Boracay and Other Thoughts

After pounding rain last night here in Boracay (this place is an overdeveloped mess, a mini Waikiki Beach with Germans and South Koreans everywhere), we awoke to hazy, now turning sunny, skies. I think I will go get a P500 massage (that would be about $12 to you there in America). Actually, $12+ and counting as our once might dollar continues its slow international death (thank you Mr. Bush and the war machine). Last Tuesday night, before Palawan, we hung out with Allan Manalo, at the hipster joint Magnet Cafe near UP Diliman, where we watched Noel Shaw's film "Kung Hindi Naman" and got to see his sister, Angel Shaw, now based in Malate -- it was so cool to see her and meet her bro and watch his film. Filmmaker Howie Severino was there too, and we got to chat for a bit. We went to another really cool spot on Sat night the 12th-- Saguijo in Makati, where we watched a bunch of great indie pop bands, most fronted by Pinays all playing lead guitar. We loved Parokya ni Edgar, Moonstar 88, Cambio, and Imago.

Lest you think this trip is all hipster clubs, Greenbelt mall, torta, barbecue pork, garlic peanuts, ampao, white beaches and baby shark sightings on snorkeling trips, I have done a good bit of research. I went to the immaculate Ateneo de Manila campus on January 7 and did research at their American Historical Collection in the Philippine High Commission papers, circa 1911-1946. My pare fo life Ben de Guzman hung out with us that Tuesday the 8th, which was my day to do research at University of the Philippines, Diliman. That was a little bit of a nightmare. The building is huge, no airconditioning, four stories tall with no elevator (research +cardio, very multitasking), I couldn't seem to find as much as I needed, we got yelled at three times for being too loud in the Filipiniana room, the microfilm printer was broken and its repair is not in the budget, and the microfilm readers were made circa 1965, but it was the only room with aircon. Imagine that it's 90 degrees and humid inside and you're running from floor to floor. Then I saw the sign: University Library closes today at 3pm. We didn't get there until 11am because of Manila crosstown traffic (and yes, Kay, it's horrible during rush hour-- two hours to go crosstown, and that's when we catch up on our sleep!). And then the whole joint closes down 12-1 for lunch. I was like, LUNCH BREAK?!?!?! WHAT THE HELL! We get so used to our work-all-the-time American cultural values! We ate barbecue and rice with the students at the stands in front of the university for P40 ($1). By 2:30pm, I finally got to where I wanted to go -- the University Archives, where the Carlos P. Romulo papers are housed. Historians among you may remember Romulo, who was MacArthur's aide-de-camp during WWII, and was a Resident Commissioner in the US during the Commonwealth period. In those papers are communiques between Carlos Bulosan (then based in Stockton) and other Stockton community leaders circa the war. But of course, just as soon as I cracked those boxes open, the entire Archives staff, all wearing their "UP at 100 Ang Galing Mo!" white T-shirts, stood over me breathing fire and telling me their closure was imminent.

So at 3pm, Ben, Jing and I joined the thousands of alumni, staff, faculty and students to watch the 100th anniversary parade. And I had to admit, I got a little choked up for the love everyone had for their university and alma mater. The most moving sight were the thousands of students from UP Diliman and Los Banos marching behind the Serve the People banners. I thought of how hard everyone was working to go to college in the Philippines, and how lucky and blessed all of us are, in the US and the Philippines, whose families worked hard so that we could be college educated. They even had a theme song: "UP: Ang Galing Mo!" that was so catchy. They had helicopters dropping balloons and confetti, and Philippine military parachuters!

American colonial officials founded the University of the Philippines in 1908 to secularize university education in the Philippines (prior to UP the only choices were the Catholic Ateneo and University of Santo Tomas), to inculcate the Filipinos with American liberalism (in the traditional sense), and as a tool of colonialism. But UP by the 1960s and 1970s had become a hotbed of student political radical activism, especially the fine arts dept. From there was birthed the movement that unseated Ferdinand Marcos, and to this day, UP produces fine minds and fiery activists. One newspaper columnist in the Inquirer noted that the UP students rearticulated the American liberal ideas forced upon them and fused them with the values and ideas of the Philippine Revolution to change the Philippines. We were proud to be there that day as that legacy was celebrated.