Pia on the Run

Whoever thought of the title for her annual fun run on March 13 at the SM Mall of Asia (do early birds or lumbering middle-aged women get a prize?) ought to get a medal for hitting two birds with a pebble (can’t anger the animal rights activists).

Sen. Pia Cayetano, a stunner at five feet eight inches (towering by typical Pinay standards) met with the core of the Tigil Yosi media group (women in media who were at a seminar on smoking hazards in Boracay in 2008), led by Anna Leah Sarabia and Rina Jimenez David, at Café M near the Ayala Museum in Makati City yesterday. Health-conscious, she selected a lunch menu of lots of greens, chicken, fish and a beef stew cooked Asian fusion style. And she concentrated on the salads.

In a few words, Pia is sincere. She’s genuinely interested with the concerns of women from various parts of the country and appreciated that people like lawyer Golly Ramos flew in from Cebu, I took the bus from Baguio the day before, a young Manila Bulletin reporter came from Davao.

She was moved to learn that the former mudslide evacuees of Santo Niño in Ambassador, Tublay, Benguet, have a passable but rough road leading to their barangay and were receiving not much help from the provincial government. The men are clearing 15 road cuts; the women prepare their meals. The local Department and Social Welfare and Development unit could only give them a sack of rice. The Department of Public Works and Highways is nowhere to be found because of the election ban on public works. It’s the women again who find ways and means.

Pia’s awareness of women’s issues stems from firsthand experience as a daughter, mother who lost an infant son, wife, legislator. When she goes on the Senate floor to talk about breastfeeding, she hears snickering from the gallery. Her august colleagues (male, of course) taunt her by saying, “Nag be-breastfeed din kami.”

If she didn’t have a brother in the Senate to update her, she’d be out of the loop because at post-sessions, the male senators regroup in lounges and bars while she, a mother of two, has to return home to oversee her daughters’ well-being and progress in school work.

So Run with Pia because you’ll also be running for causes close to her heart: breast and cervical cancer, women’s livelihood projects, violence against women. In everything, she said, a woman is in it. Whether it’s climate change or allocation of barangay funds, women are involved.

Follow Sen. Pia Cayetano at www.mydailyrace.com or visit her website at www.senatorpiacayetano.com

Chant for Cafe

In late March this year, Su Llamado put together a mini-art festival to celebrate the 20th anniversary of what is now a Baguio landmark--Cafe by the Ruins on Chuntug Street. As part of the fest, the Baguio Writers Group held an after-dinner poetry reading. Members Jenny Carino read a Pablo Neruda ode to the tomato, Nonnette Bennett celebrated the short life of one of the cafe's partners, Christine Arvisu, visual artist Rishab strummed the guitar and sang his own composition, Desiree Caluza praised vegetables, Baboo Mondonedo read a piece about another cafe habitue, Santiago Bose, who had passed on. This was my contribution.

How many times have I sat here alone, ordered from a short list of favorites—the chewy turon, a glass of lemonade, no sugar, a cup of coffee, a pot of tea? And, when feeling acutely bereft, a bowl of the gooiest champorado to warm a fretful belly?

When there is nothing going on in the refrigerator at home, except for cooling bottles of water, I come here to stock up on loaves of camote bread and vials of decadent liver pate and live on them for as long as I stubbornly refuse to step on the kitchen.

This is where I bring out-of-towners, visitors from foreign shores who never leave disappointed. Always they praise the freshness of the day’s menu, the creative take on an old or familiar staple.

Revelations, confessions, disclosures come easy when hunger is sated. After tucking a plateful of Tofu Pouches, how can I say “No” to a request for a tour around the city? If I had eaten an uninspired comida china, I would have reason to refuse.

So here’s to the café of our affections.

May you never lose your intimate size.
May you never become a chain or franchise.
May you never be replaced by a more pragmatic bank, a real estate office or a nest of condominiums.
May poets, troubadours and similar wayfarers never overstay their welcome.

May the rich Cordillera soil continue to yield the greens you are famous for.
May your roof defy months of monsoon.
May you be highland Philippines’ perennial pleaser of palates, salve of souls.