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Last month in London I was visiting the British Library when I recalled a historical factoid: Jose Rizal had hung out there.

Not sure it was the same building though; this one looks new.

Anyway I texted my history app Ambeth to ask him which hall Rizal had frequented. Not being an app exactly, he replied hours later, when I was no longer on the premises. He said Jose Rizal had spent a lot of time in the Great Reading Room, and that they had a carrel that contained the books he had borrowed. Ambeth added that near the Chalk Farm tube station (or was it Belsize Park) there is a marker on the flat Rizal had rented.

I don’t know where I heard this exactly—probably from Ambeth too—but in New York Rizal is supposed to have checked into the Chelsea Hotel. The Chelsea Hotel. Temporary residence of Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Iggy Pop, Arthur Miller, Charles Bukowski. Where Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland is set. Where Sid Vicious stabbed Nancy Spungen to death.

Jose Rizal in the same hotel (different eras) as Sid and Nancy—that’s wild. Jose Rizal in the same sentence as Sid and Nancy—far out.

Yesterday we attended the launch of the ongoing My City, My SM tourism project at the newish SM City in Calamba, Laguna. The theme was Rizal at 150. Our national hero marks his 150th birthday on June 19.

The set evoked Rizal’s long sojourn in Europe, where he picked up those “dangerous” ideas that ended up in his novels Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo. (By the way the cobblestones are trompe l’oeil, printed on tarpaulin.)

Guests “toured” Rizal’s Europe—huge photographs of the places where he’d stayed in the Czech Republic, France, Spain and other countries. The SM event was graced by members of the diplomatic corps, who paid tribute to our national hero and famed internationalist.

Present at the occasion was the Philippine chapter of the International Public Relations Association, of which My City, My SM originator and organizer Millie Dizon is a member.

Later I have to tell you about dinner.