Bong at Hayden: Isang liham

Pinakamamahal kong Bong,

Panalo ka talaga, Idol! Halos nakalimutan ko na na nakaupo ka nga pala sa Senado.

Sa wakas, tumayo ka din upang ipakita sa mga kapwa mo senador kung p’ano talaga makatulong sa ating Inang Bayan, partikular na sa mga kababaihan.

Mabuhay ka, Idol! Sana dumami ang lahi mo. (Ay teka, madami na nga pala ang lahi mo — at ng tatay mo.)

Tama ka. Isa talagang ‘pervert of the highest degree’ iyang si Hayden Kho. Hindi gaya mo. Sobrang manyak pa at mapagsamantala iyang si Hayden. Hindi gaya mo. At ‘buang’ at ‘wala sa tamang pag-iisip’ talaga iyang tao na iyan — doktor pa naman. Hindi gaya ni Miriam.

Isa kang tunay na maginoo, Idol. Hindi gaya ni Hayden na isang manlilinlang, isang babaero, isang tao na ginagamit ang pusisyon niya upang mapagsamantalahan ang mga nangangailangan at walang laban.

Talaga namang nakakagigil at nakakainit ng dugo panuorin iyang sex videos na iyan ni Hayden. Ikaw nga mismo, Idol, inamin mo na n’ung makita mo ‘yung isang sex video na pinagkakaguluhan ng staff mo, ‘nanginig’ ang laman mo, ‘nanggigil’ ka at ‘di ka makapaniwala’. Ganung-ganun din ang naramdaman ko n’ung makita ko ang mga videos na iyan. Halos maduwal ako. Promise.

Sa lahat ng ating mga senador, ikaw talaga ang inaasahan kong tumayo at magsalita tungkol sa isyu na ito. Ikaw at, marahil, si Jinggoy. Ikaw, dahil marami kang karanasan sa mga bagay-bagay na ito. Hindi naman natin maikakaila na minsa’y naging ‘matulis’ ka din, ‘di ba?

Mabuti naman at nilinaw mo, Idol, na ‘di ka nagmamalinis sa ginagawa mong pagtatanggol sa mga naging biktima ni Hayden. Tao ka din. Marupok. May mga kahinaan. Ang mahirap pa sa katayuan mo, bukod pa sa mayaman at makapangyarihan ka — gwapo ka. Kasalanan ba iyun? Kasalanan ba ang maging gwapo? Kasalanan ba ang magmahal?

Naniniwala ako na sumpa talaga ang maging isang gwapo, Idol. Kaya, huwag mong isipin na kasalanan na ipinanganak kang gwapo. Maraming tukso ang lumalapit sa mga kagaya natin. Kaliwa’t kanan. Lahat ng kasarian. Pati halaman.

Pero dapat lamang siguro na ilagay natin sa ayos ang ating pagiging gwapo, ‘di ba?

Magkahawig man kayo ni Hayden — pareho kayong gwapo, maganda ang pangangatawan, matambok ang pwet, kaakit-akit ang mga mata — marahil ‘di mo gagawin ang mga ginagawa niyang kahalayan.

Kung may lumapit sa iyo na isang napakaganda at napakabatang dilag na nagaalok ng panandaliang aliw, itutuwid mo ang kanyang landas. Kapag may lumapit sa iyo na nangangailangan ng tulong pinansyal at handang ibigay ang kanyang pagkababae bilang kapalit, kakausapin mo lamang siya at magbibigay ng tulong, subalit ‘di mo siya dadalhin sa isang maliit na kwarto na may TV na nakabitin sa dingding (plasma TV na pala ngayon ang ginagamit sa mga ganitong lugar) at may see-through na shower room.

Hindi! Hinding-hindi mo gagawin ‘yun! Isa ‘yung malaking kaululan!

Iyan ang tunay na lalake! Umiinom na lang ng Ginebra kaysa magbigay-daan sa tukso. Saludo talaga ako sa iyo, Idol!

May mga nagsasabi din na baka naman naiinggit ka lang daw kay Hayden, na tila pinaglalaruan niya itong mga batang-bata at naggagandahan na mga kababaihan na n’ung kasikatan mo’y lumuluhod sa harapan mo. Ngayon daw kasi, baka kay Dra Bello ka na lang pumasa.

Paninirang puri na naman ito! Hindi ko lubos maisip kung paano nila naiisip ang mga ito tungkol sa iyo. Ikaw pa na wala nang kahilig-hilig sa babae, na walang ibang pinagtatangi kundi ang iyong kabiyak, na hinulma sa kung paano maging isang ulirang asawa ng iyong ama, na isa pa ring huwaran ng isang ulirang asawa.

Sinususugan ko ang mga labis na pinagisipan mong mga panukala. Dapat talagang ipagbawal iyang pamboboso. Kung bakit naman kasi sobrang taas na ng antas ng medisina natin at ‘di na tinutubuan ng kuliti ang mga bastos na iyan.

Marahil, dapat ding isara na sa Pilpinas iyang mga malalaswa at karumal-dumal na pornographic sites na iyan, gaya ng ginagawa nila sa China at Middle East. Kung magagawa natin ito, bakit ‘di pa natin palawigin? Isara na din natin, gaya ng ginagawa nila sa China at Middle East, iyang mga websites na iyan na walang magawa kundi ipagtanggol ang kalayaan sa pamamahayag at iba pang mga karapatang pantao, na tumutuligsa sa ating mahal na Pangulo at sa mga kagaya mo, Idol, na iilan lamang sa ating mga mambabatas na nanatiling nasa tuwid pa ang pag-iisip.

Sa mga naninira sa iyo at nagsasabing isa kang hipokrito dahil sa mga pinagsasabi at ginagawa mo ngayon, ito lang ang masasabi ko: Birds of the same feather, flock!

.

Labis na nagmamahal at naghihintay na makita ka sa www.holybang.com,
Roborat

How I spent my near-Christmas vacation

It was a cruel joke; Baz Luhrmann’s kind, the kind that blindsides on an idle Tuesday. I was locked, loaded and ready for that three-week vacation that was sedating my mind like an opium-induced dream and spicing up my pathetic moss-watching existence when it hit. I suddenly felt bloated and heavy, like a balloon that’s about to burst. The pain was searing, and it was creeping all over my abdomen like a pissed-off python.

The joke was, it struck just hours before my flight from Singapore to Manila. Just moments before, my head was swimming in a nice haze that pretty much involved a white, tropical beach in Batangas, a full-body massage at The Spa, and “nature-tripping” around Makati and Timog avenues with some dirty old friends from college. It was my sweet escape from the sweatshop, my chance to refurbish that bubbewrap of self-esteem my toxic boss had methodically stripped away.

That dream went “poof!” when my insides went “pop!”. Instead of a hammock on a beach in Batangas, I wound up on a bed in some second-class hospital in Paranaque.

I was hoping the resident at the emergency room would rule my condition as a simple case of abdominal pain, give me some over-the-counter prescriptions and proclaim me fit and healthy for days and nights and weeks of debauchery and decadence.

After pushing and poking my stomach and listening to it with a stethoscope, however, he referred me to an attending who, after pushing and poking my stomach and listening to it with a stethoscope, told me she needed to run a few more tests. My intestines weren’t moving, she told me, and they were “distended”. That meant one more day at the hospital for more tests.

Right there and then, I wished I had Google at my fingertips. Distended? Intestines not moving? What the hell was she saying? Just make me fart, bitch, I wanted to tell the good doctor.

***

It was a mistake, I thought, when I declared – with the zeal and gusto of an evangelical trying to get his flock to fork out tidy sums from their pockets onto his spiritual kitty – that I had medical coverage. That was like hanging around my neck a huge, neon-painted invitation for the hospital’s color-coded minions to hold me hostage. Which they did.

The nurses quickly ran an IV tube through my wrist, took some blood, urine and stool samples, and then rolled me through radiology for my X-ray; I even had an ultrasound and CT scan. They then rushed me off to a room that would become my prison for the next two weeks.

Fully tethered and without the plethora of questionable-but-still-plausible knowledge Google and Wikipedia brought, I was at their mercy, and I swore I could hear the hospital’s cash registers ringing with every minuscule drop coming out of my glucose drip. Drip. Ka-shing. Drip. Ka-shing. Drip. Ka-shing.

Mid-way through my hospital stay, I did bother to check my bills, and I found out that it cost me 1,600 pesos (about S$60) every time they stuck a needle into my vein to get some blood, and they did it countless of times, mostly at night like thieves in a hurry to steal a family heirloom, for God knows why. (I had thought once that maybe they were doing it just for kicks or to check if my blood was actually red.)

***

The thing with shacking up in a hospital is that the bad news you get is directly proportional to the money you’ll be spending and inversely proportional to how good you will feel inside. Simply put: the more you stay in a hospital, the more you have to spend, but the less you’ll feel better.

In my case, it quickly got worse when three doctors showed up at my room in quick succession the day after my tests.

First was the attending who got me confined. She waltzed in, asked me how I was and then told me another doctor would be coming in a while. That was the gastroenterologist, a man with a booming voice who made a huge effort to compensate for his miniature frame – he was barely five feet – with his oversized confidence and ego, who basically told me my large intestines were really fucked up and that I would need surgery. Those visits, alone cost me about 10,000 pesos already. Ka-shing.

Then, minutes later, the surgeon – a portly, middle-aged man who talked like a wily real estate agent – showed up and told me he’d have to run some surgical instruments through my abdomen, and that I would have to spend at least one more week at the hospital, three weeks in recovery, two months before I’d feel normal, two years before I’d feel the same again... Well, he basically told me: Say goodbye to your vacation and your fucking life, asshole! Oh, and while we’re at it, let me pick your pocket.

The hospital could let me go, he said, but he could not guarantee that the next time I’d feast on my favorite inihaw na bangus and pork liempo my intestines would not rapture and I’d die a very painful, humiliating death.

The really bad thing was, the surgeon said, that I wouldn’t get coverage if ever I’d be lucky enough to reach a hospital because I would have then already checked out for the same illness. Insurance companies cover only one illness each year, he explained; they wouldn’t pay up if you, for instance, suffer a stroke within 12 months from your last one.

The choice was pretty obvious.

***

The surgery took eight hours. It was supposed to take just three hours but then, despite all the tests they made me go through, they failed to see how fucked up my large intestines really were – a three-inch section was already “decaying”, they told me later; they even showed me that piece, a blackened strip of flesh – and that doing pin surgery wouldn’t be enough; they had to to cut a 12-inch hole into my abdomen to get into my intestines.

When I woke up from my anesthesia-induced stupor, there was a hose running through my nose, a catheter running through my dick and another hose drilled into my left torso. The first words I could think of were: Oh fuck. I got fucked.

I wanted to go back to sleep and not wake up for three years.

Dear Mrs Arroyo: An open letter on our wacko maids

Thank you very much, Mrs Arroyo, for the heads up on all those loco maids the Philippines has been sending out all these years and for your newfound zeal to rid the world of them and your assurance that as long as presidential blood runs in your veins, you will never again let any luka-luka and baliw work for a God-fearing household in the First World.

Thank you, indeed, for making the world a safer place. Now, everyone can sleep soundly knowing that when they have a Filipino maid in their employ, they can work her to death without paying her a whiff, beat her to a pulp, molest her and basically strip her of her humanity and treat her worse than they would a stray dog, and she’d still come through the day singing, smiling and shouting, “Mabuhay, y’all!”

I mean, aren’t you, Mrs Arroyo, setting up a Committee for the Systematic Weeding Out of Wacko Maids? Man, you guys do not disappoint.

Can I just make one suggestion here? Why not take it to the next level? Maybe you can work out some kind of certification or classification of our maids and get this approved by the International Organisation of Standardisation. Then you’ll have something like – Super Inday: ISO 9000-certified.

Now, that’s quality assurance for you. I can almost hear it: Oh, look, hon, a Filipino maid. Let’s get one. This one has a seal of sanity on her.

Or, maybe we in the media are just not getting it right – as you and your spritely spokescreatures like to say, we’re probably just missing the context and blowing this thing out of proportion.

But I swear this guy from the foreign office, Esteban Conejos, has been clear in saying there is a need to make psychiatric testing mandatory for all domestic helpers leaving for jobs abroad. And he has some numbers to back him up. He says seven out of 10 Filipino maids on death row in the Middle East have had a history of mental illness. Man, seven wackos out of 10! Seventy freaking per cent!

I get it where Mr Conjeos is coming from. He believes he can get the numbers down by screening those thousands of maids leaving the Philippines each month and taking out the loonies before they get a chance to board a plane and things get really out of hand and they snap at the wrong place at the wrong time. He believes only the strong in mind and body gets to leave, so we’d stop getting all that shit about a Filipino maid slitting the throat of dirty ol’ Grampa who’s been raping her repeatedly for months.

Mr Conejos gets it. He feels our pain.

Here’s a guy, with the mental fortitude he thinks all maids must possess, who probably won’t mind being hit with a rolling pin on his head, back and calf every day and being kicked senseless while he sleeps on a dog bed.

Here’s a guy who’ll be perfectly all right feeding on three-day-old food, while the family dog gets chicken nuggets and fresh fruits. Heck, chain him to a kitchen sink or hit him with a water bottle on the mouth. Just mind over matter, right, Mr Conejos?

What’ll he do if he gets fed up? Why, the sane thing to do – and he is a sane man – is to just run off to the embassy and get a free ticket back home. Forget about filing a criminal or civil complaint. Forget about suing the motherfuckers. Forget about everything and just move on. Mind over matter.

So, hats off to you, Mr Conejos. You’re the dawg, man!

One thing I don’t get, though, is if we begin certifying our maids as 100 per cent sane, then what’ll happen to that uber-effective defence our embassies always use to get pardons for those on death row: that, oops, they just “lost it” when they did the deed?

But then, maybe it’s for the best.

So, come on guys, stop badgering the government with these things and advocacies that just get in the way of the little soirees and tete-a-tetes of its diplomatic missions. Setting up support services that will empower maids to fight for their rights? Now, that’s just asking too much.

Yours until Obama becomes president,

Pininggapura

PS –

Oh, our hats off to you, Mrs Arroyo and Mr Conejos, for the image boost you’ve given OFWs like me, Ares, Muloy and The Talented Mr ManF. Now, maybe my toxic boss will start going easy on me if I stop bathing and start murmuring something like “Crispin? Basilio?” while in the office. She may start thinking: Wait a minute, this may be a loco Filipino I have here. I’d better stay out of his way and leave him be. This guy may be capable of nasty things that’ll make Hannibal Lecter look like Bambie.

Kung bakit ako nangibang-bayan

Isinulat ko ito bago ako nagkaroon ng pagkakataong makapag-trabaho sa Singapore. Foreshadowing. Inaamin ko, sumuko na din ako.

PARA sa isang motoristang naipit sa trapiko, nakakairita naman talaga ang makakita ng isang convoy ng mga pribadong sasakyan na, sa tulong ng ilang police escorts, ay nagsusumiksik at nambabraso ng iba pang mga sasakyan gayong napakasikip na nga ng kalsada.

Higit nga bang mahalaga ang oras ng kung sino mang mga Ponsyo Pilatong ito kung ihahambing sa panahon nating mga hoi polloi?

Naalala ko tuloy ang essay ng nobelistang si F. Sionil Jose, ang Bakit Mahirap Tayong Mga Pilipino? Ayon sa kanya, mahirap tayo dahil mahirap tayo. Nasa kultura natin ang kahirapan. Bukod sa karamihan sa ati’y tamad, masyado rin tayong mahangin.

Kung susuriin natin, ang ugat ng ating katamaran at kayabangan ay ang paniniwala natin na, sa labas ng pamilya, hindi na natin sagutin ang ibang tao, lalo pa ang sarili nating bansa. Kanya-kanya – iyan ang pilosopiya ng karamihan sa atin. Madalas, wala tayong pakialam kahit sino pa ang masagasaan; ang mahalaga’y nakalamang tayo, nakaungos tayo.

Kaya naman bigyan mo lamang ng isang medyo mataas na katungkulan sa gobyerno o kaya’y kaunting kayamanan ang isang Pilipino at ang isa sa mga una nitong gagawin ay magdawit ng ilang police escorts at magparada sa kalye at ipagsigawan sa ibang tao na, “Hoy, mga peon, importante ako!”

***

Minsan, sa sobrang pagkainis, binuntutan ko ang isang convoy ng mga sasakyan na papuntang Greenhills sa kahabaan ng Ortigas Ave.

Wala naman silang police escort, pero lahat ng mga pawang naglalakihang sasakyan na nasa convoy ay may mga wang-wang na ginagamit ng mga ito upang harangin, giliran at singitan ang iba pang mga sasakyan.

Kumanan sila sa Connecticut, pumasok sa Greenhills at tumigil sa pangunang entrada ng shopping mall. Gaya ng inaasahan ko, isa na namang langaw na mataas ang lipad ang nanggulang ng kanyang kapwa. Ang lulan ng pinakamagarang sasakyan sa convoy ay isang kilalang beautician na napagalaman ko ay may beauty salon sa Greenhills. Dadalawin lamang pala niya ang kanyang negosyo.

***

Bakit nga ba tayo ganito?

Ang madalas na hatol naming mga magkakabarkada habang nasa malalim na impluwensya ni San Miguel ay dahil marahil sa walang yugto sa ating kasaysayan na tayo’y naging isang tunay na bansa na hinulma ng ilang taong pakikibaka para sa tunay na kalayaan.

Malabnaw ang ating pagka-Pilipino kaya marami sa atin ang wala talagang malasakit sa sarili nating bansa. Pamilya, oo. Bansa, medyo.

Madalas, mas nanaiisin pa nating ma-asimila na lamang ng ibang bansa.

Sa loob ng tatlong taon, naging isang bayan ng mga migrante ang Pilipinas. Ayon sa estatistika mula sa gobyerno, kasalukuyang nakakalat sa kulang-kulang 192 bansa at teritoryo ang mahigit 7.76 milyong Pilipino. Mahigit 2.87 milyon ang tuluyang naninirahan na sa labas ng Pilipinas at sumasaludo sa ibang bandila.

Isa sa bawat limang Pilipino naman na nandito sa Pilipinas ang nais nang magalsa-balutan. Ang nakakabahala pa dito ay kulang-kulang kalahati sa mga batang ang edad ay 10 hanggang 12 ay nagnanais na sa ibang bansa na lamang makapagtrabaho.

Hindi ko sila masisisi. Tuwing makakita ako ng isang convoy ng mga pribadong sasakyan, hindi ko mapigilang maisip na lumayag na rin at manirahan sa isang bansa na kung saan ang tunog ng isang sirena ay nangangahulugan ng isang totoong emerhensiya.

Housemates from hell

August last year was a particularly bad time to be looking for a flat in Singapore. Property prices were going through the roof and, with them, rents. A four-room flat that would’ve cost just S$900 a month in rent a few months back was already going for $1,400.

Still, I was lucky. I went to Singapore with a “live-in” partner in tow – the talented Mr ManF. The company hired us at about the same time and gave us a relocation allowance of S$10,000 each. Between us, we had S$20,000 to spend on finding a flat, furnishing it and generally finding a place to park our assess in after a hard day at the office.

So, we wound up getting a pretty decent five-room flat for $1,700 a month in Woodlands.

The place is just 45 minutes from the office by train, 30 minutes by cab, and five minutes to the nearest MRT station. There’s a small mall across the street that has everything in it: a wet market, a grocery, two 24-hour convenience stores, ATMs, a 24-hour payment centre, two coffeeshops, two salons, an optical shop and a dental office.

Our unit is on the 11th floor and has an unobstructed view of the Seletar expressway. The owners, a retired couple moving to Australia, left most of their furniture with us: sofas, a dining set, a 29-inch TV, air-conditioners, beds and working tables for each of the three rooms, a heavy-duty washing machine and dryer, a stainless steel ref with a big freezer and drapes for the windows. (Pity, the guy took with him his glass-encased scale model of the battleship Yamato; that would’ve have made a really cool divider.)

It was a great deal, we thought. When we began telling people where we lived, though, we got something like this:

“What?” they’d blurt out with the look of incredulity you’d normally see in someone talking to a person who just tore to pieces a winning lottery ticket. “Woodlands? Why so far?”

For someone who’d lived through Manila’s monstrous traffic jams and apocalyptic floods, 45 minutes to anywhere is a walk in the park. Here on the other hand, 45 minutes to anywhere may as well be an eternity. It’s like living in Fairview, Quezon City and working in Amadeo, Cavite.

So, since most of our friends are living on the other side of the island, they’ve been avoiding our place like we had the bubonic plague. We’ve hosted at least two parties where only one or two of the people we invited showed up, even with promises of a lavish feast of adobo, nilagang baka, and a hefty mix of diced manggang hilaw, bagoong, sibuyas and kaunting sili.

Still, I really can’t complain. It could’ve been worse. I get along well with my "mate", although he likes walking around the flat wearing only his skimpy shorts with those preposterous Spongebob Squarepants and Superman prints.

A number of Pinoys working here, on the other hand, have to live with "housemates from hell". These are creatures that spring out naturally from an arrangement inherent in having to share space with someone you really don’t know well but have to get along with. Kailangang makisama.

The arrangement is usually cordial at the beginning. Then, some misunderstandings occur over mundane things like an uncollected tissue paper lying on the floor. These little things pile up as each day goes by into huge mounds of discontent until all those pent-up emotions explode into a full-blown conflict that can only be resolved if one side yields the territory.

It starts out usually as a gentle reminder:

"Uy, mare, paki-tanggal naman ang mga nilabhan mo sa washing machine bago ka lumabas ng bahay. Salamat, ha. Ingat."

After a month and a half, though, it escalates into something like this:

"Eh, letse naman! Tatlong araw nang naka-tengga ang mga damit mo sa washing machine, eh. Hindi na tuloy ako makapaglaba. Ilang beses na kitang sinabihan. Lumayas ka na nga dito at maghanap ng mga kasama na kasing burara mo!

Here’s a list I grabbed from www.pinoysg.com of a few petty things that normally lead to an i'll-never-again-talk-to-you-til-the-day-I-die feud among Pinoy housemates here:

* Strands of black, curly hair gathering on bathroom floors – and even on kitchen sinks – that later manifests itself into a furry, gooey creature;

* Locking oneself up inside the toilet for an eternity and not giving way even when a housemate is clearly in a bowel-busting, poise-threatening predicament;

* “Paranormal” housemates straight from The Sixth Sense who keep insisting they see dead people;

* Swiping someone else’s food from the fridge without asking the person who toiled through the night, investing blood, sweat and tears into his special delicacy of scrambled eggs and bacon;

* Leaving the lights and heater on through the night;

* Leaving the doors open;

* Waiting for the garbage to pile up, hoping perhaps Oscar the Grouch would pop out of it suddenly to spew some expletives; and,

* Using groceries and supplies like they were manna from heaven and not bothering to restock them.

I, of course, realise that these occur not exclusively here. We see these things happening among people who share a dorm in a university or a bedspace in some apartment in Sta. Mesa. The big difference, though, is that for most OFWs like us, it's rarely an option to just pack up our bags and head home to mummy and crash in our old rooms while we find a more suitable place. For most us, it's one more hell we'll just have to live through.

http://pininggapura.wordpress.com/
http://supermouseandtheroborats.blogspot.com/
pininggapura@gmail.com

In my mistress’ bosom

I like trains. They’re like women; trains are, after all, vessels, and they do carry large swathes of humanity in their, well, wombs. So, let me tell you about my mistress.

She is a devoted lover. She keeps her promises, doesn’t give me a bumpy ride and seldom breaks down. When she says she’ll come and see me in five minutes, I see her coming five minutes later. She doesn’t leave me hanging, though we’re technically suspended eight metres from the ground most of the time.

She has this sexy, soothing voice that gives you that feeling everything’ll be all right, even when all hell is breaking loose. Here she is speaking, with the lovely, deep accent of an Englishwoman:

‘Please mind the platform gap.’

‘Doors are closing.’

‘For your safety and convenience, please stand behind the yellow line.’

I am, of course, talking about Singapore’s MRT. It’s not a stretch to say she’s one of the most – if not the most – efficient and reliable transport systems in the world.

Here are some Googable and Wiki-findable facts about her:

* Opened in 1987, the MRT is the second-oldest metro system in southeast Asia, after our very own LRT system. (That’s why she’s just my No. 2.)

* Built at an initial cost of S$5 billion (around P150 billion), the MRT has 64 stations – either aboveground or underground, except for one, which is at ground level – and over 109.4 kilometres of lines. Her coaches carry some 1.5 million passengers each day.

* Most underground stations are deep and hardened enough to withstand conventional aerial bomb attacks, and they do serve as bomb shelters.

She’s not as sleek as Japan’s bullet train or as fast as Shanghai’s maglev, but she does what she’s supposed to. She does, however, have her moods, especially when she’s shabbily treated. In 1993, one train, unable to stop in time because of an oil spill on the track, rammed into another one waiting in one station, injuring 132 passengers.

And she can be, through no fault of hers, a femme fatale. I don’t know what it is that drives people to end their lives by jumping in front of a speeding train – maybe they think it’s romantic, sadistic or very public, as any death on TV or, in our age, YouTube is seldom in vain but is often a macabre form of entertainment – but at least 10 people have committed suicide over the past 20 years by jumping off a platform just when a train is approaching. And there had been loonies who had thrown someone else onto the tracks.

* * *

My home station is the Woodlands MRT station – home because it’s the closest one to my flat. It’s one of the busiest stations along the North-East line, as it is attached to a rather big mall and a bus interchange and because it is a waystation to Johor Bahru, a frontier land in Malaysia I’ve heard so much about that, for Pinoys like me who like scoring cheap cigarettes and alcohol, may as well be part of Singapore.

All stations have these LED and plasma monitors hanging from ceilings that announce just exactly when the next train will arrive, so you’ll know when you have to run like you were Seraph chasing the Trainman or whether you still have time to check your hair in the toilet.

I used to think that the numbers that appeared on those screens were just an approximation; like when it said “1 minute”, it actually meant “1 minute and 30 seconds”. Turns out, when you see “1 minute”, the train will really be at the platform in a minute – even less. The trains are never late. In Gandalf’s words: They are never late or too early; they arrive precisely when they mean to.

They are also very reliable. They will not leave you stuck for an hour in between stations. They carry you from one station to another at exactly the same amount of time they promise. You don’t have to worry about getting late, but don’t bet on reaching your destination ahead of schedule.

I see people normally meeting up this way: One is already on a train tapping in his cell phone where his train is, as the person he’s going to meet makes his way to a platform a few stations ahead. The train’s schedule is so predictable, that people actually set up their little rendezvous right inside the train itself.

The downside with all this predictability, of course, is that it magnifies the drudgery of a monotonous life akin to working in a post office that I think already afflicts and embraces nearly everyone stepping into the trains.

My mistress’ bosom may be warm, but her womb is sadly barren.

You can see it in the hundreds and thousands of souls going in and out of the trains everyday. It is unmistakable. The loneliness. The need to reach out and be touched. The maddening indifference. The need to escape. The insanity of a predictable life.

http://pininggapura.wordpress.com/
http://supermouseandtheroborats.blogspot.com/
rdancel@gmail.com

Tanjong Pagar

It began as an after-work romp, a nightout to cap a long, hard day at the office. There was Geylang, of course, but it was too far from the office, and it was sort of cliché already to be going there. We weren’t tourists anymore, and we were just looking for a place to unwind without getting too bummed out we wouldn’t know how we got home the morning after and where our hard-earned money went. So, heeding the advice of a Pinoy mate who, for 10 years, had explored every nook and cranny of Singapore, we wound up in this district called Tanjong Pagar.

I can bore you here right now with the many things and trivias the place is known for – like how it used to bridge the docks with the old town, or its historic Jinkricksha station (the old main rickshaw depot that now houses one of Jackie Chan’s restaurants), or that it used to be the district represented in Parliament by the man himself, Lee Kuan Yew – but you can already Google these things up.

What makes Tanjong Pagar unique, I think, is this little, quaint restaurant known as Kamayan, its name a reference to the way we Filipinos like to eat our tuyo, with a small plate of kamatis, itlog na pula and sibuyas as sawsawan – with our hands.

The place is open for about 18 hours a day, and it serves dishes that will give Nanay’s adobo and sinigang na baboy a run for their money. The price is a steal – S$4 for a bowl of rice and two ulams, plus a Coke! – and the place’s pretty much the same in layout and feel as those carinderias taxi and jeepney drivers love to troop to in Quiapo and Timog for some things to warm their stomach and feed their tsismoso and usisero minds. But that’s not what makes Kamayan a special place.

As in many places that strike us and leave more than just a good impression, it’s the people who go to Kamayan that makes it one of those special corners of this vast, complicated and suffering world where we feel like we leave a tiny part of ourselves each time we go there.

During most of the day, Kamayan plays host to the regulars: office-weary Pinoys working in the district’s tall, gleaming towers, or Singaporeans egged by their Pinoy mates to try out some Filipino delicacies. It pretty much looks like any regular kopitian – Singapore’s version of our carinderia – through most of the day.

When it hits 3am, however, they start coming, first in trickles – in pairs or in small groups. Then by 4am, the taps open and they pour in – a horde of exhausted, hungry, young women coming out of those glitzy bars tucked inside Tanjong Pagar’s and Duxton Hill’s rows of shophouses, exploding into a cacophony of boisterous banter in a language all their own and transforming Kamayan into a noisy family reunion, a mini barrio fiesta.

Uy, Be, naka-quota ka ba?

Ay, naku, puro buraog!

Kailan ka naman e-exit sa JB?

Di ko nga alam, eh. Kulang pa nga pambayad ko sa Dragon kay kuya Robin. Hay, naku, Be…

There, they are stripped of all that’s superficial that goes with their “trabaho” – make-up rinsed, their micro-minis, tank tops, halters, high-heel shoes and faux jewellerey tucked neatly inside plastic bags. They are a noisy, raucuous bunch, making tsismis about who went out with who or made a scene at the club, laughing, checking out the competition, spying warily at the crowd for trouble.

There, reality catches up with them. They are no longer these pretty young things providing company to testosterone-laden young men, manic depressive middle-aged men and senility-fighting old men. At Kamayan, they are someone’s mother, wife, sister or daughter.

http://pininggapura.wordpress.com/
http://supermouseandtheroborats.blogspot.com/
rdancel@gmail.com