3 birthdays in 1 day

Ate Raya and her kid bro Dakila

Girlie Sarabia with a whole cake to herself

The blogger Jennie Moraitis likes to encourage followers to "find magic in little things."

This past Sunday I was looking for those little things that would restore me. I found one in a joint birthday celebration of Dakila and Raya, children of Sinag De Leon, all born in January, and of Girlie Francisco Sarabia.

Daki and Raya's nana (lola) Anna Leah Sarabia and Sinag chose Pigar X Pigar on the Sikatuna Village side of Maginhawa Street in Quezon City as venue for the get-together. With us also were Kaya, outfitted like a Parisian girl complete with black beret, and her mom Leonor Mae Tomelden-de Leon.

I've always liked attending children's, rather than grown-ups', birthday celebration. Food and chat are so uncomplicated.

Reminded me of Rickee Baluyut's birthday celebration some years ago when he was just a boy in his family's former Mandaluyong home. His pop Alex Baluyut prepared an unforgettable chili con carne (there were other dishes but the chili continues to stand out in my memory).

When I heard we were gonna eat at a pigar-pigar place, the first of its kind in Manila according to the owners, I was thrown back to a public market in Dagupan, Pangasinan, where husband Rolly Fernandez took me to try it. The meat was tough and chewy. The initiation was memorable because of the meat's toughness.

On this latest pigar-pigar tasting, I was anxious that I would have to grind the meat hard before I could swallow it. My brittle teeth might not be up to the task. I was proven wrong

The pigar-pigar made from carabeef was so tender; what was more, the meat came sauteed with onions and lots of cabbage. Although most of Anna's family members are pescarians or vegetarians, they sampled the meat dish. Girlie, a pianist, hummed softly, sounding pleased.

Pigar-pigar with sliced onions and cabbage

Binagoongang rice

Grilled bangus

Steamed okra

Pinakbet of Pangasinan comes with camote.

Pinakbet of Pangasinan comes with camote.

The serving plate was wiped clean; the same went for the plates of binagoongang rice, steamed okra, grilled bangus and that staple of the North, pinakbet. What made this Pangasinan pakbet different from what I've sampled was the chunks of white camote in it.

The management knew there were three birthday celebrators in our group and brought out patupat (another Northern delicacy) but served a la mode!

As I took shots of our meal, Sinag suggested I make future still life painting subjects out of them. Sige, Sinag, thanks!

So pleasured was I that I thought of suggesting to my family in Baguio that we sample Pangasinan food again but in situ. A way of escaping the Panagbenga crowd. With the good roads going up and down Baguio, this may be a capital idea that can turn a day into something magical.

Happy birthday again, Girlie, Dakila and Raya!

What else will we play next?

These served as my welcome remarks at the opening of "Sampayan Blues," my ninth solo exhibition at the Sanctuary Gallery inside the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary on North Santo Tomas Road, Campo Sioco, Baguio. The show of paintings and installation ends on Nov. 24. Come visit!

Kept it place by clothespins are the paintings "The Laughing Matryoshkas" and "Be Salt, Be Light, Be Seamstress, Be Doll."

The untitled installation in the middle of the gallery and surrounded by 18 paintings

Portrait of the artist by EV Espiritu and floating above an old wash basin and borne aloft by chipboard "bubbles"

EV Espiritu should have another solo show after his "Soul Catcher" photo exhibit from several years back. He's got one wild mind. Here he poses with the mobile that he had conceived and helped execute.

My collaborations with grandchild Kai who, when she entered the gallery, recognized her figures and announced, "That's my work!" From top: "BFFs in Flower Field" and "Oval and Round"

Good afternoon. Let me thank Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary, its genial and caring staff led by Olive Gregorio, curator Erlyn Ruth Alcantara for allowing us to turn this gallery space into our playground for a month.

Thank you, old comrade in arts and media EV Espiritu, my collaborating artist alongside Maryknoll’s Clem Delim, who is a quiet joy to work with. Yasmin Almonte, the Sarabia sisters Anna Leah and Wawie I thank for gifts of space so I can paint with no other concern except to breathe and paint.

Thank you Baboo Mondoñedo, Merci Javier Dulawan and Ben Tapang for choosing either the most barbed or kindest words for me. All of you who came today despite gray clouds, threatening rain and a bout of sampayan blues, thank you.

What else will we play next? This is the question my four-year-old friend and grandchild Kai asks when we’re done with an activity. It’s a question adults like us must also reinstate in our lives to put the element of play in things we do.

When I was painting “Storm Surge” in the aftermath of super-typhoon Yolanda, I couldn’t paint continuously and with joyous abandon. There was toxic anger in my heart at the way a national crisis/calamity was being handled. I put away my brushes, rolled up the canvas and as for the tiny tubes of acrylic, they dried up.

Until one day I found myself stuck up while writing another hanapbuhay article. Restless, I had to channel my fretfulness into something constructive lest I harm myself from frustration. That’s how I found myself returning to “Storm Surge” after it lay idle for a year. I recaptured the elusive lightheartedness that used to accompany a brushstroke.

Each visit to Baguio had me bearing witness to the ease with which Kai applied herself in her painting, coloring and drawing. Absolutely no self-consciousness about what others would think or say. I like to think I am now apprentice to this master.

Enjoy the show, and thanks again for coming and banishing the blues from my sampayan. May your own clotheslines be often visited by playful birds and butterflies, the scent of flowers, blasts of wind, rays of sunshine and just the occasional rain. Bless you!

The 'Norte' experience

Detail from Julie Lluch's "Picasso y Yo," sculpture in the collection of Gilda Cordero Fernando.

I’m pretty sure—is there a word like “un-pretty?—that you’ve also had those high-pressure days when you feel like that subject molded and sculpted by Julie Lluch. Yup, it’s her self-portrait of a once mad or maddened hausfrau, stressed out, put upon, on the verge of a breakdown or biting off someone’s ear.

I’ve always identified with the work. I still see myself in it. Each time I am summoned by she who writer Pablo A. Tariman calls a living goddess of literature, I take a few minutes to admire the work all over again.

On Sept. 15, Gilda, who cringes when she’s called a goddesss, Julie, Anna Leah Sarabia and I went on a short (in terms of distance covered) field trip to Trinoma, an Ayala Mall in Quezon City, to watch a long (four hours and some) film: Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan by Lav Diaz.

I came out of the cinema in dire need of a strong, stiff drink. Harsh truth in the hands of a master like Diaz, guided by a script he worked on with Rody Vera, does that to me. It shakes me to the core of my being. Hours after the experience (for it was that, a total experience, not a show that you could distance yourself from), Julie and I still felt all shook up. I tried to find the precise word to describe what we were reeling from.

Norte has no music score so all the more viewers like me feel the immediacy of what the characters are going through, the ambient sounds of real lives being lived. We hear the the squeals of a pig (already a foreshadowing of what is to come), rain falling, scissors snipping, wind whooshing on fields of green, the sea water breaking on the shore, cars zipping fast on the northern freeway, crackle of fire, a baby's heartbreaking cry after being the sole survivor of a bus crash and more.

Yes, the film's length seems to reflect its Dostoyevsky-inspired (the novelist who wrote those thick tomes we had to study in English 4 or 5) theme of a crime that goes unpunished, where the one who's punished severely is innocent Joaquin (played by Archie Alemania) and by extension, his family.

But the one who suffers and descends into his bestial form is the intellectual Fabian (Sid Lucero), the once decent guy, a brilliant law school dropout who turns into a beast descending into a private hell of his making. The film doesn’t sell the idea of redemption (perhaps, it’s the innocent man who is redeemed because he remains good and helpful in the prison of his days).

Winner: 2013 Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Award, International Cinephile Society Awards, among a long list of prizes won

But that's the thing with a Lav Diaz film--it has layers and layers of meaning. It deprives those who are seeking entertainment (it was free movie day for seniors living in Quezon City) some kind of satisfactory closure. No wonder some senior citizens in the audience vehemently and vocally objected to how the story ended with no justice in sight, no restitution, no remorse.

I can imagine the antagonist Fabian living to a ripe old age, combing graying hair in a town up north, managing to live with his un-appeased conscience. That is, until I remind myself that in his bestiality, he is actually godless and conscienceless.

"But then that's life!" Gilda exclaimed earlier.

Up to this hour, I am still asking myself many questions about Philippine society and revolution, the validity of bearing arms, what is social justice, that sense of hopelessness and what's the use of another electoral exercise?

Okay, that's it. I'm rising to have my dinner that I am suddenly grateful for. Oh, let there be a sliver of redeeming grace in this sorrow-filled country!

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Nota Bene: By popular demand, Norte Hangganan Ng Kasaysayan is extended until Sept. 23 at Trinoma (12:10 pm daily) and Glorietta 4 (12:30 pm daily).

Music on a Monday

Oliver Salonga in concert last night at the Ayala Museum lobby. He began with something very modern or 20th century (it had atonal and dissonant qualities), Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata in E-flat Minor, Op. 26, then moved without a break to Rachmaninoff's Etude Tableaux, Op. 33 and ended with the more traditional sounds of Franz Liszt's Reminiscences de Norma du Bellini. The Scarlatti sonata that he played as an encore really gripped my heart. It's the sort of music I like to cry along with, but it was a happy night so no tears, except for the thunderstorm that raged outside. Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

From boy to big man of the piano, we've watched him grow to even teach us how the Rachmaninoff etudes "are not like Chopin etudes that target a specific technique for each etude. The etudes teach you to apply different techniques based on what's written with emphasis on the actual application rather than a mastery of a certain technical device." Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

Oli triumphant. His friends from his Makiling years still like to call him "Berong," short for Keroberong or a Filipinized version of "Care Bear" because of his chubbiness. He's a graduate of the Philippine High School for the Arts in Laguna. He's winding up his Ph.D. studies in piano performance at the University of Southern California under Norman Krieger. Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

At almost any recital in any venue, an appreciative audience that includes neurosurgeon and art patron Joven Cuanang and sculptor Julie Lluch likes to have a moment with the musical artist to hold his hand or hug him. As an aside, Julie is teaching herself to play the piano after she had her upright at home tuned up. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

"Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul." - Unknown

"...(M)usicians are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that melody, that lyric, that chord, or that interpretation that will stir the audience's soul. Musicians are beings who have tasted life's nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another's heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes."-David Ackert, Los Angeles Times

The unknown author of that quote and Mr. Ackert I must thank profusely and publicly for giving me a good shove so I can recall in a semi-tranquil mood the times the musical "guns of August" fired and caused a pleasurable trembling in my soul. I've used an Ackert quote in a past blog about pianist Cecile Licad, but I keep coming back to it.

There's almost a "near-suicidal" quality to a true musician's playing. It's in the way they give their all to an elusive moment that will quickly become a memory for the listener unless everything, every nuance of a note or a gesture, is caught in an audio-video recording. Otherwise, there is nothing more exciting, more electrifying than being present in a live performance. Especially if it is someone like Oliver who I first watched at his farewell recital at the then PCIBank's Francisco Santiago Hall in Makati before he first left for his undergrad music studies in the States.

I've seen him at a tertulia at Odette Alcantara's Heritage House in Blue Ridge, Quezon City, where he attempted to do the folk ditty "Pamulinawen" as his encore piece. After repeated mistakes, he apologized and instead played a longer and more difficult Chopin piece. This has led to my impression that Oliver doesn't take the easier path. Gusto niya talagang pahirapan ang kanyang sarili.

And it's good for him. We, the audience, also benefit. I've also watched him play at the Baguio Country Club ballroom, at the former Kiss the Cook Gourmet at UP Village to kick off the Pablo Tariman-initiated Intimate Concert Series, at Abelardo Hall last year and then last night at a museum. Oliver is a life force, indeed, like the backdrop of paintings by Jana Benitez. Unsolicited advice from a concerned tita: Lose some of the weight. It may keep your stamina up.

The pictures tell of my latest experience of him better.

Thanks for putting this recital together, Ray Sison of ROS Music Center, Pablo Tariman of Music News and the Ayala Museum for opening up the lobby space on a Monday and a holiday (yesterday was the advanced celebration of National Heroes Day). Don't ever be discouraged by slight weather disturbances or the challenge of producing and marketing a recital.

When I think of contemporary heroes, politicians never cross my consciousness or my radar. It's always the authentic artists and tireless cultural workers who do. They are the ones who take the greater risks and make a nation truly proud and great. And people like me, a mere music fan, are grateful. Once again, Oliver, bravo!

One couple's pearl jubilee

Happy Pearl Day, Mr. You Know Who You Are from Who Knows What You Are to Me

We must have asked ourselves many a time, not only in our respective thought balloons, what would it have been like if we didn't take the leap? But we did, and oh, how we did. It has been 30 years since we took our vows one evening at our Pasig neighborhood's parish church. He was 34; I had just turned 29.

When he and his guy pals get together, he still wins the contest of who of them married at a late age. Indeed, at 34, he was the oldest, perhaps in his sense of daring and adventure to offer his self's riches (strengths, weaknesses, humor, humorlessness but most of all his integrity as a person and a career journalist) to a shaky girl who was unsure, even today evidently, of her place in the sun. But they took the gamble anyway.

Who would have thought that our kind of unique loving would last with he there, me here? And we are very we in the couple sense despite our continuing tale of two cities. Okay, so it's a long, long-distance love affair, as the pop song in the '80s goes.

And since I'm singing today, let me sing (one of the songs sung at our 25th jubilee at the former location of Cafe Juanita in Kapitolyo, Pasig) "I'm Glad There Is You" by Paul Madeira and Jimmy Dorsey. I'm doing this using my best imitation of Sarah Vaughan as she recorded this with The Earl Rogers Choir (a capella) on April 4, 1948, in New York. As an aside, April 4 is the birthday of our grandchild Kai/Butones and Paula Carolina S. Malay, Armando J. Malay's spouse. Armando was Rolly Fernandez's choice as godfather at our wedding. Mine was Nieves B. Epistola whose birthday it was the other day.

I'm Glad There Is You

Said I many times, for others illusion,
A feeling, result of confusion.
With knowing smile and blase sigh,
A cynical so-and-so was I!
I feel so secure, so positive,
So utterly unchangingly certain,
That I never was aware of love anew,
Till suddenly I realised there was love and you,
And all;

In this world of ordinary people,
Extraordinary people,
I'm glad there is you.
In this world of overrated pleasures,
Of underrated treasures,
I'm glad there is you.

I live to love,
I love to live
With you beside me.
This road so new
I'll muddle through
With you to guide me.

In this world where many many play at love,
And hardly any stay in love,
I'm glad there is you.
More than ever,
I'm glad there is you.
(I'm glad there is you)

At their silver jubilee. Official photographer for the evening was the couple's kumare Anna Leah Sarabia who wrote in her Facebook caption: "if he could sing, it would be the way you look tonight. rolly was more clear-eyed, it seems, as our dear friend by then had had enough to make her smiling tipsy." To which another friend the three of us have in common, Pet Cleto, who's in Canada, responded: "the hazy borders are superlatively right for this image!"

How to stage a surprise party in less than 2 weeks

...which was all the time I needed to work my phone and find out if my friends in Manila and Baguio could help me spring another surprise (the last was in 2009 at our silver wedding anniversary) on 63-year-old Rolly Fernandez. Ninety-eight percent of those I texted were game, the rest had other commitments that they couldn't get out of. The odds were in the birthday boy's favor.

My fellow conspirators had a credible cover: a Sunday meeting of the Baguio Writers Group combined with a thanksgiving lunch after BWG was conferred the Gawad Pedro Bucaneg by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas (we did meet yesterday after the party spirit settled down over coffee to talk about future activities; the meeting wasn't just a clever diversion ploy).

The guests were game for the "roasting" of the diamond jubilarian. His quirks/habits, particularly the way he takes his job/s over-seriously (as journalism professor before he retired last year and as a working journalist), were uncovered by "grillers" Anna Leah Sarabia, former student Avigail Olarte (she said she and her female classmates from Batch 2000 were all sick with the Electra complex when they dealt with their teacher), Upsilon senior brod Des Bautista and Linc Drilon. Heckling from the sidelines was Rolly's UP Baguio colleague Del Tolentino. Maryland-based Baguio boy Benjie Abellera sent his message by email. Thank you again, fellow grand schemers, dreamers and heart-breakers. 

Well, for those who didn't make it, here are the photos from Anna's and my cameras that say, "Wish you were there!"

The yogurt-fed, organically raised roast suckling pig  was supposed to have been Rolly's offering to the BWG folks. He later realized it was also his gift to himself.

Our daughter Kimi picks Mario's key lime pie instead of a birthday cake. Good choice because everyone loves its lemon-y taste (pampaalis suya).

Early arrivals Oscar Pacis, who leads a Saturday Bible fellowship at his home with wife Toottee (seated rightmost), Anna Leah, who came all the way from Tagaytay, BWG vice president Jenny Cariño and Auring Bautista who made a lovely fish ceviche.

Linc Drilon with our youngest daughter, who also pulls her own surprise by coming home from abroad while awaiting a new work permit, and Kai of the tantalizing eyes

Scholars Del Tolentino and Ben Tapang bring in some booze. Therese Jison and Heiner Maulbecker bring up the rear, the apple pies and ice cream following them.

The girls at Green Valley (from left): Ida, Kai, Kimi, Luchie Maranan, BWG treasurer Merci Javier Dulawan and Anna Leah

Linc croons "Moon River" while Guido
Canero plays the violin.

Guido's solo of The Beatles' "Yesterday"

Mira Abaño accompanies herself in her cover of "Keep Breathing," her advice to many senior citizens in the audience.

Jenny Cariño heats up the afternoon with her "Volcano."

Avie Olarte speaks in behalf of UPB Journalism Batch Class 2000 whose members often wondered where Rolly got his perkiness for a 7 a.m. class. It must've been the beer from the night before.

Des Bautista (left) regales guests with anecdotes about how he, his family and circle of friends initiated younger fraternity brod Rolly into Baguio life. 

Scholars Ben and Del listen by the foot of the stairs. Ben tells Rolly that his made-to-order bulol buffet table is too Caucasian-looking with its tall nose and pointed chin.

Baboo Mondoñedo arrives in time for the BWG meeting with a box of Cafe by the Ruins ensaymada to go with the coffee. By quiet consensus no liquor allowed during said meeting. 

After his roasting, Rolly responds with the story of how 1992, the year our family moved to Baguio, remains the best year of his life. Born to parents from Cavite, he now calls himself a Baguio boy through and though.

They all laugh at what Rolly is saying.

Anything to hear Cecile Licad and watch her play

Her hands           Photos by ANNA LEAH SARABIA

She hums.

The piano she later signed

Passion...

...and strength!

We never have enough of her.

Admirers cross generations.

How can I forget the Kawit performance of people's pianist Cecile Licad in March of
2012 when it began with a middle-aged woman and a recuperating-from-a-stroke senior trying to wade through the thickets of Dasmariñas and Bacoor in Cavite 

to get to the Island Cove recital venue in Kawit on time? That surreal Sunday 

ended with a towering inferno rated by the fire fighters as a four-alarm 

situation. 

The memory beats the time Ms. Licad continued playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto 

No. 3 in the dark when the lights went out at the Cultural Center

and the orchestra backing her up just ground to a halt. The emergency lights weren't on until five or so minutes later. Then there was the time she and her son 

Otavio, on separate pianos, performed a Poulenc concerto, a favorite of my 

US-based aesthete friend, Benjie Abellera.  

Benjie wasn't with me that evening. Reeking with envy that I was privileged 

to witness the event, he annotated it days later in an email, how 

"the slow movement has the notation that it should be played in the style 

of Indonesian Gamelan music, one of the types of music I enjoy most for its 

ethereal, dreamy and other-worldly quality. It could well be that your dream was accompanied by this type of music! Gamelan music influenced other French composers 

such as Debussy and Ravel. I don't think that any German composers fell sway 

to it. Must tell us something about the French versus the German artistic 

temperament. I would also have loved (to have heard) the Buencamino piece. 

Am trying to learn an Abelardo piano piece which isn't at all easy to play so I may

never get to learn to play it! Have the Licads put their genius to CD?  Wouldn't it

be such joy for all of us if they had done so?"

Back to March 25 last year. It proved to me to what lengths Ms. Licad's 

admirers would go to see and listen to her play Chopin's selected etudes, 

his Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61 and Andante spianato et Grand Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22, the last the recital organizer and foremost Licad  groupie Pablo Tariman didn't fail to point out as the same piece that the actor Adrien Brody played at the close of the Polanski

film The Pianist.  

From the village where I picked him up convalescing friend Rustie was 

wheeled to a spot where a tricycle picked us up to ferry us to the highway, then we boarded a bus that took us to SM Bacoor where we got into a public utility van to Island Cove.

The barker misheard our destination, and we were dropped at the wrong resort. Two more rides (a jeep and a mini bus) 

and we got it right.

Entering the right resort this time, I thought we would also take the golf 
trolley to the venue until R's friend, Tita, spotted him hobbling on his cane 

with me assisting. For a few seconds we rode in air-conditioned comfort in 
time to catch Chopin in Ms. Licad's hands.

The original Island Cove venue, a cockpit outfitted into a performing hall, was crackling and brittle and sparks were flying when the air-conditioner and lights went on during the technicals.The recital was thus moved to a more intimate function room as a precaution

while Pablo fretted over the Borsendorfer as movers carried it like a baby.

Rustie was quickly hustled by other friends to a front seat. At some point I saw his head
bowed low, and I sensed he was shedding tears from the beauty of it all (he was 
indeed). This came after our mishaps that he said was straight out of Keaton's Cops.

A day or two later, Pablo, in typical self-deprecating humor, texted to ask if I saw his life passing by when Ms. Licad interpreted Liszt's Après une 

Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata, the wailing sinners licked by the 
fires of hell. I had no quick retort. 

I did agree with him that Ms. Licad's last recital for that visit, after the 

much-ballyhooed "The Legends and the Classics" and her first-time recital at 
the Holy Angels University auditorium in her father's home province of 
Pampanga, was the most dramatic and the audience's response most heartfelt

that she obliged with more than the usual two encores. 

She beamed, practically glowed, as she gestured with her hand, touching her heart, 

then raising it to the audience that was up on its feet, still not wanting to let her go.

As Anna Leah Sarabia said, "We can't seem to have enough of her."

Anna documented in photos that strange, but in the end, lovely afternoon. 

Meanwhile, there are still a few good seats to this Saturday's (June 29)

Licad concert with the ABS-CBN Orchestra under Gerard Salonga at the CCP 

main theater. 

Her program: Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Totentanz for Piano and 
Orchestra. Call 5763132 or 09065104270.

The ones who never left my side

They're two of my favorite creative collaborators: Lynett Villariba and Marissa Ileto. Plus factor is they're my pals, too. But I haven't had a chance to do a project with Lynett since she became the extremely busy artistic director of Philippine Daily Inquirer. Marissa is now an international English-as-second-language teacher but is still based in Manila. We are doing our high school batch's souvenir program. Maybe it's part of aging but the process has become slower despite computer technology. Occasion for this social was the book launch of Bobi Valenzuela's essay collection, Minsan, sa Tag-araw, at the old Hiraya Gallery.

One of the three guys seated with me, Caloy Abrera (second from left), left this world abruptly and with a loud clanging of bells and steel. The other one, poet Jolicco de Cuadra (to my right), is gravely ill with Parkinson's disease. His long-time partner, Auggusta de Almeidda, is trying to find a way to keep his medications in steady supply. Apparently still in good form, especially where singing is concerned, is baritone Alex Dacanay (holding his lunch bowl). This was taken in 2002 at Jerry Araos's garden in Antipolo on the occasion of the sculptor's birthday.

Them were the days indeed when we could drink one bottle of beer after another and not even count how many. And we always chose to sit in the smoking section! Oh my, are we all, Sam Sarmenta, Cynthia Alberto Diaz, Dario Noche, Louie-an Pilapil, the blogger, Joel Sarmenta, Amadis Ma. Guerrero, Francis whose last name I've temporarily forgotten, and Rustie Otico, now paying our dues, health-wise. Sam I'd occasionally see in our Kapitolyo neighborhood taking morning walks. At least there's one exercise-conscious member of the Friday Club.

Obviously, from the color they're wearing, this was Valentine's Day in 2011 when Jacqui Magno, my favorite Pinay jazz singer along with Gou de Jesus (Gou, magparamdam ka naman), had a gig at Merk's Place on Pasay Road. Anna Leah Sarabia is my long-time friend from her Filipinas Foundation years when she was a Makati office girl and still carried a de Leon surname. She has come a long, long way from that, and if she weren't too busy with feminist,  anti-tobacco and pro-RH advocacies, she has many memories to put down on paper. I'm wearing a sling because I broke my elbow in January that year. It healed miraculously through the intercession of poet-healer Mila Aguilar whose book of poems, Chronicle of a Life Foretold, was launched to much acclaim recently.

Anna Leah calls this picture "The Baguio Mafia," although I am hardly in the city up north these days, except for the recent semestral and Halloween break. Baboo Mondoñedo on my right is  a frequent collaborator as far as mounting watercolor shows goes. Her own collection of personal essays should be out by the new year. It is Laida's eldest daughter, Padma Perez, who's more my barkada. Laida though is an inspiration because not only is she Ms. Serenity herself, her slow-food and organic market advocacies in Baguio have taken deep roots apart from her support for weavers of handmade textiles. These beautiful textiles she wears with elegance.Her Cafe by the Ruins guava jam and tart are up there in my to-die-for list.

The is the Babeth-Gilda duet, taken by Anna Leah in 2010 at the old Kiss the Cook Gourmet location during a concert for a cause, featuring baritone Andrew Fernando (no relation to Gilda), flutist Christopher Oracion and pianist Mary Anne Espina, to benefit the Free Ericson Acosta Campaign. Ericson is good friend Pablo Tariman's son-in-law, a political prisoner in Calbayog City, Samar.

Taken at The Peninsula Manila when Australia-based Japanese ceramics artist Shoko Mafune visited last. Mariano Garchitorena, the dapper-looking tisoy, always hosts our reunion dinners and long lingering coffee chats afterwards. Always present on these occasions also is Noel Soler Cuizon, whose time is taken up teaching fine arts full-time at the Philippine Women's University.