Sharing my umbrella

We Pinoys found ourselves engulfed if not paralyzed by a new wave of political turmoil these past couple of weeks, so it was a pleasant surprise for me to find none other than Army chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon Jr. singing Bus Stop ("… wet day she’s there, I say, please share my umbrella!") with a bunch of other guys – myself included – in our old high school one recent Friday evening. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

The Philippine Science High School Alumni Association holds a quarterly Alumni Forum, in which invited speakers address topics of current interest (last November, for example, an alumnus-expert spoke on avian flu). This time around, the forum had DOST Secretary Estrella Alabastro speaking on the state of science and technology in the Philippines (in sum: dismal, but improving), Ibon Foundation executive director Tony Tujan on poverty alleviation, and myself on – hmm, Edsa, GMA, and all that jazz.

Predictably, it was my 10-minute presentation that provoked the thorniest responses, given the events of the previous week and the presence in the audience of a formidable group of PSHS alumni: our colleagues in the uniformed services – almost three dozen of them at latest count, about a third of whom were present at the forum, led by no less than Lt. Gen. Esperon himself (PSHS Batch 1970, and "Jun" to his contemporaries).

I brought up the need for idealism even and especially in what I saw to be sordid times, and Jun Esperon raised his own question about the relationship between idealism and the rule of law. An interesting exchange followed, capped by the reassurance that we were all, at least, talking civilly and presumably intelligently. On the way out of the auditorium, Jun (whose two daughters had been my students in English in UP) greeted me by saying that he read my pieces now and then. "Not in an intelligence report, I hope!", I said, laughing.

We thought that was the end of the evening, but someone donated a couple of cases of beer, and even more auspiciously, Jun brought an Army band with him – the "Los Caballeros" outfit, which dished out one ’60s staple after another (Don’t You Care by The Buckinghams, MacArthur’s Park by Richard Harris) with such skill and gusto that we couldn’t help jumping onstage to sing along with them. When the band struck the unmistakable first notes of The Hollies’ Bus Stop, all hell broke loose and the stage staggered from the combined avoirdupois of such substantial alumni as Mapua president Rey Vea, business ad professor Jun Sabug, their 1969 batchmates Jun Bernal, Perry Callanta, and Reny Lorenzana, and our host for the evening, Jun Esperon.

I’m under no illusion that belting out 40-year-old tunes will banish our coup jitters or change the way we feel about this country’s governance and its governors, but it’s a relief in other ways to know that we can still communicate as people and as friends. I know, it’s both our boon and bane, precisely what I referred to in my talk that same evening as the "oddly familial of not indeed incestuous nature of our politics, where everybody knows everyone else to the point that nothing ever really gets done by way of serious change." But if a silly shing-a-ling song can keep the guns from firing a little longer, why the heck not? "Please share my umbrella!"

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I’ve been privileged to be associated with the recent production of a number of coffee-table books, two of which – Heroes (Alay sa Bayan, 2006) and Tanduay: The Filipino Rhum (Tanduay, 2005) have already been reported on by their editor, fellow STAR columnist and bar buddy Krip Yuson. I wrote essays for these books, and in the process got acquainted with people and things I might never have known anything about.

On my side of the road, I wrote and/or edited Journeys with Light: The Vision of Jaime Zobel (Ayala Foundation, 2005); Power from the Deep: The Malampaya Story (Shell Philippines, 2005); and the forthcoming Unleashing the Power of Steam: the PNOC EDC Story (PNOC EDC, 2006). Books like these take anywhere from six months to four years to produce, and since they go out with my name on the title or the credits page, I take every care to treat them as I would my own fiction or non-fiction. (Our most ambitious project so far has been the 10-volume Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People, which my editorial team and I produced in 18 months for Readers Digest Asia and A-Z Direct Marketing in time for the Centennial in 1998.)

It’s easy to dismiss many coffee-table books as fluff pieces, corporate PR give-aways meant to burnish the image of a company at the expense of some unpleasant truth. Depending on how a project is approached and presented, that’s certainly possible. I happen to think that, while every client will naturally seek to put its best foot forward, the best corporate histories will acknowledge the worst crises they’ve faced and how they were dealt with – such as the public outcry that greeted the proposed establishment of a geothermal plant on Mt. Apo.

Yes, they’re PR products in the way that family albums are our own representations of ourselves, for which we’ll put on formal wear and smile like the blazes, but taken with a critical eye, corporate coffee table books are also important contributions to our economic and social history, albeit from one point of view. They tell us how people lived, worked, made decisions that changed the lives of millions, built something out of nothing, and turned the daily grind of work into something far larger than the job or the company itself.

One such book was launched last Friday – Behind the Power Lines: The Meralco Engineers, the story of the men (and quite a few women) who’ve made it possible for you and me to take electricity for granted, because someone else is always awake somewhere, minding the switches and controls. Written by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo and researched and designed by Migs Villanueva (I had a small hand in its copyediting), the book is a compendium of anecdotes from and about the professionals at the core of Meralco’s business: the engineers who design, operate, manage, and maintain the company’s power plants and distribution systems.

The stories range from the sublime (how Filipino engineers, for example, proved themselves as good as or better than their American supervisors in the old company) and the comic (having brought the wrong transformer to a repair job, engineers were forced to use their wits to make it work) to the tragic (the death of a lineman). The book’s casual, conversational style and its inspired, snazzy design do much to project these largely anonymous and unheralded engineers as interesting individuals – and Meralco itself as the bastion of a certain corporate culture (predominantly macho, to be sure, but leavened by what company oldtimers refer to as malasakit).

I’m looking forward to more such projects (whether or not I have anything to do with them) from our major corporations and our most politically, economically, and socially engaged families and institutions. The history books are fine for context and criticism, but sometimes you just need to hear people speak to make up your own mind.

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Speaking of the Philippine Science High School, a ghastly accident recently left a PSHS scholar in dire-need of help from good Samaritans. Senior Angelynne Fabro ingested a poisonous substance in school last February 14, and developed severe vomiting and abdominal pain. That was just the start of her travails, which have gone on to two endoscopies and half a dozen rounds of dialysis.

A thorough investigation of the incident is underway, but meanwhile, Gelyn needs your help. The school welcomes and appreciates any assistance that can be extended to her. Blood donations, type AB, are also needed. If you can help, please get in touch with Dr. Jessamyn O. Yazon, OIC-campus director, telefax 929-1606, e-mail jyazon77@yahoo.com. A benefit concert is also being planned for Gelyn on April 1, with tickets costing P100 and bands from various PSHS batches performing.

Lastly, let me announce that UP Batch ’81 will have a salu-salo after the free mini-concert of Prof. Edru Abraham & Kontra-GaPi in Bahay Alumni tomorrow. For more details, please get in touch with this year’s Silver Jubilee chairman, Ma. Juliet Etorma-Herrera, gootzie_herrera@yahoo.com or UPBatch81@yahoogroups.com.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://homepage.mac.com/jdalisay/blog/MyBlog.html