Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Petty Is As Petty Does

Last night I called an Uber from my mother-in-law's house (my wife was staying the night with her) to take me home to our apartment, and I noticed that the car was driving away from me. The driver was already in the immediate vicinity, about two minutes away, but I noticed right away that he was driving in the opposite direction. (And no, he wasn't finishing a previous trip.)

I'm not new to the ride-hailing game, fuck no. And heck, I'm from the Philippines. A lot of Grab drivers use this tactic too, in the hopes that the passenger will cancel to avoid a penalty.

The problem is, I can be petty as fuck. There was no way in hell I would cancel the ride before that scumbag of a driver did, and so I was already preparing to spend the night sleeping on the couch at my mother-in-law's living room -- to, at first, my wife's amusement and then, later on, to her chagrin (she was pissed, all right: more at me than at the Uber driver. And I couldn't blame her. Lol).

And so there I was, comfortable on the couch, actually beginning to doze off and fighting off sleep, while the driver continued driving home and hoping that I'd cancel (it was already late, close to 11:00 p.m., which was why I didn't take a bus or the subway, which I prefer). I even saw on the map that he was already more than 30 minutes away from me, and he finally parked his car in what I assumed was his garage, while he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Oh you chose to fuck with the wrong guy, my friend.

And then, finally, he cancelled and Uber assigned me a new driver, who arrived in less than five minutes. 

(To be clear: I wouldn't mind if he sent me a message asking me to cancel, especially if it's an emergency; believe me, I understand. I'm not some heartless bastard. But I know when someone's trying to screw me up.)

I've heard some tourists here in Mexico complaining about Uber drivers and taxi drivers, that they can be scumbags (the colloquial term is "pendejo.") And sure, yeah, they have a point.

But obviously, they haven't met NAIA taxi drivers. (There are scumbags, and there are SCUMBAGS.)

And then, there are petty passengers who won't let scumbags be scumbags.

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Are Filipinos Overdressed When They Travel Abroad?

I prefer to be overdressed, which is 100% better than those Gringos who show up at the airport in shorts and tank tops and old, filthy, and crumbly flip-flops looking like they just got out of bed and didn't even bother to shower and brush their teeth. Or, at the very least, put on deodorant.


Saturday, May 10, 2025

Professional Is, as Professional Does


 

When I decided to transition from writing to teaching, I had to earn a couple of certifications. Before that, I volunteered to teach online English students in the Ukraine and Gaza, for experience. Even now, while carrying a full teaching load, I'm still studying for two more certifications, which I'll hopefully get in the next couple of months. After that, I'll be looking into a master's degree in education (to make me feel better after that master's program I abandoned in the Philippines? Probably. Who knows?)
My point is, we SHOULD take our jobs seriously (especially something as critical as, well, I don't know--Senator??). God knows I have -- after 20+ years as a professional. And that's the operative word here, isn't it? PROFESSIONAL.
Please, please, please, let's vote for qualified and competent candidates in the upcoming midterm elections. We've tolerated these clowns for the longest time.

Sunday, May 4, 2025

On Teaching

 


After 20 years in the corporate world, you get sick and tired of all the bullshit. It's the main reason why I started looking for volunteering opportunities online to teach English learners from the Ukraine and Gaza in my free time -- I'd reached the end of my rope.
And when the company I recently joined decided to invest more than 1 billion dollars on their own generative AI tool, and then I found myself writing less and less but acting more and more as a "prompt engineer," admin assistant, and glorified project manager, I finally saw the writing on the wall. I needed to move farther from what was stressing me out -- the corporate world itself, and Artificial "Intelligence" (which was, evidently, starting to remove me -- and quite a number of my fellow writers out there -- from the equation).
It dawned on me -- I'd been teaching English online to students from other countries for quite some time now. Why not teach English full-time to Mexicans as well? The human element has been disappearing from my corporate job; why not switch careers and rediscover what it means to be human in this world where the machines are starting to take over?
So I traded the cubicle for the classroom. And guess what? I haven't felt this good in a long time.
Teacher Mark reporting for duty. 🫔

SeƱor Manuel



This was me with SeƱor Manuel many years ago, when I first visited Mexico. Coming from a tropical country where the summer heat can literally kill you, I wasn't used to the relative cold of Mexico City in winter, and you can see the difference here in the way we were dressed -- it's hilarious. 

He took me out one evening, along with my wife, Diana -- his youngest daughter -- to the best taqueria in town.I didn't speak a lick of Spanish at that time, and it was a pleasant surprise when SeƱor Manuel spoke to me in fluent English after graciously playing the piano for me after dinner one night in their home. He talked to me about his career as a music teacher that spanned many decades, and it never failed to amaze me to hear stories from his own former students -- many of whom would still call him on his birthday or on Christmas day after all these years -- about how inspiring a teacher he was to them. Some of these students we would chance upon on the street while we were walking around the neighborhood -- to a nearby cafƩ or to church -- and they'd speak to him animatedly, with genuine joy, while fondly calling him "Maestro." It was awe-inspiring.

SeƱor Manuel has been the closest to a second father to me here in Mexico. It was a pleasure to finally speak with him in his native language the past several years as my Spanish improved. I particularly remember that time when he could still walk on his own, and we were in the well-manicured -- thanks to my mother-in-law, SeƱora Mary -- garden of his home on a pleasant spring day. He talked of his children and how he was proud of the people they've become. He made sure his son and daughters finished their studies because he didn't have any material wealth to leave them.

What he'll leave them is a legacy of a decent, hardworking man who made sure his family wanted for nothing. A father, husband, and brother who was always there when it counted. A mentor and friend who was quick with sage advice when it was sought out, and it was sought out frequently.

It hasn't been an easy past few years for my father-in-law, someone who still enjoyed walking and playing music in his retirement years, someone who loved driving cars as much as he admired them, someone who actually bought his own small plane many years ago and learned how to fly it -- eventually inspiring his only son to want to become a pilot.

But while his body deteriorated, his spirit never wavered. He couldn't play the piano anymore, or walk -- much less drive -- but he could still tell his stories. And boy, could the man tell stories. He has a published book of those stories -- those memories of many years ago -- and it will be an honor to finally read it -- in Spanish.

His stories -- from him, and about him -- are all we have now. But that's enough. For someone who lived his life the way my father-in-law lived his, that's more than enough.

Descanse en paz, SeƱor Manuel. Gracias por recibirme con los brazos abiertos y permitirme formar parte de su hermosa familia.  

 

Thursday, December 12, 2024

On Poetry

Many years ago, I tried my hand at poetry. 

A couple of my early “poems” were published in the student paper back in college, and I thought I could probably develop my poetry writing skills more, try to improve on my fledgling attempts. 

I dropped it. Never tried to write a poem ever since. 

I used to love reading poetry too. (I still enjoy the occasional poetry collection now and then, but fiction is still my go-to read.) I loved trying to make sense of the meaning of every poem, because to me a well-written poem should be metaphorical. What you see isn’t what you get. A well-written poem is a puzzle to be solved. 

But ironically, the biggest reason I quit trying to write poetry is I couldn’t make use of metaphor or simile well. To me, my poems seemed superficial, shallow. Best leave it to the experts, I thought. 

Through the years I’ve come across writers who’ve argued that poems should be more “accessible,” and I’ve appreciated these “easy to read” poems as well. In Stephen King’s celebrated memoir “On Writing,” he narrated how he fell in love with his future wife, the novelist Tabitha King (who, back then, was still using her maiden name, Tabitha Spruce). 

Wrote King: “We met when we were working in a library, and I fell in love with her during a poetry workshop in the fall of 1969, when I was a senior and Tabby was a junior. I fell in love with her partly because I understood what she was doing with her work.” 

Specifically, in discussing one of Tabitha’s poems, King argued: “Her poem made me feel that I wasn’t alone in my belief that good writing can be simultaneously intoxicating and idea-driven . . . . There was also a work-ethic in the poem that I liked, something that suggested writing poems (or stories, or essays)

had as much in common with sweeping the floor as with mythy moments of revelation . . . . In the discussion that followed Tab’s reading, it became clear to me that she understood her own poem. She knew exactly what she had meant to say, and had said most of it . . . . The point is that it was a reasonable poem in a hysterical time, one sprung from a writing ethic that resonated all through my heart and soul.” 

There’s this popular Filipino writer and creative writing professor that I admire and whose work I’ve enjoyed reading—he has written fiction, essays, plays, screenplays, and poems—who has, himself, been pretty much self-effacing on his attempts at poetry, even though he has already successfully published a poetry collection, along with his novels and essay and short story collections, and his drama. I’ve also read poetry by Neil Gaiman (full disclosure: I’m aware of the recent allegations of sexual harassment against Gaiman, which has devastated me because he’s one of my favorite writers; I hope to write about this in a future blog post) and Chuck Palahniuk—none of whom are exactly known for their poetry. Their poems, at least in my estimation, are very accessible and are devoid of metaphor and simile. 

In Gaiman’s case, I read some of his poems when he decided to sprinkle them throughout his first short story collection, “Smoke and Mirrors,” probably as fillers. In Palahniuk’s case, his poems served as the framing device—or connecting tissue, if you will—for a collection of his short stories that he tried (quite unsuccessfully, in my opinion), to turn into a novel because that was what his publishers wanted him to put out for his next book, not a short story collection. 

Gaiman’s and Palahniuk’s poems reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, probably because all three of them are known for writing about horror and the macabre—in both their poetry and fiction. And sure, a lot of Poe’s gothic and love poems require some moments of careful dissection (which is fun in and of itself), but a lot of them are of the WYSIWG (what you see is what you get) variety too. 

And of course, there are the so-called Instapoets, Lang Leav and Rupi Kaur, whose work has polarized readers worldwide. The Instapoets tag came about because their fans often describe Leav’s and Kaur’s work as “Instagrammable,” with quotable lines that are perfect for sharing. 

While some critics of the two Instapoets argue that their works lack complexity or depth, their stans assert that the emotional impact and relatability of their poems are what matter most. 

I have a huge problem with the gatekeeping of poetry; for me, Leav’s and Kaur’s poems make poetry accessible to a broader audience, particularly the younger generations. 

Or would we rather have them reading memes exclusively instead?

Thursday, November 14, 2024

The Third Laptop

Lately I’ve been using three laptops.

One for my full-time job, one for my freelance gigs, and one for my personal (and, I’d like to think, more creative) pursuits.

The most powerful of the three is the newest, although I could tell right away when the IT guy handed it to me -- when I first visited my new place of employment -- that it wasn’t brand new. The second one might be significantly older than the first, but it still has enough juice to play old games with, and index books with, and listen to streaming music with -- I just have to leave it plugged in, because the battery has seen better days. The third one is the oldest, running on an ancient Pentium processor, but still better than the PC assigned to me many years ago when I used to work for a publishing company in the Philippines -- but that’s another (hilarious) story.

When I fire up the first laptop, which I do every morning from Monday to Friday (but now, more increasingly, also during weekends), I feel a sense of dread. I use it to write, sure, but also to attend Teams meetings and reply to emails and take what seems like never-ending online trainings. The writing part is increasingly being overtaken by the other non-essential things, which makes me wonder why my newest place of employment even bothered to hire a writer in the first place. But then again, that’s another (sad) story.

When I turn on the second laptop, there’s no sense of dread -- I index books on autopilot now; it’s like second nature. Many years ago when I worked as a copyeditor for that publishing company with the crappy PCs, there was only a handful of us who genuinely enjoyed indexing books. We used to joke that it was a menial job -- not as “intellectual” as editing -- but that someone had to do it. That someone was -- still is -- me. I relish indexing now as I relished it then, and I relish it more than ever because it’s a break from all those non-essential things I do on my first laptop.

It’s when I use the third laptop though -- the oldest and slowest, I don’t even connect it to the Internet anymore; it’s strictly a tool for writing and nothing more -- that I feel the most joy. It’s when I feel I’m making a difference, even though I haven’t gathered enough confidence yet to show the world the stuff I’d worked on all these years. 

I remember a scene in one of the episodes of “Better Call Saul” when Jimmy McGill reluctantly accepted a job at Davis & Main, and Jimmy stumbled upon founder Clifford Main playing the guitar in his office. Clifford said he plays music “to blow off steam” and advised Jimmy to find a similar hobby, as working for a high-powered law firm is a stressful job. Jimmy eventually found and bought a used bagpipe from a pawnshop, which in turn he played in his own office (Jimmy being Jimmy – or, should I say, Saul being Saul?), but -- as viewers who’ve already seen the episode know -- not to blow off steam but something else.

Anyway, I fired up the old laptop to blow off steam myself. I’m the type of person who can’t sleep when I’m stressed, and when I overthink I tend to write. But for some reason the words to build one of the things I’m not ready to show the world yet wouldn’t come. So I decided to pivot (I hate this fucking word; it’s one of those words I frequently hear when I use my first laptop, along with “bandwidth,” “core competencies,” “leverage,” “low-hanging fruit,” “deliverables,” “synergy,” “deep dive,” etc.).

This decision to “pivot” is a plea to everyone out there who has their own version of my third laptop: a guitar, a pen, a paintbrush, a tennis racket, a book, a gaming controller or, heck, a fucking BAGPIPE. 

Go to that version of your third laptop as frequently as you can. And relish it as much as I do whenever I build one of those things that I’m not ready to show the world yet. Relish it as much as Cliff Main did with his guitar, as much as Jimmy McGill relished playing his bagpipe just to fuck up the establishment.

Maybe someday we’ll wake up, and by a miracle of miracles the world won’t require us to fire up that primary laptop anymore (full of those “essential” non-essentials and hated corporate jargon) -- or whatever its equivalent is in your own working life -- just to help keep those poor billionaires (who, by the way, love funding genocides and wars) “afloat,” eh?