This Morning

There is a fire raging across SLEX and EDSA. There is Mayon Volcano threatening to erupt any day now. Life in the RP is often life on the brink (of disaster).

We are happy that Tiger has learned not to pee on the Kusama Pumpkin.

Happy 23rd December 2009.

STAT

You receive a text message, an email, an updated profile... you reply... then they reply... and the back-and-forth is endless. I read somewhere this phenomenon of our time, it is called Incomplete Communication. And it never really stops, it just gets put on hold. Till the next time you log onto your email, or you check your phone, or you wake up in the morning.

So, with this in mind, I held my stub number 1671 in the hospital waiting to claim my STAT lab results. STAT in medical jargon means "rush". And I paid 50% higher than the usual rip off price to find out if I was sick sooner. There is something wrong, but I am not deathly sick. The results show that my RBCs are low, my monocytes are high, and I do not have Mono.

R and I were having an extraordinarily unhealthy lunch of Pizza Hut and Dairy Queen* while waiting for my STAT results when she asked what she should tell people when they ask why I am not practicing the doctor stuff. I don't like hospitals. I can't imagine working in one, at least not here. Hospitals are the intersection of disease and stupidity. All respect to the doctors mind you.

So after 2 hours waiting for the STAT results which they told me would be out in 1 hour, I was still missing one lab result. The one that tells me if it is viral or bacterial. I left. Let's just go with bacterial and take them antibiotics.

So back to Incomplete Communication and Stat. A hospital is one place where the incomplete communication should be completed STAT. To think that I am one unremarkable outpatient case that did not get what was promised (STAT results), what more the hundreds and thousands of other far more emergent cases out there whose results are stranded between break time and change shift?


*Note: the junk food in the new wing of the hospital is what happens when the owners of the hospital own the franchises of the fast food.

One Must Never Let Go

“And how many times have we been asked, ‘Aren’t you migrating? Think of our children, what future do they have here?’ What future indeed, as the eminent Prof. Jun de Leon would say in his landmark UP centennial speech, ‘When the cultural sources of our education are western and it is inevitable that the expertise graduates acquire is better applicable to a western industrialized society than to a rural, agricultural setting which most of the Philippines is?’ and Florentino Hornedo adds, ‘It looks like the Philippines is spending money for the training of our country’s citizens to become another country’s assets.’

“Filipinos have always been a special race beloved by God — creative and beautiful, graceful and multi-talented, a connecting, resilient, hard-working and big-hearted people, loyal to the max. After finding one’s particular calling as a Filipino, one must never let go of it. Everything is interconnected and into one’s life will spontaneously drop all those helpful occurrences, chance encounters, coincidences and synchronicities to cheer one on. Don’t be impatient. Because five or so years down the line, or maybe when you’re old like me, there will be a convergence. Suddenly you are no longer the underdog. The time for your initiative — whether arnis, saya, aswang or bamboo house, has ripened. And its fruits are very sweet.”

- F. Sionil Jose quoting Gilda Cordero Fernando, Philippine Star, 21 Dec 2009

GCF told me that I would never make money from my business, because as a book publisher and writer, she never did. The reason being, cultural workers in the Philippines hardly ever do. But the intangible benefits and cultural income derived from what we do far outweigh any material gains.

I am of the mindset that I am in the education and export business with my subject and commodity being art. It has been a tough five years since starting this, and every day is a Pandora's box of surprises and nightmares here in the RP. But I can't say it has not been incredibly enriching and entertaining.

GCF held a sold out art exhibition at our SLab a month ago. Who said you can't make from what we do?

We love you GCF. We will never let go.


Image: Jose Rizal at Team Manila Rockwell Store

Sarado Mano

The wonderful thing about quick trips is that you don't need to check anything in. Annually, family and I head down to Davao for the company Christmas party. Practically a day trip, nothing to check in, only carry on bags. But this morning, landing in Manila, brother T and I found each other waiting for baggage at carousel 3. T had his daughter's science experiment, a hydroponic concoction set to grow in a beer bottle by our team of agricultural genetecists (don't ask me what for). I had a narra wood baul (chest) with mother of pearl inlay haggled and bought from the Maranaos in Aldevinco (sarado mano as they called my last hour purchase).

As we were comparing notes as to the oddity of our loot from Mindanao, the carousel started up and out came a Sony Vaio box with a chicken inside. The black feathers looked like they were designed into the box, which was very new. Tumitilaok pa the chicken. Talo kami ni T.

Image: Christmas Party Dancing, a good year. Congratulations to sister R.

Mercury Drug Promo

Hello Pampers Insect / Bee that met me at the foot of the Mercury Drug elevator. Isn't the Christmas rush in Manila the Weirdest?

This morning...

"In 1969, we were very free... so free as to be practically useless" -- Peter Schjeldahl
"The best thing about time is the nick of it." -- Anthony Lane

Today, I got up and did something I have not done since I had the hours to do so in Japan: I read purely for myself. A back issue of the New Yorker, a food issue. With R's blue kilometrico in hand, I read and happily underlined and underlined. Passages and quotes, marked because they meant something, because they read so well, because...

And made little notes to self, that will be forgotten soon enough.

I am back.