Girlfriends' night

I've traveled miles to attend First Draft meetings, and even arrived once from an overseas trip, woozy from jet lag but still able to listen to my wise elders with some mindfulness.

Karina Bolasco and I are the "babies" in this group of women who write and like to share their works by reading them aloud for critique. I write "babies" because after me, the next lady is in her mid-60s. The eldest is forever 84.

We used to meet six times a year, but that petered out when each got involved in this or that. But the raison d'être for a group like this has been met--we're all engaged in and committed to writing. And we write not for livelihood reasons alone. To use another friend's term, writing has become a "lovelihood".

Rita Ledesma had been our gracious Christmas host for many years. December is when she brings out her best china, the best cuisine and desserts that she has tasted and now wants to share this delight with us. We exchange gifts (an option) and have a non-negotiable bunutan or mini raffle. This year we missed the company of Mariel Francisco, Melinda de Jesus and Lorna Kalaw Tirol, all fulfilling family duties. I know there's a next time with them.

If my pictures are fuzzy, maybe it's because I look at these women through the eyes of love.

Karina Bolasco and Gilda Cordero Fernando

Chit Roces Santos, Edna Manlapaz and Fe Arriola

Fe and Rita Ledesma

Glory Be, Gilda's at It Again

Her late-night text on a Tuesday didn't arrive. I have a habit of turning off my cell phone just before I sleep; it's something that annoys my eldest child who says, "What if there's an emergency?" Well, it's precisely for that reason I turn the thing off--it's usually bad news that comes in at a late hour. And if it's bad news, it can wait till morning.

It wasn't bad news that Gilda Cordero Fernando had sent me. It was just a request to come in at an earlier time. And being me, when I'm with my shadow, I usually am on time or ahead of the appointed time. So that Wednesday, I arrived at her gate promptly at 11 ("Huwag 10, baka may muta pa ako," she told me on the phone) loaded down with Benguet coffee, an art book, a cat book and a bag of Globake hopia which she loves despite her diabetes.

She was busy in her bed-cum-work room listing down the big paintings/collages she had finished in the past year. Gilda has always handwritten her stuff, even drafts of her essays, fiction, even lesser-known scripts. She has an email address, but someone else, usually a computer-literate help, opens it for her after you text her that you've sent some documents or photos she may like to look at. She can't for the life of her find QWERTY on a Remington or an old-fashioned personal computer. It has always been pen on yellow-ruled pad for her. When she cuts and pastes, she really does that: she cuts with a pair of scissors and pastes the paragraphs that have to be moved up or down with scotch tape.

That morning was no different. She sounded sungit when she turned to me, saying she would get lost in her listahan if she had me to entertain. I said, "No problem. I'll go to the kitchen and look for something to drink." (I hope my mother, who has a Facebook account, isn't reading this note. I wouldn't want her to think that she raised me to feel so at home in other people's houses that the first place I head for is the kitchen or the fridge.) Anyway, I was so confident that there would be a can of Coke 0 ready there so I had one to go with a packet of Skyflakes crackers. Being diabetic, too, I take five or six meals a day, spread out within a 17-hour period.

So when Gilda saw me fully concentrated on munching away at her desk, she told me, "Yah, I know the feeling." She was referring to hypoglycemia when we feel parched and ravenous as our blood sugar drops. "Don't eat too fast," she added, "we have nice hot choco and nice lunch." She returned to her chore.

I talked to her back. "Having a show?"

"Yah."

"Where?"

"Oh, the usual--SLAB." That's Silverlens 's sister gallery on Pasong Tamo, Makati.

Her framer was coming over at 2 p.m. to pick up the works, and she was listing their titles down, plus their sizes, I suppose, for the pre-exhibit preparations.

One of the help, whom I address Ning as I am unsure of her name, comes in to bring me hot chocolate with a separate platito of fresh green pinipig. Gilda knows what I like to drink in her house--homemade hot choco. And what I like to do there is just hang out in her room, taking in the myriad of objects that defines the dweller. Even when she pauses to take a leak or powder her face, going to her very own tatak Gilda bathroom, her presence lingers.

These past couple of days, we've been exchanging text messages about gouache, watercolor, best source of art supplies, the book I lent her, the difference between transparency and opacity.

You'd think you're talking to a classmate or a peer. But it's Gilda who never fails to put an element of mischief in a prosaic thing as an SMS.

I complained about my in-house critic, Rolly Fernandez, who pointed out after seeing the first coat of paint I put on my latest works. "Masyadong manipis ang pahid mo," he said. Annoyed, I decided to haul my unfinished works to my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis's greenhouse in Baguio so I could paint undistracted.

Gilda said hers was no different. Atty. Marcelo is still suggesting that she paint a bahay kubo for her subject.

Now, I don't know if I am better off with my critic.

Photos of Gilda's boudoir by Babeth

Froyo: The planet’s new ice cream

The sign is atop a heap of other signs: Dave’s Yogurt Bar. I swiveled from where I was seated at the back seat of a cab, sometime in May last year. I was en route to an out-of-town assignment, but I promised I would return to that clean, well-lighted place at 16 United Street, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig City. The bar-café is behind other eating places that serve steaks and barbecued meat products.

And for those from outer space, yogurt is this planet’s new ice cream.

Return I did for an initial sampling of the plain yogurt. If Oprah has had her Aha! moments, I have had mine every time I go to Dave’s. First time I went there was with my kumare Anna Leah Sarabia, then with hard-to-please Kiss the Cook caterer Waya Araos, followed by my sisters and daughters, ex-colleagues at a now defunct media office, Gilda Cordero Fernando, spiritual worker Bong de la Torre, and Club Nostalgia singing host-emcee Lincoln Drilon.

Once I brought cups of different-flavored yogurt to freelance writer Gou de Jesus's pad for an afternoon of catching up, and she just mewed in delight while taking a few teaspoonfuls of the stuff so the supply would not run out quickly.

Unanimously, they say, they’ll go there on their own the way I always do to try the regular flavors on the line-up like passion fruit, everything from the berry family (strawberry, wild berry) grape, mango, vanilla bean, dark chocolate and coffee. Dave’s now has a premium line: macadamia, pistachio, dark decadent chocolate, among others. Coming soon is mangosteen (the word itself makes me salivate).

When franchise owner David Onstott, a Filipino with American-Bavarian roots, says, “Our yogurt cakes are awesome,” you’ve got to believe him. This guy is a living testament to what diet awareness can do to alter one’s life for the better. Born with a form of skin asthma, his parents tried different medications on him. As they sought other cures, they learned that a diet leaning more on fruits and vegetables alleviated David’s discomfort.

Today David can pass for someone in his late 30s. I could scarcely believe it when he said he’s 50. No botox. The man detests anything artificial, starting with his own products. His motivation for making yogurt is “to make a healthier frozen treat than ice cream,” he says.

Few people read labels on ice cream containers, and it’s high time that more do. The label declares the usual ingredients, namely, water, sugar and milk solids. The last can include some hazardous chemicals for preserving the ice cream’s color, for guaranteeing shelf life (preservatives), for stabilizing to keep the other ingredients together instead of breaking apart when they’re frozen. There’s artificial flavor, too (only 2-5 percent fresh fruit; everything else is unreal).

Perhaps the worst ingredient there is white sugar, the most destructive kind.
But back to Dave for less scary news. Fresh yogurt, which is the base, is made from scratch. It takes him two days from the time he gets the milk (pure cream) to the time he turns the stuff into frozen yogurt. He uses as much as 40-50 percent fresh fruits so he finds no need to artificially color his products. The color comes from the fruit. David doesn’t compromise taste and texture.

“So how good can this possibly be for you?” he challenges me as I dig into a cake.

He is keeping prices “as low as I can. It’s important that people get their money’s worth when they come by. That means something to me,” he says.

For the salad he makes for me, which he calls “just a salad,” he throws in on the spot lettuce leaves, sugar beets, cubes of multi-grain bread, tomatoes, sesame seeds and pours a vinaigrette and olive oil dressing. It’s a huge bowl, but he assures me it will be finished in no time and I will feel light, with room enough for another round of yogurt.

Next on his personal menu is to start a class on how to feed an ailing loved one at home and how to help them recover, again through a good diet.

He’s moving out of his charming “hole in the wall” in Barangay Kapitolyo; his products will soon be found in more than 10 outlets in Metro Manila malls.

Dave’s Natural Premium Yogurt is open for franchising. Email bananakings@yahoo.com or text/call 0905-219-8961. He has a fan page in Facebook.

Lola Mad Hatter

She called on a Sunday on learning I was in town. “Come over and meet this young artist. He’s going to interview me. I don’t know what for. But please come.”

So while the rest of the city stewed under the heat, Joey Cobcobo, his wife and I enjoyed the cool shade under the canopy of greens in what was once Atty. Marcelo Fernando’s garden (now taken over by daughter-in-law Lilli-ann) while La Gilda Cordero Fernando (a.k.a Lola Mad, short for mader, to her nine grandkids and her help) sat for her portrait.

She wasn’t dressed for a conventional portrait. She wore jeans, socks, slippers, her Darna bracelet and a black and white sleeveless crocheted top. She put on a thin scarf for the occasion, earrings and a dash of lipstick, but like her, Joey wasn’t following rules, either. Very respectful, he asked her if she didn’t mind being portrayed as an aswang, her distorted face on a piece of piña-saba sheet of paper handmade from Sagada. She was thrilled at the idea, needless to say.

Joey has started on an ambitious Lola project. He will do 100 portraits of 100 living grandmothers on the paper earlier mentioned. The paper has the quality of cloth, and he plans to engage in a collaboration with his mother to embroider the work like a handkerchief of olden times.

To get his subject to relax, he would video them first. I was amazed that Gilda agreed to a video. She always turned down invitations to TV talk shows for fear of freezing in front of the camera. But she didn’t mind this time because “I’m just one of a hundred lolas. Who’d be able to tell it was me when these videos are shown simultaneously?”

Joey and I got her to talk about how different she is from other grandmas. She said, “I’m more liberal. I lead my apos through meditation and body movement exercises. It’s so much easier to get a child as young as three to meditate deeply than an adult. When they were about two years old, we’d take a bath together in my sunken shower. This practice stopped when one day, one said, ‘Lola, bakit may buhok?’”

She’s proud of the fact that her grandchildren consider her their friend more than a person they should defer to. “But now I feel that they can teach me more than I can teach them.” Especially in matters of technology, Gilda being known among our writer friends as incapable of typing or encoding her draft. Her apo or help turn on the computer for her, encode her essays (she’s working on a long one on the topic of the señora) or search the Web for esoteric visuals to guide her in her new painting subjects on the fight of good versus evil.

She began painting in earnest at age 70, but has always been supportive of visual artists. Her home is a living museum of the best and the brightest: Leandro Locsin, Onib Olmedo, Julie Lluch, Karen Ocampo Flores, Danny Dalena, Roberto Feleo, Mark Justiniani, Elmer Borlongan, Gabriel Barredo, Impy Pilapil, etc. And she spots them way before they become critical and commercial successes.

She told of how a pert apo went up to Emong Borlongan while he was working on a mural in Gilda’s house. The kid told him, “Hindi ganyan mag-paint!”

Lola Mad was mortified but didn’t shush him. Freedom of speech is allowed in her compound. Her husband has been known to be her severest critic. During the GCF Books years, when she and her collaborators were almost done with a book project, she would present this to him for his opinion. When he gives the thumbs down, she knows the book will sell well. If he likes it, she knows it needs retooling.

She uses the same criteria when buying him pasalubong after a day well spent out of her airy Panay Ave. home. In a bakeshop or patisserie, she’d choose the pastry or ice cream flavor that she won’t touch with a long pole and bring that home. He is so grateful that he’d exclaim, “Mommy, you really know what I want! You must really love me.”

Once, he told a grandson to choose another color because the boy showed a preference for pink. He said, “Boys should like black, blue, brown or gray.” When he was out of hearing range, Lola Mad told her grandson, “It’s okay to like pink. It doesn’t make you less a boy.” She ensured that this next generation of Fernandos wouldn’t have gender biases. And so the boy kept on drawing pink volcanoes, pink fishes, etc.

These days, Gilda described herself as being in a “cocoon stage,” resting after overworking herself preparing for two major exhibitions last year. She painted 42 watercolors for a Le Souffle show and another 32 for SLAB.

Joey, a multi-awarded painter with several grand slams from major prize-giving bodies, was astonished at Gilda’s accomplishments and activities. While we sat down for some cool buko pandan salad, he wondered aloud why she’s extraordinary.

She waved aside the compliment, saying, “There are some women who just grow old but are still immature and stupid until the day they die.” As she enters her 80s, she makes sure she is aging not only gracefully and with so much wisdom to share but with enough of her innate wackiness/naughtiness retained.


Photo shows three weirdos enjoying an atypical Monday afternoon.

Her Boots Are Made for Flying

Many important people in the long, well-lived life of “cultural heroine” Gilda Cordero-Fernando (seated second from right) are missing from this photo shared by DJOK ADRIANO at the end of a buffet dinner hosted by the Ateneo de Manila University. The university had just conferred on her the Tanglaw ng Lahi award for achievements in the arts. An equally vital sartorial detail is a-miss: a peek of her ankle-high, off-red boots cobbled together by Marikina craftsmen underneath her Steve de Leon saya. If a GCF Fans Club finally gets going, here’s part of the core that will compose it (seated from left): lighting designer Shoko Matsumoto, theater director Nonon Padilla, art director Manny Chaves and couturier Steve. Standing are three women happy to witness Gilda’s latest recognition: one fat mama, feminist Anna Leah Sarabia and Ateneo Prof. Eileen Lolarga.