Monthly Archives: May 2025

Qwertyman No. 147: Literature Has Many Flags

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 26, 2025

IT WILL be a tempest in a teapot to most Filipinos still caught up in the aftermath of the midterm elections, a topic of interest to a limited few, but I’m bringing it up this week because it’s important enough for larger reasons.

The Philippines will be Guest of Honor (GOH) at this October’s Frankfurt Buchmesse (FBM), the world’s oldest and largest book fair. Being GOH means that the Philippines—its literature, culture, history, and politics—will be foregrounded in Frankfurt, through the dozens of writers, thousands of books, and the many exhibits and presentations that will be brought over to the FBM, through the combined efforts of the National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), among other organizations. 

Much of the groundwork for this initiative, which began well before the pandemic, was laid by Sen. Loren Legarda, the principal advocate of arts and culture in the Senate. GOH status is an honor given every year to a different country, but it doesn’t come free; the project involves hundreds of millions of pesos, which its proponents see as a worthwhile investment in raising the global profile of the Philippines through its culture and expanding the international market for Philippine books and authors. The past two years have seen intensive efforts made by the NBDB and the Philippine GOH Committee to prepare the program, select the delegates, and arrange the logistics for our historic participation in October at the FBM.

Comes now a move, led by some prominent Filipino writers and activists, to boycott the FBM for various reasons, including what some see as the government’s misplaced priorities in funding our GOH participation, but primarily in protest of the FBM’s alleged support for Israel in its war in Gaza, and also of Germany’s complicity as an Israeli ally in that conflict. At the moment, it hasn’t gained much traction, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the intervening months between now and October, it gathers some steam—likely not enough to stop us from going, but enough to cause some dismay and dissension within our ranks.

I’m not in favor of this boycott, for reasons I’ll shortly explain, but first, full disclosure: I have been formally invited to attend the FBM as a delegate, and have accepted the invitation; I will be involved in several events—a launch of the new Spanish translation of my second novel Soledad’s Sister, several book readings, and possibly some panel discussions. All my expenses will be answered for. This will be my third (and at my age, likely my last) participation at the Frankfurt book fair, as an author whose books have been translated into Italian, French, German, and Spanish editions. In other words, I have a vested interest in going to Frankfurt. (To those who have never been to the FBM, it is no junket; expect long hours manning the booths, talking to people, selling book rights, and walking kilometers of hallways on the enormous fairgrounds. Frankfurt is not a particularly scenic city, although a side trip to nearby Heidelberg and its Rizal connections will be a welcome break.)

Some readers might find the connection between the FBM and Gaza tenuous and the call for a boycott bewildering, but it does have some basis worth serious consideration. The relationship between Germany and Israel, or the Germans and Jews, is long and complex (highlighted by the Holocaust before Israel even came to be, and the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, among others), but the immediate trigger for the outcry was the FBM’s controversial cancelation of an awards ceremony for the celebrated Palestinian writer Adana Shibli in the immediate wake of Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023. 

The outrage is justifiable and widely shared. In this column and other media, I myself have written against Israel’s assault on the Palestinian people (see “The Country I Wanted to Love,” from April 19, 2024), as have many other commentators. Indeed, I know of very few Filipino writers who have cheered the onslaught on—typically those holding orthodox Catholic views upholding Israel as God’s chosen nation. 

Israel’s relentless pounding of Gaza, resulting in the wanton slaughter of innocents, has long outlived its excuse of neutralizing Hamas. It is genocidal butchery by any standard, this calculated starvation of Gaza’s remaining residents, the killing of aid workers, and the mechanical attribution of atrocities to “operational errors.” Netanyahu’s encouragement of Trump’s crass and bizarre proposal to depopulate Gaza so he can turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East” reveals the utter moral depravity of these two men. 

Israel’s barbarism in its campaign of terror and annihilation has now exceeded Hamas’ own (yes, unlike many protestors, I hold Hamas accountable for its own brutality—something that will surely not endear me to the far Left on this issue). Those of us who study Elizabethan revenge tragedy know this only too well: the line beyond which the revenger no longer seeks justice but mindless retribution, and becomes a horrifying, blood-soaked caricature of the very object it opposes.

The question for us writers is: will any of this be helped by withdrawing our participation from one of the world’s largest (if arguably not freest) exchanges of ideas through books? Will we prevent ourselves at Frankfurt—should the need and opportunity arise—from expressing our opinions on Gaza, among a host of other global issues concerning human rights? (Current German rules restrict financial support to artists seen as anti-Israel, especially those identified with the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement or BDS, among other repressive measures.)

My answer is no. I stand for peace and justice for both the Palestinian and Israeli people—indeed, for all oppressed peoples of the world, including our own. But divesting ourselves of a historic opportunity to express our collective resistance to injustice—not just in Gaza or over this one issue, no matter how pressing, will only be counter-productive. Unless it catches fire (other prominent authors elsewhere, as in Indonesia—which was GOH some years ago—have expressed support), a symbolic boycott will be as deafening and as consequential as a tree falling in the forest.

In the end, this will come down to an individual act of conscience, however one decides, for which we must reserve our respectful acceptance. Whether one goes or stays, one’s reasons or motives have to be clear, so the gesture will not be wasted. I will go to Frankfurt proudly, with neither guilt nor shame, to speak about our people and our struggles for freedom through my books. Engagement, not withdrawal, will be the best service writers can perform for their country and for all oppressed and silenced people everywhere. 

Politicians like to wave one flag—Filipino, American, Israeli, Palestinian. Literature, like all art, has many flags: peace, justice, freedom, equality, truth, love, beauty, and harmony. Let all these fly in Frankfurt.

(Image from Studio Dialogo)

Qwertyman No. 146: A Shift in the Tide

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 19, 2025

THE PUNDITS have spoken and all kinds of analyses have been made about the recently concluded midterm elections, with most observers remarking on the surprise victories of Bam Aquino and Francis Pangilinan in the Senate and of Akbayan and ML in the partylist, as well as the steep decline of the hard Left alongside the continuing strength of the pro-Duterte forces. 

Some read the results as a sharp repudiation of the administration, others as a resurgence of the “Pinklawan” moderates, and yet others as just more proof of the Pinoy voter’s kabobohan in keeping the same old names in power. What’s clear is that it was a mixed outcome, giving everyone something to either crow or complain about.

At my favorite poker haunt, where I’ve been playing with a bunch of regulars for nearly twenty years, the table talk inevitably came around to the election results. The people here—mostly young and but with many seniors, mostly men, mostly middle class and urban (you need some money to play poker)—represent for me a good cross-section of our society, perhaps statistically imperfect but more grounded in gritty reality: neither scholars nor ideologues but homeboys coming from both Manila and the far provinces, brought together by nothing grander than chasing after a straight flush and pocket aces.

Maybe to rattle their opponents or to deflect attention from the cards, these guys can talk up a storm about politics. My general strategy is to shut up and smile to keep them guessing; although they know me as a UP professor and could presume on my liberalism, I’ve decided that listening rather than arguing would yield me a truer picture of the Pinoy mind, and protect my hand.

Back in 2022—to my great dismay—that mind was overwhelmingly pro-“Uniteam.” Despite all the information floating out there about Marcosian martial law and Dutertean bloodlust, my fellow pokeristas and even the dealers loudly proclaimed that they were voting for BBM, hushing the few Kakampinks in the room. 

Last week, the atmosphere in the poker place was decidedly different, one of great amazement and relief. There was surprise–but also joy—that Bam and Kiko won. The biggest buzz revolved around Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto, less over the win that everyone expected than his political future, which everyone agreed should include the Senate and at least the vice presidency, the only concern being his youth (not that he was too young for the job, but for the legal minimum age). No tears were shed over the loss of popular entertainers and media personalities. Not much was said about BBM and VP Sara, who seemed strangely irrelevant, despite the fact that the midterms were effectively a proxy war between them.

Now of course you could say that a gambling den is hardly representative of the Filipino people, but then gamblers are among the most hardboiled cynics you can find, not easily given to idle wonderment. (And then again, poker wouldn’t thrive without foolishly hopeful patsies like me—called “fish”—who go all-in on a pair of deuces, hoping to catch a trio. Remember Anton Chekhov’s description of gamblers as people who “go out for their daily dose of injustice.”) That a shift in the tide seemed to ripple on the surface of these poker faces was encouraging. I suspect that these dehadista sentiments were there all along—but have now been emboldened to surface, and I can see this happening all over the country: it’s okay to hope, to bet on the long shot.

It’s probably a measure of how desperate we’d become, more than anything else, that progressives all over the country are ecstatic to have won two out of 12 seats in the senatorial race, never mind that the other winners were mostly your usual crowd of trapos and Family Feud participants.

After previous wipeouts and defeats that, we were convinced, only massive fraud could have engineered, these signal victories—along with a smattering of other partylist and local wins—have now raised our hopes for a more enlightened electorate and a resurgent opposition.

The question is, who will that opposition be, and who and what will it be opposing? Frozen out of the Palace and facing impeachment, VP Sara has claimed the mantle of opposition leader in her post-election statement. That’s “opposition” in the trapo sense of the word—another faction of the same ruling elite, another version of greed and lust for power.

It should be clear by now that a real, viable, and electable opposition can come only from the middle forces that are beginning to regain their footing after the hard loss of 2022. The sad but not surprising defeat of the more radical Gabriela and Bayan Muna partylist groups—which some see as the triumph of Red-tagging—puts the burden of the fight against corruption and for good governance on Bam Aquino, Kiko Pangilinan, Risa Hontiveros & Co., because it’s something that no one else in the government, certainly not the Dutertites, have the moral authority to undertake.

For this battle, and in preparation for 2028, this opposition has to adopt and master coalition politics—or rather their supporters have to learn how to unite, to maintain focus on the big picture, and to yield ground when necessary for the greater good.

For example, as I noted in an FB comment, Luke Espiritu and Heidi Mendoza turned in good performances—but they could have been better if some of our “liberal”-minded friends didn’t junk them on single issues: Luke for supposedly being an “abortionist” and Heidi for being a “homophobe.” Until we can get beyond our enclaves and agree on broader issues, the real evil will win. Sometimes we look for perfect candidates, people who align with all our principles, check all the boxes, lead blameless lives. But everyone’s flawed—any writer from the Greek playwrights onward knows that. 

We hand-wringers can be our own worst enemies. As a recent opinion piece in the New York Times put it, “Members of the educated elite… tend to operate by analysis, not instinct, which renders them slow-footed in comparison to the Trumps of the world…. Such elites sometimes assume that if they can persuade themselves that they are morally superior, then that in itself constitutes victory; it’s all they need to do.”

We have three years to see what was really achieved in May 2025, and if, like a good pokerista, our middle forces will know how to play a weak hand from a strong position, with a single-minded audacity and resolve.

Qwertyman No. 145: The Devil on My Shoulder

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 12, 2025

TODAY, ONCE again, we troop to the polling booths in the hope of making our votes matter—votes that, if the cynics are to be believed, might as well be dust in the wind. The surveys have spoken, the winners named. All that remains is for this day to be over, for the formalities to be done with, for the supposedly inevitable to play itself out. And then we’ll watch the new-old Senators of the Republic proclaimed in a ceremony that will showcase the state of our electoral mind. 

As absurd as it may seem, many Pinoys will actually be happy with the outcome—that’s what the surveys are all about, aren’t they? These are the senators we wanted—or most of us, anyway. “Most of them” is probably what you’re thinking, if you’re a regular reader of this column and agree with most of my views.

I can’t think of a more complicated election in recent times, in terms of an answer to the question of “What’s in our best interest as Filipinos, and how do we make that happen?”

The idealist in me has the simplest and probably the morally most unambiguous response: vote for the best candidates, period: the intelligent, the progressive, the principled, the proven, the humane, the hardworking, the uncompromised. Whether they win or lose, it shouldn’t matter—you’ve done your best as a responsible citizen; in a sense, you’ve won. I sorely want to believe this, and to do this today.

But persistently, impishly, like a little devil perched on my shoulder, a contrarian spirit urges me to temper my idealism with some consideration of its practical costs.

Last week in California, a Fil-Am friend asked me to explain the significance of these elections. In the US, midterms usually mean a referendum on the incumbent President’s performance, and next year will most definitely be one for the Orange Pope and his systematic dismantling of American democracy.

For us Filipinos, May 2025 isn’t that clear-cut—although it should have been, if the armies of May 2022 had remained in place, leaving us with a stark choice between the good and the bad.

But the ruling “Uniteam” alliance has since collapsed, with each side fielding its own troubled slate of aspirants, all seething with the most primal of motives: survival, revenge, profit, and opportunity.

The opposition seems to be a loose coalition of liberal, Left, and anti-administration forces. Among these, four names have consistently surged to the top in the kind of social media neighborhood I inhabit. I’ll call them my Triple A candidates, the ones I won’t have any second thoughts about, leaving me with eight more spots to fill.

It’s those eight that give me pause—not for any lack of qualified and virtuous prospects, but because there could be dire consequences for not filling up the rest of my ballot, as some have suggested, or voting for names without a prayer of winning, as a matter of principle (or, by this time, by force of habit).

It’s interesting to observe how, unlike in previous elections where voting straight for a party’s slate was the norm, various formulas and menus have emerged on social media—cafeteria or halo-halo style—to reflect this urge for some balance between the ideal and the practical in this three-cornered fight. Even opposition stalwarts, including Leni Robredo herself, have been excoriated for their previously unthinkable endorsements of certain candidates from the other side. Whatever happened to ideological purity? (It was always an illusion: note the Left’s earlier alliances with a notoriously bloodthirsty Digong Duterte and an unabashedly capitalist Manny Villar.)

I think many Filipinos understand what’s at stake in this election—not just who will compose the next Senate, but what that composition will mean. As I told my Fil-Am friend, Rodrigo Duterte may be safely imprisoned in the Netherlands, but his specter looms large and heavy over these midterms, through his proxies led by his daughter, VP Sara and their “DuterTEN” team (now more like DuterTWELVE, if you add one Marcos and one Villar). Sara was all set to be impeached for grave threats against the First Family and grand theft Piattos—which would not only have taken her out as VP but disqualified her from running for President in 2028. But that procedure—needing at least 16 votes in the Senate—got kicked down the road, after the election, leaving Sara’s fate up to the newly reconstituted Senate to seal.

So again, I told my friend, presuming that the BBM administration’s game plan here is to freeze Sara out of the presidency so it can install its own man, 2025 is really all about 2028. It’s a referendum, sure—not so much about the present President, but rather the past and maybe the future one. We’re not just—or not even—voting necessarily for the best candidates, but for senators who will push Sara out, or keep her in. Daddy Digong’s summary extradition to the ICC, while a relief for many, merely intensified that drama, raising the stakes to a matter of survival for the Dutertes.

It’s another sad and sorry spot to be in, for these elections to come down to choosing among the lesser or the least of 8, or 16, or 24 evils, against the statistical near-certainty of another wipeout for the truly good. Should I support this fairly familiar trapo, the devil I know, over that manifest idiot, just to help ensure that the latter stays out? Or, again, should I simply disregard all the surveys and scenarios, and vote from my purest and most innocent of hearts for the best people on that ballot? (Was this how the cardinals chose Pope Leo XIV, or did more pragmatic considerations come into play?)

By the time you read this, I shall have cast an early vote as a senior in my barangay. Like we often say, we are whom we vote for, and there’s a part of me that fears what I’ve become or may have to be. I need some of that Holy Spirit with me today—we all will.

Penman No. 473: Taking Care of Emy

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Penman for Friday, May 9, 2025

MY MOM Emy turns 97 today, May 9. Some years, her birthday coincides with Mothers’ Day, saving us a celebration. But that’s a bit deceptive, because when you have a parent this old living with you, every day is a blessing worth celebrating. 

It’s hard to believe that Mommy Emy is a lot healthier than she was a quarter-century ago, when we all feared that we were about to lose her, just a few years after our dad Joe Sr. passed away in 1996 from a ruptured aneurysm. After all, the stories usually went that way—one spouse dies, the other follows soon after, out of grief or a sense of life suddenly losing its purpose and meaning. Whatever caused it, Mom fell ill with tuberculosis, with the disease progressing so devastatingly that she was coughing blood and feeling terribly weak. Luckily, her doctor put her on a menu of cutting-edge pills that, over two years, miraculously banished the TB, well enough for her to secure a US visa to join my sister Elaine in California.

Over the next decade, she regained her strength, and even as she sorely missed our dad, indulged in a newfound zest for life—traveling with my sisters in the US, Canada, and Europe, visiting glaciers, going up the Tower of Pisa, and settling into in the quiet suburbs of Virginia just outside of DC with Elaine and her husband Eddie. She stayed there long enough to gain a green card, and we would visit her every now and then, sensing that, despite Elaine’s and Eddie’s loving care, she was pining for home. Eventually she did return to Manila, giving up her green card. “I want to die here,” she stated with finality, and that was that. 

One thing I love about my mom is her eminently practical sense. Since at least five years ago, she has written out clear instructions about what to do in case she was dying—no intubation, no extraordinary efforts to prolong her life, just as quiet and as painless a departure as could be managed. Last year we went out with her to the department store to pick out her funeral dress—a macabre chore to some, but for us, and especially for her, a cheerful excursion, with much discussion about this cut or that shade of blue (yes, she’s going in blue). 

She was born in Romblon a landlord’s youngest daughter, the apple of his eye, the only one to go to UP in Manila, from where she graduated with an Education degree. Growing up, she rode a horse on the farm and accompanied my Lolo Cosme on his trips to Manila. She remembers how easy and provident life was back then: “We would go to the beach and Papa would throw a net into the water, not far from shore, and it would come up teeming with fish, and the fish were everywhere, jumping in the air.” 

My father was a sharecropper’s grandson, too poor to finish college but with a sharp mind and a gift for words that must have swept Emy off her feet. Like many couples of their time and place, they decided to seek their fortune in Manila a few years after I was born. Their love was deep but often tested, given that there were five of us to raise. There was even a time when Dad was a barker for jeepneys, and Mom worked as postal clerk for minimum wage. Life sometimes felt like a soap opera, but we all pulled through, and often it was Emy’s internal toughness that made sure we were fed and ready for school.

Since her return from Virginia, my mom has been staying with us in UP Diliman, occasionally spending time with my three other siblings (Elaine is now in Canada). Still figure-conscious despite her age, she watches what she eats, but we indulge her every whim. It doesn’t take much to make her happy—almost daily Facetime calls from Elaine in Canada and our daughter Demi in the US, a weekly manicure, visits from her brood, and Tuesday Circle get-togethers with her group of neighborhood friends, among whom she is now most senior. 

What surprises people who meet her for the first time is how strong and alert she is. She uses a cane and a walker (but only because we insist), but she takes long walks daily around the yard and just outside the house. Her steps are getting slower and harder, but she marched for Leni in 2022, in gratitude for which the VP sent her a video greeting on her 95th birthday. She reads without glasses, and plays word games on her iPad with a passion; she follows Netflix, and watches the news with tart commentary. She’s as prayerful and religious as they come, but is staunchly liberal in her politics. “All my friends are dead” is her frequent complaint, quickly balanced by “But I’m so thankful for my children!” She and Beng share long meals and laughter-filled conversations. We have no doubt that as long as she takes her maintenance meds and doesn’t suffer a bad fall, she’ll live to be a happy hundred. 

Emilia Yap Dalisay’s name will never make it to the society pages, but she’s the biggest star in our small stretch of sky, and taking care of her has been our grandest privilege. Happy birthday, Mommy Emy, and may you have as many more years to come as God’s kindness will allow.

Qwertyman No. 144: A Better Fighting Chance

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 5, 2025

TWO WEEKS ago, almost 18,000 young Filipinos and their parents awoke to the good news that they had qualified for admission to the University of the Philippines through the UP College Admission Test (UPCAT). Over 135,000 high school students had applied, so this year’s admission rate stood at just over 13%, almost 7% higher than last year’s outcome.

Whatever UP’s critics may think it’s become, entry into one of its eight constituent universities remains the highest of aspirations for many Filipino families, especially the poor for whom the tuition and cost of living at top private universities is impossible without a scholarship. 

UP oldtimers like to recall the days, decades ago, when the quality of public education was still high enough for public and private high school graduates to compete on fairly even terms for admission into UP. It wasn’t unusual for some provinciano wearing chinelas to step into a UP classroom or laboratory and beat the daylights out of some elite-school fellow in academic performance. Many of those provincianos—the likes of Ed Angara, Miriam Defensor, Billy Abueva, and Dodong Nemenzo—went on to stellar careers in government, education, the arts, and industry. UP was clearly doing what it was supposed to do, as its past President Rafael Palma put it: to be “the embodiment of the hopes and aspirations of the people for their cultural and intellectual progress.”

Ironically, by the time the UP Charter was revisited and revised a century after its founding in 2008, giving it the unique status of being the “national university,” UP’s student profile had changed. Jokes about UP Diliman’s parking problems began to underline the popular perception that UP was no longer a school for Filipinos across the archipelago and across income strata but one for the privileged, mainly from the big cities. The introduction of free tuition in state universities and colleges in 2017, while well intentioned, even resulted in subsidizing the children of the rich in UP, who could well have afforded going to Ateneo or La Salle.

But some good news is emerging, as this year’s UPCAT results bear out. Starting with last year’s UPCAT, there’s already been a reversal of the trend favoring graduates from private high schools, with 55% of qualifiers now coming from public and 45% from private high schools. UP President Angelo Jimenez—himself a boy from the boonies, coming out of tribal roots in Bukidnon—has pledged to do even more to give poor students outside of the big cities a better fighting chance of getting into UP.

“We started this banking on two things,” he says, “that UP will respond to the challenge of transforming the so-called common clay—the less-advantaged—into fine porcelain, and that the less-advantaged will respond to the challenge of opportunity. The task of leadership now is to set the enabling environment, structures, and systems to ensure the success of this two-pronged strategy. It’s a big bet, and it gets bigger. We still have the non-UPCAT track. This includes our Associate in Arts program, UPOU’s ODeL, talent-based modes, and finally, the UP Manila School of Health Sciences in Tarlac, Aurora, Palo, and Cotabato. We cannot solve all problems, we are not lowering standards. In fact, we must demand excellence regardless of social and economic status, and enforce it. But we are dropping rope ladders so people long staring up from the base of the fortress walls can have a better chance of scaling its sheer drop with something better than their bare hands.”

Those rope ladders include adding more UPCAT testing centers in faraway places, ultimately to have at least one in each province—a goal that will be met later this year. The testing centers are also being moved from private to public high schools. “We’ve seen that more students tend to participate when the tests are given in their national high schools,” says UP Office of Admissions director Francisco de los Reyes. Aside from more testing centers, UP is helping disadvantaged students prepare better for UPCAT through its Pahinungod volunteers, who distribute reviewers using real items from past UPCATs (these reviewers are also downloadable for UPCAT applicants) and use them for UPCAT simulations, guiding students even with such details as shading the exam oblongs. (De los Reyes reports that wrong shading has caused 20% of their machine counting errors.)

These steps are clearly paying off. Davao de Oro (formerly Compostela Valley), which previously accounted for less than 10 UPCAT qualifiers, has just produced 31, after a testing center was put up in Nabunturan. 

UP’s support for poor students doesn’t end with UPCAT. Every year, thousands of qualifiers from so-called Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas (GIDAs), even after passing UPCAT against all odds, fail to show up for enrollment after realizing that they cannot afford the costs of living on a UP campus. UP has rolled out a P50-million Lingap Iskolar program that provides such disadvantaged qualifiers who meet certain standards P165,000 a year to cover housing, meals, transportation, books, cellphone load, and other expenses. Almost 200 Lingap Iskolar grants were given out last year. In UP Manila, private donors fund daily meals for over 30 students.

I’m particularly happy to report that a dear friend of mine, Julie Hill, recently donated almost P21 million that will be used for a new Agapay Fund that will go toward the upkeep of poor students in UP’s School of Health Sciences, which has a unique ladderized program that enables rural midwives to become nurses, and nurses to become doctors. The program has already produced about 200 doctors who have served their communities back. 

Among them was Dr. Hannah Grace Pugong, who recently landed in the top 10 of the medical board exams, after placing No. 1 in the midwifery and No. 3 in the nursing exams. Dr. Pugong will soon be deployed under the Department of Health’s Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) program, fulfilling her return service commitment. It is an obligation she willingly embraces, saying that “I have often reminded myself that how I treat my patients should reflect how I want my family members to be treated by other health workers.” 

If that’s not what being a national university should be about, I don’t know what is.