Home

After unpacking, handing gifts away, getting over the jet-lag and finally getting the first restful sleep after the long arduous journey, the traveller gets up to face once again the daily grind. It was Roxanne who asked while she drove me to the airport for the fight home: "What's an average day for you back home?" 

It is not a question that can be answered completely well. That is understandable. There is no average day. Each day is different yet also the same. One gets up early in the morning to get the kids ready for school if its not a weekend, goes off to work to deal with the load piling up in the office or in the studio, waits for the clock to go 4 or 5 or 6 p.m. depending on the particular day of the week, picks up the kids, plays with them a bit, deal with homework, puts them to bed in time, if you're lucky, to go out on a date to keep alive friendships and then finally to sleep. 

But there are nuances. There is the understandable rumor you had immigrated instead of just left for a fews weeks to visit kin in a foreign country. It is a rumor that will die in time. It does not bug you as much as the bombardment of meeting schedules, notice of deadlines for proposals that need to be forethought and written. You want to deal with these early in order to find time to face more meaningful tasks. Your dog "Rasta" and rabbit "name forgotten" had died while you were away. They tiled the wall for the upstairs toilet and bath but left out the valve for the shower. Your car now has a new dented fender. You have close relatives needing care and visiting.

The journey is still inside your system. It has not completely gone into memory. There is a feeling inside you quaint and special yet familiar because you've felt it before. It is the feeling of coming home after being away much longer than you should have. But this does not come without its opposite. Perhaps you should have lingered or done this and that. Your mind does a quick accounting of things unfinished, regret that does not come without a tender smile.

Now is the best time to ask yourself: Have I been changed by all these?

Of course, you must have. People change with each passing day even without moving an inch from where they were. But what is the quality of this change? Are you dissuaded from a previous direction or become strengthened towards the set course? My change has to do with the experience of time. If in the old days I could say I have to value my time more, now I say I have to do that to a degree of despair. I have to start doing only the most important things.

I have to learn to be more attentive to my kids. I have to start growing with them instead of just watching them grow from a socially acceptable and instituted distance. I have to relearn from them the ability to play in the real sense of playing. For if I have learned anything from all these it was that I have been working too hard. The words I use to define survival all reflect it. The act of physical exertion had become for me sport and exercise. The act learning new things had become for me education instead of discovery and the joy of solving an intriguing puzzle. The act of living had become for me earning a living and work when I could have simply just plotted a course that would require me to do only meaningful things. Inside me I am beyond half certain that I could do that and still earn a living sufficient for me and my family.

But such a resolve cannot be actualized without risks. Risk is inherent to any act of moving, whether through distance or space or time. Planes can crash, boats sink and cars smash into each other. Lightning can hit you while you walk. It is the same, of course, with dreams, especially those we acquire late in life when we begin to count our time in shorter units.

Before I left on this last journey I decided to cut my hair. The reasons are not as important as the irony that it was only after I had done this that I learned to let my hair down absolutely without self-consciousness. Free.  July 10, 2009, Kinutil/CDN

This is/is not Heaven

We were watching the American Independence Day celebrations at the Hollywood Bowl in California, 3 cousins, 3 sibling and I, when the question hit me. It was right around the time John Fogerty (used to be of Credence Clearwater Revival) sang "Rolling on the River" when it hit: Is this or is this not Heaven?

I have only been in America for just over a month so I certainly cannot answer this question with a high measure of certainty. Even so, there's a lot to be said for first impressions. So what do I think?

America is a do-it-yourself culture. You either do it yourself or seek expensive help from a Mexican. 2 salient if controversial points emerge from that observation. The first has to do with the availability of tools and material kits to fix everything from plumbing to floors. This is do-it-yourself (DIY) heaven. But one must have a bit of aptitude for mechanics to do-anything-yourself well and so it is not surprising that some do-it-yourself projects end up in more skillful hands. The Mexicans are like most of us Filipinos. The colloquial term is "all-around". They do carpentry, masonry work, fix cars, etc.

But terms like "Mexican" or "Latino" cannot help but remind us of the issue of race. Is there a consciousness to race here? One can sense it although people do not really talk about it openly. Which is just as well. Racial tension is seems almost inevitable in a place where immigrants slowly begin to represent the majority of Americans. Spanish is spoken all over aside from English. At Hollywood Bowl I observed Asians, especially Filipinos, were everywhere. They spoke mainly Tagalog though Bisayan is also common. Only in a single isolated incident with my sister's neighbor did I encounter racial bias here. But then this "ugly" neighbor can hardly be considered representative of the culture itself.

Thus, in a sense, although racial sensitivity has not disappeared here, this is a kind of racial Heaven where prejudice is simply considered unacceptable and even illegal. People do consider themselves primarily American but this does not mean they do not try as best they can to root themselves to a home culture. Thus, there are Filipino neighborhood associations which celebrate the common fiestas from back home. Filipinos trade recipe for Filipino dishes although they are not at all averse to eating steak cooked the way Americans like it, which is grilled just so. 

But, of course, the main issue to resolving the question, Is it or is it not Heaven? will have to do with the issue of lifestyle. Who has the better lifestyle? The Filipino in his home country or the one working abroad?

Californian Filipinos work very hard. Sometimes they do Sunday shifts. But they also make more money than they could in the home-country. Suddenly, a house and cars and electronics for entertainment suddenly become affordable, not just affordable. they are also a necessity. There is a lot of motive to work harder here. American culture places a greater value to time and productivity. You can make more by working harder, and so this is definitely a working-person's heaven.

But the pace of life is also as fast as traffic on the freeways, nothing below 55 miles an hour. 65 on the average. Californians do not have a well developed public transportation system. So they do spend quite a lot of time driving themselves to and from somewhere. Places and kin are ordinarily far from each other. And so it is much lonelier here definitely than back home. It is such a loneliness as would strike the first-visitor like a slap of cold air. I imagine I would have to be absolutely motivated by something to survive here more than a short month. So how do the expatriate Filipinos deal with it? Some live alone in  big houses. They do have friends but most of the time there is only work.

I suppose you could get used to it. After staying here long enough developing your own network of support and social interaction this could become home to you. And if I cannot imagine myself staying longer here than I did, I suppose that could be because home was somewhere else, indeed, the place from where I came from and to where I must return.

In the end Heaven is a purely personal and relative concept of place. Heaven is where we feel most at home.

Something

I remember the first time my late mother travelled to the United States. Consuelo Lozada Fernandez was a cancer survivor. After her mastectomy she went to visit her daughter Margie who immigrated here to work as a nurse. She stayed a few months and came back with something for all of us, a pair of shoes, dark glasses, toys, clothing and gizmos. In time, we in my family started calling these things "something", what else? Thus, whenever Mommy went on her many visits here, we always asked her to bring "something" for us. And whenever she returned we always waited for our "something" from her.

It seemed she always wanted to bring us something. She gloried in it. Straight from the airport, she would proceed to open her boxes and large baggage and pull out what ever "something" we asked from her on her departure, a tennis racket, the latest Timberland shoes, and then the regular T-shirts, pants, etc. It took a while before I would come to see the whole process as a psychology, a study of how we think and behave.

It is for us Filipinos part of the ritual of traveling to the US. On the way there, we load ourselves with boxes of pasalubong, dried mangoes, Lola Pureza's Peanut Broas, regular broas, dried fish, dried squid, ginamus, in the most extreme of absurdities even "silhig tukog", corn grit; and once, in the unfortunate case of my mother bringing something in behalf of a relative, a real authentic Philippine bolo, which appropriately enough did not make it through airport security. On the way home, we bring boxes of things: memorabilia of our visit here, clothing, shoes, electronics, canned goods, art work, cell phones, food, chocolate, any miscellaneous anything and everything, it seems. This, despite the inherent hardship of traveling halfway around the globe with boxes and overweight luggage. It seems only we, Filipinos, do it. 

Why?

It would have something to do with the availability of things. There are, of course, Filipino stores but they do not carry everything. For instance, dried danggit. It is not easy to find here, neither are those tocino bulad that is so easily purchased in Taboan. Otap is common. But Visayans are quick to say they are not really otap unless they're made by Titay's in Liloan. Lola Pureza's Peanut Broas is not sold anywhere in the Filipino stores so they are of high emotional value for Visayans, especially. Other Filipinos, I suppose, have they're own menu of treasured products. We bring a bit of the "old country" when we bring these for our kababayans who have been here for a long time. The act of bringing something from home becomes an act of bringing with us memories of home, whether bottled or boxed.

At the other side of of the spectrum, there are also quite a number of things you can find here that cannot be found in the home country. But the operational thing is usually the disparity of value and price. Pharmaceutical drugs are definitely cheaper here, the more so, for our countrymen who work here. And we have an uncanny ability to identify the outlets where things are generally cheaper and where they are on sale. You could, of course, buy them regularly priced at the "designer" stores but Filipinos search far and wide for outlets where the same products are sold at big discounts. They cut up coupons from newspapers and search the web for a bargain. This is information that is regular fare of conversation.

Filipino expatriates love to shop. I suppose they hold in the back of their heads a memory of how hard it was to able to afford the things that do come here cheaper. For instance, LCD television or the latest model laptop. The Mac laptop is currently being sold here with the iPod Touch and a Canon printer put in for free, for as long as you can present a student ID. Not a very hard thing to get for a Filipino.

And we work very hard, so we shop to distress. Margie now works as a nurse practitioner doing rounds most of the day for a hospital that specializes in treating patients with eating disorders. There is a bit of irony here when you consider she comes from a country where the greater portion of the population starve not because of a psychological condition. But in between patient calls she would bring us to 99 Cents stores and malls where shops like Oakleys that were doing closing out sales. And there were many. If not that, we look for yard sales, second hand sales and pawnshops. They abound in places like Las Vegas. But you have to be good at it.

In the run of time, Filipino expatriates find their garage too filled with the best intentions the car wont fit in anymore. A filled-up garage is a perennial problem here. It is almost an affliction. And so the arrival of kin from home becomes opportunity to unload. The balikbayan boxes fill up easily. Bringing them home is akin to bringing home "the wealth of the Indies". But indeed, one will have to carry the wealth of the Indies with him even at the risk of paying a fortune on airline overweight charges. And one can take it to a level of absurdity. As when my cousin Jaime slaughtered his whole flock of homing pigeons and stuffed them frozen into his luggage after he retired and decided to spend more time home in the Philippines. To be fair, he did try to keep from having to do this by taking his pets to the desert and once there releasing them. But they were homing pigeons and so got home ahead of him. 

The punch line came finally when his luggage got lost in transit somewhere in Hongkong. It came to Cebu 3 days late. The baggage section at MIA frantically called for him to recover his bag as it was stinking up the place. You have to admit. That is something.

Obama on Iran

The news here had orbited for the past days around Michael Jackson's death by cardiac arrest and the case of the South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's admission that his disappearance of 5 days was connected to an extra-marital affair. These are news that immediately take hold of the average American's attention. They love show biz here. Thus, the news on Iran and Pres. Obama's reaction to the unrest there slid immediately from public attention. Which is a bummer as far as I'm concerned. It is the more important piece of news having long term and far reaching significance.

The rash of post-election public outrage in Iran and the brutal government effort to put it down involving a concerted news blackout, public beatings and arrests and the death of a female student protester elicited partisan reactions vocalized through American press. The Republicans by and large were pressing for a stronger reaction from Obama. They accused him of being soft on the "enemies of freedom".  Obama on the other hand stuck to a more "guarded" position expressing concern for the deaths and arrests of demonstrators but sticking by the position that this was a problem internal to Iran. He spoke in general terms and was more inclined to provide details for his proposal to reform the American Public Health System by establishing public health insurance system especially for those who heretofore could not afford health insurance.

But Obama's reaction to the trouble in Iran is easy to understand. It certainly is not how George W. Bush Jr. would have reacted. The Republicans wax nostalgic for their old leader. He would have loved and made good use of this opportunity to make rhetoric that would fire-up American conservatives. He would have needed this to justify the torture of POWs in U.S. prisons and the various infringements on civil liberties. That Obama did nothing of this sort only proves that finally we have an American president who is trying to move America forward from the old ways.

Here is an American president who is holding his guns instead of going for it on impulse. Last week, Obama spoke in Egypt. The speech was not intrasigient. Instead it attempted to appeal to Islamic moderates and in the process isolate the militant extremists. Of course, it drew immediate ire from American conservative Republicans who still believe that the best way to defend themselves from terrorists is by scaring everyone with their readiness to use military force at the slightest instance. It is a hopelessly forlorn position whose validity has never ever been evidenced by history. 

Obama's position on the Palestinian homeland issue was particularly important. For once, an American president had expressed sympathy for the establishment of a secure homeland for Palestinians. This would, of course, bother conservative American Jews. But Obama was clear that the Palestinian movement must be peaceful. He had sufficient credibility to make this claim. We are convinced that here finally is an American president who is ready to attempt to "fix" the problems of the Middle East by listening to all parties who were ready to resolve their issues through peaceful means. It is admittedly only a first step but it is a serious first step. And why is this any different from George W. Bush's position on the Middle East? George W. Bush did not have the moral credibility to make a proposal of that sort even were he inclined to do that.

The view that all Muslims are inherently militaristic is erroneous. Indeed, there are moderates all over the Muslim world and Obama, given his experience in Indonesia, knows this. The message in Egypt was generally to get them on the side of peace. I believe the public demonstrations in Iran protesting against the election results is a good indicator that Obama is getting his message across in the Middle East. It is admittedly a leap of logic. You would be right to go so far as to call it a leap of faith. But consider that for the first time since the Iranian revolution which installed the Ayatollah Khomeini into power, young Iranians are moving in defiance of the theocracy. At the very least it is encouraging for us who believe that the final solution for peace in the Middle East must come only through the process of liberalism and modernization.

So why shouldn't Obama openly intervene in Iran as the Republicans have claimed he should? He should not intervene because that would be imperialistic. In which case, the Ayatollah's would be proven right that the troubles in Iran have resulted because of Western Media and the acts of the American Satan. Soon the Ayatollah's will realize that they face a paradox. They need to get their young people educated. But that cannot come without a price. With education comes the thirst also for civil liberties. Such liberties as are allowed all civilized and educated peoples worldwide. The Ayatollahs will fall just as surely as did the Berlin Wall. But Obama knows it is neither his nor America's job to make them fall. That is a job best left to time.

For once we have an American president worthy of the world. June 29, 2009, Kinutil/CDN

Mission San Juan Bautista

San Juan is related by us to water. It usually falls on a day of the year when the tide is quite high. The beaches teem with people and for good reason. The sea takes on a cerulean blue color inviting all who come near to jump in and swim. It makes perfect sense that it should partner with the saint who baptized Jesus. It also makes perfect sense that on this day we conspire to get ourselves wet somehow, somewhere.

But we are on a trip through Northern California and have been these past few weeks guilty of being less than faithful with our religious duties. On Saturday we left on a car-trip which would bring us through wine country via the picturesque town of Solvang with inhabitants who keep alive their Danish roots. Our first target is Salinas where our cousin Jaime Lozada resides. He has prepared a steak dinner for us. Lunch the next day will have for its main course, "Binas-uy". This fare is based on "Bas-uy" a broth known only to Visayans of especially fine and uncommon taste. 

It is made of a mixture of tenderloin beef, heart, liver and the thinner intestinal lining of beef, which we call "libro". The true Bas-uy contains beef-blood squeezed and ground by hand. The secret is to hold in one's hands strands of lemon grass. But this dish will work only if the blood is extremely fresh, which is why it is served only near slaughter houses. This is also why they call this food "Kilawin" in Antiquiera, where last I partook of it at that town's wet market.

Except for the fresh blood, you can find most of those ingredients here in California where they are sold in Mexican and Filipino grocery stores. The Dumanjuganon Binas-uy does not include blood. Thus, it is of particular significance here in the United States whenever and wherever we congregate and feed. To this special lunch which 

Cousin Jaime and wife Lynlin shoo us away to have the time and space to prepare this special fare. It was a Sunday and so it was only fitting that we should include in our itenerary the Mission San Juan Bautista Church. It was worth a visit, we were told, as it would have a bit of a similarity to the Baclayon church in Bohol where I and Estela, to whom I am married, once, many years ago joined a church restoration project.

Indeed, Mission San Juan Bautista was a beautiful little church, wonderfully restored and 200 years old. But the grace of serendipity came with the fact that when we got there we found to our joyful surprise that we were on time for the Sunday Mass and that it was the mass to officially celebrate the town-fiesta in honor of Saint John the Baptist. After mass, they had a procession of town's people including young kids in native costume dancing something very much similar to our Sinulog.

This mission church is set in a great expanse of plains disappearing into the horizon dotted only with small hills not so unlike what we see in Bohol. It is mostly grazing land disturbed only by farms growing vegetables and fruits, including grapes. This was undisturbed native-American land until the Franciscans came to establish this Catholic colony centuries ago. Now, the religion has incorporated into the local economy bringing in tourists and holding together the communal bonds. And yes, that does remind us of home.

Indeed, We were surprised to attend a Catholic mass here where the church was actually packed with people who obviously kept for themselves a reverent faith and enjoyed an obviously functioning social-religious life. In a sense, that cannot help but reinforce inside us our own sense of faith and establish our own connection with these people, obviously strangers in a distant land yet so similar. They prayed the same way and in a sense we share the same past.

The church indeed reminded me of Baclayon Church in the sense of it being a building which is part of our heritage. But I also thought about people, especially Catholic people and how they still persist in a time where faith and reverence seem almost ill-fitted in the inexorably changed and changing world. Where is all these going to? Where are we headed? Do these questions have to do with the very concept of baptism? 

Well, For us travelers anyway, this Sunday has acquired for itself all the necessary symbols which point us to the idea of death becoming renewed life: the drum beating which summons the old beliefs now re-enacted by children in towns planted across the globe, even the story of the broth we will be eating for lunch and its components, the blood and the water. These remind us of John wandering in the wilderness, and on the banks of sacred river finally coming across the man who would be saviour to us all. He baptizes him with water. 

I do also miss the sea and how beautiful this day would also have been back home. June **, 2009, Kinutil/CDN

 

Finding Your Way

What do you learn most from traveling? It's finding your way through things. 

A GPS is quite a necessity here in California, most especially so when my brother, Londong, and I drive off to buy things by ourselves. A GPS is a small machine that helps you find your way on the road. It is no bigger than a calculator but you can punch into it an address or a destination and it gives you a map and a lady's voice which tells you where your next turn will be. The voice is rather mechanical and stern and it can be quite irritating at times but it can keep you from becoming entirely lost in a place you've never been to.

But you have to remember it is only a brainless machine. It can tell you the proper exit out of the freeway. If you miss a turn it will say to you "recalculating, keep left, exit highway 51" and so forth. But it will not know the state of the traffic on its suggested route. Neither can it tell if it is taking you through the roughest parts of town. If you do not know what you're doing it can take you in circles. And there are addresses it does know yet so you may still get lost if you do not know what your doing. But one gets better at it over time.

Jim Bateson, my friend and brother in law, has a better way of finding his traveling routes. He googles and prints out roadmaps for himself. This way he saves himself the consternation of having to listen to the GPS lady's voice. After a while of listening to the lady recalculate and bring you into traffic jams and the most dangerous parts of town all the time, you begin to understand why this makes so much more sense. Google maps are apparently easy to access. A lot of people swear by it. But you have to have computer savvy.

Computer savvy is quite a requirement here. The California culture is centered on the personal vehicle. There are only a few buses and very few taxies on the road. In all cases, they are unbelievably expensive. So everyone drives whether the latest model Harley Davidson or the most beat-up Japanese car.  Do you want to shop for a good deal? The fastest and cheapest way is to google the item or the shop before you even leave the house. That's what the good shoppers do here, compare prices on the internet or find out which shop has special sales. Is the item cheaper on Costco or is it Best Buy, in Ventura or in San Bernardino? Everything it seems is available on the Internet.

Soon you learn how to find your way through the web here. A long distance phone call can cost you a lot of money. But you could talk to anyone with an email address for free. And you can talk to anyone all over the world. Here you learn the value of Yahoo Messenger. If you get far enough with it you could learn how to activate the voice and webcam so you can talk while your looking at the person your talking to through the screen. Bring it still farther and you can arrange for yourself a YM conference with a batch of friends. It takes a while before you can master the process. It can be touch and go for a while but it is also a lot of fun and a modest mastery of it can yield wonderful returns. 

After a while you begin to ask yourself: what have I been doing all these years? Why is it I'm so ignorant with these things?

And what about the irony of all these? Safe in your comfort zone, the regular work and home, you never really needed to know how to work the internet. Now, thousands of miles away from home you begin finally to realize the computer's importance even as you also begin to realize the value of staying in touch and how easy it has become in this day and age.

After everything you realize finally that you are now learning not just the rudiments of traveling through geographic space. The computer after all is also virtual space through which you must learn also to navigate if you want to find for yourself the treasures it has to offer. One can only resolve to get better at it though time. June 19, 2009, Kinutil/CDN

Missing Home

It was wet weather when we got to New York so we missed going up the Empire State Building now tragically the tallest building here. It would have been too cold and we would not have seen much of anything. Still, looking up from the busy sidewalk, it was a wonderful sight I had not seen before, buildings disappearing into the clouds made it seem as if the world was smaller than it actually might be.

And the famous building enveloped in fog reminded me of King Kong. Like you, I have seen New York before though it is the first time I am here. I had seen it in countless movies. They come quickly to mind as we get to the tourist spots, Times Square, the Madison Square Garden, the George Washington Bridge where they, if memory serves me right, killed Godzilla. 

It is, of course, a wonderful experience; something to reassure us that what we know viscerally of the world is actually real. The museums in a sense are really a device to do just that. But there is a gap between reality and our preview of it from books and media. Art suffers always in translation.

The Van Goghs and Duchamps look nice on a book page but it’s a different type of enjoyment entirely when you see them hanging from a wall or rising up from a pedestal lit to perfection. Only in a few cases do they lose their mystique.

And so it is with people and your memories of them. After the Metropolitian Museum of Modern Art, with its awesome collection of Modern and contemporary art; after St. Patrick’s Cathedral with its tall spires, after quite a long walk we came finally to Tina and Jovy’s flat. Tina is a writer and Jovy an artist who had been my co-teachers at UP Cebu College, once, many years ago. In a most romantic twist of fate they got married and moved here to New York where they now have 2 children, Kino and Todge. I am with Jim, Payat and Londong, my siblings and co-travelers.

It was too wet to have outdoor barbecue so they order food from a nearby restaurant. We drink wine and talk about old times. As expected the conversation fades into future plans and possibilities. Perhaps we could return here. Perhaps an exhibit at the Philippine Center would be nice. When will they visit the Philippines? What if they moved to the Hong Kong office?

What is being said may not at all be as important as the fact we are conversing at all. We have, after all, crossed great unimaginable distances to be here and the blank space between now and the last time we met is lost to us forever. But to be here in front of each other is like a painting coming to life from the depths of memory into reality. It is a wonderful feeling. But it works like a mirror. To be in the home of close friends talking with their children cannot help but remind us of home.   

Thus, after the ride through the subway in the rush hour, after the ride in that infamous New York yellow cab, after the Guggenheim, which is the temple to Frank Lloyd Wright; and the walk through Central Park on our second day when the weather quite suddenly became bright and sunny; and after coming across a group of our country-persons baby sitting their wards through a karate session at the park; we came finally to missing home. 

It is something of a universal feeling in all of us, not exclusive only to the visitor but inclusive also of those we are visiting. In this forest of concrete and glass reaching up to the skies, in this city of art, this city that never sleeps, the big apple where one may possibly get to the top of hill and become king of the heap, what do we do but miss the home-country? We begin counting in units of days. June 15, 2009, Kinutil/CDN