A date with the consul
April 23, 2001 | 12:00am
An unexpected but welcome invitation to give a couple of lectures in the United States this summer led me to do something I haven’t done all my life, which was to queue up at the American Embassy for a visa. I’d been to the US many times before–studying and living there for five years, as a matter of fact–but all of those were official trips, for which the office did all the paperwork.. This time, having taken vacation leave, I was going to have to come and get my visa myself. I couldn’t use the drop-box facility because I hadn’t been back to the States since I came home from graduate school ten years ago, so I needed to be interviewed just like everybody else.
Well, everybody else–half of Manila, it seemed to me–did turn up on my big day last week. The last time I was with so many people in front of the US Embassy, we were waving red-lettered placards and screaming at the Yankees for them to pack their bags and go home to Tuscaloosa. There were no placards in evidence around the embassy last week, only envelopes bulging with assorted proofs of one’s material consequence–land titles, car registration papers, bank certifications, credit card statements. I held on tight to my own briefcase, having collected these documents over much of the past month with all the singlemindedness of an impeachment-trial prosecutor (or, in this case, of an attorney for the defense). A cluster of vendors offered comforts hard to imagine in any other US Embassy sidewalk around the world: hard-boiled eggs, instant ramen, Skyflakes crackers, Marlboros-by-the-stick.
The motley crowd allowed itself to be herded into lines under the balete trees by a woman vendor in shorts who sold ID pictures and barked at the visa applicants with the authority of a marine sergeant. The people were grouped according to their interview appointments, in 30-minute batches. (The embassy procedure these days requires you to pay the visa fee at a bank and book an appointment by phone a couple of months ahead of your interview date.) In a twangy Americanesque accent, our shepherdess went around dispensing free advice to applicants: "What’s your time, nine-thirty? This way, this way! Why don’t you believe me? I do this only for you, not for me! This way, this way! And remove Page 3 of the visa form, okay? No need for Page 3!"
And so we went her way, cajoled into submission by her obvious familiarity with the abstruse intricacies of the place, of which I had no idea. She had probably been there long enough to know, just by looking at an applicant from head to foot, if the person was going to get a visa or not. People in line were rehearsing their routines in mumbled whispers: "If they ask this, say this...." Most were dressed in their Sunday best: blouses with frilly collars, dimpled neckties, gusot-mayaman barongs. A lad of around 20 stood behind me, sweating in his white shirt and striped tie, a folded sportscoat on his arm; well, it might have been New Orleans on a summer day, after all. Ever the dandy, I had given some thought to what to wear that morning, remembering how, 21 years ago, I had taken my first trans-Pacific plane ride to the States in a gray double-knit suit, sharp-looking then but loaded with enough polyester to fry an egg just from the static electricity. No, I decided, a suit for a visa interview on an April morning was just about the silliest selection to make, and settled on one of my old linen barongs, rumpled just enough to suggest that I wore one everyday.
As the clock passed 9:00, we were let into the embassy, into a kind of holding room where our interview receipts were checked and where we waited to be called into the interview area. The room buzzed and pinged with cellular traffic; cellphones were allowed in that facility, most probably in abject resignation to the fact that every Pinoy has a cellphone, tagging and pigeonholing every one of which would prove a horrendous drain on embassy resources. On long benches, people reviewed their visa forms, or stared out into space, across the room and the shimmering bay, and farther yet across the ocean to Hawaii and the Golden Gate Bridge: all that lay ahead, with only a consul and his or her few fiendishly tricky questions standing in the doorway of a lifelong dream. As we waited, I thought I could’ve told them something about how murderously cold the Midwest winters could get, or how the first Pinoy I met in Washington DC in 1980 was a bellhop who bummed $20 from me to slip his American "girlfriend," but they would have found those stories charming.
We entered the interview room, which was packed to the gills with applicants seated in rows of chairs facing a battery of windows. Behind each of ten windows serving the crowd was a consul, on whose well-considered yes or no depended the sudden turn of a life. Few people spoke, most too intently waiting for his or her number to be called; I was Number 77 of the 9:30 batch. The consuls were mostly white American men in plain shirts and civil-service kinds of ties. One of the consuls was, evidently, a Filipina or a Filpino-American woman; the applicants couldn’t seem to decide among themselves whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. "Mukhang mabagsik," someone muttered.
A short line of applicants formed before each consul, and at every window played a drama, comic or tragic, like a bank of TV screens tuned in to different channels. Here a woman pleaded to be allowed to attend a conference on her own funds (denied); there a photographer asked to see his sister in California (approved); here an oldish woman begged, with a companion’s help, to see America (denied, emphatically: "I’m sorry, you do not qualify for a US visa!" declared the consul, loud enough for the whole room to hear–"My third time," she moaned on her way out). I heard my number called, to Window 6; it was the Pinay consul’s window. Just my luck, I thought, having prepared myself to sing the Michigan football fight song ("Hail to the victors valiant, hail to the conq’ring heroes, hail, hail, to Michigan, the leaders and best!") if any one of those jock-type consuls had asked me why I was going to visit Ann Arbor. I had good reason to be nervous, because I had very little money to show (unless they accepted certificates to attest to all the beer I spent good wages on) and because I’d stupidly forgotten to bring any documents to prove the fact that I’d already lived there for five years and had come home.
Six people stood in line before me; four of them went down like duckpins, applications denied. You could tell a denial was coming if the consul picked up a ballpen to scribble something on your passport. I could hardly bear to glance at those faces as they turned away from the window; surprisingly, few of them looked stricken, as though they had expected the outcome all along. Well, if they had been anticipating doom, I certainly wasn’t, if only because I handle rejection like a baby; I cry. The consul took my passport, sized me up, and asked two questions, the first of which was: "What are you going to lecture on?" I was going to say, "Aristotle at EDSA: Necessity and Probability in the Construction of a New Political Paradigm for the Philippines." Instead, I got nervous and croaked, "Philippine literature." She squinted at me and asked, "Why are they inviting you?" I should have said, "Because, as a professor of literature and as an observer of contemporary events, I consider myself something of an authority on the confluences between popular culture, mythology, and transformative politics." Instead, I cleared my throat and said, "Because I went to school there." I guess she thought it was so stupid that it had to be true, and I got my visa. Thank you, madam, kung sino ka man.
After filling out another form for the courier service (they deliver your stamped passport to your door these days) I dashed out of the embassy with a spring in my step, thinking to treat myself to a lunch of chicken mami and bola-bola siopao at the nearby Hongkong Tea House, an old haunt of mine since the 70s. But when I got there the place was closed, shut down by a strike.
How much indeed had things changed, and how little.
The arts community is still abuzz with speculation about who’s going to take over the reins of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts when current (or outgoing, or resigned, depending on whose version of events you prefer to believe) chairman Jaime Laya’s term ends in June. PenMan brought up Jimmy Laya’s supposed resignation a few issues back, relating how Dr. Laya was surprised to learn that his "resignation" had been accepted by Malacañang, when he hadn’t turned in so much as a bus ticket.
An alleged resignation letter has been making the rounds of the coffeeshops and panciterias where artists converge, but–claims my peripatetic source, who knows the ins and outs of these things as well as he knows his single malts–Malacañang has subsequently explained that the letter in question is the kind of mimeographed template every high government official is presumed to have submitted from Day One. The trouble again is that Chairman Laya isn’t Malacañang’s to hire or fire, having been elected to that post by the NCCA board. His successor would have to come from within that board; to get on the board, you’d have to head a committee, and the news is that someone so inclined has already taken the first step toward making all these complicated things happen, by getting on one of these committees. Will she make it? Birdie says not very likely. Birdie tells me to keep my eye on another candidate, another "she," who just might surprise everyone by returning to the limelight.
All this talk of easing Laya out began with a letter supposedly signed by four National Artists, insinuating that Laya was somehow responsible for unspecified financial shenanigans. What’s interesting, according to my source, is that Nick Joaquin–bellowing as usual like an injured bull elephant–subsequently disavowed having affixed his signature to any such letter. Another National Artist also reportedly gave his nod without knowing the full details and implications of the letter.
My oh my, what a tangled web these artists weave.
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com..
Well, everybody else–half of Manila, it seemed to me–did turn up on my big day last week. The last time I was with so many people in front of the US Embassy, we were waving red-lettered placards and screaming at the Yankees for them to pack their bags and go home to Tuscaloosa. There were no placards in evidence around the embassy last week, only envelopes bulging with assorted proofs of one’s material consequence–land titles, car registration papers, bank certifications, credit card statements. I held on tight to my own briefcase, having collected these documents over much of the past month with all the singlemindedness of an impeachment-trial prosecutor (or, in this case, of an attorney for the defense). A cluster of vendors offered comforts hard to imagine in any other US Embassy sidewalk around the world: hard-boiled eggs, instant ramen, Skyflakes crackers, Marlboros-by-the-stick.
The motley crowd allowed itself to be herded into lines under the balete trees by a woman vendor in shorts who sold ID pictures and barked at the visa applicants with the authority of a marine sergeant. The people were grouped according to their interview appointments, in 30-minute batches. (The embassy procedure these days requires you to pay the visa fee at a bank and book an appointment by phone a couple of months ahead of your interview date.) In a twangy Americanesque accent, our shepherdess went around dispensing free advice to applicants: "What’s your time, nine-thirty? This way, this way! Why don’t you believe me? I do this only for you, not for me! This way, this way! And remove Page 3 of the visa form, okay? No need for Page 3!"
And so we went her way, cajoled into submission by her obvious familiarity with the abstruse intricacies of the place, of which I had no idea. She had probably been there long enough to know, just by looking at an applicant from head to foot, if the person was going to get a visa or not. People in line were rehearsing their routines in mumbled whispers: "If they ask this, say this...." Most were dressed in their Sunday best: blouses with frilly collars, dimpled neckties, gusot-mayaman barongs. A lad of around 20 stood behind me, sweating in his white shirt and striped tie, a folded sportscoat on his arm; well, it might have been New Orleans on a summer day, after all. Ever the dandy, I had given some thought to what to wear that morning, remembering how, 21 years ago, I had taken my first trans-Pacific plane ride to the States in a gray double-knit suit, sharp-looking then but loaded with enough polyester to fry an egg just from the static electricity. No, I decided, a suit for a visa interview on an April morning was just about the silliest selection to make, and settled on one of my old linen barongs, rumpled just enough to suggest that I wore one everyday.
As the clock passed 9:00, we were let into the embassy, into a kind of holding room where our interview receipts were checked and where we waited to be called into the interview area. The room buzzed and pinged with cellular traffic; cellphones were allowed in that facility, most probably in abject resignation to the fact that every Pinoy has a cellphone, tagging and pigeonholing every one of which would prove a horrendous drain on embassy resources. On long benches, people reviewed their visa forms, or stared out into space, across the room and the shimmering bay, and farther yet across the ocean to Hawaii and the Golden Gate Bridge: all that lay ahead, with only a consul and his or her few fiendishly tricky questions standing in the doorway of a lifelong dream. As we waited, I thought I could’ve told them something about how murderously cold the Midwest winters could get, or how the first Pinoy I met in Washington DC in 1980 was a bellhop who bummed $20 from me to slip his American "girlfriend," but they would have found those stories charming.
We entered the interview room, which was packed to the gills with applicants seated in rows of chairs facing a battery of windows. Behind each of ten windows serving the crowd was a consul, on whose well-considered yes or no depended the sudden turn of a life. Few people spoke, most too intently waiting for his or her number to be called; I was Number 77 of the 9:30 batch. The consuls were mostly white American men in plain shirts and civil-service kinds of ties. One of the consuls was, evidently, a Filipina or a Filpino-American woman; the applicants couldn’t seem to decide among themselves whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. "Mukhang mabagsik," someone muttered.
A short line of applicants formed before each consul, and at every window played a drama, comic or tragic, like a bank of TV screens tuned in to different channels. Here a woman pleaded to be allowed to attend a conference on her own funds (denied); there a photographer asked to see his sister in California (approved); here an oldish woman begged, with a companion’s help, to see America (denied, emphatically: "I’m sorry, you do not qualify for a US visa!" declared the consul, loud enough for the whole room to hear–"My third time," she moaned on her way out). I heard my number called, to Window 6; it was the Pinay consul’s window. Just my luck, I thought, having prepared myself to sing the Michigan football fight song ("Hail to the victors valiant, hail to the conq’ring heroes, hail, hail, to Michigan, the leaders and best!") if any one of those jock-type consuls had asked me why I was going to visit Ann Arbor. I had good reason to be nervous, because I had very little money to show (unless they accepted certificates to attest to all the beer I spent good wages on) and because I’d stupidly forgotten to bring any documents to prove the fact that I’d already lived there for five years and had come home.
Six people stood in line before me; four of them went down like duckpins, applications denied. You could tell a denial was coming if the consul picked up a ballpen to scribble something on your passport. I could hardly bear to glance at those faces as they turned away from the window; surprisingly, few of them looked stricken, as though they had expected the outcome all along. Well, if they had been anticipating doom, I certainly wasn’t, if only because I handle rejection like a baby; I cry. The consul took my passport, sized me up, and asked two questions, the first of which was: "What are you going to lecture on?" I was going to say, "Aristotle at EDSA: Necessity and Probability in the Construction of a New Political Paradigm for the Philippines." Instead, I got nervous and croaked, "Philippine literature." She squinted at me and asked, "Why are they inviting you?" I should have said, "Because, as a professor of literature and as an observer of contemporary events, I consider myself something of an authority on the confluences between popular culture, mythology, and transformative politics." Instead, I cleared my throat and said, "Because I went to school there." I guess she thought it was so stupid that it had to be true, and I got my visa. Thank you, madam, kung sino ka man.
After filling out another form for the courier service (they deliver your stamped passport to your door these days) I dashed out of the embassy with a spring in my step, thinking to treat myself to a lunch of chicken mami and bola-bola siopao at the nearby Hongkong Tea House, an old haunt of mine since the 70s. But when I got there the place was closed, shut down by a strike.
How much indeed had things changed, and how little.
An alleged resignation letter has been making the rounds of the coffeeshops and panciterias where artists converge, but–claims my peripatetic source, who knows the ins and outs of these things as well as he knows his single malts–Malacañang has subsequently explained that the letter in question is the kind of mimeographed template every high government official is presumed to have submitted from Day One. The trouble again is that Chairman Laya isn’t Malacañang’s to hire or fire, having been elected to that post by the NCCA board. His successor would have to come from within that board; to get on the board, you’d have to head a committee, and the news is that someone so inclined has already taken the first step toward making all these complicated things happen, by getting on one of these committees. Will she make it? Birdie says not very likely. Birdie tells me to keep my eye on another candidate, another "she," who just might surprise everyone by returning to the limelight.
All this talk of easing Laya out began with a letter supposedly signed by four National Artists, insinuating that Laya was somehow responsible for unspecified financial shenanigans. What’s interesting, according to my source, is that Nick Joaquin–bellowing as usual like an injured bull elephant–subsequently disavowed having affixed his signature to any such letter. Another National Artist also reportedly gave his nod without knowing the full details and implications of the letter.
My oh my, what a tangled web these artists weave.
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