hk diary one -- the fire within

the city was covered in a summer mist and the pavements were wet when i arrived in hong kong one uneventful saturday afternoon in august. the plane ride was smooth that i felt as though i was just inside the living room or a hotel lobby, seated comfortably on a sofa, leafing through magazines and waiting for something or somebody to arrive. i was grateful for that given my fear of flying.

the airport, modern, sleek, clean as a newly washed baby, the floors shiny and bright but not slippery, was not as crowded as it used to be. after spending more than half an hour queuing at the immigration, then waiting for my two pieces of luggage to arrive at the carousel, and finally exchanging some us dollars into the local currency, i stepped out of the airport, a bit overwhelmed, into the waiting train that would bring me to central. specifically, at the ifc mall.

this was not my first time in the former british colony. i have been here before several times. but those were mostly short trips. most of these trips were made to cover events like a ceremony to award the finance secretary of the year to the philippines from a global bank (two nights and three days), or the international monetary fund and world bank joint annual meetings (a week), summer outings  (one night, two days) and seminars (a week or two) at my former employer.

i even flew here for one night only once to accompany a special friend who was flying, for the first time, to dubai from manila. he was going to work in the progressive city of golden dusts for his future and had a stop over in hong kong.

but this time it was different. i was here for work. this  city of labyrinthine, narrow streets, of steel and glass buildings that almost reached the sky, crowded shopping malls, old, small apartments, a melting pot of different cultures and nationalities, would be my next home for i didn't know then how long and i was anxious. mostly because i didn't know the language, and based on my previous experiences, it was difficult to get around the city if you didn't know a bit of cantonese.

sure, there were a lot of filipinos working here, or other nationalities from other countries who could very well speak and understand english, but still, there were instances when you needed to speak in cantonese to get to where you were going like when you were riding a taxi, or when you were asking a security guard for directions. or ordering food in a restaurant where most of the waitstaff were locals.
most of the cab drivers and security guards here didn't know how to speak, nor do they understand english. no, i wasn't criticizing. in fact, i loved them for that and learned later on how to cope. as a stranger in their country, it was i who should adapt, not them. it took a while, but i did it!

in the forty-minute train ride, i was fidgeting. i kept on thinking, was i right in coming here? was this really what i wanted to do and where i wanted to be for god knows how many years more?

you see, the opportunity to work in hong kong came very, very quickly. i didn't have much time to think it over. not that i usually do a lot of thinking before deciding anything. i am an adventurer, and i hate over thinking and making plans. most of my big decisions in life, like pursuing an mba degree when i could hardly afford it given my reporter's salary, were made at the spur of the moment.

let me digress a little.

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after spending nearly six years in an international news wire agency in manila, and covering the same beat for more than a decade, i was simply burned out. i wanted change. any kind of change. i reached a point when on a sunday, i would try to make up excuses or force myself to get sick, or wish there was a strong typhoon, just so i won't have to spend five days doing routine work at the office.

of course there were other reasons, but those were minor ones. mostly, i just wanted a new adventure, a new place where i could live, even a new me. i was willing to trade places with anyone, a cab driver, a librarian, a security guard at the mall, the cashier at the cinema, the bar tender at my favorite hang out in malate, the tour guide in boracay, even with my facialist  and masseur.

yes, it was that bad.

the fire within was no longer there. it died down, blown away by a strong wind of loneliness, boredom and routines. in its place was a cold, deep, unfathomable sadness.

so without much ado, i finally told my bureau chief -- always gentle, always calm, not making a fuss about anything -- that i was quitting. he was surprised. he probably did not see it coming. he thought, rightly or wrongly, that with a big, fat salary, i, a child of working class parents and who could hardly pronounce those expensive food in the menu at a french restaurant, would be staying forever at the company, one of the most coveted employers among local financial journalists.

the bureau chief, who was younger than me by a few months, but had this fatherlike presence, asked me if i was really sure about it. he reminded me that our company was like hotel california (an inside joke among us employees) -- you can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave -- or put it formally, it has a policy that once you resign, you can never come back and work there again.

i said yes and looked him in the eye.

in his usual dapper uniform -- blue long sleeve shirt and khaki pants (typical male. always safe in their fashion choices) -- he was unconvinced. he gave me a month off to think it over, the longest leave i ever got from the company. usually, because we were only three then in the bureau and with too much work to do, the longest leave we could take was for a week. i was fine with it.

since joining the company, i, too, a slacker in my former life, had become addicted to work and even stayed at the office even on weekends.

without hesitation,  and before he could change his mind, i took his offer to go on a one-month break.

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having made no plans, i decided to go home. to my parents' surprise. (they knew i hated going home. i had too much sad and even some bad memories in the house that i always found it hard to go home, much less stay for a month there. my mother thought i was sick and dying of something, like a cancer. my father, always cold and distant, merely nodded his head).

on my first day at home, in my old room upstairs, i felt different. the house had become smaller, older, unfamiliar just like my parents, now both hard of hearing, could barely see. some of the windows won't open. the doorknobs at other rooms won't work. the bathroom near my room was stuffy, the tiles, while clean, had lost their shine. there were times when there was no running water and i had to use the bathroom downstairs, outside of the house.

so i spent most days repainting rooms and walls, looking for someone to change the locks and to fix the water system (for lack of a better word). i cleaned the house thoroughly every day as though i was a trainee in a military camp or a novice in a convent. i swept the floors, washed windows. i even changed some of the broken glasses in the windows. i also cut grass in the lawn, hired someone to paint the gate and the concrete fence, planted roses, bought more orchids to add to my mother's collection.

in other words, i did something that i was never able to do in my more than a decade of staying in the city, in tiny rooms alone, in bigger rooms shared with strangers, then finally a flat of my own.

at home, at last, i was domesticated, doing household chores that housewives, maids, houseboys, gardeners, and househusbands usually do. i tell you, i had a swell time. i finally found my calling and i didn't want to leave anymore. but i knew, even if they did not tell me, that my parents wanted me to resume my own independent life, away from home, and find a new job.

so with a heavy heart, i left home. it was ironic and funny because when i was  young, i couldn't wait to leave  the house and live on my own. this time, i felt as though the world was crashing down on me.

so i said goodbye again to my childhood and teen-age room, where i spent countless sleepless nights reading mostly history books and novels by harold robbins, sidney sheldon, gabriel garcia marquez, f. sionil jose, jose rizal, writing poems and short stories in my typewriter (there were no computers then when i was growing up) late at night when i thought everyone in the house was asleep until my father would knock in my room to ask me to go to sleep now because the noise from the typewriter kept them awake, reading and watching porn nervously, listening to earth, wind and fire, the beatles, airsupply, among other favorites, on cassette tapes, sweating while masturbating on hot summer days and nights when i was alone in the house, imagining i was stranded in an island with my childhood crushes that included the then heartthrob alfie anido, now dead, long gone like those not so innocent days.

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tanned, trim from working a lot in the house and the garden, i went back to the city after a month. to work. my bureau chief and i  held off talking about my plan to resign at least for another week or so.

it was almost earnings season when i came back and we were busy preparing templates for stories (xxx company posted a xxx percent rise/drop in second-quarter profits on yyyy or xxx bank recorded wider loss in the second quarter on zzzzz).

when we finally found the time, my bureau chief (it was him i would miss most in the bureau later on. his gentle voice, his calming presence. his upper-middle-class quips, jokes and questions. i always wished that my co-workers in my future jobs were as mild-mannered, as nice as him.) and i stepped inside one of the smaller meeting rooms in the office, covered in glass, so we always felt like a fish in a fish tank inside of it, to talk about whether i still wanted to leave the company or not. if the one month break made me change my mind. without batting an eyelash, i told him my decision was final. that i have not changed my mind. he said ok very calmly, but requested me to keep quiet about it until the end of the month, when we could both finally inform the bosses in hong kong, singapore, tokyo, sydney, london, and finally new york that one of their prized reporters in asia and the pacific was leaving. for good. chos!!

to make the long story short, i left.

of course, most of my friends were surprised. one of them, who recently joined the company, even prodded me to change my mind and stay. but i was adamant, like eve when she bit the forbidden apple.

how could i tell them that i felt rotten inside, dying, or dead, as though the world and the entire universe were moving on with their lives and i was still at the airport, waiting for my plane to arrive? that i felt as though i was missing a lot about life while confined within the four walls of the office for long hours, and sometimes on weekends too, writing stories that not everyone could and would understand, or even care about. even my family. stories that won't even change the world.

how could i tell them without making them laugh that i wanted to become a journalist, inspired by teodoro benigno, so i could expose corruption in the government, contribute to the betterment of society. after all, i spent my teen-age years witnessing the tumult that the country was plunged into when senator benigno aquino jr. was assassinated at the tarmac in august of nineteen eighty three.

but i chose to keep quiet. i did not want to be misinterpreted or taken for a lunatic. or worse, on the brink of a nervous breakdown. though it won't be a news to some of my friends if i actually had one.

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it might not be evident if you meet me for the first time. or even for the second time. or even for a long time. about the other things about myself. the real, concrete things that influenced most of my decisions in life. that shaped me as a person.

because i am secretive. a closet introvert. i prefer to keep a lot of things to myself, like a winemaker bottling the liquid inside and locking them tightly. while i talk a lot about myself, share a lot of things, those are merely trivial events that don't mean so much to me. those are the things that i can shed off like dead skin because they don't define who and what i am. inside.

there's a stranger in me that even i could not recognize most of the time.

here's one secret that i never told anyone.

when i was about fourteen or fifteen, right after aquino was assassinated at the now ninoy aquino international airport -- old, falling apart, amnesiac -- my older brother, who was an activist when he was living in manila, joining those rallies denouncing the dictatorship, came home, sick. after months or years of not hearing from him, he was home. skinny like a skeleton, burnt skin, long hair, tired eyes that  had not had any decent sleep for a long time, gaunt. an old man at twenty three.

after he recovered, though he remained thin from smoking a lot, eating less, and spending sleepless nights reading books and magazines or going out to god knows where, he talked about his experiences while away from home. he showed me a lot of underground magazines and newspapers (those that were banned by the marcoses for fear they might fuel the fires of rebellion and revolution) - mr. & ms., malaya, inqurirer among others - that published black and white and sometimes colored photos of the fallen aquino, his immaculately white shirt and pants covered in blood (a very powerful image), lying lifeless on the uncaring, cruel, and i imagine scorching pavement at the airport after being gunned down. next to him was his alleged assassin, also dead.

there were stories too about the massive protests in manila. about policemen hurting the protesters with sticks, and even firing their guns on them just to scare them away.

but the protesters, mostly laborers and students (the middle and upper classes were always tucked safely inside their airconditioned offices and homes, would come out later when the fight was nearly finished and take credit for them. even take home the prized bacon like juicy government positions and contracts). for now, it was the dirty, tattered, unwashed masa that were at the forefront of the battle along with a few brave family members and friends of aquino.

it was all new to me. these stories about riots, rebellions and revolutions.

our father, the strict military officer, forbade us to watch tv (we didn't have one until we were all grown up), and we usually got our news from his old reliable newspaper, the manila bulletin and sometimes tempo. or from the radio, which my mother would avidly listen to early in the morning when preparing our breakfasts, her way of fighting off sleep or boredom.

but i was always curious. at school, i was always in the library reading the philippine star, and other newspapers and magazines apart from my father's staple reading material in the afternoon.

you see, newspapers in the province arrived late in the day because they were flown from manila (a one hour flight depending on the weather) and traveled two to three hours by land to arrive at our doorstep. sometimes, they arrived a day or two after. or none at all when there were typhoons.

of course i heard and read about the assassination of ninoy. but those were mostly sanitized versions. the news accounts from my brother's newspapers and magazines were different. they spoke about the suffering of a lot of people. the oppression of the masa, the disappearance of a lot of people who were against the government, the massive corruption, the dictator's plan to stay in power till kingdom come, the shopping sprees of the first lady overseas, among other abuses.

in my not so young mind -- then pre-occupied with high school crushes, porn, drinking nights with friends at the beach and skinny dipping afterward in the darkness -- i was educated. my eyes were opened  up to another reality, another dimension of how it was to live under the claws of the dictatorship. to live in fear, in disgust, in silent anger.

i was hungry for more. i wanted to be one of those who wanted to change the government, the society and continue the struggle of the masa. in other words, i have become my older brother.

when i went to the university for college, away from home for the first time in my fifteen years on earth, i joined organizations that were "left-leaning" like the league of filipino students, and i also became part of the school paper and became a member of the college editors guild of the philippines. i wanted to take up journalism, or creative writing, but my parents opted for the safer accounting course. but of course. they wanted their youngest son safe, sound and steady for the rest of his life.

during rallies, we called for an end to the us military bases and their presence in the country, fought against tuition fee increases, demanded for an accounting of where the money (part of the tuition fee) for the school paper went, for the ouster of the corrupt marcos government and its ally, the united states government. we sought for justice for aquino.  we listened to her widow, cory, when she visited our campus to talk about her hero of a husband. we wished we were in manila to join the uprising at edsa. then we all rejoiced, cried, got drunk or stoned, when marcos was finally ousted.

when president corazon aquino became president, we were all hopeful, optimistic about a better tomorrow. ah, how wrong we were.

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it was this spirit, this urgent sense of wanting to contribute something for a better society, for the improvement of the lives of the millions of poor filipinos, that prompted me to disregard pursuing a career in banking and finance or in an auditing firm as most of my classmates did, and instead i chose to become a journalist.

one day, while looking for work, i saw an ad in a newspaper looking for reporters. without a thought, i wrote the human resources manager a letter garnished with my youthful idealism about wanting to contribute in changing society, and was lucky enough to be called for an interview with its president no less. when the president of the newspaper, a young looking son of the owners, saw that i was a business management graduate, he asked me to instead join their affiliate, a business paper.

that was how i became a business journalist.

not what i really wanted. but it was a good start, i consoled my young self.

later on, i realized i was wrong.

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so many more years after that interview with the newspaper's president, i became frustrated. i was fed up writing about stocks and bonds, currencies, interest rates, gdp, monetary policy, budget deficit, company earnings, consolidation of the banking industry, ipos, the deregulation of the oil industry, lowering of tariffs, asean integration, credit ratings, debt, among other topics that i felt were never read by the masa, the people whom i wanted to help understand the issues that concerned them.

(i remember telling a friend once when i was about to quit the news wire agency that i felt like a commodity, or a product, whose performance was based on the number of hits or clicks that my stories generated from its mostly online users, or how they impacted the financial markets, or how many minutes or hours i was ahead of the competition in sending headlines for news stories.)

so i vowed to shift to another form of journalism. what ever it was.

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but fate had other plans for me.

(to be continued)