little white walls bore me

on the mrt ride home, as i absorbed the days decadent medium of microbes press upon me, i stare upon the cityscape at the same time rushing to me and being left behind, the disgust for the sweltering heat and stench thicken the air around me, as a series of thoughts plague me about my discomfiting predicament.

theres a lot of sad in realizing that when the world reaches its end and the question inevitably directs me as to what i have done in the life i have been given that i will have to speak the truth. more because there would be no point in lying but mostly because i have at the very least practiced the fortitude required to be honest. so i would have stammered, for sure, and admit to myself that there really cannot be anything great with having spent the rest of my time sitting in a room with four, albeit great, individuals punching away on a key pad trying to make life great for people with money who wish to be in a place that could provide them a template of their american dreams. whether these people care enough to make of their life something that would give the world what i wish i could give to it myself is highly doubtful and far far too unpredictable to make the foundation for a claim that my life has meaning.

Ulitimately, when one comes to that realization, the knees of your spirit buckle, and you stagger to find a way out. of course, its too short a time to say, but i would like to pretend i'm a smart enough guy to know what i want. or more precisely what i dont want. hopefully there is some advancement in this work but i'm pretty certain it wont be in a direction i would be completely comfortable with. but really, think about it. how great is a life where your social interaction's limited to a couple of guys boxed up in little white walls. and the web you play with denies you any social interaction that can make you grow. Its a marketing tool i understand, but it surely stunts the mind.

so thus, the dilemma creeps into the rot of your soul, to take the money or to go. i'll sleep on it. and pray that it somehow finds a way to resolve itself.

phone home

its been a while, but its been a crazy week. like being in a rubber tube floating on a pool on summer, taking in some sun and cool ... dirty water. the type where you're stuck there so you might as well have fun.

let me start with the cab. not the first cab i took but rather the last one. took a walk a couple of blocks from the office to spare myself from the sticky traffic i can never find myself accepting. its like having to take the world's demand for you to fail.and something about leaving your victory dependent on someone elses weakness never struck me as a good thing. so i walk. and when the metal crowds trickle down into open roads i hail a cab.

ugly, as usual, messy white cab with dirty blue covers. mustache man sweatng in the pits. but he was nice. no hints about how money was tough so give me a tip kinda deal. or "sa iba na lang boss traffic dun." he talked pleasantly and found me the best route to glorietta. i managed a decent conversation, my mouth ran as the traffic eased and i shut up when it clamped down. dizzy, it made me. but i was feeling melancholic anyway, for some reason i could not fathom. hollow chest, the kind with a ticklish feeling, mostly felt with slight anxiety about something which you know not what. fidgeted with my mobile as i bantered with the shallow conversation i was having.

the fare hit 50 and the driver was fine with it. he never hinted at anything. he reassured me with a laugh that it was fine. money was tough. how cooool is that!!!

dropped down glorietta 2. walked through the mall.....

and thus i parted with a really good phone.

the second didn’t whammy as much

a couple of days later, here i sit with the benefit of a little introspection, having just realized that the whammy that i thought was, isnt really after all.

see, i figured a good way to reboot my career was to take an LLM and resolved to make a better life outside. of course, i am not so naive as to believe that the rot in the pinoy civilization was exclusive, but i hoped that there may be better roads to somewhere where the bleakness could be less felt. i did send applications and it was with no small measure of pride and hope that my application was received by a rather cool university in an even cooler place. got conditional admissions and waited for the fellowship grants.

the months that followed i could not even begin to describe. the closest i could get to articulating the serene hopefulness of knowing that there could be a chance is the feeling you get on the night of an exam you barely studied when you hear that a storm was coming and signal number 2 was up. it wasnt 3 yet, but man the way the rain whipped into the dorm panes just made you know, KNOW, that the 3 was coming and thus a repreive.

for months i had that privilege. i prayed, yes. but it wasnt a st. jude matter. it was more like a conversation with mother mary. the type you felt you need not burden the heavens with too much since the rest of the world needed their attention far more urgently. i was going to have it. i knew.

i didnt get it.

it hurt me so much that day. i so wanted to leave, depart, bid adieu, vamoose. i could not stand the air i breathed each day i was a lawyer here. i felt so moldy inside and i thought i'd never see the disinfecting sunshine. i dont think i could stand the tedium of applying again.

i received the regret email and it was explained that a quarter of the grants had to be devoted to african nationals, and for the rest, a preference for women applicants was to be given. of course, only the filipino can really appreciate the rut we are in but yes, africa was far far more poor. never mind that i was poor as well, but i wasnt starving. as for the women, i thought it was right. i understood the advocacy somehow. it was like jumpstarting the balance in gender. sad, however, that in the philippines, the economics deals the same rotten hand to both and without preference for either.

but beggars cant be choosers. i guess i'll try again. what's a few more spores in my soul?

double whammy

Double whammy hit me today. Don’t know which is worse.

The first? Hits in the gut, where the damage is felt long after the pain of the actual punch. The kind that makes you feel that it didn’t hurt you, only to realize a while later that you can no longer go the distance you used to sprint to. That’s what happens when you lose a case you shouldn’t have. Much more when it’s personal and not a client’s.

Of course there’s solace in the fact that there’s really not much an honest man can do against a malicious fabrication. But it will be of record that the fabrications of my former employer (which arbiters should see through easy) have led to a decision which actually advises me to be gentler and more respectful of my “underlings” as I am a lawyer who must bear himself with utmost professionalism. In the case, you see, they’ve asked my former co-employees to harp on little things and blow them up to make it big. It would seem now that these co-employees of mine who I have always respected, eaten lunch with, joked around with and have shared our concerns, friends who I actually thought I had a great rapport with, now have attested that I was mayabang and abrasive to one fellow who used to pilfer a buck or two from office funds and therefore must have been mayabang to all leaving the conclusion that I must have been a bad bad man. Its no comfort that some have actually apologized, believing that they did not have too much choice. Life is hard and jobs are scarce. Besides if they can treat a lawyer like shit, how much more shit can the staff withstand?

The irony is that for all the faults I may have had (none of which were actually pointed out in the case, mind you) it was the boss who was an idiot slave driver and the other one without spine and both refused to pay the proper taxes and social security as well as engaged in soooooo many acts no lawyer should even entertain but actually do. To me, to their staff, and to society in general. So if it’s a point of being unprofessional, I guess I was the one who didn’t do what lawyers do. So I must have deserved the boot.

But what can I do? I find comfort in the fact that I did not succumb to the temptation to buy my victory as there was in fact an opportunity. And I have worked long enough in the firm to hear it being openly discussed how buying was not beyond the pale of proper conduct. So I leave my own dreams to take on what could have led to this decision. But to see and feel and absorb this kind of run of the mill injustice hurts me not today. Rather it will sear my soul sometime in the future when I find the courage to fight my battles in court again. Because I will not buy my client’s well-being, nor will I pay for his honor. Suffice it to say that I will not have client’s for long and I would have found myself al long way into becoming a quixotic icon of the law for insisting on maintaining my soul.

I will not compromise. My friends say I should. Sad.

To my mind that leaves me one real choice. To get out of here. To find a fresh start. To seek my place among the honest-for-the-most-part where I can actually relieve the misery that lawyering has very often fed on. So I tried.

That’s where I got the second whammy…

starting with cabs

Lately, my days have begun in dusty cabs wearing starched outfits with a backpack lazily slung over my groggy shoulders. The crispness of my attire belies the sappy mood you would feel too if you just woke up and forced to smell the smog. Well, not really instantly. Its starts with the hint of freshness that now seems to be a rare and distinct character of the UP Village, but the goodness fades almost instantly as one takes steps toward the kanto just behind the NHA where I take my cab. Reminds me of two-day-old lettuce. You know? Where it looks crisp but it limps into your sandwich the moment you touch it? That’s how the morning feels.

And I have to grin. Because a cab just halts by just as I wave it down. And at just that instant, in what I can only describe in legal terms as “estoppel,” I regret it already. The cab, a Nissan sentra of squarish make looks solid enough except for the series of black skid-like marks on the doors!!!! The kind that looks like “!!!!” leaning over to cheat on its neighbor. And the dent! Man, the bumper’s dent on the passenger side not even slightly. With stitch marks from some thick nylon. Frankencab, I think. I’ll tell you why it worries me but I’m sure you’ve already guessed what I feel about the cabby.

But I got to ride and I got to go. So I grin. Here goes. “Makati po. EDSA daan” Just hope the cab driver’s nice to let me sleep.

Aaaaand nope, he doesn’t. fuck it. I noticed this about cab drivers. But let me just deal with this one. They twitch around in their seats and twist an arm to look at their watch preparing to say, and if you’ve been in the metro long enough you know they’re going to say this, “boss, traffic dun,” in an attempt to dislodge you to pick another passenger. But today, I was lettuce, two days old, and I didn’t want to whither any further. I would have none of the excuses.

But he starts out nonchalantly, peppered lightly with descriptive words about someone’s mother, about how Makati sucks and how someone, he says someone, catches him and fines him for dropping off passengers just about anywhere. He pretends we’re buddies and takes the tone like “alam mo naman yun brod di ba?” Of course, I was no brod…

Now, tired old me, suspicious that this is either a con job to make me either pity the fool and give him a higher tip or he just realized he didn’t want to go the EDSA way for some fear of traffic, I just about said good bye to my morning nap to work and snapped back, “ba’t ka naman kasi nagbababa sa bawal…?”

“eh kasi…” so he rolls on some excuse about the sign not being in the right place and what not. I reassured him where I was going there was no such trap and tried to ignore him the rest of the way. I was tired of hearing this everyday and today I just tuned out. And he keeps on and on and on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are decent cab drivers and I will write about them sometime. But today, he wasn’t on of them. Incessant chatter and a ridiculously heavy brake foot just got me this close to puking had I not been too tired for my gut muscles to tighten.

My point is this, to many the cab serves the very first social interaction one gets into his everyday metro life. He couldn’t do without it. And if only cabs can be less of a box of chocolates enough to send some sign of what the drive to work would be like, then stepping into the office would be one fine feeling. But noooooo, you get con men, you get old political ones, the occasional nice ones, the former stock broker turned cab driver, the smelly ones (eowww), the brakers, the swervers, the speeders, and very very often the ones who do not know the rules. All affect that precious hour drive from QC to Makati where they are free to disturb your peaceful catch-up nap by the talk or the fear of hitting something on the road.

Ahhh, if only. Work would be far far more pleasant.