Dear Classmates:
1989 was a momentous year in world history:  the Berlin Wall fell, there were pro-democracy riots in Tiananmen square, the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize, then coup-plotter Honasan and the RAM boys tried to overthrow Cory again, “Like A Prayer” by Madonna was playing on the airwaves, acid-washed jeans and Hawaiian shirts were in, and our class of dewy-eyed doctors graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine.

Needless to say, time has passed. Twenty years in fact, so let’s celebrate 20 years and reconnect with each other. For those in the Philippines or visiting the Philippines in December,
please think about attending the UPMAS celebrations:

Here are the UPMAS details:
Theme: Pagbabalik sa Bulwagan ng Talino at Galing
Dec 16 – Golf Tournament, Valley Golf Club, 2500/tkt, includes lunch and golf entry
Dec 16 PM – 75th Mu Ball at Sofitel
Dec 17-18 – Individual Class Reunions
Dec 18 PM – Phi Ball
Dec 19 – Homecoming Day (Mass, Class Picture Taking, Parade, Tipanan, Lunch, Business Meeting, Pabidahan)
Dec 20 – UPMAS Grand Homecoming Ball (Sofitel), 2500/tkt (2250 if we buy early), 10 tkts considered sold to Class 89
Dec 21 – CME activity at BSLR West and East

As 20th year celebrants, our class is in charge of the “Pabidahan” presentation on December 19. We also need fun pictures for the Video Wall and a 2 page write up about the class with pictures. If anyone is planning on attending, please reply to this email, or on the class blog (www.upcm89.wordpress.com).

We would also encourage the rest of the class, who are in other parts of the Philippines and the globe, to organize their own satellite mini-celebrations. (What about it, LA, Las Vegas, New York, DC, Houston, El Paso, Naples, Lubbock, Guymon?) Please take pictures or videos and send them to Malu DA  to post on the blog.  If you need help in locating the classmates in your part of the world, you can refer to the Class Directory page on the blog. (Click on the Class Directory link which takes you to Google documents, put in the username and password sent to you via the class email
then click on Sheet 1.)

Joining Facebook is also a good way to get and stay in touch.  Watch out for a listing of classmates by geographical area on the blog.

Let us give thanks for the blessings of the past 20 years, and here’s to many more, Mabuhay!

from SunStar

MANILA (Updated) — Rescuers plucked bodies from muddy floodwaters and saved drenched survivors from rooftops Sunday after Typhoon Ondoy tore through Luzon and left at least 106 people dead and missing. The death toll caused by Ondoy (international codename: Ketsana) is expected to rise as the country’s capital region struggled Sunday to recover from its worst flooding in 42 years. Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said that soldiers, police and civilian volunteers rescued more than 5,000 people, many of them nervously clinging to each other on roofs and on top of passenger buses. Officials said they hoped the roads would be cleared soon to enable the Department of Health (DOH) and representatives of international groups like the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Food Program (WFP) to assess the damage and the conditions in evacuation centers. Initial data reaching Malacañang showed about 280,000 individuals affected by Ondoy as of 10 a.m. Sunday, said Deputy Presidential Spokesman Anthony Golez. Some 8,300 families, or 41,000 individuals, went to evacuation centers. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has put up drop-off points for relief goods and donations in their offices in Quezon City, Legarda in Manila and near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Pasay. Several agencies, groups and local government units in the Visayas and Mindanao are also conducting relief operations to help the victims of the typhoon. The City Government of Davao and Cebu will reportedly donate food and other relief assistance to the flood victims in Luzon. Victims The Associated Press wire agency reported at least 106 persons killed, but without an official list, that number cannot be verified. It said the deaths included 14 villagers buried in a landslide in Pampanga and nine others who drowned in Bulacan. A soldier and four companions drowned while trying to rescue villagers in Laguna. Health Secretary Duque said his main concern is for rescue teams to reach the Amang Rodriguez Hospital in Marikina and attend to the needs of patients there, including those who suffered injuries or ailments stemming from the rains and floods. Some roads in Marikina are still impassable to vehicles and a lot of areas remain submerged.

Class suspension The Department of Education (DepEd) suspended Monday’s classes in the elementary and secondary levels in Metro Manila and the nearby province of Rizal. “Homes and access roads are still flooded while some schools that are not flooded or damaged are being used as evacuation centers for thousands of our kababayan,” Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said. There are about two million elementary and high school students in Metro Manila alone that will be affected by the cancellation of classes. In other areas also reeling from the typhoon, local government officials and school administrators have the discretion to suspend classes depending on the situation, said Lapus. He appealed to the public to “help instill orderliness and care of the evacuation premises and properties” to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. Repair Lapus said he also ordered DepEd engineers and technical experts to visit and assess schools damaged by the typhoon so that immediate repair can be done. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared a state of calamity in Metro Manila and in 25 Luzon provinces to speed up the release of calamity funds. Teodoro said the suspension of classes will give local governments a chance to attend to the needs of the affected residents and to start rehabilitation work.

Roads impassable The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said several areas in Metro Manila remain impassable to traffic, particularly light vehicles, as floodwaters are subsiding slowly. MMDA teams reported waist-deep water on J.P. Rizal in Makati, Lacson St. in España near the University of Sto. Tomas in Manila and SM Sucat in Parañaque. Knee-deep water remained in the C-5-Ortigas Junction area, Dela Rosa South Superhighway, Tiendesitas Pasig, Sta. Mesa in Manila and Buendia Taft. On edge MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando said his teams are keeping a close watch on low-lying communities and areas near waterways. In Muntinlupa, Mayor Aldrin San Pedro said he ordered the city’s emergency personnel and the local social welfare department to cope with the estimated 4,000 evacuees from eight barangays, now living in evacuation centers. Three children were reported missing after a swollen river inundated several houses in Sucat Village, San Pedro said. In Parañaque City, Mayor Florencio Bernabe said more than 4,000 residents were also affected by the typhoon. The affected residents were housed in evacuation centers with the local social welfare department providing them food, medicines and clothing. Ondoy, which packed winds of 53 mph (85 kph) with gusts of up to 63 mph (100 kph), hit land early Saturday then roared across the main northern Luzon island toward the South China Sea. Most of the areas in Metro Manila are still without power as of Sunday, but personnel of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) said they are working round-the-clock to restore the supply of electricity. “Estimated count of Meralco customers without power as of 2 a.m. Sunday is 1.2 million, or a little over one-fourth of total registered Meralco customers,” said Meralco’s assistant vice president and call center head Alex Evangelista. (JMR/AH/MSN/Sunnex/With AP/Sunnex)

What We Lost

(Philippine Inquirer Editorial)

It is all beginning to sink in. The expected end had come as a vertiginous surprise, and for many the first hours of mourning were spent in various degrees of bewilderment and disbelief—the disorientation of grief. Since then, however, many of us have begun to realize what it was, exactly, that we lost, when Cory Aquino passed into history.

We lost the international icon of people power. An Agence France Presse report out of Singapore quoted former Asean secretary general Rodolfo Severino’s perspective-setting remarks on the non-violent resistance that Cory symbolized. “I think that what happened in the Philippines is not being given enough credit for the overthrow of authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world like in Eastern Europe and within the Soviet Union itself and elsewhere in Asia,” Severino said. “People seem to forget that this wave of enlarged freedoms was really pioneered by the Philippines.” It is true that Jaime Cardinal Sin was the one who sounded the trumpet, but in truth the people—in the millions—who converged on EDSA (Epifanio delos Santos Avenue) during those four glorious days in February 1986 were Cory’s yellow army. And the entire world knew it.

The amnesia that has since overcome us, and the world with it, can be explained by many factors, but Cory’s long, public suffering and her death have made us remember again, and reminded us of our best selves.

We lost a political exemplar. It is now conventional wisdom to say that Cory Aquino was no politician, that she was a “mere” housewife thrust into a political role. But we think this is a misreading of both her character and our history. She was certainly heavily involved in the political work required to rebuild a democracy. She may have been somewhat reluctant about certain aspects of the political side of the presidency, but once committed she was always resolute. She wore the longest coattails in Philippine history—causing the election of an entire army of Cory’s Candidates in three elections, including 22 out of 24 senators in 1987 and her successor as president in 1992—and she knew it. But she exercised this unparalleled power with great discretion.

She could have run again for a second term; the Feb. 7, 1986 Snap Election was conducted under the Marcos Constitution, and her takeover of Malacañang on Feb. 25, 1986 was a revolutionary act—and yet she refused to even entertain the notion that she was politically indispensable and therefore should run again. As we have already written, Cory was the only president who never sought to stay in office a day longer than necessary. She was an inspiring example of the politician who could say No.

We lost the country’s most famous martyr. It is astonishing to consider that Cory was a widow for almost as long as she was a wife. Indeed, if we subtract the seven years Ninoy Aquino spent in Marcos’ prisons, we realize, with a start, that she spent more years away from her husband, a martyr in his cause, than with him. She bore the responsibility of raising their children during their most impressionable years mostly by herself; she took up the cross of widowhood without complaint; she accepted the impossible task of unifying a fractious and fear-ridden opposition to fight an all-powerful dictatorship despite it being against her best interests—for what could have been easier after Ninoy’s funeral than to go back to Boston, Massachusetts, the scene of the happiest years of her life, and reclaim the ordinariness of a normal life?

It is this spirit of self-sacrifice, of the abnegation that cannot be understood without reference to her profound spiritual life, that raises Cory’s life out of class and gender and education and connects it with the Holy Week-framed narrative that binds our nation of martyrs.

We lost the mother of our democracy. Cory was not a perfect president; on the issue of retaining the American military bases, for instance, she saw the matter from a perspective that was the exact opposite of this newspaper’s. On that issue, we believe she was on the wrong side of history. But when it became clear to her that her role in history was to restore freedom to a people “worth dying for,” she did not flinch or waver: joyfully campaigning against Marcos, serenely assuming control of a sprawling government, determinedly restoring institution after democratic institution. She came to serve democracy, not to subvert it.

Articles:

Farewell to Cory Aquino Philippine Champion of Democracy by Sheila Coronel (WSJ)

It’s official, Bourdain has pronounced the lechon, “the best pig, ever.”

this section has the mouth-watering lechon shots

Favorite Obama Commercial:

Hong Kong, 13 November 2008 – A panel of three internationally acclaimed authors and experienced literary judges named Filipino author Miguel Syjuco winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel Ilustrado, a fictional account of a young Filipino caught within a notorious scandal spanning over the Philippine history.

The panel of judges for the 2008 prize praised Ilustrado:

“The shortlist for the Man Asian prize testifies to the great vitality of the novel in Asian societies undergoing hectic and unexpected transformations. In the end, we had to choose; and Ilustrado seems to us to possess formal ambition, linguistic inventiveness and sociopolitical insight in the most satisfying measure. Brilliantly conceived, and stylishly executed, it covers a large and tumultuous historical period with seemingly effortless skill. It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humour.”

The prize winner was announced at a celebratory dinner at The Peninsula Hong Kong. Miguel Syjuco was awarded USD 10,000.

Ilustrado was selected from shortlist of five:
Kavery Nambisan, The Story that Must Not be Told
Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay
Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado
Yu Hua, Brothers
Alfred A. Yuson, The Music Child

Miguel Syjuco was born in Manila, Philippines in 1976. His fiction and poetry have appeared in national publications and anthologies. He co-founded and edited an online publication, Localvibe.com. He has written poetry, fiction and journalism for national and international publications. The manuscript of his debut novel, Ilustrado, has just been awarded the Grand Prize at the Palanca Awards.

Ilustrado begins with Crispin Salvador, lion of Philippine letters, dead in the Hudson River. His acolyte Miguel investigates the author’s demise and the disappearance of a manuscript about the corruption behind rich Filipino families. To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, charting Salvador’s trajectory via his poetry, stories, interviews, novels, polemics and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns become stories become epic: a family saga of four generations tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, Americans and Filipinos themselves. Finally, the story twists, belonging to young Miguel as much as his lost mentor.

INQUIRER EXCLUSIVE
First look at ‘Ilustrado’

By Antonio A. Hidalgo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:26:00 12/01/2008

Filed Under: Books, Lifestyle & Leisure, Literature

ILUSTRADO” by Miguel Syjuco, the novel that recently won the MAN Asia Prize and the Palanca Grand Prize, is an exceedingly complicated and ambitious work.

It tells many stories simultaneously by using many voices, two narrators who are also the main characters, a dazzling collage of invented material like excerpts from novels and short stories, learned social and political essays, TV shows, printed interviews, poems, letters, and the ubiquitous and anonymous school jokes and ribald stories that all of us get through text messages and e-mail correspondence.

It is a mystery thriller, a historical novel of the Philippines and Filipinos spanning the last 150 years, a novel of manners of the Filipino ilustrado class, a political novel about the Philippines and its various diasporas, a deeply personal autobiographical novel, and a novel about two fictional gifted writers reflecting on Philippine literature.

The main thread of “Ilustrado” is ostensibly the story of two Filipino writers in New York. Crispin Salvador is a larger-than-life fictionist and essayist who was once a literary lion. Born into a haciendero family from Bacolod, he roamed the world in his youth and later wrote an autobiography about his adventures with the internationally rich and famous. When time passes him by and he is largely forgotten, he retreats to New York, becomes a recluse, teaches literature, and tries to write a final masterpiece. Miguel, who has no surname, is his student who becomes his literary acolyte. Miguel also comes from a wealthy family that lives in Forbes Park, but he has chosen to run away from his emotional problems at home to find himself in Manhattan. He intends to write a biography of Crispin, his mentor, and doggedly hounds him to probe all the hidden crevices in Crispin’s mind and heart.

The novel begins with a prologue by Miguel about the discovery of Crispin’s body floating in the Hudson River. The police don’t know if Crispin was murdered or if he committed suicide. Miguel is deeply troubled by the mysterious death of Crispin and sifts through his belongings in search of a clue to what really happened. He finds nothing except the odds and ends of Crispin’s life. His relationship with his girlfriend, Madison, finally dies at this time after much languishing. There is nothing left for him in New York. He decides to return to the Philippines to try to unearth the truth behind Crispin’s death and to gather more material for the biography.

On the plane trip home, Miguel muses with irony, thoughts framed by the return of the first ilustrados long ago: “Around me, in this tin can, my fellow travelers: we, the acquiescent, unaware insurrectionists, we who have left and returned so constantly throughout history our language has given us a name—balikbayan. Slope-shouldered are we, freighted by years of self-exile; handcarries bulging with items that wouldn’t fit in overweight luggage, all the countless gifts for countless relatives—proof our time away has not been wasted … These are my people. (Crispin once called them the ‘splay-toed, open-hearted.’)”

Pastiche

In Manila for the yuletide, the young writer reflects on his country and people and a pastiche emerges. There is a recollection of Crispin’s imaginary interview: “Manila is the cradle, the memory, the graveyard; the Mecca, the Cathedral, the bordello; the shopping mall, urinal, discotheque. I’m hardly speaking in metaphor.” And a passage from one of his books: “…We should embrace Traffic as part of our cultural identity, the way the French have their smoking and the Italians their womanizing …. Our chaos is as ordered as it is necessary. We cope. We protect ourselves. We learn the patience necessary in everyday life… Happy are those who learn to enjoy it. It’s better than a cockfight, and free!”

Like Manila traffic, the novel’s narrative congeals into ordered chaos. The timeline is frequently disrupted with invented historical texts of the origins of the Filipino elite, beginning with the migration of Crispin Salvador’s Spanish great grandfather to the Philippines in 1860. History is merged with fiction through Crispin’s stories of the Philippine Revolution in the 19th century. One of Crispin’s characters, Cristo, returns home from battle after the Revolution has been defeated. His four young sons no longer recognize him. He shaves his beard and walks with his sons and his wife, Maria Clara, after dinner. On the spur of the moment, he invites his wife to have another child, to try for a girl, this time. Then he says: “We will become American. Our children will learn to speak American. When they are ready, we will send them there to be educated. Just as I was in Europe… They’ll return to make a difference.”

In Crispin’s imagined autobiography, he alludes to the deterioration of the ilustrados from the heights of revolution to crass selfishness and greed when he writes: “Fittingly, my father’s name was Narciso… At one time, somewhere in the lineage before him, the name possessed the tragedy of the myth and the irony that such a name could be possessed by such a man so distinctly un-narcissistic. Upon my father, however… the very act of christening him ‘Narciso’ authored a parody of a sacred sacrament, wherein one is named for his essence, his worst characteristic by which he would be forever remembered. In fact, he is belittled further as ‘Junior’… A self-fulfilling prophecy: Try as he did, he was damned forever to be the tiny narcissus.”

Critical

With an unflinching gaze, the novel inexorably, albeit sporadically, builds a most critical profile of Filipino elite. The character of Miguel remembers that his mother bought a pair of jeans for P5,000 and paid her maid only P3,000 a month. At a dinner in Dasmariñas Village where he is introduced to the parents of his new Pinay girlfriend, Sadie, he records through dialogue the utter contempt with which Sadie’s mother regards her maids. There is a scene of bitter bickering over inheritances in a family after the collapse of sugar prices in the ’70s. And historical accounts of the many bastard children of the elite. Miguel begins to go out regularly with his young barkada to the nightspots and clinically records their superficial preoccupation with drugs and sex, including his own reversion to getting high.

Through TV and the papers, he sees the country descend into chaos, from politically instigated bombings and the ruthless machinations of the charlatan Brother Martin of a charismatic Christian movement; the opportunistic revolutionary Wigberto Lakan; and the corrupt President Fernando V. Estregan and his ally, former general turned senator Filimon Lontok. Within the gathering storm in the country, the novel examines the possibilities of high-minded action through the writings of Crispin, a bit like what Rizal’s novels did. The writings are from different periods in Crispin’s life and are contradictory. They cover the gamut of choices—from revolution to compromise to acquiescence to creating literature like Rizal’s that would kindle social powder kegs.

Personal quest

While the novel paints the large portrait of Philippine society, it simultaneously develops the personal quest of Miguel for the truth about Crispin. He talks to his sister and aunt and discovers a humdinger of a family secret that will send him on a lengthy odyssey for the roots of Crispin and what makes him tick. In the process, he is forced to confront his own bitter personal secret.

All the stories are regularly interspersed with pop-culture jokes about a promdi OFW called Erning Isip; colegialas, Atenistas, La Sallites, and their foil, a poor student from the AMA Computer College; and the hilariously bawdy Boy Bastos. They lighten the essentially cerebral nature of “Ilustrado.”

Like: “When Boy Bastos was still a sperm in Erning’s testicle, he was already precocious. One day… he feels the current moving them forward. Boy Bastos… leads the pack. As he is about to shoot forth from Erning’s shaft, he shouts, ‘Go back, go back, it’s only tonsils!’ The next day, he feels the current moving again and leads the pack once more. At the last instant, he shouts again: ‘Go back, go back! It’s only condom!’ The next day, the current flows, and Boy swims forward with anticipation, convinced this time must be his. Suddenly, he turns back, shouting desperately to the others: ‘Go back, go back! It’s shit!’”

Using a wide variety of materials in a novel is often called bricolage—literally, construction by using whatever comes to hand. Its expert use in “Ilustrado” achieves several objectives. It imbues the novel with a wonderful makeshift and uncertain quality that evokes real life. It also broadens the canvas of the novel by using pop culture and sharpens its content by limning its characters and present realities with light from learned analysis of the past.

Heteroglossia—multiple voices using different language registers—is also employed quite effectively by the talented author. Because the many voices in “Ilustrado” all ring true, what emerges is a large three-dimensional reflection of our country and of ourselves from various angles, including the views from our scattered diasporas.

All the story lines converge toward the end of the novel. Miguel continues to be alienated from his parents and does not yet resolve his personal dilemma. One night, he and Sadie bail out of a nightspot from boredom to go to a party. It rains heavily and the streets flood. The lights go out in most places and they are stuck in frozen traffic near the Pasig River, at the edge of Makati. The Pasig rises and they are trapped in Sadie’s car. A factory across the river explodes like fireworks. Two street children float by their car atop an ice-cream cart.

‘Choose sides’

Miguel remembers Crispin’s words: “You must choose sides. If you choose your own, you choose oppression, fratricide, indifference; you will never be content amongst your own. If you side with the others, you choose treason, patricide, betrayal; you will never be accepted amongst those unlike you… What to do? Nothing to be done, Pozzo. You cannot sit this out. The airplane lands. The people clap. Take a bow. You’re on the stage.”

While this is happening, Edsa 4 is going on at Malacañang. Lakan has taken hostages and threatens to kill them. The mob, egged on by Brother Martin over the objections of Lakan, attacks the palace. The national political storm coincides with the heavy rains and the crisis in Miguel’s life that calls for action.

In post-modern style, “Ilustrado” ends uncertainly, or perhaps, ends in several contradictory ways. There are several scenes where Miguel takes alternative paths with vague results that are written in soaring prose: “He thought, instead, not of how it began, but how it must have ended, of how it always must. That last final moment before going towards the light: the pinprick of dawn, the world turning on its side, the horizon vertical, the sun and the moon in the same sky… Hearing someone sing your name, seeing faces to whom life will soon ascribe meaning, the discovery of your first word, the oblivion of not yet knowing there would ever be your last.”

The epilogue is a fitting ending to the chaos so ably rendered by the novel. It surprises, explains much, but also further nuances the multiple visions that abound throughout the book. The language of the denouement, by itself, is a singular achievement that is certain to satisfy readers.

“Ilustrado” is metafiction in that it is often fiction about fiction. It is a most cerebral novel that dares to reflect the Philippines and Filipinos at so many levels and dimensions. Through virtuoso use of language and a dazzling array of fictional techniques, it achieves all of its lofty objectives.
It is far too sophisticated to engage readers in the direct way of, say, melodrama, like Rizal’s novels did. The right reader, however, will be thoroughly engaged by this novel, for he will be enticed to reflect upon himself and his society in a fresh light through the passion of ideas.

It deserves all the accolades it has won. It is among the finest novels written by a Filipino. Perhaps, even by any writer.

Antonio A. Hidalgo was chair of the board of judges that unanimously awarded the 2008 Palanca Grand Prize for the novel to ‘Ilustrado’ by Miguel Syjuco. Thanks to Syjuco, this review was also based on the slightly rewritten version that won the 2008 MAN Asia Prize.
LINKS:

Read Excerpt of Ilustrado
Q&A with Miguel Syjuco

With the popularity of ’60s style series and films like Mad Men and Reservation Road, I thought it’s time for us to take our own look back at our ’60s experience.
Dance-O-Rama was a movie made in 1963 starring Susan Roces, Jose Mari, German Moreno, Marissa Delgado etc. which was shown constantly in the afternoons after school when we were growing up in the ’70s. A significant number of our class are obsessed with this musical comedy and I finally found some clips on the web (see below).
Dance-O-Rama film clips:
“The Watusi”
“Sleeping Time”

for the lyrics to the song “More Processed Meat, visit her site at www.happyslip.com

In anticipation of my Christmas trip, I’ve been searching sites on Philippine Christmas and I came on this very nice page on the TAGALOG website that gives you the traditions, the decorations, especially the food (drool), and even the songs. I’ve pasted some of the pix, but go to the site itself: Philippine Christmas to get your Pinoy Christmas fix.

SWEET! Saveur magazine’s December 2008 issue has an entire feature on Christmas in the town of Arayat, Pampanga by Robyn Eckhardt, be sure to check it out.
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Philippine Christmas Carols:

“Simbang Gabi” by Philippine Madrigal Singers

“Kumukutikutitap”

“Pasko Na” by Bukas Palad

“Gabing Payapa” by Donna Cruz

“Pasko Na Sinta Ko” video by Piolo Pascual (shot in NY)

“Miss Kita Kung Christmas” by Susan Fuentes (special shout out to Candy and Marls)

at ang walang kamatayang “You’re All I Want for Christmas” by
Rico J. Puno

MALIGAYANG PASKO AT MANIGONG BAGONG TAON!

LINKS:
Burnt Lumpia: A December to Savor
MarketMan: Days of Feasting in the December Saveur