Pinoy Penman

Penman for Wednesday, June 28, 2006


AND SO the inevitable happened: (Sir) Paul McCartney turned 64 earlier this month, causing baby boomers all around the world to shake their heads and mutter, “My sweet Lord, could it have been that long ago?” “That long ago” was 1967, when the Beatles came out with their musically mindboggling Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, among the wildly eclectic songs of which “When I’m 64” stood out as a sweetly singable ditty, a paean to enduring domestic love.

When McCartney wrote “When I’m 64” in 1966 he was 24, presumably unaware of the many and sometimes spectacular turns his life would yet take, from “Band on the Run” to Heather Mills.

When that album came out, I was 13 and in high school, desperately and futilely wishing for facial hair—at least enough fuzz for a decent moustache and sideburns, which every pop idol worth his Nehru jacket seemed to sport—and meanwhile memorizing everything churned out by not just the Beatles but the Dave Clark Five, the Monkees, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, the Buckinghams, the Hollies, and Herman’s Hermits. They were all great bands, but there was something about the Beatles—and especially Sgt. Pepper—that drew out the adventurous in us, but adventurous in a fun-loving way, well before punk rock and groups like the Sex Pistols changed the whole equation between music and meaning.

When you come to think of it, there’s no song more patently un-revolutionary than “When I’m 64”, from its very first bar down to the last: “When I get older losing my hair, many years from now, will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine….” It’s about growing old nicely with one’s mate—how reactionary can you get? And then again, in the context of the late ‘60s—when the world seemed to come apart just a little more at every turn with Vietnam, LSD, civil rights, the Apollo program, the Black Panthers, and Woodstock all pulling you hither and thither—that was probably as fresh and as bold a statement as anyone could make, a plea for constancy amidst its opposite.

The plain and plaintive truth of that voice could be why the song has survived so well and never fails to put singers and listeners in a bouncy good mood. My pals and I have been singing it for 40 years without even noticing the time—and soon, yegads, I’ll be 64 myself!

But not that soon. Lemme see—I’m 52, and so have 12 years to figure out what 64 will be like for me. Never mind the losing-my-hair bit; that’s already happened. What is it exactly that I’d like to do or to have happened by my 64th birthday?

1. Write five more novels. Not very likely, at the rate I’m going, but I’m convinced that if I’m hoping to be remembered as more than a lousy badminton player, I’ll need to ratchet up the fiction, which sticks in the mind more than anything you and I can say about fleeting facts. Mind what the Bard said in Sonnet 55: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.” Or, as Hippocrates said, “Ars longa, vita brevis” (often transposed the other way around into “Life is short, but art is long”). If we write to be remembered, then we should first write—and write something memorable.

2. Own and be driven in a brand-new car. Forget the Nobel Prize: I’m sick of driving wheels two registration series behind (like driving a Honda with a T-plate when everyone was sporting W-plates, or a Suzuki with a U in the time of Z). I want that new-car smell without paying for that ridiculous “new-car-smell” perfume vial. And I’d like to sit in the back seat, for a change, twiddling my thumbs while dreaming about No. 3 below.

3. Visit Rio de Janeiro at Carnaval, before my eyes get too fogged up to distinguish between a carioca and a caracoa. It’s the last unrealized item on a list of four travel wishes—amazingly, I’ve already made it to Oktoberfest in Munich, the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, and Macworld in San Francisco. I wouldn’t mind being named ambassador to Brazil, whereupon my first act will be to move the embassy to Ipanema, the better to improve bilateral relations with the natives there.

4. Be cared for by a nurse 30 years my junior (with Beng’s approval, I guess)—and please don’t make her look like one of those Wagnerian Brunhildes with the horned helmet. An ability to discuss mid-century British poetry while feeding me chicken noodle soup and giving a Thai foot massage would be a definite plus. If I’m alive at all in 2018, I expect to be reasonably sick—the just desserts of a life devoted to carbo-loading and all the ways of devouring pork—but not too sick as to fail to appreciate the ministrations of faithful and talented assistants.

5. Hand over all my old pens, watches, computers, books, CDs, and my Beetle to my grandkid, who will perfectly understand his or her grandpa’s quirks, and know better than to yank a cap off a 1934 Sheaffer, and know how to put the Beetle in reverse gear. If I’ve been out till quarter to three, he/she (Vera? Chuck? Dave?) will open the door for me.

Some of these could happen, some may not, but we take our first and boldest steps into the future on feet of fantasy, and while the greater likelihood is that 64 will find me indulging in nothing more fabulous than doing the garden and digging the weeds, I’ll probably be too happily astonished just to have lived that long. Who could ask for more?

Penman for Monday, June 26, 2006


WHAT A difference a merienda makes. One afternoon a couple of years ago, some writer-friends and I hosted a merienda for a visiting Albanian poet who’d been brought over by some friends from Italy, where the poet has lived in exile. His name was Gezim Hajdari, and he could barely speak English—but when we read his poetry in translation, and what sources like the International Herald Tribune said about him, we sat up and took notice, and sent him home with copies of our writers’ best work.

I thought that was the last I would see of the gregarious and generous Gezim—touted to be a contender for the Nobel Prize—until, a year later, he and his friend Silvano Gallon invited me to attend a literary festival on a fabled mountaintop near Rome, Cervara di Roma. That visit gave me an opportunity to interact with other writers from Italy, Latvia, Macedonia, Iraq, and such other countries as we know very little about (remarkably, the Latvians knew about Jose Rizal and Lope K. Santos, among others).

I’m happy to report that, next month, another of our merienda mates will be winging his way Rome-ward, again at the instance of the formidable Mr. Hajdari. Poet, critic, and professor Gemino “Jimmy” Abad will be attending the third edition of Mediterranea: the Intercontinental Festival of Literature and Arts of the Mediterranean which will be held in Rome over most of July.

Mediterranea will bring together poets from all over Europe, Africa, and (thanks to Jimmy) Asia to “Rome, Ladispoli, Cerveteri, Santa Marinella, and other towns of the Latium Region to liven up various events with public readings; their voices will cross and alternate with the works of other artists to express in different ways the same language of freedom, of opening up to a pluralistic world, of fighting exploitation, war, and terrorism.”



Jimmy’s going will truly be a form of poetic justice, since he’s almost singlehandedly labored all these years to teach not only modern poetry also the Greek and Roman classics to undergraduates in UP and other universities. He’s been to Rome before, but it will surely be different in the company of like-spirited poets to walk beneath the columns of the Pantheon on a bluish summer evening, before imbibing a glass of grappa, or two, or three.


FOLLOWING THROUGH on last week’s update on Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature which the UP Institute of Creative Writing will be publishing, I’d like to announce that the deadline for submitting stories, poems, and essays (in English and Filipino, for our first issue) is August 31, 2006. Please take note that only original, unpublished work will be considered.

For the story and the essay, we will consider work in the range of 12-30 pages double-spaced; for poetry, we will consider only suites or small collections of about four to seven poems, from which the editors will select at least three for publication. The essay could be a work of literary scholarship or criticism or creative nonfiction, formal or informal. We will consider short graphic novels or excerpts from longer work; what we actually publish will depend on the range and quality of the submissions.

All submissions will undergo a process of pre-screening by the editors, and shortlisted pieces will be reviewed by expert referees. I should probably forewarn our potential contributors that, as space is limited and as we will be putting the highest premium on quality through the refereeing process, getting in will be very difficult for all but the best work, and winning or having won a Palanca or a similar award will offer no guarantee of acceptance. For those accepted, however, Likhaan will pay commensurately high rates.

Kindly submit all contributions to us at likhaanjournal@gmail.com, accompanied by a brief self-introduction. Again, please don’t ask or expect me to provide an instant response to or a critique of your work; I have neither the time nor the inclination for this, and as the editor of the inaugural issue, I cannot be saying anything to influence our referees’ decisions. But I’ll be sure to acknowledge receipt of your work, also by e-mail.


I'D LIKE to devote some of this week’s column to respond to some reader comments and inquiries, before the backlog gets too large.

First off, some corrections:

Darwin Mariano—press and political affairs officer of the British Embasssy in Manila—wrote in to say, in connection with my piece on foreign scholarships, that “It’s not the British Council but the British Embassy that funds the United Kingdom's Chevening Scholarship Program. The British Council only helps us administer the scheme.”

Two readers—Rene Guatlo and Romy Aquino—also corrected my reference to Carlos P. Romulo as having been a secretary-general of the United Nations. My fault for blindly picking that off a press release, but as a current-events quiz-show fan myself, I should’ve known better: CPR served as president of the fourth session of UN General Assembly from 1949 to 1950. (For Romy Aquino—an old friend from Ann Arbor—the error was particularly egregious, noting that “My parents liked the name Romulo, hence I got the name in 1951 when I was born.”)

Another old friend, the eminent Iluko writer Honor Blanco Cabie, wrote me to say, among other things, that “Your piece on the Manila High School you described as the country's first public high school may not exactly be factual. The Ilocos Norte National High School in Laoag City, which has as well produced national and regional leaders in the various disciplines—and they include diplomats assigned overseas—marked in appropriate ceremonies at the sprawling campus grounds northwest of the provincial capitol its centennial in the first week of February 2006, which would make it four months older than the Manila High School.” Not to provoke a little war, perhaps more clarifications from both sides can settle the issue.

Speaking of the blogosphere, leader Mike Baños wanted to know how to find out where your blog readers are coming from, and what search terms they use that lead them to your blog. Mike, there are many so-called counters available for free on the Internet that not only keep track of the number of your visitors, but also yield more particulars such as the data you mentioned. I myself use CQCounter. It will give you, among other things, the URL and IP addresses of your last 20 visitors, and also an idea of who’s linked to your blog.

And last week I claimed to write a weekly column for the San Francisco-based Filipinas magazine. That’s rather hard to do, considering that Filipinas comes out monthly.


SPEAKING OF quiz shows, we received a pleasant home visit from Mrs. Pettizou Tayag, executive director of the National Quiz Bee, a worthwhile activity that’s become an institution in our schools for the past 27 years.

This year’s National Quiz Bee participants can look forward to more innovations. Pettizou reports that “We are releasing past Quiz Bee questions asked the previous years in a book compilation called Answerboards Up! The Quiz Bee Reviewer to help prospective contestants review prior to competition. This will help them assess how questions are phrased or formulated. We are launching the first radio quiz bee by August 2006 with DZXL for public school students in Metro Manila. We are also launching the quiz bee on text messaging, whereby Quiz Bee questions asked during the eliminations can be answered by the audience as well.”

While I have nothing against entertainment programs (I was a dutiful follower of American Idol this year), it worries me that too many of our kids are growing up thinking that singing and dancing (or, alternatively, surviving a roomful of housemates) represent the acme of personal achievement. When I was in grade school and high school, we looked forward to events like the Voice of Democracy public speaking contest to strut our stuff—and, yes, to spelling and quiz bees that exercised our brains (and maybe gave us nerds some form of psychic compensation).

I’m under no illusion that a mastery of trivia equates with knowledge and even less with wisdom, but with the quiz bee, you might say that it’s not actually what you know but what you learn that counts. By that I mean the habit of reading, the practice of inquiry, the discipline of study, and the love of knowledge for its own sake—all values that Filipino children should be imbued with, but which have been swept aside by our culture’s obsession with material goods (mea culpa!).

Thus, a project like the National Quiz Bee deserves all the help it can get from both public officials and private donors. The organizers are deeply grateful for all the assistance they’ve received from such regular sponsors as Time-Life Books, Uni Writing Instruments, Ovaltine Power, Fujifilm, PCSO, Datu Puti Patis/Papa Banana Catsup, Max's Restaurant, JRS Express Worldwide Delivery and Megapix Photo Inc. But they need more substantial and sustained support from our mega-corporations, especially those who deal with our youngest citizens (do I hear the cellular phone companies saying “Hey, that’s us!”?).

If you or your company can help rescue young Filipino minds from the specter of mass mediocrity, please get in touch with Pettizou P. Tayag of the Quiz Bee Foundation at mobile 0917-8922560 or landlines 7120682 or 7410856.

Penman for Monday, June 19, 2006


I'M VERY pleased to report that we’ve gotten the green light to proceed with the publication of Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature. “We” means the University of the Philippines Institute of Creative Writing, which will edit and publish Likhaan for the university.

I wrote about this new literary journal—a refereed journal which will take only the best original, unpublished work and pay top rates for accepted pieces—a couple of weeks ago. We’re accepting submissions at likhaanjournal@gmail.com, and I’m hoping that we’ll get our inaugural issue out in time for Writers Night early in December. Please visit my blog for more details.

Many thanks again to UP Diliman Chancellor Gerry Cao for helping us see this project through. He’s a mathematician by training and otherwise a professor of business administration, so his support for the arts is doubly appreciated.


I WAS also very glad to be able to attend the awarding ceremonies for the 2006 Philippine STAR Lifestyle Journalism Awards earlier this month, and to see 15 winners—chosen from over 6,000 entries—receive substantial prizes from the sponsors, HSBC and Store Specialists, Inc. But the real prize for some if not all of them is a chance to write a column for the STAR—which means, in real-world terms, a chance to be read by hundreds of thousands of people, in print and online.

I’ve met hundreds of young and aspiring writers in my lifetime, some of whom—though clearly talented—have professed to write only for themselves, without any thought or hope of reaching out to thousands if not millions of potential readers. I can respect that stance—but I have a hard time buying it. A person who joins a writing program or writers’ workshop then claims “I’m writing just for me” should have stayed in the kitchen or bathroom and written there—producing possibly wonderful poems, stories or essays—without having to waste other people’s time.

It’s more reasonable to assume that writers write to be read. And few writers get to be read by others more than newspaper or magazine columnists, for whom one day’s readership could well exceed a novelist’s (well, a Filipino novelist’s, anyway) yearly take. And profess as we might that we don’t really care about the figures when we write, I can’t imagine a writer who won’t be gratified by the thought of being read by the equivalent of a small city.

I’ve often observed that we Pinoys think of writers as the coolest people, and of becoming a writer as the dream to nurture—all of this without reading much beyond the comic books and the newspapers. (Fair enough. Books are expensive, but words are cheap, and everybody has a few to spare.) We may not buy their books, but we think of writers as accomplished persons worthy of bringing out the marching band for, like my townmates did the last time I went home to speak at the high school graduation.

I remember growing up writing for the school paper—and being introduced by my proud folks to unwitting relatives and townmates as “the writer,” eliciting oohs and aaahs long enough to lace my shoes with. It got to the point that I came to believe what people were saying, and fancied myself a writer, whatever that meant in high school (among others, conspicuously toting a copy of Catcher in the Rye or The Little Prince and mouthing barely intelligible pronouncements vaguely resembling philosophy). I wrote a column for the high school and later the college paper, and while it was always a treat to see my name beneath a news or feature headline, it was especially thrilling to see my picture go with my opinions—whatever they were worth—and I was hooked for life.

We usually think of writing for the op-ed page as the acme of column writing, and that could be true up to a point. Op-ed writing requires not only a tenacious interest in current events—especially political and economic issues—but also strong if not always well-reasoned views. On the plus side, your subject is given to you—just check the headlines; on the other hand, you tend to settle into your well-considered opinions, rephrasing and rehashing them day after day, drawing on the loyalty of similarly inclined readers.

As a younger, professional journalist, I never wrote an op-ed column (I do now—an occasional piece for the newsmagazine Newsbreak and a monthly column for the San Francisco-based Filipinas magazine), but I wrote editorials three or four times a week for almost five years for a daily newspaper (not the STAR). It gave me a high like no other, since I could pontificate on anything from famines in Africa to film-festival cheating, but—as editorial writers quickly discover—there is such an ailment as God-fatigue, culminating in the sudden and crushing realization that one could very well be, or is, a pompous fraud, protected only by the anonymity of the editorial itself. It got so that I asked to be given a column in the Lifestyle section, just to decompress and to remind myself that I could be, well, myself. I gleefully wrote that column pro bono, and where editorializing was work, the column was unmitigated, soul-saving fun.

And then, of course—as our new columnists will find out for themselves—work can be fun, but fun can also be a lot of work. Lifestyle writing at its best (and I’m saying this as a reader, not a writer) is much more than telling people about the trendiest skirt lengths or the best spas or the prettiest debutantes, as intrinsically interesting as they may be. Sometimes it’s about making a connection between fantasy and reality, making ordinary people feel privy to things beyond themselves without degrading their sense of self-worth; at other times it’s about reintroducing people to themselves, celebrating the familiar without sounding trite. Great lifestyle writing survives the trends or fashions it may seem to be concerned with, transforming the ephemeral into the memorable, even as the American columnist Jim Watkins reminds us that “Writing a weekly column isn't exactly like creating something that high school students will be required to read 100 years from now.” Watkins adds that “It is, however, a challenge coming up with a fresh, insightful essay every seven days—or at least some ink spots to fill 10 inches of column space.”

I can swear to the truth of that statement. The younger, brasher me boasted that he could write something about anything at the drop of a hat, that there was nothing he couldn’t find something to say about in ten minutes. When I moved from the op-ed to the lifestyle section I reveled in the privilege and the opportunity to write about practically anything I wanted—until I realized that absolute freedom, like anything that sounds too good, was also an enormous burden.

Believe me: it’s a pain thinking of something interesting and substantial to write about week after week, and I don’t always hit the mark. (I keep a folder on my computer desktop titled “Column Ideas” where I stash snippets of topics, observations, and vignettes, but I also jot quick notes on my smartphone and on a real notebook, a happily battered Moleskine. In a fix, the back of a calling card will do.) Many of us get by through the simple and shameless expedient of cannibalizing our own lives—trying, at the same time, not to sound too self-absorbed and therefore irrelevant to the reader out there. If you think I’m making column writing look like a form of literary exhibitionism, you’d be absolutely right. I can’t think of a writing job that takes bigger chunks out of your personal life than a weekly lifestyle column—but then again, in another sense, the writing is or becomes the life.

If you’re a budding columnist, there’s a lot of good and free advice you can get on the Internet about column writing. (To cite just two, check out http://www.oonyeoh.squarespace.com/column-writing-tips/ and http://watkins.gospelcom.net/manu.htm. I

I’d sum up my own counsel to columnists thus:

1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. You and your experiences are interesting and important only insofar as they strike a responsive chord in the imaginations of ordinary people.

2. Keep a journal or, better yet, a blog. It’s a form of finger exercise, a way of moving from random jottings to a full-fledged essay (which, in effect, a column is). Blogs reach far more people than even newspapers, and provide a free and handy means of archiving your work—and of soliciting reader responses.

3. Be prepared for violently hostile reactions. There will always be that reader who will hate your guts for whatever reason, or who will deliberately misread your points to make one of his or her own. I’ve gotten hate mail for everything from Iraq to Faulkner to The Da Vinci Code. (I’m advising you to be cool, but I have to admit to a short temper—if someone writes me a particularly nasty message I tend to send it right back across the net with a forehand volley.)

4. Thank your lucky stars for every reader who reads you, hostile or not. I have a pet theory that the reader to write for is the one most unlike you; your clones will be pushovers for anything you say, but it’s that truly different, difficult, diffident reader who’ll test your powers of persuasion.

5. In the same vein, practice your column-writing mind on the unfamiliar topic. Even as you’ll inevitably gravitate towards certain favorites, no subject should be beneath you or beyond you. In the art of the informal essay, it isn’t really the topic that counts, but your treatment of it—which will tell the reader if it’s worth buying next week’s issue, just to see what you’re up to. Sure, it’s a tall order—but that’s exactly why not everyone gets to be where you are, in this space, at this time.

So welcome and good luck to all of my new colleagues here at the STAR, and may your inkwells never go dry.

Penman for Father’s Day Issue


SINCE I'M writing this a few days before Father’s Day when people will generally be disposed to look more kindly on men, I thought I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to deal with some perniciously persistent myths that have been circulating about us. I’m not addressing this to women my age (and you can extend that to women above 20, or anyone who’s been in a serious male-female relationship), whose views will have been so set that any attempt to convince them of the honest truth will only prove unavailing.

Rather, I’d like to speak to unsullied females between the ages of 7 and 17, who might yet be capable of entertaining some reasonable doubt about whatever their mothers or older sisters might have infected their impressionable minds with by way of atrocious misconceptions about my kind. Are you listening, girls?

There’s this strange belief, for example, that all men are babies. Never mind how old they are or how many wars and battles they’ve been through and how many dragons they’ve slain. When they come home, they expect—nay, they demand, through whining and similarly mewling sounds and gestures—to be suckled at the teats of their mates’ affections. They’ll be deaf to female entreaties about the busted shower or the kids’ bus service, but they’ll curl up in your lap and expect you to understand what a wretched bastard Mr. X was for stealing that account or cheating at that golf game. They’ll hold up that finger that supposedly got hurt when they poked their enemy in the eye, and expect you to kiss it back to wellness. They’ll scream when you try to touch that finger, but will scream even more if you don’t.

Now, I know for a fact that this isn’t true, because only insufferable weaklings whine. I sulk, unspeaking, until I’m blue in the face and someone takes notice; only then do I cry, and only to give the other person a worthy purpose in life, which is to bring comfort and joy to mine.

There’s also this nasty notion that men live for food and sex, are hopeless creatures of appetite whose idea of heaven consists of an imperial lauriat followed by a Roman orgy with a year’s worth of FHM centerfolds. (Since I’m addressing myself to very young women, I should hasten to explain that a lauriat is, well, a party with lots and lots of outrageously good food and an orgy is, well, like a lauriat, and I’ll leave it at that; go ask your mom). I’ve been tearfully told that all men think about is how to get drunk and how to get laid.

That’s absolute rubbish; we all have other, loftier things in mind, and I’ll name you three off the top of my head: (1) the war in Iraq, which I follow on CNN; (2) the responsibility of the news and entertainment media to the truth, as I’ve often heard discussed on the BBC; and (3) that impossibly pretty and sexy chef on the Lifestyle Network, who can’t make me decide whether to watch her or her bonbons.

I have no idea how it is that some women can claim that men are naturally born faithless—that is, after having been married for a quarter-century or more, they still can’t resist chasing after every swishy skirt (or better yet, the absence of one) or staring at the frontage, profiles, and backsides of women young enough to be their grandnieces. And their propensity for philandering supposedly rises with their ages and paychecks—i.e., full professors, army generals and company presidents are more likely (if more portly) Lotharios than instructors, privates, and clerks, bringing us to the interesting proposition that those who have more to lose also have more to gain.

But I’d venture to say that it isn’t so much that men are congenitally incapable of fidelity to one and the same person; going by same scientific yardstick, recent research proves that women have an attention span a thousand times longer than men’s, which should properly explain why they’re still looking at the same guy when he’s already seen a hundred pairs of whatever sashaying by. There might even be an evolutionary reason for this behavior. This kind of “infidelity” has also been observed of the purple-spotted salamanders of the Nyhurong Valley of Papua New Guinea, lending further credence to my theory. (Yes, it’s one of those species where a male lizard mates with a dozen panting, egg-bearing females before being devoured by his wife with one dart of her poison-coated tongue. But at least the species survives, creeping deforestation and acid rain notwithstanding.)

Speaking of resistance, I was amused to overhear a woman exclaim in an ATM queue that men can’t resist crying ladies or damsels in distress—that all it takes for some GRO (that’s, uhm, a Girl Requiring an Offering) to part a man from his money is a sob story about a quadriplegic father and a tubercular mother and more undernourished, unschooled brothers and sisters than you can shake a ladies’ drink at. (It’s said to be worse if the clubgoer is an ex-Marxist, who’ll likely say yes, that’s very true, that’s exactly what’s wrong with this semi-colonial and semi-feudal society of ours, and another rum coke for the lady, please!) Other forms of womanly woes reputedly include premature widowhood, inexplicable singlehood, an inability to write term papers or theses on unreasonably difficult topics given by bitterly bitchy professors, a childhood dream to go to Baguio or Hong Kong, and a fruitless search for a roof over one’s head.

This is pure canard—of course men can say no to these women, despite the overflowing goodness of their hearts; they do it all the time—especially if the women happen to be their wives or girlfriends.

And how can it be true that men never ask for directions? I’ve been hearing incredible stories about how iron-jawed husbands have driven straight into the darkness for hours, steadfastly unwilling to stop and ask for directions, despite the wailing of the kids and the weeping of the wife. (And God help your soul if you so much as suggest the possibility that you’re lost. “Lost? I looked at the map! I was an Eagle Scout, I can read maps, and those mapmakers can’t be wrong, with all the billions they spent on GPS and satellite photography. Don’t you read Popular Science? Why don’t you put little Tommy to sleep and let me drive?”)

While some of this sounds vaguely familiar—I’ll admit that nothing annoys men more than to have to ask other men (or, worse, women) what to do or where to go—I think it’s all a bit exaggerated. I usually stop after plowing onward for 20 kilometers or an hour, whichever takes longer, on the pretext of running into some gas-station toilet, where I can nudge or coerce the attendant into revealing where exactly I am in the solar system.

And whoever said that hell hath no fury like a man whose new car you’ve scratched against the gatepost? Or that men forget everything (i.e. anniversaries and birthdays) except their mates’ dark past (i.e., the guy you kissed goodnight after the J-S prom)? There’s more, girls (and boys), lots more—but you catch my drift. Beware these myths. They may sound true, but if you believe everything you’ve heard here so far, then you’d have to be—indubitably and hopelessly—female.

Penman for Monday, June 12, 2006


ONE OF the first things you discover when you put up a blog is that you are not alone. There are people out there—people you never met, people you probably never will meet, people you never heard of, people who like you, people who hate you—who have one thing in common, which is that they read what you write and, to some extent, expect you to read what they write as well.

I’ve yet to see a blog that doesn’t have links—titles of other blogs or websites you can click to bring you instantly to another corner of the digital universe. If that corner looks anything like mine, it’s chock full of stuff, with at least one computer turned on practically 24/7, and a tabletop brimming over with papers, bills, receipts, staplers, cables, half-opened books, week-old packets of potato chips, and three cupfuls of assorted pens and pencils. In other words, it’s barely managed chaos, which we try to compensate for by staking out yet another corner of the World Wide Web, which we think we can control. That’s the corner we call our blog—that online compendium of our ideas, thoughts, impressions, fantasies, and images that we inflict on the unsuspecting world, hoping for some attention (and sometimes getting more than we care for).

Before you know it, you find your blog linked up with dozens of others, who send their readers to your blog who—if they have blogs of their own, and if they like yours—will likewise hook you up to theirs, and so on. You yourself might choose a few of your favorite blogs to include in your links. And so, pretty soon, you become part of a little “blogosphere,” a virtual community of bloggers who might share the same central or peripheral interests—books, computers, fashion, sci-fi, food, travel—intersecting like those Venn diagrams we all had to plow through in high school math.

I’m amazed to find where my blog, “Pinoy Penman,” has turned up—anywhere from John Nery’s comprehensive and cerebral “Newsstand” to the saucy and insomnia-inducing “Confessions from a Cheap Motel.” You can actually find who’s linked up to you through such sites and services as technorati.com (a kind of global blog directory) and counters such as CQCounter, which (as the name suggests) keeps track of how many “hits” or visits your blog has received—and, more interestingly, where those hits are coming from, and whose sites referred people to yours. (I don’t know about you, but I’ve become inveterately addicted to these counters and checkers—dreaming, perhaps, of being read and admired by Scandinavian babes drooling over leaky fountain pens as much as by Chinese or German military intelligence concerned by the state of Philippine literary publishing.)

You can even find out what people were searching for—using such search engines as Google and Yahoo—when they stumbled on your blog. This is the part that intrigues me the most. I can understand how people can find me when they type in search terms like “carlos palanca awards short stories 1986,” “ang paglilitis ni mang serapio,” “fountain pen collecting,” “apple macintosh philippines” and “filipino writers.” But I can’t, for the life of me, explain how I could possibly be involved in any way with “blogs women sinking in quicksand,” “philippine girls celebrities sex scandal” and “ingesting a small piece of glass effects on body.” Verily, the Internet is a strange habitat.

Since opening my blog in November 2005, I’ve had nearly 15,000 hits (14,000 of them, I’m sure, from my friends, or students looking for clues about our next exam), and I can only hope they’ve gotten as much fun out of my blog as I have putting my regular two cents’ into it. But for all my digital sociability, I haven’t signed up for Friendster, MySpace, Multiply, or any of those global group hugs that my students and their peers can’t seem to live without. At 52, there’s no way I’m going to be seen in any of these places as anything but a potbellied pervert; if I don’t say I’m 52, it’ll be even worse. For the kind of companionship I might find in Friendster, I’ll rely on the analog attractions of my beer and badminton buddies.


SPEAKING OF badminton, I always come late into any craze having nothing to do with computers—I read The Da Vinci Code just last month, and only to be able to say something sage-like about it—but I’m glad to report that I’ve taken up badminton with a beginner’s passion. I’d been taking long strolls around the UP campus for exercise—pausing here and there for an ice cream cone the size of Cubao or an arty photograph of trees against the sunset—until I felt beset and oppressed by the loneliness of the long-distance stroller, and decided to do something more active by yielding to the entreaties of badminton-playing friends.

I’d always thought of badminton as a sissy sport, something akin to swatting pesky houseflies on the loose. As I was to discover, it ain’t necessarily so. I played some tennis in my younger days, but badminton has me huffing and puffing and sweating like crazy, forcing me to move hither and thither quickly within a relatively small space (which, small as it seems, I can barely cover). I’m about as talented as a lamppost, and much of my moving around has to do with picking up shuttlecocks I’ve missed and tossing it across the net to the server, but hey, it’s good exercise, at its best a kind of dance.

My muscles are aching but my body’s happy; I’ve lost about ten pounds since I started walking and playing a couple of months ago, and if I lost ten more before the year is over, then all that work picking up other people’s shuttlecocks will have been well worth it.


I'D LIKE to make two public-service announcements this week, both of which have to do with a pet cause of mine, which is recovering our sense of history.

For starters, the Manila High School—the country’s first public high school set up by the Americans on June 11, 1906—will be marking its centennial this week. Its illustrious graduates include three Philippine Presidents, namely Manuel Roxas, Elpidio Quirino and Jose P. Laurel, and Carlos P. Romulo, the only Filipino to become Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Yesterday, they held an Alay Lakad along the Intramuros walls that surround the school (located on Muralla corner Victoria Streets in Intramuros), but the highlight of the celebration will be a Centennial Alumni Homecoming to be held on June 16 at 4:00 p.m. at the Manila Hotel Centennial Hall.

Interested alumni and retired faculty members should call the principal, Mr. Arnulfo H. Empleo at tel. nos. 527-5162 or 521-4199, Ms. Luisa Triumfo at cellphone no. 0915-5050799 or Dr. Beng Manalang at cellphone no. 0918-9030791. Alumni are also advised to contact the event organizers through the website www.manilahighschool.com.

The second event I’m plugging is a one-and-a-half-day seminar and workshop on writing historical fiction & non-fiction for children and young adults hosted by the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI). Titled “Putting the Story in History”, the seminar-workshop will take place the whole day 8am to 5pm Saturday July 15 and half-day 8am to 12 noon Sunday July 16 (Sunday afternoon sessions optional). The venue will be the Orchid Garden Suites in Malate, Manila.

The featured speaker is Chris Eboch, author and SCBWI Regional Advisor for New Mexico. Chris is the author of The Well of Sacrifice (Clarion Books, 1999), a middle grade historical adventure set in ninth century Guatemala that has received rave reviews. Topics to be covered include the difference between historical fiction and history; what historical fiction can do; methods of historical research; how to make history come alive; and how to explain painful truths such as historical violence and racism. To be discussed are developing ideas, plotting, building characters, and developing lifelike settings. The seminar will also cover critiques and editing. Handouts include a character chart, critique questions, and a sample list of historical fiction books. This seminar and workshop should be helpful to people writing nonfiction, memoirs or family histories as well as those writing historical fiction.

You can register through Anvil Publishing Sales Representatives at 6375141.

Penman for Monday, June 5, 2006


I'M VERY pleased to announce some good news: a new literary journal will be coming out soon. Called Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, this new publication will be the literary flagship of the University of the Philippines, and will showcase the best of what not only UP writers but all Filipinos have to offer in imaginative writing.

Many details have yet to be worked out, but I can tell you this much: UP Diliman Chancellor Gerry Cao has approved the project in principle (an important and much-appreciated approval, since he’ll be the one sourcing the funds for it) on condition that it be a refereed journal, meaning that it will observe the highest academic standards in evaluating and accepting submissions. The journal will be edited and administered by the UP Institute of Creative Writing ICW), which has, in turn, designated me editor for the inaugural issue.

As we noted in the proposal we presented to Dr. Cao, it’s about time that UP—which is celebrating its centennial soon—came out with something strong and solid to cement its legacy as the nation’s richest and most influential source of new literature for nearly a century. UP has produced writers who have been honored as National Artists, CCP Centennial awardees, Ramon Magsaysay awardees, Palanca Hall of Famers, and Gawad Balagtas awardees, among other prestigious distinctions.

The ICW (formerly the UP Creative Writing Center) has administered the UP National Writers Workshop since 1965, discovering and developing hundreds of the country’s best young and new writers in all genres. Many of the Philippines’ finest writers teach on the UP faculty, in charge of burgeoning creative writing programs that have attracted applicants from freshmen to accomplished professionals in other fields.

Yet for all that, UP has long been in need of a literary journal of a quality and reach commensurate to its influence in the field of Philippine literature and creative writing. The College Folio ceased publication ages ago, and the Diliman Review is now focused on the social sciences, to name just two titles traditionally associated with new writing from UP. Many first-rate literary magazines and journals have come and gone over the past few decades—the Manila Review, JOSE, Chimera, and Pen & Ink, among them—but high costs and a small reading market have done them all in.

For the past few years, the ICW has done its best to produce annual Likhaan selections of the best of Philippine fiction, poetry, and criticism, but these publications have been sporadic because of the difficulty of covering so much ground within so little time. These selections also featured only previously published work. The new journal will replace this old Likhaan series—and hopefully be the most prestigious local publication a Filipino writer can aspire to be published in.

Likhaan will most likely begin as an annual publication, although ideally it should be a semestral or even quarterly project in the long run. It will accept only original, unpublished creative work in English, Filipino, and other Philippine languages (with translations), but it will take only the best of the best, with the blind-refereeing system guaranteeing that only the quality of the work, and not its author, is taken into account.

Submissions will be refereed by respected writers and critics both within and outside UP, overseen by a board of editors comprising the associates of the ICW sitting en banc, with production decisions delegated to an Issue Editor and two Associate Editors. To attract the best material, we will be paying authors the highest rates hereabouts—I can’t tell you exactly how much just yet, but it will be considerably higher than what local magazines have been paying their contributors.

We will be publishing the following: short stories, poems (in “suites” of three to four poems per author); essays (both critical and personal); a literary roundtable devoted to a discussion of significant literary issues; an interview with a literary figure; excerpts from new media such as graphic novels and blogs; biographical ephemera and memorabilia (letters, photographs, drafts, sketches, diaries, etc.); and an annual bibliography of locally published creative work (books, magazines, journals).

To be absolutely fair, referees will be disqualified from publication in the specific issue for which they will be refereeing articles. No ICW associate serving as a referee or as an Issue or Associate Editor can have his or her work published in the same issue. Being an ICW Associate will offer no guarantee of having one’s work accepted for publication in the journal. Associates with work under consideration will be expected to inhibit themselves from participating in editorial decisions for the issue in question.

I have the highest expectations for this new journal, which I hope we can produce in a few months, and we will be formally soliciting submissions as soon as we work out some final details. In the meanwhile, if you can take my word for it that this will eventually push through and can afford to wait a bit, you may submit work to us at likhaanjournal@gmail.com (don’t send it to me in my personal e-mail; I’ll send it right back). Will we accept submissions from overseas? I don’t see why not, for as long as the work can arguably fall under the broad rubric of “Philippine literature.”

Remember: we’ll accept only original, unpublished work; it could already have won a prize, but it will still have to be unpublished; send us about four to six poems we can choose from. I’m not specifying any page limits for the prose in the meanwhile, but we obviously can’t and won’t publish book-length manuscripts or dissertations. We may or may not require translations of non-English work (this is one of the issues we’re still settling). Don’t forget to include a brief write-up about yourself, including contact information.

And please exercise some self-awareness: spare us your high-school doggerel, and send only your best work. Don’t expect me or the other editors to respond with a critique of your submission; we will, however, acknowledge all e-mailed submissions. We might decide to introduce other criteria later (such as a thematic focus) that could narrow our choices further. But if you really feel like sending in that story or suite of poems or essay now, please go right ahead, and all the best of luck to you, along with my early thanks. The address, again, is likhaanjournal@gmail.com.

I WISH I read or spoke Spanish well enough to join this, but let me share this invitation with you, anyway. It came in the mail from the Instituto Cervantes, which is inaugurating its new building by sponsoring the first non-stop, around-the-clock reading of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere in the original Spanish. The Instituto is looking for 250 volunteers to participate in what it expects to be a 21-hour marathon, with each volunteer reading two of the book’s 580 pages.

If you’re interested, sign up by calling 526-1482 to 85 loc. 115 or e-mailing cultmni@cervantes.net.ph with the subject “Lee el Noli.” The reading will be held on June 16 and 17 at the Salon de Actos of the Instituto Cervantes at 855 T. M. Kalaw, starting at 3 pm on June 16. The readers will receive a commemorative T-shirt plus a certificate of participation in the reading.

Accompanying events include a midnight concert and midnight paella on Friday night, and a breakfast party on Saturday morning featuring chocolate con churros for all the participants. Sounds like a great way to spend the weekend and honor our country’s most celebrated birthday boy for June. More details at .

ON ANOTHER happy note, I attended the Manila launch of Apple Computer’s new MacBook line of laptops last Thursday. The MacBooks are three different models ranging from 1.83 to 2.0 GHz, with the faster models available in a choice of the standard Apple white or a new, sleek matte black. (For what look like purely marketing reasons plus a larger hard drive, the black ones cost a chunk more money.) These 13” MacBooks replace the old 12” PowerBooks and 12” and 14” iBooks, but are the juniors of the heftier 15” and 17” MacBook Pro, released earlier this year.

But never mind the geeky numbers. These babies are beauties. Powered by Intel processors, they can run both the Mac OS and Windows, have built-in cameras and all the extras you can imagine: wi-fi, Bluetooth, CD/DVD burner, gigabit Ethernet, and so on. Plus, it comes preloaded with the iLife suite of programs (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, iWeb) that will turn your laptop into a digital audiovisual studio. (For more information, go to this site.)

I’d actually held the MacBook in my hands and played with it a bit a couple of nights before the formal launch, and first impressions, beyond all the stats, help me make up my mind.

What can I say? It’s surprisingly thin, light, and easy to carry. Longtime Mac users will take a while—but not too long—to get used to the glossy, ultrabright, and superwide screen, as well as the new keyboard that feels more widely spaced out. The snag-free, popout “MagSafe” power cord connector is a nice bonus, as is the built-in iSight camera that makes videoconferencing a breeze. A new all-magnetic latching system does away with those pesky and brittle hooks. I love the satiny black model—but will be watching whether the black finish keeps well or chips off too easily.

So am I getting one? Maybe as soon as some Thug-in-Reverse accosts me in the street to stuff a check for P90,000 in my pocket for the high-end black MacBook (actual prices may be lower). Until then, I’ll be happy with my souped-up 12” PowerBook, which, not too long ago, was the living end.

Makes me wonder if I keep getting new machines so I can work harder, or if I’m working harder so I can get new machines.

A special Penman for Sunday, May 14, 2006

THE FIRST thing you notice about Ian Wright is that the man just can’t keep still. He’s constantly in motion; even when he’s standing, his eyes might be rolling toward the ceiling while his tongue might be hanging downward. He’s forever clowning—perhaps a throwback to his days teaching drama to children, which is what his adult audiences quickly turn into. His hands will dart about like uncaged birds, pecking at a point here and fluttering around another there. He can’t be taller than a couple of inches above five feet but he can fill the stage with the kind of presence politicians would kill for.

The STAR sent me to Singapore last month to interview the famous “Globe Trekker” through the auspices of the Discovery Travel & Living channel, which is running a new six-part series titled “VIP Weekends with Ian Wright.” As the title suggests, it’s a good many steps up the social ladder for this street-smart Cockney, who had to trade in his sweaty T-shirt and cargo pants for a tidy tux.

“From beer to champagne!” is how Ian himself exuberantly describes his momentary transformation from the poster boy and patron saint of backpackers to the houseguest of an English lord and an Indian princess, among others. (The complete list includes Hong Kong celebrity Karen Mok; the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon; Princess Bhargavi and the Mewar royal family of India; the Alvaro Domecq family of Spain; the UK’s Simon Woodroffe; and France’s Florence and Daniel Cathiard.)

Over lunch, dinner, and a 20-minute personal interview in between, I managed to learn a bit more about the man than even his travelogues have revealed.

To begin with, he’s 40. And sorry, ladies, but he’s married, with two stepchildren aged 17 and 19. (He gets along just fine with them, but doesn’t spoil them, and they’ve apparently gotten over their dad’s global celebrity.) Ian comes from Ipswich, about an hour by train from London, and is a diehard Ipswich football fan. (When I told him that I lived for a while in Norwich, a few stops down the railroad tracks, he snickered, relishing the memory of a great football rivalry.)

As you can imagine, he’s been through a lot—even before he began globetrotting on everyone else’s behalf. He went to art school, was a cycle courier for a while, then ran a market stall at Spitalfields in London. “I used to make paints, jewelry, weld things up, make candlesticks, clay artwork, jams, chutney, and mint sauce and sell them there,” he recalled in a previous interview; then he taught art and drama to children.

When the call for a TV “presenter” (as the Brits call their hosts) for a travel show came, a bulb lit up in his head. He had already done a bit of traveling—to India, Nepal, Egypt, Guyana, and all of Europe—and having done some video work as well, it seemed a natural thing for him to join the search, even for a lark. He sent in a typically funny take on arriving in Liverpool Street Station and falling all over the place—and the rest, as they say, is globe-trekking history. Twelve years of it, in fact.

When he strides into the China Club for his first meeting with the press, he’s in a crisp black tux and bowtie. “I’m Ian Wright,” he says, “and I am the luckiest bastard in the world. You’ve got to remember it’s not my fault, yeah? If someone comes to you and says, this is the job, we’re going to send you around the world, we’re going to give you a chance to meet the most incredible people, see the most phenomenal sights, and we’re going to pay for your food and your accommodations, give you some spending money, and if that’s not enough, here’s a fat wad of cash as well, what would you do, eh, what would you do?”

He goes away about seven, eight times a year. We all think we’d love to do that, but it’s a punishing lifestyle. “The only problem with having the best job in the world is that you’ve got no friends,” he says smiling, but you know there’s some truth to that.

As if to banish the backpacker blues, he starts talking about food—we’re meeting, after all, against the backdrop of the World Gourmet Summit, which Singapore hosts yearly to claim its spot on the global gastronomical map. Ian prefers to go vegetarian—except when he’s on the road, which happens to be most of the time. “The country to me with the worst food in the world is America. It’s rubbish there, rubbish. Obviously if you go to New York or Chicago, they’re countries on their own, and the food there is heaven. But beyond that…. Our driver in the US asked me once, ‘Are you hungry? If you want, we can get some snacks from the supermarket, but if you want a proper meal, we can go to McDonald's!’”

Still, a Big Mac can’t be half as bad as the other things we’ve squirmed to watch him having to devour in the name of global goodwill—a sheep’s eyeball and a Cambodian cockroach, among others. “The worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth was in Iceland, which was rancid shark,” he says. “You get your shark, stick it in a hole, then leave it there for eight months until it gets all moldy and rancid, then you pick it up and dry it for another four months… It is the worst taste!”

But there is, he reminds us “the hospitality thing: you can’t really say no.” The sheep’s eye, for example, the Mongolians give to the visitor as a sign of respect. “The taste isn’t too bad, it’s the texture. It’s like that white glue stuff, crusty on the outside and gooey on the inside, that’s what an eyeball is.” The switch from all that to champagne and caviar may have required a corresponding shift in mindset, but being what he is, Ian remained his true irrepressible self in this new series. “What I like about this series is that every single one is different,” he would tell his dinner audience. “You never know what you’re going to get next, because the crux of the program is me getting on with them, and I’ve never met them. You meet them on a Monday, and if you don’t get on it’s going to be a very short series. You never know until you’re there, and that’s the exciting part of it.”

Authenticity and spontaneity are mantras to Ian, who acknowledges that “It’s harder for them (his upper-class hosts) to come down to my level, because they’re not used to that.”

He can’t work very well with scripts, beyond a general outline of what the episode will cover and contain: “You put them into your own words. I can’t read from a script, or read very well. If I see a word, fine, if I don’t, well, then just tell me. My favorite ones are when I’m doing and saying something at the same time. It just makes it more spontaneous. I never know what I’m going to say or going to do or how I’m going to react to whoever, and I don’t want to, you know what I mean?”

He’s proud of his working-class roots and connections: “My wife is staunch working-class like you would never.... When I think of my kids now and what they’ve got, they would think that my era was medieval.... My wife was brought up in absurd working class conditions where she had nothing, with six sharing a bed.... On my mum’s side, my great granddad’s Welsh, and they’re from an old coal-mining family.”

During our sit-down interview, a fellow journalist remarks how kind and honest the English were, in her personal experience. “You do judge places like that,” Ian responds, scratching his chin, “even though they might have been one-offs. The fellow sitting next to you might have been through something completely opposite. When I got mugged in Morocco, I wrote the whole country off because of one stupid bad experience. The funny thing was even when I was getting mugged they kept haggling the price down. We got to my hotel, and the guy kicking me said I’ll kick you anyway when you come out, so why not give me a hundred and I’ll go away? I offered sixty, he asked for eighty, and we settled on seventy-five.”

He loves Southeast Asia, but has never been to the Philippines. Did he have any pre-formed impressions of it, I ask?

“The women look really nice!... But nothing, really, I don’t know anything about the Philippines at all. But I would love to go to the Philippines. I don’t want to know that much about it, that’s why you go there.”

“What’s a real personal vacation for you?” I follow up.

“A bed and breakfast in England. I love an English seaside. That’s because as a kid that’s what I grew up on, and you can’t get that away from you. I loved it even in winter when it was cold and breezy and you could hear the sign outside the pub go ngeeek-eeek-eeek! You looked outside and it was cold but there was something comforting about a nice, warm pub.”

Has he ever gotten into any seriously life-threatening situation?

“I remember we were in Vanuatu, which is an island in the Pacific between Fiji and the Solomon Islands, and it had the most active volcano—well, the most acceptable active volcano. It was almost like a park-and-ride, you know... You walk up and then you see the smoke, but it’s not like an old film where it’s all lava, there’s little vents that come up every now and then, and they’re just flying up in the air pitching lava, and the sound is unbelievable. And just like kids you wait for the last big blowout, and with the crew, we go right up to the top of the volcano. As it gets dark, the lava cools down and becomes more ferocious. We didn't realize that the wind had changed and suddenly an explosion sent lava literally five meters from us. At the next explosion we started to run down the path. It was mad!”

The longest Ian’s been away from home is seven months. But he can’t think of living anywhere else. “I love England, to be honest. Being away for so long, you just get fonder and fonder of where you live. And I can’t live anywhere without four seasons.”

But he’s a firm believer in the salutary effects of travel—even if our version of it doesn’t quite match up to his shark-swallowing standards. “Every bloke should leave home and live on his own for at least three years, that would be my policy.” After twelve years on the road, you’d think he’s been everywhere and seen everything, but there are, believe it or not, places he has yet to visit and would love to: “Antarctica, Central America, Vietnam.”

And the Philippines? “Yes, of course! Take these people’s phone numbers down!” he instructs his staff in jest, but who knows—one of these days, that guy buzzing your doorbell just might be Mr. Wright.

“VIP Weekends with Ian Wright” is showing Sundays, 10 p.m. on the Discovery Travel & Living channel.