Boracay, in the mind

AS THE shutdown begins Thursday, April 26, so flow the torrent of memories…

 STILL – 

The coconut palms sway, nay, sensuously sashay to the gentlest breeze.
Soft, fine grains, a divinely white bed the sandy beach does make – refuge to the body battered by endless toil.
Poetic becomes erotic – at the endless procession of kimchis in the briefest bikinis.

Here –but a sprinkling of white flesh: sagging, more than nipped, tucked, and uplifted.

There – exotica in the natural habitat, far removed from the zoo cages of Fields Avenue.

The rock – the famous formation of corals that dared to rise from the depths only to lose life to wind and sun, now a hardened host to small trees and shrubs – de-natured, and with a grotto to the virgin, Catholicized.  

The waters, yes, the waters. I sit, squat in the waters. Neck deep, arms outstretched to the undulating waves. Ah, life is the sea.

In a trance now. A fish, small, pesky, cautiously now, curiously poking, probing my left hand, the fingers one by one. A second, bigger fish comes, going about like the first one. Then, a whole school of fish around both hands, arms, back, stomach, legs.
A twitch, so sudden. All the fish gone as sudden.
The waters, the waves, the sea. On me. All around me. In me. The sea becomes me. The oneness of being. Nirvana, here.

STILL –

Boracay makes a fine getaway. A retreat to the realm of the senses – and transcendent spirituality too. Despite the monstrous development frenzy still ongoing there.
Hotels, more big than small, are in various stages of both construction and completion. The waste, both biodegradable and plastic, increases by the day. Even in the off-season.  
Wonder how the Supreme Court declaration of the island as public property would be received by those who have staked fame and fortune in what was once billed as the “most beautiful beach in the world.”

(Zona Libre, October 17, 2008/photos from 2016 album)

Despicable by our weakness

“IF WE don’t protest, we acquiesce. We consent impliedly.”

Thus, spoke acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio on China’s landing of military aircraft on Panganiban Reef (internationally known as Mischief Reef), located  within the Philippines’ 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea, also known as South China Sea.

“To preserve our rights: No, we don’t agree [to the landings]. That’s ours [Panganiban Reef]. It remains [disputed]. If we don’t protest, [for them] it’s no longer disputed.” So was Carpio quoted in news reports.

It is not only Carpio that noted that the Duterte administration – in keeping with it’s no-displeasing-China-at all-cost policy – is doing nothing in the wake of this apparent transgression but for the perfunctory “taking all diplomatic actions,” which, coming from one Alan Peter Cayetano, amounted to zilch.

The nation’s helplessness towards anything aggressively Chinese when it comes to our territories – and more, I had the conceit to articulate in this piece of April 22, 2012.

Chinese hegemony

“IN A state so insignificant our commerce would be a prey to the wanton intermeddlings of all nations at war with each other; who, having nothing to fear from us, would with little scruple or remorse, supply their wants by depredations on our property as often as it fell in their way. The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.”

So wrote in 1787 Alexander Hamilton, pen-named Publius, of the then-fledgling United States in The Federalist No. 11, titled The Utility of the Union in Respect to Commercial Relations and a Navy.
We are now that nation, most despicable at our weakest, forfeiting not just neutrality but our very own territory. Sabah is but a generation removed from today, still relatively too recent to be forgotten.
And last week, it was the Scarborough Shoal.
The Chinese intrusion into the sandbank is but the latest of that country’s infringement upon our territory, the area well within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, as recognised by international law.
To China, the shoal is but a part of its irredentist claim to all of the South China Sea, including waters abutting the coasts of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, not to mention Taiwan, which it has always regarded as its province.
To many, China’s Scarborough affair has found an analogy in the stranger who barges into a home, rapes the wife, and then proclaims ownership over the whole household. With the man of the house kept outside, a weakling reduced to whining.
Come to think of it, this is the second time that we, as “a nation despicable by its weakness,” have forfeited territory to the China bully.
In February 1995, it was discovered that China had already occupied the Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands and set up structures which the Chinese said were meant to shelter their fishermen working the waters in the area.
Mischief Reef, claimed by the Philippines as Panganiban Reef, is 150 miles west of Palawan – well within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone too, while it lies a very distant 620 miles southeast of China.
Still, China had its way. No matter the protestations of the Philippines and Vietnam, no matter the alarms in the ASEAN over China’s territorial aggressions, diplomatically termed “assertions.”
A powder keg in the South China Sea, so were the disputed Spratly’s considered in many “strategic studies” since. The Scarborough Shoal now providing an added fuse.
Defused last Friday, April 13, was the tension at the Scarborough Shoal.
After days of stand-off, seven Chinese vessels including their marine survey vessel, the Zhungguo Haijan 75, left the area by noon, and around 7 p.m., five more vessels pulled out leaving only one in the shoal. So, reported Lt. Gen. Anthony Alcantara, Northern Luzon Command chief.
"Wala nang tension [There's no more tension]." So was Alcantara quoted as saying, underscoring that the Chinese pull-out was "apparently the result of the negotiation by our foreign department with that of the Chinese counterparts."
So all’s well that ends well?
Not quite, from this corner.
The quote from that little red book I have consigned to memory – of the Great Helmsman’s counsel to the youth: “China is yours as well as ours, but in the long run it will be yours” – gravely bothers me.
Paraphrased thus: “The Philippines are yours as well as ours, but in the short run, they will be ours.”
Chinese hegemony here. Or haven’t you yet noticed who rules and reigns in this country, from its economics to its politics? Sy, Tan, Go, Kong, Wei. Co-Wang-Co.
Wapelo.

YEAH, WORSE yet now with this President that is an idolater to Xi Jinping, this President that is awe-struck at anything and everything Chinese.   

More than this nation, it is its President that is truly despicable in his weakness.

Who was it who said power-tripping is the way of the weakling, and show of force but a front for cowardice?

Bully.

From Cong to Kap

OLD SOLDIERS make the very antithesis to old politicians, in at least one instance.

Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away.  As Gen. Douglas MacArthur immortalized in his farewell speech to the US Congress circa 1951.

Old politicians never fade away, they just die. As…okay, take your pick of all those curmudgeons hogging the hustings from Aparri to Jolo, and everywhere in between, every election year.    

Like this year, this very May.

Deader than dead, thus readily consigned to political limbo after his epic loss to Atty. Edgardo Pamintuan in the Angeles City mayoralty contest in 2013, Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin, first ever three-term city mayor and four-term representative of Pampanga’s 1^st District, has risen, flexing his muscles anew for the barangay elections, with the chairmanship of Balibago, the city’s premier village, as one more addition to his championship belts, so to speak.

So, who was it who likened old politicians to old boxers? Ring the bell and they rise, if only to shadowbox.    

But not this Lazatin prizefighter. His age of 80++, notwithstanding. In fact, making the very ground of the feasibility of his candidacy. Indeed, quite possibly of his very winnability.

How can one simply put aside Cong Tarzan’s hundreds of bills filed, a number ultimately enacted into law, in his long stint at the House?

Easily come to mind at least two, both conversions: Of the Municipality of Mabalacat into Mabalacat City, and the Pampanga Agricultural College into the Pampanga State Agricultural University. That makes Cong Tarzan as famous for siring children – two juniors themselves rising in the political firmament: sitting Pampanga 1^st District Rep. Carmelo “Jonjon” Lazatin, and incumbent city councilor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin -- as for fathering a city and a university. Beat that.

“By the grace of God, by the sovereign will of the people, we are now a city!” So, joyfully screamed the tarpaulins put up by the also famously fathering Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales after the overwhelming result of the cityhood referendum in Mabalacat.

The once-forever and now-future mayor was but two-thirds right. “By the act of Cong Tarzan” should have been placed there, between God and people. Lest my faith be misconstrued, there’s nothing theological, but everything political there, whether impressions or implications.

How can one simply set aside Mayor Tarzan’s long service to the people of Angeles, which redounded to their well-being, socially, moreso economically? The city earning direct taxes from SM City Clark instead of it being but a part of local government’s share in the gross income earned as locator in the Clark Freeport.  

“The last battle,” not a few opinion influencers would readily impact upon Cong Tarzan’s getting into the barangay fray, as though he were the grizzled lion in winter.  

Others laugh this off as some reductio ad absurdum – okay, Direk Ronnie Tiotuico, a reduction to absurdity – noting how the former congressman, former mayor diminished his political stature to the lowest level of local politics.

“Pang-derby ne, liban na pa ing bularit.” As some sabungero would put it. As Cong Tarzan knows only too well, being, himself, a cockfight aficionado. But to the man who truly serves, no position is too small or too insignificant. 

And that is what matters most to his thousands of loyal supporters: the service of their man institutionalized in a cursive L inside a heart inscribed “Mula sa Puso.”  

Hence, his losing notwithstanding, instead of fading away, much less dying, Cong Tarzan fights on. Serves on. Lives on.

May forever.

    

      

     

Gawing mahal ang bawal

BAWAL ANG tricycle sa highway.

Multa: P500

No Helmet, No Travel

1^st Offense: P300

2^nd Offense: P500

3^rd Offense: P1,000

Babalang nakapaskel sa kahabaan ng MacArthur Highway na naglalayong ipatupad ang mga batas trapiko at bigyan disiplina ang mga pasaway na nagmomotorsiklo at nagtatraysikel.

Babalang walang kakuwenta-kuwenta, walang kangipin-ngipin sa kawalan ng pagsunod dito ng mga binabalaan; sa kahinaan, kundi man katangahan, dili kaya’y kawalan ng sigasig ng mga nagpapatupad dito.

Nitong nakaraang Huwebes, sa pagbaybay ko ng MacArthur Highway mula tanggapan ng Punto! sa hangganan ng lungsod ng Angeles at San Fernando hanggang sa papasok ng St. Jude Village – 6:02—6:30 ng gabi – kabuuang 47 nagmomotor ang nakitaan ko ng paglabag sa kautusang No Helmet, No Travel. Ang higit na nakararami ay yaong mga mag-isang sakay na tanging buhok ang proteksyon sa ulo. Mayroon ding angkasan na bagama’t may helmet ang nagmamaneho ay wala naman ang nakaangkas. 

 

Mayroon pa ngang tatlo ang sakay ng single na motor at lahat ay walang helmet.

Isipin na lamang: Kung sa loob lamang ng 28 minuto ay may 47 nang paglabag, ilan kaya ang sa loob ng isang araw, o sa kalahating araw man lamang.

Sa 47 na lamang na aking namasdan, magkano na ang multang malilikom ng pamahalaang lokal? Suma total P14,100 sa mga first offenders pa lamang. Sa minimum wage na P330, kabuuang 42 kataong arawan na ang maaaring pasahurin nito.

Nitong Martes lamang, mula naman sa St. Jude papuntang Punto! alas-11 y media hanggang bago magtanghali, tumigil ako sa kabibilang ng mga traysikel sa MacArthur Highway nang abutin ko ang 65.

Muli, ilang traysikel, kabilang na ang mga kolong-kolong, ang bumabaybay dito sa loob ng isang araw?

Muli, sa multang P500, kabuuang P32,500 na ang makokolekta mula sa 65 pasaway na ito.

Sa flat rate na P32,500 bawat araw, ito ay aabot na sa tumataginting na P975,000 sa isang buwan, sa dumadagundong na P11,700,000 sa isang taon!

Aba’y kayang-kaya na nitong pondohan ang departamento ng trapiko ng lungsod San Fernando.

Hindi ko sinasabing habang panahon na lamang ay magiging ganito kalaki ang koleksyon sa pagpapatupad ng mga nasabing batas-trapiko. Tiyak namang sa pagpapatupad – sa mahigpit at walang kinikilingang pagpapatupad – sa mga ito ay matuturuan na ng matinding aral ang mga pasaway at mababawasan na, kundi man ganap na mawawala, ang mga ito.

Ang sa akin ay ipatupad ang anumang kalakaran o kautusang isinabatas. Isang kabalintunaan, isang karuwagan, isang kaistupiduhan sa panig ng tagapagpatupad kung ang pagpapairal sa batas ay nagsisimula at natatapos sa pagpaskel nito.

Palasak nang kasabihan na “Masarap ang bawal.” Higit ang kasarapan ng anumang bawal kung walang anumang kaakibat itong kaparusahan.

Sa ganitong pananaw, isa lang ang kasagutan: Gawing mahal ang bawal. Patawan ito ng mabigat na kaparusahan.

Ang katanungan: Kaya bang tumindig mula sa likas na kahinaan sa pagpapatupad sa ganitong mga batas ang pamahalaang lungsod?           

O, abot man lang kaya ito ng kanilang kaisipan?          

The path from power

FROM THE presidency to prison. Has this become the new normal in the dynamics of political power?

Three stories in a single broadcast of BBC News one night made it appear conclusively so. Merely chanced upon though, while surfing channels in Room 24-02 of Berjaya Times Square Hotel in Kuala Lumpur last Friday.

One. Brazil’s top court turned down the preventative habeas corpus request of the charismatic former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to stave off a 12-year jail sentence while he appealed a corruption conviction last July.

After holing himself in the ABC Steelworkers Union building surrounded by his supporters and resulting to a standoff, Lula turned himself to the federal police Saturday.

Two. Forced out of office only last February, South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma has been haled to court on a 16-count charge of corruption, racketeering, fraud and money laundering rising out of a 1990 arms deal. He faces a stiff prison sentence when, not if – as some analysts projected – convicted.    

Three.  Found guilty of charges including bribery, coercion and abuse of power, former South Korean President Park Geun-hye was handed a 24-year sentence – for the 66-year-old, effectively for the rest of her life.

The daughter of the assassinated former President Park Chung Hee holds the honor of being her country’s first female leader, as well as the infamy of being first president to be impeached from office.   

Lula in Latin America. Zuma in Africa. Park in Asia. The universality of the corruptive essence in power all too manifest there. Yeah, Lord Acton to the dot. Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

From the pinnacle of political power to the abysmal shame of prison. But it was not always like this. As a matter of course, It used to be even the reverse of this.

South Africa’s Nelson Mandela spent the greater part of his adult life in prison before claiming his destiny to stand as his country’s first black president, and the first elected in the post-apartheid fully democratic state.

As dissidents, Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa underwent multiple prison stays before rising to the presidency of their countries, post-Soviet Czech Republic and Poland, respectively.

Mandela. Havel. Walesa. Not an iota of shame, but all integrity, courage, and honor of the highest order obtained in their prison-before-the-presidency route. The very antithesis to the Lula, Zuma, Park way.

The latter three though can find some soothing consolation, indeed, a working template for extrication – redemption is too noble for application here – in contemporary Filipino political experience.

Joseph Ejercito Estrada was ousted from the presidency through a people’s revolt in 2001; charged, tried and convicted for plunder; and sent to prison – okay, confined to his farm in the mountains of Rizal province. And then pardoned by his successor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2007.

In the 2010 presidential elections, the convicted plunderer Estrada came close to winning back the presidency, landing second to eventual winner BS Aquino III. He has since sat as duly elected Manila mayor.  

Tells you as much of Erap’s charm – no, charisma is too sacred a word to apply here – as to the gullibility – no, idiocy is too strong a word – of the Filipino voters.  

In turn, Macapagal-Arroyo was charged with plunder for allegedly diverting P366 million in Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office intelligence funds intended for charity use for her personal gain during her term as president.

Even as she won the Pampanga 2^nd district congressional seat after stepping down from Malacanang, and re-elected to the House in 2013, GMA spent most of her first two terms on hospital arrest at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center. She was released within the first month of Rodrigo Duterte’s assumption of the presidency, the Supreme Court on a 11-4 vote junking the plunder case and is now on her third and final term as congresswoman.        

Only in the Philippines?

For the disgraced presidents, there’s no harm in trying. Absolutely. As in power and its concomitant corruption.  

Nanay's own drug war

REJECT CANDIDATES involved in illegal drugs.

Gov. Lilia G. Pineda sounded the call at last month’s joint Provincial Peace and Order Council and Provincial Anti-Drug Abuse Council meeting.
“’Yung filing (of certificate of candidacy), malapit na lang. Kausapin ninyo sino ’yung former drug addict, pusher, pati ’yung nagpoprotekta  na huwag nang pahabulin. Dapat hindi na sila pwedeng mag-file. Kayo ang chief executive ng bayan. Mahirap na kung kahit SK maging involved sa drugs,” Pineda told the mayors.

Some people readily dismissed the governor’s pronouncements as her way of channeling President Duterte: To impress upon Malacanang that she has not been remiss in her duties in the war against drugs.

Indeed, the governor has never been remiss in that duty, as she has never been the least remiss in her other duties as governor.

Truth to tell, she has been in the thick of the anti-drug campaign since her assumption of office – two full terms even before Duterte considered running for president.

Here’s a piece that appeared here in September 2014.

Vigilance, not vigilantism

DANGEROUS ARE these times we live in.

Death strikes anywhere, anytime, anyone. Rapine respects no bounds, not even fraternal or familial ones. Mayhem breaks loose at a sniff, aye at the whiff, of some mind-blowing crystalline grains.

Aye, some strong smoky substance there powerful enough to permeate the rich man’s gated castle as effortlessly as the poor man’s hovel.

So, how pervasive is the drug problem in Pampanga? Let’s do some dope economics.

Statistics from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency excludes not one of the province’s 505 barangays from drug influence. That’s the market, a really big one, any way you look at it.

Shudder more at the scope and scale of the supply side.

It has not been a month yet when some 279 kilos of methamphetamine hydrochloride, better known as shabu, and 975 kilos of ephedrine and other substances used in shabu manufacture worth some P4-billion – later reports put it at P6.5 billion – were confiscated in successive raids by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and police operatives at the Greenville Village and Richtown Subd. in the City of San Fernando.

Much earlier was that haul of over P150-million (only?) worth of shabu at uppity Lakeshore subdivision in Mexico town, where the apparently much undervalued booty and questionable “escape” of a Chinese suspect resulted to some sanctions against the raiding team, including summary dismissal proceedings.       

That drug fiends can easily set shop in upscale enclaves and go about their evil enterprise with impunity is an indictment as much of the inability of the police as the disability of the local government units to contain this heinous scourge to society.

Not that nothing is being done about it by the LGUs.

Gov. Lilia G. Pineda, from Day One of her first term has integrated an anti-drug campaign in Priority One of her agenda for development – the total well-being of the Kapampangan.

Towards that purpose and cognizant of the critical role the maintenance of peace and order plays in community development – and well aware of the needs of the police forces to fulfil their mandate to serve and protect the populace – Pineda has showered the local force with provisions addressing their material as well as morale requirements, read: radios and other equipment, infrastructures such as precincts and outposts, motorized vehicles, PhilHealth coverage, scholarship grants and livelihood assistance for their dependents.

Pineda has likewise engaged the barangay tanods as multiplier force in law enforcement with equal support in morale and materiel. Periodic pep talks – and reprimand when needed, delivered in her motherly manner – have become one long-running affair between the Pineda administration and the barangay officials.

In district-wide barangay anti-drug summits, Pineda involved the PDEA, the police and the courts, to orient barangay officials on drug laws and provide them inputs on basic intelligence gathering.

The rehabilitation component of the anti-drug campaign is not lost to the Pineda administration, having provided assistance to drug users and their families to cope with the rehab programs they needed to undertake.

Pineda has even initiated a study on the feasibility of the province to put up and administer its own ward for poor drug users at the Central Luzon Rehabilitation Center in Magalang town, which already gets some P1.4 million monthly subsidy  from the provincial government.

Pineda’s magisterial, if maternal, enjoinder to the LGUs and the police have become some sort of a mantra: "I want this to stop. Let us not permit illegal drugs to destroy our children's future…Catch the pushers, save the users…Do you wish to see your children dead on the road?"

Still, desperate are the times. And desperate times demand draconian, if not dangerous, measures.

Cadavers have started to litter the Pampanga landscape.

Just this week, two male bodies believed to be victims of summary execution, better known as “salvaging” – were found at a garbage dump in Barangay San Isidro, Bacolor town.

In Candaba town, two – one a 15-year-old boy – were gunned down by “motorcycle-riding criminals” in separate incidents.

Earlier, there were reports of dead men casually dumped by the roadsides or in some grassy areas “not far” from some lonely road in the towns of Apalit, Magalang and Mexico, and in Mabalacat City.

Clear cases of termination with extreme prejudice there. Of desperate measures non-commensurate even to the most desperate of times. The nullity of human life, the negation of due process, never a means justifiable in any case. Not in Davao, notwithstanding Duterte’s way of maintaining the peace. Certainly not in Pampanga, given the caring Nanay for governor.

Never short of peaceful options even in the face of the most extreme situations, Pineda has asked the sangguniang panlalawigan to empower the barangay officials in the registration of transients renting houses in their respective barangays, especially those in private subdivisions, as well as monitor their activities.

“We expect the barangay chairman and his council to revive the old spirit of  bayanihan and the value of malasakit through vigilance in the conduct of neighborhood watch and efficient reporting system,” said Pineda. “This will surely deter evil elements from penetrating our communities.”

Vigilance. Not vigilantism. Nanay is crystal clear there.    

Act your rage

JUST BEFORE the Holy Week past, resurfaced in the memory section of my Facebook account a video of six years ago showing me dancing – two left feet and all desynchronized – with the convicts of Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in Palawan.

It amused my friends no end to see me in gay – basic meaning now before the term got genderized – abandon: one even asking what medication I was in, others in so many ways suggesting that I act my age.

It is definitively that which I defied – to act my age. It is precisely that which I live – at the least try to at every given chance – to act my rage. Ain’t that what living is all about?

“Act your age” is not only condescending, but outright discriminatory to seniors. It is a contemptible compartmentalization of the “aged” to some suitably sedate pigeonhole pre-ordained by a society that puts premium on youth.

Retired, but not retarded. So, we cry. Aged, but passionately alive. There’s the rage. No need to make and follow some list of must do’s before one kicks the bucket, all it takes is to seize the opportunity at its every turn. Carpe diem, as the lively Latins do.

Verily, it is past 50 that the rage to live goes on maximum (over)drive, to the superlative degree: the sense of mortality beginning to settle in.              

So, I exhilarated in the twists and turns, dips and dunks, of whitewater rafting in the Upper Davao River in 2012. Twice falling overboard only maxxed the experience. The adrenaline rush so intense that I still craved for more after the three-hour 13-kilometer spin.

An emotional high was swimming with the butanding, the gentle whale sharks, in Oslob, Cebu via Dumaguete City in 2011. 

At 51, I first climbed Mount Pinatubo. Did it again in 2016, aged 62. The long, hard way on both occasions. 

Majestic Mount Fuji I set foot on last year, albeit only at Station 5, the take-off point of the climb to the summit.

Ditto Mount Kinabalu in 2011, only at the Taman Negara Kinabalu, the national park at its foot.    

No summitting of Mount Takao in metro Tokyo last year too but managed to hike up to the Yakuo-in Temple, just below the apex.

All 272 steps to the temple inside Batu Caves in Malaysia I climbed – without huffing and puffing – in 2012. 

All 268 steps I scaled – no sweat! – to reach the Tian Tan Buddha at Ngong Ping, Lantau Island in Hongkong in 2016.

No tomb raiding ala Lara Croft but did explore the wats of Siem Reap in 2016,

with the awesomeness of Angkor searing my very soul.

Searing of a different kind was the Dubai Desert Safari in 2012, with much younger riders fainting and vomiting in the sand.

The pinnacles – okay, the topmost floors accessible to visitors – of one-time tallest buildings in the world I had the opportunity to set foot on: Taipei 101 and  Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers both in 2012.

Conquered acrophobia as well at the Macau Tower in 2010, but failed to summon the nerve to bungy jump. Acted my age there, ha ha.    

On the intellectual, ahem, plane, it was past 50 that I churned out six of my seven books: Brigada .45 (2004), About Oca: A Story of Struggle (2005), Oca: Isang Istorya ng Pakikibaka (2006), Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit (2008), Reverend Governor: A Chronicle of Irreverence (2010), and Agyu Tamu: Turning Tragedy into Triumph (2011).   

In 2015, some nerve endings somewhere in the lumbosacral area protruded causing excruciating pain. Age and body abuse, the doctor said. Surgery was prescribed for cure. I opted for therapy, to manage the pain. No more strenuous activities, not even sitting for so long, I was ordered.   

Unresigned to debilitation, tested the limits in some derring-do – under the circumstances of the age of aches – and drove all the way from the City of San Fernando, Pampanga to Pagudpud in Ilocos Norte with overnight stop in Vigan Ilocos, Sur. Three days after, drove all the way back with nothing but food and pee stops in between. Did my lower back crumble? Nah! Was there any pain? Yes, but all too bearable.

Rage triumphing over age. The command to act lies there. Age being but a number, as that truism holds. And youth is eternal.

Conceitedly now, I just may have that in me. What with that great writer Ram Mercado once bestowing me the greatest accolade I ever got – “the enfant terrible of local journalism.”

So, age notwithstanding, I shall continue raging. And go on living.