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.

A Chopin discovery!

As someone who's just beginning to play the piano, this news of discovering another Chopin composition is thrilling to me. I'm troubled when people say they like classical music because it's relaxing. There's some truth to it. Perhaps such people have only listened to some version of classical music which can be described as soporifics, the kind of sounds one can listen to before a restful sleep. These are the portions that also tend to be the more popular ones. But, to me, the best parts of classical music are the difficult parts, which stimulate and captivate and even trouble me. I am in awe of the difficulty of those pieces.  

I can only dream of playing something like a Chopin waltz one day, but I'm just happy I can read notes a little bit faster now and can play some church hymns, albeit with some difficulty. The piece I'm currently practicing on is Holy, Holy, Holy composed by Reginald Heber (1826) and appears in my second-hand copy of Hymns for the Christian Life. 

Read the entire article and listen to the Chopin waltz played by Lang Lang here.

Invisible Threads in Ani 42

A few weeks ago I got a message that my creative non-fiction piece, "Invisible Threads," will be published in the 42nd edition of Ani, the literary journal of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. I wrote about my experience of lockdown during COVID pandemic. Here's an excerpt. 

I opened the door to the small balcony of the 28-square meter condo unit to see what was going on. I shared the space with my older brother. He never asked me to contribute to the bills, realizing I had no money. I had just finished my subspecialty training in medical oncology two months ago. I was unemployed. I wanted to go home, but there were no commercial flights to Mindanao. I was locked down, trapped inside our space filled with our dead epidermis; stale air that got recycled each time we opened the windows; fresh, crumpled clothes that needed folding; new and secondhand books; and random academic clutter.

What greeted me outside were half-naked men in shorts, an interracial young couple who looked like TV personalities, mothers and grandmothers in daster, teenagers in basketball jerseys and oversized university t-shirts, and children with unspent energy, cheering, whistling, clanging their kitchen wares. In the subdued afternoon light, as the sun was about to set, I could observe my neighbors with greater clarity. There were human inhabitants to units I thought were empty. A twenty-something year-old man, who looked like a computer programmer, occupied the exact replica of our own place, except that it was in Tower 2. He was living a parallel existence and probably woke up to the same walls and cabinets, the same sliding door and brown sofa bed. Did he, I wondered, also have the washing machine inside the bathroom? I could make out the outlines of those who lived in Tower 1, which was built on the other end of the Olympic-sized pools. I looked for a classmate from med school who owned a place there. But I did not recognize any of the people I saw, did not know them by name, because this was Metro Manila, where neighbors in condominium units were bound to be strangers to one another. But that day, outside our balconies, we were knit together by a common, invisible thread and the realization that we were all in this together. In the act of banging our pots and pans, we were willing ourselves to hope.

Golden Valley, my contribution to Professor Marjorie Evasco's Frestschrift

I had the honor of contributing to a Festschrift for Prof. Marjorie Evasco. I wrote a short story entitled Golden Valley to honor an incredibly generous, gracious, and remarkable person.

Not far from where she lives is the edge of town, where the houses are far in between. On Friday afternoons, she takes a twenty-minute walk. Her only son, a doctor in another city, told her this was good exercise. The road is uphill, lined by old acacia trees that filter the sun. She hums to the tune of “Trust and Obey.” After passing the Carmelite convent, she takes the narrow side road to the left, marked by the crumbling sign, “Golden Valley, 500 meters away.” From there, the incline becomes progressively steeper. She pants for air, stops under the shade to drink from her water bottle, then proceeds as she has done religiously since he passed away.

Tolkien and Tatay

Tatay's birthday. He would've been 73, a perfectly happy man in God. In preparation for today I'd been remembering him, as I've always had—but to a greater degree, I suppose. As you know, when you lose a loved one, birthdays and death anniversaries take on revered spaces on your personal calendar. Hardly ever a day passes by without a thought of him visiting me. Those recurring moments used to be bitter because of the pain of loss, then became bittersweet because of time. Now, six years later, they are just sweet to me. I imagine that if I could perfectly remember my dreams, he'd also be there, with his perpetual smile and laughter, which, to this day, people still remember. If you see me and my brothers, you will notice that we got our hearty chuckle and stupid, self-deprecating (in only the good sense) humor from him. 

What helps me remember him is the treasure trove of letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited and selected by Humphrey Carpenter). Tatay was not a writer of letters but I could hear him—see remnants of his fatherly advice—in Tolkien's letters to his sons. He was, like Tolkien, a man who found deep friendship with his children. Tatay was a keeper of close friends. After his early morning visits to the farm, he'd spend the day at home, tending to repairs and feeding his brood of sons, take an afternoon nap, then head out for afternoon coffee with his kumpares. Often he'd bring one of us with him, usually the gullible third-born, because Tatay's enjoyment of the afternoon wouldn't maximal without any of his family around. After coffee, he'd always buy something on his way home—pan de sal or cinnamon bread from the KCC bakery, or whatever he could find his hands on—then regale Nanay and his children with stories over the dinner table. He insisted that we all eat together. "Hindi na magpatawag!" he'd say, because our young eyes were glued to the TV, indifferent to the preciousness of the after-school routine, unable to grasp that one day we'd cease to hear his speaking voice, for he would leave his terrestrial world ahead of us, leaving a perpetual emptiness in our hearts. 

But today, we remember. 

Happy birthday, Mervyn!

My dear friend Mervyn celebrates his birthday today. This was taken sometime in 2014, during our Pay Ward rotation, having just started Internal Medicine residency. May you be safe and and dry, brother! 

Bagets na bagets

Prof. Marj and Joti look radiant and intelligent, while I'm in a black hat and a backpack. Why did I send this photo to Ms. May? I wish I'd sent another one—even the old one, where I was in a white coat and looked like a proper doctor. But the instruction was to submit a recent photo. I'm afraid I haven't had any of my portraits taken recently. This was what came up when I browsed through my private Flickr cloud. My high school classmate Willie took the photo under the trees in a library in Taipei. The heat was sweltering. The photo doesn't show my sweat. Afterwards Willie, Topher, and Kat would go inside, comforted by the first-world airconditioning, pretending we could read the books in Mandarin. 

Congratulations to the 10 fellows of the Fifth La Salle National Creative NonFiction Writers’ Workshop for Health Care Professionals & Medical Interns

The list is out! Congratulations to all our fellows this year!

The Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center (BNSCWC) is pleased to announce the ten writer-doctors who have been selected as fellows of the Fifth La Salle National Creative NonFiction Writers’ Workshop for Health Care Professionals & Medical Interns to be held online from October 30 to November 28, 2024:

Allene P. Allanigue
Victor J. S. Baron
Angelica G. Espejo
Myra G. Gahid
Ian Leoj M. Gumban
Christi Annah V. Hipona
Leonard D. Javier
Anthony Q. Rabang
Adrian Emmanuel D. Teves
Frederic Ivan L. Ting

This Workshop is part of the BNSCWC’s efforts to boost collaborations and critical-creative exchanges between scientists and artists; to train health care professionals in the art of life-writing; and to give value to the stories written by health care professionals in caring for our people and in building the nation.

The hybrid workshop shall consist of eight synchronous sessions on Wednesday and Thursday evenings (6:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. via Zoom) across four weeks. Part I, from October 30-31, 2024 will consist of lecture-discussions on the Art of Writing and Close-Reading Creative Nonfiction. Part II, from Nov. 20-Nov. 28, will consist of workshop discussions on the fellows’ submitted creative work. The culminating program on Nov. 29, 2024 will be held onsite at De La Salle University.

For more information, please email bnscwc@dlsu.edu.ph.

Why typewriters are having a renaissance

I showed some young visitors from church—young, meaning people in their "twenties"—my small typewriter collection. For Abby, a teacher, it was her first time to play with a typewriter. It fascinated her. Leklek, an engineer, said she saw some typewriters before. Jai, also a teacher, said it reminded her of old government officers—barangay halls, for instance, where typewriters remain the mainstay of generating certificates and documents. 

My ihado, Lance, once asked me, "Sulat mo 'ni, Ninong?" I gave him a typewritten note for his birthday. My message was about him honoring his mother and praying and reading his Bible every day. I said I wrote it with a Smith Corona; I would show the machine to him one day. 

And I remember Hans and Haley, Pastor Henry's grandchildren, who rush to all corners of the house and notice everything. Our dog Paul is always delighted by their presence. These kids, too, love my typewriters. 

They're amazing machines, manufactured many years ago, meant to be hammered and used every day. I hope I do them justice. 

Congratulations!

Congratulations, Dr. Rey Isidto (creative non-fiction) and Dr. Elvie Razon-Gonzalez (short story), for winning the two first prizes for the Rotor Awards for Literature! My claim to fame is getting to join them during a tour of Bohol island many months ago. 

Each of us is marked by the memories of words spoken to us.

Alastair Begg on the power of words: 

Each of us is marked by memories of words spoken to us. Perhaps we reflect on the joy of a child's first words or still feel the bitterness of a friend's hurtful words. From our earliest days, we learn how to use words both to bring harm and to bring gladness. King Solomon was right: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21).

Lake Street Dive!

I discovered Lake Street Dive through their interview with David Remnick in the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm a huge fan. My favorites: Hypotheticals, and Shame, Shame, Shame.  They have such great song titles! Their songs make me so happy that I listen to them early in the morning on my way to work, or after-lunch commuting, or late night drives back home. 

I’ve been playing out a lot of hypotheticals in my mind
I’ve been writing your name down next to mine
Been imagining all the things you and I could do oo oo


I’ve seen all the possibilities in my dreams
You’re alone when you should really be next to me
Baby, let’s not wait and see

I played the song to my mother, who said, "Nami man. Pero daw kabudlay kantahon."

My Kindle Oasis

I don't want to describe my feelings toward the Oasis as "love-hate" but that's the most concise, accurate, and precise way to capture my sentiments. It's a near-perfect device, if not for the lousy battery that I have to recharge every one or two days—that, with the wifi and bluetooth turned off, and the lights at level 13. Compare that with my trusted Kindle Paperwhite, whose battery lasts me weeks. I loaned the Paperwhite to my mother, who now uses it to read John Calvin's The Institutes. 

I'm reading The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners edited by Lauren Groff. I discovered this collection because I'd just read The Haunting of Hajji Hotak by Jamil Jan Kochi in The New Yorker. Terrific storytelling. Now a fan, I looked him up and discovered that his story appears the 2023 O. Henry anthology. My favorites in that collection so far include Dream Man by Cristina Rivera Garza, The Locksmith by Grey Wolf LaJoie, Happy Is a Doing Work by Arinze Ifeakandu, Elision by David Ryan, and Xífù by K-Ming Chang. 

Now, where is my charger?