Let It Rain On Me.

It all started when I was seven, pitifully rangy despite the constant prodding of my mom to take
multivitamins big enough to choke a horse. My mom, a sort who studiously consulted the food pyramid to ensure tha we were getting all the best nutrients and cajoled us into drinking tall glass of milk before bedtime finally relented to the idea of her youngest, bathing in the heaps of rain. I must have looked like a stoned leprechaun doing the mating dance -awfully uncoordinated while soaking up the downpour.

Before becoming a weird man I am today. I was a weird child.

I then would go to the 'other side' of the village where my playmates were residing, a group of rowdy, rambunctious kids who could survive on tomatoes and noodles for a month, already soaking, dripping wet rioting around under the torrents of rain. A quintessential klutz that I was, my clumsiness could be spotted miles away by the naked eye, characterized by tripping and falling onto big puddles of mud while trying not to knock myself unconscious. Imagine the jeers and goodnatured but brutal name calling from my playmates who were so accustomed to roughing everything up.
We would then shoo the hapless carabao away from its comfortable puddle, tagging the rope that was tied to its nozzle and lilting a cacophony of sounds similar to Indian Warcries, I would then suggest to do a matching choreography but instantly dismissed before even volunteering to do a demonstration- my showbusiness potential was not particularly appreciated by my posse.

I had an inexplicable and almost paralyzing fear of the beast. And their gesture of shooing away the object of my horror was almost sweet, but once I found out that the intention was to redirect the carabao to where I was fixedly standing, to put it mildly, made me lose the will to live. If I had a weak heart, believe me, I would have had a couple of bypass surgeries in a span of a year.

Rainy days also meant scores of bullfrogs, another object of my utter horror. (the very reason I stopped eating cheesebreads). My childhood playmates, who, in retrospect, I affectionately call Little Spawns of Satan, would then put a croaking bullfrog inside my shorts. My mom would only allow me to play in the rain in two provisos, 1. To rub oil on my back and chest to ward off pneumonia and 2. to take off my underwear for reason until now is not yet clear to me aside from the fact that too much coldness can shrink your wily into a wrinkly prune. So the sensation of a bullfrog scratching againts your buttcheeks while trying to further explore your crotch area was (Expletives deleted) horrible. Much as I wanted to just drop dead that instant and take my shorts off, a LIVE, croaking frog looked more appealing than a squished-up, DEAD one inside your shorts.

These happened when it rained. When we owned the streets, when adults could only watch from afar, sheltered.

The children turned into men, even the one who was constantly a default target of an enraged and displaced carabao, and whose buttcheeks, despite too many contacts with bullfrog, never grew warts.

When it rains, I still get the same excitement. It brings back memories of time when all we wanted in life was to play in the rain. Times when we could be oblivious to the world, and all the worries could be easily drowned out by our shouts and laughters.

I still play in the rain. Alone this time, but in my mind's eye, I swear I still can hear them laughing at me.

Spaced Out

My days here in the P.I. are numbered. Its a one way ticket- the saddest thing aside from unrequited love,a head pounding hang over or a root canal without anaesthesia. One way ticket is my metaphor for uncertainty, it whisks you somewhere without any guarantee of being flown back. Its like finally fleeing from the total control zone of Yodok, North Korea, only to find out that all the important people in your life are left behind, including your will to live. I know that I am extremely lonely, because my attempt at humour falls flat and makes me woozy. I dont feel any emotions at all. I get this when the emotions become overpowering that my system stops to acknowledge them anymore. It does the automatic shutdown, either from emotion overload or for self-preservation. I just dont want to think about any of it anymore. Even writing this entry feels like an out of body experience, I am not the one who is keying up these words, its my raw emotion. It dictates my person, taking ahold of me completely. Overwhelming sadness reduces me to a zombie. I know that one day, when i get back to my senses, I'll keel over laughing upon revisiting this entry. "what was I thinking? this one will surely make the cut to Elton John Drama Awards (cling! fell flat)" .
But for now, I am not thinking, I am feeling. The bad thing about saying goodbye is, there isn't really getting used to it. The departure area that holds teary, bloodshot eyes will always be like that- a place of unspeakable sadness,painful sense of abandonment, and helplessness. Once you walk past the immigration counter and into the departure holding area, you are officially alone, and have to rise to the occassion of looking after youself, because no one else will.
My friends, I am now leaving, thank you for putting up and sorry for my neuroses. Ill be missing you all.

Just Another Crappy Story

I am always asked where my hometown is. "Bataan". I'd say. "Oh so, are you carrying any of those lethal flipknives?" or worse " Bataan is in Mindanao, right?". There is a limit to my masochism and oftentimes when stupidity becomes visible from the outer space, I see myself snapping "Bataan is somewhere off the coast of Kiribati just a speedboat away from Tuvalu, It's a no-fly zone, and chances are, extraterrestials may suck you down deep into the abyss". It is often mistaken from Batangas (thus, the flipknives) and with regard to the allusion to Mindanao, its either they have been frozen for 2000 years or they are just plain dumbos. So, in order to avoid any more body counts, I just say "I am from somewhere up north." If they start pressing for specifics, I twist my head 180 degrees,stick my tongue out,barf inordinate amount of green thingy , and if there's a staircase in sight, I do the 'spider-walk" belly up. That never fails to discourage.
When I am abroad, people, as if the mere mention of "Bataan" kicks a dormant synapses, allude to the Death March that happened when the likes of Barney were still roaming the earth singing in unison "I love you, You love me, We're a happy family.." while snacking on each other. I am often put in the spot of narrating a dissertations about the horrible event of 1942, but my knowledge is smidgen and pitiful. I always feel the impulse to grab a bayonet and just impale it upon my ribcage to end my moment of agony.
Bataan, is just a tiny, least-heard-about speck on the Philippine map. It is full of rice fields that never fail to switch on the "magtanim ay di biro, maghapong nakayuko" in your head. It is the soundtrack of Bataan. Once a friend from Manila visited, he asked if we could pull over and take a better view of the vast expanse of the rice paddies. I swear if I hadn't known him that well, I would have thought he was doing an impression of Judie Garland aka Maria, half expecting for the Von Trapp kids to materialize. He was enthusing about communing with nature like a maniac when he unwittingly stepped on a puddle of fresh carabao manure, the memory of Bataan wouldn't leave him that easily, it was literally stuck on his sole (soul? excuse the pun) , we continued traveling, windows rolled down to ventilate the car. I was busy talking my head off, he was busy snorting the car freshener, I was waiting for the thing to shoot up his nose but to my great disappointment, it never happened. I then told him that when I was younger, instead of snow (for very apparent reason, if the reason is still not apparent, come closer, I'll karate kick you senseless. ) , We would play around pelting horse and carabao manure at each other. It was pure, unadulterated fun until someone aimed that excrement at you mouth, the result was always atrocious. I was always the weakling and the 'pampered one' among the group of rowdy, rambunctious kids and I would always come home with a green organic mud pack smeared all over my face with an occasional string of undigested hay. I told my friend stepping on the dropping wont cause him to foam at the mouth and drop dead. Its just grass after all . He wouldnt buy it. Oh this pampered, pompous ass.

Angels With Tooth Decays

The time I was in Hong Kong teaching and pulling Playhouse Disney-esque stunts to engage even the most wayward and disruptive of my students (at least half of the class) . Virtually all kids were all dolled up like a dream, everyone had his/her own nintendo ds, mobile phone, and a pinay yaya who was waiting outside yakking with other nannies about their strife and grievances concerning their meager salary, their delinquents sons/daughter back home and Judy Ann Santos, not necessarily in that order.

But Hong Kong kids with all their upper crusty accoutrements can never measure up to the zest for life of the third world children. No gadgets can trump the joy of a filipino boy who just received a '2 for P50' shorts from his tatay, or a filipino girl in threadbare clothing that had once been her older sister's getting a new slippers from the week's market bargain.

If you want to see the world's sincerest and most genuine smiles, Look at the faces of Filipino children, they may be lacking practically every tooth, but their toothless mirth suggests innocence in its purest form. Their smiles can heal a soul, touch a heart and make you feel ashamed of your useless pursuits. They smile at us, seemingly saying "Look at us, We may not have everything money can buy, but we are having the greatest time living!"

Happy Horse from Hell

Back in college where everyone's greatest pastime was hitting bottles and subsequently hitting each other with bottles on his head when alcohol started killing dormant brain cells, providing live entertainment to the less drunk ones. (The degree of damage was directly proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed). I'd heard a tale of that notoriously elusive horse that, just like Da vinci's La Gioconda, for some weird and cryptic reasons, casts a knowing smile. It was so elusive that in the span of my college years, I never got the chance to see one. I was told by my hard core friends, who can destroy three internal organs at the same time (pickle their livers, scorch their lungs and fry their kidneys to dust with salty and cheap nibbles, e.g. boy bawang and everything else with price tags below P5.) that the odds of finding the Mona Lisa of Booze is 1: 12. or one bottle in every dozen- the very reason why I finally dropped my quest to finding that proverbial happy horse. One bottle of Red Horse, to put it mildly, can drive me into a coma for a week, what more a dozen. There must be an easier way to die.
Years after college, when the most popular past time is still hitting bottles but this time followed by hitting ON each other instead of knocking each other senseless. (and blaming it on the hapless alcohol the morning after.) I stumbled upon a bottle peculiar from the rest. A horse that had its mouth curved into a wide grin. The holy Grail and the lost continent of Lemuria! ( Im being cinematic again,my bad.) Finally, my encounter with the horse that had kept me baffled for years was one gulp away. I swilled and I swear a boulder of ice would not have made the taste less vile. It kicks you from your guts out and it kicks you hard!
Post Script:
A boy wearing a black shirt was seen spread-eagled on their doorstep, presumably braindead until he was poked with a broomstick by the maid. oh well, blame it on that horsy smile and I say, chalk it up to experience.

Sensory and Baggage Overload

I am leaving for the gulf in less than three weeks and the sight of stack of half read books on my bedside is making me cringe. If that tower of tomes topple over onto me while in sleep, I'll surely suffer from multiple head concussions. I dont intend to bring them with me, apart from their bulk,they weigh considerably heavy. I know only too well how cumbersome it is to saunter around the airport carrying so many stuff that makes you look like a hawker of assorted useless goodies. Oh I'd better stop and read on.

Oh,It Pickles my Olfactory Bulbs!

I lived just around the corner of the shop that sells dried stuffs. From dried geckos to dried seahorses . An american friend,while walking along the pavement asks me upon seeing the hapless creatures, "Isnt that the symbol of the aviation school you are from? Won't you have one pinned on your right pocket?". This friendly banter becomes a regular brunt to bear that one day I just snap and retort "That was funny the first 100 times i heard it. Cant you think of any creative way to piss me? Like this, Oh I thought all along it was the shop that reeks of dried decay, Its time for you to get a prophylaxis". Thats the last time he ever mentions about my college insigna. I hope he never takes it seriously.

Nodding Acquaintace With Hepa and Salmonella

Hong Kong street food is relatively cleaner, but sometimes, it's that extra filth, extra danger of potentially contracting diseases that makes it more appealing. My personal favorite is the pig innards with some unknown vegetables tossed altogether into a cup big enough to fill two growling stomachs. The special sauces, which are bloody red in color add an extra 'ommmph' and render a disgustingly, fearfactoresque, 'fresh-off-the-abbatoir' effect. It costs 15HK$.

I swear If I were in the Philippines, I would have bought two servings of rice for my utter satisfaction. It is best when washed down with water chestnut that tastes weird and pulpy.

See people? not only in the Philippines do people feast on animal parts that are supposed to be thrown away. Its a worldwide obsession!

The Wrinkly Terracota Warrior/ Greengrocer of Temple Street

There was this old decrepit lady in Yau Ma Tei wet market who sells the freshest of green produce. Just by looking at her, You would think that she's been around since the Manchu Qing dynasty. Her severely crooked back renders her the look of a hunchback pre-adoslescent oompah loompah (about 4'8). She was perenially looking down at her wares that I think she would be needing neckrings on hydraulics to prop her head up. But never underestimate her, she can tie bunches of vegetables before you can even say "oh my goolay!" She's so limber I was always half expecting her to do triple cartwheel and then painfully split along the narrow market aisle. I once brought my american friend to the wet market and pointed him the lady I so admire. We couldnt get a better view of her coz she was always surrounded by people who either wanted to buy her produce or just plain curious to see this hardy and highly industrious lady who has withstood the test of a lower class chinese life. When my friend caught a sight of her, He said, "Dadge, Why is she not dead yet?
Perhaps its the tea dude.