The Reading Life: "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife" by Manue...

I've been trying to trace down the essays and short stories found in the Philippine Anthology 1925-40, a copy of which we used to have in the ancestral home but which has since disappeared. This is one of the pieces in it.
The Reading Life: "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife" by Manue...: "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife" by Manuel Arguilla (1940, 8 pages)

How to cross the road in Indonesia

Learn immediately or quickly become a statistic: I realized this on the first day. Next day, I stepped into the path of a hundred snarling motorbikes and nearly became a statistic. In Indonesia, as many countries of the world, pedestrians are legitimate candidates for roadkill, or a nuisance, at best. My daily crossing was not merely a busy highway, but a main artery: a national road. Container trucks, natural gas and petrol tankers, cars, medium lorries, and motorbikes all jostled for space. The fun was compounded with unscheduled “counterflows” and people driving on the left-hand side. A year and a half later, here’s what I learned.

The number one rule is to give your full attention to what you’re doing. The immediate concern is the lane nearest you and a little less, the next one. To think of the whole road to the other side - the entirety of your undertaking - is like proposing to live a lifetime in a day: you wouldn’t do it at all.

Naturally, the first thing you'll be looking for is where other people are crossing. This may or may not work as that crossing might be too far from where you are.

Look for the narrowest strip of road. Scout about 100 yards or more upstream and downstream of where you want to cross. The narrow portions usually result in backed-up traffic which chokes vehicles and motorcycles. They also give you the shortest distance to the road median where there are slightly better odds of safety.

Be very wary of motorcycles. They are the unpredictable factor of road traffic and are likely to be aggressive and downright deadly. They will gun their engines at the slightest hint of open space so stay alert even when crossing a space that has opened between larger vehicles. Other than Jakarta, motorcycles are also tolerated by the police to ride on the wrong side of the road, INCLUDING sidewalks. So, when crossing, look to BOTH sides of the road regardless on the lane you are on.

Take advantage of traffic jams but keep an eye out for motorcycles trying to squeeze between vehicles. This means that even when you’re squarely on one side of the road going a particular direction, you have remain alert for motorcycles when crossing between the lanes of that side, even when the cars have stopped.

Take advantage of meridian islands, street light posts, and any barriers. Stay behind them particularly when caught by the traffic light. Be willing to stay on the meridian if stranded there, but heaven help you, try to never be caught at an unprotected meridian.

Have infinite patience. Do not force a crossing when your mind and your gut tell you not to. This may sound like New Age advice, but believe me you’ll know when it’s not right to cross.

Look for stop lights, if any, but also consider the hour. Traffic lights are usually respect during work hours and when cops are around. Nevertheless, stay wary and don’t bet your life on the light. Expect motorists trying to beat the light.

Cross only where you have a clear view of oncoming traffic. Avoid blind curves just after stoplights, and do not cross where the road bottoms out from an extended downhill drive.

How to Ride a Bicycle in Jakarta: 10 steps - wikiHow

How to Ride a Bicycle in Jakarta: 10 steps - wikiHow

Starving Quietly

I suppose there are as few examples of the close connection between body and soul as the hunger pangs of an expat who can’t get the food he/she is used to. I cannot forget the way a former classmate of mine from California, USA would talk so earnestly about how grateful he was to have discovered a source for applesauce. “Apple sauce?” I was thinking at the time.

Now it’s my turn. I’m dying for bulalo, sinigang, petchay, kare-kare, pork chops, chunky beef stew, stuffed and roasted milkfish, bagoong, dinuguan (blood pudding), menudo, giniling, oh a slew of other unacquirables here. It’s particularly bad when the meal hours come and the only things edible are the foods that the people here have. Indomie, mie instan, mihun, mie basa, mie kuning, sohum mie, bakmi, cwiemie, mie goreng, mie bakso, mie ayam bakso, ayam bakso mie, bakso mie ayam, mie bakso ayam, mie rubus, rebus mie, mie dan kuah, mie tampah kuah, mie thrown at the wall, mie on the plate, mie on the side of the plate, mie under the table, mie and you, you and mie. That. Works for them, but it's killing mie. I mean, me.

I come away from the table stuffed to the gills but positively starving in my mind. I recall the parakeet squabs I had when I used to keep parakeets. The barely fledged baby birds would find themselves kicked out of the nest and sitting at the bottom of the cage, right on the birdseed dish. While the mature birds had enough sense not to sit on the seed, not so the bugleys (I called them bugleys from bird + ugly). The other thing that bugleys hadn’t yet figured was how to eat the bird seed. Hungry but no longer fed by their parents, they’d have the general idea of eating the birdseed like all the other birds were doing. What they didn’t quite know yet was that they were supposed to hull the seeds first. Often, the result was a sorry-assed looking bugley with a drum-tight crop, bursting with un-hulled birdseed. Starving, of course! Yep, that’s what I feel like these days.

I am losing weight. This is a good thing, yes? But I’m starving. That’s mie. (Whimper)

City Bites

7 Aug 11 (Sunday)

That’s what big cities do to foolhardy newbies and I played the part yesterday. Three things I managed. 1) I moved apartment. I moved from a hi-rise apartment complex to a ‘kost” or a homestay sort of lodging. I thought it would bring me closer to the school and I could stay later and produce more work. Well, no, not exactly. Seems I made the choice without really understanding the layout of this area and I find, so far anyway, that I’m not much closer to the school than I would be had I just stayed at the apartment. The room is great. Unfortunately, I had not taken into account the stench of the open sewer canals that surround the place.

The last straw is the water. I saw the bath water in the pail this morning. Noticed big bubbles on the surface. Damn that’s dirty water. Then I recall hearing in the conversation with the other residents last night – no, I don’t speak the local language very well, but I do understand enough to catch phrases and the thrust of the conversation – something about how there was a water pump. Shoot! That didn’t register in my head until this morning: ground water! If you’ve never been to Jakarta I’ll tell you something about it. There are lots and lots of open sewers here. Breeds lots of mosquitoes, creates unspeakable views, generates a miasma that perhaps only the longtime residents don’t notice. City newbies, well, we notice. And that black water, it seeps down to the ground!

Perhaps those apartment dwellers are there not just because they’re seeking a stylish lifestyle but because they’re refugees. This city is beginning to reveal itself as one of the more environmentally degraded places I’ve been to. Oh sure, Manila has its corresponding areas. Still it’s not very nice to discover that this dismal state of the environment is endemic here. It’s all around. Yeech!

The second stupid thing I did was I went shopping for too many things. More than I could comfortably handle in one go. Consequently I lost a couple of items. A pail and a trash bin. Not too expensive items, but still that cost me money.

Finally, I got fleeced by a cabbie. I still don’t know my bearings in this city. I stayed at the supermarket without realizing it was nearly midnight and so had to ride through the dark streets of this city. Dumb. Ha ha.

Wisdom isn’t a stage you achieve, I think. Instead it’s a dynamic state brought on by having to deal with circumstances that keep you sharp and alert. Take away those conditions and you revert back to the not-no-smart you. Then change the situation again, make the situation difficult and then you start hurting, and consequently getting smart again.

Incidentally it’s Sunday morning. Normally I would be at church today. But I don’t know where that is and it’ll take some time to find it. So I’m spending this morning walking around and getting my bearings. Maybe I’ll find a place where they sell cheap secondhand bicycles because I sure could use one.

Race Against Kungfu Master!

Tonight I went on a footrace with some unknown Kung Fu master.

Not having worked out at the gym the last few days, I had got it into my head that I would walk home from work today. It’s a good 30 minute and I usually get to the house feeling nicely fazed. There are some challenges to this walk though. One of them is you can’t walk on one particular side of the road because the pedestrian path goes right under some trees that local egrets have decided to call home. Unless you’re willing to take your chances with highly acidic and fishy bird poop, you can’t pass there. The other challenge is the sidewalk isn’t anywhere near even. It goes up and down very abruptly, with many camouflaged obstacles like telephone pole stumps, brow-height street sign edges, missing cobbles, missing manhole covers, phone pole guy wire anchors, and parts where the sidewalk had collapsed completely into the sewers below. Just to make things more interesting, there are large intervals of the sidewalk that are in complete darkness. Nevertheless, as I have walked this way many times before, I know I can negotiate it with a grain of caution.

One other option is to go off the sidewalk and walk on the roadway itself. I do not often do this as both motorcyclists and public utility minivans think nothing of running mere centimeters from you at high speeds. An imprudent leaning to one side could easily spell grievous bodily harm and even an untimely demise.

So there I was walking when I noticed up ahead, on the roadway but close to the shoulder, a man in a tunic like outfit, clad in flip-flops, pulling an old-fashioned bamboo cart, you know, the one with two long handles and rests on two large wheels? The outfit he had on reminded me right away of Bruce Lee, because he wore loose trousers, and his Chinese-collared long-sleeved tunic was also loose. He was going my direction.

I quickly dismissed him from my mind, half-expecting to draw up on him and then pass him at any coming moment. I only had an empty knapsack and was wearing comfortable track shoes besides. My eyebrows went up when I noticed that not only was I not catching up on this KF Master, but inexplicably, he was steadily pulling away from me. Now how could he do that? I watched his legs in action. No, he wasn’t running. If anything, he looked like he was taking both slower and shorter strides than I was. Besides, how fast could he go? He was in flip-flops for heavens sakes!

So why, even as I watched, did he seem to be pulling ahead? I shook my head. Nonsense! I quickened my pace, but taking care not to appear that I was running. I’ll show him! With a quiet sense of exultation I closed the distance. But what should have been a quick sprint to close the gap didn’t turn out to be a sprint. It took serious effort! A glance at him showed that no, he didn’t seem to be trying to walk any faster. How the heck was he doing this?

I passed him! Hallelujah, I passed him. I was practically running now. In the half-dark, dodging trash cans, plant pots, phone pole stumps and trying to fall into a manhole. My breathing was rapid now and I was seriously pumping those legs. I imagined in my head that I was pulling rapidly away from this impudent stranger and quelling the urge to look over my shoulder to see how far back he was.

Of course, I looked. And there he was, KF Master, languidly walking in flipflops, about 12 paces behind me, keeping apace and threatening to overtake should I ease up on my frantic rapid strides. Oh my gosh! This was not looking good! Did this mean I would have to maintain this pace till my house? That was miles ahead!

I could feel the beginnings of shin splints, and my calves had begun to ache. No, I steeled myself. I would not fall behind this man. Besides, with any luck, he’ll probably arrive at his fruit stall or maybe veer off to a side street. Just keep walking, man, and pretend he doesn’t exist. For the next 10 minutes I did my best to look nonchalant while attempting to break into a run. I also told myself that no, I would not look back.

And so I looked back. And there he was! 10 paces behind me! Walking as leisurely as you please, still pulling that cart. Ye gad! I had long since broken out into a sweat. The hope that he would quietly disappear into the darkness had itself disappeared. At this point I gave up trying to give a semblance of subtlety. I began leaping up and down the uneven sidewalk, dashing to the sides of open manholes, ducking under low streetsigns, and sprinting when the there was enough even ground to see. I would not, no how, be beaten by Kung Fu Master! No kungfu way! I ignored the pains in my shins, the stitches at my sides, my ragged breathing.

Farther on, much farther on, I came to a traffic build up. I was near my home too. There was no way he could get through that traffic. Wherever he was, if he was still back there, he would have been stuck. I dogged between close-packed cars and motorcycles to get to my street. On an grassy island, the last one before the turn-off to my street, I paused to catch my breath. I also paused because I wanted to know if Kungfu Master was still behind me. If I had managed to get that far ahead of him.

When the light turned green and most of the cars had passed, there, coming implacably in that deceptively unhurried pace, was Kungfu Master and his cart. Backgrounded by passing traffic, he kept going, going up the road to heavens knows where, maybe the next county.

Soundly beaten, I reverted back to a sane pace. Good night, Kungfu Master. Your Kung Fu is stronger than my Kung Fu.

Old Dog Does New Tricks with Dialysis Machines

Abigail and Mon, a photo by Uberdoog on Flickr.

Everyone admires excellence when they see it. A pilot smoothly landing a plane. A ski jumper slaloming down a course. Or Roy, head nurse of the Hemodialysis Unit, setting up the arterial blood lines of the dialysis machines. 


What’s that? Did I say dialysis machines? Yup, you read right. You’ve heard of dialysis, right? That’s when your kidneys decide to go on ahead of the rest of you. The rest of you gets messed up because your blood builds up toxins and water builds up too. For that you need dialysis. Dialysis machines are machines the size of two personal refrigerators stacked atop each other and they do the job that two little kidneys, individually smaller than your fist, did. Better than any dialysis machine. But what choice do you have? 


Let’s get back to Roy. It's 4 in the morning, he's racing through the set up of the machines. Washing this, plugging that, pushing these buttons, inverting cartridges, purging excess, heck if I know.
Watching Roy is watching excellence. Working with an economy of motion, purposefulness and fluidity, he got one of the machines harnessed and ready to go in no time. 


Admiring excellence is like admiring the tip of an iceberg, 90% of their mass is out of sight. With excellence, what you don’t see is the hard work, perseverance from day to day, or the bad hair days with their terrible balls-ups. But I guess it that would be an unfair comparison. Excellence probably hides at least 99% of practice and work. 


“Great!” I thought to myself, I have 98 more days to get a little better, but most likely nowhere near as good as Roy. But I was just being flippant and was not actually bothered. The good thing about Nursing is it’s not a competition. At least, not in the usual sense. 


All I want these days is a new bag. While the rest of my contemporaries are packing up and looking forward to retirement, I’m moving into new and unexplored territory. I’m having to toughen up, physically and mentally. I’m having to become game, quick, flexible, alert and responsive. If you’re young, you’ll find it hard to imagine how inertia can slow down a middle-aged man. The habits of seeking comfort and familiarity, formed of earlier decades have to be gradually broken. It hurts, but then I have seen the changes to adapt.   And the changes feel good. I can see the banner in my head: Old Dog Learns New Trick. So Roy , how do you set up the dialysis machine again?


Originally posted Jan 6, 2010