Dogbert’s Whip

Have you noticed that no matter how cruel or galling a person is, he or she becomes a better individual in death? It’s not uncommon to hear audible whispers during wakes, espousing the alleged positive traits that the deceased has exhibited in the past. One good case in point is the philandering husband. He may have fathered dozens of children through his adulterous affairs with six different women, but in his death, he’s the best dad and husband in the world. Even his legal wife would agree: “At least di nya kami pinabayaan,” the wife, as you could imagine, would tell her consoling amigas in between hysterical sobs and gulps of tranquilizers. Why, even one of man’s illegitimate daughters would deliver a heart-rending eulogy from the stands, complete with quivering lips, smeared mascara, and an ending that would most probably involve an anti-climactic fainting spell.

The reason why I decided to write something about eulogies has something to do with a funeral service that I attended last weekend. The service was for the mom of a good friend from college. Only in this case, my friend’s eulogy for his dear departed mom was crisp, sincere, and clearly devoid of any superfluous declarations of praises that are so common in most eulogies. It was so raw in fact that the words caught up with me, and before I knew it, I was wiping tears from my eyes. Maybe it helped because I’m aware of the challenges that my friend had to endure when his mom came in and out of various hospitals. And as a self-confessed “mama’s boy,” the thought of losing my own mom is simply unfathomable (knock on wood). 

I had met my friend’s mom only once in the past. It was during our college graduation way back in 2000. All I could remember is that she was a radiant smallish woman with a warm smile. That brief encounter was understandably not enough for me to realize what a great mom to her children she had been. Through my friend’s eulogy, I learned that she sacrificed a lot to send her children to university. See, my friend’s mom was unable to fulfill her wish of becoming an architect. In the old days, a woman was perceived to end up as a doting housewife to her family, no matter if she shows great promise and potential.

Music happens to be my friend’s mom’s passion aside from her family. Before the funeral service, cd’s containing her favorite songs were handed out. Scanning through the compilations, there were standards from Barbra Streisand, Norah Jones, and Sergio Mendes. Clearly, my friend’s mom had impeccable taste. It also tickled me when my friend recounted how his mom is unable to cook anything but sopas and ketchup-drenched spaghetti. And since their brood consists of three boys, his mom’s frustration is not having a girl for whom she can sew dainty dresses. My friend’s mom has worked as a seamstress for most of her life, and it’s highly admirable on how she was able to support the needs of her family with the threads of a spoon pin.

Through the twenty-minute eulogy, my friend managed to maintain his composure. Although his voice was beginning to crack towards the end, I couldn’t imagine being in his place, being the cry baby that I am. When the funeral service ended, people flocked in front of the casket to get their final view of the deceased, and to pay their last respects. I turned to the Duchess of Acoje Platinum (DAP), another college classmate and good friend who joined me in this trip to Angeles City, and asked her if she wanted to take her place in the queue. DAP shook her head, saying that she’d rather not have the final memory of our friend’s mom as a mortal body resting on satin sheets. In my mind, I shared the same sentiments. For in the end, it’s still comforting to remember my friend’s mom as the radiant smallish woman with a warm smile, an impeccable taste in music, and a heart that has endeared her preciously to those around her.    

Like almost all Filipino households yesterday, I was glued to the television screen to watch the highly-anticipated rematch between our very own Manny “The Pacman” Pacquiao and the Mexican Erik Morales. Towards the end of the 10^th round, raucous cheering and revelry swarmed our nation with Manny’s stunning knockout of the fancied Mexican. It was so unlike the pugilists’ previous encounter in March of last year when Pacquiao took quite a beating, and promptly lost in a unanimous decision. Back then, Manny’s personal issues – his woes with his promoter, taxman, and yes, even his boxing gloves and socks – were claimed to have contributed to his eventual loss.

It may seem like sour grapes but given that Pacquiao has become the hero of every ordinary Juan Dela Cruz, it’s no wonder that our countrymen feel so strongly for who could be the best boxer to come out of the Philippines. And with the depressing national and economic issues plaguing our nation, it’s no wonder that people would rather see a triumphant Pacquiao on the front cover of our daily broadsheets, rather than the latest developments on charter change and the please-make-it-stop-now-or-I’ll puke-green-slime “Hello, Garci” wiretapping scandal.

Pacquiao’s victory in the pinnacle of boxing glory inspired me to resume what I neglected to do for more than a month now: join my friends’ weekly badminton games in Star Smash Timog Ave every Sunday. For the past year, my clique has holed up in this place to smash shuttlecocks (or shuttledicks, as we prefer calling them) and stumble ungracefully on the Taraflex-lined badminton courts. Between my daunting office tasks and plain indolence, I somehow have all the varied excuses to shun performing cardio-vascular activities. But with the euphoric mood affecting me like a venomous snake bite, I decided to grab my stuff and head out for the badminton court.

My bestfriend, the Guru of Adidas and Badminton (GAB), who happens to be the best player in the group, has gotten pretty depressed with my and our other friends’ abysmal failure to improve on the game. GAB laments that despite all the pointers that he has shared to the group, most of us have somehow managed to wallow in the “skilled” (read: beginner) level instead of progressing to the “advanced” level. Up until now, our smashes lack power, our grips are all wrong, and our footwork is comparable to a duck that has gone to an all-night lager fest. It’s not like we lack the motivation to improve; but rather, we treat badminton as a social sport.     

Badminton has ceased to be the sissy sport that only shrieking girls in wind-blown skirts would play. In college, I passed the chance on taking a badminton class in PE for fear of my high school buddies learning about it. If I’ve known that badminton would be so huge now, I would’ve signed up for it in a heart beat. Nowadays, its blitzing popularity of the sport is evidenced by the growing number of private badminton courts mushrooming everywhere. I heard that some badminton racquets are even more expensive than most top of the line tennis racquets. The good thing about badminton is that one does not have to be built like a burly athlete to play. It’s not as physically demanding as most sports, and is one of the few games where technique and timing is more important than power or sheer brute strength.

Going back to yesterday’s badminton game, I immediately swung my racquet around as soon as I arrived in Star Smash. Since time was ticking fast, we didn’t have time (or just plainly didn’t want) to stretch and warm up. In the middle of one game, I had stitches all over my chest and back areas. It was hurting me like crazy, and it limited my mobility to chase after the shuttledicks. After losing two consecutive games, Yaya, one of our friends, joked that I was fast becoming the “alat” of the session. Not wanting to give up, I teamed up with Ivan, one of the better players of our group, and proceeded to win our game by bageling (15-0) the team of Luis and Joma (peace!). “Tapos na ba? We hardly broke sweat,” we kidded quite cockily afterwards.

Our group usually devotes 6-8pm of every Sunday to play badminton. For us, it’s a great way to bond since everybody can take part in it and a session would normally cost just a hundred bucks each. In contrast, it costs more than a hundred pesos to watch a movie in the theatre these days, and even a bottle of brew in your standard bar would come close or even more than that. Besides, Sundays also give us the opportunity to have supper and chit-chat after our games. It’s rather refreshing when friends are able to have frill-free fun and bond closer in the process. These days, such opportunities don’t come often.

Right now, my muscles and joints ache from playing two hours’ worth of badminton without much of a flex or a warm up. I might have to visit our company nurse to request for a pop of Alaxan. And since our group’s after dinner chat went close to 10pm, I now have this nagging urge to take an on the job discreet nap. Yep, it’s far from being comfortable, but with Sundays like the one that I had yesterday, it’s definitely all worth it.

My first two weeks of the Year of the Dog were spent in car-chasing and tongue-wagging mode. First off, I took this Basic Safety Course in a training center somewhere in Roxas Blvd. The lectures started at seven in the morning, which meant that I had to wake up extra early just to beat the pesky traffic in España and Taft. And so for each day for two straight weeks, I chased many Buendia-bound FX taxis in Philcoa as early as 5:45 am. Nowadays, most of us would prefer riding the FX over stinky buses and the hopelessly crammed LRT and MRT. As a result of this, it took me eons to get a ride, and unwittingly made me one of the “Tardy Boys” for each lecture day.

Tardy Boys in the training seminar are not allowed to take a seat or sign the attendance sheet unless they entertain the class with a song-and-dance number. In one particularly humiliating day, I had to garble the inane lyrics of a certain Masculados hit (“Lagot ka, lagot ka! Huling-huli ka… may kasama kang iba…”) as I performed wooden, calisthenic-like choreography amid condescending hoots and chuckles of laughter. Being late does not come as a surprise for me since I’m almost always tardy whenever I show up for my current work in Makati. But somehow, I realized that salary deductions are better punishment options compared to quasi-artistic performances. That’s probably the reason why I became a technical person, rather than a budding artist, in the first place. But then again, I’m just rationalizing.

Although I thought the safety seminar would be a complete drag, it turned out to be an enjoyable experience. There were exercises involving the administration of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on a female mannequin named “Resusci-Anne.” My classmates thought I did a great job trying to revive the “victim,” saying that my performance was worth a slot in the Star Circle Teen Quest. Then there were activities on fire fighting where I got to be the second “nozzle man,” sea survival techniques where they taught us how to huddle together and board a life raft, and my all-time favorite, the Helicopter Underwater Escape Training or the HUET.

The HUET is very much like a Fear Factor stunt. In the exercise, one is strapped inside a decoy of a helicopter cabin as it is lowered in a deep swimming pool. In a simulated capsizing of the chopper, the cabin will suddenly flip 180° over, resulting to panic, disorientation and the rush of cascading water inside the cabin. Once the pressure inside the sinking helicopter is stabilized, the person inside would have to open the emergency window, unhook his seatbelt, and swim afloat to safety. Sounds simple, eh? But no! Most of us were dead scared of the stunt to the point of hypertension. On the day of the HUET practicum, I think I may have annoyed God Himself from my constant mental whining slash prayers. And when the instructor informed me that I was to take the practical exam first since my surname starts with an A, I moaned at why my dad didn’t have a Castillan-sounding surname like Zuñiga, Zalameda or Zaldarriaga.

I really don’t know if it’s the sheer volume of adrenalin that pumped into my veins, or if it’s just plain divine intervention, but somehow, I escaped the HUET unscathed! The great thing about going first is that when you screw up, you’ll have convenient excuses for doing so (i.e., nerves, unfamiliarity, etc.). But if you’ll pull it off, you’ll look so damn good and earn a great deal of pogi points in the process. “Ang galing mo naman… ikaw na nga ang nauna tapos very good pa…,” people would compliment you. “Wala yun, sinwerte lang…,” you would answer back in mock humility.

While it may seem that my first two weeks of 2006 were pure merriment, a phone call from my brother one late night briefly interrupted my peaceful life. I readily knew that it was an emergency since my brothers and I hardy call each other over the phone. My brother told me that my mom just had surgery to have her gall bladder removed, and that I shouldn’t worry because the operation was successful. Of course I knew he was telling me the truth, but somehow, I felt guilty for not being by my mom’s side.

That same Saturday night, I was having supper with my self-proclaimed techie ex-officemate, the Queen of Pain and Tardiness (QPT). It was our first meeting of the year, and what we expected to be a light conversation about the past holiday season and my misadventures in the training seminar turned out to be melodramatic session about our moms. See, QPT’s mom is about to go to the States to work as a nurse. We realized that both of us haven’t been spending enough time with our respective mothers, and that often, in the fast-paced urban rat race, we tend to forget the simple joys of being at home with loved ones.     

I went home to Pampanga first thing the next day and kept my mom company in the hospital. We chatted the whole time, and in between stories about my basic safety training and my current career plans, I gobbled up most of the ensaymada that I originally intended to give her. I also ate a couple of chicos and Fuji apples that relatives brought her. Well, don’t look at me; the doctors gave strict orders not to give her any food or liquid, and I was starving in that hospital room beyond relief.   

By night time, I had to leave since I still had to pack my stuff back in Manila. The next day, I’ll have to be in Roxas Blvd. by 5:30am since our training will resume in a boot camp in Tanza, Cavite. Being late on that day meant missing the shuttle service to Tanza and commuting all by myself to the training site. Before leaving, I playfully informed my mom that I was going to take part in the dreaded HUET that coming week, and that I was chicken scared of the prospect of panic drowning. Like any mom to her son, she assured me that I’m the best kid in the world and there’s absolutely no challenge that I cannot hurdle.

Sheesh… mothers. They’re simply the best. J