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Last Saturday I went to Manny del Rosario’s birthday party. So that’s what Embassy is like: long queue of people dressed to impress and waiting to get in. Made a mental note to call Jim Libiran and suggest a sequel to Tribu. Tribu 2: Shet, pare. Chus prefers Tribongga. In the climactic sequence there would be a walk-off, then a dance-off, then the in-crowd would send in their security guards to do the fighting. We left the place round 1 am, before anything exciting had happened, and went back to that 24-hour carinderia to eat lechong kawali, tokwa’t baboy and beef pares. Heavenly. You don’t get food like that at The Fort.

The party was 90% advertising folk. I had a chat—okay, we had to yell over the music, but in a polite way—with a risk management consultant. He said, Could you not write about Roger Federer? So here’s something about the Fed on the practice court from 3Quarks.

“Seen at close range, I can perhaps best describe his play as explosively graceful, or violently precise. He wasn’t very focussed, though, missing some shots and laughing, “Nein!” (Federer tends to exposulate in different langauges, using “Allez!” for the French, and “Come on!” in Queens.) At one point, Kiefer aced him, and Federer, without looking, smashed the ball off the tarp behind him, neatly banking it into the hands of a waiting hitting partner. It was the kind of thing you might see a magician do, yet for Federer it was just an absent-minded expression of annoyance. Such is life as the greatest practitioner ever of tennis.”

Emotional Weather Report, today in the Philippine Star.
Saturday, 2 am, somewhere in Makati. Raymond insists that we go to this 24-hour carinderia, a favorite among filmmakers.

“What’s it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name,” Raymond says. “You have to try the tokwa and lechong kawali.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know the name of the street.”

“Then how will we get there?”

“I know the way. Sort of.”

“Di kaya tayo ma-Tribu nyan?” Ricky asks.

“No.”

“What do they serve?”

“Pares. Lechong kawali and tokwa.”

So at 2 am, after only three minutes of confusion that Raymond blames on a tikbalang, we find the carinderia on a crowded street. I can’t be more specific because the place has gotten popular enough as it is. It’s so popular that by the time we get there the only food left is lugaw and tokwa. True, the fact that it’s past 2 am may have something to do with the lack.

The carinderia is clean and bright, with that cruel fluorescent lighting that picks out and reveals your zits from twenty years ago. We sit on the bench by the long metal table and order lugaw and tokwa. The neighborhood is pretty lively despite the hour—people keep popping up for midnight snacks. At the next table, the owner is having a serious conversation with a transvestite in a halter dress. Across the street is an electric sign offering “24-hour organic massage”, whatever that is. (”They massage your organ?” is Raymond’s guess.) Down the street someone is doing karaoke: it sounds like he’s being garrotted with his own vocal cords.

Two picturesque teenagers sit at our table and inhale bowls of lugaw. Raymond wants to put them in a movie, but they leave before he can deliver his spiel. However, the woman at the counter tells us their names, addresses, and hobbies without our even asking. Then it starts raining again. I feel like a character in the Edward Hopper painting, or more accurately, the Tom Waits album. “There’s a rendezvous of strangers around the coffee urn tonight, all the gypsy hacks, all the insomniacs, now the paper’s been read.” In that instant I even wish for a piano, until I remember that I don’t play.

Ever notice that one of the main signifiers of socioeconomic class in Metro Manila’s malls is toilet paper? Specifically, the availability of toilet paper in their washrooms. The toilets in the SM malls (We still call them Shoemart, because we remember when they were just shoe stores, which means we are old), which target the lower middle classes, do not have paper. However, little packets of tissue paper are sold in vending machines. Glorietta and Shangri-La malls, which target broader demographics, have both free toilets (no paper) and pay toilets (with paper). The more “upscale” Podium, Promenade, Power Plant, Greenbelts 3 and 4, and Bonifacio High Street (which looks like that outlet mall in Barstow outside Las Vegas) have t.p. in all their washrooms.

Interpret.

rue Cazotte, originally uploaded by 160507.

Paris, je t’aime; the movie not so much. It consists of short episodes set in the different arrondissements and directed by a bunch of well-known directors including Alfonso Cuaron, Gus Van Sant, and Tom Tykwer. The idea is to make Paris seem romantic and worth visiting; the fact that it’s become necessary to make a movie to deliver that point says a lot about Paris’s image these days. You mean Paris isn’t the default setting for romance anymore?

The producers reportedly got the idea from Love, Actually, which made London seem romantic and exciting; the memory of Love, Actually still makes me want to run screaming out of the theatre (and I usually enjoy Richard Curtis flicks). The episode I like most is the last one, by Alexander Payne, in which a middle-aged American postal worker speaking French with a midwestern accent sums up the weird combination of joy and sadness that seizes visitors to Paris. It makes up for the cuteness that afflicts the rest of the movie. Paris is many things, some of them infuriating, but it is not cute.

The most unbelievable episode is the one in which an estranged couple have a drink at a bistro and Gerard Depardieu as the maitre d’ tells them it’s on the house. Ha! A freebie in a Paris restaurant? Has the apocalypse arrived?

Five minutes into the movie, at the end of the Montmartre episode, there’s a shot of my friend’s apartment building. It’s the only building on rue Cazotte, which is the shortest street in Paris, in case you’re in a trivia contest.

By the way there’s a new Woody Allen impressionist on the screen: Julie Delpy. 2 Days In Paris, which she wrote, directed, sang the theme of, and stars in with her ex-boyfriend Adam Goldberg, her parents, and probably her cat, is like Annie Hall with Delpy playing both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. It’s lovely and hilarious, though it ends rather abruptly. Noel and I both found Adam Goldberg hot all of a sudden. One thing I know about relationships among the hyperverbal: talking never resolves anything, it’s just more ammunition.

I’ve been drinking coffee since I was eight. Skip this part if you’ve heard it before. My habit began one afternoon when I wanted Ovaltine and we’d run out of it. So my father gave me a cup of coffee. I’ve been drinking four or five 8-oz cups a day since childhood—does that mean I’ve consumed enough antioxidants to become immortal, or did the antioxidants only start working after they became fashionable? Everyone’s going on about the health benefits of coffee; I don’t care, I just like coffee. I take it black, no sugar, so I can actually taste the coffee.

You know who has good coffee? Dunkin Donuts. I went to a Dunkin Donuts yesterday, and it had been tarted up into a “cafe” and the plain honey-glazed doughnut was P28. It tasted like. . .a plain honey-glazed doughnut. So that’s their plan to ward off competition from Krispy Kreme (awful coffee with artificial milk)—raise their prices. Any place that serves Illy is alright, if they know what they’re doing. UCC is expensive but the coffee is worth it, although you have to remind the staff to bring you the chunky sugar crystals. Afternoons they serve arroz caldo made of oats. Sure I go to Starbucks, but not for the coffee, which is weak and tastes burnt. I go because it’s clean and comforting, even if every branch in my (extended) neighborhood is covered in law students. I like Figaro, plus the Figaro guys were my neighbors and when I was doing a radio show (I miss radio, does anyone want to produce a radio talk show?) they kept everyone caffeinated. My friend wandered into a McDonald’s McCafe one morning and found the staff making espressos which they stored in a thermos bottle; he fled in terror. Coffee at Via Mare, Pancake House, Gloria Jean’s—bleccch. The words “coffee” and “Chinese restaurant” don’t usually go together, but I had an excellent cup at Panciteria Lido in Binondo.

In the news: Brit teenager lands in hospital from coffee overdose. Seven double espressos in a row will do that to you. Remember when espressos were a new thing in Manila restaurants, and when you ordered one the waiter would warn you, “Kaunti lang ho yon” (It’s a very small serving)?

The other day I found myself in Blanco Center on Leviste Street, where I lived in the early 90s. The name of the street has been changed—it used to be called Alfaro—but everything looks exactly the way it did in 1991: gray, gloomy, institutional, reminiscent of Soviet architecture. The minute I walked in, my feet automatically made for the elevator, and my finger hit 9—if I hadn’t snapped out of it, I would’ve knocked on 914 and demanded to know what those people were doing in my apartment. It was the first apartment I ever had; I shared it with two roommates, corporate types (they’re rich now) who only turned up at sleeping time, so it was mostly mine. If anyone out there wants to do a remake of David Lynch’s Eraserhead, this is your location; bring your own goat parts.

At the time I had a column called Womenagerie, which appeared in a weekly women’s magazine. One time I wrote about my apartment—its dimly-lit corridors, the identical studio units, the ambience of a Stalin-era asylum. I thought it was funny and affectionate—I actually loved the place—but my landlord was not amused. Clearly he did not like irony, because he raised my rent substantially. How did he know that I was referring to his building? I suppose it was a compliment to my descriptive abilities, but when you’re just starting out on your own, you prefer lower rent to a compliment. As far as I know the landlord was not a reader of Woman Today, so I figure some rat fink tenant squealed on me.

When I got the bill I didn’t suspect anything; I thought all the tenants had to pay more rent. But my furious roommate came home one day with a photocopy of my article, and I learned that it was my fault. So I sought a meeting with the landlord. Who gave me a long lecture about conformity, obligations, and how, as I grew older, I would realize that I have to consider what other people think, etcetera etcetera.

That was an important meeting. My entire career is founded on not following that advice. As for the building, someone told me that it will be torn down in December to make room for a new condominium development. I miss it already.

Did you ever live in Blanco, or know someone who lived there? I’m compiling apartment stories.