Trees in Davao City

This weekend I drove to Davao City, 197.3 km from Koronadal, according to Google Maps. I felt like it was time. I had accumulated enough driving experience to undertake what seemed to me a daunting project. In my younger years, when South Cotabato was part of Region 11 (then called the Southern Mindanao Region), I would often head to Davao City for regional contests. Those trips were torture, even with Bonamine. I did not help that the Yellow Buses we took smelled of stale air fresheners. The roads right after Malungon and before Sulop were always under construction. 

It came as a relief when South Cotabato eventually became part of Region 12, and Koronadal City had been made the regional center. I had missed Davao in a way. My aunt and cousin had lived there for many years before they relocated to Polomolok for convenience; my aunt now has severe dementia and needs round-the-clock care. Some friends live and work there. 

I could have taken the faster route—the Davao to Cotabato Road, which could have shortened the distance by around 50 km—but that was unfamiliar to me. I wanted to see if, many years later, I had overcome the trauma of travel-induced nausea by taking the bus route that passed through General Santos City, then Digos City, before Davao City. I also had to see a patient in General Santos. (And here's me talking about work-life balance!)

The trip was wonderful. I found the city charming. Manong and Nanay were with me. We played good music—a mix of opera, which keeps me awake, and some acoustics, Broadway and worship songs. The city has not escaped the fate of large Philippine cities—traffic congestion—but other than that, the people were kind, the taxi drivers were exceptionally honest, and the food was tasty. And there were trees. I stayed in a hotel along Quimpo Boulevard. Near my hotel were cafés and restaurants. And trees. I think trees are lovely. 

Elegant lady in an Osaka café

Manong Ralph, my cousin Hannah, and I explored the neighborhood to buy groceries and some coffee. We turned a corner because it had begun to rain. We were supposed to buy groceries at the nearby Seven-Eleven, but we were distracted when we saw a quaint, old store that smelled of fresh bread and warm caffeine. We went in, transported into a different realm of sorts. The store also smelled of old wood, like ancestral houses in the provinces, and a piano concerto—Chopin, perhaps?—was playing from an old stereo. Beside us were old men smoking, their eyes glued to their newspapers. Hannah, sensitive to smoke and smells, coughed violently. I told her to keep it low; otherwise it might be construed as offensive, as we were in a smoking area, after all. Meanwhile the elegant lady, who ran and possibly owned the store, could not keep still. She wiped the counter, washed the cups, kept everything spotless—all these as the she made drip coffee and toasted the bread with cheese for the three of us. 

Don't we all cherish these random, surprising, unplanned moments?

Hard Fork!

I couldn't put a finger on it, but I'd felt something was missing these past few weeks. I realized I hadn't listened to Hard Fork, and the friendly voices of my favorite hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton! I checked the Apple Podcast app and confirmed that while there were, in fact, new episodes from the show, they weren't showing up because I had to link my New York Times subscription to the podcast. I just did. Now the shows play seamlessly. 

I can't tell you how much I love this show. It's geeky and funny and so, so smart that it vicariously makes me feel like I understand cryptocurrencies and AI and many things scientific and technological in the world. 

And the opening theme of the podcast? I just love it. It's a close second to The Russell Moore Show.

Morning walk

Morning walk with Paul, most beloved dog of the neighborhood.

Pastil

I arrived early at university, too early, in fact, that the cafeteria was closed and the early risers, the handful of students that roamed the school, still had wet hair. I was starving. I waited for the canteen to open. Before I left the house, I only had a cup of coffee, which I ground and brewed myself, the preamble to my morning routine of reading Scripture and praying, taking a warm shower, toothbrushing, and picking the first clothes I could lay my hands on, explaining, by the way, my adventurous fashion sense—I consciously do not think about the pair of glasses I would wear, or my shirts and trousers.

I told the class beadle—my students' term for what we, in my time, called the liaison officer, meaning the person who cascades the information from the teacher to the class; like a spokesperson, in other words—that the class would begin at 8 am. I had an hour to kill. I cleared the seats of dew; it had rained the night before. I edited my lecture slides as the staff cooked the rice and fried the food. There were men delivering ice cubes, rushing off to the next store that ordered from them. Examination of the Abdomen, the title was. I wanted to edit it, make it sound more interesting, but I had no other ideas, and when the hot meal of spicy tuna pastil, the Maguindanaoan dish I had only recently discovered, I consumed it right away.

John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead

John Jeremiah Sullivan takes essays to a whole new level in his collection, Pulphead. My favorites in this collection: Upon This Rock, where he writes about Christian rock bands, and Peyton's Place, where he tells the story of how his home used to be a set for the series One Tree Hill. And Violence of the Lambs, which he said was career-ending. The topic is on animals getting back at human beings for the wrongs done to them. Year 2024 is proving to be a great reading year.

Updike's Licks of Love

John Updike on writing books (via Paris Review):

I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teenaged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. 

Spent the afternoon reading Licks of Love, a sequel to the Rabbit series. 

Ian McEwan said about Updike: 

Great sentence-maker; extraordinary noticer; wonderful eye for detail; great fondler of details, to use Nabokov’s phrase. Huge comic gift, finding its supreme expression in the Bech trilogy . . . He reminds us that all good writing, good observation contains a seed of comedy. A wonderful maker of similes. His gift was to render for us the fine print, the minute detail of consciousness, of what it’s like in a certain moment to be another person, to inhabit another mind. In that respect, Angstrom will be his monument.

A sampling of Updike's wonderful sentences: 

They hear the train lash at the loose-fitting elementary-school windows in a tantrum, in a world unhinged. (Context: Nelson meets his stepsister Annabelle, whose existence he had just recently learned about.)

These dysfunctional make him aware of how functional he is. They don't bother him as normal people do. There are boundaries. There are forms to fill out, reports to write and file, a healing order. Each set of woes can be left behind in a folder in a drawer at the end of the day. Whereas in the outside world there is no end of obligation, no protection from the needs and grief of others. (Context: Nelson works in a mental health clinic.)

This pale man in bifocals, the pride of the Harrison's, reminds her of a doctor—the same chilly neatness, the same superior air of having mastered a language only a few can speak. (Context: Annabelle, the newly discovered stepsister, is invited to a family dinner, where she is welcomed with mixed feelings.)

If I could go on and on, it will look like I'm impersonating Frank Bruni, who compiles the most amazing sentences in current publications. My point is: John Updike is a delight to read—on a sentence-level, much so on a paragraph-level. McEwan writes: 

When I feel my faith flagging in the whole enterprise of fiction – and all writers experience this – a few pages of Updike will restore my energies and optimism.

Great finds!

At Causeway Bay.