White hair chronicles XXIV

Two weeks ago, more than thirty years after my elementary graduation, I was invited to the recognition day of my beloved San Juan Elementary School, a public school. I was asked to speak before excellent kids from Grade 1 to Grade 6. When they were told the year of my graduation, a teacher was heard to remark he wasn't born yet at that time.

Indeed, it was a long time ago. I have gone full circle. I remember having received some of those awards myself. Anyway, I told them the usual blah-blahs. I told them that their time spent in those classrooms will serve them in good stead later in life. That being a long time San Juan residents, my father, my siblings and I all graduated from the school.

I also told them that my even if my batch went on to different schools, we all had an easy time not just because of the lessons learned but also because of the discipline acquired. I told them I had the chance to work abroad and I observed Filipinos to have the ability to adapt to any situation. We are also persevering - matiyaga. That is why there are many Filipinos able to find work everywhere. Those traits – perseverance, discipline, adaptability - I learned at SJES.

It was also a nostalgic trip for me. The gym where the program was held is the same grounds where we played running games. In hindsight, there are many things I failed to say to the kids and their parents. I would have wanted to tell them that the '70s were difficult times. It was a time when one man tried to stay in power forever. It was also Erap's first term as mayor. And his family has controlled San Juan politics since then. We are still in difficult times today. Today we still have one person who wants to stay in power forever. Times have not changed much.

White Hair Chronicles IX - COBOL is 50

We mark this month the 50th year of the COBOL language. COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) is one of the oldest programming language. It is also the first computer language I learned. I had to study it back in college. We used punched cards then for our programs that run on big-double-cabinet sized computers at the university.

According to Wikipedia, a specification for COBOL was initially designed by Grace Hopper. Committees were set up to recommend an approach to a common business language. On September 18, 1959, they decided on COBOL for the name.

I also used COBOL in my job as an Operations Research analyst, though I didn't use punch cards anymore, I typed directly on to dumb terminals of a ref-sized mainframe. That mainframe, which had a 90 MB hard disk (yes that's right 90 megabytes) that took half-day to format. There were no defragment tools then. But it also had a BASIC (BASIC itself is 45 years old) version that can do matrix algebra. COBOL is still very much around, though largely unseen.

Those were the days. Life was so much simpler.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now" - (My Back Pages-Bob Dylan)

White Hair Chronicles V

"Life gives us brief moments with one another but sometimes in those brief moments we get memories that last a life time."

Last weekend I had a reunion of sorts with some people I knew from way back. Some of us have not seen each other for 35+ years, after spending together the first 1/4 of our lives. In a few years, the men in the group will turn 50. That will make us certified century eggs (do the math, 50 years * 2 eggs). On the other hand, the ladies who I last saw in their pre-pubescent youth, are now pre(post?)-matronly beauties (just joking, ladies).

So for a brief while, we tried to catch up how our lives went. Who married whom? Who's a grandma now? How are the parents? How did you grow so big? What aches? What happened to your hair?

How am I now? I am proud to say that despite that I am a few years short of fifty, I have the speed and agility of a senior citizen, the eyes of a septuagenarian, and the hair of an octogenarian. What can I say, I am ahead of my time. My wife complains of my high sex drive. She says it's all in my head, she wants it lowered to my loins (another joke).

To those who knew me as a kid and have not seen me hence, this 20 second video shows how I looked before I became a Richard Gere stand-in (joke again).

Before the end of the innocence

Remember when the days were long/ And rolled beneath a deep blue sky/ Didn't have a care in the world/ With mommy and daddy standing by/ When "happily ever after" fails/ And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales...
...Who knows how long this will last/ Now we've come so far, so fast/ But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us/ I need to remember this/ So baby give me just one kiss/ And let me take a long last look/ Before we say good bye...
...But this is the end/ This is the end of the innocence - Don Henley "The End of the Innocence"

I met with some of my elementary schoolmates still based in Manila for a few hours of banter over pichi-pichi, barbecue, and originally San Juan fare pancit from Aling Banang and Big Scoop ice cream. There was plenty of food to go around for the eight of us who made it to the feast. Some of us have not seen each one for over thirty years. This is catching up bigtime.

I had to give them something, a small token for finding time to meet a classmate who came all the way from the south. I knew copies of the latest scandals will be a good give-away. I was not wrong. It was well appreciated. We went online for a video chat with classmates now based overseas but we were only half-successful. Still we had a good chat with those sacrificed sleep just to stay with us.

We first knew each other when we were in the age of innocence. As I recall now, we did not even had romantic notions then. It was the age for fairy tales, the happily ever afters. After thirty-five years, not everyone has her happily ever after, but they live more happily even after. That is what matters.

Today we can talk without embarrassment about anything. And I mean anything and everything. Someone in the group said this would not be possible a few years ago. We are once again at an age when we can get away with most things. It's a big jump from our simple innocence then to the harsh cynicism today. Don Henley sang about the end of the innocence and one's need to go back, to take one last look, before we all say goodbye. I think that's the reason why we like these mini-reunions.

Google yourself

Do you google yourself? I do. This practice may seem narcissistic, though I just want to know what pops up when others google me. Sometime ago, when I google my name, some events/seminars that I have been part of show up. But two years ago my name wrongly appeared in a news item about raps filed against some NGO. And ever since I realized some elementary school classmates search for me in their attempts to reconnect with former batchmates, I wanted 'better' Google results for me.

A Google study says that people search for themselves because of their curiousity about what other people see when they search for their name.  But the problem is we don't have any control over the search results.
To give people a bit more control over search results, Google introduced a feature it calls a "Google profile," which users can create. Once users create a Google profile, their name, job and location (photo is optional) appears in a box on the first page of the search results for their name. Next to the thumbnail info, there's a link to a full Google profile page that resembles a Facebook page.

Google maybe jealous of the inroads made by Facebook. It fears it will suffer the same decline experience by e-Bay because of Facebook. By giving users a some control over the results that appear on a search for their name, Google hopes to take on Facebook and MySpace.

The Google profile lets you set up a personalized page on which you can include links to your blog, photos, videos, and personal website. You can include a brief bio, list your current interests, places you've lived and schools you've attended. There's also a space where you can list your "superpower", a curious attempt to be cute.

Unlike Facebook there is no feature that lets you "friend" another user. There is a "Send a message" where others with a Gmail account can send you e-mail without knowing your e-mail address. It's tight integration with Google maps enables your profile to locate you on a map, approximately.

Google says the more information you add to your profile, the higher your page is likely to be ranked on a Google search for your name and associated keywords, such as the name of your hometown, your job title or where you work or go to school. So I think my elementary school mates can find me easier on Google now and the I hope the results about the syndicated estafa raps filed against a client will be deep down in the results pages.

There may be a downside to this, however. The more richly detailed your Google profile is, the more Google knows about you. Already, Google has my photos, email, videos, blog, etc. What happens when Google suddenly goes down? It is possible, could be a problem when that happens. But I'll ponder about that later. So go and create your own profile. Meanwhile my Google profile is here.

Happy nostalgia

We experience nostalgia more as we age. Invariably, we long for our childhood memories and those who relocated have strong feelings of homesickness. Sometimes nostalgia is triggered by discontent by present situation. Nostalgia provides a sense of comfort for stressed-out adults. That is why folks today fondly remember martial law as if life was easier then. It just shows how bad life has turned under GMA. 

Sometimes nostalgia can be painful. Psychologists say that painful nostalgia can often be addressed by planning a visit to a childhood hometown. The power of knowing you can revisit parts of your past can help to lessen the pain. Feelings of nostalgia are normal and healthy, but making a conscious effort to live in the past is not.

My elementary school batchmates are planning a reunion, some 35+ years after we last saw each other. I am sure all of us are nostalgically happy, gauging by the posts in our e-group. We will not be living in the past. We just want to see each other again. Whatever childish problems or petty rivalries or healthy competition we had before in our youth, and later in life, should not get in the way of the chance of being happy again with each other's company.

Aling Banang Pansit Halo-halo Tapsilog Atbp.

If you grew up in the heart of San Juan you must know Aling Banang's eatery. It started out as a carinderia in the old public market. They had a branch under the old mango tree beside Rizal's monument in what is now the parking lot/town plaza. Back in the '70's, before the fastfood chains, Aling Banang catered to the San Juan student population and the market goers. Its main menu consisted of noodles (all varieties - bihon, canton, palabok, mami, etc.) sprinkled with bits of crunchy lechon kawali; and the halo-halo. An interesting variation of their halo-halo is the halo-halo icecream, where instead of shaved ice, three scoops of homemade icecream are used. It is enough to give you sugar rush for a day. Of course, they also had regular and special halo-halo (halo-halo with icecream).

The core of its student base in the '70s and '80s have all now grown up but most still yearn for the crunchy lechon kawali bits. It is not actually the traditional lechon kawali since they use the pig's nape and not the belly. It is just as mouth watering and equally cholestrol laden, but what the heck. It is a gustatorial treat.

The original Aling Banang's has since moved out of the public market after the fire that gutted the whole of Agora. Many branches have sprouted all over San Juan. One was spotted in Quezon City in front of St. Luke's Hospital. Another one was reportedly seen in Cainta. Apparently Aling Banang's children/ grandchildren are operating the different branches. If you knew Aling Banang and her daughters, you will notice their chinny resemblance to those currently operating/manning the new stores.

The different branches still offer the same basic menu. They added tapsilogs and more to the list. The pricing seems to be uniform but the taste and food presentation varies. The best tasting fare still comes from the original store now located in a building just outside of the new public market.

Here are some photos of the Aling Banang stores within San Juan.

Lechon is best Pig

Sometime in February, Anthony Bourdain featured the Philippines in his show No Reservations. In that episode he ate Cebu lechon and blogged “that of all the whole roasted pigs I've had all over the world, the slow roasted lechon I had on Cebu was the best,” placing it over the Bali and Puerto Rico versions.

Time magazine took the cue from Bourdain and featured the lechon in its April 23 issue. The magazine glowingly salivated: "A pig is roasted for hours over a fire of open coals, slowly rotated on a bamboo spit, lovingly basted and meticulously supervised until its flesh is so tender, moist and succulent that it can be sliced with the edge of a plate, and its skin so crisp it can be punctured with the tap of a finger. You could call it the Platonic ideal of a pig, but it's doubtful if Plato, or even an entire faculty of philosophers, could have imagined anything so exquisite."

Notwithstanding swine flu, this Pinoy food is among the most missed by my batchmates based abroad. I am sure we will have lechon again in our planned reunion. We'll take our chances.

Meeting old friends II

Facebook reconnected me with friends way back from my elementary school days. The virtual reunion on cyberspace and the photo/video sharing whet the desire to see old friends in person. It is a logistical nightmare when half of the people are abroad and the rest are scattered all over the country. So we do it in small steps. We hold mini-reunions to plot the big one.

As in my reunion with former office mates, it is uncanny to vividly remember how we all looked before and now see the changes that thirty-five plus years can do. To me, reunions are always heartwarming. We had halo-halo over halo-halong kwento. Alas, three hours of chit-chat are never enough to catch up after thirty-five years of being apart.

It was a roller-coaster ride of emotions. For a moment grieving for those who passed away, then sympathizing with romantic heartaches, then feeling good for the big winners. We truly enjoy these mini-reunions because we enjoyed our previous time together, thirty-five plus years ago. It turned out to be so enjoyable that we resolved to search for others from the batch. So this is a shout out for graduates of San Juan Elementary School-1974. Get in touch. See you soon.