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Only in the Philippines can there be a Japanese restaurant that plays Brazilian music, which was exactly the case when Filipina Nyko Maka played Voce Abuso among other Latino standards at the Wasabi bar and jazz restaurant along Makati Avenue late in May, just as the monsoon season was starting.

Nicole Severino (real name of Nyko Maka, which anyway sounds good enough to be on the menu) spent years in Canada and when she visited the home country for a visit, drummer Richie Q helped her out in initial gigs at the Monk’s Dream when it was still at Rockwell. Now horn player and elder statesman Butch Silverio is main instrumentalist of the Maka band, coloring the proceedings with executive aplomb but still funky enough for us to imagine the likes of Ronaldhino evading pursuers on Ayala Avenue traffic towards the goal behind the Manila Peninsula, where we heard there is valet parking.

There is a huge Brazilian flag as backdrop of the Wasabi stage as Maka plays, in honor of the current World Cup and Confederations cup champions as well as of Astrud, Airto and Flora, not to mention Joao, Gayle, Nana and Monica. There is a tattoo on the small of her back that might disrupt the concentration of a Kaka in injury time, but that shouldn’t matter much when Severino’s music got our tongue, and Silverio the last local refuge of Dixieland blows away the enemy, as we sit with our beer and sushi and even the valets in the obscure parking lot cannot help but applaud too in their uniformed heart of hearts, aye aye sir!

Audience participation has picked up somewhat despite the hard times, the wiretaps and imminent EVAT notwithstanding, and every once in a while everyone needs a break and we don’t mean just a closer walk with thee. One of these nights we intend to catch Richie Q’s Guarana to further heighten our Brazilian IQ, whether in Makati or Malate.

Nyko however has an undeniable pull on the audience, and she even has a pre-pubescent percussionist to boot, or does the kid have latent progeria? Whatever, you can’t afford to miss this Maka jazz child abuso in Japanese time. Even the keeper Dida would have his hands full.

Meanwhile on an equally soggy night on the other side of town, we sit by the big picture window in the Conspiracy Garden Cafe looking out to what could be a traveler’s tree, standing like a windmill or sentry among the multitude of wet empty seats that would have been filled up had there been an ordinary book launch or if weather was fine.

It so happens too that on the Saturday after San Juan was the last night of the exhibit of wild thing Romeo Lee, with his poster depicting him beside the celebrated Michael Jackson, the pair through the wonders of digital technology holding each other’s crotch. Why MJ? Because that’s the issue these days, he says.

Beside the wild and colorful mostly oil paintings of the Lee bro is a confessional interview posted on a wall at the entrance to the gallery, wherein the artist answers such questions as what he thinks of when he’s painting (food), if he’s ever been in love (naks, of course, first with his cat, and then with his dog, but wait a minute, he never owned a dog), even as the bohemian takes a dig at the normal, wholesome, car-riding throng who anyway might find something that delights in these irreverent oily canvasses. Romeo not only must rock, he must also paint.

On the same Saturday night the singer songwriter Bayang Barrios walks in for her irregular weekend gig with the Villegas twins and a percussionist imported from Pinikpikan. We’ve heard it said before that Bayang live is worlds away from Bayang on CD, but live or on CD even the artist is befuddled by recent political events, "Ano ba ang nangyayari sa bayan natin, hello Garci?"

Soon a respectable audience builds up in the air-conditioned music room, as Bayang and the twins plus one rip through a repertoire mostly out of her "Alon" album, about a tricycle driver that has to drive like hell for a lover’s chance at romance, how hope springs eternal in reggae time, even a version of the anthem of modern Pinoy rock, Himig Natin.

Bayang with her light beer and earthy voice straight out of the wilds of Agusan held the listeners in thrall, with the guitar by her hubby Mike and bass by twin Angelo amply filling out the empty spaces and driving forth the music, propelled by the kahon player Budet killing us softly with their songs.

It might have been another Saturday night alright for fighting, with the waiters filtering in and out with their trays of food and beer, but for the view of the traveler’s tree from the big picture window, where before the set we exchanged small talk with Bayang magiliw about the old Lumad members (Noe Tio is still in Palawan, Onie Badyang is back in Davao, Cynthia Alexander’s latest CD is on sale at the entrance and she recently had an exhibit in Davao, Joey el conde de Ayala is somewhere around), and why weren’t we at the wedding of Koyang’s daughter? Koyang Egay Avenir not Koyang Jess Santiago. And she’s on her way to Hong Kong for yet another gig, even as she expresses weariness about having to play the same stuff over and over, "Pero kailangan lumabas ka ng bahay kundi wala kang tugtog." The wave of it all, being the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the conspiracy of monsoon Manila, circa hello Gwen Garci.

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Many thanks to Lucy Estacio, of the Department of Tourism, whose daughter Danielle Kristine picked up and returned through Lucy the cell phone of my housemate which she had inadvertently dropped at a Robinsons Ermita movie theater showing War of the Worlds.