Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
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.
Scene: Caña at The Bricks Hotel along Rizal Avenue, Dumaguete, Thursday, 3 PM. A table overladen with laptops and work stuff, and cups of coffee. A conversation.
“I heard there’s a new coffeeshop opening in front of your apartment.”
“It’s not really a coffeeshop, we found out last night. It’s actually more of a milk tea place—but they do serve coffee. I mean they have to. The word ‘bean’ is part of their name. People would expect it to be a coffee place, not a milk tea place.”
“There are too many milk tea places in Dumaguete, to be frank about it.”
“I’ve only liked one or two of them, to be honest. But Renz is a big milk tea fan, although he denies it.”
“Wasn’t that spot where the, umm, new milk tea is now… wasn’t that a fruit stand?”
“It was! I loved its name. Rizalicious Fruit Stand. It tickled me to death. Can you imagine taking Rizal’s name and making it delicious? It’s absolutely sacrilegious and bonkers, I love it. But it’s gone now. I was frustrated about that for a while, because it became my landmark for Grab Food drivers.”
“I wonder why they moved out.”
“I’m not really sure—but I was riding a tricycle the other day and the passengers in it had some chika. Apparently the lot owners increased the rent? I’m not sure about that. But that’s what I heard.”
“These days, you have to be careful keeping a business. Everything’s so expensive now. Rent is expensive. Onions are expensive.”
“Can you imagine for a while we were talking about how expensive onions were in the Philippines? That people were actually trying to smuggle them in international flights? What crazy times we live in.”
“I’m worried about _____, though. Its original branch in ______ is no longer around. But it’s new branch along _____ is still thriving.”
“We ate there last night.”
“I think he’s just consolidating his businesses right now. Let go of branches that are no longer working.”
“But it was such a pandemic hit!”
“It was!”
“I remember trying to get their food in the early months it opened in 2021—and we couldn’t! The lines were so long, and by the time we got to the stall, all their food items were gone.”
“That was fun.”
“It was, kinda. We had to go back there at least four times before we could finally get our orders in. But it was worth it. That ______ is to die for. It was delicious.”
“I have no recollection anymore how much I ate there.”
“Oh, it was a lot for me. And then I stayed away for a bit because it was already a bit too much. But later, when we got a craving for ______, we’d be there in a minute.”
“And now that original spot is gone.”
“Gone.”
“I went past it the other night—the spot is so dark now, and it was all so festive before. I loved how they played music like mad.”
“Now it’s gone. Except for their second branch along _______. Thank God it’s still there. Because I still get my ______ cravings. I don’t understand though. It was so popular during the pandemic!”
“But that’s how Dumaguete runs. It runs on f*ckboy consumerism.”
“F*ckboy what? What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you noticed? Whenever new places open in Dumaguete, locals throng to it like mad, for months even. But once the novelty is over, we avoid them like the plague. That’s what f*ckboys do. They’re always, like, into you—and then when they get their fill, sayonara.”
“Oh yeah. I remember Chapters Café.”
“Yup, that café is popular in Dipolog, and franchisers thought they could make it work in Dumaguete. And it did, for a while. It was so Instagrammable with its quaint design using popular literary characters—and people went there to Instagram being there. And then suddenly nobody came.”
“The food was horrible! And I hated how they used books as receipt and cash holders. It was so disrespectful.”
“I’ve noticed we generally hate franchises. We do like things that are local.”
“Must be why Harbor City didn’t work.”
“The dimsum wasn’t worth the Dumaguete taste. I also remember how people swarmed to Max’s.”
“I still love Max’s! But yeah, it’s quiet most days. I love the chicken though. And their other stuff. How come we still patronize Mooon Café and Café Racer? Aren’t they Cebu franchises?”
“Because Rey remade them to cater to Dumaguete sensibilities. Mooon Café in Cebu is not exactly the same as Mooon Café in Dumaguete, not really. Same with Café Racer. Totally different vibes. You have to get into the elusive Dumaguete vibe to cater to Dumaguete taste.”
“I have a former student once—he now works at a major Manila corporation—he posted in Facebook some years ago that the only way to know you’re really a success is to succeed in Dumaguete. Because we are notoriously picky, so when we pick you, you are an absolute winner.”
“Dumaguete as the litmus test for the rest of the Philippines?”
“I get that. I get f*ckboy consumerism, I guess. We do tend to swarm in the very beginning—and we do tend to easily let go.”
“Unless we really, really love the food or service.”
I promised a review and I finally tried out the new concierge service in town because it was a lazy Sunday yesterday, and my spirit was not exactly willing to leave the comforts of the bed in search for something to eat. So I called up InstaSugo [Facebook here | Mobile: 09274223901 | Landline: 522 1872 / 419 5887] who promised in their page that they can deliver anything in less than 45 minutes. They have a variety of services, including Food Delivery, and for PHP18/km, you can “name the food you want as long as it can be found anywhere in Negros Oriental and we deliver it to you in less than 45 minutes.” Sounded good to me. For the same sum per distance, they also do your gasoline needs, your document errands, your personal gifts/flower delivery services, and your grocery needs. They can also do your medicine delivery for PHP70 per 1k worth of meds, and your utilities/bills payment, free for the first month and then P150/month for 5 bills/utilities. (All rates from their page.) I called them and a polite lady answered. I told them I wanted some food from Neva’s -- my test site since it’s nearest to me. I couldn’t give them my address because my pad has no distinct landmarks around it, so we decided to chat over Facebook. I gave them a sketch with directions to where I lived, and they gave me several snapshots of Neva’s menu. I asked for Hawaiian kuripot pizza and herbed pork chop. They calculated the sum, and gave me a courier charge of P40. I said okay. “It will take Neva’s some time to prepare your order though,” she said. “Can you give us 40 minutes?” I said sure. I waited. They got lost, and so they called me. I waited by the sidewalk. Soon, there was a nice man alighting from a nice car bearing my order. It was all so strange. But it’s very much good service for anyone like me who live very independently, and sometimes wants a courier service to do their bidding—like when you’re feeling sick or lazy on a Sunday. I’d very much recommend the service. I wish they gave me a receipt from Neva’s though. And I still can’t figure out how they billed me P40 for a distance that’s not really even a kilometre. But I can’t wait for another lazy Sunday. I’ve already paid my bills this month.
From InstaSugo: "Thank you for your honest review and thank you for your recommendation. We at InstaSugo are very happy to see someone like you appreciate our service. We would just like to inform you that our minimum callout fee is P40 for 2km and below. We are very open for suggestions to help us improve our services as we are the first in Dumaguete to offer this kind of business. Next time, we will make sure to provide you with a receipt which we forgot to give you yesterday. Our goal is to help people connect with local businesses around the City and also let the community experience what is available in big cities all over the world in the advancement of technology. We are working hard to make it as easy as possible for our customers to access what they need in less than 45 minutes. Once again, thank you, sir!"
I just heard from a friend in Facebook that Video City is going the way of Blockbuster Video -- and is closing for good, at least in Dumaguete. News flies fast that way, on digital wings. So do the demise of old things. This video store in this tiny corner of the Twin Arcade Building -- that forlorn, misdesigned structure along Perdices Street -- contains so many memories for many people that news of its closing has become a little charged with nostalgia. It makes me ask: to what extent will the Internet [and digital culture] -- and it is the Internet that's the main culprit of many businesses closing up -- change much of our lives? What else will it obliterate?
I've always thought, given the digital reaches we can now do and go for, that the continued existence of video stores in this day and age is a little too ... superfluous. Even almost unnecessary. And I say this with such sadness. You see, I started my own film education in my youth with rented titles from video stores all over Dumaguete. I remember Midwest (now gone), Goodluck Store (now barely hanging on), and that videoshop at the bowels of Don Atilano that gave me my first glimpse at the films of Gregg Araki and other filmmakers of the New Queer Cinema. (Imagine that? New Queer Cinema in Dumaguete?) And so video stores are a major part of my film DNA, the same way it was for people like Quentin Tarantino. But back then, you had to do your research: you had to know what to look for exactly, amidst all the crap you were surrounded with on the shelves of these video stores. Finding a good, unexpected title was a bonanza. The experience is totally unlike the ease of picking titles today, legally or illegally. Today, you hear about a certain obscure title, and it doesn't take much to track down and download a copy. Sometimes, the obstacles cineasts faced in the past created a romance of sorts, like a search for some holy grail. I remember stumbling on James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971) in some dark shelf in a forgotten videostore, and I remember how I went nuts.
But when was the last time I rented a title from Video City? Years and years and years ago. My late-return fees were killing me, and so I decided to stop altogether. (Then again, I haven't bought anything from my suki DVD bootlegger for the past few years either. Sorry, Japar.)
I hope this post doesn't trip my Google AdSense to PSAs, but this is interesting... According to Top Ten Reviews, the Philippines ranked no. 8 in worldwide p-o-r-n revenue in 2006. And the top three notorious contenders? In order: China, South Korea, and Japan, which cut such huge slices of the p-o-r-n-pie. So much for the alleged Asian hinhin when it comes to sexuality.
In India, the once highly-regarded call center industry -- which fueled the country's current tech boom and subsequent economic miracle -- seems to be facing gradual extinction by sheer burnout, work dissatisfaction, and the understandable health fears of agents. The dive is reflected in the way some universities now actually ban call center recruiters from entering their campuses altogether. Here's a sentiment from one Indian:
"Earlier it was considered cool to work at a call center," said Nishant Thakur, 19... "That died out quite quickly." Added Thakur's friend, Vishal Lathwal, 19, "If you work at a call center today people will think you don't have anything else to do or were a bad student."
Will the dissatisfaction spread to the Philippines as well? Read the rest of the report from Time.
When I was living in Tokyo, the best bookstore in the world, it seemed to me, was the fourth floor of Tower Records in Shibuya. They had absolutely everything. I'd go every weekend and sprawl across any of its red-carpeted aisles and read books, and then come home to Mushashi-sakai having spent another small fortune in yen on books. (I never saved enough money when I came back home.) Now, the 60-year Tower Records has declared bankruptcy in the age of online downloads, shameless piracy, and too-many choices, and is closing its doors everywhere in the world. It's sad. It making me rethink my Limewire habit.
"Obedience is better than sacrifice." -- I Samuel 15:22
Sometimes, when I despair about the state of the world -- complete with images of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Marcos, and Arroyo flashing in my head -- I think about the lowest levels of depravity we sometimes unwittingly allow ourselves to wallow in. There is scientific basis for this.
In 1963, the psychologist Stanley Milgram decided to do an experiment that would test the capacity for evil by the most normal of human beings. He called this controversial experiment "Behavioral Study of Obedience." The results of that study stunned the world, and gave us an unsettling view of the darkest depths of our psychology.
Stanford University's Philip Zimbardo wrote of that experiment:
Milgram recruited more than 1,000 participants from all walks of life to be a part of his studies. They would arrive individually in the lab and be told they were helping psychological science to find new ways to improve memory through punishment and thereby help in the education processes.
Teacher, the role assigned to the participant, helps the Experimenter, who is wearing the white lab coat, symbolic of his status, to connect the Learner, a lovable middle-aged man, to the electrical shock apparatus; the victim is in an adjacent room. On the first trials, learning is going well, the word associates are being recalled, and Teacher says, "Good, fine."
But then the Learner starts making errors and punishment begins, first small, then ever escalating. As it does, the Learner begins complaining, then yelling and screaming. The Teacher is upset, having never imagined it would come to this. Turning to the Experimenter, Teacher dissents, indicating he or she does not want to continue, which is cast aside as the Teacher is reminded of the contract agreed to previously. More shock, more yelling, complaining of a heart condition, and insisting he wants to quit. "Who will be responsible if something bad happens in there to the Learner, Sir?" asks the Teacher. "I will; please continue, Teacher." At 375 volts the Learner screams, there is a loud thud, and then only silence from the shock chamber thereafter. Teacher is now really distressed (the women often cry, the men wince), says the experiment should be terminated because the Learner has stopped responding.
Not so easy. "Remember the rules," reminds the Experimenter, "Failure to respond is an error, and all errors must be punished immediately with the appropriate level of reaction, Teacher." And there are five more higher levels possible to the extreme of 450 volts.
Before starting his research, Milgram invited 40 psychiatrists to predict the percentage and type of person who would indeed go all the way in this study that he described to them in detail. In their collective wisdom based on their medical training in dispositional, individualistic analysis, they concluded that fewer than 1% of the Teacher-Participants would go all the way, and they would be the sadists.
So the psychiatrists were all wrong; everyone's predictions were all wrong. Not 1% compliance, but 65% compliance -- two thirds of the subjects went all the way up to the final level. That quantification of evil went as high as 90% or down to 10% compliance across 18 studies in Milgram's research program -- each study varying one aspect of the social situation.
This explains why there can be absolute acquiescence by the most normal of people even in a deluge of so much palpable evil, and sometimes even contribute to its perpetuation: there were the ordinary Germans in World War II, the Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge bloobath, the Spanish during the Catholic Inquisition, the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, and so on and so forth...
This scenario is more or less echoed in Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (see the IMDB data here), which for me is a powerful indictment of corporate greed in recent history.
According to one description, the movie "takes a look at one of the greatest corporate disasters in history, in which top executives from the 7th largest company in [America] walked away with over one billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing. The film features insider accounts and rare corporate audio and movie tapes that reveal colossal personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The human drama that unfolds within Enron's walls resembles a Greek tragedy and produces a domino effect that could shape the face of our economy and ethical code for years to come."
The writer of that note happens to have posted the entire movie over at YouTube. This is part one:
Watch the film, and cringe with horror over the ordinary gestures people do to create evil -- and even relish it.
The very nature of the bamboo -- which is among the most useful of all plants -- provides a fitting metaphor for understanding the mechanism of the success, and the continuing goals, of Buglas Bamboo Institute (BBI) in Dumaguete City: the bamboo is resilient, it is highly functional in so many ways, and it is always conducive to growing to its fullest potentials.
There is, all over the world, over 1,500 species of bamboo. A significant portion of them grows in Asia, with the Philippines breeding many of the species best suited for the manufacture of specialty products. According to experts, their uses can astound in the way they vary: bamboos, of course, are highly decorative plants, but their compact and highly-complex root systems also make the bamboo environmentally useful because of its magnificent capability for controlling erosion. Houses, screens, and windbreakers have been made from bamboo, and its culms have been used for an array of things, from bridges to rafts, from fishing poles to garden stakes, from water pipes to scaffolding, from carving to jewelry, from cooking utensils to woven mats and baskets, from fences to furniture. Toys and musical instruments have been made from bamboo. The bamboo organ in Las Pinas, for example, was constructed in 1818 from 950 bamboo culms -- and is still operational. There is no construction material as hard as bamboo. Its complex physical structure makes it a hardwood material perhaps comparable to steel -- but is, almost paradoxically, waterproof, light, bendable, and tough. In many Asian cuisines, edible bamboo shoots are also considered a delicacy.
The bamboo gets into the record books as the fastest growing plant in the world, and its continuous regeneration makes it an authentic "sustainable resource." What is remarkable about the plant is that, under certain beneficial conditions, new shoots become taller and thicker over the years, until that particular species of bamboo planting reaches its maximum potential in terms of height and breadth. While the mother plant produces new shoots every year that develop to their maximum height within a few months, the poles can be harvested after 4 or 5 years when they reach their maximum tensile strength. And bamboo can grow relatively anywhere. Thomas Walta, the DED specialist currently assigned to look over the manufacture and design component of the BBI, says that bamboos generally thrive on moist and rich soil, but are fairly tolerant of varying soil conditions. "That is why they grow mostly beside riverbeds," Mr. Walta says. But once they take root to any particular environment, they become reasonably resistant to drought -- hence their remarkable resiliency.
That may be the same exact story about how BBI itself came to be. Resiliency. That story is also the chronicle of a socially-minded Carmelite missionary who came to the Philippines from the Netherlands in 1964, and quickly took root among Filipinos, particularly those who lived by the skin of their teeth and the caprices of often cruel fates.
Frans Kleine Koerkamp's first assignment as a man of the cloth was in Escalante, Negros, where his social education about the plight of common Filipinos first flowered. "I would take a walk in the barrios of Escalante," Mr. Koerkamp recalls, "and already I could see so much of extreme poverty among so many people." Moved, he decided to help form a credit cooperative in town -- but soon his social activism took its first mark in the eternal skirmish of local class wars: he eventually got himself in trouble with the local hacenderos or landowners.
In 1972, he was transferred to Iligan City, but there his social activism became even more heightened. He helped setup labor organizations, with the sole purpose of starting a housing project for local workers. In those days, that brand of advocacy was already enough to cast suspicious eyes from the authorities, and when military rule became instituted under President Marcos, Mr. Koerkamp again got into trouble. In 1980, he was in Manila trying to organize church people to become more aware about the social evils of Martial Law, focusing mostly on human rights abuses, which he saw firsthand happening in the countryside.
By the end of that tumultuous decade, Mr. Koerkamp's social activism took on a different focus. "I had, by 1989, become aware that there was a need for a kind of socio-economic progress for political advocacy, but I didn't know what to do," he said. His wife suggested that perhaps he stayed, at least for a while, in a typical barrio -- where he might grow into seeing what needed to be done.
In 1994, he settled in Dauin, a town south of Dumaguete City. In barrio Casili, he noticed there were plenty of bamboo plantings -- an abundance that belied the stark social realities of the place. The land in Casili, just like most land in the province and elsewhere, have become privately owned and subdivided, with the local farmers left to tenant the land, producing mostly coconut and maize. "The children of the barrio farmers knew only to get out of the place as soon as possible, and go into the big city -- where they end up selling cigarettes or becoming housemaids," Mr. Koerkamp remembered. "That got me into thinking... If we could only do something with the plentiful bamboo, we could increase the income of the farmers -- and perhaps, in the process, empower them as well." He concluded that the utilization of bamboo, whatever that may be, should be in the hands of the people.
By the time Mr. Koerkamp came into that conclusion, countries around Asia already knew of the bamboo as a source of a multi-million dollar industry. In the Philippines, however, he knew he had to start from scrap. First, he had to convince local farmers about the value of the bamboo itself -- a feat in a country already used to concrete and the like. Between 1995 and 1999, he devoted his efforts to research, and was astonished to find out that in a given year, Negros Oriental alone is capable of producing between 90,000 to a million poles -- but that only 30,000 of these per year are being used.
Buglas Bamboo Institute -- which took into its identity, "Buglas," the pre-Spanish name of Negros Oriental -- finally came into being in the interim, with initial support from Dutch developmental organizations. In 1999, Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED) came into the picture, with the primary aim of extending technical expertise, and networking potentials, to the program. That year, DED's Andreas Eineg helped set up the extension component of BBI -- something which sets the Institute apart from typical business entities: it is a corporation with a social conscience, and works actively to develop it. For the most part, this is an evolution of Mr. Koerkamp's belief that corporations should develop a benevolent social dimension to help the poor.
Set up as a support base for the marginalized farmers and rural poor of the province who have little stake in the formal economy of the country, BBI urges them to make their own living through their own enterprise, by producing something in their fields, in their homes, or in small workshops -- in other words, helping communities make sustainable use of local resources for their welfare. That resource, in this case, just happens to be the bamboo, which farmers -- in localities such as Maayong Tubig, Si-it, Lunga, and Apolong -- breed, harvest, and sell to corporations like the BBI, which in turn manufacture them into profit-making products. Today, BBI's biggest products range from raw bamboo materials, to elegant furniture, to the construction of houses and gazebos.
But it is also an institution currently in the crossroads of its existence -- and the question now is how it must become more viable in the future. For that, it is in the stages of splitting the closely-linked production and extension components to become more sustainable, but still aims to retain the overriding social orientation that started it all.
For the most part, the future looks bright. Local sales of its products have gone up almost 200%, especially with the Institute's success in the 2005 Cebu Exposition, where it won a Mugna Award for Best Outdoor Design for an intricately conceived lounge chair.
The international market is also being exploited, with orders now streaming in from everywhere, particularly from the Middle East. By 2006, according to new CEO and business head Samuel Ruiz, the BBI will finally get into the black, rising above the break-even point. Within three years, the company will finally be earning for good.
The challenge, it seems, is to firm up the business side of the program, meet customers' needs, streamline the factory in Dauin, and control overhead.
But perhaps the bigger challenge BBI is facing is in promoting the bamboo as "the grass of life," restoring the original significance of this indigenous resource. Although very much a part of Filipino culture, bamboo has lost much of its importance in the lives of the common people, and has become dubbed "the poor man's timber." The ultimate aim, Mr. Koerkamp admitted, may be for "the culture to be redeveloped since it has already been damaged for 500 years."
With BBI at the helm of a bamboo renaissance, the future indeed looks green -- and pliable, just like the bamboo.
1:06 AM |
No Credit Cards Accepted!
