RED ANTS AND CRUMBS

SHE said she was having a date that night. So I didn’t ask her again. I went back to my table in the other room, and dived into a bulk of manuscripts I had been proofreading since morning.

Then I forgot about her. It was February 14, and what the heck. I’d just received my payslip. I could just stay in my rented space in Roxas District, read another Leon Uris or John Grisham book, or treat myself with a bowl of simmering bulalo in a sidewalk bulalohan along Aurora Blvd. in Cubao.

It was past 5 and most employees had left the office. And over the glass wall that separated our editorial office and the circulation department where she stayed, I could see her still absorbed in paper works, and I didn’t think she was raring for a date. But I won’t ask her again.

I was the only one left in our department, because, unlike my officemates, my official daily time would end at 6 (the company allowed me to extend additional hours from Monday to Friday so that I can have the whole Saturday for my post-grad studies).

It was 6 when I asked her again. She said she wasn’t sure about her date, and she must stay for an hour to finish some job. I went back to my table, closed the manuscript, looked up the wall clock, again and again, and then lost my thought watching a column of little red ants marching to the flower vase atop my cubicle. They were gathering tiny crumbs from the crackers I had for my 3 p.m. snack.



I left the room, locked the glass door and off I went to the circulation department. I told her, if she’s really going on a date, I could stay with her in the room for the meantime, and then we could just go out the office together and part ways at a street corner. She said it’s OK. So I stayed on, and between our conversations I skimmed through back issues of the company’s publications—showbiz, sports, and music magazines.

She was introduced to me only in August, or six months earlier, by her best friend, a classmate in college, who asked her to join her in the company. She was shy, slim, a little above five feet, with an attractive face, observant eyes and long tresses.

I came to know her more closely one Sunday afternoon, days after the first meeting. She was alone in the office. Her best friend wasn’t able to join her that day. Meanwhile, the magazine editor who called me for a press work that day, also changed his mind and cancelled our work schedule at the last minute. I went straight to her office, said “hello” and stayed on for the next two hours talking with her. It was then that I learned we finished college at the same year, her family is Ilocano, and her late father, a brother and a sister, share the same birthday, September 21, which is also MY birthday!

That night, I invited her for a dinner in a sizzling joint cum bakeshop near the office, just across Sto. Domingo church. While eating, we talked more about our college days, some wacky officemates, Eraserheads’ songs, and her goals in life.

More dinnertimes together followed after that. And in a fastfood near Welcome Rotunda, I paid her three 100-peso bills as payment of my loan from her petty cash. The bills contained the three words I wanted to say to her. She counted the money, looked at me in disbelief, and then put the bills in her purse. She said she is on a relationship.

That must be her date now, I thought.

We left the office at 7. So you’re not having a date, I said. She nodded. Then I offered myself to just bring her home, which I would usually do when we leave the office at the same time. So we hurried out of the office, and flagged down the first Malate-bound jeep that we saw from the street corner along Quezon Ave.

Almost everybody around us seemed in a romantic mood, from two or three young pairs who made goo-goo eyes at each other inside the jeep, to PDA couples squeezing each other's hand while roaming the streets, some girls holding a flower, and to couples in glass-walled fastfoods. And for sure there could be more lovebirds inside cinemas and motels, of course, and in some bushy spot of a public park. We just smiled with our observations, and would rather talk about everything but love matters.

We alighted in front of the Malate church. We walked on towards Remedios Street. The night was clear and starry, and the cool breeze coming from the Manila Bay wafted like sweet caress. I suggested a dinner, she said it was okay, so I brought her to a burger stand near their place.

I had been wildly delighted at the prospect of going out on a V-day with her, and that was it, though unplanned and not necessary. I finally had a date with you on this day, I said. She laughed, and she said not a word to validate it. We just enjoyed our company together. She knew the real me. I need not be the right guy for her, but I just allowed myself to be a real friend to her. And it was the same way that I came to know her more. I was so comfortable with the setup that I stopped thinking about my feelings for her and simply enjoyed being with her.

And before she knew it, a long-lasting friendship loomed large before us. Until she was nudged into love territory I marked my own.

That, I must say, was our first date—a friendly date—in a Valentine’s Day. But it was a date and our best ever. And our last, because on December that same year, I married her.

JUST THREE WORDS

WHAT is your motto in life? It was a bonus 5-point question—so unexpected like a lightning at this time of the year, in my midterm exam for a civil law subject. But it was a breeze to answer it in not less than 50 words and having the extra points.

When was the last time I answered the same question? High school days, when I had to fill out slum books of my female classmates? Before I graduated in college, when the yearbook committee asked me about it?

It didn’t take me a minute to think what to write in the exam, because I have been consistent about it and live by this motto: NEVER GIVE UP.

Winston Churchill during the war had uttered these words in a speech before British students (some say “Never give in” were his exact words). Christopher Columbus and Thomas Alba Edison might have uttered these words also in their respective undertakings. I can’t imagine the world now without Columbus who never gave up during his voyage to the New World, what with the uncertainties of his destination, unfriendliness of the sea, and mutinies among his men. And what would the world be without inventors like Edison who persevered to make our life easier than before?

Never give up! Perhaps one of the most evocative mottos, and it has proven to have woven magic to people who take these three words to heart. For me, it has become like a mantra every time I am in a bind. For without it I would not have accomplished things and become the person I am now. My college education was filled with uncertainties and consistent combat against poverty. I had lots of rejections when, as a probinsyano and an inexperienced fresh grad, I applied for a job in the big city. And in pursuing my dream to buy a house with my hard-earned money, I was robbed thousands of pesos by a scheming real estate agent.

But did I give up? In those particular cases, NO. I finished college by supporting myself; I worked as a student assistant for a time and an underpaid farmhand during semestral breaks. I persisted in my job applications, until I was hired by a publishing company which up to this time is still providing me the work I need to earn a living. And I was able to acquire a house on mortgage from a new and legitimate broker (though I wasn’t able to recover my loss).

My father used to say to me, if you think you can do it, you can do it. I remember I was tempted to add: if you think you can’t do it, then forget it. But I realized early enough that this is wrong, because the resolve to do something must dwell first on the mind, that’s why there’s this mental conditioning: if you think... Now if you think and you believe it can be done, then you can do it, as what my father used to say. But if you lose, there’s always a second chance, and third, and so on.

But the best one that gives me the real push comes from the bible, thanks to a Born-Again Christian friend in college who first shared this verse to me: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13). Now this added a new dimension to the three-word motto “Never give up” as I say it now because a resolve that comes with it, is now hinged on a belief that I cannot fail because Someone’s up there to help me all the time.

There are times, however, that I wasn’t able to use the motto, along with my father’s words and my favorite verse, to my best advantage. Sometimes I falter, waver in my faith, and give up things for good reasons. And some, for bad reasons.

When did I give up? I can only think of a few. I gave up playing chess, though I have been good at it when I was younger, because I had been very emotional when I lost in a match; I gave up my post-grad studies midway to the course because I decided that I rather start a family of my own than embark on a new career; and I gave up a friendship because I chose the will and weal of a group rather than nurture a close relationship with this person.

But so far, one thing will never change about me. Not a chance would I give up working and dreaming for something better.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE... MALATE

LONG before I become a resident here, Malate to me is just a passive host to many rowdy bars and restaurants stretching up to nearby Ermita district, and a perfect place for people who love to chill out, hang out and have sex.

During my first year in the metropolis in the early 90s, I only heard of the place from news reports about its famous mayor Alfredo Lim, the former chief of police who became the city mayor, became a senator, and now mayor again, padlocking bars and restaurants in Malate-Ermita area which the city council believed were havens for prostitution and lewd shows. Years after, the Supreme Court ruled that the good mayor and his council had acted beyond their power when they padlocked even those legitimate businesses; but even then, some of the bar-owners, entertainers and bar patrons had moved to other red districts in the metropolis.

Mayor Lito Atienza, who succeeded Lim, initiated the rejuvenation of old districts including Malate, along with city squares and mini plazas around the city. New resto bars and KTV joints, most of them now owned by Koreans, were opened. And a motley cluster of new businesses came in, sprucing now that once deserted (at least during Lim’s first term) Nakpil-Adriatico-Orosa stretch, near the Robinson’s Place which is just a few blocks north.

I first came to see Malate closely when I frequented the place to visit my girlfriend whose family resides in one of the remaining pre-war wooden houses along Remedios St., just about 500 meters from the Malate Church. It was 1996, three years after I left Ilocos, and I was then working as a proofreader in a publishing house and a bed spacer in an old house in Quezon City. In that same year, I married my girlfriend in Malate Church, and since then, or from January 1997 up to the later part of 2001, when my family moved to Bulacan, I have been a resident of Barangay 697 of Malate District, and a registered voter of the same barangay a year after that, and the succeeding elections even up to this time.

But even though I am now residing in Marilao, Bulacan, the old district of Malate to my family is always a home. My three children were born in Philippine General Hospital, in nearby Ermita, and all were baptized in Malate Church. When they were babies, we would bring them to the barangay center near San Andres market in Malate for free medical checkups.

We go to Malate during the feast day of its patron Our Lady of Remedies, celebrated every third Sunday of November. We go to Malate when one my kids or my wife is sick and needs a check up (their doctor is in Singalong), or when my wife has to do some important business in the metropolis. Malate is always a home, a stopover point, a watering hole.

But one important thing that gravitates my family to Malate is New Year's celebration, because it is a perfect time for a reunion for the Gundran family (which means my mother-in-law, my wife’s two elder brothers and two elder sisters, plus their kids, in-laws and grandsons). We will welcome New Year watching fireworks just outside the gate fronting Remedios St., and feasting on spaghetti, ham, and pork or hotdog barbecue after that, and exchanging gifts (we do this on the 31st, not on the 25th).

So for the past twelve years, except once where my family went to my hometown in Ilocos Sur in 1999, I would celebrate New Year in Malate. And the first day of the year would be spent usually with my family strolling and taking pictures in the baywalk area along Roxas Blvd. Or we attend a mass in Malate Church, visit Manila Zoo, shop or do funhouse games in Harrison Plaza or Robinson’s Place, or run/play around with the kids in open spaces in Remedios Circle or in Paraiso ng Batang Maynila, along with street kids, some of them running around half naked.

And after every holiday season, we leave for Bulacan with the hope that anytime soon, we’ll be back to old Malate district, to be with my wife’s relatives, and see her birthplace, her city, and her home again. Meaning no matter where my family goes or how far we have been gone, we still go back to Malate if we have our way. And indeed, there’s no place like this one I also consider home for the past 12 years now.

Here are some snap shots I got from Malate this New Year:

San Andres market fruit stands & Paraiso ng Batang Maynila


Remedios Circle & Remedios St. front of Royal Plaza


Malate Church & Rajah Sulayman Park


Manila Baywalk fronting Malate Church & Adriatico St.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

This was written two years ago, and it speaks of the relevance of the ongoing Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) on my family. And again for this year my family is planning to watch one movie from the festival entries. But with my three kids now, it will be a choice between a movie of my choice or one that caters specially to fun-seeking kids like them. If I were to choose now what movie to watch, I go for Iskul Bukol, because I have been a big fan of Tito, Vic and Joey and a regular viewer of Eat Bulaga since I was a kid. But as I have said, that would depend on the kids (they have the majority votes). Or perhaps we will skip the festival, not necessarily due to disagreement but due to lack of time or lack of budget. 
 

THROUGH the years, Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) has been part of my married life. My wife and I couldn't celebrate our wedding anniversary on December 30 without a movie date.
  
Because December is MMFF month, we always had a filmfest entry in our list and it has become our tradition to watch only one movie for the whole festival. And we just don't watch any film, we have to see to it that it would be the best among the entries. 

Most of our picks romped away with the Best Picture award or received good reviews among film critics. 

The most memorable of these films and what I would say is my personal choice as Best Film in recent years is Mark Meily's debut feature, Crying Ladies. 

I'm not a big fan of Sharon Cuneta who plays the female lead character named Stella Mate in the movie. Sharon does a fine job in eliciting our sympathy (and laughter) for Stella's never-ending woes and her many wacky attempts to solve them. And to think that she looks chubby or losyang in Crying Ladies, far from the more glamorous portrayals she had in most of her previous films. 

But after I watched Meily's film, I realized Sharon indeed deserves of her Megastar status. 

No, Crying Ladies is not only about Sharon. It's about the clever plot of a story cobbled with local color and the ordinariness of life, centered on an old Chinese practice of hiring professional criers to fool the gods into thinking the deceased would be sorely missed for his/her good deeds. The humorous, witty script by Meily himself put together the individual stories of the three criers played by Cuneta, Hilda Koronel and Angel Aquino and that of the deceased's son, played by Eric Quizon. The funny shrieking trio and the relatively subdued Quizon came out with winning performances, marked by their brisk rendition of their characters' desperation with humor and poignancy. 

It's a Filipino version, if not second best, to Forrest Gump, in terms of the cunning use of comic relief to temper the heavy stuff and the depiction of an affectionate yet satirical portrait of an ordinary life with interesting twists at the end of the story. This is the kind of script I wish I would have written.

A couple of scenes remain vivid in my mind up to these days, perhaps because of the movie's Pinoy-ness or comic effect. 

One shows Stella having a hearty McDo meal with her son, her exasperated ex-husband and his wife. Others show Stella's regular encounter with the balut vendor, her audition piece for an entertainer's job in Japan and her winning an international acting award as a videoke model-artist.
 And to think that my wife and I almost missed watching Crying Ladies! We were celebrating our seventh anniversary that year and our two boys --then aged five and three, wanted so much for the family to watch Bong Revilla's Captain Barbell. But I did not give up watching Crying Ladies for a fantasy movie about an over-exposed local superhero. So we hired my wife's niece to accompany my boys to watch the film of their choice, while my wife and I watched Crying Ladies. 

For the next years, I gave in to my kids' wishes. With kids in tow, our anniversary date has turned out to be a family affair.

(Published in The Philippine Star, March 2, 2008, under the title “Pinoy as it gets”.)

A BOXING FAN

I AM one of millions of Filipinos that up to this day relish every retelling of the victory of Manny Pacquiao in his much-vaunted fight with another boxing great Oscar de la Hoya early this month. It was a good fight, a very convincing TKO conquest by the Filipino punching machine. In my whole life of watching great fights in the ring, and those of Pacman’s latest exploits over other big-time Mexican sluggers, his last fight for me is one of the best one-sided fights of all time and it’s a good thing when you’re a Filipino and on the side of the victor.
  

I have been a boxing fan since my elementary days in Ilocos. And I thank my Apong Lakay (my maternal grandfather Angel Escobar Sr.) for this. That’s why even to this date when I think of amazing fights, or when I see people to their feet cheering with wild abandon for their warrior in the ring, I always think of my late Apong Lakay doing the same.

And if I make a list now of those special moments I spent with Apong Lakay, who died when I was a college freshman or years before Pacquiao entered professional boxing in 1995, it’s the ones we had together watching boxing, or even wrestling matches, on TV which seem to be the best for me. Maybe because I always enjoy watching physically competitive contests whether on TV screen or in the street. Or I should say I can only watch a boxing match on television and any TV show hours after that when Apong Lakay was then in command of a rich aunt’s black-and-white TV. He would know schedules of every live boxing match or some classic boxing matches on replays, as I would with schedules of my favorite action movies shown on TV. He would call any of my cousins (my aunt’s children), no matter what they were doing, to turn on the TV for him. Yes, during that time, our own TV was already sold by my father to a neighbor, and Apong Lakay’s house didn’t have one until his death. So the best venue then for a visual delight over a bakbakan (slugfest) would be in my rich aunt’s house.

Apong Lakay, who was good in arnis and mano-mano during his younger days, was so proud of our Filipino fighters, especially Flash Elorde and Pancho Villa. Perhaps he would feel the same, if not reserve the best now for Manny Pacquiao. He was also a big fan of Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali. And with those years when Apong Lakay was alive, I was able to watch Ali or Leonard fight with their respective opponents in classic matches. I also watched other outstanding boxers in the 80s who have become legends of the sports—Marvin Haggler, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, and Larry Holmes. Likewise I didn’t miss great fights of our local champs like Rolando Navarette, before his rape conviction in Hawaii, and Dodie Boy Peñalosa.

And now if Apong Lakay were alive today, he would have savored like his favorite steaming papaitan this latest fight of Manny Pacquiao. And I would have loved to have us exchange our own post-fight analysis, now that I have matured as a boxing fan through the years. But I could only imagine these things now.

MY TOP 15 BOOKS

WHENEVER I chanced upon blogs that tell about books that have changed people’s lives, books that are memorable to them for some reason, or books that are outstanding, based on eccentric and subjective standards, I always go over their articles and find out if some books that I have read and savored are on their top 10 or 20 lists.

And like most of the bloggers, I love books and started reading early in life but I don’t consider myself voracious enough to finish a book in one sitting nor a certified bookworm (and I don’t necessarily collect books). I just love to read, especially fiction or pocketbook novels; I fill my idle time, even during a bumpy jeepney ride, reading them.

The first novel I read was Howard Pease’s Thunderbolt House. It was a good material for adventure-loving and mystery-seeking youngsters. That started early my penchant for mystery and detective stories, leading me to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and mind-boggling crime stories of Agatha Christie, Ross McDonald, and some titles from the Hardy Boys series.

My appetite for books was reinforced by my father, a former high school teacher, when he would bring home books, a mix of modern romance and classic titles, or from Silas Marner to Mills & Boons to Harold Robbins bestsellers, which he borrowed either from the school library or from a co-teacher or one of his students. Father would read them during the night or on weekends, while I would wait for my turn to get hold of these books. And it helped also that I have an older brother, an English major, who read pocketbooks and discuss them with me. This stirred me to read more for the next discussion.

I was already a college freshman when I started logging every book that I finished, and I’ve been doing it ever since. My latest count, discounting nonfiction books and anthologies, is 126 novels in all. And it’s only now that I started thinking which of the novels in my list have a permanent impact on me in some small way.

Well, let’s stir the waters with my own top 15 list of novels that may have changed my life just a little bit. My list was arranged in the order when I read them. I’ve also added some commentary for the top ten books to explain why each one made the cut.

1. The Pearl by John Steinbeck
I was in high school and I didn’t know then who Steinbeck was when I read this novella. It was a story that explores the secrets of man’s nature, the darkest depths of evil, and it centered on a great pearl, the Pearl of the World, found by the main protagonist. One memorable part for me was the escape of Kino, his wife and his baby from trackers or those who want to grab the pearl from him, and the cat-and-mouse chase that lead the family to a cave in the mountains. But the baby was killed by the trackers, thinking it was a coyote. Kino’s journey with the pearl ends in tragedy. Realizing that the pearl is cursed and has destroyed his family, Kino and Juana throw the cursed pearl into the sea. Sayang!

2. Portrait of a Marriage by Pearl S. BuckThis is the first Pearl S. Buck story that I have read. As the title goes, it was a story that makes you feel good about marriage. I was in high school when I read this book, and that early I know then what I want in life, aside from a good career.

3. Silas Marner by George Eliot
Before I read the novel, my father had already narrated to me the whole story during a brownout in our barrio. It was a tale of familial love and loyalty, reward and punishment, and humble friendships, centered on this cataleptic guy who was accused of theft, and later excommunicated, but became rich and fully vindicated at the end of the story. And the morning after that informal English Lit session with my father, I got hold of the book, and thus began my propensity to classic novels.

4. The Good Earth by Pearl S. BuckI belong to a family of farmers. So when I read this novel, it made loud and clear to me the importance of owning big tracts of land, and the social status that come with it. The story begins on a farmer’s wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. As the wealth of a rich family in a nearby town slowly declined due to frequent spending, and uncontrolled borrowing, the farmer, through sheer hard work and the skill of his wife, actually a slave he bought from the rich man’s house, slowly earned enough to buy land from the rich family. The wheel of fortune turned in favor of the farmer who at the passing of years, was able to accumulate more lands until he bought even the remaining estate of the rich family.

5. Exodus by Leon Uris
After reading the book, I fell in love with the history of the modern State of Israel, and admired how the Jews struggled and finally abled to gain their independence. It was more than a history book that taught me things I want to know about the Jews. Two of the memorable characters are Ari Ben Canaan, the Jewish army leader who ably hatched a plot to transport Jewish refugees from a British detention camp in Cyprus to Palestine; and Dov Landau, the quiet, introverted teenage boy who lost his entire family to the Holocaust, but survived the horrors of ghetto life in Warsaw and of concentration camp in Auschwitz, by becoming a master forger for the enemies to save himself.

6. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
I love this novel’s labyrinthine or detective-fiction plot, deep philosophical discussions, and the mysterious medieval setting (an Italian monastery). For the first time, I came to know about monks, and what they do in a monastery. I have yet to see its movie adaptation starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater.

 7. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
This is a wonderful story that gives me a ringside view of the workings of the Mafia “families.” But what stumped me early on is the emphasis on family honor, loyalty, and friendship by these families as they wallow in a life of crimes. The novel notably reveals how the family of an organized crime works, e.g. when you are downtrodden, or unfairly victimized, all you need do is approach one of the “families,” proclaim your devotion and friendship, then request a “favor,” and the don will surely grant it. But here’s the catch, you must be willing to return the favor whatever that is. But what strikes me most was the character of the Godfather (Don Vito Corleone); discounting his underworld persona, I aspired once to be like him—strong, powerful, and wise and most of all a good family man.

8. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 

Where love was, all was. This is a memorable line from the novel. It has become my guiding principle when I started committing myself to a serious relationship. It’s a good decision that I borrowed this from a classmate during college. I hadn’t read any of Charles Dickens’ books then. I wanted to read it, not only because it was highly recommended by my English professor, but also to satisfy my curiosity why it bears the same name as the world renowned magician. At first I was intimidated by its thickness, over 900 pages, but I enjoyed deeply, although it took me months to read it. Many stories were effortlessly woven from the main plot (David’s struggles in life) which beautifully connects with one another, all with interesting, colorful, funny, eccentric and outrageous characters, some having weird names like Micawbers, Traddles, Steerforth, and Uriah Heep. If you’ve never read Dickens before and you want to delve into his style, I would recommend you start with Copperfield.

9. Never Love a Stranger by Harold Robbins

The first Harold Robbin’s book that I have read was The Adventurers. It has very interesting plots and defined characters in this novel and it was like watching a movie or a TV series. But it is Robbin’s first novel Never Love a Stranger that I read later that ranked higher in my list. Maybe because I find the courageous and passionate story of the protagonist Francis “Frankie” Kane more interesting than Diogenes Alejandro Xenos (or Dax), the tragic revolutionary hero of The Adventurers. A few things stood out for me in Never Love a Stranger. One is the way Frank works his way up, from his meager beginnings as a Jewish orphan, choosing the wrong side of the law to make a name for himself. He has this innate and powerful drive to succeed, in spite of the harsh realities in his world, racism, and living in the fast lane in the New York’s gangland. The difficulty of fitting in with an antagonistic world and the corresponding price you must pay to make the grade is the sense you get after reading this book.

10. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I found this small book in the library of the school in Ilocos where I taught for a year. I thought it’s about Buddha’s life, because Siddhartha is the former name of Gautama Buddha. The novel, soon I found out, only mirrors the inspiring life of Buddha but isn't a retelling of his exalted life. Hesse’s Siddhartha has his own quest for meaning. He is a young and brilliant Brahmin in ancient India who has everything but dissatisfied with life. Siddhartha, just like  St. Francis of Assisi , leaves the comfort of his place to seek more. Siddhartha lives as an ascetic, but after meeting the Buddha, he rejects that kind of life, and ends up becoming a simple ferryman on a river.  Of all things he met along the way, it is the river where he derives his real enlightenment. He thinks that the river is god. But what is most memorable is this line from the book: Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. A food for thought for a fresh graduate like me then, for that time I was on a crossroad, and I didn’t know which road to take, or where I will start to embark on a satisfying career. That “awakening” theme or the journey of self-discovery had big impression on my life after that year.

11.The Roots by Alex Haley
12. Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace
13. The Firm by John Grisham
14.The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
15. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

And lurking under my top 15 are Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte; The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean; The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown; and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

SOME MEMORABLE APO SONGS

THE APO Hiking Society will always be one of my favorite Filipino artists.

I grew up listening to their pop hits. Their simple yet catching melodies were laden with romantic, and at times, funny lyrics—all distinctly Filipino in mood and outlook. I admire their chemistry, their friendship that spans more than three decades, their advocacy in promoting Original Pilipino Music (OPM), and their involvement in socio-political issues, with the song “American Junk,” and “Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo ” among others.

I have lots of favorite APO songs, but there are some that dwell in my memory box, because they form part of the soundtracks of my college days, particularly my four-year stay in a boarding house in Vigan more than a decade ago. And I have no one to blame for this but this APO-crazy co-tenant of mine, a scrawny engineering student, who loved to listen to his compilation of APO songs on his cassette player for almost every day in a span two or three semesters. Having owned the only cassette player with a booming speaker, he had the monopoly of sounds in the house.

The guy also played an unknown Leo Valdez’s album, a slow rock compilation, and some New Wave songs, but the APO songs stood out because he would play them with gusto when he was in a good mood. No one would raise hell over this one because the folksy APO music was rather the best alternative or a fitting middle ground between an overly sentimental Pinoy ballads (it was the era of April Boys and some copycats) and a barrage of slow rocks, punky songs or crossovers that dominated FM channels during that time.

The most memorable song for me, or perhaps, for most of my boardmates is “Pag-ibig.” There is a line in the song that some naughty boys (inspired, I’m sure, by a daily dose of APO songs) would love to use in teasing every female boarder who broke up with a bf: Hindi mo malimutan kung kailan mo natikman ang una mong halik, yakap na napakahigpit. And there were lots of break-ups during my stay there, and lots of teasing and warbling of the song in off-tune keys.

Next on the playlist is “Kaibigan” which has lyrics that the boys would use in their awkward attempt to comfort every guy who was spurned by a girl: Kaibigan tila yata matamlay ang iyong pakiramdam, at ang ulo mo sa kaiisip ay tila naguguluhan... They would use this also to accost those who sulk in a corner for varied reasons—a failing mark, a cancelled date, a delayed allowance, a quarrel with some rowdy boys in the house—either to offer some unsolicited advice or just to meddle in their affairs. And, there were lots of sulkings during my time.

Another one is “Paano,” with its catchy opening: Paano mo malalaman itong pag-ibig ko sa’yo, paano mo mararamdaman ang tibok ng puso ko. I had a secret crush—okay, it’s love at first sight—on a female boarder, and I couldn’t muster the nerve to tell her how I felt. She had one problematic relationship while I had a risky long-distance affair. But we remained very close friends, and every time I would hear this song, I wished I was singing it for her until the last line: ‘Wag ka nang mangangamba, pag-ibig ko’y ikaw, wala nang iba. But the naughty guys would rather intone the line to tease some pretty boarders, or to court them in jest.

“Kabilugan ng Buwan” is another memorable tune. The same boys would sing “Kapanahunan na naman ng paglalambingan...,” to josh a pair, a male and a female, visitors or boarders, caught in some moonlit nights chatting under the santol tree in front of the house. It was any pair’s bad luck to have pestering members of the male tribe in the boarding house whose sole weapon to ruin (or encourage) a diskarte, was a set of cheesy lines from APO.

There is also a serious theme song for everyone. “Awit ng Barkada” was then a good piece for guitar and beer sessions with the naughty boys. With some sort of a samahan in the boarding house, we can easily relate with the lyrics of the song. Boarders would leave the boarding house as a school year ended, but some would take their place for another set of barkadahan.

And the best thing about each APO song is its ability to transcend and connect one generation to the other. It’s no wonder then that when some of their popular songs were revived by today’s popular bands, they become instant hits even to the younger ones.

Take my 10-year-old son, for instance. He really likes Sugarfree’s “Batang-Bata Ka Pa” and Kamikazee’s “Doobidoo,” both from APO’s tribute album, and he can sing these and other songs in the album with gusto. In due time, I’m sure, these songs would also dwell in his own memory box. And I’d be the one to blame because he and his younger brother were around when for a time, I played the songs from the album almost every day in my playlist.