Sunday, September 28, 2025
9:00 AM |
The Worst People in the World, Winning
Let’s just say so many interesting things happened to me this week—for example, an opinion piece from this very space going viral and stirring talks in high places [as well as low].
But one other thing that happened, of which I have no interest at all in elaborating, both disturbed and amused me—because it reeked so much of privilege, arrogance, and unprovoked show of toxicity. In the end, it just was not worth being troubled about.
One thing that slightly disturbed me, though, was the avalanche of responses to that thing that were essentially approving high-fives to the instigator. Some were by people I knew. And it got me thinking: people like to be thought of as “good people”—so how come they cannot recognize when something definitely “not good” unfolds in front of their faces?
Then again:
Why are there Hitler apologists?
Why did people vote Marcoleta into the Senate?
Why are there Vico Sotto bashers?
Why did someone like Leni—who proved herself capable of fantastic governance one thousand times over, and is now proving that again as mayor of Naga City—lose in the last presidential election?
How did a white supremacist move so many so-called Christians to swooning adoration?
Why are there Elon Musk diehards?
Why are people attracted to bad people? And why do these people often win?
I mean, come on, they win. Some may be in hot water now, given the corruption scandals exploding everywhere, but they are crying from being cancelled from the posh confines of their mansions, their garages still bursting with luxury cars, their safes still bursting with ill-gotten money. And the inconveniences they are feeling right now are totally of another variety. Heart Evangelista, for example, bemoans missing Fashion Week (!!!) in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, on account of her politician husband Chiz Escudero being under scrutiny for allegedly coddling contractors. “I’m sorry to my fans that I’m not going to fashion week,” she wrote in her Instagram. “I know that you guys say laban—I really appreciate you but honestly, I don’t think it’s the right time for anyone, especially from our country, to be going to fashion week because I think we need to be here.”
Lahi ra jud.
Let’s be honest. Most of the wealthy in the world have gotten where they are either by connection, or inherited wealth and privilege, or illegal maneuverings, and most of them have kept their wealth because they are inured to the one fact about capitalism that makes the system work: for one to earn profit, there must be exploitation.
It’s never really about hard work, although that’s the Horatio Alger myth we have been taught to believe. I know so many poor people who work harder than most, but they’re still poor—but I really don’t want this essay to be a lecture on Marxism.
I’ve made my peace about money years ago. With the kind of purpose I have built for myself—and I am, after all, a “mere” teacher and writer who is poor [somebody’s words]—I know I will never be rich. Unless I win the lotto. I’m not even compensated well for the talent [and hard work] I bring to projects! But I know that sometimes there are “opportunities” offered to you, especially if you are not rich, that will ask you to bend your sense of morality and succumb—because the temptation is just too immense, and it can happen to the best of people.
You run for public office on a platform of good governance—and then the temptation comes from political forces around you that’s difficult to shake off. You enter a certain government agency hoping to become a good civil servant—and then on your first week at work, you find an envelope of “balato” on your desk, your “share” of something-something after the big boss had taken their cut. You are a good engineer and you become entrepreneurial by forming a construction company—and then you realize that the only way to get contracts is to bend to the shenanigans of politicians. But, look, you get to have fancy, expensive cars in return!
We can recognize the beginning of such temptations as small “starting points” that become big. It will always start small. Just this once, probably they all say. I just need the money now. And then you do get the money and find out it comes with bigger and bigger perks. A nice motorcycle. Which becomes a nice car. Which becomes a nice house. Which becomes a nice series of vacations abroad. Which becomes an even nicer house. Which becomes a garage full of expensive cars. The temptation becomes endless, and for many of these people, they do feel like all these are deserved, like these good things are their due. Take note what Claudine Co, a privileged daughter of Zaldy Co, recently said: “Like hello? Wala kaming utang na loob sa mga Pilipino, okay? This is not from taxpayers’ money, the government literally paid us for the service that our business provided. Gets?” The disconnect, and the sense of privilege, is bewildering and maddening.
* * *
I’ve seen this kind of slow corruption happen to a good friend. A really nice guy. Was a scholarship student working through school. Entered government service, and was in a position to oversee public works—and soon he’s building a really nice and fancy house that’s obviously not commensurate to his pay grade. What happened?
This is why I have told my closest friends: “If ever you see that I’m about to be tempted to do something fishy in return for small glittering gains, tell me.”
But something has to be said about actual bad people, winning.
It’s 2016, and Uber is melting down in the United States. Travis Kalanick, its CEO, is being pushed out after years of brazen exploitation and abuse, but he walks away with billions, retreats into a Beverly Hills mansion, and still finds new ventures to toy with. It’s a familiar story: the bully, the narcissist, the liar—not only surviving, but thriving. One even became President of the United States!
And it’s not just in Silicon Valley. Here in the Philippines, the story takes on its own provincial flavors. You don’t have to look far. Politicians caught red-handed in corruption scandals, their hands literally in the cookie jar, are re-elected by landslide margins after a few months of “PR rehabilitation.” [Remember Bong Revilla doing that stupid dance in his successful campaign for the Senate, years after being ensnared in a corruption scandal?] Businessmen who exploit workers, pay starvation wages, and avoid taxes are celebrated on glossy magazine covers as “visionaries.” Religious leaders who fleece their flock in exchange for “miracles” become untouchable celebrities.
Meanwhile, the honest, the diligent, the quiet—burned out, broke, and invisible—continue to toil away, unseen.
If this feels backwards, it’s because it is. But it’s not random. There is a logic to it, a brutal one.
From childhood, Filipinos are taught the old catechism of virtue: be kind, play fair, respect elders, share. Sa kabutihan, may gantimpala. And, for a while, in the microcosm of the family, the barkada, or the barangay, this holds true. Do good, and you get good back. Altruism works in small groups where everyone knows everyone’s business, where reputations matter. But when we grow up and enter the larger systems—politics, corporations, institutions—that logic unfortunately unravels.
Our human instincts, you see, are built for intimacy, for small communities where wrongdoing is immediate and visible. For example, if you see a child on the streets of Manila being abused, you’d feel outrage and maybe even intervene. But when that same child becomes a statistic, tucked away in government reports about child labor in Zamboanga or sex trafficking in Angeles City, the outrage dissipates. Because unseen. The cruelty now hides behind bureaucracy, media spin, and our limited attention. Out of sight, out of mind. And because of this distance, we become numb. We buy the cheap clothes made in sweatshops, we watch the influencers paid for by the corrupt, we shrug at the news because it feels too overwhelming.
This dilution of moral clarity opens the stage for those who thrive in noise, spectacle, and manipulation. And we’ve had plenty of them: Imelda Marcos with her 3,000 pairs of shoes, Rodrigo Duterte with his bloody bravado, Manny Villar with his property empire built over graves of displacement. They understood something most of us don’t: that in the Philippines, as in the world, power does not reward virtue. It rewards cunning, ruthlessness, and an ability to command attention.
Niccolo Machiavelli saw this centuries ago in Italy, in a time where poisonings and back stabbings actually ruled politics. His lesson—better to be feared than loved—echoes still through Malacañang, through Congress, and even perhaps through our barangay halls. What harms you in small communities—narcissism, manipulation, ruthlessness—can actually reward you immensely in national politics or billion-peso businesses.
Psychologists today call the constellation of traits these people exhibit as the “dark triad”: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. And don’t we know these types?
The Machiavellian trapo who kisses babies during campaigns but steals calamity funds in the aftermath of typhoons. The narcissistic influencer who treats every tragedy as a backdrop for self-promotion. The psychopathic warlord who orders killings without remorse and still wins a Senate seat. They manipulate, they deceive, they threaten, and—because they’re louder and bolder—they rise.
* * *
And yet, there’s a trick here. We only see the bad “winners,” not the countless failures. For every politician who spins historical revisionism into a political victory, there are dozens of corrupt scions of dynasties who crash and burn, their names forgotten except as cautionary tales whispered in our towns and cities. For every business leader who builds a retail empire, there are a hundred ambitious taipans whose malls rot half-finished along provincial highways. The failures don’t trend, however; only the “victories” do. And that is why we believe the worst people always win.
But remember, even among those who seem to triumph, their victories are actually brittle. Elizabeth Holmes, for example, had her Theranos dream implode. Here in the Philippines, think of Janet Napoles, once untouchable, now languishing in jail. Or Antonio Floirendo Sr., stripped of privilege and humiliated in scandal. Success built on lies creates blind spots. When you see people as pawns or prey, you don’t build resilience—you build delusions.
And there is a price: not just the collapse of reputation, but the corrosion of self. We call this guilt. It is the part of you that keeps you human. Without guilt, there is no compass, no correction. And when our bad deeds unencumbered by guilt comes crashing back, they drag shame and regret with them.
So yes, the system is rigged. The worst sometimes rise, the best often overlooked.
But this doesn’t mean the decent are doomed.
It means they must adapt.
The lesson is not to become ruthless, according to Mark Manson in a YouTube video essay, but to do these three things: first, to become strategically compassionate, to understand that empathy can overwhelm in a complex world, but compassion—clear-eyed, balanced—can sustain you.
Second, to let go of universal approval. Wanting everyone to like you is its own subtle narcissism, and in this country, where utang na loob and pakikisama often silence people, it’s downright dangerous. Sometimes you must risk being disliked, even vilified, just to do what is right. [Like being called “bayut” and being laughed at by 500+ people! That one amused me.]
And third, crucially, to learn to speak up. The Philippines is a nation where silence has too often been complicity—during martial law, during the drug war, during countless “pork barrel” scandals. To be quiet is to be erased. According to Manson, to speak, even if uncertain, is to be remembered.
The challenge for us is not to mimic the worst people but to learn what they get right about power: visibility, boldness, audacity. And then to wield those with integrity. Because in the long run, history may glamorize tyrants, but it also burns them down. What survives are not the narcissists and bullies, but the memory of those who dared to live with compassion, courage, and yes, a little bit of cunning.
Labels: dumaguete, moral rages, politics
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, September 26, 2025
9:26 PM |
A Generational Divide in Photography
Whenever I ask a much younger friend to take photos of me doing stuff, I get anxious when I get back an avalanche of said photos. I mean, thank you for the generous coverage, from all possible angles, but I’m from a generation where we only got 12 or 24 or 36 shots per roll, and every shot was indeed judiciously considered. There is a curious generational divide between photographers who grew up with manual cameras where we loaded finite rolls of film, and photographers with digital cameras with almost infinite takes. My boyfriend is amazed that when I take photos of things, I do only 1-2 shots, and I'm done.Labels: generations, life, photography
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
8:08 PM |
A Memory of a Literary Giant: Gregorio C. Brillantes, 1932-2025
I think I’ve met the Gregorio Brillantes only once, when I won the inaugural Fully Booked Speculative Fiction Prize, underwritten by [ehem] Neil Gaiman in 2006. The fiction category of the award was named after him [and he judged]. I know I must have fangirled so hard, considering that he was quite an influence in my formative years as a fictionist. We were having a post-awards dinner near the venue. [I think it was BGC.] He was very quiet but also encouraging, but I was just glad, to be honest, to share the same space with him in that moment. There must have been a photo of us somewhere in my archive, but alas, I think this small memory of him will have to suffice. Some time later, I was recruited to contribute to a planned anthology of several writers remaking his iconic short stories, and I was assigned to do “The Apollo Centennial.” I don’t know whatever happened to that anthology, but it still sounds like a great idea. His passing is such a great loss to Philippine literature.
I've written about the influence of his work previously, in 2005, here.
Labels: philippine literature, writers
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
1:06 AM |
No Credit Cards Accepted!
SCENE: A famous restaurant in Dumaguete, has been around for years. I’m with friends.
ME: [Grumbling] I don’t get why some restaurants choose not to accept credit cards, only cash. It’s 2025! You’d think they’d find that a good way to make things convenient for customers.
FRIEND: Well, that way, there’s no definite record of sale. It’s just cash. Then they can cook the books.
ME: But isn’t that bad? Then they don’t declare their taxes properly?
FRIEND: I’ve thought about that. Then I realized all our taxes are going to these trapos in government. I’d rather the money remain with our entrepreneurs.
ME: I’ve never thought about that before.
FRIEND: I don’t even bother to ask for receipts anymore.
This is how we are now in Da Pilipins.
Labels: business, friends, government, life, scandal, tax
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Thursday, September 25, 2025
I was off-kilter most of yesterday because I had an important 9 AM meeting. I knew that would happen, so I wasn’t surprised when I was sleepy for most of the day, and felt on edge. I mean, why fight your body’s natural rhythm? I really feel the most rested and ready to take on the world when I wake up at 10 AM. Anything before that makes me subhuman for the rest of the day. So, thank God for the kind of work I do. I consider myself a highly productive person, but I’m not designed to report to work at 8 AM.Labels: biology, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
10:20 PM |
And That's That
The truth of the matter is, you can only really do the best of what you can with things that you do. You try to make sure everything has been considered and accomplished. But there will always come a point after all the preparations you've done when you just have to let go and let whatever happens, happen.
[In Hemmingway Cafe, 24 September 2025]
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 258.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, September 21, 2025
Over the past two weeks, casual chats over coffee and dinner with some friends who also happen to be business owners in Dumaguete became local touch points over how the whole Discaya fiasco has really taken the nation by storm. The rot runs deep, and the corruption extends far beyond the DPWH.
All these are allegations, of course.
One friends owns several businesses in town—which I have promised not to mention or be more specific about. They had to close down one shop because, even after several years of that shop having “soft-opened,” City Engineering allegedly had yet to issue them an occupancy permit. Unless, of course, some kind of “deal” could be made. They refused—and soon opted to close down that shop instead. It was a small business endeavor, anyway, and closing it would not exactly hurt their bottomline.
Until, of course, they found themselves constructing a building within the city a few years ago. Again, City Engineering allegedly hee-hawed on providing an occupancy permit, and this time around my friend found it necessary to just give them what they wanted—much to the consternation of their contractor.
“Ma’am/Sir,” the wary contractor told them. “The moment we make this pay-off, with that kind of money, all other constructions we would be making in the future will fall under this trap.”
But my friend badly needed to open the building, because any delays would seriously affect their business, and so they promised they would make the appropriate pay-offs—just to get that damn occupancy permit. And they did.
“Sometimes, while driving down Dumaguete streets,” my friend told me, “I’d see that guy from that office driving his fancy car. And I’d get the urge to just plow into him, because I am so angry. And I’m not a murderous kind of person.”
We laughed. My friend is of the gentlest sort—always calm and collected.
“I mean, what we are trying to do is put up businesses in Dumaguete,” my friend continued, “and help hire people. But all these is so detrimental to entrepreneurs wanting to contribute to the economy.”
That night, we had dinner with another friend, who also happens to have two shops in Dumaguete. And without any prodding, my friend started complaining about the fact that business people like them always looked forward to the economic windfall of Christmas season—but come January and February, they would brace for the ultimate season of kickbacks from government agencies. Like, the Fire Department, allegedly.
“They make so many unnecessary demands, allegedly to keep our businesses up to acceptable standards,” my friend said. “But it’s really kickback. Once I had my business inspected, and they demanded this and that—and we could only follow their unreasonable requirement halfway. We could completely follow through with our choice of service providers, who could give us something more affordable—but no. We have to hire their own chosen service providers, who are apparently ‘accredited.’ A few days later, the inspector messaged: ‘Can you sponsor this and that for my [redacted]? My [redacted] is doing this and that for their [redacted].’ We did sponsor whatever that [redacted] needed, because after that, we finally got our permit. They ask for the weirdest things, too. Expensive motorcycles, for example. And we are not in the business of selling motorcycles at all!” My friend paused, then said: “Medyo nahadlok ko about the sponsorship thing kay bason ako ra iya gi-ask ato—but mas maayo makabalo ra pud sila that people talk!”
My friend has another friend who was eventually forced to close his business because of this system. “They really targeted him,” my friend said. “He owned a small restaurant, and he refused to pay. His kitchen had induction stoves just to make cooking safe, but they still asked him to build unnecessary fire suppression systems.” That friend eventually closed down his shop.
Still another friend had this to say when they learned I was writing this article: “[Redacted names of agencies] ask for appliances, phones, laptops, pag-Pasko. Pang-‘raffle’ daw. Ugh.”
I bet the rot does not stop there. The rot has become so much a part of the ecosystem of doing business here, no one even questions these practices anymore.
But the whole Discaya debacle has opened a can of worms, and I know for sure that those anomalous projects are not isolated to their respective localities. Already, we know of several Discaya infrastructure projects in Negros Oriental, with project managers now declaring that these projects have been declared finished and accomplished. But, given what we now know, does anyone doubt the quality of those projects? Who does not recall infrastructure projects in the city and the province that eventually crumbled in a year or two after their finish?
The terrible thing about corruption is not that we don’t know it exists. It’s that we’ve learned to live with it like a bad smell we can’t quite wash off. You hear it in coffee shop chatter, in the way we swap stories of absurd permits and “special requirements” with the same tone we use for the weather—resigned, familiar, inevitable. It’s the banality of rot. You grease a palm here, you sponsor a project there, and the gears of bureaucracy suddenly start to turn. Refuse, and you risk the slow death of your livelihood.
And it’s not just the money. It’s the humiliation. My friend, the gentlest soul you could ever meet, fantasizes about ramming their car into a bureaucrat’s shiny new vehicle. That’s what corruption does—it curdles kindness, makes decent people dream violent thoughts they’d never act on. It chips away at dignity until you’re left cynical, muttering to yourself that maybe honesty really does have no place here.
The Discaya fiasco is just the latest theater, and we gawk at it because it’s spectacle. But beneath the headlines, it’s also a mirror. The same decay that allowed the Discaya projects to be declared “accomplished” while everyone knows they’ll eventually crumble—it’s the same decay suffocating small businesses in Dumaguete, the same decay clogging our regulatory inspections, our operation permits, our everyday transactions.
Here’s the truth no one wants to say aloud: corruption has become our ecosystem. And ecosystems are hard to kill. But maybe, just maybe, this scandal is also a chance to name the rot again, to refuse silence, to remind ourselves we deserve better. Because if we stop naming it, if we stop raging, the rot wins—and we go on breathing this poisoned air, pretending it’s normal.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, September 19, 2025
9:00 PM |
Salome, Agnes, and All the Anguish in the World
Over the past few weekends, those who love the Dumaguete theatre scene—and it has been quite a bountiful season so far—found themselves confronted with drama at its most essential: bare, unflinching, and alive with questions that cut to the bone.” To begin with, Artista Sillimaniana presented two plays over two weekends in succession, dubbed Double Take, with the conceit that their titles were not to be revealed in any of its publicity, inviting their potential audiences to trust the theatre artists with just the promise of great stories performed to their best expressions by some of Dumaguete’s mightiest thespians. I called it “secret theatre,” with the reveal of the titles only happening at the very start of each show. It was experiment, and by the time Double Take took its last bow last September 13, that experiment proved to be a grand success—the audiences growing with each performance, brought on by fantastic word of mouth.
But now that it’s over, we can reveal the titles in this review. First up was M/ark St. G/ermain’s F/reud’s L/ast S/ession, directed by Jaime del Mundo, and featuring Del Mundo himself as the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud opposite Nelsito Gomez as C.S. Lewis, the famous author behind The Chronicles of Narnia and other tomes which have become classics of Christian literature. Both came to Dumaguete from Manila under the modest billing of a live reading. But modest is the last word one would use to describe what unfolded on the Woodward Little Theatre stage in the first weekend of September. What we were given was theatre distilled to its most essential, its most dangerous, and its most rewarding: two actors, two chairs, a script, and the raw electricity of performance.
The absence of theatrical spectacle—no elaborate set, no special lights, almost no blocking—was never a lack. In fact, it heightened the evening I saw the play in, forcing the audience to lean in, to listen, to wrestle with the very same questions the play poses: belief or unbelief, faith or despair, the stubborn human spirit against the inevitability of death. Del Mundo’s Freud was masterful: here was the old man, frail and dying, yet still wielding wit like a scalpel, each phrase honed with the authority of a mind refusing to surrender. Gomez’s Lewis was a supple counterpoint, all luminous conviction and trembling vulnerability, his belief not naïve but hard-won, tender, and full of ache.
What followed was no mere dialogue but a duel, ideas clashing and dancing in equal measure. And yet, in the pauses, in the shared quiet, there bloomed an intimacy that was profoundly moving. In that intimate space, Dumaguete was gifted not spectacle, but essence: words made flesh, thought turned theatre, performance stripped to its soul—and it was glorious.
These are nights in local theatre when we can see that spectacle can be unnecessary, when the simplest act of reading becomes revelation. Such was the case with the second play of Double Take—J/ohn P/ielmeier’s A/gnes of G/od, again directed by Jaime del Mundo, this time orchestrating a trio of actresses who are rightfully considered as among the finest of three generations of Dumaguete theatre—Dessa Quesada-Palm as Dr. M/artha Livingstone, Belen Calingacion as Mother M/iriam Ruth, and Anna del Prado as Sister A/gnes. What unfolded that second weekend of September was theatre in its most concentrated, unflinching form: three women, three chairs, and a story that dared to wound and enlighten at the same time.
The brilliance of the live reading lay in how these actresses localized the story, rendering its conflicts of faith, truth, and madness into something that felt disturbingly intimate for Dumaguete audiences. Dessa’s Livingstone was a force of skepticism wrapped in vulnerability, her lines haunted by betrayals of faith. Belen’s Miriam Ruth was fierce and evasive, her contradictions dangerous in their evasions. And Anna’s Agnes was astonishing—innocence curdled into menace, her fragile voice laced with something monstrous.
The clash of these three women unfolded like a storm, all of them armed with questions about divinity, about sexuality, about truth colliding in a crucible of pain and wonder. The silence of the appreciative audience spoke volumes, broken only by applause in the end rising like benediction. I noticed that among the crowd I saw the evening in were seminarians from nearby St. Joseph, a reminder of how close this story cut to lived lives of faith in our city. They loved the play.
And then, that same second weekend of September, came Salome, this time at the Luce Auditorium.
Oscar Wilde’s curious one-act tragedy, presented by the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council and staged Andrew Alvarez in Benjie Kitay’s brilliant Bisaya translation, plunged us into blood and desire with startling intimacy. Performed in the round, the audience encircling the stage like conspirators, this Salome found its full flowering in the precise lighting design by Keith Delgado, in the sensual choreography by Fionabelle Marie Cabe, in the hypnotic music by Jules Steven Josol, in the delightfully decadent costuming by Josip Tumapa, and in the minimalist set design by Eazel Savellino. I mention these members of the creative team, because their contributions truly heightened a masterful rendering of the play—an astonishing feat by first-time director Alvarez.
What unfolded for us on the Luce stage was as inevitable as it was shocking, the fantastic unfolding really the result of beautiful performances. Jade Mary Cornelia embodied Salome with revelatory nuance—playful innocence transforming into terrifying obsession. In the way she lilts her voice, we get childish, almost innocent, petulance curdling into corrupted desire for Jokanaan [John the Baptist], the prophet who spurns her, and who pushes her to make her fateful demand for his head in exchange for her dance for King Herod. Surrounding Cornelia’s tour de force performance are three veteran Dumaguete stage actors—Hope Tinambacan, Onna Rhea Quizo, and Benjie Kitay [all senior mentors from Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts]—who gave the staging a much-needed gravitas: Hope’s Jokanaan was a force thundering with sanctity; Onna’s Herodias was deliciously imperious, commanding disdain in every gesture, in every line reading; and Benjie’s Herod was a different marvel altogether—witty, clownish, sinister, fully inhabiting Wilde’s paradox of depravity laced with comedy. [He also got the best lines, perhaps owing to the fact that the entire play is his fantastic translation effort.] On the other hand, Fort Narciso’s Naraboth, a new face in Dumaguete theatre, lent a handsome and tragic yearning in the play, which completed the fin de siecle tableau.
For me, what makes this Salome astonishing is its “completeness,” embodied by the efforts of the cast and the creative team, the daring use of the arena stage, and the pulse of Wilde’s words rendered in our own tongue. It’s just a different beast, seeing this play rendered in beautiful Binisaya. [Gorgeous lines like, “Gigutom ko sa imong katahum; nangala ko sa imong lawas; og bisan ang bino ug mga mansanas, dili makapawala sa akong tinguha,” sent shivers down my spine.] It feels like a perfect production—confident, sensual, unsettling, and absolutely alive. Wilde’s play, Alvarez tells us in his director’s notes, is about victims of circumstance making choices that define their becoming. I get that. Also, on the Dumaguete stage, Salome becomes more than revival of a classic play: it is revelation of current tribulations, a mirror of modern obsession and its terrible costs.
Taken together, these three plays—F/reud’s Last Session, A/gnes of God, and Salome—for me formed a triptych of anguish and faith that Dumaguete audiences were so very privileged to witness. Each play in its own way wrestled with belief and despair: men circling questions of mortality with reasoned eloquence, women clawing through madness and doctrine toward fragile truths, and a young princess spiraling from innocence into monstrous obsession.
They were plays that confronted the fragility of conviction, the dangers of desire, and the necessity of doubt. Staged with minimal spectacle or with ritualistic grandeur, they shared one thing: an unrelenting interrogation of what it means to be human, to believe, and to suffer. Theatre in Dumaguete, in these productions, became a crucible, where anguish was not hidden but laid bare, and where faith, whether affirmed, denied, or corrupted, became the trembling heart of drama itself.
Labels: art and culture, city of literature, dumaguete, theater
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 257.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
9:13 PM |
Robert Redford, 1936–2025
You were lovely, Hubbell. Goodbye. Barefoot in the Park (1967) is actually my favorite Redford.Labels: celebrity, death, film, obituary
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, September 12, 2025
2:32 PM |
At the Crematorium
We cremated my brother today at the Eterna crematorium in Valencia. That was the first time I’d see such a thing: a dead body in a dark cavern, in a place that felt both solemn and ominous. My 93-year-old mother sat quietly beside me in the waiting room, surrounded by family, many coming from Bayawan; she is hard of hearing and often forgets things, but she knows what’s going on. Yesterday, I asked her why we were at St. Peter’s Chapel, and she calmly said, “Namatay imong Manong Alvin.” We are not criers as a family, so that serenity, that ungrieving facade was par for the course for us. Today, though, she was a bit restless. “Okay ra ba nga isunog imong manong?” “Okay ra, ma,” I replied. I got she wasn’t used to the idea of cremating a loved one; she probably wanted to see a coffin being lowered to the ground, being covered with soil, the whole burial business. But she nodded. A few minutes later, she asked again: “Okay ra ba nga isunog imong manong?” I held her hand, and again I assured her: “Okay ra, ma.”
Labels: death, family
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
12:31 AM |
The First of Us to Go
This was not our first death in the family. My father died in 1997, when I was in college. Assorted relatives have passed on in the intervening years, including our beloved sister-in-law Efeb, who died in 2024. But Alvin was the first among us brothers to go, and that realization amounted to something tectonic—like a massive shift in our considerations of mortality, like death knocking too intimately at our family’s door.
On the day my brother died, Kuya Moe [Moses Atega] posted on Facebook—as he is wont to do with most alumni of Silliman University—that “the handsomest Casocot brother had passed away.” My Manong Alvin was certainly very handsome, but my brother Rey would probably disagree vehemently.
But let me break it down for you:
Rocky, our eldest, is truly the handsomest.
Edwin is the most ambitious.
Dennis is the most responsible one, and the architect of everything we do as a family. He is the one we turn to the most when we want to get things done.
Rey is the most fabulous and chaotic—and he will, I’m sure, also insist on being the handsomest.
I am, ehem, the most talented.
But Alvin, considering everything, was really the kindest and the sweetest among us six.
Truth to tell, if a gun were pointed at my head and I am forced to answer the question over who my favorite brother is, I’d most probably say, “Alvin.” But I only truly knew him when I was very young. I was in high school when he left for Switzerland in what turned out to be a brief sojourn, and which paved the way for him to eventually enter the United States as a tourist—and where, alas, he decided to turn TNT.
But when I was growing up—and straight on until I was entering my adolescence—Manong Alvin embodied being the “best kuya.” He was very kind, sometimes to a fault. He was compassionate. He was patient. Of all my brothers, he was the one who was most demonstrative of fraternal love—which is an anomaly, because the Casocots as a family is not exactly known for outward displays of affection. [Not that we are cold, either.]
I remember playing crazy rounds of ping pong with him. I remember that he was, among all of us, the best cook. I remember that he was also the most romantic—and always seemed to fall for the same type of woman. Perhaps the Tagalog word “maamo” describes him best—he was mild-mannered, domesticated, affable, possessing a gentle nature. When I ask his high school classmates their memories of him, they recall him as a quiet boy, also someone kind. But because he was very handsome and quiet, girls loved him.
He belonged to SUHS Class 1979, which includes, among many others, Alex Rey Pal, Mark Macias, Emma Ray Panaguiton, Jessica Lupisan, Burton Estolloso, Jun Datu, Vivian Ceniza, and my cousin Gil Moncal Jr. Pastor Jun Datu remembers once calling Alvin, “Tocosac,” a reversal of our family name—to which Alvin amiably retaliated by calling him “Utad”—which actually stuck as a nickname. He also remembers spending many afternoons with my brother in high school playing basketball. “He was not a tall guy,” Pastor Jun remembers. “But he made up for it by being very quick. He was like a cat.” Afterwards, resting from their games, they would troop to buy 25-centavo banana-q at the merkado. “In college, we still played basketball,” he remembers. “But we switched from banana-q to Coke. And also cigarettes. Because we were always hanging out at the house of Burton Estolloso, which had a store.”
I do remember my brother’s favorite cigarette—“Hope Short”—because I was always the one sent on errands to buy this for him when I was growing up.
Another one of his high school friends, Adidas Cañete, remembers him to be quite the ladies’ man—but also one who was quick to share, not just the delicacy of baye-baye my brother would bring to Dumaguete from home in Bayawan, but also answers to exam questions. In college, they were also part of a clique they called Addax—a reworking of the word “barkada” which was apparently bestowed on them by former Dumaguete City Mayor Ipe Remollo. “Alvin was mostly the serious type but he got along well with the rowdy group,” Adidas remembers.
At his memorial last Thursday night, which was sponsored by his high school classmates, I couldn’t help but think about some of the “What If’s” of my brother’s life. Earlier that day, I had spent the morning choosing the best photo of him to print out and put in a frame, to grace the glass top of his casket. I chose the one where he looked the most promising—a choice cut from a family photo taken at a popular studio [Image Bank!] in Dumaguete, circa 1990. He was very handsome in this photo, and he must have been 27 years old. I think he had just gotten back to Dumaguete after spending a year or two in Manila, where he was hopping from one job to the next, never finding one that stuck. He had graduated from Silliman University with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1985, a year or two later than his original cohort; afterwards, he had failed the board exam—which surprised my family, because he was smart, and he was very good with numbers. He never bothered taking the board again.
A year or two after this photo was taken, he embarked on an OFW life in Switzerland—which, alas, did not pan out as planned. That’s when we found out he had gone to the U.S., ostensibly to visit—but had made the decision to stay on illegally. We would eventually find out he had married a Filipino immigrant, and had two children with her. [He also adopted her eldest boy.] We lost touch, only to find out again that they had divorced but that their sons were living with him and his mother-in-law, in difficult circumstances. The correspondences were not consistent, until we learned that he had gotten sick. In 2019, we had to bring him back home to the Philippines.
I asked myself: What if he did not study civil engineering? I don’t really think it was the path he wanted to take—only the path he was expected to take. What if he had become a chef? He was very good at cooking, and I remember him being passionate about it. But in the 1980s, I’m not sure that was even a consideration—certainly an “impractical” one. So he ended taking up civil engineering—which, alas, he did not come to practice anyway.
I asked myself: What if he did not go to Switzerland, and eventually to the United States? I knew he really wanted to stay in the Philippines—but there was pressure on him to leave, “to help the family,” especially in the direst of our financial worries—and truth to tell, there was also pressure to get him away from a girlfriend my family did not approve of. [So much drama!] His life never gained traction in America, especially considering his circumstances. But he did have family, and having his sons Bryan, Christian, and Darrell in our lives—albeit so far away in Los Angeles—is a blessing that could not have happened, if he had not gone to the U.S.
I asked these difficult questions because I love my brother, even when he became the paragon of potential thwarted. Because most of his life, he was always searching for himself and what he could be in this world. I think the life I have chosen to live is mostly a response to my older brother’s chosen pathway. For me, my Manong Alvin taught me—although indirectly—to follow my own dreams, and to carve out a path that would be the making and fulfilment of my potentials.
I do wish though that I was a better brother when he finally came back to the Philippines in 2019, more than twenty years since I last saw him. His body was already ravaged by Lubag, a type of Parkinson’s that comes from Panay. He could no longer communicate well, and I admit that made me uncomfortable, because the Alvin in my memory was someone active, someone articulate, someone who embraced me with so much affection. My heart broke for the man I saw in a wheelchair, and who could not speak.
In the early hours of September 10, in his bedroom at our house in Bantayan, his caregiver heard him mumble incoherently, a sound, she later told me, that sent chills down her spine. When she checked on him again by 5 AM, he was no longer breathing. A homecare nurse finally came by at 8 AM to officially pronounce him dead. To us and to many of his friends, it was a much-needed rest to what had been a physical torment. Knowing even that, it is never easy to grapple with a death in the family. There’s a hole now in each of us.
I still want to remember him the way he was in my younger years. In the summation of our lives, we are measured by the fond memories of those who love of us, who remember us in our best moments, in our fullest potential. My Manong Alvin deserves that.
Labels: death, family, friends, life, memories, obituary
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 256.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, September 07, 2025
9:00 AM |
The Art of Failing in Dumaguete
Just because you are a popular franchise does not immediately entail you will be successful in Dumaguete. This is a lesson many chains—restaurants and cafés included—trying to make headway into the curious Dumaguete market have failed to learn, sometimes spectacularly, like a plate of overcooked pasta sent back to the kitchen. Dumaguete is not a blank canvas awaiting corporate paint. It is, rather, a living ecosystem, a town with its own rhythms, rituals, and hunger. To ignore these is to serve up failure on a sizzling plate.
I have seen it again and again: shiny new franchises opening with fanfare—balloons, ribbon-cuttings, a social media blitz promising the capital’s taste now available “in the provinces.” They attract the first-week crowd [or the first three-month crowd], the curious, and the selfie-hungry. And then the lights dim, the tables thin out, and one day you pass by and notice the signage has been quietly taken down, as though the restaurant had ghosted the city. What happened? The answer is usually simple: they didn’t know Dumaguete.
Take, for instance, the ridiculous phenomenon of restaurants taking last orders at 8:45 PM. Eight forty-five! As though Dumaguete were a city of children tucked in by nine. “Sorry, we’re closed na, last orders at 8:45 PM,” the waitress at the newly-opened Bigby’s over at Filinvest Mall told us last Friday night, when we wandered in for a late dinner after watching a play. Fine, if that’s how you operate. Our recourse: Sans Rival in the same mall, which opens till late at night—and is, if you noticed, a Dumaguete brand.
This is Dumaguete—a town that dines out, or goes to cafés, at nine. Always at nine. I don’t know why that is the case, but at 9 PM, people always trickle in. I’ll be working at a café like Bo’s, and then at 9 PM sharp, I look up and I see people trickle in. [This was especially true in the pre-pandemic.] If Manila eats at six and Cebu at seven, Dumaguete is unapologetically nocturnal. This is why Why Not?, even if it has become frightfully expensive these days, will always be special in our Dumagueteño hearts—because it opens as late as 2 AM. This is why places like Café Estacion or Hemmingway are popular, because they close at midnight. The day here is long and slow, and no one is in a rush to eat dinner early. Students are still hanging out at cafés past eight, professors are only just stirring from naps, doctors and lawyers are closing up their clinics, and suddenly everyone decides they are hungry—at 9 PM. To close the kitchen before the town is even ready to eat is not just bad business, it is cultural malpractice.
Is this because most of these franchises have decision-makers who are not really Dumaguete-based? And thus unable to really fathom the way we have contoured our lives in this city?
You see this happen during Founders Day—which is really two weeks in late August when the city essentially explodes in a celebration that is all about Silliman University. The city does get very busy—but it is a busyness that should be read in a careful way, or else something you do will turn out to be a fiasco.
Let’s say you are a new restaurant trying to make a splash, so you schedule your big opening or your big promo or some ill-timed “wine night” right smack in the middle of Founders Day. Rookie mistake. Founders Day is Dumaguete’s Mardi Gras, its Coachella, its everything rolled into fifteen chaotic days of parades, alumni parties, high school reunions, art exhibits, food fairs, concerts, etc. Everyone is busy. Everyone already has an itinerary. Nobody has time for your corporate stunt, least of all at your restaurant. If you are not part of the Founders Day constellation—if you have not embedded yourself in the alumni circuit, the Hibalag booths, the local pub crawls—then you are invisible. You simply do not stage an event during Founders Day. You join Founders Day, or you wait until September.
This is why local knowledge is everything. This city has its seasons, its rhythms, its secret codes. You have to know when the cicadas scream at noon, when the pedicab drivers converge at the corner of Silliman Avenue or Miciano Drive, when the professors decamp to Café Mamia after department meetings, when the doctors sneak to Casablanca for after-hours gin. You cannot run Dumaguete from a Manila spreadsheet, or Manila blueprint, no matter how many “trend reports” you paid for. Management must be local. Hire people who live here, who breathe the air and know when it smells of rain, who understand that a brownout can shut down an entire day’s business [unless you have generators], that a funeral in one barangay can drain the traffic of customers for hours. Hire people who know who eats and spends where, and why.
Dumaguete is not just any city. It is a university town, a place of endless transience and permanence locked in dance. Students come and go, professors linger, retirees settle, tourists drift in and out. The lifeblood of the city is conversation, not consumption. People don’t just eat here to fill their bellies; they eat to talk, to linger, to stretch out an evening into midnight over plates of Manang Siony’s tocino or bowls of pochero.
And Dumaguete has a nose for authenticity: it can sniff out corporate calculation from a mile away. What endures here are the places that feel true. Jo’s Chicken Inato, born here, not imported. Sans Rival, a dynasty of silvanas, with a legacy as rich as its buttercream. Neva’s, growing from humble beginnings in Puerto Princesa into an institution of Dumaguete pizza and pasta nights. Lab-as, still the definition of Dumaguete seafood, and longtime definer of Dumaguete night outs—although its legendary Reggae Wednesday has definitely seen better days. Even the humble tempurahan carts at the Pantawan in the Rizal Boulevard command more loyalty than a thousand franchises combined, because they belong to the city, they smell of sea breeze and memory. [And locals know they’re not really “tempura,” either.” We just call it ”tempura,” just because. It’s a local thing.]
So when a franchise comes in with its rigid hours, its Manila-style promos, its tone-deaf events, Dumaguete shrugs. Or worse, Dumaguete resists. Because here, loyalty is earned by listening, not imposing. You cannot bully Dumaguete into your business model. You have to court it, woo it, seduce it with understanding.
Once upon a time, National Bookstore opened a branch at Portal West, and was an instant success. Then, a few short years later, it transferred to Robinsons in what many locals has since considered to be a lamebrained corporate move—thinking that mall traffic was better than organic traffic in the heart of Dumaguete. Now, that bookstore is gone.
Once upon a time, Chapters Café opened here and thought it get by with its Instagram aesthetics inspired by books—not knowing that Dumagueteños are notoriously picky with its food. The bland menu was a quick turn-off, and the city—home of Asia’s oldest creative writing workshop, and home of many legendary writers—fled from its inauthentic book theme. [Do you remember those books they made displays of in their walls? Terrible books. Books you could in bulk get from a warehouse sale.] Now, that cafe is gone and is unremembered.
We just went to a new restaurant fronted by Manila celebrities, by the way.
Yikes.
Plastic cups for drinks? Yikes.
Bad plating? Yikes.
Unmemorable food? Yikes. [This is the worst offense. In a city bursting at the seams with many restaurants, you cannot, simply cannot, be unmemorable with your food.]
But the lines are still long since it’s new.
I’ll give it a year.
The irony is that Dumaguete is generous. But only if you play by its rhythms. Given that, the city will reward you with loyalty that can span years. But first, you will have to surrender the arrogance of thinking your brand name is enough. It is not. Not here. Here, you must prove yourself at nine o’clock sharp, during Founders Day, with locals at the helm. Otherwise, you will be just another forgotten franchise sign gathering dust in the city’s short memory, replaced by the next curious experiment. And Dumaguete will go on, unbothered, still dining at nine, still laughing into the night over plates that taste of home.
Labels: culture, dumaguete, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, September 03, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 255.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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