NO COUNTRY FOR LITTERERS, OLD MEN

                 Grandchild Jasmine Julian, daughter of Rene Rafael
            who works in a multinational company in the island-state

SINGAPORE--We were waiting for an underground train at an MRT station in the Serangoon area when my recurring cough irritated my throat, and I was about to expel phlegm. My son, who works in a multinational company here, restrained me, pointing to the closed circuit TV camera above us.

Personnel of the Manpower Services are nearby, ready to pounce on the would- be phlegm thrower, hail him to court that will impose a fine of no less than S$500. Of course, after a quick due process.

In this rules- based island, the 6th wealthiest nation on earth, the law is the law. You can not escape it. Remember the Flor Contemplacion case? Death was her penalty for the killing of fellow Filipina Delia Maga. No amount of representation from the Philippine government stopped the implementation of their death penalty.

What did I do to my phlegm? Think about it and laugh aloud. Like the former Prime Minister of India who used to drink his own urine? For health purposes, according to some medical journals. I don't know if phlegm has health benefits.

My friends have asked me whether life in this expensive country is easy for everybody-- citizens and permanent residents.

I have seen old men--Chinese, Tamils, Malays, Indonesians--driving cabs and wiping tables and floors in restaurants.

I have seen old women--Chinese, Tamils, Malays, Indonesians--waiting on tables. Sometimes they look at me with their said, sunken eyes and my heart is broken.

They have to work to keep with the rent and the high cost of living here, says one of my sons who will be married to a Canada-based Ibanag maiden in December.

Singapore not a country for old people?

Quote of the week: "One who pursues spirituality alone goes into great darkness; one who pursues spirituality alone goes into even greater darkness. Yet one who pursues materialism and spirituality side by side (like the two wings of a bird) is happy in this world and the next." --Isopanishad

NO APAY NGA INSUBLIK TI PEDRO BUCANEG AWARD

The Pedro Bucaneg Award is the highest medal of honor in Iluko literature. The award was given to me during a convention of  Ilokano writers in Suso, Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur sometime in the summer of 2001, in the presence of Dr. Godofredo S. Reyes, 13-time president of the association. But I tried to return it in support of a cause--the vicious "attack" by writers identified with Gumil Filipinas in the Internet against Apo Ariel Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the unexplained expenses of funds of the major national association of Ilokano writers. The political act was made through a letter dated August 5, 2009 to Ms. Elizabeth Madarang Raquel, then president of Gumil Filipinas, through Mr. Ariel Tabag, then secretary- general of the organization.

Iti suratko, imbatadko nga adda dua a kondision iti panangisublik ti PBA ket maisurat koma iti pakasaritaan ti Gumil Filipinas:

1. "Peter La. Julian, Pedro Bucaneg Award insublina a kas simbolo ti pannakipagriknana ken pannakitaktakunaynayna ken ni Apo Aurelio S. Agcaoili a nangtunton iti husticia iti pannkarabrabngis iti dayawna."

2. "Peter La. Julian, Pedro Bucaneg Award insublina a kas simbolo ti luksawna iti saan a nalawag a pannakadagup iti nau-or a pondo ken pannakagastos iti kuarta iti pannakabangon iti Balay ti Gumil idiay Suso."

Saan a nasungbatan ti suratko ngem inikkatda kano ti naganko iti listaan dagiti immawat iti kangatuan a pammadayaw ti Literatura Iluko.

(Siasino ngamin aya ti makailawlawag iti pudno a nagasto iti patta a idiay Suso a namkuatan ni Dr. Dedicacion Agatep-Reyes a nangibaga  a "bulok" ti gunglo?)
Incidentally, Ms.Raquel used the name of Mark Limon, a young MMSU instructor, in an article published in the Ilocos Times,  that maligned Apo Agcaoili.

BEARERS OF BLACK NAMES

scions mikey and jv looking good on
philippine TV

arrogant owners of chubby cheeks
grabbers of the biggest pie?
well-fed fellows arguing
in lifeless ire

debate never never
bloody facts are naked and bare.


inheritors of dirty millions while
a million zombies
filch wrapped throwaways
sons and daughters dying
of garbage bread.

let this cup pass
unto the mouths of plunderers
rue, rue the eternal bitterness

let soothsayers be damned
but hear ye hear ye
the cruel Jehovah Christ sayeth
doomed are bearers of black names
born of kleptomaniacs
playing Abel and Cain
walking the earth
to purgatory
where robber barons
and ill-gotten riches
burn in the sulfur
of eternal fire



singapore, july 8, 2011
Caption; PLJ with Singapore-based BBC news presenter Filipino Rico Hizon

NO REDEMPTION?

To gain their support, she gave sleek cars like Mitsubishi Pajeros to Roman Catholic bishops last year using Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office money for the poor?
No redemption for the Little Woman, the personification of evil (Romulo Neri's term), even if she danced with the supposed savers of souls, now unmasked as bribe takers and shameless solicitors like the Mindanao bishop who asked for an expensive car?

Mi amigo Pedro, the government under the watch of the emperadora has been described as the most corrupt in the country's history. As bad as Ferdinand Marcos, who during the martial law years, had the perceived enemies of the state either killed or "made to disappear" in lonely or mass graves?

Where is Jonas Burgos, the activist son of the Ilocano journalist Jose? Now six feet below the ground or just "disappeared" like the "desaparecidos" of Argentina. In a press conference, according to a leader of the military junta that brutally ruled that country, the desaparecidos were"neither dead nor alive; they disappeared." Actually, they--left-wing activists and political dissidents-- were kidnapped, drugged and dropped, still alive, out of aircrafts.

Or was Jonas killed by his military captors, his body put in a container that was cemented and then dropped into the sea like what some dirty Amianan politicians do to their political opponents?

KINDRED SOUL?

After falling prey to capitalist economics by selling ecclesiastical property, the High Priest of the Diocese of Laoag City was promoted (Utlegged, according to Herdy La. Yumul, one of the country's top 5 bloggers) by the Vatican to archbishop, succeeding the respected Diosdado Talamayan of the Archdiocese of Tuguegarao.

The Laoag City Diocese under the watch of Apo Sergio conducted a raffle draw the first prize of which, a Honda Civic, was won, of all people, by our kamannurat friend Fr. Danilo Laeda, (still the parish priest of San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte?) whom he earlier appointed as vicar general.

What happened, Apo Sergio?


"The function of the writer is to act in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world and that nobody may say that he is innocent of what it is all about."--Jean-Paul-Sartre

7/43 SERANGOON AVE 2

ON THE GLASS TABLE

It waited in silence:

Dinner of jasmine rice, mixed veggie tempura,
fried Malaysian galunggung.

Cup of Japanese green tea sat in limbo like bored Palawan rock in Sentosa.
Without bidding adieu, the Mangyan maiden
Walked away, disappeared like smoke in cyber space.

AUTHORS OF PERFIDIA

A REFRAIN, LORENZO, A REFRAIN


A. Two years later, the serpent's
head came out
of the hole of a beach: the woman
had gone to bed with a young man
named Mark.

O, how she lies:
Here lies Eli, she lies.

B. They deleted names
In list of Bucaneg Awardees,
They who lied about the money
from Hawaii,
from the US Mainland
from Ilocos poverty
For a house of memory
In Suso, by the sea,
In the town called Sta. Maria
In the north country.

And the wrinkled widow,
Lamenting for her beloved Godofredo,
Bears witness:
What a mess,
What rottenness!




"Perfidia"

sung by Linda Ronstadt

"with a sad lament my dreams/are faded
like a broken melody, while the gods
of love look down and laugh, at what
romantic fools we mortals be.."

-courtesy Mayette Cantos,
FB, June 20, 2011

THE 5TH Day in Singapore

Arrived at the Changi International Airport aboard Cebu Pacific that left Clark at 12:20PM. It was almost four in the afternoon, June 6. We started the trip from Oscariz, Ramon, Isabela Sunday morning riding on Raul's Navarra with Jovy, his third eldest boy to Manila, where we checked in at a hotel owned by an Isabela resident. Most of the helpers there were Ilocos boys. The following morning, we motored to Clark and checked in at about 9 in the morning. We had two luggage, 2 hand-carried bags and laptop slung on my shoulders. Paid the travel tax-- P1, 260.00 each. Christoffer and Christian met us at Changi's Budget Terminal.
Started yesterday reading, "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor", the first major work of 1982 Nobel Prize winner in Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez, published in book form in 1970. The book was borrowed by 10-year old Juan-Juan Julian from the Serangoon Public Library, located atop a mall in Serangoon, S$55 cents away from our resident via bus. Some of the books borrowed by Juan-Juan (no librarian here, it's all run by electronics): The Longest War by Peter L. Bergen, a book about the conflict between America and Al-Qaeda; Interlogue, studies on Singapore literature and a book of poetry by Robert L. Hass.
A gray day with occasional rains, we stayed mostly indoors, in the 8th floor of a 12-storey flat in Serangoon Ave. 2. It's quarter to two in the afternoon.