Green Building on Gil Puyat Street

Of course, it's an attempt to be green and it's good. But for me, it's not even good enough, considering how much fossil fuel you use to maintain it and how much fossil fuel is consumed by its surroundings. Still, an attempt is an attempt.

The Rainbow Tree

The Rainbow Tree had survived the blight it experienced in January last year when I travelled to Pagadian City and everyone forgot to water it.

When in November I left it again to embark on our trip with Sean and Ja to Intramuros. We went home to find most of its leaves wilting although the roots were still intact. So on December 21, I planted it where it should belong. 

It finally reached its destination in the rainforest after such a long travel from Laguna in 2021 or 2022 to Davao. 

Tomorrow when I see it again I should ensure that I inspect all its leaves. I should ensure that it will survive!

Traces of Pa

 

Life is too short for our mistakes

Sometimes we often take things for granted. We've been warned about this every time by so many people around us, by friends, neighbors or even strangers we just meet on the road but we never listen. Or, if we ever do, we think that we already have everything covered: We take care of our loved ones and we're not in anyway aware that we've been taking for granted anything or anybody at all.

When Pa was alive, I practically had all my focus on my boys, who were of course, very photographable and I often ended up editing, even deleting Pa's pictures. Don't blame me for this, I'm not alone. Check Lualhati Bautista's later novel that had an ageing woman as a narrator and that narrator also did this to her Pa.  

So, right now that he's gone, I've been looking for photos of Pa and feel so happy when I see even a parcel of him or his clothes in past family events. I hold on to these photographs, which make me remember clearly what happened to us on the day they were taken. 

This set of photographs I culled from my old file was taken on November 29, 2013, when I was so agitated and restless, prompting Pa to bring me to the boundary areas of his farm. [Actually, it was I who insisted because I did not know anything about the farm, where it began and where it ended]. But even after that and until now, I still don't know.  That was precisely the reason I was very agitated on that day.

2013 was a difficult year for me as a journalist. I could hardly make ends meet. I was doing odd jobs to compensate for my very low income but still those were not enough. 

These were taken with a Nikon point-and-shoot Coolpix S-3100 that I often carried in my pocket at that time. 

Less than two years after these photos were taken, on April 2, 2015, he would be taken to the hospital, groaning in pain.  
Pa would have turned 89 on January 15. He died on June 1, 2017, at age 82.  This post is dedicated to him. 

Mother Hood

In temperate countries, the hood is worn to help ward off the cold, said the priest after the baccalaureate mass.  Later, the academe has adopted it as a symbol...

That enlightened me a bit and called the pinning the most important thing I've ever done in my life. Then something suddenly hit me in the gut. 

Inside the mall

 

Agfa Building

I'm just fascinated by this old building standing unobtrusively, almost obscurely, along City Hall Drive and caught my camera on Independence Day. While waiting for the VIPs to arrive, my camera felt very impatient and explored the vicinity of the square some distance away. We were allotted a standing space without any chair to sit on so it really tested my endurance, especially as my hipbone was hurting that morning. So, the camera roamed around and happened to look up at the trees--there were about eight full grown trees left standing at the City Hall grounds, had they cut all the others? and beyond the trees, this particular building, so fascinating because it looked so old. What story could it be telling me? The drive on its ground floor was often crowded with people milling around, doing some business with City Hall, vendors hawking, or selling fruits like sliced papaya, singkamas, raw mangoes; or banana cues and later, siomai, binignit, used to line up the sidewalks outside the camera shops next to this building, photocopiers, laminating shops, photo studios and Davao's oldest bookstore, the Velasco Bookstore, lining down the entire stretch of the drive that ends at the Jaltan outlet where it meets Magallanes Street in the corner. 

Is Agfa Building the real name of the building? And why is it named Agfa in the first place? Yes, I know it had something to do with Agfa film but I want to know exactly what and how. 

Story that refuses to write

I am about to finish the story that I failed to write. It's so difficult.

I'm so lazy to sharpen my pencils

 Try again next time, Mr. Fagin.

Why I refuse to speak to my sister

Because the last time that we talked, she was in her bathroom, washing clothes because washing clothes  was more important to her than talking to me. Just talk because I'm washing clothes, she said in a dismissive tone, as if what I was about to tell her was something that would only need half her attention, like when you tell her, hey, I'm going to the market, do you need something for me to buy? No, that was not the kind I was trying to talk about. In my mind, I revised and reviewed several ways to tell her how I knew she was ostracising me, her kind of a power play, something that I saw other people do to me countless of times but never expected it from a family member.  Also, I wanted to ask her if she was talking about me in front of my boy? Why is my boy behaving like that? But I did not know how to bring this up so I talked about other things and realised we were replaying scenes we did in childhood; her being allowed to do everything she liked with impunity while I was not allowed to complain because I was older by one year and five months. Every time she did something to me, Ma, who was now in her sickbed, said I should not complain because I was the older one, I should just let my sisters be because they were younger. 

So, while she was yelling at me, "you always have what you wanted!" and me, dumbfounded, saying, "whaaat?" and could not even say a word. When I said, why are you not including me in your discussions and your plans? Both of you talking to each other, excluding me as if I were not a part of it. She replied, "Whaaat? Do I have to ask your permission to give the medicine to our Mother?" As if that was what I meant. So as she continued talking angrily in her bathroom, I quietly stood up, opened the door, walked away calmly and felt sharp pains shooting from my left arms and left shoulder as I reached the potholed streets a few paces from her gate. It was my body's way of telling me it was such a really terrible experience talking there with my sister.  I should not do it again.

Losing my notebook

As a young reporter in Cebu city, I did not cover City Hall. That beat used to belong to Sol, who always landed in the banner headline almost everyday. I did not cover Capitol, either. That beat belonged to Michelle, who also used to grab the headlines with Sol. I did not, could not cover the police beat, supposed to be the training ground for young reporters. Instead, I was made to cover the business and economic beat, not because I was a smart ass but because no one my age and fresh from school would dare cover such a beat. In fact, the one covering it was Pops, an octogenarian so aloof I was afraid of him. I treated him like a sage. He always had sums of money, running in the millions, on his head. I knew it because that was always what came out of his mouth when he stood talking with presidents of the Chamber, another scary thing I had to contend with. Pops used to wear a gray beret that covered his balding head. It gave him an air of style and prominence.

Reporters my age used to describe the business beat as difficult, boring, full of economic jargons one can't understand, numbers, figures, charts. How can you make a story out of mere charts and numbers, no narrative, from BIR, from SEC, or from Neda? But my editor taught me how to make the numbers talk. 

Even during those times, I already had the ability to sit straight quietly and listen as somebody explained to me the workings of the Norwegian ship.   Maybe, it was a result of some neglect I might have suffered in childhood because I could sit there for hours listening to a farfetched subject without complaining. Towards the end of the day, I would hurry back to the newsroom to write the story. My business editor would be waiting for it, as if it were a matter of life and death. She would ask as soon as I opened the door, "So, what's your story?" and I would stare at her, mouth open.

So, I'd never open the door again if I was not sure of the story. 

Our newsroom was on the second floor, so even before I could take the stairs, I would be composing the lead  and two supporting paragraphs in my head to give her a ready answer. Sometimes, I would go to the toilet before opening the newsroom door. The toilet was just near the newsroom door. You can write your lead and two supporting paragraphs in the toilet. 

I was still a dreamy-eyed and clumsy young reporter then. I never actually fully understood what was going on with my life. 

One afternoon, after spending long hours with Norwegian engineers piloting a shipping project in the city, I was already three steps to the newsroom door when I realised I no longer had my notes with me. I panicked. Where could have I left my notebook? Did I drop it in the jeepney? I was about to go back to chase the jeepney when I realised--how could I do that?! There were lots of jeepneys plying the city. How would I know which was the one I was riding? 

So, right then and there, I tried to recall the story. I loved those Norwegians so much. Just like me, they'd be easily dismissed as boring and they never spoke English that fast. They spoke English slowly, as unsure as I was. I could ask them over and over again about the basic concept of their machine and they'd never tire explaining it to me. So, more or less, I already had the story in my head. I can even approximate a quotation, knowing their Norwegian English well. Yes, it was really, really painful to retrieve jottings from a lost notebook in your own mind. It was hell. The story made it to the business page's banner headline the following day. But from then on, I really made sure not to lose my notebook again. 

 

Davao's changing skyline

 

Growing Rainbow in a pot

 

I'm growing the Rainbow tree in a pot in one corner of the terrace. I'm growing Rainbow in a pot. The pot with the growing Rainbow is in my terrace. I go there everyday--in the morning to water it and later, in the midst of my editing works, when I could no longer bear the tangle of verbs and nouns and phrases and feel I would suffocate, I'd knock at Sean's room to let me go to the terrace to see the Rainbow plant growing there. At different times of day, I invent excuses to go to the terrace to see the Rainbow tree growing. I'd like to bring it to my room so that I could sleep with it near my bed, if the Rainbow could take so much stress of being carried to my room inside the pot, its stem and leaves swaying before I could finally put it down on the floor. 

Working high up in the air [Flash Back Series 1]

 Have you ever tried working while you were high up on air? There was a beautiful sunset at your window but you can't even look out and down because you had to catch the deadline? 

It was crazy but that really happened to me. It was just like an experience of being there and not being there at the same time. 

On my way back to Davao, I was still in the airport in Cebu when some breaking news happened somewhere in the town of Datu Hoffer, Maguindanao del Sur. Four soldiers were ambushed on their way to the public market--or was it on their way home? The desk needed the story asap and I had to file it, by hook or by crook. It was lucky that the reporter was already in the area sending the story.  I needed to process it before deadline time. It happened that my flight would arrive at the next airport precisely at deadline time, so that meant I should be doing the actual editing right on the plane. So, there I was, boarding the flight, editing the story while the plane traversed the ocean at 150,000 feet altitude. I could not describe what I felt. It was like I was holding some fragile thing that I had no control of and anything wrong could happen any time--.

I thought about it now and I realised that the fragile thing I was thinking about was actually my life.

Growing a penis

You should have seen me the other day, my first day as a Blue Collar. I climbed the construction ladder and installed the cork screw somewhere near the rooftop. I didn't even know if that was called a cork screw or a hook screw, I have to ask Ja again. Ja has become my capatas. I elected him to that post because I said I had to learn to do things right before it was too late. 

He was a bit wary because he knew me as quite rebellious and unruly, someone "too argumentative," he doubted if I could even follow a simple instruction. But I told him my secret. I said I wanted to be a man doing some real manly job. I was already sick and tired of being a woman, I was totally done with it, I said. I even dragged him to the Ace Hardware to buy that ladder, the kind I saw being used by construction workers. It cost P2,999.95 and I told him it would be an investment for the future. He stared at me. To prove to him that I was serious, I even tried the ladder myself. I took off my shoes and asked the sales staff if I could climb it to see if I won't fall. I did not tell them that I had fear of heights. I climbed fast and made it straight to the sixth step, where I suddenly felt my chest tighten, my breath shortening. I could feel some tingling somewhere in my legs and my hands would have begun to shake and lost its grip but I tried to calm my hands down. I said, take it easy hands, you are the ones holding on to the ladder.

I managed to climb down and we began to ask if the ladder was too heavy to carry. They took the ones still wrapped in plastics and handed it to us. It was very light. You could just tie a red ribbon around it and gift it to me on Mother's Day. Karl should have handed it to me [instead of the chocolates he hurriedly bought from Seven Eleven], saying, Happy Mother's Day, Ma! I would have been so happy!

But the ladder cost that much. When I was about to pay, Ja again gave me that look. He dragged me outside the store and told me he would just borrow one from the staff of the hotel. 

So, early morning the following day, he brought in the borrowed construction ladder, already weather-beaten and well-used, with splotches of paint all over it. 

The whole morning, I was installing hook screws on the beam near the roof of the apartment terrace. It was quite a balancing act, another skill to master. When I was up there on its uppermost rung, I can't just move any way I wanted to because it was very easy to lose your balance.  Ja said he never expected me to be a good worker. He said I could follow instruction well and learned very fast. He said I would really thrive as a Blue Collar. Maybe, one day, I may even grow a penis.

I also installed lightbulbs on the ceiling--and all while the electric switches were on. We did not know whether the switches were off or on, so I told Ja it was better to pull down the plank because it was safer. But he would not do that. It was too much a bother for him to cut all electricity in the house, even for just a few minutes while I installed the bulbs. So, I would still be turning the bulb with my hands to install it in its socket when suddenly, it would light up. That's when we knew the switch was on. Every time that happens--lights lighting up the bulb I was holding in my hands, I would panic. The same feeling I get when it was already past deadline and the Manila desk was already asking for the story, but the story was nowhere to be found because of some missing crucial details that I still had to extract from sources who would not even answer the phone. That's the way it felt.

You should have seen me climb the ladder. It was a real milestone for me, a real social climb. We've already returned it when I realised I should have taken photo of me in it. I should have taken a real Selfie. 

But now, I'm at my desk, forcing myself to write. I can't write.

That's not what I was talking about

Just don't tell them that I told you this. But the place simply is an accident waiting to happen. It's so beautiful yes. But  look at those patches of ground. Are you not worried about the soil? If you plant it that way, how could you stop the soil from being washed away when it rains? When I told someone whether they were not worried about it all they could say for an answer was, No, we're not worried at all. If you actually go down there, you will find that the ground is still relatively stable. It's  not as fragile as it looks.  It's still very strong. 
But that's not what I was talking about. 

The Road to Kapatagan

After I left Upper, I made a detour to the mesmerising village of Kapatagan. This journey was actually about myself; about my never ending quest for that part of myself that I lost a long, long time ago. 

Resplendent tree

Actually, I've been telling anybody who cared to listen that I'd rather live in Upper, where the land is so expansive and neighbors are so far away, they will not be complaining about trees growing so tall they almost touch the sky. In that other place where I grew up, neighbors seem to regard trees as if they were enemies. 

They become very suspicious and cautious when they see a tree growing in your lot untrammelled. It was so infuriating when I heard someone say they were already quite afraid of a tree growing in our lot because it was already so tall, they were afraid it might fall. Then, there were those concerns about electric wires, or trees whose branches already overlapped into the next property. Once, a neighbor actually approached me saying I had to kill that tree growing high near our window because that was a Balete, a habitat for the enkanto. 
So, I said, I wouldn't want to live in that place where people regard trees like enemies. Or something they could cut for firewood. I would like to live in Upper, where I thought I could grow trees as much as I wanted to. I would cover the whole area with dipterocarp, I said. 
But the last time I was in Upper, I came upon somebody I did not know who told me this narra growing high along the roadside might already be interfering with the electric wires and might have to be cut off eventually. I was seething inside. 

Trip to Upper

I won't tell you where Upper is, but it's my beloved rainforest. When I got there, all I could hear was Jimmy saying, look at the clouds, there's nothing there, anymore, look, look! So, I looked up and saw clear, blue sky, the clouds had been carried away somewhere. It was very hot, the grasses had browned, the dust rose to one's nostrils and the wind was curiously stronger than usual. I could see the coconut trees straining to its onslaught. Was it really this windy here before? I asked myself but couldn't remember this kind of wind slamming my face, pushing the leaves to curl and branches of trees to sway. Jimmy said, grabe kahangin! 

When I turned around to the small trees I planted months ago, I noticed the Mindanao Eucalyptus dancing. No, maybe, it was not dancing. It was just trying to accommodate the wind. "The many things that the tree does to battle the forces of nature, an architect once told me. The many things the tree will do to keep its balance. I saw it in the Mindanao Eucalyptus tree dancing. I was afraid it was already straining itself to the limit. Is this already part of the ill effects of the El Niño? I asked myself and decided to look it up as soon as I get back to my life in the virtual world.

When the body shuts down

The first time that it happened, I was writhing in pain, spent the night bent over my stomach, foetal position, or body turned upside down hoping to make it go away.
As soon as the morning came, I managed to bring myself to the internist's clinic, where the internist asked me to go to the radiologist to take a couple of tests. I still remember the soothing hum of the air conditioner, the subdued lighting, the total silence  inside the radiology room, as the radiologist puzzled over what she saw on the computer, asking me over and over to locate the pain. 

"I could not see anything wrong with your body," she said. 

After a while, she asked, "Are you experiencing some kind of stress?"

When I replied, she refused to believe it. "How could you be so stressed in a job that you've been doing over and over again in the last 15 years?"

So, I told her.

Close to midnight last Thursday, after about three hours of waiting, I sat squatting on the floor maybe more than an hour into the press con when the first pain shot up, a signal from space. I made it a point to take a rest that night; and the following day, working up three or four stories at the same time, I knew that I was operating on a low energy level but still believed that my remaining energy could still last me through the end of those stories when I could finally declare a  rest. 

Unfortunately, though, just a sight of one message after the end of the third story, shot my cortisol level up to the roof.  Something must have burst there somewhere because, although, I managed to crawl myself to finish the fourth story, I was no longer myself afterwards.  

The pain is back again.