Landed in CDO 10:20 am Monday. Deplaned from plane and walked to collect luggages. Kids, as expected, were like energizer bunnies (they slept in the terminal in Manila and in the plane) but mama and, especially papa, dead tired after having to haul around five luggages, two boxes, and assorted hand-carries without U-Haul.

Went to collect checked-in luggages. Retrieved all save one which, apparently, never left airport in Manila. So stood there with bunch of other passengers wondering why carousel empty until, after 15 minutes, somebody (not the Somebody who dozed off in NAIA pre-departure but just a namesake who works for airline but who apparently had also been sleeping) came to say, “So sorry, so sorry.Airline forgot that all checked-in baggages are supposed to be loaded in plane…”

After being told of luggage’s plight, Mama, along with about 20 others, troops to airline’s little corner office in CDO airport to ask, “Luggage…where?” The somebody from courteous airline promises (because they are nice and efficient and believe thoroughly in the motto The passenger is always right–especially when it concerns his/her luggages) to deliver luggage door-to-door, free of charge, not to worry.

It is now Tuesday but errant luggage seemingly still in transit. Or in limbo. Or (as we all are perennial optimists) perhaps delayed, cancelled flight that luggage is supposed to be in delayed yet again. So luggage is still, if not in plane, in NAIA, somewhere. Perhaps tucked in a nice little corner gathering cobwebs, missing in action. Or luggage may have opted to be on extended vacation.

Aside from these shall we say, minor inconveniences caused by an otherwise very courteous airline, flight was pleasant with not too much turbulence nor any loud, boisterous laughter coming from other passengers. Everybody sound asleep. Except of course for the flight crew who all probably were wondering what happened to Somebody whose luggage was loaded into plane but apparently managed to get  left behind after more than a day of anxious waiting at the pre-departure area.

So here we all are, safe and sound (albeit still waiting for missing luggage) and back in our old routines. Many, many, many thanks for the splendid holidays. Kids still can’t stop talking about how wonderful Bangkok was with the elephants and the swimming pool in Tito’s and Tita’s house. How nice it is, they say, to have a swimming pool practically right at the doorstep and could we have a swimming pool too Papa?

And when you ask them, “What about the wats?”  They reply, “What’s a wat papa?”  “You know,” you say,”all the wats that we went to.” “The what papa?” “The wats…Wat Po, Wat Arun, watchamacallit…” “What?” Oh nevermind.”

What wat indeed.

And perhaps in world of cold statistical data and tangible accomplishments, the idea of hopping from Manila to the different islands that make up the Philippine archipelago; and, from the Philippines, to Sabah, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and ultimately to China by June 2010, is crazy.

But for adventurer Art Valdez, former undersecretary of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), leader of the team of Filipinos who first scaled Mt. Everest in 2007, it is something that needs to be done.

“We are adventurers,” Valdez says.

“But more than adventurers, we want to deliver a message,” he says.

The message that the 60 year-old Valdez and his team want to deliver is simple—it is in dreaming that makes the seemingly impossible less daunting.

Off the bat, it is quite easy to be overwhelmed by what Valdez and his team is proposing to do—retrace the trade routes of the Filipinos’ forebears on board a balangay, a pre-Hispanic watercraft built using carved out wooden planks and joined by pins and dowels.

But like a sculptor methodically chipping at a granite block, the journey that began in September 2009 in Manila is now on the eve of its seventh leg.

One by one, scheduled ports of call have been ticked off its list. As of this writing, the boats are quietly lying in anchor in the placid waters off Initao in Misamis Oriental, Mindanao, approximately 1,000 nautical miles from Manila.

That the boats, the 15-meter Diwata ng Lahi and the 24.7-meter long Masawa Hong Butuan, and their crew of 30 (made up of men from the Philippine Navy, the Philippine Coast Guard, members of the First Philippine Mt. Everest Expedition Team, Badjao tribesmen, and Butuan City volunteers) have gotten this far is nothing short of a miracle.

Already, the expedition has sailed through eight typhoons and has had to undergo meticulous repairs in almost every port of call. Strong winds snapped the sails of the Diwata twice off Balingoan in Misamis Oriental. And the crew has had to repair Masawa’s broken rudder in Cagayan de Oro.

Crew members still managed to indulge in light banter Monday evening, even after the estimated four to five hour travel time from Cagayan de Oro to Initao turned out to be 14-hours long. The boats had left Cagayan de Oro at 8:47 am Monday, expecting to be at Initao, which is an hour’s drive away from Cagayan de Oro, by 2 in the afternoon. Instead, a persistent headwind caused the crew to paddle furiously for hours on end before the boats’ sails finally caught wind at 5 pm.

And then the expedition’s motorized dinghy, christened “Tiririt” by expedition members, got lost somewhere off Gitagum, Misamis Oriental, after the rope tethering it to Diwata snapped in the gathering darkness. Tiririt had been vital in towing the boats to port, in helping secure the anchors, and in shuttling between the two boats while at sea. With no Tiririt, the two boats dropped their anchors at 10:30 pm after being towed to port first by a trailing Navy ship and later by a fisherman’s banca.

“We have gotten used to it somehow,” crewmember Nelson D. Ojano said after an 11 pm dinner.

Ojano says sometimes, the elements seem almost alive. There is nothing in his 18 years in the Coast Guard, Ojano says, that comes even comes close to the experience of sailing while being pounded by the elements.

“But we all have to undergo pain and suffering before reaching our goals,” he says adding that ultimately, it is all a matter of persistence.

There is no doubt that dogged persistence, God-willing, will get the team to China by June. But Valdez, who seem to be possessed by some unseen kinetic energy, says he is also only too aware of the perils at sea.

“We are totally dependent on nature—the wind, waves and of course, on how sturdy the boats are,” he says.

This is why, he says, they made it a point to tap both the knowledge of the Philippine Navy and the Coast Guard as well as rely on the Badjaos’ sea sense.

“This is how we normally look,” Valdez says pointing to a photo of themselves taken at Mt. Everest Base Camp.

“So I told (the Badjao crewmembers), ‘get it right (celestial navigation) otherwise we will not be able to go home’,” Valdez says.

Turning serious, Valdez, dog-tired like the rest of the crew after a 14-hour slog, says he hopes their efforts may help stir up national pride, especially among the young.

Thirty years from now, Valdez says people will look at what they have done and hopefully find inspiration.

“Who ever thought we could climb Mt. Everest,” Valdez says.

“And yet we did. We want to finish this and show everybody it can be done,” he says.

“Imagine two balangays sailing up the Huangpu River in Shanghai in June,” Valdez says.

“What a sight that must be,” he says, “What a sight that must be.”

Crewmen of the Masawa Hong Butuan man the rudders while the Diwata ng Lahi trails at the distance. Photo taken off El Salvador, Misamis Oriental. PHOTO BY JB R. DEVEZA

The dialogue also examined the media’s reporting on the conflict and how this exacerbated the distrust and misunderstanding between the different peoples of Mindanao regarding the MOA-AD. Among the speakers of the dialogue was Professor Rudy Rodil, the vice chairman of the dissolved government peace panel.

In the forum, Professor Rodil said the job of disseminating information on the MOA-AD was not theirs alone and in fact they conducted continuous consultations at the local level in the course of the peace talks with the MILF. Talks with the MILF, in fact, started in 1997, one year after the government concluded a peace deal with the Moro National Liberation Front(MNLF) so local consultations have been going on and off for the past eleven years.

On this the Professor is right. Any settlement with the MILF is political in nature and while the panel may have been tasked to negotiate on the government’s behalf, in the end any agreement would have to bear the imprimatur of the President. It must therefore follow that, in explaining the MOA-AD to the various shareholders, media included,  the Executive should have taken the lead.

It can be argued, and in fact the point has already been made countless times by various personalities, that the President lacks the political capital to push for the acceptance of such a momentous document, especially since a final peace agreement would necessitate changing certain provisions of the Constitution. There is simply so much distrust on the part of the political opposition, civil society groups and even among members of the media for the President.

Nevertheless a concerted effort should have been made as the issue of a just peace with the Bangsamoro people is more important than the intramurals of the political elite. The problem was, there never was any coherent message coming from the President regarding the context of the MOA-AD and how this may pave the way for an end to the conflict with the MILF. Instead, what emanated from the Executive was a garbled message, a fact that was immediately exploited by politicians with their own selfish vested interests.

What is even worse is, with the dissolution of the government peace panel, there is an impression that the President is leaving the panel members to take all the heat, or out in the cold as the case may be, as if she was clueless to what the panel was doing all these years.

Then, too, the Executive allowed itself to be boxed into a corner by the national media when it could have seized the initiative and explained the nuances of the document to the same. It has always been an admitted shortcoming on the part of the national media to indulge in stereotyping Mindanao stories. That is a sad fact—the national media tends to, at best, sensationalize the periodic violence, or threats of violence, in Mindanao.   

I also remember reading about how the peace process is being supposedly used to propel the ChaCha Train days before the President even announced the breakthrough in the peace negotiations with the MILF during her State of the Nation Address last July. Why the President never bothered to explain herself in clear, unequivocal language is beyond me. Instead what we got was often conflicting explanations from various high officials of government.

In the end the inevitable happened—media hyped the many incendiary statements from politicians, there was confusion with regard to just what the MOA-AD is all about, and rogue commanders of the MILF attacked civilian communities. And even now, we are still picking up the pieces; we are still bearing the consequences of a peace deal gone sour.

In bulking up to lightweight, Pacquiao chose to fight David Diaz, considered as the weakest of the lightweight champions. Marquez, on the other hand, fought Casamayor, considered the linear champion of the division. 

And as everybody knows, too, Marquez bulked up to lightweight to chase after Pacquiao who abandoned the 130-pound division after squeezing past Marquez last March.

Pacquiao-Marquez II, billed “Unfinished Business,” was a fight that could have gone either way with neither fighter dominating the other. And, if anything, boxing is a sport that is in essence about beating the other guy into submission.

It is a sport about pitting one man’s skill, one man’s courage and heart, against the other. But sadly, boxing is also undeniably a business.

Pacquiao has a date with the Golden Boy in December. But the fight with Oscar de la Hoya is more about the money, the mega money, than anything else. It is an anomaly. Entertaining for sure but the disparity in size and weight between Pacquiao, who started his professional boxing career two pounds below the junior flyweight limit of 108 pounds, and de la Hoya is such that the fight can only be called a circus of some sort.

Whether Pacquiao can fight effectively at 147 pounds, after putting on an additional 12 pounds above his fighting weight, is doubtful. The same can be said  for de la Hoya who will have to fight at 147 pounds after competing as a junior middleweight and above since 2001.

Neither Pacquiao nor de la Hoya will therefore be at his fighting best for the December 6 fight which is now being dubbed as the “Dream Match.”

In contrast, a third fight with Marquez is the only logical fight left for Pacquiao after de la Hoya.  Pacquiao has said that his fight with the Golden Boy is the first of his last three fights as he intends to retire from boxing  in time for the 2010 elections.

Aside from the de la Hoya fight, Pacquiao is also eying another mega-buck fight with Ricky Hatton in an attempt, perhaps, to shore up his campaign kitty. Whether there is any wisdom in squandering his hard earned money to win a political seat is not for us to say. What Pacquiao does with his money is his own business. But there is little doubt that money is becoming a big factor in Pacquiao’s choice of who to fight.   

Then, too, Marquez is not getting any younger. Marquez is only six months younger than de la Hoya who, at 35, is now considered way past his prime. If Pacquiao dilly-dallies further in fighting Marquez, he may lose his chance in validating his crown as the best pound for pound fighter.

After winning his fight with Casamayor, Marquez once again issued the oft-repeated challenge for a third do-or-die battle. Marquez has certainly gone to a lot of trouble to bait Pacquiao to a third outing, even going as far as to come to the Philippines just to press for a third fight.

But will Marquez’s decisive win over the previously undefeated Casamayor finally make the fighter in Pacquiao listen? Or will Pacquiao become another de la Hoya who is first and foremost a businessman?

It is just a tag, a means of identifying the generation I belong to. It does not hold any meaning other than to differentiate my generation from, say, Generation X.

When Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in September 21, 1972, he ushered in one of the darkest chapters of Philippine history. Curiously, courtesy perhaps of my relatively sheltered provincial middle class upbringing, I have no traumatic recollection of the Martial Law years. But I do remember feeling Marcos’ omnipresence in my childhood.

I remember studying the origins of the Filipino in history books and such and seeing a likeness of Marcos as Makisig, the mythical first Filipino, and Imelda Marcos as Maganda, the first Filipina. I remember the earliest books on reading and writing always featured Pepe and Pilar and of course Bantay, the loyal mongrel. It was always Pepe this, Pilar that and “run, Bantay, run.”

I remember having to line up for nutribun. In the school that I went to it was not given for free. I remember having to buy my ration of the so called nutrient-filled, rock-hard bun for twenty five centavos. It was brownish and sweet and sometimes you’d find little insects mixed with the flour but once you dunked it in Lem-o-Lime it was not so bad.

I remember we were all agog with Voltes Five, Daimos, Mazinger-Z. Like kids of today, we were crazy over video games. There were no Play Station nor X Box back in the day so you’d have to go to Ororama in Cogon where the video machines were and line up for tokens. That or if you were a little older you’d go straight to the section where they sell Lord Wally, swipe a little into your palm, style your hair and then wait for the girls from Lourdes.

Marcos eventually outlawed video games as it was becoming too popular among school children. We felt this a terrible injustice then. We could never understand how playing speed racer could corrupt our minds.

I was in grade five when Ninoy was shot in the Manila International Airport. The assassination apparently triggered mass protests in Manila. There were only two channels on TV then, Channel 9 and Channel 12. The late Harry Gasser was the guy who read the news for Channel 9 but I do not remember watching all the bad news from Manila. The news was of course sanitized by the censors but as far as we were concerned the murder of Ninoy never upstaged our interest in the space adventures of Buck Rogers or of the Starship Enterprise.

Maybe our generation got tagged with the wrong label. We were born during Martial Law but the tag always sounded a little wrong, as wrong as a jar of sandwich spread labeled as peanut butter. None of us ever marched in the First Quarter Storm, nor in the many other marches and public demonstrations against Marcos. None of us ever died fighting the dictatorship, none of us even knew something was terribly wrong with the country. At best we were post Martial Law, the generation that marched post-Marcos, if at all.

But there is no getting away. People, when seeing our birthdates, will always conclude,”Ah so you’re a Martial Law baby.” And that’s just it—we were still babies during Martial Law, dead to the affairs of the world, carefree and preoccupied only with the silly games of children.

And always, at least on my part, there is that nagging feeling that our generation missed it’s turn manning the front. Our grandfathers fought the great war, our fathers and brothers fought Marcos. As for us, there is that silly little voice at the back of our heads that says we really have fought no one.

We are Martial Law babies. Perhaps now is our time to finally start fighting for causes greater than ourselves.

I do not particularly care for McCain. Nor for Obama for that matter. Like the rest of the world, I view the upcoming US elections from a spectator’s point of view although, like the rest of the world, I am keenly aware that the results of the coming US elections affects all of us, regardless of where we live.

I say McCain’s personal hero is curious because the fictional Robert Jordan is, above all, an idealist. Hemingway’s protagonist is a fictional American volunteer in the International Brigades which fought the fascist forces under Generalisimo Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Robert Jordan is a believer in great causes, so much so that he is willing to die for them. And Robert Jordan in fact does die at the end of the novel.

Personal heroes speak greatly of the mettle of the men that hold them. Heroes, unlike the passing interest on the idols of our youth, help define the lives we try to live. If for example we hold the Christians’ Jesus or the Muslims’ Muhammad as heroes, then it must follow that we would try to live our lives as closely to those that we hold in high regard. Thus it is always interesting to know just who our leaders look up to.

But I can not remember the subject of personal heroes of our candidates ever generating the same amount of interest during our own elections. We do not seem to particularly care who they look up to just as long as they project an agreeable image. Here it is not so much the man, or the woman as the case may be, but the image. It is not so much the stuff they are made of but how they are perceived in public.

Take the example of Joseph Erap Estrada. He became President chiefly because of his having played hero roles in movies. Erap passed himself off as the real deal, the uncompromising good guy, the man who always fought on the side of ordinary folks. Never mind if it was all make believe.

This is rather unfortunate because, if anything, we are again being set up. Our own national elections are still a good year and eight months away but already politicians coveting the juiciest posts are mounting their respective campaigns, albeit unofficially.

“Mr. Palengke”, “Sipag at Tiyaga”, “Mr. Clean,” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Radio, TV, and print ads are all buzzing with catch phrases, words designed purposefully to paint a certain image; in advertising lingo—packaging.

And candidates are spending good money, too, buying airtime,  paying for outsized posters publicizing their advocacies, purchasing ad space detailing their opinion on pressing issues.

Of course it is still too early in the game to say this is as good as it gets. We can always demand more; we can always say we deserve better than this.

Or is it now too late to trade form for substance? Especially since, from the looks of things, the pickings for quality candidates are getting slimmer and slimmer?

For all our sakes, I certainly hope not.

I have never really found the songs I listen to amusing. I am a child of the 80s and 90s. But as far as I can tell, none of the songs of that “era” were funny.

I mean, does anybody find Sting “funny”? Or Peter Gabriel? Does anybody crack up when listening to the Eraserheads, the penultimate Pinoy band of my generation?

I have never thought myself old, even when I started sleeping with a pillow tucked under my thighs. I have chronic back pain, you see. Not too long ago I discovered I slept better this way. But old? No way.

Instead of seeing it as an unmistakable sign that the old engine is breaking down, I thought of it more as the natural effects of perhaps a nasty spill, even when I hadn’t ridden my bike for weeks.

I’ve given up jogging. My knees can’t take the constant pounding. And I have a collapsed arch from my days playing soccer so I have pretty much given up on running as exercise. Besides, why jog when one can cycle?

As I write these my ankles are throbbing. Like Hell. Several months ago my knees acted up. It got so bad that I had to use a golf club to get around. I can’t walk decent but not once did I thought of using a cane. Canes are for patsies. Golf clubs, well, that’s another story. And good thinking , don’t you agree?

The  doctor said I must have gout. I can’t have gout. Only old people have them. Not me. There is wisdom to second opinions after all.

But I bought the painkillers and the Colchicine tablets just the same. No need limping around when access to years and years of medical research is on hand, you understand.

They say the only way to age gracefully is to embrace it and to sort of roll with the punches. But how can one, to use a cliché, age like wine when one can’t even walk decent? I’m not even sure I can use the golf club trick again as my daughter seems to have gotten wiser.

Eureka!!

The secret to aging gracefully? Colchicine. And that’s with the second opinion.

Gone are the hysterics. Gone are the high-pitched cries of treason and dismemberment of the Republic. Gone, too, is the urgency.

President Arroyo has agreed to give the Senate a direct hand in drafting a new peace accord with the MILF. So now we are back to zero. Now we can all say goodbye to the prospect of peace with the MILF, at least till the elections in 2010 are over. It is now politics as usual in Manila, war as usual in Mindanao.

Meanwhile, civilian militias are rising up in Mindanao, thanks to Secretary Puno. The Ilaga, a ghoulish outfit with a litany of atrocities to its name, has slithered its way from the dark past and into the light of the present.

Internal refugees are flocking to evacuation centers; casualties, combatants as well as civilians, are rising.  We are, after all, now shooting instead of talking. But beyond the usual, feeble rhetoric calling for restraint, the silence from Manila is deafening.

The headlines have moved on; the war is now yesterday’s story. Mindanao is now yesterday’s story. Now, our politicians can again focus their energies to the coming political intramurals. Never mind the dead and the dying.

What else is new?

For Manny, well as they say the man’s got to eat. But for a future Hall of Famer who has given fight fans some of the more memorable fights in the history of boxing, de la Hoya is chickening out by fighting a much much smaller fighter, even if that fighter happens to be the best pound for pound boxer today.

Consider the tale of the tape: Oscar stands 5’10.5’’, Manny, when he’s got his socks on, 5’6.5”. Oscar weighs 150 pounds (as of May 2008 when he fought Steve Forbes) but fights at 154 pounds. Manny, on the other hand, has just had one fight at 135 pounds. And at 73 cm, Oscar enjoys a reach advantage of a kilometric 6 centimeters.

To emerge a winner, Manny Pacquiao needs only to do one thing—show up. He does not need to beat up Oscar, a long shot in any case. He does not need to win. Nor even score a draw, another long shot. If, by the last round, Manny happens to be still standing and trading punches, then he would have won. Again. Even without the rematch.

By contrast, Oscar, just by picking Manny, has already lost.  Forget all the talk about Oscar wanting to fight only the best pound for pound fighter.  Forget even all his talk about avenging the Mexicans. In fact by picking Manny, Oscar has already done the Mexicans a great disservice. Whichever way you look at it, the match up looks every bit the spectacle of the big bully picking on the smallest kid in the school yard. Even if the smallest kid happens to pack some serious punching power.

In any case there are no Mexicans, Filipinos, or Canadians in boxing. There are only individual fighters, devoid of nationality, devoid of race.

If the fight were in the context of the movie Lord of the Rings, would Aragorn pick on, forgive the comparison, Frodo? I don’t think so. In fact, in the movie as well as the book, Aragorn makes it a habit to stride to the battlefield and look for the biggest, baddest troll. Orcs he leaves to men of lesser stature, to dwarves and elves. And, of course, to Frodo and the Hobbits.

If Oscar were Aragorn, to take the argument further, he would have chosen to fight Margarito, the biggest, baddest troll of his weight class. That would have been boxing. In its purest, most perfect form. But as we have now seen, Oscar is not Aragorn even if he has reigned as the Golden Boy for the longest time.

As for Frodo? The book and the movie tell us he vanquished the Lord of the Ring himself. But then again, that’s just fantasy.

Or maybe not.

Take the example of raising “police auxiliaries” a.k.a. civilian militias. Just last Friday, Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said government is “thinking” of tapping civilian volunteer organizations to create police auxiliary groups. Puno said this idea is among the many items to be discussed with local government officials of North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte in “consultations” that ended yesterday.

In talks with local reporters yesterday, however, Puno admitted that they have already distributed shotguns to some communities, particularly in Kolambugan, Lanao del Norte, scene of one of the bloodiest attacks by the MILF in recent weeks.

To justify this unilateral action, unilateral because government is supposed to be still in the process of consulting local stakeholders regarding the wisdom of arming civilians in the ongoing conflict against the Moro rebels, Puno said this is part of the year old “internal security plan” of the Philippine National Police to organize civilians to defend their communities.

He said government is planning to distribute 12,000 more shotguns to police auxiliaries who will be “under the command of the PNP” but who will nevertheless be on the payroll of the local governments concerned.

That government went right ahead in enlisting civilians to fight the MILF is not unexpected. This is predictable behavior on the part of the President—she has a habit, after all, of launching weather balloons to test public opinion. Public outcry, especially in the aftermath of one of the most vicious attacks in recent years, is a call to arms against the MILF. And this is a President who likes to pander to popular outcry, even when what the public is asking for is not necessarily right. So long as an exit strategy is on hand and ready.

By tasking Puno to, on the one hand, ostensibly consult local stakeholders on the issue of raising militias while, on the other, implementing a limited version of the plan, the President is again hoping to play it safe. She can always say, if public opinion becomes too hot to handle, that this was just a test case, not official policy.

If, however, the action is welcomed by a civilian population already grown weary of the constant threat of attack, she can always step forward and claim all the credit for herself. Either way, this is a win-win solution for a politically wily President.

The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International already issued warnings regarding the use of militias in fighting the MILF. Saying this could only further inflame an already tense situation, Amnesty International said experience from around the globe belie the wisdom of employing militias. Kosovo, Rwanda and our very own experience in the 1970s and 1980s tell us that militias almost always degenerate into gangs susceptible to ambient prejudices, biases, even revenge.

Yet here we are. Again.

We in Mindanao have been caught up in a war with no prospect for a just peace for too long. What we don’t need is a repeat of the 1970s. This is no political game. This is  literally life and death. The last thing we need is a President who thinks first of her own political fortune than in crafting a solution that works. What we need is a President who offers solutions without skirting accountability for them. Is this too much to ask?

But then again, perhaps for this President it is.