, but with this sublime novel, with its invisible, careful style, the author does farther than most of us—Filipinos, not just writers—have, in restoring our forgiveness for, and our faith in our own Filipino hearts.

But that's just the gauzy, shiny leg of the novel. The fun part is actually the functional, full-daylight part—where Dalisay's clear prose and sure handling allow him to deliver rich, layered material to the reader's mind without piling on the adjectives (or worse, adverbs). When adobo, binagoongan and dalag sa mustasa are dished out, almost in their raw transliterated form, presumably for the non-Filipino audience, the transparency of the ingredients, curiously enough, only gives the Pinoy reader more direct access to his personal experience of the dish—just the way his mother (or his housekeeper, or considering the state of reading in our country, his caregiver) cooked it. When Dalisay introduces Nicomedes Panganiban, an old hotel piano player-turned-momentary gurô/guru who would, early on, provide a soft sustained note of hope for Rory (and the somewhat gratified reader), we also see, and are almost sure, that the "nails immaculately trimmed and polished by the girls at the barber shop" and "the slicked-back hair, which may have been thinning but was dyed absolutely black" may have also belonged to that other master of the art, that other Nick—Joaquin.

Perhaps it's wishful thinking to search for anybody you know in a novel, but Soledad's Sister is, after all, is a wishful biography, a list of things that may really happen to real people you may know.

Toward the end of the novel, it is these things that happen that perform a grand choreography, massive and minute, bared further and further toward the end, constantly testing the author's heroic literary restraint. This restraint, perhaps, is how the novel's slim scale outwits the reader to think it is a simple tale. To me it is the author's most fascinating trick of all.

After all, you could list a lot of curious, interesting and proseworthy things about the life of the OFW, from the most embarrassing personal detail to the most dramatic economic observation. After all, there are eight to ten million Pinoys out there. You could crowd us with relevant, surprising, self-gratifying data until the last of those millions comes home—or stops returning. You could write a zillion stories, with all kinds of granularity, that will make you feel rewarded for writing your work, or your reader believe he is rewarded by reading it. It is these hundreds of things that seem to alternately inform and caution Dalisay every step of the way, so that so much is hidden, and so much revealed—but only in the circumstances he chooses to explore, and repeat: a name is repurposed, a person comes home, a crime is committed.

Soledad, the book's first victim, is also its last, and if she is anonymous, faceless and nameless in the beginning, she is, also, in the end. The quests for identity, solace and escape remain the same, and for the same people. The novel begins and ends quietly, and simply, with the Filipino alone—in a crowd, in a city, in death, out of nowhere, in history. The sweep and the thrill and the movement that you feel when you read it—that's the Filipino in you stirring, claiming Soledad's Sister as your own.

Flotsam & Jetsam (77) for Sunday, July 6, 2008

(EDD ARAGON is a Sydney-based artist whose editorial cartoons have livened up many of Australia's major publications. He was in Manila recently for an exhibition of his works, and it was then that I was introduced to him by Beng, whom Edd knew from way back as "Hune." When I visited Sydney for the Writers' Festival, Edd interviewed me by email, and here's that interview, slighty edited, which you can also find on his blog. Many thanks, Edd, for the interview and for the cartoon!)

EA: An extensive traveller you are—is this your first time in Sydney?

BD: It’s actually my second time (not counting stopovers), but the last time I was here was ten years ago when I stayed in Canberra for a month and spent a weekend in Sydney (for reasons that anyone who stays in Canberra for a month will appreciate). The Sydney Writers' Festival is supposed to be the world’s third largest such gathering of writers, with over 300 writers attending, about 70 of them from overseas, like myself. I’m here with the support of the Philippine Consulate-General.

EA: You were working as a journalist when imprisoned in 1973 for being a staunch Marcos critic. Did it change your perspective in life?

BD: Well, I was very young then, but I realized that principles are something you can’t just write about, and also that everyone has a threshhold of pain.

EA: What would you consider most frustrating moment of your life... and your reaction?

BD: I once spent two hours alone with (Filipino actress) Ara Mina—for an interview. I didn’t know where to look.

EA: LOL! Err.... You teach English and creative writing. Are kids receptive to the genre? How would you compare today's generation to boomers?

BD: Well, the kids still read, but they read different things; they seem to be more interested in fantasy than reality.

EA: Uh-huh. Will English and creative writing free the Filipinos from political and economic oppression?

BD: Heck, no! They never saved anyone from anything, except maybe from stupidity and boredom.

EA: If in Philippine journalism, to be critical is to search for truth, are governmental threats and violence worth the writer's risk under an American paradigm of democracy but wrapped tight in feudal values?

BD: Wow, what a loaded question! The search for truth is vital under any kind of regime, whether in hardship or in comfort.

EA: Feudal and old sometimes leave traces on the planet. How many old fountain pens have you got in your collection? Which is better, a Sheaffer or a Parker?

BD: I prefer Parkers, especially the old ‘30s and ‘40s Vacumatics that look like a cityscape at night. I probably have around a hundred pens lying around. It makes me look romantic and old-fashioned—but I’m also a Mac and a gadget freak, so I have an analog and a digital side.

EA: Har-har... a well-balanced Yin-Yang then. I heard from Hune you collect beetles then later I found out you’re not into entomology at all! :-) The Volkswagen Beetle was designed for the most fearsome dictator in history... and I learned driving in Manila under a dictator's regime using my aunty's cheeky ’73 Volks. And you collect them, too?

BD: I have a collection of exactly one—a fully restored late '70s Beetle that I drive around once a week. If you can drive one you can drive anything.

EA: Okay, back engines are cool, I guess :). Any word for our young Filipino-Australian writers?

BD: Write about who and what you are—as Filipino-Australians. It’s a unique situation to be in!

EA: Thanks Butch, and with due respect, Dr. Dalisay, Jr. More power to you!

BD: Thanks, Edd!

Flotsam & Jetsam (76) for Friday, May 23, 2008

I'VE BEEN in Sydney since Monday to attend the 11th Sydney Writers Festival (in which I've been preceded by my illustrious elders Krip Yuson and Ricky de Ungria, and where I'm scheduled to share a panel on Sunday with Pulitzer prizewinner Junot Diaz). You'll hear more about it in my column a couple of weeks from now, but meanwhile here are a few shots taken with my D-Lux 3:

More pics here.

Flotsam & Jetsam for Tuesday, May 6, 2008


I WAS down in Cebu this weekend with Beng and a gang of her high-school friends, so I amused myself by taking shots around the place with my point-and-shoot Leica C-Lux 2. Here's a few:

And a few more here.

Flotsam & Jetsam (74) for Friday, April 4, 2008


I SEEM to be the repository of rules these days, but I certainly don't mind! Andrea Pasion-Flores, executive director of the National Book Development Board which is co-sponsoring the National Book Awards with the Manila Critics Circle, just sent me a copy of the rules for the 2008 NBAs, and here they are, downloadable as a 60-KB PDF file:

http://www.savefile.com/files/1481800

Flotsam & Jetsam (73) for Tuesday, April 1, 2008

The rules and forms for the 2008 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature are out (thanks for the help, Ross!), and you can download them in a zipped folder that I posted here:

http://www.savefile.com/files/1477137 (I’ve tested the link, and it works)

The folder contains the rules, the entry form, the authorizaton form, and a location map of the new Carlos Palanca Foundation offices in the Fort Bonifacio area. (The Palanca Foundation provided Page 1 of the 2-page rules as a big .JPG file with logos, making this a 2.4-MB download; I’ve asked them to provide a plain .DOC version for easier downloading. UPDATE: I got a new copy of the rules in .DOC format and have uploaded them here. I've changed the link accordingly, to point to the new, smaller, 340-KB file. The old one has been deleted.)

Take note that the deadline, as usual, is April 30.

Good writing, and good luck!

Flotsam & Jetsam (72) for Monday, March 31, 2008


BENG AND I were in Hong Kong and Macau last week for some serious noodle-slurping. Some pics from that adventure:

Flotsam & Jetsam (71) for Friday, February 29, 2008


I FELT very proud of my university today—and of myself, for that matter, not having done anything of this sort in ages—but the picture below tells you everything. We may argue about tuition fee increases and what to do with the university’s idle resources, or about the proper balance between research and teaching—but sometimes most of us agree on one thing, and today (and at a University Council meeting the other day, when a vote was taken), it was this.

Flotsam & Jetsam (70) for Thursday, February 21, 2008

I WROTE this and posted it on philmug.ph last February 10:

I’ll probably write a longer piece about this, but just for now, in the deep well of sadness, let me say a public goodbye to my beloved 12” PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz, which had been with me for over two years (its predecessor, another 12-incher, also lasted two years until Dave Deluria sold me this one, nearly brand-new, for a song).

I was deadset on keeping this because, as I’d noted in other posts, I think of the 12-inch PB as a collectible classic, and because this one in particular saw me through some very exciting times, traveling with me to more than half-a-dozen countries and writing several book manuscripts. Sometimes, writing nothing, I would just run my fingertips over the keyboard, savoring the silken feel of the aluminum keys—like playing with your cat.

But today I realized two things: I needed help badly with a big project I was working on, and I had one too many (make that maybe 10 too many?) Macs around the house and on my (real) desktop. I had no ready cash to pay for services, having just acquired a MacBook Air.

Then I had one of those brain waves that put one and one together: why not ask B.—my inaanak, a fellow writer and loyal friend, and another Mac addict—to help me with the job, and pay him in kind? I knew he’d been eyeing my PowerBook covetously (I’d also sold him the 867, which he promptly—and maybe wisely—turned over to his wife; before that, years earlier, he’d also inherited my first-ever PB, a "Batman" 520).

So tonight I said goodbye to the PB 12”—I wanted to do this quick, without any long laments; “Come and get it now,” I told B., “before I change my mind.” So he did, the lucky guy, going away with a maxed-out PB (1.25G RAM, 160 GB HD, SuperDrive, BT, APE) in near-mint condition, plus a spare battery, and a spare adapter and Marware sleeve to follow. I asked him to bring over some beer to dull the pain, and he did—but it didn’t.

I’m typing this on the new MBA, which is sexy as hell, but I miss my old friend. At least I know he/she’s in literally good hands—at least I chose someone I knew and could trust. “Don’t drop it,” I sternly ordered B. as he went out the gate, thinking of all the infernal tasks I was going to assign him to make up for my loss.

Flotsam & Jetsam (69) for Monday, February 4, 2008


I’M NO great fan of Joe de Venecia, but I could feel for him as I watched the live telecast of the vote to oust him from the Speakership, on the floor of the very same Congress he had ruled for longer than any of his predecessors. “Et tu, Brute?” must have gone through his mind dozens of times as one former ally after another took the mike to cast a vote against him. Earlier, he gave an impassioned one-hour speech denouncing corruption in government and calling himself a “sinner”—but a few years too late.

Not only JDV took a beating tonight. So did the English language, which these congressmen seem so hell-bent on improving (or is that uncharacteristic self-awareness?). Herewith some choice gems of oratory, verbatim, from their “humble representations.” Check the transcript—you’ll find them there:

“We should vote to restore the damage which has been badly tarnished as far as the image of this house is concerned.”

“The fruits of our sacrifice is bearing fruit.”

“We will bring you back the ongoings at the House of Representatives.” (from a TV commentator)

“This will result to a tectonic eruption!”

“Longetivity in power is no reason to stay in power.”

“It is eminent that he will not be speaker in a few hour.”

“Event has its own time, and time has its own events.”

“I cannot afford to punish a statesman, a political leader this country ever had.”

"As the Speaker so eloquently put it in his frivolous, er, privilege speech..."

And just to remind us that there are worse things than bad grammar, give a listen to:

“Congressman Nograles is my cousin, but the Speaker is the father-in-law of my brother... so I abstain.”

“I must rise to defend my cabalen—the President!”

Flotsam & Jetsam (68) for Saturday, February 2, 2008

More on my Flickr page.

Flotsam & Jetsam (67) for Wednesday, January 16, 2008


THERE'S NOTHING, apart from statues and buildings, that reminds me more of Diliman than the cadena de amor, just about the prettiest vine there ever was and one I’d suffer gladly on my walls and fences. Took these shots today of a tree bedecked with these blossoms, and of a spiky flower whose name I don’t know but find interesting. More on my Flickr page.

Flotsam & Jetsam (66) for Tuesday, January 8, 2008

I HAVE two million other and better things to do instead of blogging (again) tonight, but I passed by Quezon Hall (the administration building of the University of the Philippines System) on my way home from fixing my father-in-law’s computer, and saw this sight. They’re dressing up the campus in lights in preparation for tomorrow’s kick-off, at dawn, of my alma mater’s Centennial. I had to stop and take this, if only to be the first to bring you what Quezon Hall won’t look like for another hundred years.

(See all of my Diliman photos here.)

Flotsam & Jetsam (65) for Monday, January 7, 2008

MACWORLD 2008 is opening next Tuesday (hey, that’s my birthday!) in San Francisco, promising a worthy end to months and weeks of alternately anguished and ecstatic prognostications by the high priests of the Mac cult as to what Steve Jobs will unveil at the keynote. (A perceptive observer described this rapturous moment and its immediate aftermath—when Jobs appears to be all done, then turns and says, “And one more thing...” before unloading the show’s biggest bombshell, like the original iMac and iPod—as a “nerdgasm”.)

Having followed the Macworld hoopla for over ten years now (and having enjoyed the privilege of attending one two years ago), I have several foolproof predictions to make:

1. That one week before Macworld, at least a dozen new wonderful products and upgrades will be rumored to appear, one more fantastic than the other; people will curse and occasionally strangle each other in feverish arguments over whose prediction rings truer.

2. When Macworld itself comes around and the keynote takes place, 3.5 million Mac freaks all around the world will stop eating, working, getting their dialysis, or having sex just to hear Steve Jobs say ".... and one more thing..."

3. When Steve Jobs finally says ".... and one more thing," 1.75 million geeks will punch the air or fall to their knees and say silly things like "Whoopee!", "Yeehah!" and "Hallelujah!" Another 1.75 million will smash their fists into the nearest wall or kick the nearest dog and say silly things like “But where’s my Intel Newton?” or “What???? Another $129 for an effing OS upgrade?” or shake their heads and mutter, “There goes the baby food....”

4. Whatever it was they said in the heat of the moment, three months later, 3.5 million Mac freaks and another 3.5 million infected friends and relatives will be camping out overnight outside the nearest Apple store, coffee cups in shivering hand, for the first-day release of whatever Steve Jobs last pulled out of his pocket.

And one more thing...

5. 28 million Windows zombies and several hundred perennially disgruntled Mac freaks will grumble and mumble “It’s too expensive....”—at least until Steve Jobs announces the Windows version, and then announces a $200 price cut, at which point 1.75 million early-adopter Mac freaks will scream “I’ve been had!”