Apropos

My eyes are heavy with the sands of sleep. Of late, I’ve been averaging only four hours of snooze time each night--violently lacerated by minutes of abrupt wakefulness somewhere around 2am (always somewhere around 2am). Each sudden stirring is spurred by a feeling of urgency more imperative than a simple need to take a midnight leak.

It’s closer to an emergency one erratically springs up to. When nothing else matters except accomplishing what is demanded by the moment, without the requisite five-minute car engine rev up before activating the A/C. Then as rapid as it arrives, I suddenly settle down, somehow get my bearings straight, and stabilize to an irritable condition regretting the time wasted after the whole business turns out to be just a false alarm.

I permit myself to attribute the sleeplessness to occupation-related stress. The daily workload is immense and daunting I can’t even imagine where to begin. I’ve barely finished the first task when three more come in. Somehow, I am beginning to feel unflattered by the faith my superiors are willing to wager on my behalf. In such instances, an artist-friend would have normally delivered such a blistering commentary: “Thank God, I have close friends: coffee and cigarettes. They keep me company for at least five minutes. Five minutes of pure, unadulterated loyalty.”

To this, I would have prudishly pointed out, “Cigarettes and coffee will stab you in the back, eventually.” To which, with a dismissive gesture of a hand, he would have nonchalantly retorted, “Puh-leese, spare me the health advisory. I can read ads. I am more than capable of looking after my own.”

Vices. Such inventions have been the objects of discord between fellow men; inspiring numerous arguments between husbands and wives and a mouthful of exchanges between parents and children. Like any preoccupation, cigarettes and coffee determine either humanity’s redemption or downfall. I am quick to add that many geniuses were born out of far worse vices and more hedonistic affairs. Whatever the preference, the power of suggestion has always been the poisonous tipping point. That feeling of invulnerability and freedom that unreasonably goads one to continue experimenting on new but nevertheless perilous things.

One irrelevant and random thought can always lead to enlightenment, so they say. The apparent suicide of former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief Gen. Angelo Reyes and the side-stories bred by it are still the content of print and broadcast media nowadays. The Inquirer gave a though-provoking sub-heading for one headline regarding the AFP’s last rites for Reyes: “vilified in life, honored in death.” The sarcasm is thinly veiled, qualifying it as one of the wittiest, subtlest subtitles I’ve seen in recent years that any newspaper could be capable of coming up with. The editors of Inquirer could be credited for being smart-ass folks indeed, and no doubt they seem to take their jobs seriously.

Ask any random Filipino and they would readily say as-a-matter-of-factly that Reyes was a coward for taking his own life. Definitely not the bravest and noblest thing to do for a soldier of his supposed decorated stature. The logic is simple: if he was so innocent, why would he take the easy path and end his life instead of facing his accusers?

The absurd part about all of this is the State’s duplicity and political act of omission. The government often has a misplaced penchant for selectivity, turning a blind eye on an official’s blatant and overbearing crimes while purely focusing on his past good deeds, if at all. Social Justice, to be restorative, is not just about convenience achieved by simply ignoring the finer, unsavory points. As my above-mentioned friend would have been inclined to say: “Spare me the half-full-and-not-half-empty-glass argument.” In his time, Reyes was responsible for instigating the bloody war policy in Mindanao wherein hundreds of people died, combatants and civilians alike.

Suicide as an uncalculated act is the height of unreason and cowardice. Lack of foresight is a result of emotional imbalance. Only Reyes will know what really went on in his head during the final minutes before he pulled the trigger. Did he ever think that by killing himself he could shield his family from further public scrutiny? Did he even think that ending his life would, by extension, also end the possible vilification and implication of his family in his alleged dastardly acts? Granted, he has at least succeeded in gaining a semblance of sympathy from some camps (mostly those who were involved in corruption anyway), although I would bet my month’s worth of wages it was hardly sincere.

Even his most grandstanding accusers have backpedaled and took their tirades a notch lower, rarely mentioning his name among the involved, as if anticipating a potential political backlash. But his gainful participation in the pervasive corruption in the AFP simply cannot be overlooked. Although death can be a fitting punishment, suicide is far from an act deserving absolution, and even far less for one to be granted a hero’s status. Suicide is the ultimate escape, a convenient excuse and most cowardly act to finally end one’s haunting guilt and cheat his way out of culpability.

Only a few people may be aware but exactly two days from now, February 20, Kurt Cobain, a truly gifted artist and vocalist-guitarist of the band Nirvana would've celebrated his 44th birthday. Cobain, too, took his life 17 years ago. His death, however, eclipsed his career far differently from that of Reyes since the former's depression was something deeply personal, real and unimagined (well, if you discount his psychedelic trysts with an assortment of chemicals, which never resulted in a truly sober moment that is, so probably not). But his despair was truly genuine—a culmination of a dysfunctional childhood, overwhelming social pressures, a shaky marriage, an artistic intellect bordering on insanity—and not a product of any misconduct except towards his own. I take this opportunity to issue an open dare to the emo-types out there. You guys can learn a thing or two from Cobain if you really want to live up (or die) to your trendy, overly celebrated codes.

Nirvana’s last standalone studio album, In Utero, was probably Cobain’s best literary output before the frontman—whether deliberately or arbitrarily (since he was mostly drug-inspired)—decided to assume the band’s namesake state: the ultimate bliss accorded by death.

A college professor once remarked that Cobain was reputed to have been artistically influenced by the works of celebrated Beat generation writer William Burroughs, especially his novel, The Naked Lunch. My professor even added an interesting tidbit that Cobain had an unconfirmed homosexual affair with Burroughs. The iconic writer had reportedly been involved in several homosexual affairs in the past and was even said to have made romantic but unrequited advances on his contemporary and fellow Beat pillar, Allen Ginsberg. At the very least, going from point A to B, Burroughs appeared to have been Cobain’s mentor.

The Naked Lunch is a first-person running narrative of an institutionalized junkie. I read The Naked Lunch when I was a college sophomore. The book was numbingly difficult to read and the images Burroughs conveyed were absurdly jarring and teeth-gratingly raw somewhat similar to a skin test administered by the hand of an untrained nurse. It was a chore to read, indeed, and definitely not the best reference material for someone who’s just starting out to develop his own voice and style. But a few things did rub off, fortunately, like how to wholly surrender to one’s stream of consciousness when putting thoughts onto paper.

His sexual orientation notwithstanding, Burroughs was very ardent about his political views. Thus, he once commented: “Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.”

As if Burroughs was still among the living, the quote seems like a pointed and interminable commentary about the Congressional investigations being conducted by our esteemed Representatives and Senators on the AFP slush funds. Like most intentions, as sure as any suicide letter is almost impossible to decipher, theirs are the hardest to measure. It’s up to the living to interpret the act of the dead to whatever purpose suits them.▼

15-minute Break

Six minutes to three in the morning and we would have reached the day’s second work hour. I absently stare at the digital clock displayed on my computer monitor, seeing past the numbers as they move out of focus and involuntarily turn into a glassy blur. Only the slow pulse of dots indicating each passing second registers a vacant signal to my mind. I imagine hearing an almost audible tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack in agonizing succession as the minutes expire in a slow grind before they dissipate into a dark corridor inside my head. I am compelled to endure the wait.

With an effort, I pull myself out of the stupor and nudge the guy next to me. “Honda 3.” I said, intimating my desire to take my break “on-the-dot” at 3am. I must have spoken a bit louder than necessary as he momentarily flinches. I realize my headset is still hinged to my head. Still, the message gets across as he consequently nods in agreement. He is still talking to a customer but just delivered the familiar “anything else I can help you with?” segue to the closing spiel. I have been “avail” for almost 17 minutes, which means I am available to take in a call. I am hoping I don’t get one in the next six minutes.

His customer appears to have raised an after-thought question about something I suspect to be likely irrelevant. But we at computer tech support always aim to deliver the best possible customer experience. We provide answers to even the most obtuse of customers’ queries like, should they or should they not place their computers near the microwave oven, or why the computer’s built-in mug holder isn’t stable enough--obviously referring to the optical drive tray. The dense ones who ask equally dense questions tend to forget what you tell them, anyway. So expect the same customer to be calling back next week for a similar, if not related, problem. We reach full circle, and the vicious business cycle is perpetuated. Not everyone is intended to win.

You get that nagging feeling that everything you do, no matter what and how, leads to nowhere. Back in college, I studied economics with such idealism I hoped to make a difference in the world. I had this fervent desire to address real-world problems like poverty, unemployment, mass hunger and even clinical depression. Impressionable as we were, students like me were taught how every profession should work towards its own dissolution. When we’ve eradicated all of the world’s problems, there would be nothing left for us to do. It wasn’t long before I realized it doesn’t exactly work this way in the real world. Current human society has this overbearing tendency to delve in a constant cycle of generating needs. Artificially induced needs. A principle the call center industry openly affirms.

Is there a solution to every problem? Under otherwise normal circumstances I would readily say yes. But a qualified yes. The solution may not be available now but it will be given time. There’s also the fact that although the solution is correct and makes sense to many, expect that it will inspire resistance from a privileged few who have everything to gain by keeping everything as it is.

Three years ago, I tucked my tail in, swallowed my pride and applied for this job. Former colleagues and close friends had frowned on the idea of me working at a call center and said it was an outright waste of my talent. Whether I have talent or not is not as relevant as one’s desired professional route. An older colleague, wisened in his years, put it most aptly: you’re in this job because you’ve failed in what you were supposed to do in the first place. Priceless, irrefutable knowledge.

The fact is, no sensible person ever dreamed of becoming a call center representative. But I deserve this job. It’s the only job that’s fit for the unfit. A solution readily available but not completely acceptable. It’s the most appealing and reasonably paying alternative for people who literally celebrate the half-ness of their humanity; the semi-skilled, semi-equipped professionals. When there’s a “semi” attached to your title, you can safely assume you’ve reached that undesirable state of mediocrity.

I realize now that I deserve it. I just don’t want it.

What I dread most about avail times is not the uncertainty that comes with the wait. It’s precisely the moment of not doing anything that opens up opportunities for self-reflection. Hard thoughts that you try as much as possible to avoid. It’s during these moments that I retreat into a state of regret, thinking about what I have accomplished so far in the past three years of working here.

Absolutely nothing.

A bubble popped up on my computer screen from the internal messaging system. Team, please adhere to your scheduled breaks. The guy next to me received the same message. No ACW, please. We have high avail. A random send-to-all. Impersonal but nonetheless thought-provoking.

The name on the message is familiar, someone from a wave of employees hired not so long ago, perhaps less than a year ago. He’s the new operations manager and everybody hates him. I don’t personally know the poor fellow. I usually suspend disbelief–give every person I am unfamiliar with due benefit of the doubt. He could be a kind person with commendable qualities for all I know. But unfortunately in his case, I am unable to commiserate. His untimely and dubious appointment overtakes any respect he may or may not deserve.

What I come to hate most in this company is that performance, loyalty and dedication account for nothing. What happened to innovation, initiative, creativity and excellence? Just bare concepts devoid of any real-world value, aside from being useful catchwords during occasional business reports, token organizational meetings and tired pep talks. Here comes a guy with no managerial background whatsoever who gets appointed (not promoted) to a sensitive position that may spell the success or doom of the company. Until eight months ago, he was a virtual unknown. His name has never appeared in the list of monthly reports that highlighted top performing agents (or even the bottom ones, for that matter). He spends more time outside the smoking area than inside the operations floor, mingling with the people who matter.

Three more minutes. I humor myself and pursue the thought. Perhaps objectively, to get ahead, knowing the right people and getting close to them is a necessary and distinctive skill. After a few months, you think you get used to the standard. People are recognized not for what they know but who they know. Ultimately, it’s the management that stands to lose if they narrow their choices within their own immediate circle. It’s similar to creating needs. You can invent a superficial sense of loyalty by forming a small cabal of friends but not actually have it. Besides, you surround yourself with stupidity long enough you forget to notice it’s abnormal. What is more frustrating is how they try not to make a big deal out of it, like trying to justify chronic infidelity to your adolescent kids.

The clock finally turns to 3:00 and I casually key in Auxiliary Work Mode 1. My colleague does the same and we leave our workstations to proceed to the smoking area outside in front of the building.

As we saunter towards the exit I realize that what motivates me to remain here is the normal excuse made by the most jaded of individuals – cutthroat economics dictates that you can’t live without money. In my more than three years of working here, I have obsessed in making the best out of the situation. And yet, there are certain conditions that prevent one from performing to the fullest, much less reaping the rewards of one’s conscientious efforts. I have observed one major factor that characterizes this business – it is fueled by self-interest, which isn’t the noblest of professional attributes.

While self-interest may be a strong motivational factor at first, it is hardly a lasting one. Tenuous at best, self-interest can immediately foster competition. But your principles are always held in suspect. You ask the question: why do you do your job? Surely it’s not born out of a genuine desire to help customers, to serve clients and assist co-workers. The hard fact is, you look after others ultimately because you are looking after your own. But if you don’t really believe in what you are doing, if there is no passion, can you really last in this type of environment? You need to steel yourself and stifle your humanity if you intend to just work from one paycheck to the next.

Everything becomes a black box. Without any hard-set fundamentals, everything becomes a variable. You don’t know what you want except what the bosses want. They, in turn, want only what the clients want--foreign business people who make occasional visits to ensure that we make good with our deliverables. For three years, working in a call center environment has become a dehumanizing experience for me – the ride a veritable journey to regression and ultimately the death of one’s sensibility.

Each 15-minute break is a lesson in reality. We arrive at the designated smoking area and I get a chance to observe the people around me outside of their usual, impersonal wok-mode shells. It’s amazing how strangers can be so eager to share their personal thoughts, their immediate circumstances and real-life struggles. Some of course can’t wait to relate their most recent experience with a customer, and how the call went and such. But these least interest me. While the boisterous ones are dull and transparent, the quiet ones--those who are deep in thought smoking silently alone--are the more revealing.

I survey the surroundings and see a group of young people in the middle of the smoking area, laughing and bantering, having the time of their lives. But on one corner, smoking alone and scarcely hidden underneath the blanket of early morning darkness, I find what I’m looking for. A middle-aged man, frail and disfigured, his hair thinned by age, his shoulders collapsed under the invisible burdens he carries. He looks down absently on his decrepit, old-fashioned shoes. “Shoe-gazer,” I said to myself barely containing a dry laugh. For what seemed like an eternity of ten minutes he does not move, except to draw and exhale smoke from his cigarette. Each breath he lets loose is an obvious sigh of frustration.

Despite the obscurity granted by the darkness and the collective fog of second-hand smoke, I sense an uncanny clarity in the nicotine-filled substance of his ways. His time appears to be up and he flicks the cigarette butt casually into the trash bin. As he steps into the light at the building entrance, I notice the backside of the shirt he wore. It was an old shirt frayed by sweat and years of patience. A veritable window to his past that amounts to absolutely nothing within this workplace. On it, written in bold print, was the word, FACULTY.

My 15 minutes is also up but somehow at the back of my mind the thought of returning to work seemed bearable, at least for the moment. I follow his footsteps with renewed assurance, knowing that I still have youth for an excuse.▼

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*Although this is a piece of fiction, the author did work as a technical support representative in a reputable call center for almost three years. He was supposed to be up for promotion but curiously the account closed shop a few months after he received such a notice. He now develops, implements and manages development programs for an NGO catering to the needs of street children.

A Letter to Uncle

Hi, Unlce Rommel.

It’s nice to hear (or in this case, read) from you again. Just to bring you up to speed, I am currently working for an NGO catering to street kids. I develop, implement and manage programs to help prepare street kids for eventual social reintegration. This means either providing them with formal and informal education, or helping them find jobs. We hope to help street children develop into responsible, self-reliant and productive adults. But enough of the brochure-inspired spiel.

On the side, I still do a few writing gigs for extra cash and if time permits, work on my unfinished fiction at a relaxed (and perhaps, I admit, too leisurely) pace. Someday, I will earn my sabbatical and take one full year of leave to finally sit down and have my collection of short fiction finished (although I am not heavily banking on this). But for now, I must engage in the more mundane affair of earning a living.

How’s the M.A. going, by the way? Still weary of instructing your professors, I assume?

I very much appreciate that you sent me a copy of your papers. On what occasions were these talks delivered? The familiar firebrand tone is evident and I can palpably feel your unrelenting passion for genuine Filipino architecture and all the aspects related to architectural criticism. Such conviction I am proud to share not only due to blood relations but as a kindred spirit in the ways of viewing certain things beyond their initial appearances.

I am not of course in a credible and objective position to make commentaries about the topics discussed related to your chosen profession. However, I may be able to provide criticisms on several arguments that you’ve raised in terms of how practicable architecture is to a typical Filipino. Please indulge me on a few points.

In “Architecture and Cultural Sustainability,” you mention the erosion of Philippine Architectural culture but failed to identify what actually makes it distinct. Lest I mistake the fluff for empty nostalgia or hopeless idyllic romanticism, you did not exactly state what comprises “genuine” Filipino architecture to begin with. Should the proverbial image of the bahay kubo be my point of reference? Probably not. I assume the talks were given in front of an audience of architects and design connoisseurs but preaching to the converted would only make the exercise extraneous.

Our similarities are our curse and we both have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I for one would have been curious to find out what “Filipino architecture” really is. Having educated me about it would have benefited me profusely. There was a cursory allusion to mass housing design being unfit for human habitation, as well as an obligatory jab against bureaucratic corruption, but not much else. A counter-establishment does not exist without the rarefied institutions we would like to subvert, similar to counter-cultures being inspired by prevailing, bankrupt ones.

Relatedly, you argue that the Bali architecture invasion has slowly usurped our native architecture and its necessarily implied culture but did not specifically state how and why. You mount an attack against the Red Kites but cut the strings short by leading the reader aimlessly in a torrent of alta de ciudad inanities and delectable fast food menus. Yet in the end I fail to grasp what caused Bali designs to be so demonized and detestable that we should avoid it like the plague.

Forgive me if my remarks seem a bit scathing but again this is merely born out of a genuine interest in knowing more about the topics you’ve discussed. Your analysis, as always, is correct but unfortunately lacked the examples that would have served as veritable nails to the coffin.

Mass housing, devoid of all its bureaucratic trappings, can arguably be a rational option given spatial requirements and one’s current purchasing power. It is sad that at this point, typical working Filipinos will not appreciate architecture and culture on a level that would sincerely appeal to their sensibilities. Filipinos have become too dehumanized to the point that nothing else matters except surviving from one pay check to the next. Would it then be too unforgivable that after nine hours of soulless toiling we fail to pause for just an instant to breathe in and appreciate the finer aspects of the structures surrounding us?

You will have to agree that utility, although indicative of valid priorities, is never a result of legitimate prerogatives. Thus, a bungalow works for my current purposes but given a choice, I would rather settle for something more spacious and with better ventilation. We however are not provided with such a choice.

I find the debates about population control and reproductive health to be both timely and relevant to this discussion. My principles are clear and unbendable concerning the supposed inalienability of women’s reproductive choice since it primarily concerns their health and well-being not as much as men’s. But the question of population is a slightly different matter. I think that all things being equal, a rise in population should never be a national problem. Ideally, the more people we have, the larger our workforce. Imagine such a high per capita being pooled into production and positively contributing to the economy!

The problem is the economy can’t absorb this number, which is basically why we have a high rate of unemployment. Population per se is not the problem. If figures are to be our sole indicator, Japan outnumbers us by the millions. But population has never been Japan’s concern, at least not as desperately as ours, because their economy can accommodate the emergent labor force. To my mind, the root of the population problem (and even of the architectural bankruptcy) in the country is social injustice. If all the basic needs are adequately addressed, perhaps only then can we move on to other niceties such as the Arts.▼