Look who's blogging

All righty, blog. I owe ya a post about Italy, Cebu, and Davao, and I'll try to get all that but first, but first ...

Aiyo's blogging.

Would you look at that.

Philippine Travels

Bricks. N. Leaves. Anawangin, Baby!

Roughing it.

It’s a trend that’s catching fire. Nope, not roughing it, per se, but the wording, although roughing it is no slouch either, and what you’d find is that as more and more people rough it, you see an inordinate amount of leaf pictures, shots of bricks, etc. missile-locking their way into your consciousness.

And the social networks – what did we ever do before social networks – have a nice little feature that emails people and tells them, “hey, your social network male-buddy-sorority-sister-daughter-friend has posted nice little pictures of bricks ‘n leaves, (BNLs) wanna have a look-see?”

Of course, male-buddy-sorority-sister-daughter-friend knows that if he/she/it showed you BNLs in person, literally walked up to you and showed you the latest in cement-drying technology, you’d show him/her/it what it would feel like to have an artery removed.

But he/she/it is not showing you the items in person, and the BNLs are not the point. The point is that what’s taking photos of these BNLs are powerful devices, DSLRs, devices known to capture details as little as miniscule blood clots causing cerebral aneurisms that block logic functions, including those that tell people enough with the leaves already.

But, anyway, roughing it. Catching fire. Not the travel style. The wording. The staccato. On every. Freaking. Thing.

News articles. Blog entries. Micro-blogs. Micro-blog news articles. News blog entries. Random coughs.

The thing is, there used to be dignity in staccatos. And DSLRs. And bricks for that matter, but that was before people collectively figured they should point their cameras at them saying “look at me, looking at this.”

So for all of you posting more leaves and more bricks, let’s take a moment, and celebrate all your leaves, and all your bricks, and how the synergy of the forms encapsulate not just the considerable beauty of those items, but the perspective of the brilliant artist behind the lens that makes rendering that beauty possible. And let’s further rejoice at the defamiliarization that occurs with the otherwise ordinary object, now immortalized by your perspective, like it has undergone object apotheosis. Really, let’s celebrate it here. And then stop.

Because we’re happy that you captured the beauty of your 4,387th leaf, but like it’s been said by other bloggers, it just forces us to think about what you’re compensating for, and how small your penis must be. And we’d prefer not to think about your penis. Really, we’d rather not.

Anyway, with that out of the way, we went to Anawangin last week for beach-drinking, leaf-photographing action. Anawangin looks like one of those places you’d see in monster flicks – it’s an island with a forest right next to the beach, and at night it gets pretty dark, close to pitch black. There’s no electricity, and you can either sleep in the open or inside a tent. Think LOST, minus the polar bears and time travel.

Now, if you’re looking to go there, here’s the least you need to know:

They have a lighthouse, and most tours recommend it. Not. Worth. It. You can get the same experience as going there by running up and down your favourite stairs five hundred times, and then shooting some photos of bricks at Intramuros.

They have a separate beach, Camara, recommended if you want to swim. Not. Worth. It. The beach is rocky, and the view isn’t exceptional. You can get the same scrapes you’d get there by falling off a ditch. You can get the rock photos from Manila Bay.

They have a nice little camp where you can set up tents by the beach. Best. Drinking spot. Ever. Camp is like the environment equivalent of Quinito Henson – a string of really bad clichés. Think breeze blowing away the cares of the world, with the stars lining up to make the experience right, with the sand caressing your feet and blah, blah, blah. To get the same experience, at a minimum, I’m pretty sure you’d have to do several Vicodins.

Photos here.

San Diego, baby! Sagada, baby! Columb... erm... (Part 2 of 2)

Shortly after the Sagada trip, the company sent me to the US for slightly over a week. It was a quick trip, but it felt longer. It consisted mainly of me

a) freezing over, and
b) watching people navigate using GPS systems that never shut up

Those blasted UPS systems are amazing. They command you, demand things from you, basically tell you you’re an idiot when you don’t follow it’s directions, and sometimes even when you do. “Turn left in three meters,” it would say. And there’s a wall to your left in three meters, so you opt to, well, not go left. “Recalculating,” it would say, with some scorn. The device continues to say that for the next five minutes, before it tells you to turn left off of a bridge and onto nothing.

If you’re built to withstand the GPS onslaught, you’d find that San Diego is a really nice place. Offices next to beaches, quick access to everything, wide roads, great restaurants, and lots of places to go see. Columbus was…

Oh, look, gotta go. But pictures ahead.

Blog Entry San Diego, baby! Sagada, baby! Columb... erm... (Part 1 of 2)

I’ve been on what is, for me, a bit of a traveling spree. It started a couple of months back, when we went to Sagada, a quaint little town where the people appear to be from a bygone era, the views appear to jump out of postcards, and shopkeepers appear to be on crack half the time.

The town is proud of it’s heritage, with all the subtlety of a jackhammer - you get a sense, when you’re there, that everybody’s proud of this place on a scale that doesn’t even register on your system. They talk about the history of the place with a confidence that you rarely see, and they are very protective of that place. And there is much protecting to do. One restaurant, for instance, indicates in an obvious manner that there will be “no taking of pictures.”

No, it’s not “do not take photos IN here.” You can shoot yourselves half to death, and they couldn’t care less. There will be “no taking OF PICTURES.” People literally swipe photos off of their walls.

It is rampant enough, it’s so commonplace, that they feel it warrants putting a sign reminding people, say, stealing pictures off of restaurant walls is not very nice.

Now, if you’re wondering, like I wondered, what would motivate people to actually go into a small town, travel hours over hours to get to that place, and literally grab a photo off of someone else’s wall, I blame all of this on yet another proud tradition the place protects, which is pretty much doobie.

But the point is, protective of the pretty place, and man, it is pretty. It’s pretty around the Kiltepan viewpoint, which sets the standard for beautiful places where you can fall to your death. It’s pretty around the Bomod-ok, a waterfall several stories high that will take your breath away. Before you get there, that is - the mountain trek is over an hour, with hardly any flat surfaces. And it’s pretty around Lake Danum, which looks like it was sculpted into reality, and which, for some reason, refused to let rocks float when you throw ‘em at it.

Pictures ahead.

Next up, San Diego and Columbus.

Dos Palmas, baby

I just came back from Dos Palmas, home to an array of things you will lose yourself to - a magnificent mangrove beach, a plethora of Rico Yan references, and souvenir items that declare, “God created women and pearl as well.” And as with so many of these trips, the story starts out with the airport, where we arrived after using up enough batteries on digital cameras to run a small village.

The Palawan airport, we would later learn, is a place for contemplation, a respite clearly designed to take your thoughts off of stress, or take them off altogether.

The Palawan airport battle cry against stress reads,

Try and relax the soothing massage
Of blind masseurs,
While waiting your trip!
It is for rajuvination, it releases stress

But the point is, airport. The place is supported by a fee travelers pay, money they use to tend to the cobwebs by the seats and - and this is what I really like about that airport - the guy who walks over the roof, holes on the ceiling and all.

From there, we took a bus ride and basked in the glory of Palawan, complete with a very enthusiastic tour guide. “The specialty food around these parts is... well, there’s really no specialty,” she began, and it dawned on me that it was going to be a long haul. “Notice how clean the place is. Palawan was voted cleanest city in 1994, 1995...”

About an hour and an MP3 session later, we arrived at the ferry dock, a small place with a thing for bathroom use. The comfort room sign reads,

TAKE-A
CR - P5.00
SHOWER - P20.00

After having taken a CR, and then staring at the sign for a good few minutes, I got left behind by the ferry I was supposed to be on, and the rains began to really have at it. I got on another one, and there was another guide, replete and bursting with tourist information. “That is the bat island,” she began. “It’s called that way because there are lots of bats.”

“MP3 player, now!” said my feeble, tourist-information-overloaded brain.

“You can’t see it because of the rains but that’s the Starfish Island,” she continued. “It’s called that way because...”

They were looking for me after the ferry finally docked on Dos Palmas, partly because the rains were really heavy by then, but mostly because I got left behind my designated ferry ride while I was in awe of the CR sign. So after the people from the office realized I wasn’t lost, just signage-inspired, we got to the business of checking out the beach.

The island is called Arreceffi - it’s a sweet little patch of sand and mangroves, and the beach makes some of the others I’ve seen look like a backyard picnic spot, and that’s while there’s vicious amounts of rain. There’s a range of things to do - we kayaked, played an array of beach sports, and watched the fire dancers play with, erm, fire, but we made sure we didn’t break any of their rules including - and this was on the tour reminders - not entering the restaurant topless.

On day 2, there were team building activities, physically grueling challenges that we journ majors refer to as “painful.” Excruciatingly painful, the kind that leaves you wondering later if oxen have been partying on your back - there was a four-way tug-of-war, a log race, and a range of other superb activities, and they warned us not to do “direct assaults on the marshals.”

We spent two nights in Dos Palmas, and there had been bottomless booze and countless cameras, concepts that are dangerous by themselves but taken together become monstrous entities. Want proof?

Update: It's amazing how many photos were taken BEFORE the vacation began.

Bolinao, Baby!

I have not seen my hometown, Bolinao, in a couple of years. I spent some really good years there; back in high school, the place had a pristine aura to it.

People are generally nice and they go out of their way to help you, the beaches are wicked unspoiled and downright beautiful, and at any given point, you could watch a beauty pageant involving a contestant who would - and this was her talent number - bite off parts of a chicken, feather and all.

That is the place I remember, and those memories are good.

Enter 2008. The place itself has not changed much. The buildings in town were as dilapidated as ever, the beaches were as picture perfect as they had ever been, and an antediluvian feel to the place still resonated. There were facilities that improved here and there, but overall, you’d get the feeling looking at the place that you’d kept it in a time capsule; you can visit any time and it’d still be there to greet you, a haven no one can take away.

But then you’d hear the bus operator say “Wake up, Bolinao station na tayo,” and your world falls apart.

A bus ride to Bolinao takes about four and a half hours from Manila if you leave around midnight; I left with four friends and we were asleep by the time we got there. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m used to getting this warning “Nasa (wherever the heck you are) na tayo,” or even “Gising, nasa (wherever the heck you are) na tayo.”

“Wake up, Bolinao station na tayo.”

The place has changed. Between visiting the falls, lighthouse, and a couple of beaches, our contact for the ride told us, as we coordinated what time he’d get to us,

“K.”

“K,” for crying out loud. You’d get water to wash that down, but then the water bottles there say- and I wouldn’t show this without proof - “Buy Mo Water Ko.”

Something tells me my time capsule went all coñotic on me.

That having been said, it was phenomenal. Getting drunk near bodies of water, always cool. WARNING: Pictures here, if you don’t like seeing geeks go shirtless, do not click the links.

La Union and Primal Forces

It’s something of a ritual. You put guys in their mid-twenties on a beach, and regardless of how colorful their background, how sophisticated their concerns, or how convoluted their views, something else takes over. It’s quintessential; it’s primal. It’s bigger than us - an instinct hard-wired to take control, setting aside nuances and, ultimately, uniting us.

This primal force says – as a friend of mine very eloquently put it – “Pare, chicks!”

It’s a very curious thing, that “pare, chicks.” Last week, we headed to a beach in La Union, and I heard that about 634 times, not counting conversations about KFC.

It’s like fowl have collectively taken control over every single brain of every single creature with a Y chromosome. And some that don’t. I think it’s a global thing; somewhere on the other end of the planet, the Ys are waking up, some are heading to large bodies of water, declaring with wild abandon, “Buscar, chicks!”

Thing is, it’s not like there’s nothing to observe in La Union. The place was beautiful; there were few enough people that you could get your piece of action whether what you’re into is throwing a football by the beach as the sun sets, or drinking by a hut near the pool, hopefully not intending to jump in.

The waves on the beach were the size of small monster trucks – if you wait long enough, there’d be a few with enough force to throw a fridge a couple of dozen feet back. What that feels like when it hits you… well, that’s kind of fun.

They have a pool near a speaker that’s on all saxophone, all the time. It’s weird as hell, yet strangely endearing.

But nobody’s thinking about that.

Because someone, somewhere, at any given point is saying, “dude, chicks.“

Dendrites stop the synapses about football. Brains stop taking in the view. They’ve got business to attend to.

Waitering at Elbow Room

It’s a pattern of sorts. Someone walks up to you, asks if you know what he’s thinking, knowing you couldn’t possibly have any idea what it is. He would have a smug smile on his face, like what he’s about to tell you is the coolest thing since the TV was invented, though what usually comes after is a story about a cell phone dropping. You, trying to be polite, ask, “did it make a cool sound when it broke?”

Wait. No, what usually happens is, trying to be polite, you make the mistake of asking, “no, what?”

This leads to a very compelling story about how many times the person’s cell phone has dropped, dating all the way back to 80s.

So it’s something of a relief when people say surprising things, things that make you want to scratch your head, and not think about call waiting.

Enter Elbow Room. The place is a kind of nifty pool/ videoke place in Ortigas. It’s generally a festive place, where you can relax, rock the house, or mingle with random strangers who can say wicked things like,

“Sir, isang oras lang po yung table namin.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know what you’re supposed to say when you’re confronted with other people’s time management issues involving billiard tables. I leave that to the pros, and even they fumble. But I had to say something quick and snappy, and my instincts told me go for something like, “good for you.”

Unfortunately, that was not a friendly response to make, that good for you, at least not for my health. So I elected to say something more neutral.

“Dun nyo po tanungin,” I told the guy, pointing toward the Elbow Room staff.

He had no clue what just happened. I had no clue why I didn’t just blurt it out. We were in interesting territory.

Hammered in 07

I’ve never been a big drinker. I’ve always wanted alcohol tolerance, but like dexterity or hair on my forehead, it’s just not one of the things I’ve been gifted with. And it’s not for lack of trying either; I try to drink whenever I can, it’s just not one of those things I can get good at, it seemed.


So 2007 was a treat for me because alcohol was a heavy part of it. Consider:

· After mixing beer with like, 5 or 6 types of hard drinks, (you can see how this would be tough to remember) I puked at an airport in Bohol

· I got hammered in more places more times last year than I have last year than the past three combined, one of them resulting to me being put inside a human bowling ball

· With enough booze, I rapped during a Christmas party, in front of office mates who would, apparently, still recognize me the next day

What getting hammered like that tells me is that, unlike agility or a decent amount of hair, alcohol tolerance is something within reach, although what that probably tells others is they should quietly get rid of my number. If they haven’t already.

But the point is, hammered. A lot. And when you’re hammered, several cool things happen, the most important being the way your decision-making skills change. The circumstances are different for people the world over, but it generally works the same way. Presented with ideas that normally generate responses like “How much crack are you on?” your brain, operating on the lowest capacity that sustains life, instead says something like this: “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

This is how great ideas are born.

In Cleveland, they built a hotel and spa for your dogs; in Texas, they’re using an improved version of the catapult to hurl vehicles; scientists are now developing ways to constipate worms, and to power nanobots with - and this is how you know alcohol was involved - sperm.

In all cases, the people involved are thinking “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

Which, at least to my really small brain, is kind of like the time a friend of ours sucked gas from one car using a straw, and then used that to put gas on the other car. This is a phenomenally bad idea, in that, if you think about it, you could swallow large quantities of liquids meant to power vehicles. But that didn’t strike him until after. Because he wasn’t thinking about that. No sir. He was thinking, and this is as close to verbatim as possible, “Whoa, this is going to be cool.”

I think people rarely get each other, and they think the same way even less, but standing outside the garage watching him that day, all of us there knew for a fact we were thinking the same thing. “Eww.”

But also, “Whoa, this is going to be cool.”

Our brains were happily in that loop, moving from “Eww,” to “Whoa, this is going to be cool,” and back, and we were looking at him exactly the same way. I’ve had quite a few moments like that this past year, and I think what makes moments like those possible is that alcohol abused dendrites are sending faulty synapses in a malfunctioning brain, saying, despite all evidence to the contrary, “maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

Hope there are more of those coming this year.

If You need Make Love

One of the most lively things about living near Delta, Quezon Ave, is that on top of access to more bars and restaurants than maybe the rest of QC combined, on any given night, you run the risk of getting clobbered to death by pimps and prostitutes.

The pimps near the Delta stretch generally curse at everything, including pizza delivery. “Mga [expletive deleted] kayong mga [expletive deleted], [expletive deleted] nyong lahat, mga [expletive deleted],” they would scream, apparently at Pizza Hut. Or maybe just around Pizza Hut. It gets tough to tell.

So it’s… honestly, kind of weird, but some people have figured out how to make this process as non-violent as possible.

Attention, people who need make love... they are calling for you.

[Disclaimer: I do NOT consider this representative of my experiences in China. As far as I can tell, China's a great country that's weird for different reasons]

Rolling in Cleveland, hurling in Bohol

I’ve been on what is, for me, a bit of a traveling spree. A couple of months ago it was to the Bohol beach club, which I pretty much spent doing one of two things:

A: getting extremely hammered by open bars, and

B: swimming,

which, in retrospect, doesn’t seem to be the safest of combinations.

The trip there was pretty uneventful. This is all kinds of surprising, as by looking out the window of the plane we were on, you’d see a SIGN on the WEAK END of the WING that said - and this has to instill trust in our aircraft maintenance teams – DO NOT WALK PAST THIS LINE. Yep, yep, yep, the DO NOT WALK PAST THIS LINE-viewing people were maintaining the plane, which kind of makes you wonder if people who don’t need to be reminded to NOT BREAK OFF PARTS OF THE PLANE were something of a rarity.

So anyway, Bohol beach club. The operative word being beach, unless you’re one of those Hershey’s-lookalike-hills enthusiasts, in which case the operative word is Bohol, or one of those Cuervo aficionados, in which case the operative word is club… Hmmmm. Was that a paragraph?

But the point is, the Bohol beach club has a beach and a swimming pool, and it probably has other features. I don’t really remember that much, thanks to the booze, which is also, by the way, responsible for having my thoughts go from this…

“it’s-kind-of-ironic-that-beaches-are-a-sign-of-serenity-when-all-we-seem-to-do-around-em-is-drink-and-shout-people’s-names-while-calling-the-wrong-people-apparently …”

to this…

“man-I’m-conked-out-hey-look-CAMERA!-ow-HEY!-watch-it-my-arm-AGHH-that-hurt-you-oh-wait-look-flash-man-I’m-conked-hey-look-CAMERA!”

It was pretty cool. Or at least, as cool as things can be, when as experiences go, it was the first time I’ve thrown up in Bohol.

Or in an airport, for that matter.

Or in front of over a hundred people, for that matter.

Who happen to be officemates, for that matter.

So the point is, there are a lot of ‘for that matters’ when you don’t watch your alcohol while traveling, and you don’t avoid having to to HURL in front of RANDOM AIRPORT DUDES and OFFICEMATES who can and probably will TAG PICTURES of you.

****

So Cleveland had this open bar about a month back, and it was pretty cool. I don’t really remember much of it, thanks to some measure of getting hammered, and there being not very many things to remember, unless you count viewing the number of clinics there as something of a personal highlight.

There are a LOT of clinics in Cleveland. The place I was in was surrounded by clinics. The clinics outnumbered restaurants, shops, and parking lots three to one, which sounds logistically impossible but is apparently pretty normal there since nobody seems to notice. The Cleveland Clinic has a campus and a hotel, the Guesthouse. This raised a variety of concerns for me, namely:

What?

and…

Why?

but mostly…

So do people here catch the flu several times a day, or what?

So first I theorized that all these clinics were there in the off chance that LeBron James gets sick. There’d be, like, 200 clinics to choose from, although not much in the way of either parking or food, which may be something of a problem.

Still, this doesn’t make any sense, as I’m sure he’d be fine, with say, 20 clinics waiting for him, so I needed to make more reasons up. The reason eluded me right up to the point where I saw what Clevelanders had for a pastime.

One of the hosts called it “the human ball of terror.” It’s a set of metal bars shaped to resemble a bowling ball, not that there’d be a difference if they modeled it after a large basketball.

The goal was pretty simple. Find a way to have someone enter the ball. This person does not, technically, technically, need to possess a brain.

Then, you can have a bunch of people, apparently smarter as they know not to enter a metal ball, roll the ball against giant-sized pins. The objective was to see if they could get the pins to fall, bowling-style, and to laugh at the person inside, given that the person probably has smarts just below jailbird-Guess-models, who may also technically, technically, not possess working brain cells.

I got a spare with some wicked spin on the ball, and, by some miracle, didn’t need to drop by one of maybe ten clinics within two meters of the hotel. ‘Wonder how Clevelanders play football.

Hong Kong, baby

So last week, I was out of the country for the first time in over a decade. I flew out for what I swear musta been training; it’s all kind of a blur now. I think there was a conference room. I KNOW there was tea. If you’ve always been kinda curious what tea-bloated people think as they encounter forms that ask them if they carry “blood or blood products” to China, boy, have I got a story for you.

This story starts, as so many travels seem to these days, with the airport. We landed in what people tell me is the HK airport, although for all I know, it could have been Djibouti; that is the kind of deeply culturally-aware mind that we are talking about here.

Regardless, the kind of pretty place is about the size of two minor countries, so the Hong Kong engineers – or possibly Djibouti engineers – figured they’d help people walk. They have escalators that do not, strictly speaking, escalate people, like giant tapeworms. The tapeworms have mechanical speakers that offer you advice in what I think is Mandarin; I presume the advice concerns holding the handrail, although for all I know, it could’ve been telling people that pooping on the sidewalk has a fine of up to $5,000.

From there, we took the MTR (Metro Transit Railway?) and a shuttle to our hotel. The room the company got was cool; I had a window view of a wall, which is always a good view to wake up to. Also, there was an extra bed, presumably for my imaginary friend, Bob.

Two other things struck me about it. One is that there is an ash tray next to the TV. The other is a sign, next to the ash tray, that says smoking in the room can have a fine of up to $5,000. I did not try to make sense of this.

Wan Chai, where our hotel was located, is a business center, kind of like Makati, except people do not suddenly pull your hair if you are within hair-pulling distance. At least I don’t think so. Also, our particular spot in Wan Chai gives Quezon Avenue a run for its money in sheer density of night clubs; think of the delta stretch along Q. Ave except with Chinese characters everywhere and you’ve got a fairly accurate image of the place.

A few intervals between night clubs left a little space open for restaurants, which was very generous of em night clubs, leaving those spaces open like that. Asian food is pretty great in Hong Kong – they have the best dumplings ever, served by people who throw plates at you.

Yep, that is correct. They throw plates at you. And not just plates – chopsticks, bowls, soup spoons, the whole nine yards. I was especially thankful nothing we were served there required a steak knife.

But the point is, the best dumplings ever, and if you so much as blink you will have probably missed your table getting set up. Hong Kong residents get you your utensils faster than it takes most people to wince. I did not try to make sense of this.

The food was pretty great; we had our share if smoked things, roasted things, dumplings, noodles, and an inordinate amount of tea. The thing is Philippine culture can be at odds with HK. Here’s a typical scenario: I drink the hot tea I’m served. It’s good tea, and it’s kinda courteous here to finish stuff you’re served. Someone from the table refills your tea. That’s HK culture – someone serves somebody else, and it displays some of the very best things about society.

This is all nice in theory, but something has to give. At some point, one of these things have to happen:

1) All of the hot water in town is drained and no one can serve any more tea

2) I drink until I am physically unable to continue, turned into a giant walking bowl of tea

Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which actually happened. After meals, when I’ve had enough tea to float a small village, I approach a catatonic state, and I hallucinate, reading stuff like ”mind your head” or a driver must “find the most practicable route” or even “damaging this arm has a fine of up to $5,000.” Either that, or those signs really were there, and man, I really won’t try and make sense of that.

Also, when you’re bloated, you tend to notice weird things. Weird being stuff guys usually deny observing, and things being fashion. Hong Kong fashion was a confluence of cultures, from plain shirts to trench coats (the weather allowed for this – it was pretty close to Baguio’s) and pretty much everything in between, including people sporting hair-dyed Mr. T looks.

China was not all that different from Hong Kong, or at least, the part of China that we visited, Shenzhen, wasn’t. Shenzhen wasn’t all that different from many parts of the Philippines, save that things were pretty clean. The Chinese people we encountered had been superb, although they did give us a form that asked us whether

1) We had encountered poultry in the past few days

2) We carried microbes heading into China

3) We carried blood with us

I did not try to make sense of this.

One particular event stood out in China. We ate at a restaurant where they served tea with a three-foot nozzle. A guy basically had hot water traveling from six feet away to a cup three-inches wide. Now, if you’ve ever operated a hose and aimed it at a three-inch target, you’ll have known this is not an easy task. The first time he did this, it was extremely impressive – he was incredibly accurate, and I thought to myself, “Dang, that is incredibly accurate.” Of course, the next time, he missed kinda badly. I pulled my chair back a little.

Now, I don’t know why, but if you’re serving tea with a three-foot nozzle, you just have to do Kung Fu moves. His started with a kettle flip, went through a series of matriesque motions, and ended with him bent over, the kettle by his hands, with the nozzle running by his arms, the edge of the nozzle and his face both about two inches from my cup. I did not try to make sense of this. Nor did I do any more tea-drinking.

We headed back to Hong Kong shortly after visiting China, and we headed to the Djibouti airport and the tapeworms shortly after that. I did my darndest not to incur a charge of $5,000 for, say, throwing stuff in a trash bin, and man it’s good to be back, where things make sense, such as action-star cum senators negotiating with serial hostage-takers.

It’s good to be home.

Commuting and Dead Fungi

A friend of mine from college romanticized commuting as the freedom to watch people without stigma. You get to observe people. You get to learn new things. She reasoned that under normal circumstances, you couldn’t really watch people conduct their business without drawing attention to yourself, whereas while commuting, you are free to watch people standing inside trains, sitting inside jeeps, sticking boogers onto bus seats, etc.

Now, if you don’t think you can learn a lot from watching people sticking various forms of sputus onto various parts of vehicles, you’re probably not alone. Also, it’s probably considered serial killer behavior.

But there are things about commuting worth observing, worth asking about. For some of them, we might even have answers.

Q: Why do MRT users about to ride the train feel so passionately about never letting anyone off the train?

A: Frontal Lobe Dysfunction, a neurological condition. For the same reason, whales slam onto beaches, forgetting they need water to swim. Or, simpler explanation, dead fungi for brains.

Q: Why do barkers substitute “maluwag pa” for “couldn’t fit another person inside with a crowbar?”

A: Visual Agnosia, a neurological condition. For the same reason, a music teacher mistook his wife’s head for a hat. Or, simpler explanation, dead fungi for brains.

Q: Why does the Ayala MRT station sport talking escalators?

A: Verbal Apraxia, a neurological condition. For the same reason, Eddie Gil can’t finish coherent sentences, or sentences in general. Or, simpler explanation, dead fungi for brains.

Q: Why does commuting involve so many neurological conditions, or dead fungi for brains?

Now, see, that isn’t exactly an easy question to answer.

One theory - let’s call it the Dead Fungi Theory (DFT) - is that there’s a passive ‘Dead-Fungi-gene’ (DF gene) that is triggered when perfectly rational, otherwise solid thinkers go commuting.

Some high school kid sits at the back of the bus, thinking about trigonometry, and then - BAM, Dead Fungi seizure - writes “hot singol lukin 4 sexy txtm8– txt 09181234567.”

A neat-ish guy at the side of a jeep who looks like he’s been combing his hair for the past 245 years thinks about lunch then - BAM, Dead Fungi seizure - spits gum onto incoming traffic.

A middle aged woman who evidently took a power dressing courses to heart stands by an MRT door thinking about what she ought to wear the next day then - BAM, Dead Fungi seizure - she drags passengers heading out back inside the trains, possibly fatally.

The DFT symptoms are everywhere, and it’s only getting worse.

So that’s it, I’m off to the MRT. Maybe I oughta go get some gum.

Hair-raising streets of Makati

Let’s get the obvious out of the way.

I don’t know Makati well. Even when I started working there, I never really wanted to find out more about it than I absolutely had to.

Are there enough convenience stores. Answer: Yes, they’re all you can see for miles.

Can you be legally punished for spitting on the sidewalk. Answer: Not if you’re careful.

Do most people you meet there obey traffic/ pedestrian crossing rules. Answer: Yes, sometimes it’s all people can talk about.

Do you risk running into a celebrity stranger along Ayala who grabs people’s hair if you make the critical mistake of getting within hair-grabbing length?

Answer: Do you what?

Now, see, I’m not intuitive with street survival questions. If I had been, maybe I would have asked around if there were celebrity strangers in Makati who would kick your scrotum if you were within scrotum-kicking range. The idiot I am, it took me this long to realize these were questions all self-respecting workers in Makati must ask themselves.

I was walking along Ayala Saturday morning when this was made painstakingly obvious. Two women were walking ahead of me, minding their own business, then BAM. Another woman just stopped and pulled at woman A’s hair. And by pulled, I mean tugged, with the force ancient Egyptians used to raise blocks for pyramids. And by hair, I mean all two million three hundred fifty seven strands of it.

There tug-of-war fan had no goal, as far as I could tell. She didn’t kidnap the woman’s hair for ransom. I really doubt somebody was mean to her hair when she was a kid. Seemed, she just felt like pulling, and that’s all there was to it.

When the hair-assault aficionado let go, woman B calmly said to her then hair-challenged friend “Kaw kasi, di ka lumayo sa kanya eh.”

And in my head, I’m going: What? You can assume these things will happen?

But I was young and naïve. It was wrong to think that. Evidently, the true streets of Makati belong to the dark lair of hair-intrigued, and all who pass by are just borrowing a rigid piece of their space. The hair-pull organizations own the streets. The streets own Makati. We are slaves to their bidding in wait, and all we can do is watch our hair with the passion of commercial models, and hope the streets aren’t also curious about kicking our nads.