Father

It doesn’t happen often –very rarely in fact—but there are days when I miss my father. Strangely enough, missing him isn’t at all like missing friends or other loved ones. I don’t sit around thinking dreamily about how great it would be if those guys were here. We’d be arguing about this and making fun of that. Oh, what fun. 

I don’t have such day dreamy thoughts about my father. I can’t even imagine him in this cramped little room of a flat where my mother and I now live. When I’m blogging and my mother is watching her Korean dramas, what would he be doing? Having passed about six years ago, he just doesn’t seem to fit into this new world where neighbors aren’t good friends and people read the news online.  He used to struggle desperately with a cell phone and only agreed to carry one so he could send me text messages.  I knew he found it very hard to use because his messages were always in caps and sometimes preceded by a couple of blank messages, failed attempts at typing in some text apparently. 

My father probably had to go.   And he went indeed with more pain than we’d hope but what are you going to do? That’s life. Or more accurately, that’s death.

The passing of my father was not at all difficult to accept.   He was in such pain in the last days of his life I almost did not recognize him. His strength was gone along with his patience and reason.  The grieving process was easier than I thought as well. Immediately after his death, there were so many who genuinely mourned his passing that I was sort of preoccupied by their grief, a bit curious and somewhat surprised.  People I’ve never seen in my life cried in my living room, shoved money into my palms and offered me and my mother words of condolence.  I’d be like, “Who was that?” And she’d be like, “No idea.”

For many who knew him, my father was a jolly fellow, the kind of person whom you would always be happy to see and invite over for a meal.  

For my mother, he was a companion, an occasional headache and the kind of husband who would insist on buying chocolate cake for her birthday even when times were hard and she would rather not spend on luxuries like cake. 

For me, he was the guy who shined my shoes in morning, made my meals, took me to the dentist, fixed my broken things, sent me money and picked me up having come from God knows where.  He taught me how to watercolor (although I never really got that), lent me the first ultra thick novel I ever read (entitled “The Eight”), and yeheyed with me when after eons, I was finally done.  He was my father and his greatest gift to me was being present to raise me.

And I miss him these days.  I feel like an aching hole in my chest is being stretched open by feelings of regret, guilt, frustration, need, loss and disappointment all fighting to come out.  Oh, but what’s done is done and that’s a scary place to get into.  At the end of the day, I will manage.

Just once in a while though, I get this need to be with the person who taught me how to cross the street just so I could glance back one more time and ask if I should take a step forward already. Am I going to be all right?  All I need to do next is to trust that answer and with full confidence, soldier on.

Margaret Heffernan: Dare To Disagree

"But it strikes me that the biggest problems we face, many of the biggest disasters that we've experienced, mostly haven't come from individuals, they've come from organizations, some of them bigger than countries,many of them capable of affecting hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives. So how do organizations think? Well, for the most part, they don't. And that isn't because they don't want to, it's really because they can't. And they can't because the people inside of them are too afraid of conflict.

In surveys of European and American executives, fully 85 percent of them acknowledgedthat they had issues or concerns at work that they were afraid to raise. Afraid of the conflict that that would provoke, afraid to get embroiled in arguments that they did not know how to manage, and felt that they were bound to lose. Eighty-five percent is a really big number. "

American Idol Blog

From Dulce to Aegis to the most recent product of our own local singing contests (done on our own terms), we've always known that we, as a race, sing like crazy. Why the desperation for an American stamp of approval? That, right there, is probably where we burn.

At some point, we just have to stop measuring ourselves by other people's standards and learn to love music the way we make it with or without international approval. To be told that we do a pretty good Whitney Houston has got to stop being a compliment even though we really do. We make us second rate.

One day, another white boy, who couldn't sing half as well as we could, would be able to move a crowd more powerfully than we could. Shocked, we would once again cry in protest and say to each other "but we sing better?!" And because we in fact do, we would agree among ourselves that it must be white supremacy. 

The blacks with their own brand of soul have overcome this so-called white domination so we really can't hide behind that forever, can we?  The blacks have created for themselves a very special niche in music, one which has been astounding people from all over the world whatever the color.

All the Filipino singers who tried and miserably failed to make it big abroad lost their chance when we decided that Aegis and April Boy Regino are bakya and that we absolutely love Mariah Carey.  

I am Filipino.  Nothing ups my alcohol consumption more than a full blast "Luha" playing in the background if for no other reason that it speaks to me in my own language. Sung five times in a row in full power, perfect melody and sans the vocal gymnastics we never needed to manufacture soul, I'll remember every shitty thing that's ever happened to me and I just  might decide to slash my wrist as a dramatic expression of my unspeakable pain. If you doubt me, try listening to Aegis drunk. 

But somewhere along the way, we decided that this was uncool.

The white boy has a little bit of that unidentifiable quality which we unknowingly got rid of. He didnt wake up one day and said, "hey, I can sing like crazy. I'm going to sing." He struggles with the singing and he knows it. He probably just stumbled onto a guitar one day, liked it, did it more, sang songs with it, did some gigs, tried out and won. And he won it fair and square if for no other reason than he sings for himself first, for the music next and for the American crowd last. 

We've been singing for the American crowd even on Philippine stages. And music with all its glorious pain, exhilarating triumph, consuming love, undying hope and sunshiny happiness has decided not to reward us with its magic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRkntoHkIE

Madunot

Four events: First, improper waste disposal and that fierce southwest monsoon which recently hit the country have led to yet another devastating flood in Metro Manila. 

Second, apparently the government is serious in its efforts to promote the mother tongue taking a cue from studies which show that kids learn better when taught in their own language. Schools are now teaching Hiligaynon in class.

Third, my coworker in charge of cleaning up after us is getting pretty tired of seeing plastic and tin cans in bins marked "bio-degradable" so he changed the marking to "madunot" which is Hiligaynon for bio-degradable.

Fourth, I was going to throw plastic in that same bin (I always do. Sorry.) but stopped when I saw that marking, “madunot,” on it and looked for the other trash bin meant for plastics.  I met that brilliant coworker on the way out of the pantry to ask if the marking made a difference. Apparently, nobody throws plastic there anymore.

There is always one good thing in one day and one odd lesson to learn.