Month: June 2019

Mia and Rosa

Pampanga sisters Mia and Rosa sit and relax
Pampanga sisters Mia (left) and Rosa (right) sit and relax

Originally written June  2016

“If she is from Pampanga, she must be a good cook,”  Filipinos often say about the women from this area because of its internationally-renowned cuisine. Before the closing of Clark Air force base in 1991, US servicemen indulged in the food and natural beauty of this province, situated between metro Manila and the coastal province of Zambales. Clark’s closing put the local economy under pressure, make diversification essential. Presently, Clark serves as an international airport and designated economic zone and the provincial economy is driven by tourism and the manufacturing of furniture and other goods and services.

Sisters Mia and Rosa are Pampanga natives. They are two of seven siblings from a tight-knit and hard-working family…

Continued in registered free member section…

‘Quezon’s Game’: The Philippines’ ‘Schindler’s List’

 Schindler’s List was a film based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who employed Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland during WWII.  Directed by American motion picture icon Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List was a big-budget film backed with the all the “American-muscle horsepower” typical of a Hollywood film: music originally scored by John Williams, an internationally-renowned cast featuring Oscar-winning cast members such as Ben Kingsley, and cinematography shot with cameras valued equal to the price of a modest-sized home.

  

The “list” was comprised of over a thousand people detained in concentration camps, selected for work in Schindler’s enamelware and ammunition factory.  Though many often consider Schindler to be more opportunistic entrepreneur than altruistic humanitarian, names listed on the historical documents were also lives spared from extermination camps such as Auschwitz. Presently, over 8,000 people trace ancestry from the Jews rostered for work in Schindler’s factories.

 Where Oskar Schindler made history with a list, former Philippine President Manual Quezon made history with a game.  During WWII, Manuel Quezon regularly played card games with foreign dignitaries and businessmen from around the world. Some of the dignitaries the president dealt hands with Quezon included the likes of Jewish businessmen and then-US-General Dwight D. Eisenhower. During these card games, commanding general of US forces in the European theater, Eisenhower brought to the attention the plight of the Jews. Compelled, Quezon devised plans for a Jewish diaspora to the Philippines. 

Starring Raymond Bagatsing, Quezon’s Game is arguably considered a Filipino equivalent to Schindler’s List with the former Philippine president as focal point.  Directed by Mathew E. Rosen, this ABS-CBN Star Cinema production was budgeted meagerly, valued at $500,000 compared with Universal Picture’s Academy-Award winning production estimated at $22 million in 1993. Released the end of last month in cinemas across the Philippines, Quezon’s Game is causing a buzz throughout the nation.

This Rappler.com review originally posted Sunday, June 2, gives Oggs Cruz’s take of the biopic currently showing in cinemas across the Philippines.       

Benigno Aquino III Steps In

According to this South China Morning Post article posted June 22, 2019, friction continues between the Philippines and China over the collision that had occurred over a week ago in a disputed maritime area off the coast of the Philippines.   Duterte’s strongman image is softened as he dismisses the collision which put the lives of 22 fishermen in harm’s way as “just a collision,” however, former Philippine president Benigno Aquino III has a different perspective of the incident.  Since the incident, Aquino has been vocal and contends that the captain of the Chinese vessel had a moral and legal obligation to help the stranded fishermen.

According to statistics, this may not be an isolated incident as President Duterte has stated. Between 2014 and 2016, 10 ramming incidents have been recorded and have been met with outrage by the governments of neighboring countries.  Amid the controversy, there have also been a history of skirmishes between Filipino fishermen and Chinese coast guard officials which involved the use of weapons and explosives.

Chinese officials have vowed to investigate the incident, but Aquino disregards the possibility of Philippine officials entering into a joint investigation because the two countries do not have “joint sovereignty” over the area of water.     

The Importance of Being Miss Universe Philippines

America’s beauty pageant circuit often flies under the radar, usually gone undetected by mainstream and social media. Despite nationally-televised broadcasts of pageants such the “Miss America” and “Miss Universe,”doubts arise if the woman crowned queen will receive, as American pop artist Andy Warhol would put it, her “15 minutes of fame.” The story may headline only the most obscure section of newspapers, such as “Lifestyle,” but will seldom become front-page material. Unlike sporting events such as the Superbowl or Wimbledon, the chances of hearing colorful recollections at work or in school yards of contestants from pageant’s past are as slim a snowman’s survival in the Sahara heat. They are destined not to become subjects for topics of million-dollar questions on game shows, nor will the pageant winner’s images be immortalized on the breakfast-cereal boxes that stand on the tables in American households.

Ironically, the best way to achieve fame and fortune as a beauty queen is through becoming the center of scandal. In 1983 ,Vanessa Williams became the first contestant of African American descent crowned Miss America. Representing New York, Vanessa Williams captivated audiences during the pageant gala. During the talent portion, Williams sang her rendition of the roaring-twenties song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Her above-average singing ability was evident, but was her network-television debut as beauty queen enough to spark superstardom? After nearly a year as the reigning Miss America, unauthorized photos surfaced of Williams in September, 1984 issue of Penthouse Magazine. The epitome of sapphic erotica, the black and white spread featuring Williams captured on film, “in the throes of passion,” with a female co-model were euphemistically reported by news outlets as “nude photos.” 

Amid publicity surrounding the publication’s release, pageant officials urged Williams to step down as the reigning Miss America. Forced to return her $25,000 in scholarship money, Williams publicly announced her resignation.  After nearly a year of fulfilling duties as pageant ambassador, her name was erased from official records and replaced with the name, “Suzette Charles.”     

Though the name Suzette Charles is officially written somewhere in pageant history as Miss America ’84, in the minds of Americans who have experienced the tail end of the last century will recall, or insist, Vanessa Williams was the one and only Miss America that year, and years past and since. She rebounded from the scandal amassing more fame and fortune than any contestant of the pageant’s illustrious history in the entertainment industry as a world-renown singer and actress.  

Across the Pacific, in the Philippines, beauty pageant contestants receive the same status reserved for Olympic-gold-medal athletes or star NBA players in the US. Like some boys aspire to become the next LeBron James, in the Philippines it is not uncommon for boys to aspire to become Gazini Ganados, Miss Philippines 2019. On a brief visit to the Luzon province of Pampanga, a loud beeping from my hotel-room television prompted my undivided attention. “Oh no!” I thought. “Is there a tropical storm on the way? Has President Aquino just been shot?” Turning my face to the television, I noticed floating from left to right at the bottom of the screen was a ticker-tape news bulletin:  “Venus Raj has been reinstated as Miss Philippines in the 2010 Miss Universe Pageant. Stay tuned for more news after regularly-scheduled programming.”  The bulletin was not centered on an assassination, a natural disaster, nor was on the achievement of an Olympian, but an update of the status of a beauty queen’s eligibility!

From the small barangays nestled deep in the provinces to the big cities of Cebu and Manila, beauty pageants play a significant role in a cross section of Filipino culture.  Many girls, and boys who identify as female, view the glamour and pageantry of the events as an escape from the harsh realities of a life marginalized by poverty and limited opportunity. Throughout the archipelago, people gather by televisions, shopping-mall promenades, and the street-side stages to witness the spectacle, inspiring some to one day enter the pageant circuit as a participant . 

Not only are pageants such as the annual “Binibining Pilipinas” a big draw nationally, but pageants such as the “Miss Amazing Philippines Beauties” and the “Super Sireyna International.”  Often slotted for prime time television, these pageants receive an equal share of mainstream-media coverage.  Many outsiders insist the Amazing Philippines and Super Sireyna contestants are the most strikingly beautiful matched against Binibining Pilipinas contestants, but are later surprised to find that contestants from the Miss Amazing Philippines and Super Sireyna have something in common that precludes them from entering the Binibining Pilipinas: the gender printed on their birth certificate. The competing queens of the Miss Amazing and Super Sireyna were born male.

When American comedian Steve Harvey hosted the 2015 “Miss Universe,” unfamiliar with the elimination process, mistakenly named Ariadna Gutiérrez, Miss Colombia, as the winner over Miss Philippines, Pia Wurtzbuch, most Americans were dismissive, commenting in social media forums that “it was just a beauty pageant.” In the Philippines and Colombia, however, the slip up took people to the streets . To worsen matters, Harvey later tweeted a public apology, misspelling the country’s names with the following statement; “I want to apologize emphatically to Miss Philipians and Miss Columbia.”

Presently carrying the “torch,” handed down from Wurtzbuch is former Miss Philippines and current Miss Universe, Catriona Gray. With the upcoming “2019 Miss Universe” around the corner, Filipinos place high expectations on their current representative, Gazini Ganados.

This Rappler.com article posted June 12, 2019, gives insight on the Cebuano beauty queen who insists the work of a pageant contestant is no easy task.

      

Troubles in Disputed Waters

After living in Asia for nearly a decade, I realized how much the dominance of China and Japan in the continent cannot be understated. While working in the Republic of Korea, I mentioned a body of water separating the Korean Peninsula with Japan. “The Sea of Japan,” I said of the maritime area off the eastern coast of Korea. The instant the name was uttered, I was certain it would be met with resentment. The face of the teenaged boy standing beside me reddened and his eyebrows raised. “No, no, no! The East Sea,” the pimple-faced teen protested.

With China to the west and Japan eastward, many Asian countries would agree that Korea is geographically disadvantaged, “stuck between a rock and a hard place.” South Koreans insist the sun always rises in Korea on the Isle of “Dok Do,” while Japanese contend the sun sets over Japan on the Isle of “Takeshima.” Dok Do and Takeshima: same island; different name. On the peninsula’s western coast, without regard to international law, Chinese fishing boats often trespass Korean waters, depleting catches of Korean fishermen.

Since president Rodrigo Duterte took power two years ago, the Philippines was moving in the direction of severing its ties with the US and aligning itself with China in an effort to improve Filipino-Sino Relations.

Taking a leap backward in relations between the two countries, the Philippines made allegations against China, claiming a vessel collided with a Philippine boat in the water of the contested “South China Sea” or as the Philippine’s argue the “West Philippine Sea,” jeopardizing the lives of 22 Filipino fishermen on board.

Though there is no consensus of the area’s name, three years ago, an international tribunal in The Hague reached the verdict that the area in question was the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. The US Secretary of Defense backed the Philippines, urging China to follow a “rules-based order” in the disputed waters.

A New York Times article posted today describes unfolding events in more detail.

United Nation Steps in to Oversee Duterte’s Anti-Narcotics Campaign

Growing up in the USA in the in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, drugs were a staple in popular culture.  As a child, Larry “Snortin” Norton was a popular local DJ on the airwaves whose nickname was in reference to the intra-nasal method of using cocaine, an expensive habit easily afforded by and exclusive club of rock stars, multi-million-dollar athletes and urban professionals in the high rises of New York and the So-Cal beach-front properties. The acentric behavior of television personalities was attributed to daily concoctions of uppers, downers, washed down with glasses of bourbon.

 During my childhood and adolescents, drugs were glorified. As a teen, I remember looking at the cover of a hardcover book published in the 1970s. At first glimpse, the photo appeared to be of items laid out on a kitchen table for a morning meal. Initially, I thought the liquid-filled glass was apple juice, the white granules of powder were sugar or flour, but the green and white capsules pictured between them gave it away: the liquid in the glass – whiskey, the ant-hill-sized heap of powder – cocaine, and the capsules – barbiturates. “The breakfast of champions,” I said smirking to a peer beside me of the cover.

In my twenties, I was on the fence about drugs and alcohol. Occasionally, I would go out with my friends for nights on the town, visiting bars, being treated – and treating others – to overpriced drinks.   Celebrating a close friend’s belated birthday, I partook in quantities of alcohol which caused me urinate once every hour. I wasn’t drinking for the taste, nor to quench a thirst. After the first drink, the flavor became slightly intolerable and, indicated by the fullness of my bladder, I was hardly thirsty.  I was drinking to be “social” – I was drinking to be intoxicated.  Fortunately, the night ended better than the first-ever night of intoxication which ended sleeping beside a pool of vomit and a pigeon dropping on my shoulder from a bird flying overhead the following afternoon.

Years later, I became less tolerant of drugs – prescription or nonprescription – and alcohol. Though occasionally, I would have glass of wine with a fine meal or for religious purposes, drinking socially or excessively to cause a rupture in my bladder seemed pointless. Taking drugs, from the most illicit to over-the-counter, seemed like a ball and chain of dependency that would, with every use, become heavier and more constricting.   I wasn’t a rock star, I didn’t have a penthouse on Park Avenue, nor did I have a beach-front property in Malibu.  

Rock legend Gene Simmons once commented of the “sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll” lifestyle he disassociates from, claiming to be drug-and-alcohol free, that some people get the sex, most get the drugs, but what most will never have is the foundational element that holds it all together: the rock and roll – the stardom of being a rock musician. Of the three elements, in everyday life, the people I encounter get plenty of the drugs, little of the sex, and can only manage to get the rock and roll vicariously through digital recordings, singing along, led by the guitar riffs and melody of a Kiss song.

Two years ago, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte came out publicly on his lifestyle during his presidential campaign on live television. In a nationally-televised broadcast Vice Ganda, a prominent figure in the Filipino gay community asked of the now-president’s love life. Duterte then shared with the audience he was at the time involved with not one, but three women at the same time, but insisted he was not using government money to support his alternative lifestyle. 

In the US, a country where politicians would most likely admit to illicit drug use than disclose details of their sexual orientation or love life, Duterte’s admission would have been political suicide.  Gauging from Duterte’s rhetoric on sexual issues, the Philippine president seemingly practices what he preaches through his lifestyle and his ardent support of GLBTQ issues, but his stance on drugs differs greatly and has caused major concern over alleged drug-related extrajudicial killings Duterte has encouraged through speeches.  Duterte’s hardline rhetoric and frequent reports of vigilante killings of suspected pushers and users have prompted the UN to send officials to investigate and monitor Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign for human rights abuses.

In this Reuters report posted June 8, 2019, Duterte and other government officials see current UN intervention as an intrusion and a threat to the nation’s sovereignty, however, some human rights organizations and UN officials insist intervention is necessary.

After years of occupation by Spain, the US, and Japan, the country has grown suspicious of foreign intervention. Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo described the officials as “foreign propagandists masquerading as human rights protectors,” the report continues.

YMCA Brings a Winter Sport Outdoors to the Philippines and Becomes a ‘Way of Life’

Over a century ago, Canadian James Naismith was sent out to Springfield, Massachusetts assigned to run a YMCA athletic training school. During the cold winter months, trainees needed a diversion from regular activities not suited for indoors such as baseball and lacrosse. Stuck within the confines of the school, the cabin-fever-ridden trainees were in need of a new game combining the best aspects of the popular sports of time appropriate to be played inside in the cozy conditions of a gymnasium. On either side of the gym, suspended 10 feet from the floor, Naismith nailed peach baskets to the facility’s walls. He then gave the students a soccer ball for students to toss around. It was to be used to score points through aiming the ball into the halo-shaped rims of the peach baskets made of wood. Today, Naismith’s cure for the cabin-fever-ridden trainees has grown to become among the world’s most popular spectator sports, known internationally as “basketball.”

As little as I care to admit, basketball has, directly and indirectly, played an important role in my life. Growing up in suburban Buffalo, New York in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, my father, a successful businessman in the tire and automotive industry, purchased land used to build my childhood home from former Buffalo Braves coach, Dr. Jack Ramsay. With the transaction closed vicariously through Ramsay’s lawyer, the bushy-eyebrowed coach was already in Portland, guiding the Trailblazers to victory,

I often wondered what Buffalo was like with an NBA team, as I was too young too remember the days when the team swooshed, squeaked and dribbled to a roaring crowd at War Memorial Auditorium. I also wondered why he was addressed as “doctor.” Was it for his Ph. D. in basketball? Was is something he attained like Julius Erving did by being the originator of the slam dunk?

The sport of Basketball briefly began to pique my interest in 1984 when a University of North Carolina standout was regularly highlighted for feats that seemingly defied laws of gravity and physics the fortnight of Los Angeles’ Summer Olympics. With his superhuman vertical leap he gave the appearance of an albatross-like creature. He went on to be known as Micheal “Air” Jordan.

Though, I was never much of a basketball fan, I too wanted to “be like Mike.” The last of the Gen Xers, I can recall desiring and owning, not one, but two pairs of the former Chicago Bull star’s shoes in my childhood. The first incarnation I had as a fourth grader were the original pairs released. They were black and red, with winged basketballs painted along the ankles. The insignia often provoked thought, triggering the question, “what if basketballs had wings and could fly?” The space-age look of the second edition were attention-getters for students and teachers which earned me the title of “Captain Moon Boots” in middle school as much in the same way Ramsay and Erving had earned the distinction of “doctor.’

Strangely, when I play basketball, I prefer wearing inline skates over any pair of Air Jordan’s because it gives me an unfair advantage. Fortunately, I have traveled many times, but never been caught in the few pick-up games I have played throughout Buffalo and Los Angeles.

While in the Philippines, I was surprised to find thong sandals were commonly worn by locals on barangay or village courts throughout the Philippines. I can recall sitting beside a six-year-old girl watching a game between villagers. Dressed in beachwear, the young men played frantically as the six-year -old gave her best color analysis of the game. Like an aspiring Marv Albert, “Two points, three points,” she yelled after every swoosh of the net.

This New York Times article posted Wednesday, June 5, explains the epistemology of basketball’s roots in the Philippines. Like the sport’s original beginnings, the YMCA was instrumental bringing the game to the archipelago after Spain surrendered the Philippines to the Americans following the Spanish-American War.

YMCA missionaries brought what was once a winter sport played in a gymnasium to an outdoor tropical setting. From the slums of Manila to the barangays in the province, basketball has taken the country by storm.

Footage of boxer, basketball player and team owner Manny Pacquiao in action

Philippines’ Trash Back-to-Canada Movement continues

The Philippines’ dispute with Canada unfolds as miscategorized containers of garbage docked on Luzon’s ports of Manila and north west of the capital in Subic are finding its way back to its rightful owner – Canada.

According to a recent BBC report, Canada’s government has agreed to foot the bill in the return of approximately 69 containers that have remained a stinking eyesore, under humid year-round tropical conditions since 2014. After officials extensive exchanged dialogue, the displaced refuse that once found “refuge” in the Philippines is en route to Vancouver and other ports in Western Canada.

“Baaaaaaaaa bye, as we say it,” Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teddy Locsin Jr. tweeted of the “Back-to-Canada” exodus on Twitter. Its final destination will be a waste-to-energy facility in Vancouver.

The Philippines takes back Canada’s trash

According to this NPR (National Public Radio) article, posted Saturday, Philippine officials made demands to the Canadian government to stop shipping waste deemed nonrecyclable to Filipino ports amid growing concerns from other Asian countries also disgruntled about western countries utilizing land and ports as dump sites.

The Philippine’s outspoken president Rodrigo Duterte boldly stated he would personally ship the containers, some of which that have remained stagnant on Filipino ports for multiple years, back to Canada himself. If the situation does not improve, Duterte threatens to wage war against America’s friendly neighbors north of the border.

Meanwhile, Canadian officials remain equivocal on the displaced containers. ” Our prime minister committed and has recommitted to resolving this issue, including taking the waste back to Canada,” Canada’s Ambassador to the Philippines says of Justin Trudeau’s past responses to the issue which said to be in violation of the international Basel Conventional according to an environmental law firm based in Canada.

The following is a CTV report: