Lou Reed opened the day looking for something to screw. But the bright sun streaming in from Baker's terrace would have none of his cussing.

On the table, two huge oranges on the table with a quart of soya milk and two squares of brownies for breakfast. But on a far shelf is another meal and out it goes.

A bottle of Bombay Sapphire and Ma Jian's old book, Red Dust, and hopefully Baker won't mind. Just a glass, senyor; it's your birthday and only a few pages to turn. Besides, the morning is just incredible.

In lieu of coffee, two packets of Rajinigandha pan masala, a crushed betel nut snack infused with spices and herbs from India. It makes the mouth feel fragrant and stains the lips and tastes like an incense stick.

As the glass door opens, the cold breeze slithers in and bare feet step out.

Outside, it's only the fool wind and gin.

The expanse of a silver-blue bay flanked by green-topped hills and the silhouette of indigo islands. An open book, a birthday tune, and a big sip.

Inhale, boys. Everything is quiet and it's grand.

It's a long stretch from Hong Kong Central to Monsieur Boulangerie's place but it's worth the lurch.

From Sai Kung you go down at Tsam Chuk Wan and you're in Wu Geng Bi Shui, the village lounging on a hill overlooking a wide spread of salt water that glimmers non-stop, day and night, like a bright idea that's finally claimed its own territory.

After a year of staggering from one place to another, slow days finally. Decompression.

But by sundown, the caffeine compulsion kicks in with ferocious power and it's off to Chai Wan Ho, where coffee's to be had and where SP's waiting.

There's a hotpot bash at his place tonight and a few more supplies are needed.

Five dozen kinds of fish, pork, beef and chicken balls. Check.

Fish chunks. Check.

Paper-thin slices of lamb. Check.

Bacon. Check.

A sack of greens. Check.

Around half past six, Amy the Loser arrives. She tells me she's no longer a loser, though I suspect she still is.

Then KT sashays in with Pierra. Next comes MK and Dorothy.

As tradition goes, I tip a glass of beer over and it shatters on the table but I manage to catch a large wicked shard before it falls to the floor. Wise move.

There's a long gash on my right hand and blood's dripping but no problem.

Washed it with ale, splashed some citrus and mercurochrome and taped it up with three band aids.

SP's son Fei-fei gives me a look and I give him back a wink.

Someone takes off the lid and announces the soup's cooking and in go the chopsticks. One pair, two pairs, three, four, five and six.

Everyone's dipping, stories are flowing, laughter's growing louder.

Another bottle of wine, then one more, then another and one more. Then it's time for beer gallons. All the bad deeds are recalled and then lofty dreams.

Half-past midnight, Fei-fei's sleeping soundly despite the raucous banter and the good friends have left.

Routine kicks in – wipe the table, clean the kitchen, tie up the rubbish bags, fold the chairs. A last big bottle of beer, wise and silly words, and it's time to snooze.

By sunrise, Fei-fei's grandmother comes over to pick up the happy toddler and SP and I
head off to a Yunnan eatery for breakfast at 1:00 pm.

We swear to stay away from our evening fare and a hotpot of ten kinds of wild mushroom is ordered, with a chicken thrown in for good measure.

SP orders shui zhu yu for the side dish – freshwater fish swimming in chili, oil and tongue-numbing peppercorns; I ask for wild bee pupae, deep-fried.

A few bottles of beer after, we part ways.

A blink of an eye later, zoom, I'm in Wan Chai with high school buddy Dennis Briones.

It's been a more than a decade since we last met. He has two daughters now, EZ and KD203 and he's still physically fit and his mind's spry. We go over wild times.

The memory beer named San Miguel pale pilsen is flowing, first in cans, and then in the trusty amber bottle.

Dennis is the band leader of Kaktooz, the main act of the most popular saloon in Wan Chai, Bar Amazonia.

It's just a Sunday yet by 9:00 pm the place is already packed.

Kaktooz is playing classic rock, reminding everyone who's ever come across veteran Pinoy bands that many of the best musicians in the Philippines are playing outside the country, eking out an honest living while ass-wipe government officials ransack the country's treasury.

I just missed the band's pretty singer Sopheia, who had to fly home for a short break but the rest of the team was there.

On the keyboard, Carlo Carranza, dredd locks reaching to his ankles. Pony-tailed Richard Tenorio is thumping bass lines while the wizard Jephthah Wenceslao is spinning tales with his guitar.

On drums – in the setting he loves the most –Dennis is generating thunder and playing his heart out as if he were hitting the skins for the first time, singing, swishing, pounding and tapping with the grace of Ian Paice in his veins.

They play The Doors starting with Roadhouse Blues and they don't look back.

An hour past midnight, the stage and a guitar are set on fire and the feline crowd is louder and jumping up and down in a wild dance and they don't stop till it's five in the morning. It's the Kaktooz trance, feral and humid and high octane.

Outside, it's six degrees Celsius, but there's no winter in Hong Kong. Not when Kaktooz is playing.

-------
Red Constantino is the author of The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire (FNS, 2006). He has written a number of sketches about Filipino migrant workers. For a sample, see The Marathon of Erma Geolamin. Comments welcome at Red Constantino's blog site, http://redconstantino.blogspot.com

They will call 2009 a revelation year, when the nation was once more forced to confront self-evident truths and when again too many looked away.

Decades from now, we will be asked not merely how but why we endured the decay and incredible debauchery of our time. The indifferent will shrug and the clever will offer ready theories. But many will be hardpressed to come up with suitable answers.

What would you call a country whose highest officials greet mass murderers with expressions of undying friendship, an embrace, and a handshake?

What would you call a country ruled by a government that considers its citizens as its main export and which treats its soldiers as mere fodder while it feeds, arms, and fondles grotesque warlords?

What would you call a country where larceny has become the leading state enterprise and where shamelessness has become the rule of law?

Here everything seems to be for sale.

A man's liver, a woman's children, territories, forests, national dignity – there is a price for everything. And what cannot be purchased is either destroyed or stolen.

In the Philippines, acts of extermination and plunder have become all-encompassing, reaching levels of ignominy several magnitudes greater than the achievements of the most notorious criminals in the country's history.

Here, the chief executive and her coterie steal lives and mine the national treasury and the ballot box, hoping, from experience, that people would rather forget, would rather move on.

Because that is what the recent years has taught – that national nausea eventually recedes.

An election is stolen in 2007? It's OK.

Contracts worth billions of dollars are drawn up with intestinal ties to the First Gentleman's belly? It's alright.

Activists and journalists are periodically slaughtered like chicken? No problem.

Noisy groups might throw a tantrum, effigies might be burned and perhaps there might even be a little chaos in the streets.

But we have learned to eat bullets for breakfast and for lunch and dinner, various servings of atrocities and pillage.

Life will go on. At least that is the hope.

When the first working day of December came to a close, the Maguindanao carnage was supplanted by the accumulated certificates of candidacies filed by a motley crowd aiming for the highest post in the land.

Ninety-five Filipinos in total had entered their names in the race for the position of Philippine president while the person who had usurped the crown of the republic – the ugliest, most despised individual in the country's annals –moved to avoid prosecution, imprisonment, and execution by going for a lower elective post.

Veiled Gloria, mother of disgrace, the nerve is with thee. Blessed art thou among the craven and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Mikey.

"I have one term left but I am giving it to someone ten million times more intelligent than I am," said the congressman of Pampanga's Second District, Mikey Arroyo, when his mum officially registered her need for his position.

Going by accepted standards of arithmetic, shouldn't the good congressman have just given his post to a slab of concrete?

In the end, do we realize that the humiliation is ours? That by our silence we also own the acts of dishonor committed by those whom we detest?

For all the noise and heat that the most humongous scandals of the government have generated, ruling elites continue to expect the public's anger to be brief – that citizens of common station will not leave their households to put an end to the indignities they have suffered for too long as individual families and as a people.

Today we are asked in the face of the Maguindanao butchery to remember the names of the murdered.

But maybe it's high time as well that we recall the names of our very own – to name each child in our family – who will inherit the ruins left behind by our inaction.

When an 18-foot whale shark ended up dying on the breakwaters of Manila Bay last October, too few realized that one of our country's possible futures had already washed up on our shores.

Decades from now a coroner's report of the whale shark's demise might stand in as a snapshot of the Philippines in 2009:

"The skull of the once majestic creature was fractured while its heart pumped septic water through its veins. Its eyes were gouged. Numb to violence and duplicity, the body endured ten thousand slashes and it wasted away slowly, steadily, in its desire to float away, to forget and to move on."

Walang kaduda-duda na pag dumating na ang araw na siya'y nag-pasya nang magretiro, papasok si Pacquiao sa kategorya ng Sampung Pinakamagaling na Boksingero sa Kasaysayan ng Boksing. Saan man siya ilalagay sa hanay ng Dakilang Sampu – sa itaas man o sa ilalim ng Dakilang Panlima – tiyak na sasaludo ang mundo ng boksing sa kanyang nagawa.

Ngunit aktibong boksingero pa rin si Pacquiao at napakaaga pang sukatin siya kumpara sa mga nakamit ng iba na nagretiro na sa labanan ng boksing. Hindi pa tapos ang lakbayin ni Pacman at may ilang bundok pa siyang nais na tibagin.

Tiyak man ang kanyang tala sa kasaysayan ng boksing bilang unang manlalaban na pitong ulit na naging kampeon sa pitong magkakaibang weight division –maraming iba't ibang pamantayan ang gagamitin para matukoy ang kanyang lugar sa mga All-Time Greatest List ng madla.

Madali magbigay ng opinyon kung ang tanong lamang ay "Pabor ka ba na kilalanin si Pacquiao bilang isa sa pinakamagaling – o pinakagamaling – na boksingero sa kasaysayan ng boksing?"

Mas mahirap sagutin kung ang tanong ay susundan ng "Kumpara kanino – at bakit?"

Kung ang tanging paliwanag na gagamitin ay tungkol sa kakayanan o kalidad ni Pacquiao – kayang-kaya.

Ngunit higit na mas mahirap sagutin – at sagutin ng tapat – kung kailangang ipaliwanag din natin hindi lamang ang mga katangian ni Pacquiao kundi pati na rin ang katangian ng mga boksingerong sinasabi nating nalampasan na niya o di pa niya nadadaig.

Hindi dapat magmadali sa paghirang kay Pacquiao bilang isang miyembro ng "Top Twenty" o "Top Fifteen" o "Top Ten Greatest Boxers of All Time."

Kung may kompiyansa tayo sa kanyang nagawa na at sa kanyang kakayahang lampasan pa ang iba, tungkulin natin na buuin ang sarili nating listahan – kung kaya, hanggang singkwenta; kung hindi, eh di hanggang beinte, o kinse, o sampu – at himayin ang mga katangian na nagsasabi kung bakit si Ganito ay dapat nasa unang lima at si Ganoon ay wala sa unang labinlima.

Tulad ng inaasahan, sandamakmak ang nagbigay ng komentaryo, tugon, tanong, kantsaw, halakhak, at dagdag pang tanong hinggil sa nakaraang piyesa na nagbabalik-tanaw sa banggan ni Pacquiao at Cotto.

Maraming hindi sumang-ayon na nagpaabot lang ng ngitngit, ngunit marami rin ang tumutol sa pamamagitan ng pag-hugot sa iba't ibang karanasan at kaalaman sa boksing.

Isang saludo po para sa mga nagbigay ng kanilang pananaw sa pamamagitan ng pagtimbang sa mga kwalipikasyon ng mga boksingerong hinahangaan din nila ngunit sa pagtingin nila'y higit nang nalampasan ni Pacquiao.

Para naman sa mga gusto lang ibandera na idolo nila si Manny at di bale na ang sino pa mang boksingero, ok lang! Apir din sa inyo.

Paalala lang – napaka-subjective ng pag-gawa ng ganitong uri ng talaan.

Subukan mong maglista ng "Top Ten Bands of All-Time" at agad na mamumulaklak ang mga sagutan; maski criteria pagtatalunan. Pagdebatihan na lahat, pero ang puso niyo inyong ingatan...

Paminsan lang talaga, hindi sapat ang cheerleading.

Hindi sapat na tingnan lang ang nakamit ng ating napupusuan. Mas nagiging tanyag pa nga ang mga taong nais nating kilalanin o kilalanin ng iba kung kinikilala rin natin ang mga taong sinasabi nating kanilang nadaig.

Ginawa ito ng iba nang kanilang ilagay ang record ni Sugar Ray Leonard at Pernell Whitaker sa tabi ni record ni Pacquiao at mula dito idiniin na walang dudang dapat mauna si Pacquiao sa dalawa sa listahang All-Time Greatest Fifteen Boxers.

Kahit na may kasamang kantyaw (sports lang!) dapat palakpakan ang ganitong klaseng tugon.

Kasi maliwanag batay sa pinupuntos ng nagkoment na kung titimbangin ang record ni Leonard at Whitaker sa record ni Pacquiao, lamang na lamang si Pacman.

Gumamit siya ng batayan at tiningnan ang tagumpay ng tatlo at mula dito nagpasyang mas matimbang talaga si Pacquiao.

Isantabi natin ang una kong pamantayan (aktibo pa nga kasi si Pacquiao) – may ilang tanong pa rin na kailangang harapin ng nagbahagi ng nasabing pananaw (pati na ng mga sumang-ayon dito.)

Heto isa – kung daig pala ni Pacquiao si Leonard at Whitaker batay sa nakasulat na record, #12 lang ba talaga si Pacquiao sa inyong listahan? O dapat mas mataas pa? Baka naman numero dose lang talaga? Kung dapat mas mataas pa, ganoo pa kataas? Sino ang bababa o sino ang mawawala sa listahan? Bakit?

Ganyan malimit ang diskusyon sa ganitong uri ng listahan – hindi palakasan ng sigaw.

Kahit hindi pa rin magkasundo sa konklusyon, mas mainam pa rin na seryosong timbangin at kilalanin ang mga nais na mabilang (o matanggal sa listahan).

Halimbawa, tatanggalin niyo ba si Larry Holmes?

Kung ang criteria ay "endurance bilang isang kampeon," "madalas na depensa sa titulo," at hindi pag-ilag sa kahit sinong challenger," mahirap bastang ilaglag si Holmes, na may dalawampung walang talong depensa sa kanyang heavyweight title, tatlong beses isang taon kung lumaban nung siya'y kampeon, at walang iniwasan.

Kung ito naman ang gagamiting pang-timbang kay Pacquiao, mahihirapan si Pacman, dahil hindi patas ang aplikasyon ng criteria sa kanilang dalawa.

Nakamit ni Pacquiao ang pinakatanyag na katangian ng kanyang career sa pamamagitan ng makasaysayang pagpanalo ng pitong titulo sa pitong weight class. Kaso dahil dito walong ulit lang ang pinakamaraming niyang title defense sa isang weight class (sa super featherweight; umakyat siya pagkatapos sa lightweight laban kay Diaz).

Sa usapin naman ng fight frequency bilang kampeon, maraming taon na tigalawa lang ang laban ni Pacman. May mga taon pa nga na isa lang ang kanyang laban. Ibig sabihin ba, mas lamang si Holmes?

Hindi rin – kasi pwede ring sabihin na dahil paakyat ang direksyon ni Pacquiao, hindi basta-basta na lumaban ng tatlong beses kada taon habang nagdadagdag siya ng timbang.

Sa sukatan naman na "walang iniiwasan" – madaling sabihin na wala pang iniwasan si Pacquiao (at malamang wala talagang iiwasan). Ngunit dito papasok uli ang usaping hindi pa tapos ang kanyang paglakbay. Andyan pa ang Bundok Mosley at Bundok Mayweather (na tingin ko'y iiwas kay Pacman sa bandang huli).

Hanggat hindi pa nagreretiro si Pacquiao, kahit si Marquez pwedeng sabihin (katawa-tawa pero pwede pa ring sabihin) na iniwasan ni Pacquiao na maganap ang kanilang ikatlong pagtatagpo.

Imbis na ang pinagtatalunan lang ay kung bakit masyado pang maaga na mailagay si Pacquiao sa Top Fifteen All-Time Greatest Boxers, bakit hindi pagtalunan kung ano ang dapat na ginagamit na sukatan, at kung sino pa ang dapat na kasama ni Pacquiao (assuming pabor kayo na isama siya sa Unang Sampu o Lima) at bakit daig niya ang iba – ang mga katulad ni Robinson, Ali, Louis, Armstrong at Hagler. (At bakit din hindi isinama si Carlo Monzon, si Harry Greb, si Willie Pep o si Joe Walcott).

May ilan pang nalalabing paksa na kailangang tutukan bago tayo magtapos:

1. Si Pacquiao na nga ba ang pinakamagaling na Pilipinong boksingero?

Marahil ang sagot ng marami sa atin ay "oo." Pero baka naman kaya nating sagutin ang tanong na ito nang hindi minamaliit – o kinakalimutan – ang mga nakamit din ng iba pang dakilang boksingero ng ating bayan?

Pag may nakausap kang Pinoy ngayon tungkol sa boksing, malamang marami siyang makekwento sa iyo tungkol kay Pacquiao. Pero kung tanungin mo siya tungkol sa ibang boksingerong Pilipino, malamang maubusan siya ng kwento.

Hindi ba nakakapanghinayang?

Dahil sa tagumpay ni Pacquiao, may pagkakataon tayo na makilala uli ang mga nauna sa kanya.

Si Gabriel "Flash" Elorde na tubong Cebu. (Pinakamagaling na superfeatherweight champion sa buong kasaysayan ng boksing ayon sa WBC; unang Asianong kinilala sa International Boxing Hall of Fame. Sa 117 laban, 88 ang kanyang panalo at 33 nito sa pamamagitan ng KO, at may 27 pagkatalo at dalawang draw.)

Magbigay-pugay tayo sa dakilang si Pancho Villa, tubong Negros Occidental. (Ikalawang Asianong kinilala sa International Boxing Hall of Fame. Kabuuang laban – 109. Panalo, 92 at 24 nito sa pamamagitan ng KO. Walo ang talo at apat ang draw)

Magbigay-pugay tayo sa Manilenyong si Luisito "Lindol" Espinosa. (Dalawang titulo sa dalawang magkaibang weight class. Sa 60 laban, 47 ang panalo ni Lindol at 26 nito sa pamamagitan ng KO; 13 ang kanyang talo.)

Huwag kalimutan si Ceferino "Bolo Punch" Garcia (tanging Pinoy na naging middleweight champion. Sumabak sa 142 laban, 102 ang panalo at 67 sa pamamagitan ng KO), si Dodie Boy at Gerry Peñalosa, si Mansueto "Onyok" Velasco na nanalo ng silver medal noong 1996 Olympic games at kanyang kapatid na Roel (bronze, noong 1992 Olympics), pati na rin si Rolando "Bad Boy" Navarrete.

Napakarami pang propesyonal at amateur na boksingero na nagbigay ng dangal sa Pilipinas. Tama lang na magpasalamat tayo sa karangalang inalay ni Pacquiao sa ating bayan – at napakalaking karangalan ito – ngunit huwag nating iangat siya sa pamamagitan ng pagmamaliit, o pagkalimot (di kaya pagmamaliit na rin ito?), sa iba pang mandirigmang Pilipino.

2. Pagpasok ni Pacquiao sa politika

Sinalubong ng dismaya at pangangantyaw ang unang pagtangka ni Pacquiao na pumasok sa politika noong 2007. Nabigo si Pacquiao sa kanyang balakin at tumanggap ng maraming panunuya ang dakilang boksingero kasama ng maraming paratang na nagpapagamit lang siya sa mga politiko.

Umaalingasaw na naman ang mga akusasyon ngayong nagpahiwatig na uli si Pacman na balak niyang lumusong uli sa halalan ng 2010. Bagamat hindi na kasing ingay – o kasing-lupit – ng dating paninira, minamaliit pa rin ng marami ang pagnanais ni Pacman na pasukin ang buhay politika.

Tama nga bang pumasok si Pacman sa politika?

Ang simpleng sagot – aba, bakit naman hindi?

Bakit ba ang bilis humusga ng ilan sa atin? Aktor, maralita, pesante, bakla, tomboy, mang-aawit, basketbolista at boksingero – kung may interes silang seryosong maglingkod sa taumbayan – patas ang kanilang kwalipikasyon na manungkulan sa bayan kumpara sa napakaraming mambabatas ngayon sa Kongreso.

Si Lito Lapid walang maipakitang pakinabang, ngunit hindi dahil aktor siya kundi dahil tinuring niyang inidoro ang kanyang posisyon. Bilang trono na pampalipas ng araw at pagkakataong magpabinyag sa marangyang lugar.

E bakit si Jaworski? Hindi man kasing sikat ng nagawa ng marami niyang kasama sa lehislatura, marami rin siyang naitulak bilang mambabatas partikular sa kanyang pamumuno sa komiteng hinggil sa kalikasan sa Senado.

Ano na ba talaga nagawa ng sandamukal na abogado sa loob ng Batasang Pambansa ngayon para iahon sa kahirapan ang Pilipinas? Kung may karapatan silang tumakbo, may karapatan din si Pacquiao.

Mananalo na kaya siya o mana-knockout uli?

Taumbayan ang maghuhusga – at taumbayan din ang aani – sa resulta ng kanilang desisyon.

3. Bakit ba pinuna si Chino Trinidad?

Si Chino na ang pinakamahusay na komentarista sa telebisyon ngayon dahil matatas siyang mag-Filipino at may pamamaraan siyang tila nakikipaghuntahan lang sa mga manonood ng kaniyang mga programa.

Pag nagsalita si Trinidad, malimit parang direkta niyang kinakausap ang viewers. Malawak ang kaalaman niya sa sports at saksaaaaaakan ng layo ang kalidad at kakayahan niya kumpara sa mga katulad ni Ronnie Nathanielz (na kahit nag-i-Inggles ang intindihin; ngayon pang nagpupumilit mag-Filipino lalong hindi siya maintindihan).

Pero pag nag-ulat sa mga boxing match, sana hindi lamang papuri sa pambato ng Pilipinas. Sana panaka-nakang sumasangguni siya sa mga nakaraang laban na may relasyon sa pinapanood ng mga Pinoy.

Halimbawa, sa maraming pagkakataon, lalo na sa Round 4 at 7 at 8 sa laban ni Pacquiao kay Cotto, tila nagbalik uli ang multo ni Margarito nang paatras nang gumagalaw ang Puerto Rican.

Maganda rin sana kung nagamit ni Trinidad bilang reference ang laban ni Cotto kay Mosley habang mainiti na nagpapalitan ng jab si Pacman at Cotto nung Round 2.

Hindi na kailangan ng maraming superlatiba tungkol sa bilis ng kamao ni Manny. Ang mas masarap sanang pakinggan, sa matatas na uri ng pagpapahayag ni Trinidad, ay kung ilang suntok ang sapol at saan galing –parang reporting niya rin sa basketbol, pero imbis na pasa, dakdak o three points, ang pagpapahayag ay Chino-stakato din, parang armalite – "nagpakawala ng kanan! Sinundan ng kaliwa, ilag si Manny, isa pang kanan, jab, tumama ang kaliwa, yanig si Cotto, tumba!"

Yun bang kahit ipikit mo ang iyong mata at nakinig ka lang sa kanya, para ka pa rin nanonood ng TV.

Kasi ganito talaga ang kalibre ni Chino. Minsan lang, nakakalimot.

Makalipas ang pitong araw, panahon nang balikan ang bonggang banatan na naganap sa pagitan ng apat na bigating mandirigma. Ang dami na rin kasi ng sumulat sa akin tungkol sa nakaraang mga salpukan.

Sa Manchester Evening News Arena sa Manchester, England, bumangga si Brandon "The Truth" Vera kay Randy "The Natural" Couture sa light heavyweight division ng UFC 105.

Sa MGM Grand Garden Arena sa Las Vegas, US, hinarap ni Manny Pacquiao si Miguel Cotto para sa welterweight title ng WBO.

Alam na ng lahat ang resulta – tinatak na ni Pacquiao ang kanyang pangalan sa kasaysayan ng boksing bilang unang boksingero sa buong mundo na nanalo ng pitong titulo sa pitong weight class.

Sa larangan naman ng mixed martial arts (MMA), nagwagi si Couture laban kay Vera sa pamamagitan ng unanimous decision.

Pagkatapos ng isang linggo – pagkatapos ng isang linggong pagwawagayway ng bandila't pagtutumba ng sandamakmak na serbesa't ginebra – panahon nang tingnan muli ang dalawang nasabing laban batay sa ialng anggulong hindi gaano nabigyan ng pansin ng maraming komentarista sa Pilipinas.

1. Mayroon pa bang natitirang palusot kung bakit hindi dapat ilagay si Pacquiao sa Top Twenty Fighters of All Time?
Wala na. Ubos na ang palusot na maaring gamitin upang hindi kilalanin ang nakamit na tagumpay ni Pacquiao sa boksing.
Tanging paungot-ungot na lang ang nalalabi sa pangunguna ng mga katulad ng boxing writer na si Vivek Wallace ng respetadong EastSideBoxing.com.

Ayon kay Vivek, droga daw – posibleng nagse-steroids daw si Pacquiao at ito lang ang maaring paliwanag kung bakit nakayanan ni Pacquiao na abutin ang tugatog ng mundo ng boksing ngayon. [1]

Isa lang ang dapat itawag kay Wallace. Tulad ng mga nagrereyna at naghahari sa Malakanyang, isa siyang tukmol. (Si Floyd Mayweather, Sr. din, ang dating coach ng kanyang anak na si "Money" at naging trainer ni Hatton sa laban ng Briton kay Pacman, ganito ang himig.)

2. Baka naman mayroong isyu pa sa kahandaan ni Cotto na sumabak sa laban?

Wala po. Preskong presko si Cotto nang magharap sila ni Pacquiao. Kitang-kita sa unang round niya kay Pacquiao na eksakto ang timbang ng Puerto Rican.

Hindi maaring ituring na laos si Cotto, tulad ng naging paratang kay Morales, Barrera, at De La Hoya. (Hindi man ako sang-ayon sa nasabing paratang, ito ang naging palusot ng marami sa boxing world kung bakit nagulpe ni Pacquiao ang mga nasabing mandirigma).

Hindi maaring ituring na "drained and dehydrated" si Cotto tulad ng akusasyon ng marami kay De La Hoya at Hatton.

May puntos man ang isyung ito hinggil sa kondisyon ni Golden Boy nang labanan niya si Pacquiao, hindi dapat kalimutan na bahagi pa rin si De La Hoya – at si Hatton – sa kinikilalang hanay ng elite fighters.

Sa parehong laban, ang babala pa nga ng marami ay baka malagay pa sa peligro ang buhay ni Pacquiao. Maling mali.

3. Tama ba ang sabi ng ilan na hindi pa rin talaga nasusubukan si Pacquiao?

Mali. Si David Diaz, may power pero walang bilis.

Si Cotto, parehong mayroon. Dinaig lang talaga siya ng mas mahusay na boksingero. Ito rin mismo ang sinabi ni Cotto.
Tunay na welterweight si Cotto. Siya'y top rank na boksingero at kinikilalang isa sa pinakamalakas sa kanyang dibisyon. Dating kampeon si Cotto at si Antonio Margarito lang ang talagang nagpaluhod sa kanya. Pinatunayan ni Pacquiao sa kanyang laban kay Cotto na hindi lamang niya binitbit ang kanyang bilis at lakas kahit na siya'y umakyat ng timbang.

Pinakita rin ni Pacquiao na kaya niyang indahin ang mga suntok mula sa isang tunay na welterweight. Tinamaan si Pacquiao ng maraming kakila-kilabot na jab, right uppercut, at left hook mula kay Cotto. Naramdaman ni Pacquiao ang bigat ng kamao ni Cotto. Ngunit ilang ulit mang pumilantik ang ulo ni Pacman at ilang beses mang nasapol ang kanyang tadyang, hindi nanghina ang tuhod ni Pacquiao, hindi siya nahilo o gumewang-gewang.

Kung may matinding epekto ang mga suntok ni Cotto, ganap na babagal ang footwork at bilis at dami ng kombinasyon ng kanyang kalaban. Hindi ito nangyari. Halos kalahati nga ang tumamang suntok ni Pacquiao –336 – kumpara sa 172 ni Cotto.

Napakalaki na inunlad ni Pacquiao magmula ng agawin niya ang junior featherweight title Lehlohonolo Ledwaba noong 2001. Hindi na siya ang one-dimensional na boksingero noong una niyang hinarap si Morales noong 2005. Dati ang tangi niyang sandata ay ang kaniyang kaliwa – madaling basahin.

Tama ngang tawagin niyang master si Roach ngunit wasto ding isuot niya ang lahat ng papuri ngayon sa kanya dahil pinakita niya ring handa pa siyang matuto at sumunod sa gameplan. Lahat ng anggulo, parehong kamao, komplikadong footwork, tibay ng panga, kondisyon ng katawan, disiplina ng pag-iisip – ito ang dala ni Pacquiao ngayon sa kanyang mga laban.

Ang resulta – talagang talbog ang dekalidad na Cotto sa paraang napahanga pa ang lahat ng mga nakapanood sa laban.
Wika nga ni Tim Dahlberg ng Associated Press, "Pacquiao didn't merely beat a world-class fighter, but systematically dismantled him." [2]

Ano pa man ang maaring resulta ng salpukan nila ni Floyd Mayweather, Jr. – kung mangyari man (ang unang pustahan ay kung papayag si Mayweather) – wala nang kailangan patunayan si Pacquiao. Malamang na kilalanin siyang pinakamahusay na boksingero sa kanyang henerasyon.

4. Dapat na bang itala si Pacquiao kasama ng Top Fifteen Fighters of all Time?

Pasensya na mga kapatid, pero hindi. Para sa akin, lampas na ni Pacquiao ang mga katulad nina Alexis Arguello, Salvador Sanchez, Roy Jones Jr. at, oo, pati na sina Julio Cesar Chavez at Bernard Hopkins. Pero sa Top Fifteen, masyado pang maaga.

Kung Pinoy ang iyong tatanungin, malamang walang kurap siyang sisigaw na "Dapat lang!" Kung ikaw ang nagtanong, tungkulin mong alamin ang pinanghahawakang batayan ng iyong tinanong.

Ang bansag na "All-time great" ay hindi basta-basta. Hindi ito pinapataw sa paborito ng panahon, maging sa napupusuan ng isang buong henerasyon. Huwag tayong magmadali na isalaksak si Pacquiao sa listahan ng Fifteen Greatest Fighters of All Time kung hindi natin kabisado ang nagniningning na kasaysayan ng boksing.

Pagkalipas na pagkalipas ng panalo ni Pacquiao kay Cotto, sinubukan kong agad na ilista ang para sa akin ay labinlimang pinakamahusay na mandirigma sa kasaysayan ng boksing.

Maliwanag na hindi ako handang magbawas ng kahit na isa – na mapalitan ni Pacquiao ang sino man sa aking listahan. Eto sila (pero hindi batay sa ranggo o weight class):

1. Sugar Ray Robinson
2. Joe Louis
3. Muhammad Ali
4. Thomas Hearns
5. Roberto Duran
6. Joe Frazier
7. Jack Johnson
8. Jack Dempsey
9. Rocky Marciano
10. Henry Armstrong
11. Pernell Whitaker
12. Sugar Ray Leonard
13. Larry Holmes
14. Sonny Liston
15. Marvin Hagler

Hindi ko makuhang maglaglag sa listahang ito ng kahit na isa. Tulad ng nasulat ko, hindi basta-basta ang malagay sa listahang ito. Kung hindi mo pa napapanood ang mga laban ng mga mandirigma sa listahang ito, hanapin mo ang kanilang mga laban. Panoorin mo.

Ang record nila magbibigay ng katiting na katibayan kung bakit sila hinirang na pinakamahusay.

Si Sugar Ray Robinson – 85-0 bilang amateur (wagi sa 69, at 40 nito first round KO). Ang pro record ni Robinson, 128-1-2 kabilang ang 84 KO.

Si Duran, 119 ang propesyonal na laban; 103 ang panalo, 70 ang KO.

Si Hearns, 155-8 ang amateur na laban, at 67 ang laban bilang pro (61 KO).

Si Hagler, 62-3-2 (52 KO).

Kung may pag-iisipan man ako – kung pepwersahin ako – titimbangin kong tanggalin si Leonard at si Sweet Pea Whitaker. Pero malamang hindi ko sila tatanggalin. Kung sasabihan akong "Basta! Pumili ka kahit isa!", si Leonard ang ilalaglag ko, pero dahil lamang pinilit ako.

Pag tinalo niya si Mayweather Jr. sa 2010, posibleng may dalawa o tatlong bababa sa aking listahan at tiyak na papasok si Pacquiao – posibleng derecho sa loob pa ng Top Ten, depende sa uri ng kanyang pagkapanalo.

Hindi pa tapos ang listahan ng mga kailangang harapin ni Pacquiao bago siya hirangin ng kasaysayan na maging walang kaduda-dudang bahagi ng Top Fifteen All-Time Greats.

Nandiyan pa rin ang mas mapanganib na Shane Mosley. Nakaharang pa rin si Mayweather Jr. sa pintuan (wala si Mayweather sa aking Top Twenty), Paul Williams at Edwin Valero.

Para makapasok ka sa Unang Labinlima, napakaraming dahilan na kailangang itimbang – oo, kasama na dito ang pagkakapanalo ni Pacman ng pitong titulo sa pitong magkakaibang weight class, pero isa lamang ito sa maraming dahilan.

Sa susunod na ulat, talakayin natin si Pacquiao at si Gabriel "Flash" Elorde, ang pampulitikang ambisyon ni Pacman at ang komentaristang si Trinidad (isa sa mga paborito ko ngayon ngunit masyadong marami pa rin ang karaniwang sablay).

Hinggil sa UFC 105, narito ang aking mga pagtingin:

Una: Maliwanag pa sa sikat ng araw na kapag nagsabay ang top rank na laban ng UFC at boksing, talagang musmos pa ang koponang MMA.

Saksakan man ng dami ng problema ng professional boxing, iba pa rin ang hatak nito kumpara sa UFC. Iba ang lalim na pinaghuhugutan ng boksing pagdating sa drama ng labanan.

Ikalawa: Kontrobersyal uli ang hatol ng hurado sa salpukan ni Couture at Vera, tulad ng nakaraang labanang Machida-Rua.

Nakaiwas si Couture sa unang tatlong sunod-sunod na pagkatalo sa kanyang career –29-28 ang score ng lahat ng huwes sa kanilang laban –ngunit marami uli ang hindi sumang-ayon sa resulta ng desisyon, sa pangunguna ng komentaristang si Joe Rogan ng UFC (Ani Rogan, "We have a real problem with judging in MMA.").

Posibleng nagwagi talaga si Couture, pero tila dapat pabor kay Vera ang naging desisyon.

Sang-ayon ka man o hindi sa naging hatol ng hurado ng Couture-Vera, ang mga hindi maipagkakaila ay:

Sa edad 46, pinakita muli ni Couture kung bakit may karapatan siyang hamonin ang lahat ng pinakamahusay sa kanyang dibisyon. Pero bilang na bilang na ang mga araw ng The Natural. Sa katunayan, bumaba na ng husto ang kalidad ni Couture. Bumagal na ang reflexes niya at kitang kita na mas mabilis na siyang tinatablan ng mga hataw ng kanyang mga kalaban.

Hindi si Couture ang tunay na kaaway ni Vera. Si Vera ang talagang kalaban ni Vera – sarili niya. Napamalas man ni Vera ang kanyang patuloy na humuhusay na talento, kwestiyonable pa rin ang tibay ng kanyang mentalidad at ang kanyang physical conditioning.

Pinakita uli sa labang ito na mahina pa rin ang cardio ni Vera. Naubusan na naman ng gasolina si Vera, tulad ng nangyari sa huling niyang apat o limang laban. May ilang pagkakataon si Vera para mailigpit si Couture, pero kinulang siya uli sa bodega (at sa stratehiya)

Hindi intelihente ang pag-execute ni Vera sa kanyang stratehiya. Hindi niya na-impose ang kanyang sarili kay Couture at kinulang siya sa agresyon sa mga pagkakataong hindi niya dapat nilubayan ang kanyang kalaban.

Nahirapan si Couture kay Vera, hindi ito maipagkakaila. Ngunit pag dating sa clinch, hindi si Vera ang dominante, kahit na sa huling round sa wakas na-takedown din niya si Couture.

Asintado ang mga sipa ni Vera pero sa maraming pagkakataon, si Couture pa rin ang tila nagko-kontrol sa kanilang laban, mula sa positioning hanggang sa kung hanggang kailan tatagal ang stand-up. Maaring sabihin na nakarami ng hataw na tumama si Vera, pero tila malaki ang naging pagtimbang ng mga huwes sa kakayahang i-kontrol ang laban.

Kung nais ni Vera na mabigyan ng pagkakataon na makaharap ang may hawak ng titulo ng light heavyweight, hindi pwedeng talento lang ang kanyang bitbit sa laban. Higit pang agresyon (iba ang mentalidad ni Vera nang ma-TKO niya noong 2006 si Frank Mir sa round one), mental preparation at smart execution ng fight strategy – ito ang mga susi para ganap na mapasok ni Vera ang larangan ng top rank fighting sa UFC light heavyweight.

Bata pa siya – wag lang siya mawalan ng puso – malayo pa ang kanyang mararating.

Nasabi ko na dati at uulitin ko uli – hanggang angas at lakas o talento lang ang bitbit ng karamihan sa mga laban sa UFC, hindi makakaengganyo ang mga labanang MMA.

Tingnan mo ang naging salpukan ni Dan Hardy at Mike Swick. (Panalo si Hardy.)

Tuwing mayayanig ni Hardy si Swick, hahayaan niyang siya'y ma-clinch at pipilitin niyang i-takedown ang kanyang kalaban imbis na itulak palayo nang patuloy niyang paulanan ng suntok at tadyak ang hilo niyang katunggali. Ang labo, dong.

-------
[1] Vivek Wallace, "Vivek Wallace speaks on Pacquiao, Cotto, Mayweather, and Margarito's potential innocence," EastSideBoxing.com, 19 November 2009.

[2] Pacquiao takes on Las Vegas," Associated Press, 16 November 2009.

For Muatar and Parviz

Dushanbe, Tajikistan - Jiri Barta opens the day with Prelude, Suite No.1 in G Major from Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.

The Czech virtuoso plays the piece with slow, signature vigor, his bow gliding across and tapping the strings with a little more gravity, hewing close to the sound of Azerbaijan's master, Mtislav Rostropovich, but producing a different, thrumming cadence.

Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Turtles have been the favored companions throughout the trip but today Bach and Barta keep the peace.

As the sun rises in Dushanbe, the rays reach past the thick mist and the roof of the world becomes softer as the light penetrates the dense white of the sky.

There is a chill despite the strong sunlight washing over the city and casting long prisms of shadow.

An apple sits on the window sill and from a distance, wood-fired smoke is rising from behind a row of tenements.

Trees surrounding the neighborhood are rustling with an early breeze and the muscular, speckled dog from the abandoned apartment across the street is chasing sparrows again.

The air this morning is like mist fading from a mirror as Rudaki Prospekt comes to life and pedestrians begin to fill Bukhara Ulitsa, where a bust of the Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, has been installed.

Gandhi now looks intently at everything and nothing, a stern and gentle rendering of the great man.

In the confluence of the majestic Varsob river and the tributary Kofarnihon, Dushanbe is a city of quiet elegance, its color defined largely by the resplendent dress of its women reflected occasionally by grand mosaics dappling city structures.

It is a walkable city, a place for strolling.

Massive oaks line the sidewalks of its wide boulevards – a promenade suited to the sauntering of its residents.
Tea is an all-day mode of drink here, which complements the measured pace of the city's denizens. At night, there is Shohona vodka, the finest of its kind the world.

This is the land of shish and salads, and its offering is simplicity.

Dishes consist of enormous round loaves of flat bread, uncooked whole cucumbers and tomatoes, dill and great sprigs of basil, together with titanic amounts of grilled meats served on heavy, steel skewers.

You may get an occasional trout or chicken in Dushanbe, especially in the city's outskirts in Lazat, where fire is a friend.

But as local consumer tribune Bakhadur Kabibov remarked simply, his Macedonian eyes glancing over locally brewed Simsim beer, “We consider chicken and fish as vegetables. Here you order meat – real meat – and that's what you get. That's the way it is.”

Devastated by a five-year civil war after gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Tajikistan “rose from the ashes... with an elected coalition government that for the first time in Central Asia accommodated both religious and secular parties.”

It was once considered by some as “a model” that offered “domestic peace and international investment opportunities.”

Today, the potential of the country remains huge, owed largely to the storied culture and stoic resilience of its people.

But Tajikistan remains beset by economic crises.

For now, Tajikistan's future is under the sway of the usual maldevelopment suspects, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, with their debt-inducing programs and excess of reconstruction projects that are in various states of neglect or distress and which have served largely to line the pockets of the global consultancy industry. [1]

Though markedly less nasty compared to the appalling US-backed regime ruling Uzbekistan, the veil of totalitarianism and political uncertainty has yet to lift from the shoulders of the storied Tajik people, descendants of the ancient Persian Empire.

Increasing drug trade from Afghanistan is undermining the nation's integrity. (Undocumented Filipinos used as drug mules are languishing in Tajikistan jails.)

The government has yet to secure the country's long-term interests involving transboundary water resources while intensifying poverty and corruption is steadily sapping the will of even the hardiest Tajik.

And yet, as the eminent journalist Ahmed Rashid noted, “[i]n many ways Tajikistan is [still] the key to peace and stability in Central Asia – something the international community must recognize, and soon.”

The fledgling nation of seven million was once the last region in Central Asia to come under Russia's province of Turkestan in the nineteenth century.

Later, in the 1920s, arbitrary boundaries were drawn by Stalin, echoing the crisscrossing colonialist enterprise imposed by European powers on the Middle East.

Republics that “had little geographical or ethnic rationale” were created and the Tajik cultural centers of Bukhara and Samarkand were handed over to Uzbekistan. [2]

The Persian word for Monday – the day visitors trooped to the marketplace village to buy produce – Dushanbe became the capital around 1925.

It was renamed Stalinabad in 1929 but, riding the crest of Kruschev's de-Stalinization drive, reverted to its original name in 1961.

Tajikistan shares a 650-mile border with Afghanistan, including "the thin wedge of Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor" which separates the country from northern Pakistan. [3]

Only six miles wide in some parts, the passage was defined "by Russia and Great Britain in the nineteenth century to ensure that the British and Russian empires were not contiguous." [4]

Around 30 percent of Tajikistan's eastern province of Gorno-Badakshan, which has large gold and mineral deposits, "is claimed by Beijing." [5] A rugged 265 miles constitutes the border between the Tajik nation and China's Xinjiang Province.

Staring in awe at the Varsob valley's mountains, a poem came to me in a rush:

“Basic equations. / Human frailty. / Weaknesses abound. / Fights, debates / Quarrels over minutiae, / Disagreement over great / And mundane things. / Large victories, or defeat / All are same. / Look at the rockface of Tajikistan, / Mighty mountain, / Impregnable, still, solid. / Watching. / The granite stoic is wiser / Because it is patient. / Conversing with wind and sun / the failure of people / And the triumphs of women and men / Are smaller than the tiny pebble. / Humans may linger. Or may not. / But the earth will live on." [6]

Red Constantino is a writer and painter based in Quezon City. Constantino is the author of The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire (CFNS, 2006). He can be reached via his blog site http://redconstantino.blogspot.com

---
[1] Maya Eralieva, "The saga of ADB's impacts on the lives of Tajikistan," NGO Forum on the ADB website, 22 June 2009.
[2] Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (Yale Nota Bene Book, 2003)
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] "Basic equations." By the author, written in Varsob Valley, Tajikistan, 14 October 2009.

Napaaga. Ako mismo nagulat. Pero gaya ng inaasahan, pag-aaralan ng mga mandirigmang matatalino at nakikinig sa kanilang mga trainer si Lyoto "Dragon" Machida, ang bagong kampyon sa light heavyweight ng UFC.

Noong isang linggo, nagharap si Machida at si Mauricio "Shogun" Rua sa unang title defense ni Dragon. Parehong Brazilian, magkaibang istilo, at parehong kinatatakutan.

Unanimous ang decision – panalo si Machida. Pero hanggang ngayon, pinagtatalunan pa rin ang desisyon ng hurado.

Marami ang naniniwala na si Rua ang nagwagi.

Marami rin ang nagsasabi na matino ang pagtitimbang ng mga huwes noong gabing iyon. Pero lahat nagsasabi na kinaharap ni Machida ang pinakamatinding pagsubok ng kanyang career.

Nasaktan sya (nag-mistulang galapong ang kanyang mga hita) at pumutok ang labi niya. Sa unang pagkakataon sa UFC, natalo siya ng dalawang round. (Bago niya hinarap si Rua, ni isang round hindi pa siya natatalo; di pa din siya tinatamaan ng matindi ng sinumang kinalaban niya.)

Si Machida ang bagong darling ng marami sa mga tagahanga ng UFC, ang pinakasikat na koponan ngayon ng mixed martial arts o MMA.

Kilala si Machida sa dala niyang talas ng isip, disiplina sa pakikidigma at sa kanyang istilong Shotokan Karate na pinamana sa kanyang ng kanyang tatay. Matindi din ang reputasyon ng asintadong mga hataw ni Machida at ang natatangi niyang kakayahan na makaiwas sa mga suntok o sipa ng mga kalaban.

Marami ang umaasa na madali niyang tatalunin si Shogun.

Napakarami nga ang nagpahayag- kasama na mga manunulat at mga propesyonal na mandirigma – kung anong round patutulugin ni Dragon si Shogun.

Bakit nga naman hindi ganoon ang magiging konklusyon nila? Head-hunting – ito ang kasaysayan ng halos lahat ng laban ni Shogun.

Kilala mang mandirigma sa MMA si Shogun, pabor lagi kay Dragon ang mga manlalabang 'brawler.'

Mahirap makalimutan ang pagdispatsa ni Machida sa dating kampyong si Rashad Evans at sa sikat ding si Thiago Silva.

Ngunit unang round pa lang, maliwanag na seryosong pinaghandaan ni Rua si Machida.

At si Machida ang nagulat. Siyensya laban sa siyensya. Estetika laban sa estetika.

Ang gara ng kanilang paghaharap.

Sa isang banda, ang asta ng isang karate master, na parang nagwawasiwas ng balaraw at nagpapakawala ng pana, derecho ang likod ngunit may kembot ang baywang kung saan bubulalas ang tadyak, hinihintay magbigay ng katiting na puwang ang kalaban.

Sa kabilang panig naman, ang kiling ni Rua sa classical Muay Thai: marahang umaabante sa pamamagitan ng magaan na kaliwang binti – dumadapo-dapo ang kaliwang paa sa canvas ng Octagon at tila sinusukat ng tuhod ang katawan ng kalaban.

Naka-angat ang nakakuyom na kanang kamao sa tabi ng tila pasuray-suray na ulo habang bukas-sara ang palad ng kaliwa na pumipitik-pitik.

Dalawang hakbang lagi si Shogun.

Unang banat, pero hinihintay niya ang inaasahang counter ni Machida, at tuwing pinakakawalan ni Dragon ang kanyang kaliwang suntok o sipa, aatras ng bahagya si Shogun sabay tadyak sa tadyang. Sapol.

Tulad ng dati, tumatama si Machida. Malakas. Matindi. Aabot sa panga o pisngi ni Rua. Pero matibay si Shogun.

Iniinda-inuunat pa nga ang braso na parang eroplano para ipakitang walang epekto ang tama sa kanya. Sabay porma uli. Naghihintay. Nanlalanse.

Inaakit si Machida na lumusong at mag-commit ng panibagong opensiba o counter. Hindi makita noong gabing iyon ang Shogun na nakilala sa bara-barang banat, na laging nanggigigil na patulugin ang kalaban.

Binasa ni Rua ng husto si Machida at hustong husto rin ang game plan na hinanda ng Team Shogun. Akala ko nga magiging iba ang hatol ng desisyon at malilipat ang titulo kay Rua.

Hindi maliwanag sa akin kung sinong nanalo sa nasabing labanan, bagama’t bago nag-umpisa ang salpukan, naka-kiling ako kay Machida.

Kung hindi kampyon si Machida at hindi light heaveweight title ang kanilang pinaglalabanan, may posibilidad na ‘draw’ ang naging pasya ng hurado, kung hindi man si Rua ang kinilalang nagwagi. May posibilidad.

Ngunit bilog ang mundo at hindi nagkulang ang mga opisyal na nagbigay ng hatol sa labanan kahit na sari-saring kantyaw ang inabot nila pagkatapos ng laban.

Sa wari ko, napakahina ng opinyon ng ilan na lutong makaw ang naging desisyon ng hurado ng nasabing laban.

Lahat ng pasya ng mga huwes, 48-47 para kay Machida.

Ang mga huwes na si Nelson "Doc" Hamilton at Marco Rosales, binigay ang unang tatlong round sa kampyon habang round 2, 3, at 4 naman ang score na pabor kay Machida para sa huwes na si Cecil Peoples.

Daan-daan nang labanang MMA ang iniskoran ng tatlo at, di tulad ng mga manonood na abala sa chanting, sigawan at beer bilang mga spectator, bawat segundo nakatutok ang mga huwes sa labanan na tinitimbang nila batay sa pinanghahawakan nilang kaalaman ng Unified Rules ng MMA ng UFC.

Wika nga ng manunulat ng ESPN.com na si Frank McNell, hindi tamang pagdudahan ang kakayahan at integridad ng mga nasabing huwes.

Ang desisyon nila ay batay sa napanood nila mula sa pinakamagandang silya sa buong Staples Center sa Los Angeles, US. [1]

Ang tanong pa nga ni Josh Gross ng kilalang pahayagang Sports Illustrated, baka naman ang malawakang reaksyon ng mga nakapanood ng labanang Machida-Rua ay dahil mababa ang expectation nila, na lalampasuhin ni Dragon si Shogun. [2]

Sinubukan ni Gross na panoorin uli ang laban ng nakapatay ang audio – para hindi madala ng mga hiyawan ng mga nasa Staples center at ang mga opinyon ng mga commentator na si Mike Goldberg at si Joe Rogan.

Ang hatol niya – posibleng nanalo si Rua, at posible ding panalo talaga si Machida, pero malinaw na hindi pwedeng sabihin na lutong makaw ang naging desisyon nina Hamilton, Rosales, at Peoples.

Ayon kay Kevin Iole ng Yahoo! Sports, ang dapat pa ngang sisihin ay ang Team Rua, na nagpayo kay Shogun – sa baway round – na nananalo siya. [3]

Bunga nito, labis na nag-ingat si Rua, at tinimpi ang kanyang agresyon. Si Rua na mismo ang nagsabi na nag-ingat na siya sa huling round dahil akala niya na nananalo na siya.

Kung iginiit ng kanyang kampo na kulang pa ang kanyang nagawa sa huling dalawang round, sa tingin ko kaya niyang agawin ng walang duda ang korona ni Machida.

Tiyak na binasag ni Shogun ang "unbeatable" na imahen ni Dragon sa kanilang unang laban. Nagkaisa na sila, na may basbas ng UFC, na magkakaroon ng rematch.

Sa wakas, may drama na rin ang UFC.

May maaasahang labanan na may tunay na paghahanda at na may sapat na atensyon sa stratehiya.

Grabe ang paghanga ko kay Shogun.

Dapat nang kalimutan ang unang salpukan nila. Bagong laban ang Machida-Rua II, at tiyak na aabangan ko ang kanilang muling pagharap.

Pero Pacquiao-Cotto muna. Kung tatanggalin ang watawat ng mga bansa, kanino kayo at bakit?

------
[1] Frank McNell, "Machida-Rua called as it was seen," Espn.com, 28 October 2009.
[2] Josh Gross, "Like most great fights, Machida-Rua will be ongoing story," SportsIllustrated.CNN.com, 26 October 2009.
[3] Kevin Iole, "'Shogun' has no one to blame but himself," YahooSports, 25 October 2009. http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=ki-machidarua102509&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Here we are.

The morning after.

When the plane finally touched asphalt I could call home.

Kamuning in the heart and also beneath my feet.

Content canine Emil is sleeping on my left, at peace with the slow day in the corner where he fought and defeated the ugly things that once attempted to impose their space in our house.

In front of us, the bougainvillea planted years ago in the street.

The plant is stretching out, with multiple trunks stemming from a single base, thorned stems shooting upwards, towards the sun, merging with the crown of the old chesa.

From above, the woody vine cascades with a different shade of green and shy bracts of magenta flowers, enjoying, on occasion, the company of the deep-yellow fruit of the evergreen tree spelled tiessa or called canistel elsewhere.

A breeze strums the air and momentarily parts the leaves, allowing connection briefly with the sky.

The chesa is a native of Central America. The thorny bougainvillea sprang originally from Brazil. Emil is of multiple breeds. And I am Filipino, a child of the world.

There is a simplicity here that commands the silence of the morning. An inhabitable awe, as Kingsolver once wrote, that absorbs the aches of troubled times.

I was not here when the great flood brought by typhoon Ketsana came to pass. When a month's amount of rainfall fell in a matter of hours and transformed Manila into a lake – a land that became a body of water surrounded by water.

I was with colleagues in Bangkok, monitoring, of all things, the appalling, plodding pace of the global climate negotiations.

From Thailand's ancient capital we followed the hurricane's path till it hit Vietnam even as we searched frantically for electronic signs of safety – a texted word, a missed call – anything about family and friends in the submerged Philippine metropolis. [1]

And we waited and waited.

Our faces remained stolid, because we knew the week ahead would be long and difficult. But for a time we did not breathe the same way.

In the privacy of quiet corners some wept, when news began to filter in about entire neighborhoods washed away, and also when the first glimmers arrived indicating that kin and colleagues were alive, though not entirely out of harm's way.

Strange days we live in.

It's not as if the Philippines is new to cyclone-induced disasters. What makes things different now is the rate at which consequences of human idiocy – large-scale mining, deforestation, the construction of dwellings along riverbanks, to name some – is fusing with climate folly with deadly frequency and force.

What makes things unsettling – especially to those who for years have tracked the impacts of warming temperatures – is the promise that in the absence of leadership extreme weather events, including extreme precipitation, will soon become the norm.

Yet you would not be wrong in thinking negotiating members of the UN in Bangkok were discussing instead the alignment of Mars with Saturn and its effect on paint peeling from its halls.

"We talked about whether we are trying to build townhouses or a tower and about two elephants and how one would react if her elephant died," said one government delegate to another in the corridors of the UN's Ratchadamnoen office. [2] "We also discussed mixing all the ingredients together so they are cooked before Copenhagen," where the penultimate international concurrence – or collapse – is expected.

An indignant Filipina in Thailand representing a sector already reeling from climate inaction – rural women – was scientifically more precise than Stephen Hawking in her response.

"The only thing more insane than the weather," said Elvie Baladad, "are the officials negotiating our future inside the UN building."

And of course she's right.

Perhaps it really is as a delegate was said to have remarked in Bangkok. That in the long, directionless quibble on negotiating text and commitments, the UN-assembled parley on global warming may be writing the longest suicide note in recorded history.

The target to remain within safe boundaries prescribed by science is well-known – an agreed world treaty strong enough to bring carbon dioxide levels down to 350 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. [3]

Scientists have told us that we are already above the safe zone – at 390ppm – "and that unless we are able to rapidly return to 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt." [4]

The elements that such an agreement needs is no secret – an aggregate reduction in emissions at least 40 percent among industrialized countries by the year 2020, along with the transfer of resources registering no less than $100 billion a year to finance the rapidly growing adaptation needs of peoples most vulnerable to climatic impacts. Not as loans but as reparations, because the impoverished did not create this crisis.

But no.

The likes of the US, Canada, and Japan – their officials would rather puff up their chests and talk of urgent climate action (but only if China and India act likewise).

Never mind if the yearly consumption of citizens from those two most populous countries are less by several magnitudes compared to what an average American or Japanese consumes.

And the profligate elites of developing countries – including the ugly thugs and morons ruling the Philippines today – they echo the false chivalry, bravely demanding emissions reductions from rich nations based on the doctrine of "common but differentiated responsibilities."

But they will not apply the same at home.

Where now are all the great powers?

Where now, all ye of self-proclaimed towering nobilities?

Wisdom is a failed crop, and valor is now more scarce than green rice fields during El Niño.

Red Constantino is the author of The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire (CFNS, 2006). He is based in Quezon City and can be reached through his blog site http://redconstantino.blogspot.com

NOTES:

[1] "Army deploys troops as Ketsana closes in," Bangkok Post, 30 September 2009.
[2] Earth Negotiations Bulletin, AWGs #4, Vol. 12, No. 431, 01 October 2009.
[3] See http://350.org
[4] Ibid.

Para kay Harley, Tambol, at Toktok

May mga bagay na hindi pwedeng ipagkaila.

Halimbawa:

Henyo si Bitoy.

Mas masarap pa rin ang fish ball kaysa squid ball.

Kung naghahanap ng malamig, Sarsi pa rin kahit may Coke, pero mas masarap pa rin ang gulaman kahit may Sarsi.

Kung naghahanap ng tinapang isda, tamban ang piliin.

Kung naghahanap ng matamis na pang-palaman, Lily's Coco Jam. Kung maalat na palaman ang hanap, Reno Liver Spread.

Kung puso sa basketbol ang hanap, si JV Yango ng Tanduay ang dapat una sa pila. Kung puso naman na may kasamang balya, si Onchie dela Cruz ang mangunguna.

Kung magtatapat ang salpukang UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) at boksing, pasensya na mga brad, hanggang hindi umuunlad ang kalidad ng mga manlalaban sa koponan ni Dana White, boksing pa rin.

Eto naman kasi ang problema.

Maliban sa iilang mandirigma ng mixed martial arts o MMA na kumpleto ang arsenal at tunay na may dalang bago sa bakbakan – hindi lang angas, tapang ng apog o lakas ng dagok – nakakatamad panoorin ang karamihan ng mga laban. Para bang puros mixed martial lang pero walang arts. At kulang sa siyensa.

Di naman sa minamaliit ko ang mga manlalaban sa MMA.

Nasa Pride FC pa lang lumalaban ang kasalukuyang UFC light heavyweight champion na si Lyoto Machida, sinusundan ko na ang kanyang husay.

Ganun din ang kasalukuyang UFC middleweight champion na si Anderson "Spider" Silva.

Nagkataon lang na pareho silang tubong Brazil pero wala itong kinalaman kung bakit sila lang sa ngayon ang dapat na may hatak para sa akin. (Si Hoyce Gracie at ang mas bagong si Thiago Alves, parehong Brazilian din, ngunit ni minsan hindi ko inabangan o hinanap ang mga laban nila.)

Eh bakit kamo, pano yung ibang kilalang fighter ng UFC?

Ganun din.

Si Rampage Jackson, Wanderlei Silva, ang patawang si Rashad Evans, oo pati si Chuck Liddell – para bang ang gusto lang sapakan. Tira-pikit – hampas, dagok, hagis, upak.

Hayaan mo na kung malamutak ang nguso nila o mapisak ang kanilang ilong o pumutok sa sampung lugar ang kanilang noo. Sige lang basta maka-sapak. Unahan. Baka maka-tsamba. Hataw lang ng hataw. Pag tinamaan nila kalaban, tulog. Pag tinamaan sila ng kalaban, tulog din.

May chess game ang lahat ng laban.

Hindi lang determinasyon o ngitngit o tatag ng loob. Kailangan ng tamang stratehiya. Disiplina ng isip. Pag wala ang mga ito, ayun na nga. Umbagan lang. Nakokornihan ako.

Nauunawaan ko naman na hitik sa stratehiya ang mga gumagamit talaga ng ground game at grappling, pero ito wala akong gana na panoorin ang mga nagyayakapan nang lampas sa ilang minuto. Panahon pa nina Ken Shamrock at Tito Ortiz sa UFC, di ako mahila-hila ng nakikita ko.

Sinusubaybayan ko naman panaka-naka ang MMA – paminsan-minsan may bagong competitor na masarap panoorin dahil sa bitbit nilang natatanging abilidad, pero malimit na nililipat ko ang channel.

Ito naman ang dahilan kung bakit mas nakakaganang panoorin ang mga MMA na laban kung ang mga katulad ni Lyoto Machida ang nasa match-up. Kasi hindi dos por dos na pang rambol ang dalang teknik ng mga katulad niya (iilan lang), kundi patalim, tiempo, balanse at pag-asinta.

Ganun din si Anderson Silva.

Tiyak isang araw, mabubuwal din ang dalawang ito, kung hindi sila maunang mag-retiro. Pero sa ngayon, nasa kanila ang talento, siyensa at disiplina.

Nung nagkasabay ang salpukan ng UFC 103 sa Balls channel at top-rank boksing sa Dos nung isang Linggo, nagpasya ako na silipin ang labanang MMA.

Baka sakaling may maiba, kahit na ang pinagpipilian ko medyo malayo – si Rich "Ace" Franklin laban kay Vitor Belfort para sa main event ng UFC.

Sa kabilang koponan naman, ang "Number One vs. Numero Uno" na sapakan ni Floyd Mayweather, Jr. at Juan Manuel Marquez.

Wala rin.

May inabutan nga akong ilang banggaan sa UFC pero ganoon din.

Hermes Franca laban kay Tyson Griffin; panalo si Griffin. Joss Koscheck versus Frank Trigg; panalo Koscheck. Junior Dos Santos laban kay Mirko Cro Cop; panalo Dos Santos.

Lahat iisa ang drama. Hataw, dakma, tadyak, sakmal, pero wala halos head movement, kokonti ang lateral movement, tapos parang maghihintay ng suntok na parang isang kilometro ang hugot ngunit parang kasing bagal din ng paghigop ng sabaw ang banat.

Sa main event – ganoon din ang kwento.

Wagi si Belfort; tulog ang mabagal na Franklin sa round one. Ang resulta, medyo katulad ng MMA na laban ni Spider Silva sa dating kampyon na si Forrest Griffin (talagang hindi pantay ang kalidad) maliban sa isang bagay: papanoorin mo talaga ang poise, talento, at pag-hihintay para sa tamang tiempo ni Silva.

Parang noong pinutok ni Machida ang lobo ni Evans – dama mo na ang pinapanood mo, cerebral style at aplikasyon ng Shotokan Karate (di lang Brazilian jiu jitsu).

Isang araw, pag naging mas popular ang UFC, tiyak na tataas ang bilang ng mga dekalidad na mandirigma nito. Pero sa ngayon, parang kulang pa. Nakakaaliw lang pero nakakabagot din.

Mabuti na lang inabutan ko pa ang laban sa boksing ng batikang featherweight champion mula sa Indonesia na si Chris John laban sa Mexicanong si Rocky Juarez.

Kamuntik nang mabuwal si John nang magpabaya siya't natamaan ng kaliwa ng Mexicano sa loob ng huling minuto ng Round 12.

Pero dahil iba ang husay ng kanyang boxing, wagi pa rin siya sa lahat ng score card ng mga hurado. Apat na pu't tatlo na ang panalo niya at wala pa ring natatalang talo ang Indones na boksingero.

Kung napanood mo din ang tinaguriang main event, naging saksi ka sa boxing clinic ng saksakan ng yabang ngunit ubod ng husay na si Mayweather. Bilis, depensa, balanse, talas, taktika, footwork, lakas. Nandoon lahat.

Nasa elite level man ang talento ni Marquez, mas malaki si Mayweather at pinakita ng gabing iyon na may ilang milya ang agwat ng kanilang kakayahan.

Minsan lang natumba si Marquez sa ikalawang round ngunit talagang hindi niya maabot ang kalidad ng dating kampyong si Mayweather, na nagbalik mula retirement bunga marahil ng pangangantyaw na di niya hinarap ang mahabang pila ng mga nakaabang na elite fighters tulad ni Miguel Cotto, Paul Williams at si Shane Mosley.

Matagal na ngang dapat nilabanan ni Mayweather si Mosely.

Patas ang kanilang timbang at matagal nang nasa tuktok ng weight class niya si Sugar Shane (na nagpatumba kay Antonio Margarito).

Pero mukhang patuloy na iiwasan siya ni Mayweather. Kaya ayun, wala pa ring respeto ang maraming beteranong boxing fan kay Mayweather.

Sa ngayon, tatlong bagay pa ang maliwanag na lamang ng UFC sa boksing:

1. Si Arianny Celeste.

2. Top quality sportscasting. (pero si Joe Rogan na lang, wag na isama si Mike Goldberg.)

3. Wala pa silang Ronnie Nathanielz na mang-pepeste sa lokal na audience.

Hanggang ngayon – sa dami-dami-dami-dami-dami ng mas mahusay at mas batang lokal na commentator, bakit si Nathanielz pa rin ang pinipili?

Ano ba naman.

Nagsusumikap nang mag-salita ng Filipino si Nathanielz ngayon pero wala, comedy.

Sa tagal-tagal nya sa bansang ito (nag-pugay na siya sa lahat ng kanyang Your Excellencies mula kay Marcos, Cory, Ramos, Estrada at Arroyo) mas mahusay pa yata mag-Bisaya o mag-Tagalog si Don King kumpara sa kanya.

Si Dyan Castillejos ang sportscaster na katambal ni Nathanielz nung labanang Mayweather-Marquez. Sana mag-pursigi sya a mag-patuloy dahil malinaw na malalim ang interes niya sa sports at may kakayahan siya.

Dapat din mas dumami talaga ang mga babaeng mamamahayag sa sports.

Pero pakiramdam ko lang, mauuwi ako sa pang-hihinayang kung walang kahandaan si Castillejos na paunlarin ang kanyang obra.

Boksing po kasi ang laban nung gabing nag-tambal sila ni Nathanielz. Boksing. Siyensya. Aesthetics. Walang lugar sa boksing commentary ang "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my god, oh my gosh!”

For Avilash

Animesh the Navigator triggered the thirst.

The first stop was in Old Delhi, the walled capital of the Mughal dynasty whose foundations were laid down in 1639 under the rule of Shah Jahan, son of the emperor Jahangir and father to the emperor Aurangzeb and the great Taj Mahal.

If India had pores, a stream of sweat would flow through this old walled city, home to the Chandni Chowk – once a moonlit bazaar and corridor to nobles in search of late night merrymaking.

In its days of glory, Old Delhi was the destination of calligraphers, artists, dancers, and artisans.

Today, grandeur remains as architecture – across the road from the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, which can hold up to twenty thousand worshippers – and as ghosts crisscrossing countless lanes and alleys.

Arriving at deep dusk, Saroj the Scribe is the first to step out of the rickshaw as the call to prayer is issued by the minarets.

Animesh and I follow.

Faithful legions, many in pristine white, conclude their ablutions and slowly clamber up the steps of the northeast gate of the immense house of worship. From the street, offal and the soot of asphalt and engines pave the footfall of hundreds of pedestrians, vendors, beggars and businessmen hawking their status and wares.

Everything is spilling color, flavor and sound, like a romance of chaos. Yet all that is offered is a sliver.

This is India. Exceptionally real yet intangible. Elusive and intoxicating.

The night we plunged into the universe of passages, we were heat-seeking missiles.

The aim was the dhaba called Karim's, a simple eatery of great fame which holds one of the secrets of the old city. It is a key to Mughlai cuisine with a culinary lineage that goes back centuries.

The restaurant is a complex composed of four or five dining rooms and an open air kitchen and a square where an occasional motorcycle would weave and honk its way through as uniformed servers carry "gastronomic delights that once tickled the palates of a generation of Mughal emperors."

A step inside Karim's is a stroll inside the house of noise; we are everywhere and we are home.

To our left is an unfurled Indian flag under which a seated man clothed in regal Islamic tunic directs ladles and great silver pots filled with stew.

There is an open oven, where various kinds of bread are baked. Crouched men stick and retrieve unleavened chapatis and bright naan from the hot tandoor.

To our right, a decadent fragrance of spices and roasting meat billows out of a long charcoal-filled clay trough. Sparks fly as the griller pokes and caresses angry embers. Behind him, a gang of cooks prepare shaped and skewered meat.

Haji Karimuddin, the son of Haji Noorimudin who was chef to Bahadur Shah Zafar at the summit of the British Raj, opened Karim's in 1913.

Today it is run by Karimuddin's son Haji Zahuruddin. Their bloodline extends back hundreds of years to the chefs who conjured feasts in the courts of Mughal emperors till the dynasty was toppled by the British in 1857.

Here in Karim's, grilled mutton burra is unlike any in the world.

Here, seekh kabab is unrivaled – all the variations in the Middle East cannot compare.

Here, the simple weds perfectly with the profligate: a salad of raw onions and lemon with freshkly baked bread sprinkled with cumin seeds goes well with alo gosht – a great preparatory potato stew – and khadai gosht – an incredibly fragrant, promiscuously spiced mutton stew.

Here, only a kheer can conclude the searing experience: a small dessert of cold milk mixed with rice and pistachio nuts scooped with a tiny wooden spoon.

Two hours after the feast for three, the teeth of our six eyelids withdraw.

Movement is slurred. Things slow down. Hunger is sated and the evening is at an end.

We step outside – to the pavement where working people exhausted from a full day's work have begun to fill cots strewn along the sidewalks.

Old street lamps flood the road with yellow light and shadows. The time for sleep is near but the incredible din of human chatter has yet to subside.

This is India, where a single night might feel like an endowment of everything – a year packed in a day or a single inspired moment.

It fills the pockets of the mind, like a clutch of shiny stones that can be taken out any day – a reserve of mystery and joy for pondering and for lean times.

-------
1"Mubarak Ali, "Shahjahanabad before 1857," The Dawn, 17 August 2008.
2 Priyanka Jayashankar, "Karim's kebabs," The Hindu, 20 June 2008.
3 Ibid.
4 Adapted from a passage by Merlinda Bobis, from her novel Banana Heart Summer.

New Delhi - There was a downpour when the plane touched down in Delhi the night before India's big day.

A week ago a friend from Bangalore had asked for a bit of the rain that he said Manila seemed to have too much of. And indeed the rains came with the plane.

Night showers seeded puddles across the tarmac and the wheels of cargo vehicles hissed at the wet concrete. For the next three days, intermittent rainfall persisted, and then the heat returned to seize the day.

No one expected precipitation and the functionaries and politicians who had gathered at the historic Red Fort in Delhi to mark India's Independence Day were left drenched as the annual ceremonies rolled out under the watch of 15,000 security personnel.

The ceremony grounds were secure from the land and the air but the clouds had their way.

As temperatures plunged briefly in the great city, the Independence Day speech delivered by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew high due to its weightlessness, alongside kites tied to strings coated with metallic powder (the better to cut loose rival kites).

People welcomed the cool spell with sighs of relief, having waited so long for the monsoon to arrive. But many received it with hidden disquiet. Because lower temperatures were not expected to last.

Two weeks previously, the mercury had climbed to 41 degrees Celsius. [i]

Rain deficits registered 85 percent in areas such as east Rajasthan as total foodgrain sowing went down by 11 percent. In states such as Uttar Pradesh, the decrease in paddy propagation plunged to 28 percent.[ii]

The dryness has made the seat of India's rule in Delhi anxious.

If rain does not pick up in the next 45 days, there may likely be a repeat of the 2002-03 period, when productivity sank to 18 percent across India. With the current drought, India is already looking at "a fall of 17 percent."[iii]

Frenzied digging of borewells has erupted throughout the drought-hit regions in a mad search for groundwater.

State governments are scrambling to save what little is left of the kharif crop – foodgrain planted during the monsoon period – while praying for a bit more moisture to stay in the soil for the winter season's planting.

There is, as the Times of India put it, a "drought of hope," particularly in hard hit Andhra Pradesh, a state heavily dependent on rain and where 21 farmer suicides were recorded just in the last 40 days.[iv]

In the new India, there are, of course, the Mittals and the Tatas – global corporate empires run by the tycoons of India – and officials like D. Subbarao, the Reserve Bank of India's governor, whose words deserve elevation to the global pantheon of absurdities.

Responding to the success of India's measures to address the economic crisis, Subbarao recently said "Financial stability is like pornography. You can't define it but when you see it, you know it."[v]

But then there is the rest of the vast country, many represented by people like 55-year-old farmer Peddolla Nadipi Bhumana from the village of Donchanda, who hanged himself the other week, in the face of massive crop failure which had compounded with finality his inability to pay mounting debts.

Bhumana is now part of the roster of ruined farmers who took their own lives – 21 in the last 40 days; in the period 1997-2007, 182,936 recorded suicides, most of them cash crop tillers – as a result of India's increasing integration into the global economy.[vi]

On the evening of India's independence anniversary, thousands milled around a memorial surpassing the majesty of the Arc du Triomphe of Paris – India Gate – which was built to honor Indians martyred in the wars India fought, including its fight against the British.

The last struggle was the most just, in all senses of the word. Because had India paid a dear price for the rise to economic prominence of its erstwhile conqueror, the United Kingdom.

Today, it is the occasion for the pillage of India's coffers and ideals at the hands of its own officials, but this detail stands largely atop an interesting reality of the past.

As the writer Mike Davis noted recently, “If the history of British rule in India were to be considered into a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in India's per capita income from 1757 to 1947.”

In contrast, “in Britain, the per capita incomes rose 14 percent between 1700 to 1760, 34 percent between 1760 to 1820, and 100 percent between 1820 t 1870."[vii]

At the base of India Gate is a monumental flame kept alit for perpetuity.

Gautam Kumar Bandyopadhay, who still lights candles in India Gate when the occasion permits, said the eternal fire is a reminder.

"It reminds the times," said Gautam, "so that Indians do not to go back to bondage.

"To me," said the Chhattisgarh resident, "it's one among many spiritual sources in the struggle against any sort of exploitation in today's colonial frame of development, led by robber corporations, banks and Indian tyrants."

______________________________________
[i] Abhishek Sahran, "Dusty Delhi unwinds on special Saturday," Times of India, 16 August 2009.

[ii] Rajeev Deshpanda and Nithin Sethi, "Govt scrambles to save kharif, prays for rabi," Times of India, 15 August 2009.

[iii] Hindustan Times, August 16, 2009.

[iv] Zia Haq, "Drought of hope: 21 farmer suicides in 40 days," Times of India, 16 August 2009.

[v] Times of India, 15 August 2009.

[vi] Renato Redentor Constantino, "The National Imperative," BusinessMirror, 09 March 2009.

[vii] Mike Davis, "Late Victorian Holocaust: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (Verso, London: 2001). Davis cites the 1998 study by Angus Maddison, "Chinese Economic Performances in the Long Run."

Three times ten is not so long.

Thirty years ago it seemed as if the discotheque flu spread by Donna Summers and the Bee Gees would sway in the roost forever, especially after Gloria Gaynor issued her cross-generational therapy for cross-generational anomie titled “I will survive.”

This was in 1979, the year “twenty-five of the first thirty weeks ... saw a disco dance number perched atop the Billboard charts. It seemed as if rock and roll was dead.”

Then The Knack triggered a head-bobbing pandemic called “My Sharona” and forced the coroner to announce the demise of Tony Manero and Saturday Night Fever.

Three decades.

It's not such a long time.

The Clash finally smashed its way out of the UK in December 1979 with its third album named “London Calling,” with songs about restlessness, unemployment, the Spanish Civil War, race and nuclear power.

Around three months prior to its release, photographer Pennie Smith would capture with the final shot in her last roll of film the image that would immortalize the album: an angry Paul Simonon blowing a gasket and smashing his bass guitar, “framed by pink and green lettering” that echoed the cover of Elvis Presley's first LP.

A portable universe was created in 1979, the year Sony introduced its handy cassette player – the Walkman – to an unwittingly ready public. The device reconfigured the daily life of the first lucky few wise enough to grasp the concept of existential mobility.

The Walkman’s original version was a bring-your-own-altar “audio player without a recording mechanism.” It came with headphones “associated with the hard of hearing” and was as “big as a paperback book.” It challenged an entire industry’s thinking, which wondered incredulously “how many people would actually want to listen to music outside the comfort of their home.”

Mobile music was indeed an anomaly but it was grand.

Beybe-beybe Rico J. Puno, bell-bottomed trousers and inch-thick pomade were still constitutional in 1979, the same year Tito, Vic, and Joey broke away from Bobby Ledesma's Discorama to set-up the protracted noontime party of the masses called Eat Bulaga, which would eventually dislodge Student Canteen.

Schooled in Matutina-speak and petty delusion, the great Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was then stealing mostly just precious time away from unfortunate students she handled as an Assistant Professor at the Ateneo de Manila thirty years ago.

In 1979, the Marcos dictatorship still held full sway over a pliant public through the holy trinity of America the All-Father, national burglary and violence.

It was an interesting period.

The grim Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was chosen man of the year by Time magazine in 1979.

The publication described the Iranian cleric as a leader who “gave the 20th century world a frightening lesson in the shattering power of irrationality of the ease with which terrorism can be adopted as government policy.” Which is kind of an interesting thing to say.

A nasty bemoustached chap installed himself as Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party in 1979, becoming president of Iraq in the same year. He would enjoy the unrestrained support of the US for decades – particularly during the vile dictator’s war against Iran. His name was Saddam Hussein.

In 1979, the dour chief of the USSR Leonid Brezhnev decided to send the Soviet army into Afghanistan, in an act of ultimate folly.

Three decades later, the Pope of Hope, Barack Obama, sustains the lunacy by expanding America's war in Afghanistan with a familiar imperial twist – by announcing a limit on the number of US troops to be deployed to the war-ravaged country. Because “that's how escalation works,” the writer Norman Solomon reminds us. “Ceilings become floors. Gradually.”

Indeed.

As the novelist Tariq Ali noted with characteristic clarity, "This is now Obama’s war. He campaigned to send more troops into Afghanistan and to extend the war, if necessary, into Pakistan. These pledges are now being fulfilled. On the day he publicly expressed his sadness at the death of a young Iranian woman caught up in the repression in Tehran, US drones killed 60 people in Pakistan. The dead included women and children.... Their names mean nothing to the world; their images will not be seen on TV networks. Their deaths are in a 'good cause'."

Thirty years ago the US space station Skylab I plunged back to Earth, “scattering debris across the southern Indian Ocean and sparsely populated Western Australia.”

The space laboratory was launched in 1973. Three teams of astronauts lived in Skylab for periods reaching 84 days. It's “final orbital path ... passed over the north Pacific.”

Police in India's 22 states "were put on full alert and the civil aviation department was planning to ban flights across the sub-continent during the crucial hours of re-entry."

Skylab tumbled back to Earth in 1979 in Esperance, Australia where authorities fined America's State Department $400 for littering, which the US never paid.

Filipinos might consider Skylab lucky: at least it finally landed whereas the fortune of their country – it’s still plummeting.

I mean, viva ZZ Top.

Get up in the morning and it's a Monday and stick Tres Hombres in the player so Billy Gibbons can get the day right from the get-go.

"Rumour spreadin' around in that Texas town / 'bout that shack outside La Grange / and you know what I'm talkin' about."

If the Chicken Ranch song's still playing twenty rimshots later things should be ok. Because that's just how it is. Or that's how it should be.

Whatever.

I don't know.

It's like that.

Start a day with Bon Scott and end it with Brian Johnson and it's still AC-DC. Same octane, same boost. Same burn you'll need when you get up on the wrong side of the bed, which is what daily life here in wonderland feels like more and more.

Turn on the television or radio or step out the door and say hello to Palpakistan, the 24/7 Philippine reality TV show where we get screwed 24/7 in a daily parade of obscenities.

Department of Burglary. Bureau of Larceny. Minister Brutal, Minister Fecal Matter, Minister Mendicant, First Gentleman Smegma.

And we take it. We take it.

We get by on good cheer or a few beers and a tough fruitcake demeanor, as if we revel in our smallnesses.

We douse our frustrations with gratuitous tolerance.

We say bless us and we say curse us and we just suck it up, spring an occasional whoop, drain a pint and then before we know it another week's gone by. Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday's gone grieving in a weekend alley and the public coffers are a little emptier and the vile alien's still in the presidential palace.

"Ok lang kung tuyo na ang ubas / may pulutan pa tayong pasas," Dong Abay sings in his taunting album, Flipino. "Ok lang kung tuyo na ang gatas / may palamang keso bukas. / Ok lang kung tuyo na ang baka / may kakainin na tayong tapa."

He may smirk or scowl or strum the air but Senyor Abay, he's figured things out. "Nakakadena si Amor / Nakahawla ang dama de noche / Walang trabaho / Bagong layang Ador Reklamador / kundi ang mag-bilang ng poste."

"Ang lagay matira'ng matibay," Senyor Abay sings. "Ay buhay".

They say life is about options. Who'd disagree? Ours is the bliss of a thousand paper cuts.

There's a Rio Alma verse about choice that's pretty hard to forget once you've come across it:

"Kung isa kang dukha
O wala nang ibang magawa
Ngunit ayaw mo namang malunod sa luha
At lalong ayaw mong pumasok sa ibang kusina,
Iisa lang ang posible mong isipin
Dahil sawa na sa iyo ang kawanggawa
Dahil sawa ka na sa welga, rali't batuta
Dahil hindi ka uubrang pulgas o tuta
Dahil ni hindi ka uubrang pain sa daga
Dahil maliit ka, pangit at mahina
Kailangan mo ng himala."

What if you wake up one day and you had a chance to re-jig the entire set-up? Doubt will set you free. But first you have to wake up.

If you have a magic wand and you won't take your anger to the streets try this recipe. Get Chrissie Hynde, Bonnie Raitt and Patti Scialfa to stand as world deputies and install Lolita Carbon as high chief. Forget about world peace. Go for groovy and pagan love and stick all the cabrons in the slammer and play Laura Branigan until their ears bleed.

And why not?

Might as well.

We live with music virtually all our lives anyway, even in our blue sleep, and centuries from now someone's surely bound to reveal the molecular truth that, yes, there's indeed a soundtrack to every little thing we do.

Renato Redentor Constantino is the author of The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire (CFNS, 2006). Feedback welcome at Constantino's blog site http://redconstantino.blogspot.com.

Our nation's enduring hex is forgetfulness. If only we'd remember the word.

It's like we have a national reboot button and every three weeks someone steps on the big clicker and everyone stops mid-step in a bazillion tiny pieces of a second. Then the music lurches forward again and we do a little skip and we sneak furtive looks left then right and our mind squints, as if it's staring at the sun.

Blink, blink.

Same, same.

That's been our lot for a while.

Insipid, shabby future.

Godawful present.

A few curious blips of past glory that's somehow able to reach back to only two decades of mostly clichés, if at all. Oh boy. As a blogger once wrote in Mickey Z's place, "We're so screwed galactic parentheses aren't big enough."

Buti na lang may chicharon.

We're never without choices and so the other day the family made one.

Push back a bit, just a bit. Make a day trip to elsewhere. Make it a Sunday and make it count.

Binoculars and 7B pencils in the tote bag, check! Crayons and a puppy for Luna. Check! Rio secures his new book, David Borgenicht's "The Worse-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: How to Wrestle an Alligator, Perform a Tracheotomy and Escape from Killer Bees". Kala brings with her the best mag in town called H.I.P.P. (Happy, Intelligent, Progressive Parenting).

It'll be a whole day so get the playlist right. Roy Orbison, Stevie Nicks, the Zombies. Radioactive Sago Project. Check!

First stop, Malolos, Bulacan. Around forty kilometers from Manila and everything's still beautiful and depressing despite the years.

Barasoain Church. Seat of power with three legs. The perfume of slow and angry days. Regal mansions of old wood; royal families built on sand. Rice fields. Betrayal, redemption and betrayal. Slumber.

A hundred and ten years ago the first republic in Asia was inaugurated in Malolos, in the House of Barasoain on January 23, 1899. Yet we celebrate June 12, 1898 instead as our country's main marker, the day Aguinaldo issued his so-called proclamation of Philippine Independence -- "under the protection of the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, the United States of America."

Only protectorates celebrate their vassalage. Talk about lasting heritage.

Masses of penitent, smiling texters stream out of the church as holy mass ends. We troop to nearby Casa Real, where the printing press which published revolutionary papers during the days of the Philippine Republic is housed. Then we go searching for the street Kamestisuhan in search of the Bautista home, which we found after a few tries. And then more grand old houses kept erect by the ballast of dust, stone and mildew.

The kids are singing with Bob Dylan now. "They're selling postcards of the hanging / They're painting the passports brown / The beauty parlor is filled with sailors / The circus is in town."

Too many questions.

When in doubt, head for Citang's. Best dinuguan and puto in the entire country. I remember going there from Quezon City on a bicycle a few years ago with Francis, Beau, Teban and other characters from Batibot.

But this time we arrived at 1 p.m. - an hour too late. All the hot fare was finished; that's how great Citang's is.

We had to settle for rice cakes and pastillas de leche and we ended up at Bahay na Tisa with laing, pinakbet, sinigang na hipon and asadong dila.

The day's just past halfway done. Lots of time.

Run to the car. Roll down the playlist. Search for AC-DC and North Luzon Expressway. Proceed to Mall of Asia and look for Science Discovery Center. Discover that the place has space for many things. Except science.

OK, let's be fair; it's not zero. There are things at the center that make a scientific attempt.

Armpit chemistry. Astroboy. A global warming video warning viewers against the climate changing perils of butane but not coal-fired power plants. A theater called "planetarium" showing madly spinning planets as a five-minute screensaver and a main feature about "flish" -- really flying fish -- and other incredibly strange inhabitants of the Earth five, ten, twenty million years from today.

No attempt to explain anything about why the future creatures came to be. Tortoises as tall as buildings. Care Bears with snouts; a bird with six wings; a squid on high heels. No explanation.

The center has its moments. There's the Grossology section, which attracts many kids. Of course. Barf, burp and fart. Ok. Bodily emissions, spurts and squirts -- human anatomy -- these are important things that can get young ones thinking. Earthquake simulators - they're pretty important too.

But why was there nothing on Sumerian or Chinese astronomy? All it would have taken is a panel and some photos and a few diagrams; no need for electrodes or blinking lights. The place had Daleks and feet fungus. But nothing on Filipino inventions or inventors. Nothing on Philippine geological history. Nothing on abundant natural resources that our people have yet to really harness, such as power from the wind, geothermal sources and moving water, or scientific wisdom from centuries of indigenous stewardship in the country.

We walk out of the cold place, none the wiser but a thousand two hundred pesos poorer.

We head straight for the breeze and Manila Bay. We order a plate of jellyfish, nuts and sesame seeds.

The sun is setting. Luna is pointing to stars emerging with the approaching night. The sky is coagulating, turning from bright orange to ultramarine blue. Rio's demanding to know why flish are more important than planets.

Dalawang Pale Pilsen nga, waiter.

From somewhere Lourd de Veyra's Sago entourage is spreading jazz-funk-chacha gospel.

"Nakaupo sa kalye, sa kalye, sa kalye / Ang utak gumagala para bang may bulate ... / Maraming sinasabi ang ate, ang ate / Ipasok mo sa maliit mong kukote ... / Hello, hello, hello, hello / Sino ba ito, sino ba ito, sino ba ako."

Renato Redentor Constantino, "Red" to friends, is the author of The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire. Constantino is a writer and painter based in Quezon City. Feedback also welcome at the Kamuning Republic blog -- http://redconstantino.blogspot.com