‘Ocean’s Twelve,’ the Pulitzer, and the House of Anne Frank

A bill seeking to enforce by law a compulsory P125 per month pay increase for workers in the private sector is sheer nonsense. Worst of all: it signifies arrogant bullying by our congressmen of the private sector which represents both domestic and foreign investment. What our country needs to progress, and create more jobs, is investment from local entrepreneurs and financiers, as well as foreign firms and portfolio managers. When we show the world that the government, from the Palace, to the legislature and the courts meddle shamelessly in business, then money flees.

In sum, Filipino businessmen will salt their money away abroad, or invest overseas, while foreign capital already here will run away, too. Any prospective investors weighing the advantage of coming in will go elsewhere, shunning our inhospitable shores.

It’s easy to paraphrase the Las Siete Palabras and say, as did Jesus on the cross: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." But they ought to know. For our Presidenta, who’s supposed to have majored in economics and finance, to bleat that she is in favor of a legislated wage hike, even if she won’t endorse that stupid bill, is sheer political hokum, stuff and nonsense. For our Congress to impose such a measure is ridiculous – and unjust. Labor and management can and must negotiate any wage increases with each other – and the government must not stick its nose into this matter. For business, to stay alive, must be able to live and operate within its means – not have a mandatory salary and wage increase for employees forced down the throats of its management.

Money is the most skittish and cowardly commodity in the world. When it is threatened, it runs away full tilt, without a backward glance. Sure, Money talks. But when it does, it usually says, "Goodbye."

Ram through that mandatory wage hike for the private sector, and we might as well kiss our prospects of foreign capital infusion Goodbye, too.

* * *

I’ll resist the temptation to perorate about the US Marines – all five? – who allegedly gang-raped a helpless Filipina student in a Starex van in Subic – and the used "condom" which is a major piece of evidence. I also won’t comment about Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita – a retired general, former DND Secretary, and ex-Batangas congressman to boot "taking seriously" a warning by La Miriam (Defensor-Santiago) that a coup was being planned by the opposition to unseat La Gloria by December. Susmariosep, why wait for December if one can mobilize a coup d’etat? So the mutineers can give GMA a rousing send-off with, "Get out, Ma’am: Merry Christmas"?

Or are they waiting for the Balikbayans to come home for the Season to be Jolly so they can join the kudeta?

Frankly, all this wild talk gives me a migraine. Why, yesterday I even read (in another daily) a frontpage headline: "Alarm Raised Over Breastfeeding Babies." Wow!

It turns out that the story meant: "Filipinos import $400 million worth of milk formula a year but spend P536 million to bury 15,000 bottle-fed babies and P3.5 million more for the treatment of infant malnutrition and diarrhea…"

This was the finding, apparently, of studies conducted by World Health Organization, the Department of Health and the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development, Philippine Pediatric Society, the UNICEF and the National Demographic Health Survey. The study further revealed that only 15 percent of mothers in the Philippines "practice exclusive breastfeeding."

The writer prefaced her piece with the line: "Breast milk, not infant formula, rears geniuses."

It was thus sheer disappointment for this writer to finally have to face the fact that I could never have qualified for "genius." My wonderful mother breastfed me for the first few weeks, then switched me to bottled, then canned milk. In this way my Ilocano habits were drastically reinforced: I was brought up on "Dutch Baby Milk."

This was canned milk imported from Holland – no wonder I naturally feel at home there. I still remember the label on the cans, since the "Dutch Baby Milk" habit persisted till I was three years old – and we boys graduated from Evaporated Milk to Condensed Milk. We used to make sandwiches from Condensada, a thick, supersweet condensed milk. The symbol on the tins were that of a Dutch girl in characteristic starched white "hat," and wooden clogs, with a windmill in the background. The milk probably came from Frisian cows, which come in patches of black or brown on white.

The "Bear Brand" label had a Swiss bear on its tins.

Those were the good old days. We never worried about whether bottle-fed babies were more prone to die than breastfed babies. Every infant got given Tiki-Tiki Manuel Zamora, and when sick, got purgative in the form of that (ugh) obnoxious Scotts Emulsion. Tamiflu? Nobody ever heard of it at the time. Flu was called Trankaso, and nobody ever guessed it could be transmitted by birds or poultry.

If "ignorance is bliss," as they used to say in that golden yesterday, we continue to be the most blissful nation in Asia.

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It’s Sunday, so I won’t attempt to say anything weighty about the boring political situation of non-stop confrontation. Is it true that former Secretary Josie Trinidad Lichauco introduced herself in a speech she gave in Makati in this fashion: "I’m a columnist of The Philippine STAR unfortunately…" I hope this isn’t true, but if so, Dear Josie, one of the freedoms we enjoy, not the first four, but perhaps the sixth is the freedom to quit being a columnist of the paper you dislike. Gee whiz. Such goings on in this season of recrimination and smugness. I’m just a newspaperman, a poor boy who fought in the muddy trenches of journalism and fortunately managed to claw my way to the top. Je regrette pas rien, or did I misspell that? On parle Francaise.

My most recent brush with… well, some kind of fame is that in Amsterdam I was lucky to get a reservation in the Hotel Pulitzer on one of the major Canals, at 315-331 Prinsengracht. This hotel is specially fascinating since its frontage, like that of all the quaint Dutch houses and even princely dwellings on the principal Canals (the Amsterdammers resent being called "The Venice of the North"), is small – but the Hotel sprawls deep into the rear, with interior gardens as well brightening the transition, and includes huge banqueting and conference rooms like the baroque Saxenburgzaal, the Art Deco Tuinzaal and the classic Keizerzaal for high profile meetings. I discovered that The Pulitzer, one of Sheraton’s "Luxury Collection" hotels, consists of 25, yep, twenty-five 17th and 18th century canal houses perfectly integrated to create a truly unique hostelry. To get to my room, which overlooks the Prinsengracht Canal itself, I had to take the D-Elevator, not the A, B, or C.

This charming hotel is so named because it was the brainchild of art-aficionado Peter Pulitzer, grandson of the renowned newspaper Publisher who founded the annual Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, literature, music and drama. The rooms, including mine, all feature original works of art. (In summer, I’m told, the hotel even hosts an arts festival with musicians performing on barges moored in the Prinsengracht on which The Pulitzer is perched).

However, not until I breakfasted in "The Pulitzer" restaurant (what else?) did I find out, through its excellent deputy maitre-d’, a friendly and helpful Singaporean-Malaysian named Raymond (a Dutch citizen by now) that the hotel had the added distinction of having had the first scenes of the movie Ocean’s Twelve shot there. In fact, while Brad Pitt had his own private apartments not far away, most of the other stars had stayed in The Pulitzer: Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones, George Clooney, etc. They never ventured into the cafeteria, restaurant or function rooms, however, but had room service, since adoring fans were waiting everywhere to waylay them. After weeks in The Pulitzer, the entire cast moved on to Rome for the next round of "shooting."

So there.

There wasn’t a sign in the Ladies Room, however that "Julia Roberts Sat Here," as once there was, but no more, in the loo of the Aux Deux Maggots in Paris, which proclaimed that "Simone Beauvoir Sat Here" (The toilet seat in the Ladies’ cloakroom was thereby regarded, in those bygone days with more reverence).

* * *

The Pulitzer’s greatest distinction, and convenience, however, is that it is located only a few hundred yards down the same canal-side street (Prinsengracht 263) from the Anne Frank Huis, the "House of Anne Frank," the place travel guides always describe as "the most visited attraction in Amsterdam."

Early in the morning, till sunset, you see long queues of tourists, and pilgrims, lining up to visit this house. By now, almost everyone in the world knows the poignant story of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who poured her heart out into a secret diary she penned while she and her family were hiding out from the Nazis during the German Occupation of the Netherlands. What a compelling tale this tragedy remains. When the Nazis goosestepped into Amsterdam and started rounding up the Jews for imprisonment in their concentration camps, Otto Frank, a Jewish businessman who had used the house as a base for his company which handled spices, food additives, and other commodities, concealed himself and his family in what the Dutch call the achterhuis, a secret annex at the back of the same house.

You can see it for yourself: a simple wooden bookcase was the divider which concealed the hiding place. Frank knew the depredations of the Nazis well. He had fled from Frankfurt (Germany) with his family in 1933 when Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists (Nazis) came to power. Now, in Nazi-seized Amsterdam, Otto, his wife Edith, and their daughters Margot and Anne, and other Jews, the Pels family, Hermann and Auguste, their son Peter, went into hiding on July 6, 1942. The visitor can still see the pictures cut from Hollywood magazines by Anne and pasted on the wall to brighten the dark hiding place; and the newspaper map father Otto utilized to trace the progress of American and Allied liberation forces following the June 6, 1944 Normandy Landings. So near and yet so far.

One day, betrayed by a Dutch informer, the Frank family and the others heard the fatal knock on the door – on August 4, 1944. The German barged in and dragged the two families away. Anne was taken away to the camp in Bergen-Belsen, not far from Gottenburg, Germany, where she succumbed – at the age of 15 – to typhus in March 1945 – only three weeks before the British arrived to liberate the camp on April 15!

What brought her tragic story to life was the fact that during her days of hiding, Anne had kept a diary, in the end filling up three volumes and over 100 loose-leaf pages with her girlish scrawl. Into these pages she had poured her hopes, dreams, thoughts and feelings.

The abandoned diary was spotted on the dusty floor of the abandoned house by Miep Gles, one of the family’s former servants. Father Otto, the only one who had survived the horrors of imprisonment, offered the diary to several publishers after the war – none of them were interested. Finally, a small Dutch publishing house brought out a simple first, edited edition in 1947. It became a bestseller. At least, in 1952, an English version was produced. It became an even bigger bestseller. In 1955, the book became a Broadway play, then a 1959 movie starring Mille Perkins as Anne.

Anne had never realized her dream of becoming a "writer." She turned out to be one of the most famous – and beloved – posthumously. Who has not shed a tear over the diary of this young girl? Her words made her immortal, for they were the mirror of her valiant soul.

"With words we govern men," Stuart Chase, one of the fathers of semantics once said. With words, too, are the hearts of men and women moved.

Brave Anne, you will live forever in our hearts!