Monthly Archives: October 2023

Qwertyman No. 65: Who’s Afraid of Big Bad AI?

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 30, 2023

I NO LONGER attend writers’ conferences and festivals that often, believing that younger writers would benefit more from each other’s companionship and encouragement, but I made an exception last week for the 66th Congress of the Philippine PEN, as a gesture of solidarity with that organization which has bravely fought to defend freedom of speech where it is threatened all over the world.

I was richly rewarded for my effort by listening to one of the most enlightening discussions of artificial intelligence (AI) that I’ve come across—not that there have been that many, considering that ChatGPT—widely regarded today as either God’s gift to humanity or the destroyer of civilizations—has been around for just a year. 

Of course, AI has been around for much longer than that. In pop culture, which has a deep memory for these things, we can’t help but think of HAL, the insubordinate computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey (which actually came out in 1968), said to be a clever play on “IBM,” just one letter to the right. Indeed the fear of technology—what some would call unbridled knowledge—has been around since Faust made his pact with Mephistopheles, reiterated in literature, film, and pop culture all the way to Dr. Strangelove and Spiderman’s Doc Ock. 

Not surprisingly, the panel on “The Filipino Writer and AI”—composed of Dominic Ligot, Clarissa Militante, Joselito D. Delos Reyes, and Aimee Morales, and moderated by Jenny Ortuoste—expressed many of the anxieties brought on by the entry of AI into the classroom, the workplace, and everyday life: plagiarism and the loss of originality, the loss of jobs, indeterminate authorship, and the lack of liability for AI-produced work. With Filipinos being the world’s top users of social media, AI’s centrality in our digital future can only be assured, like it or not, and for better or for worse.

So new has AI been to most people—and so rapidly pervasive—that most institutions from governments to universities have yet to formulate policies and regulations covering its use and abuse (the University of the Philippines has adopted an AI policy, mandating among others that all members of the academic community should be AI-literate, but it has yet to provide concrete guidelines on, say, evaluating and grading AI-assisted work).

Most revealing and thought-provoking were the remarks of Dominic Ligot, a data analyst, software developer, and data ethicist who brought up talking points that many of us miss in our usually dread-driven discussions of AI. I didn’t tape the session, but so sharp were Dominic’s observations that I can recall and share some of them here (employing an endangered resource in this human, memory).

Let’s not forget, Ligot said, that all AI works with (in the literary, journalistic, and academic sphere) is words. It may have a scary ability to amass, analyze, and re-integrate these words, but it lacks the other elements that contribute vitally to creativity: emotion, inspiration, insight (and, may I add, the power of abstraction, the kind of conceptual leap that, say, stimulated modernism in art and literature from the rubble of the First World War). 

Also, the more AI amasses, the more mediocre it tends to be, because it works with averages, and averaging averages degrades the quality of the end-product. Since the products AI spews out from the prompts it receives are plowed back into the system, this spitback reduces the originality of material even further. If it keeps feeding on itself, AI gets even dumber.

Ligot also reminded us that the suspicion and denigration with which AI has been met in the creative community is understandable, given our earlier responses to technology. When photography was invented, he said, painters didn’t see it as a potential competitor; it wasn’t art. 

What separates human creation from AI, he emphasized, could be summed up in three things: agency, inspiration, and liability. Humans make sense of their experience and act on their thoughts and feelings accordingly; they draw on their experience to imagine new possibilities. And lastly, we are liable for what we make, do, and say, for which we have both legal and moral responsibility, while an AI-driven car does not, even if kills someone on the road.

Dominic also noted the inevitable tensions between disciplines and industries that consider AI a helpful if not indispensable tool in, say, achieving more efficiency and economy, and those, like the creative arts, that may feel threatened by the options AI offers.

Overall, the discussion could offer no assurances either way that AI would leave us better or worse, but what it left me with was a desire to continue writing the way I do, while I can, before the algorithms take over everything.

And just out of curiosity, to see what AI can do now for and to the Filipino writer, I gave ChatGPT this prompt: “Write me a sentence in the style of Nick Joaquin about a man grieving over the loss of the woman he loved.” This is what the program came up with:

“In the solemn silence that engulfed his weary soul, he encountered the bitter truth that bereavement lingered like an everlasting shadow, forever haunting his heart with memories of a love that once bloomed in the garden of his existence, now reduced to a withered rose, its petals scattered across the desolate landscape of his grief-stricken days.”

“Solemn silence?” “Weary soul?” “Desolate landscape?” Maybe not bad for a freshman yet to learn about unlearning clichés, but definitely not Nick Joaquin. Of course, out of vanity, I had to ask ChatGPT to do the same thing “in the style of Jose Dalisay,” and it offered this:

“In the depths of his longing, his heart bled like fragmented brushstrokes on a forlorn canvas, for she was the vibrant palette that infused life into his desolate existence, now forever vanished like whispers carried away by a tormented wind.”

Just slightly better than Mang Nick’s AI ghost but still so not me. (Boy, does AI love adjectives!) All this says is that AI’s big mouth and stomach haven’t found and digested us yet, probably because we are not worthy. Cold comfort, but I’ll take it.

Qwertyman No. 64: The Death of a Crony

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 23, 2023

WHEN A friend asked me, about 15 years ago, if I would meet with another friend of his who wanted me to write his biography, I almost fell off my chair when I learned who my prospective subject was.

“It’s Rudy Cuenca,” I was told. 

I knew who he was, of course—a “Marcos crony,” which had become an almost generic term at one point, there being so many. I had actually met the man once before, on a bus trip to the Pahiyas festival in Lucban arranged by the late Adrian Cristobal. My first impression had been a surprisingly positive one: he was polite, urbane, funny, hardly the obnoxious and domineering person I had imagined a crony might be.

Still, he was who he was, and I didn’t know that writing a book about his life was the right or smart thing to do. I has already written Wash SyCip’s biography, and that man was almost saintly, or sainted by the acclaim of his peers and juniors. A Marcos crony was something else.

“How can I work with someone whose boss put me in prison?” I told my friend. As a student activist, I had spent seven months in Bicutan under martial law.

“Just meet with him, listen to what he has to say,” he said. “No commitments, no promises.”

And so I did. “I have a story to tell,” Cuenca told me over coffee. I knew what he was saying: he had been privy to the Marcos regime’s internal workings, and had been one of the President’s closest golfing buddies, but, at one point, had found himself fallen from favor, eased out of the inner circle by a more unctuous lieutenant. As stories went, it was irresistible. 

I took a deep breath and told him in so many words what I’ve said to many other clients since: “I’ll help you tell your story, but I won’t lie or lawyer for you; your story will speak for itself. What I leave within quotation marks will be you speaking, not me. I’m under no illusion that you will tell me everything you know, but to the extent possible, I’d appreciate your being honest with me, so I can tell your story the best way I can.” He agreed. What followed was Builder of Bridges: The Rudy Cuenca Story, co-authored by a former student of mine, Antonette Reyes. It was published by Anvil Publishing in 2010 and became a finalist for the National Book Award the following year.

A college dropout, Cuenca taught himself the basics of business and civil engineering, and went on from small public-works contracts to some of the country’s biggest infrastructure projects such as the North Luzon Expressway and the San Juanico bridge. It was widely believed that Cuenca’s Construction Development Corporation of the Philippines (CDCP), then the region’s largest construction company, benefited from his closeness to Marcos, whom he had supported since his first presidential campaign.

Most interesting were Rudy’s stories of Palace life. Herewith, some excerpts from the book:

“I was a member of Wack Wack and Valley Golf for a number of years before I joined Manila Golf’s ‘Mafia’ group in 1973 with Charlie Palanca as the head man. Golf helped me gain some ground in business. I became a Marcos golfing crony around 1969. Marcos ended the afternoons at the nine-hole Malacañang course. Typically, a call came from the Study Room—either golf at 4:30 in the afternoon or party organized by the First Lady. The afternoon golf was meant to be the President’s peaceful time, but this was taken advantage of by those who wanted to get his undivided attention. The HIS and HERS were with their folders and envelopes for endorsement or approval. The HERS usually could not get to see him, so they were inserted as part of the regular golfing group.

“The Study Room was operated by Presidential Security Command personnel. Blue Ladies and cronies alike waited for this office to call them to major Palace functions. If no such call came, they would run around like headless chickens in search of that awaited invitation. One crony got the message that the President no longer wanted his company through the Study Room, obviously on Imelda’s instructions. As Marcos was the sole source of dispensation, those seeking approval tried to find parings or sponsors. Sometimes, those projects were so absurd that they were rejected outright.”

Rudy remembers that “Every morning, Marcos got a written report from Fabian Ver about what was going on in the country. But Marcos also got two more reports, one from Alex Melchor, and one more I think from Johnny Ponce Enrile. Marcos read these three reports at breakfast, so he knew what was going on everywhere. These reports contained lots of information—who was the boss of who, who went where, and even who was fooling around with who. He knew everything.”

Rudy doesn’t deny the systemic—but relatively small—pay-offs that got projects approved and claims processed and released in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. But he also says that they were amateurs compared to today’s pros, and that the scale of greed has grown exponentially. “In the old days, nobody asked you to give,” he says. “If you did, you gave them dinner. Today, people are told outright and up front what they’re expected to pay, and those amounts are outrageous. No advance payment, no contract.” 

When asked why, for example, Philippine roads seem visibly inferior to those of even other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, he says: “It’s simply a matter of greed. In Malaysia there’s also corruption—I’ve lived there, I should know—but the thieves there make their money by overpricing the materials. Here in the Philippines people are extraordinarily greedy. Not only do they overprice, they also steal the materials. The cement’s deficient, the gravel’s deficient. So the thing crumbles that easily.”

Rodolfo Magsaysay Cuenca’s passing last week at the age of 95 reminded me of how many stories about Ferdinand Marcos and martial law remain to be told. Fifteen years ago, it might have been considered safe for the members of that generation to spill their secrets (or justify their choices—no one will deny that these biographies are essentially self-serving), but the present dispensation will likely make people think twice about being so candid. 

I will leave it to more qualified scholars and more intrepid journalists to sift through the material and annotate the margins of my Cuenca biography, but I feel privileged to have listened to the man and to put him on the record. By any measure, it was a remarkable life. (In an even stranger twist, another crony approached me after I had done the Cuenca book, wanting me to do the same for him—the late Herminio Disini, of Westinghouse fame. I completed a draft but had to walk away, and the book never came out—but that’s another story.)

(Photo from riles.upd.edu.ph)

Qwertyman No. 63: The Slaughter of Innocents

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Penman for Monday, October 16, 2023

TWO SATURDAYS ago, my wife Beng and I sat enthralled as we watched a brilliant performance of the play “Anak Datu” at the CCP’s Black Box Theater. It was a play that, among other objectives, sought to trace the roots of the armed conflict in Mindanao to a series of massacres perpetrated by the military against Muslims just before and after the declaration of martial law. It began with the well-documented killings of young Tausug recruits being trained in Corregidor for an abortive invasion of Sabah in 1968 and went on to the less-known Malisbong massacre in Sultan Kudarat on September 24, 1974, in which 1,500 men were reportedly killed.

For us—and I’m sure for the packed crowd in the theater as well—it was a harrowing revelation. We had known about the troubles in Jolo and had followed the rise of the MNLF, but to most Manileños then and now, Mindanao was another country, tourist-pretty but woeful, home to exotic fruits, fabrics, and dances, but otherwise mired in poverty, corruption, and bloodshed. The play tries to break through those stereotypes even as it acknowledges the complexities of politics and culture as they apply to Mindanao, especially to people just trying to catch a breath of peace.

In pointed irony, earlier that same day on the other side of the world, Hamas militants had begun to mount an attack on Israel, eventually killing about 1,000 people and taking hundreds more hostage. In retaliation, Israel bombed the Gaza Strip and killed about as many. This nightmarish war of attrition is still continuing more than a week on, with no clear end in sight.

Like many Filipinos far from that war zone, all we could do was to mutter prayers for the dead, the displaced, and the suffering on both sides. On top of the war in Ukraine and natural disasters ravaging the planet, it seemed like the world was in the sorriest mess it had ever been since the Second World War, emerging from a pandemic only to destroy itself with more willful deliberation.

I know that some were not so generous as to seek or see a moral balance, and immediately identified with Israel, invoking the Bible, Washington, and common sense, especially with the reports and pictures of brave Filipino nurses standing their ground and being murdered by Hamas.

For certain, whatever and however long the history may be behind the legitimate grievances of Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation, Hamas’ brutal assault on ordinary citizens will not win them any sympathy, at least in the Western media which we depend on for our news. We know that there has to be another side to the story, perhaps one just as terrifying, but we go with what we see. It could be argued that Hamas’ actions were the result of decades of oppression, like a man running amok; but this was cold premeditation, factoring in the inevitable retaliation it would provoke.

Still, with both Jews and Palestinians fighting for survival, we forget that not all Palestinians are Hamas, and that not all Israelis supported Netanyahu. The guns will drown out the voices of moderation in both camps, those who understand that there can be no real victors in these messy wars, only losers. Lives are lost, the truth is lost, our humanity is lost.

Countless posts on social media claim that the Lord has already taken a side in the conflict. But not being particularly devout, I remember only how often the Almighty’s name has been invoked to kill. The skeptic in me suspects that the Lord is, must be, indifferent, so we can use our own hearts and minds to sort things out; he will not play deus ex machina.

Nothing, not even quoted Scripture, will convince me that the slaughter of innocents in the name of God, Allah, or Yahweh is morally justified. It has happened, it happens, and will always happen because of our brutish nature, but that will be an explanation, not an excuse. The hard-nosed men in the war room will dismiss all this preciousness as so much sentimental handwringing, and raise the killer question: “If the enemy goes for your wife and daughter, won’t you go for theirs?” Revenge and retribution, an eye for an eye, will prevail over reason and compassion, often devalued as suicidal weakness.

Come to think of it, no one ever called the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—in which over 100,000 people died—“massacres.” Most of them were ordinary citizens just going about their business, with little or no say in their country’s militarist policies. Instead, conventional political and military wisdom has always insisted that these deaths were necessary for other deaths—particularly American, in a projected invasion—to be averted. One hundred thousand innocent lives wiped off the face of the earth in a literal flash, and no one in power even blinked, because of course it was justified as the lesser evil, made more acceptable by the savagery unleashed by Japanese soldiers on their captive populations.

In graduate school, I developed a keen and rather morbid interest in a genre of English Renaissance drama called “revenge tragedy” (think “Hamlet,” but there were many cruder, bloodier and frankly more entertaining examples). The object of all those plays was to show that “revengers” begin with a just cause, the victims of insufferable oppression and humiliation. But ultimately they prove little better than the beasts they seek to extinguish, wreaking havoc on the innocent. They cross a line, and lose all moral superiority.

That line is drawn somewhere in the sands of the Middle East, but  just as importantly, it also crosses our conscience. When we recall how easy it was for many Filipinos—even those who professed to be devout Christians—to condone and even applaud extrajudicial killings, thinking that society was merely ridding itself of riff-raff, we see how righteousness and evil can so comfortably cohabit.

I have no easy and firm conclusions to draw from this most recent conflagration, and I feel that we have to look beyond the intricacies of history and politics for answers. Diplomats, scholars, and zealots have tried almost all the formulas at their disposal, to no avail—with the notable exception of the two-state policy, an elusive political solution that will come with its own challenges.

It may be that only the hopelessly naïve or the naively hopeful—and I plead guilty—still imagine that any kind of just and enduring peace can be achieved in these circumstances. But before or while we condemn barbarity elsewhere, we have our own hordes of howling ghosts to confront, coming out of the Chinese pogroms under the Spanish, Bud Dajo, Samar, Corregidor, Malisbong, Mendiola, Maguindanao, and Mamasapano, among others. Let more “Anak Datus” be written, to lift and save us from Facebook’s summary judgments.

(Image from broadway world.com)

Qwertyman No. 62: Remembering Ed Hagedorn

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 9, 2023

LIKE MANY Filipinos, I was surprised to hear last week that former Puerto Princesa mayor and Palawan congressman Edward “Ed” Hagedorn had passed away aged 76. It was a peaceful death, according to reports, which might have raised some eyebrows among those who knew him and his colorful past. Beyond surprised, I felt genuinely sad, because I had met the man and been much impressed by what he had been able to achieve, despite the brickbats thrown his way by his enemies and critics until the very end. (Only last July, the Sandiganbayan found him guilty of malversation of public property for failing to return some firearms issued to him when he was mayor.)

Hagedorn was one of those larger-than-life figures who stick in your memory like a barnacle. I came to know him two decades ago when he needed someone to write a book about Puerto Princesa’s regreening; I was available and happy to fly down to Puerto to see for myself what the buzz was all about, and looked forward to quiet beachside chats over beer and broiled squid. Instead I found myself rattling in the front seat of Hagedorn’s SUV on earthen roads at breakneck speeds, absorbing his stories, which never failed to make me wonder, “Is this guy for real?” But he was—a true politico, to be sure, who ate controversy for breakfast, but also a game-changer who left an indelible imprint on the community he served, just as Dick Gordon did for Subic and Bayani Fernando did for Marikina.

In memory of that man, let me share some unpublished notes I took for that project (which itself was overtaken by events, but that’s another story). Flash back to the early 2000s, and say hello to Ed Hagedorn:

With his well-combed pompadour, mestizo looks, and neat moustache, Hagedorn looks like a cross between actor-turned-President Joseph “Erap” Estrada and rebel-turned-Senator Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan. The resemblance goes beyond the physical, and the key lies in the movement of these men from the fringe to the center, in their mutation from outcast to power player.

For a man once feared as a teenage toughie, gambling lord, logger, and survivor of at least two assassination attempts, the two-term mayor of Puerto Princesa, Palawan, can be surprisingly gentle and charming. He speaks with an easy smile and a quiet, slightly raspy voice, the golden pin of a Christian dove bright on the collar of his gray bush jacket. He knows that the past hangs on his shoulders—something he has the honesty and the good PR sense not to deny—but he speaks much more enthusiastically about Puerto Princesa’s future, and its own transformation from sleepy island town to a global model for ecotourism, as acknowledged by no less than the United Nations.

Hagedorn appreciates the irony of his situation, and attributes his conversion to a religious faith that he now applies with a fanatic’s fervor to his job. Mayor since 1992, Hagedorn drove his former partners in crime out of the city, set down clear and strict environmentalist policies, especially those having to do with illegal logging, illegal fishing, and waste disposal. Today most of the land within Puerto has been reforested; a “Baywatch” program patrols the water; and a cigarette butt on the open street is about as common as hen’s teeth.

The story of Puerto Princesa’s regreening into a world-class showcase of Philippine environmentalism is an inspiring one, but the Hagedorn story is clearly the stuff of action movies. In fact, not one but two movies have already been made about the flamboyant mayor, who reconnoiters the city in his Chevy Suburban, wearing his trademark wraparound Cazal sunglasses and Rolex wristwatch (“It’s fake,” he says with a grin). 

He doesn’t drink, but until a few years ago couldn’t quit smoking, needing the nicotine to keep him going on typical killer workdays that begin at 6:00 a.m. and end at around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. the next morning. (He kicked the habit in 2002.) “When I came into office in 1992,” he says, “I inherited the grand total of P26,000, plus one tractor and two dump trucks. In three years, we were able to pave 340 kilometers of roads—just 1,000 kilometers more to go!” Appalled by the city’s conditions when he assumed the mayorship, Hagedorn declared a state of calamity to gain access to P20 million in calamity funds; the government balked at his move, but the courts have since upheld the mayor. He talks about setting up International Environmental University on a large estate already blocked off in Puerto for environmental development.

People wait along the road for his SUV and flag him down. He stops to listen to an assortment of complaints; a secretary takes down notes and his instructions. Like a good politician, Hagedorn has a phenomenal memory: hosting several hundred guests at a banquet at a major hotel, he greets all the luminaries present by name, without notes. The next day he takes his guests to a bayside sari-sari store for a snack of cheap sweet biscuits and soft drinks; the tab comes out to P155; he hands the giggling storeowner a P500 bill and tells her to keep the change. “Don’t evict, develop,” he says of a squatter community that had sprung up on the bayshore. He has also set up 160 low-cost housing units on 100-square meter lots, payable at P500 a month for 25 years. Like an automatic wristwatch, the man’s mind is constantly working, kept alive by motion.

In quick succession, the mayor answers the typical interviewer’s questions:

“Is there anyone next to God whom Edward Hagedorn fears?” Answer: “My wife Ellen!”

“Whom did you grow up admiring the most?” Answer: “The Godfather!”

“Any political plans?” A job, he says, that would let him do more for the environment.

When Joseph Estrada was forced out of the Palace in early 2001, his staunch friend Ed Hagedorn stood by him to the end. That probably cost him the governorship in the election that May, when he challenged incumbent Gov. Joel Reyes for the job, running under the fallen Erap’s standard. We’ve heard that many trees have also fallen since in Palawan’s forests—one of them, reputedly the province’s largest, said to have been carted off to become a centerpiece for a politician’s house. 

I remember remarking then that to call Ed Hagedorn a saint would send St. Ignatius of Loyola—himself a colorful character in his time—into a spasm, but Edward Hagedorn is beginning to look like someone we’ll sorely miss when those trees start coming down for some bigshot’s dining table.

Qwertyman No. 61: Funding Real Intelligence

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 2, 2023

YOU COULD hear the gnashing of teeth from Aparri to Zamboanga when the Filipino men’s basketball team crashed out of the recent FIBA tournament with three losses, the fans’ dismay relieved only momentarily by the locals’ drubbing of arch-nemesis China. All over social media and even in the mainstream press, there was a lot of hand-wringing, with soul-piercing questions like “Is basketball really a Filipino sport?” and “How do we regain our hardcourt glory?”, followed by angry demands for certain heads to roll and fresh calls for a renewed grassroots-based sports development program.

Aside from politics—arguably the most vicious blood sport hereabouts—nothing gets us Pinoys more worked up than sports (and maybe beauty contests, another kind of sport). We know all the players and coaches, can recite the history, analyze all the moves, surveille the opposition, and scout and spot the best prospects. You would think that it was a national industry, although it all comes down to one thing: Pinoy pride, our fervent desire to matter in the world at large, if not be No. 1.

That’s all understandable, so hold that in your memory while I rattle off some other “sporting” statistics for the Philippines.

In a 2018 PISA ranking of 15-year-old students from more than 100 countries worldwide in terms of their abilities in reading, math, and science, the Philippines scored second to last in both math and science, next only to the Dominican Republic. If that sounds bad, we scored last in reading. (The Program for International Student Assessment is run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.)

Maybe they got something wrong? In 2019, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study or TIMMS, with covered fourth-graders from 58 countries in math and science, ranked the Philippines last. That same year, the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics, checking up on fifth-graders and their proficiency in reading, writing, and math, scored the Philippines below the regional average in all three; more than 40 percent of all Filipino students tested failed to meet the minimum proficiency standard for math.

Did we hear or do I hear any gasps of dismay or demands for accountability from our government and educational leaders—or from the general public, for that matter? Of course not. The private sector has taken note, knowing they’ll be paying for these gross deficiencies down the road, but they don’t make policy, or decide the budget. Otherwise, we don’t seem to be seeing ourselves in any kind of race in global education, which just isn’t sexy or entertaining enough like singing, dancing, or basketball. We’d all be insulted if anyone called us “stupid”—and these surveys don’t use the word—so we pretend that it’s not a real problem and that we can get by on our natural smarts, like we always have. 

If we’re feeling feistier, we can even trot out the names of all the Pinoy Spelling Bee and Quiz Bee winners, chess grandmasters, Moot Court victors, World Poetry Laureates, inventors of this and that gizmo, and so on. In the meanwhile, we scratch our heads and wonder why our neighbors like the Thais and Vietnamese are surging ahead of us (“Why, we have nicer beaches! And didn’t we teach those people advanced rice technology?)

So instead of ensuring adequate funding for  programs, reforms, and resources to address these shameful scores, what do we do?

We cut the budget of the Philippine Science High School System—our flagship secondary school system, especially in math and science—from P3 billion to P2.7 billion, an 11 percent reduction. Not only the PSHS, but other agencies in our science and technology cluster found their 2024 budgets slashed as well—a 14.17 percent budget cut for the Advanced Science and Technology Institute, 18.04 percent for the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, and 83.7 percent cut for the National Research Council of the Philippines.

“We can no longer sustain our cloud-based Knowledge Hub or KHUB learning system because of this cut,” PSHS Executive Director Lilia Habacon was quoted as saying. “We developed KHUB during the pandemic, and it was being accessed by 10,000 students.” The PSHS System now comprises 16 science high schools nationwide. “Even as we’ve returned to face-to-face learning, many of our modules remain online, and the students really learn from there.” The cut will also halt the system’s infrastructure projects such as gymnasiums, dormitories and multipurpose halls in Mimaropa, Zamboanga, Soccsksargen, Calabarzon and Caraga.

The Department of Budget and Management says that the cut corresponds to “38 non-recurring and terminating locally-funded projects in FY 2023,” but as Dir. Habacon points out, there are clearly many ongoing and vital projects that need continuing funding through to at least next year. 

The DBM also took the PSHS to task for its lack of “absorptive capacity,” meaning that it couldn’t spend its allotted funds fast enough. And here’s where the irony of this whole budget business and our national priorities really gets me. (Granted, the problem goes much deeper and at more basic levels than the PSHS, but if they can do that to our premier high school, what do you think they’re doing with the less illustrious others?)

The Office of the Vice President (OVP)—under recent criticism for spending P125 million in “confidential funds” in 11 days in 2022—claimed in its defense that it did so not in 11 days, but 19. Oh, okay—is that supposed to make us feel better? Does that qualify in the DBM’s books as proof of “absorptive capacity?”

Confidential funds here, intelligence funds there in the hundreds of millions, and the recipients even feel demeaned if they’re asked to account for the money, for which their fawning friends in Congress are only too happy to give a free pass.

Meanwhile, we scrutinize every line in our budget for science education, and probably in other areas as well, and get all uptight when we spot some tiny item we can’t figure out, like some alien cockroach, and squash it with gusto, thinking we’ve done our job. When it comes to funding real intelligence, we balk.

The sad part is, we’ll get away with it, because appallingly low science, math, and reading proficiency doesn’t get people worked up as much as poor basketball tactics do. We don’t even know who our National Scientists are (there are now 42 of them), nor care what they’ve done. Fire the education coach? What for? No harm, no foul.

Penman No. 455: A Musical for Our Generation

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Penman for Sunday, October 1, 2023

PINOYS WHO came of age in the 1990s like our daughter Demi, born 1974, will swear by “Ang Huling El Bimbo” as their collective anthem—not just the song, but the whole musical and its score by the Eraserheads, who might as well be Martians to Beatles and Woodstock fans like me. On her last vacation her from her long and happy life in California, Demi made sure that she and her cousin KC got to see the show, no matter the cost, and the two girls stepped out of the theater misty-eyed. 

It got me wondering if our generation—boomers, I think we’re called—had something similar to get us all thoughtful and even weepy about what we’d been through. If you were born in the ‘50s, you’d be in your late 60s or in your 70s by now, and that’s a long time to be alive, relatively speaking, especially given that so many of us died so young (read my Qwertyman piece on this from a few weeks ago on “A long grace note”). That usually means college, jobs, marriage, kids, affairs, separations, houses, cars, debts, accidents, ailments, responsibilities, recognitions, disappointments, losses, homecomings, and all the sundry little things that make up a life. That’s what happened to us, and the ordinariness of it doesn’t seem to suggest much worthiness as entertainment material. 

But someone our age apparently thinks otherwise, and beyond just thinking about it, has actually co-written and produced a musical titled “Silver Lining” for our generation—and our children who may want to understand what their folks went through, and why they think the way they do.

That someone is Jack Teotico, better known these days as the man behind Galerie Joaquin, Fundacion Sanso, and other art-related ventures that have opened doors for Filipino artists here and abroad. (When we last met, he was on his way to Madrid to scout prospects for a gallery there.)

Jack and I happen to be friends for half a century now, having met at UP where we were both student activists. We had actually been grade-school batchmates in La Salle Green Hills but hadn’t really connected there. We were both arrested after martial law, and our lives would inevitably intersect every now and then. An economist by training, he headed the Fiber Industry Development Authority at one time, while I worked for the National Economic and Development Authority. We ran into each other more often when he devoted himself almost exclusively to the art world.

Still, it was a great surprise when he told me, at his recent 70th birthday party, that he was staging a musical titled “Silver Lining,” using songs he had written over the years. I knew Jack also loved music and had been performing with a group called Rockitwell.

“I think it’s time to share our generation’s experience,” Jack said. “Not just the political part, but our story of growing up and growing old, the friendships we make along the way, the trials we’ve been through, and what life looks like today from our point of view.” No literary piece touching on the 1970s would be complete or credible without mentioning or implicating martial law, and it’s there in the dark shadows of Jack’s story, but he’s chosen to foreground what to most people were the more familiar rituals and milestones of early adulthood—high school and college life, relationships, love and loss, acceptance, and intimations of mortality. 

Based loosely on real-life events, the musical traces the journey of three high-school buddies who, in their senior years, form a band for their Golden Anniversary homecoming, drawing in their wives and children. They soon decide to work on a musical together—so yes, this a play within a play—and as they do so, the past unfolds in poignant contrast to the present. Even as the narrative unavoidably reaches into the darkest corners of our lives—dependencies, betrayals, disappearances, and such—it ends of a note of hope and redemption.

Working with Palanca-prizewinning scriptwriter Joshua Lim So and musical director Vince Lim, Jack tells these stories through songs with titles like “Brothers,” “Losing Our Way,” “Rambolan,” and “Atin Ito.” The script is in Taglish, given the middle-class milieu of the characters, and the melodies should be easily relatable, reflecting the musical variety of the period covered, from ballads to disco. 

Directed by Maribel Legarda, the musical is headlined by veteran actor Ricky Davao as Leo, Joel Nuñez as Anton, Raul Montesa as Raul, and Nenel Arcayan as Josie, with Krystal Brimner playing a special role as Julia.

As every Broadway aficionado knows (and Jack is one), musical theater is a risky business, but I suspect that Jack really isn’t into this for the money, but rather to leave his signature on our cultural memory. He’s done more than enough to support and promote other artists, and indeed it’s time for him to tell his own story—our story.

“Silver Lining” will have a limited run of only six performances over two weekends  at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium in RCBC Plaza, Ayala Avenue, Makati City—at 8 pm on Fridays, October 20 and 27, 8 pm on Saturdays October 21 and 28, and a 3 pm matinee on Sundays, October 22 and 29. Book your tickets now via Ticket2Me or bit.ly/silverliningmusical.