Category Archives: Fun

Penman No. 461: A Parisian Interlude

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Penman for Sunday, April 7, 2024

WHY IS it that just when you think you’ve begun to figure out a foreign city’s transport system, it’s time to come home? That happened again barely two weeks ago when my wife Beng and I flew to France for some speaking engagements in Paris and Le Havre. We were there for work, not tourism, and more work waited for us as well back home, so we couldn’t stay for as long as we would have wanted to. We’d been to Paris three times before and had done the obligatory Louvre and Eiffel Tower visits, but it almost seems criminal not to linger and loiter around such a beautiful city.

We were there at the invitation of SciencesPo, France’s leading social sciences university, for a series of talks on Philippine literature and art. Along with France-based writer Criselda Yabes, I gave a reading as well at the Philippine embassy in Paris at the behest of our most gracious ambassador, Mme. Junever “Jones” Mahilum-West, an avid amateur painter and supporter of Philippine culture. Our host at SciencesPo, Dr. Pauline Couteau, also arranged some events for us at their campus in Le Havre and sponsored a special screening of Lino Brocka’s classic “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag” at the Entrepot Theater in Paris.

It was a hectic week that left these footloose septuagenarians exhausted but exhilarated at the same time, warmed up in France’s unseasonably chilly weather (often falling below 10C) by the enthusiasm of our new friends, both French and fellow Filipinos. 

Again, however, we had a sweet problem to deal with even before we flew to Paris: with such little time left on our schedule for more casual diversions, what places or experiences would we put on top of our list for our relaxation and amusement, given Paris’ almost inexhaustible offerings of wonder and delight?

Anthony Bourdain, bless his soul, famously advised short-term visitors to Paris not to make a mad dash to try and see everything all at once, but to just relax, have coffee, imbibe the neighborhood culture, stay in bed (and for those able and inclined, make love). Beng and I recalled, with both fondness and regret, how we had first seen Paris a quarter-century earlier from the back of a bus on a 99-pound budget tour from our base then in Norwich, England. The bus went by the city’s landmarks so fast that Beng missed Rodin because she was in the on-board restroom then. Subsequent visits afforded us a bit more time to see the Mona Lisa (of course) and to go up the Eiffel Tower (of course) but our happiest memories came, as Bourdain suggested, from just walking in the city gardens and along the Seine.

This time, we decided to do just two things with our limited free time: visit one museum, and hit the flea markets. This follows a pattern that Beng and I have observed over decades of traveling together, from Amsterdam, Barcelona, and London to New York, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The museums capture and preserve the glory of the past, and if you’re lucky, rather than pay for made-in-China miniatures at the museum gift shop, you can find some genuine article from that past in the flea market. 

Our choice of museum was easy: Paris has dozens of fantastic museums—and you’ll never, ever finish the entire Louvre in one visit—but the great one we’d never been to was the Musée d’Orsay, the former train station that’s become France’s cathedral of Impressionism. Finally, this time, in the few hours we had just before boarding the train to Le Havre, we managed to step into the Musée d’Orsay, and what a divine experience e that was, to find room after room filled by the masterworks of Renoir, Monet, Manet, Seurat, Degas, Redon, Courbet, and so on, like walking into a book of pictures. 

Understandably, hundreds of other people had the same idea, so the best time to visit may have been after 6 pm—the museum closes at 9:45—when admission rates are also cheaper. Not a few friends have remarked that they found the Musée d’Orsay much better than the Louvre, perhaps because of its relative compactness and its delivery of proven crowd-pleasers in its collection.

Our flea-market sorties proved just as wondrous, with the additional thrill of unpredictability, as each table will be different from the one before it and you need a quick, trained eye to spot the jewel in the junkyard. As flea-market addicts from decades back when we used to scour the yard sales and antique barns of the American Midwest for things we could drag home, Beng and I have developed a routine of scan-and-scrutinize, looking for our respective grails (old fountain pens for me, old bottles and costume jewelry for her).

We were lucky to be billeted near our first flea market, the one at Porte de Vanves, which has about a hundred dealers strung along a large city block selling all manner of goodies from 18th-century books and Christofle silverware to walking sticks and paintings. I searched in vain for that lost Juan Luna and that stray copy of the Fili (which Rizal finished in Paris), but the flea-market gods blessed me instead with an early 1900s “safety” fountain pen sheathed in gold, perfect in every way, lying all by its lonesome on a table of bric-a-brac. “Combien, madame?” I asked in my schoolboy French, my throat dry with anticipation. “Cinquante euros,” she said; it was easily worth five times that, but I gathered up all my courage and countered, “Quarante?” “Okay,” she said, “A quick “Merci!” and 40 euros later, I was a happy boy with a new toy—what could be a better memento of this short trip than a gorgeous century-old pen with the word “Paris” on its 18-carat nib?

Of course, this luck was not to be repeated on our visit to the big flea market of St. Ouen in Clignancourt—reputedly the largest of its kind in the world—a few hours before boarding the plane back for home, but we rewarded our labors with a late lunch in a Chinese restaurant. After a week of French cuisine, immersed in the grandeur of French art and culture, huge platefuls of Cantonese fried rice sounded just about right. It was as if we were being told, “You’ve had your Parisian interlude and your souvenirs, it’s time to go home.” Au revoir!

Qwertyman No. 87: A French Sojourn

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 1, 2024

MY WIFE Beng and I were in France last week to give a series of lectures at the invitation of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, better known as SciencesPo. They don’t formally observe Holy Week in France (nor, for that matter, do many Filipinos to whom it’s simply come to mean “long weekend”). So we thought that it was the best time to come over and share some of our insights into Philippine literature, art, and politics with young French students as well as our countrymen in Paris, for whom I and fellow writer Cris Yabes, who’s based in France, gave a special reading at the Philippine embassy.

For those who’ve never heard of it—which won’t be too surprising given our Pinoy fixation on top American and British universities—SciencesPo (pronounced SEE-ansPO) is France’s leading university in the social sciences. It now has 14,000 students spread out over seven campuses across the country. Only 4,000 of those students are undergraduates; the rest are graduate students, including 350 taking their PhD. Unlike our universities, SciencesPo’s undergrads can finish in only three years, with their last year spent abroad. I was told that there are about 20 Filipino students currently enrolled at SciencesPo, and about half of its students come from overseas. As a public research university, SciencesPo is supported by the government through a private foundation, an arrangement that gives it a high degree of autonomy.

Founded in 1872, the university has served as the training ground for France’s political elite, producing five out of France’s eight presidents: Pompidou, Mitterand, Chirac, Hollande, and the incumbent Macron. Marcel Proust studied here for a year, and Christian Dior was a graduate.

With that kind of elite status comes criticism and controversy, and SciencesPo has had its share over the years. Nevertheless, it remains high on the list of desirable universities, especially for students with plans of joining the French civil service, after further studies at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. (At Inalco, another Fremch university, we were surprised to find eight Filipino-French students studying Filipino for their degree under Prof. Elisabeth Luquin, who studied in UP and speaks Filipino like a local.)

Beng and I gave presentations on the Philippines at SciencePo’s main campus in Paris—a sprawling complex comprising ten buildings in some of Paris’ most precious real estate—and I had an additional three sessions in Le Havre, where SciencePo’s campus focuses on Asian studies. Wherever we went, we could see signs of intellectual and political ferment; like their predecessors at the Sorbonne whom we admired for their militancy 60 years ago, SciencesPo students have protested and rallied over many causes from domestic violence to Gaza.

To be fair, these concerns have occupied much of the rest of France as well. In a country where street protests are a time-honored tradition that have a real bearing on political outcomes, differences of opinion can run deep and long, and controversy stalks nearly every issue, from the wearing of religious headgear to the extension of the retirement age. To “liberté, egalité, fraternité,” we must now add “identité,” the subject of identity so central to political discourse in many countries today, especially those with large and strong immigrant populations like America and France.

“Over the last few years, France has been torn by culture wars—a shift that was less the effect of American concepts imported into French universities, as many on France’s right claim, than of the long-term decline, beginning in the early 1980s, of class politics and alternatives to capitalism. In a post-ideological France, class struggle has been displaced onto the terrain of identity,” noted sociologist Daniel Zamora in an article for Catalyst in 2021. “Despite Macron’s professed disdain for identity politics, his alternative can scarcely be construed as anti-identitarian. Building on what we have in common, Macron argued, meant finding an answer to the question, ‘What does it mean to be French?’”

Identity, at least, was not in question when Cris Yabes and I gave our reading at the Philippine embassy, thanks to the invitation of Ambassador Junever “Jones” Mahilum-West, one of the most amiable, gracious, and artistically inclined ambassadors I’ve ever met. (She was very game as well, happy to hoist an IPA beer with my wife Beng after our talks.) To a fairly sizeable group from the Filipino community in Paris, Cris and I read pieces that had to do with our foreign relations, particularly in my case with our diaspora, which my second novel Soledad’s Sister (which has been published in French by Mercure de France) dealt with. 

In the conversations that followed, I learned that there are around 26,000 documented Filipinos in France, with perhaps just as many existing belowground, most of them domestic helpers. One of them, Zita Cabais, was a victim of human trafficking more than two decades ago, having been enticed to come to Europe with the promise of a visa and a good job. Instead she was brought to Hungary, from where she was led on foot through Europe to finally reach France, whereupon her employer confiscated her passport, effectively holding her hostage. But unlike many other DH’s, Zita fought back, sued her employer, and succeeded. Since legalized, she now works for organizations devoted to fighting human trafficking. (The path to legalization is reportedly shorter in France, but knowing the French language is a prerequisite.)

One unexpected highlight of our visit was running into a group of Filipino seamen in our hotel in Le Havre, prior to my lecture. Beng and I had just come down for breakfast when we heard the familiar chatter of Filipinos at a nearby table. We came up to them and introduced ourselves, and we had a lively conversation during which they explained that they were still waiting for their ship to dock because of the bad weather. I’d met and chatted with seamen like them before in Hamburg and in Christchurch, among other places; as a writer and as a Filipino, I take it as a pleasant obligation.

Competition, they said, was driving them to accept shorter four-month stints at sea. “We barely break even, and it’s a tough life at sea, but we have no choice, since our families depend on us.” Part of my lecture that day was going to be about our Filipino notion of the hero as martyr, of Christ-like sacrifice for the common good. I suddenly realized that it was Good Friday. We had our smiling selfies taken, and they seemed proud to stand with UP professors, but it was Beng and I who felt honored to be there with them.

Penman No. 459: Spartan but Splendorous

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Penman for Sunday, February 11, 2024

WE OFTEN think of ecotourism in terms of swimming with whale sharks or encountering rare species of flora and fauna in some faraway forest. But not too far from Metro Manila lies a natural haven that will satisfy adventurers and conservationists alike—and the ecotourists who are both.

That haven is the Masungi Georeserve, a 3,000-hectare tract of largely reforested land marked by sharp karst or limestone shards jutting out into the sky amid bamboo groves, exotic orchids, and Benguet pine.

The unlikely remainder of an aborted housing project for DENR employees, Masungi now serves as home to hundreds of species, many of them rare and some even unique, such as the purple jade vine and the Masungi microsnail.

These sightings alone would be well worth the trip—a pleasant 30-kilometer drive from Quezon City through Masinag and Antipolo on the Marikina-Infanta or Marilaque Highway, on some of the country’s best and widest roads. (On the weekday morning we went there, it took us just a little over an hour from UP Diliman.) 

Masungi straddles the Sierra Madre boundary between Baras and Tanay, Rizal, much of which is occupied by the Upper Marikina Watershed, across the Kaliwa Watershed on the northern side. Its name comes from the Tagalog sungi, meaning sharp, a reference to the profusion of limestone outcrops looking like sharp teeth across the mountainous landscape.

The georeserve—now being managed by the Masungi Georeserve Foundation—wasn’t set up as any kind of pleasure park. Indeed “pleasure”—except the visual kind—was the last thing this septuagenarian thought of when he went up the steep trails to a vantage point that afforded a spectacular view of Laguna de Bay and the surrounding metropolis far below. Younger and fitter visitors, however, will surely find the challenge pleasurable and even exhilarating.

When the housing project with the DENR failed to materialize—the DENR couldn’t evict the squatters already there and the land, in truth, was simply too steep and inhospitable to permanent human habitation—engineer Ben Dumaliang and his Blue Star company (the housing project contractor) took it upon themselves to rehabilitate what land they could and regrow the forest that would have been lost forever. In 2015, Ben’s daughters established the Masungi Georeserve Foundation to oversee the place, and in 2017, the MGF entered into a contract with the DENR under then Sec. Gina Lopez for the georeserve’s replanting and conservation.

Masungi now features a Discovery Trail for hikers aged 13 and up that takes about three to four hours to complete, although it can be shortened depending on the hikers’ preference. The challenging trails feature hanging bridges, a giant spiderweb, rope walls, caves, and other points of interest (or maybe not, for acrophobes like me). Protective headgear is provided.

Typical reviews on Tripadvisor include comments like this one, from a Singaporean visitor: “Perfect day at Masungi Georeserve. The hike was well-organized and well-paced with sufficient rest stops. Our guide was knowledgeable and friendly, allowing us to take our time and helping to take our photos. You do need a certain level of fitness and daring to tackle the ropes, steps, and hanging bridges, but you will be rewarded with stunning views of the limestone karst formations. There are alternative paths to take for those who have a fear of heights but these detours may take longer. Best not to rush and go with people who won’t judge you if you feel like dropping out! Well done to the Foundation and for educating the public on biodiversity and sustainable tourism. Book ahead and pray for great weather.”

This one came from a repeat visitor, Ronald R: “Had the privilege of visiting Masungi Georeserve for the ninth time (six times on the Legacy Trail, thrice at side trails and once on the Discovery Trail) and every visit was a memorable learning and life-changing experience. All dedicated forest rangers are well versed in the changing landscape and diversity of flora and fauna. The experience differs depending on the weather. I prefer windy, cloudy weather when going up there. The Sierra Madre is more dramatic with rain clouds. Beyond the transformations, the team behind Masungi Georeserve is focused on restoring the lost and abused part of the Upper Marikina Watershed Area. Masungi Georeserve is a platform to make anyone fall in love with nature in a much deeper level. The Masungi Georeserve experience should be in every nature lover’s bucket list.”

Experienced rangers—most of them recruited from the local community, including indigenous Dumagats—serve as guides for these treks. To support the place’s upkeep—it gets no funding from the government—the georeserve charges guests P1,500 each on weekdays and P1,800 on weekends, covering the tour and simple but satisfying snacks (including a refreshingly minty tea made from the kayumanis, a native plant; a set lunch buffet is also available at the hilltop Silayan restaurant). The number of daily visitors is strictly controlled to minimize wear and tear to the area, and groups are kept manageably small. (For more helpful and detailed instructions, as well as photos of the various features along the trail, visit willflyforfood.com and look for “The Masungi Georeserve Survival Guide.”)

It’s a spartan but bracing experience, minus the spa, the massage, the gourmet menu, the uniformed attendants, and all the other amenities we associate with more genteel and patrician hideaways. This is nature in your face—but what a splendorous sight it is to behold, a painterly tableau of rock, tree, bird, and flower set against a radiant blue sky, 640 meters up and far removed from the smog and sludge of the metropolis. 

It’s sad and alarming that Masungi continues to be threatened by powerful landgrabbing syndicates as well as by the indifference if not hostility of the government people who should be supporting it, but that’s another story (check out my Qwertyman column last January 29, “Fighting Windmills at Masungi”). In the meanwhile, avail yourself of this chance to encounter nature like you never have before, and enjoy Masungi while it lasts.

Qwertyman No. 77: Taylor Swift 101

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 22, 2024

THERE WAS a lot of snickering around the local Internet a couple of weeks ago when the University of the Philippines announced that it was going to offer a course on the American megastar Taylor Swift. “Why???” seemed to be the most common hair-trigger response, expressing consternation over the need or rationale for such a course. “This is where your taxes go,” lamented another netizen.

The clear suggestion was that spending a semester—that’s 16 weeks—on a pop phenomenon like Taylor Swift was a grandiose and frivolous waste of teaching time and people’s money, scarce resources better allocated to studying worthier topics like, say, Gomburza, the South China Sea, endemic species, and sovereign wealth funds. (Not incidentally, all these other topics are already covered in other UP courses, so no one need worry that they’re being sacrificed for in-depth analyses of “Cruel Summer” or “You Need to Calm Down.”)

Before we go any further, I have to declare that I’m no Swiftie, as her adoring fans call themselves, and I had to look up and listen to those two titles I just mentioned. At my age, my idea of a diva I’d pay good money to listen to is Barbra Streisand, Laura Fygi, Lisa Ono, and Dionne Warwick, none of them below 60. I have to admit that the only Swift song I was aware of before she exploded into global stardom was “You Belong with Me,” which my then-teener niece Eia used to bounce her head to (an effect that, I’ve since discovered, many Swift pieces tend to induce). 

Still, my instinctive reaction to the announcement of the UP Swift course wasn’t “Why?” but what I suppose is the academic’s default of “Why not?” When I looked into how the course was going to be taught by its instructor—Cherish Aileen Brillon, a mass communications specialist who had previously published a paper on, among others, “Darna and Intellectual Property Rights”—I could see that this wasn’t going to be just party time for 15 kids listening through Taylor Swift’s ten albums (yes, I counted) over a semester, but serious study connecting material from the singer’s songs and of course from her life as a 21st century celebrity to our reception of her and whatever she represents, as Filipinos. 

The course—an elective under the BA Broadcast and Media Studies program of the Colle of Mass Communication—will focus on “the conception, construction, and the performance of Taylor Swift as a celebrity and how she can be used to explain our and, of course, media’s relationship with class, politics, gender, race, and fantasies of success and mobility…. Gender should be part of the discussion because Taylor is a woman operating in a highly patriarchal and misogynist entertainment industry,” Brillon told the STAR in an earlier interview. “Transnationality is also a large part of the discussion,” she added, defining the term as a “media-driven flow of goods, products and services from various nations” in this globalized age. “Celebrities have always been transnational anyway. The class will look into the transnationality of Taylor and how Filipinos are appropriating their relationships with celebrities.” 

If you know anything about what’s being taken up in universities worldwide today as media and cultural studies, that mouthful I quoted above is heavy-duty academic work of the kind I myself may not be too keen to undertake, but the results of which I’d be deeply interested to find out. And that because there’s nothing more pervasive and influential in our world today than the media, which includes the Internet, TV, radio, and newspapers, plus all the advertising, the tweets, the Facebook feeds, the Spotify music, and the Amazons, Lazadas, Shopees, and eBays you find in them. How the media draws our attention and often subliminally persuades us into buying certain products and ideas can’t be worthier of academic research and investigation. 

And it’s not as if this hasn’t been done before. New York University, Stanford, Arizona State University, the Berklee College of Music, Rice University, UC Berkeley, the University of Florida, the University of Delaware, and Brigham Young University are among the American universities offering Taylor Swift courses from different approaches ranging from the music itself to social psychology, marketing, and literature.

So, okay, they’re Americans—why us Filipinos? Because the singer has a huge Pinoy fan base, despite the slight that local Swifties felt when she left the Philippines out of her 2024 Southeast Asian “Eras” tour, for which well-heeled Pinoys then rushed online to book expensive ticket packages for her shows in Singapore. (She’s been here twice before, in 2011 and 2014.)

But never mind Taylor Swift. Back in 1995, scholars attending the first International Conference on Elvis Presley at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture got academia “all shook up,” according to reports, with papers bearing titles like “A Revolutionary Sexual Personae: Elvis Presley and the Acquiescence of Black Rhythms,” which discussed sensuality and spirituality in Elvis’s acts.

And then, of course, there are all the college courses on Frank Sinatra at Suffolk University, and on the Beatles at MIT and Oxford, among many other places. At Carnegie Mellon University, flautist and Prof. Stephen Schultz alternates teaching 18th-century Baroque music with a class on the Beatles; guess which class attracts 200 students a semester.

I’m sure that, despite these precedents and rationales, there will remain many skeptics who’ll still believe that all this academic mumbo-jumbo is just an excuse for both professor and student to kill an hour and a half doing nothing but nodding their heads to pop tunes and chatting about which song’s lyrics were cooler. (Don’t be too surprised, but that’s also basically what happens when we discuss poetry and fiction, sans the rhythmic nodding.)

But then you could be talking about Taylor Swift and her songs—or you could be talking about how Adolf Hitler and his deadly message were packaged and sold to the German people, not to mention Donald Trump and other despots closer to our time and place. This is what media and cultural studies are ultimately about—the power of media and other cultural forces to shape our minds, our purchases, our votes, and therefore our history. 

Perhaps our students can even learn more from a semester of Taylor Swift, BTS, and Justin Bieber than the Shakespeare they’ll merely turn to AI to write papers on. Like I told one naysayer, “We keep studying history, religion, law, etc., and yet we seem to learn nothing—just look at how a former human rights lawyer suddenly justifies EJKs.” So there may yet be more to Taylor Swift 101 than meets the eye. As another Swift—Jonathan—put it, “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

(Image from Sky News)

Penman No. 456: A Pocket of Peace and Quiet

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Penman for Sunday, November 5, 2023

ROXAS CITY, the capital of Capiz, is proud to declare itself the “Seafood Capital of the Philippines” as well, but I didn’t even know that when I booked a flight for me and my wife Beng last month to spend a few days in Roxas. I still had a few “super passes” I’d bought a bunch of from an airline promo last year and they were expiring soon, so as Beng and I are wont to do, we decided to pick a place on that airline’s list of destinations, one where we’d never been before. It would help that Beng was Ilongga, and having been married to her for almost 50 years, I could understand Hiligaynon, so getting around would be no problem. The “seafood capital” tag popped up when I googled “Roxas City” for ideas about where to go and what to do—that was the clincher for me, the scourge of crabs, shrimp, scallops, and all aquatic arthropods. 

An hour-long plane ride from Manila deposited us in Roxas City’s airport, which has the advantage of being a short tricycle ride away from downtown. 

For our “hotel,” I picked out, online, a place called the Olive Hostel, which proved to be an adventure on its own. At just over 1K a night with free breakfast and within walking distance of Western civilization, it seemed just right for Beng and me, who don’t insist on five-star luxury. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in a container, well, we found out. It literally was built out of steel containers piled on top of each other, with doors and windows cut out. But don’t get me wrong: it was all very capably and tastefully done, and as tiny as our quarters were, it was actually quite cozy; the bathrooms were immaculately clean and the wi-fi was strong. There was no TV, but we made up for that by watching Netflix on my laptop, perched on my tummy. (Beng and I are used to tiny hotels in HK, Japan, and Korea; I’m usually claustrophobic, but I don’t feel that with Beng beside me.) 

The Olive Hostel’s grounds were, by contrast, spacious and very well maintained, lovely especially in the evening. For those seeking more traditional lodgings, the President’s Inn downtown comes highly recommended. Among the city’s newest and most modern hotels, three—the Veronica, the Urban Manor, and the Islands—can be found in Pueblo de Panay township.

Roxas City has one of the prettiest and cleanest plazas I’ve seen around the country, small but the very picture of what a plaza has always been in our provincial imaginations, with City Hall, the church, and a park with a bandstand beside a river.

To one corner stands the Panublion Museum, a cleverly repurposed water tank that showcases highlights of Capiznon history and culture. Managed by its very capable director, Cheryl Anne del Rosario, Panublion features the personal memorabilia of the city’s favorite son, President Manuel A. Roxas, including the flag flown at the July 4, 1946 inaugural of Philippine postwar independence. (President Roxas’ ancestral home is not too far away and is open for public viewing, but was closed on the day we toured the city.)

The museum also showcases the tools and finery of the province’s and island’s indigenous peoples. Most captivating were the exhibits  featuring Capiz’s two female National Artists—Jovita Fuentes for Music and Daisy Avellana for Theater. Fuentes’ golden gown contrasted sharply with the suit of armor worn by Avellana as Joan of Arc. Entrance to the museum is free, but donations are welcome. 

On our first night we walked out to a neighborhood restaurant where the chicken inasal was P108 with unlimited rice and a surprisingly good fruit drink, plus lomi at P68. We had the obligatory seafood lunch in one of the many restaurants along Baybay (literally, the beach), but much more charming and restful was a similar lunch on a bamboo raft on the river at the Palina Greenbelt Ecopark, normally part of a lazy cruise (the tide was too low when we arrived for any cruising, but the scenery was enough to soothe the senses).

Roxas has no shortage of malls for the urban dweller. The usual suspects—SM, Gaisano, CityMall—line the main highway downtown. Its equivalent of Metro Manila’s BGC is the 670-hectare Pueblo de Panay township, a residential and commercial development project master-planned by a Singaporean company and offering the most modern facilities and amenities to Capiz’s and Panay’s rising middle class. 

A mutual friend—the peripatetic Susan Claire Agbayani—introduced us to Hariette Ong Banzon and her husband Peter, the couple behind the Pueblo, who invited us to dinner at Cafe Terraza, their hilltop restaurant offering a panoramic view of the city far below. But before dinner, Hariette made sure to bring us to see the project dearest to her heart and now one of the city’s—indeed the island’s—most remarkable landmarks: the 132-foot statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which Harriette commissioned following the miraculous cure of a relative. Hariette and Peter—incidentally both fellow PSHS alumni, so we had other memories to share—are people of faith and conscience, reflecting their values in their optimism about Roxas City’s prospects and the way they run their business.

For all the things we seek in this troubled world—a pocket of peace and quiet, good food, rejuvenation of body and soul, and friendly people—Roxas City has much to offer, and we can only give it our ultimate accolade: “We’ll be back!”

Qwertyman No. 67: Business with Culture in Iloilo

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Qwertyman for Monday, November 13, 2023

OVER THE past year, still eagerly emerging from our post-pandemic stupor, my wife Beng and I have been traveling up a storm, limiting ourselves to local destinations such as Bacolod, Virac, Davao, Roxas City, and Iloilo City. We chose these places because we’d never been there before—such as Virac and Roxas—or hadn’t visited for many years.

We were most impressed by the progress shown by Iloilo, whose transformation into a rapidly urbanizing metropolis I had begun to observe well before the pandemic. City and provincial officials, under the initial leadership and with the strong support of former Sen. Franklin Drilon, had managed to unite behind the key objectives of a continuing comprehensive development plan that has straddled several local and national administrations. 

All over the country, you hear about politicians achieving national prominence and power, even to the point of aspiring for the presidency—except that back in their home provinces, they did little or nothing for their constituents, and may even have lost the local vote to an outsider as a result. Drilon never ran for President—a job I think he would have performed excellently, if our voters were thinking rationally—but if he did then he could have counted on a near-solid Iloilo vote for never forgetting where he came from and ensuring Iloilo’s emergence as a model of city planning.

Any visitor to Iloilo cannot fail to be impressed by its dynamic growth, from the minute he or she steps off the plane in the city’s airport in Cabatuan, about 20 kilometers from downtown Iloilo. The long drive to the city down the wide, smooth highway is a virtual introduction to the city’s progress, with new malls, office buildings, car dealerships, hotels, construction depots, hospitals, and housing lining both sides of the road; new bridges and overpasses were rising here and there. A Grab car service just opened this year, our driver said, happy to be lifted by that rising economic tide.

The crown jewel of Iloilo’s renaissance is clearly the Iloilo River Esplanade, now stretching nine kilometers along both banks of the river in its expanded form. Designed by the celebrated architect Paulo Alcazaren, the Esplanade is what we Manileños want our Pasig riverbank to look like, in our dreams, but here in Iloilo, it’s been a reality for over a decade now. From early morning until after sunset, the Esplanade is filled with joggers, couples, families, and tourists who can also duck for a drink or a meal into one of the restaurants and cafes lining the walk. The river itself, once described as a septic tank into which the effluents of the city’s factories, slaughterhouse, and beer gardens drained, is clean and clear, fringed by a healthy belt of mangrove where we spotted egrets taking refuge. 

There’s a point of view that sees malls as the bane of urbanization and the death of small, artisanal businesses, and that’s been true in many places. It’s abundantly obvious that malls and mall culture have invaded Iloilo, with some negative consequences down the road. But so strong is local culture and tradition that it’s almost inconceivable that Iloilo will lose Tatoy’s, Breakthrough, Ted’s La Paz Batchoy, Panaderia de Molo, pancit molo, KBL, diwal, and all the other little things that make the city what it is. Indeed, instead of being pushed out, many of these institutions are now in the malls. At the plaza in front of Molo Cathedral, after a 3-km walk from our hotel via the Esplanade, we had breakfast of mini-bibingkas baked right before us the way they’d been done for decades.

It was a happy coincidence that, during our visit, UNESCO named Iloilo as the country’s first Creative City of Gastronomy, in recognition of its outstanding culinary culture and heritage. This was achieved by the city government under Mayor Jerry Treñas with the assistance of a team from UP Visayas’ College of Management that facilitated a workshop for the city’s food-industry leaders last May. Education remains one of the city’s strengths; its West Visayas State University College of Medicine is now one of the country’s top-ranked medical schools, aside from UPV’s commanding role in the region.

It was UPV Chancellor Clement Camposano who, after dinner in one of the many seafood restaurants that have cropped up in Leganes on the city’s outskirts, drove us around so we could appreciate the city by night. On our way to Molo, we passed through the new Megaworld/Festive Walk business district and were blown away by how smartly designed everything was; it was almost as if we were in Singapore or some such country. It was hard to believe that not too long ago, this was the old Iloilo airport in Mandurriao, and that the road we were traveling on had once been a runway. This is also where the Iloilo Convention Center is located, where the APEC 2015 summit was held (Drilon had negotiated the donation of the site from Andrew Tan, in exchange for the ICC’s being built there).

We returned to this place in the daytime to visit one of Iloilo’s most recent and also most impressive attractions: the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art or Ilomoca, a three-story showcase of both local and national talent. Ilomoca’s establishment in the middle of one of Iloilo’s CBDs demonstrates what seems to be the local formula for sustainability, the merging of the modern with the traditional, of business with culture. You can best see this in the majestic Consing mansion in front of the Molo Cathedral, which was bought by SM but tastefully renovated and transformed into its Kultura shop. There’s no doubt that modernization is coming to Iloilo in a big way, but its leaders are smart enough to know that the city’s appeal lies in what it has built over the past two centuries, which no money can buy.

You’d think that Iloilo has gotten this far just because of political patronage from Manila, but Iloilo was one of the 15 provinces that went for Leni Robredo in 2022. The city’s former mayor, Jed Mabilog, was hounded out of office by threats of tokhang under the previous administration, but the city seems to have weathered the political storms under Treñas, returning to his old job under the National Unity Party. What this tells me is that good local governance matters, whatever may be happening elsewhere. 

Email me at jose@dalisay.ph and visit my blog at http://www.penmanila.ph.

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.

Penman No. 454: Revenge Travel, Local Edition

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Penman for Sunday, September 3, 2023

WE PINOYS don’t really know what “summer” is any longer, with heavy rains falling out of the sky as much in March as they do in September, but especially with the new school calendar in place, most of us now do what used to be our summer traveling between May and August, if Facebook posts are any indication.

Many Filipinos—those who can afford it—still seem to be in “revenge travel” mode, flying off to Prague, Helsinki, Myanmar, and other parts off the usual travel charts. My wife Beng and I had a couple of dream spots halfway around the world in mind—recalling our pre-pandemic spree in 2019 when we blew a chunk of my retirement kitty on an escapade to Penang, Tokyo, England, Scotland, Singapore, the US, Turkey, and Macau—but our shrunken pesos and aching knees urged something kinder and more affordable: go local, and suffer no jetlag.

As it happened, we visited at least four places these past few months that I’d like to share with our readers looking for alternatives to the usual weekend destinations, ie, Tagaytay, Subic, Baguio, and Boracay. Some of these trips were partly for work, although I have to admit that pleasure pretty much overpowered anything else on our minds once we got there.

The first was a treat for the whole household—Beng, myself, my 95-year-old mom Emy, her caregiver Jaja, our housekeepers Jenny and Ara, Jenny’s husband and Beng’s assistant Sonny, and Jenny’s and Sonny’s kids Jilliane and Buboy. This is our extended family, whom we genuinely enjoy being with, so every year I promise to take them out on an overnight trip to water resort, as everyone (well, at least below 65) loves to swim. That means a wave pool, a place to cook, good and clean rooms for sleeping and showering, and not too long a ride (for my mom who gets carsick). 

Last year it was the Villa Excellance Beach and Wave Pool Resort in Tanza, Cavite that did the trick for us—and it’s still worth a weekend for your family—but a little Googling yielded me something much closer to our home on UP Campus: the Ciudad Christhia Nine Waves Resort in San Mateo, Rizal, just a 30-minute hop away via the Commonwealth/Tumana route. The place had everything we were looking for—it’s an ideal venue as well for teambuilding seminars, if you don’t want to go too far, with very helpful staff and prices that won’t break the bank; you can do your broiling right beside the huge pool, and the cabanas were clean and cozy. While I flailed around in the knee-high water, six-year-old Buboy had a blast in the wave pool, which was all that mattered.

If you don’t mind driving through the mountains on a zigzag road for about three hours, then a trip to Infanta, Quezon will make the effort worth it. Facing the Pacific, but with Pagbilao Island buffering the waves in between, Infanta offers a bevy of beach resorts, of which Beng and I went to the Marpets Beach Resort, which was run by an American expat and his Filipino wife. Aside from its stretch of beach, the resort had three swimming pools, very livable quarters, and deliciously cooked food. The great thing about a roadtrip to Quezon—which is reachable via the zigzag Marilaque Highway from Marikina and also via the equally scenic though more moderate route passing Antipolo, Famy, and Real—is that the journey itself is an adventure, with much local produce to buy along the way, and breathtaking views to snap. 

Our third destination was almost a random but providential choice. Looking for an inexpensive getaway far enough from Manila to require a plane, and with some airline credits to expend, Beng and I looked up Cebu Pacific’s destination map and settled on one spot we’d never been to—Virac, Catanduanes. We Manileños often hear of Virac only in the context of incoming typhoons, for which it’s probably unfairly used as a reference point, but if you catch it on a sunny day like we did, then you’d rather be here than busy Boracay. I found a new boutique hotel on booking.com called Happy Island Inn in San Vicente, a short tricycle ride from downtown fronting the water, and it turned out to be a winner, priced very reasonably with the friendliest front desk fellow I’ve ever met in all my travels.

Soon we learned that nearly everything in Virac is reachable by tricycle, which we hired for a day tour that included a beachside lunch at the ritzy Twin Rocks resort, a visit to the historic Bato church, hewn out of stone and coral, and a bracing dip into the cool and clear waters of Maribina Falls (entry fee, P25 per person). We made new friends of a lovely couple, Bobby and Myette Tablizo, with whom we shared stories under a full moon. There’s a lot more to be discovered of Catanduanes up north—the island can be circled on a first-class circumferential road—but we’ll save that for next time.

My last sortie was by my lonesome and work-related, but work gets doubly hard in a place meant to transport you to blissful oblivion. This was in Panglao, Bohol, which, the last time I looked many years ago, was little more than a cluster of huts. Imagine my surprise when we stepped off the plane into a world-class airport and then, just minutes later, were wheeled into the kind of resort you find on some glossy magazine cover or on the travel channel but never thought was right in your backyard. (Well, of course there’s a whole class of Pinoys who do know about such places, and I’ve been fortunate to have been invited to a few, but my poor-boy’s jaw still can’t help dropping in the face of luxury.)

The Bellevue Resort in Panglao is one such place that will make you wish you’d studied something like plastic surgery so you could spend a few weekends here every year. The rooms are as plush and comfortable as you should expect at its price point, but it’s the waterfront that will captivate the first-time visitor, with its white-sand beach, tour boats, infinity pool, and multilevel restaurant. Breakfast or dinner beachside is an option, and a tour of the rest of Bohol can be arranged.

Of course, there’s always Bali or the south of France, but with the new travel paperwork requirements, who needs the hassle at immigration? Save yourself the travel tax and go local. It’s still more fun in the Philippines, if you know where to look.

Penman No. 450: A Hillside Haven

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Penman for Sunday, May 7, 2023

“SHAMBALA’ IN Tibetan Buddhism is a mythical kingdom where, according to lore, resides a community devoted to good deeds. But there’s a real version of it, aligned with the same beneficent principle, and it’s just two hours from Manila on a good day.

Thanks to the herculean efforts of the wife-and-husband team of Riza and Albert Muyot, a place called Shambala Silang now exists to welcome city folk fleeing stress, pollution, and stop-and-go traffic for a day or two of blissful living.


The two-hectare hillside resort seems larger than it is, magnified by the panorama that opens behind it—the green sprawl of a provincial landscape under a bright blue bowl of sky. But “resort” seems a misnomer, because Shambala doesn’t have a swimming pool, a karaoke bar, a disco, or a zipline. Except for short walks around the property, you don’t come to Shambala to work up a sweat, but rather to relax, meditate, and celebrate life, whether by yourself or better yet, in the company of loved ones and friends.

That’s what we did on a recent day trip organized by fellow writer and academic and dear friend Edna Manlapaz, at the gracious invitation of the Muyots. (Albert—a lawyer and former Undersecretary of Education—is another old friend, a fellow fountain-pen enthusiast and Michigan alumnus.) The main invitee and guest of honor was actually National Artist for Literature Jimmy Abad who came with his wife Mercy, and we roped in novelist Charlson Ong to complete the party.

From Quezon City, Shambala is best reached by the Skyway, then CALAX, then a series of backroads winding through Silang. We have friends who have chosen to relocate here, and passing through groves of mango and other fruit trees, we can understand why. If you want to disengage from city life, Silang is an easy option, where you can vanish into the woods while still being a short drive away from modern necessities. A narrow dirt trail leads uphill to Shambala, and I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much from what I could (or couldn’t) see on the road, but then it appears at the very end, and the magic begins.

Shambala is a cluster of several buildings containing art galleries, collections of Philippine tribal art and culture, halls for meetings and celebrations, restaurants, gardens, and the Muyots’ private residence. It has six tribal houses open for overnight (or longer) stays, operating as a B-and-B. The houses are authentic structures brought down from the north when their owners no longer needed them, and rebuilt piece by piece. “They were originally constructed without nails, but we had to reinforce them and to introduce some modern touches and conveniences to make them more comfortable for our guests,” said Riza. “For example, we expanded the space beneath the houses , which was traditionally used for farm animals like chickens, so we could put a platform around which people could sit and meet. We also added friendlier stairs.” The one-room houses are spacious and airy, and a modern bathroom stands outside each of them.

Below the houses, down the hillside, is a circle of stones with a fireplace at its center—a dap-ay traditionally used for meetings of tribal elders and for religious functions, but now serving as a virtual theater or arena for post-prandial get-togethers under the moonlight.

And everywhere you look, there are trees—about a thousand of them, according to the Muyots, a hundred of which are Benguet and Norfolk pine, specially brought in. “There was nothing here when we bought the place around 2000 but pineapples and coffee,” said Albert. The Muyots were then looking for a sylvan hideaway to run to from their workplaces in Manila. They found the property and fell in love with it, although today’s Shambala wasn’t necessarily what they had in mind. “This is all Riza’s doing,” Albert explained. “She’s the one with the vision, the one who saw the possibilities and brought them to reality.” Now the CEO of Save the Children Philippines, Albert is happy enough to work on his laptop from his home office on the property (yes, there’s wi-fi all around).

A CPA who once worked with SGV, Riza comes from a corporate background. She’s also a gifted poet whose works subtly appear among the art on the walls. “Culture, heritage, art, and nature—that’s what we devote ourselves to here in Shambala,” Riza said. “We have an ongoing exhibit of soil painting featuring artists from the Talaandig tribe in Bukidnon. Do you know that there are 21 colors of soil in Bukidnon? They add water to those soils and use them in their painting. “ Shambala brought over Mindanao artists such as Kublai Millan and Datu Waway Saway to share their experiences and insights in the TIBOK Community Art Fair last month.

“People discovered us during the pandemic,” said Albert. “They went to Tagaytay, only to be turned away because of local restrictions on visitors from out-of-town, like seniors who couldn’t be let in. They came here and liked it, and spread the word.” It’s no surprise that on busy weekends, as many as 200 people pass through Shambala’s gates. Shambala has consistently ranked No. 1 in TripAdvisor surveys of such resorts in the area.

So if you want to try something exquisitely different—like their signature welcome drink made from malunggay, luya, and calamansi—drive off the beaten track to Tagaytay and try Shambala one of these days. The food’s as heavenly as the place itself, and you’ll wonder why you didn’t come here sooner. You can find out more about Shambala and their rates on their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/ShambalainSilang/.

Penman No. 449: Sharing the Joy of Pens

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Penman for April 2, 2023

With the successful holding of the 2023 Manila Pen Show last March 18 and 19 at the Holiday Inn Makati, the Philippines firmly established itself as Southeast Asia’s Pen Central—the largest and liveliest marketplace of items and ideas related to one of the world’s fastest-growing hobbies: collecting fountain pens and other writing peripherals (inks, papers, and cases). 

The last MPS in 2019, just before the pandemic, had brought in 700 visitors. This year, that number was eclipsed on just the first day, and by closing time Sunday, over 2,000 pen lovers—from hardcore and advanced collectors picking up $2,000 Nakayas to eager newbies thrilled to get sub-P200 Wing Sungs—had showed up. The turnout wasn’t totally surprising, considering that Fountain Pen Network-Philippines (FPN-P), the pen show hosts and organizers, now counts more than 12,000 members on its Facebook page.

Aside from the country’s leading purveyors of writing paraphernalia—familiar names such as Scribe, Everything Calligraphy, Pengrafik, Stationer Extraordinaire, Leather Library, Leather Luxe, Shibui, Gav N Sav, JumpBid, and Kasama—foreign sellers from Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan such as Aesthetic Bay, Pen Gallery, Straits Pens, Musubi, and Toyooka Craft flew in just for the show. Nearly all the sellers reported robust sales at all price points.

As a longtime pen collector and co-founder of FPN-P, I’m proud of how the hobby has taken off in this country over the past decade, and also frankly amazed by how different our demographics are from the rest of the world. Fountain pen collecting, especially in the West, has long been the domain of predominantly old white men, inclined like I am toward vintage pens and high-end, limited-edition modern pens. 

FPN-P’s profile is distinctly different: mostly young professionals between 20 and 40, with far more women than men, happy to purchase the entire color range of inexpensive Chinese-made Jinhao 82s (and inks to match) but just as savvy about the latest Montblanc release, keen on using and enjoying their pens rather than keeping them in boxes. As the MPS attendance showed, ours is an exuberant, generous, and democratic community, with little sense of entitlement or competition, dedicated to sharing the joy of pens, of expressing your individuality and artistry with the ink on your nib, of doing something personal and authentic in this age of artificial intelligence.

A highlight of MPS 2023 was a panel discussion devoted to the topic of “Curating a Fountain Pen Collection,” and I was privileged to share the table with fellow collectors Reggie Reginaldo, Amanda Gorospe, Jun Castro, Ronnie Geron, and Raffy Aquino. Each of us said a few words about how and why we put our collections together, given that each of us had a different focus: inexpensive pens, high-end pens, vintage pens, yellow pens, and so on.

Before talking about my passion for vintage pens (i.e., pens at least 50 years old, in many cases a hundred years old), I tried to explain what “curation” was all about. Here’s part of what I said:

Every collection begins as most love affairs do—with fleeting glimpses of the loved one, then seemingly chance encounters, then long chats over coffee before the steep and blissful freefall into a dizzying madness. 

For a moment, happiness and contentment reign. And then sadly follow the inevitable regrets, the disaffections, the “It’s not you, it’s me’s,” the parting with the old object of desire and its replacement by a new flame.

Today we’ll try to introduce some sense into this seeming cycle of bliss and despair. Curation means bringing some method into the madness, finding the inner logic that threads many disparate elements together.

The word “curation” is rooted in the Latin curare, “to take care of,” or to treat an illness, and here clearly the illness is in the collector, whom curation treats by providing guideposts to follow and guardrails against excess.

There are several kinds of collectors:

  1. Those who want anything and everything, although they might be more properly called accumulators (this describes 90 percent of us at the beginning);
  2. Those who want everything of a kind (this applies to my fetish for Parker Vacumatics);
  3. Those who want the best or the most impressive of everything (this implies having the budget to go with your taste);
  4. Those who want some very specific things, for personal or even idiosyncratic reasons; and
  5. Those who get only what they need or can afford—perhaps the rarest of all collectors, the practical and disciplined kind.

Vintage collecting relies heavily on connoisseurship—on knowing the field and knowing what to look for. Surprisingly, it often involves less money than buying new pens. Of course there’s a cost to factor in for restoration and repairs, but even so few vintage pens reach the stratosphere of the thousands of dollars you would pay for a shiny new Montblanc.

You can collect based on brand, material, filling system, size, and of course price. For vintage you can add age and scarcity. Good working or repairable condition is presumed, although vintage collectors should always be on the lookout for cheap parts pens. 

Every quest for collectibles also involves what we might call “unicorns”—ultra-rare or one-of-a-kind pieces that exhibit some distinguishing hallmark of quality or technical innovation. These could be prototypes, custom jobs, or things in almost mint condition despite their age.

It also helps to know what you don’t like, or no longer like. For example, I generally don’t go for small and light pens, nor for blingy or too colorful pens. My pens are “lolo” pens—staid, conservative, almost severe, corny to most young collectors today.

Culling or cutting down is a good exercise, financially and mentally. I built up my collection over the years by selling five good pens to get one better pen. I have also sold very good pens that I once lusted after, but no longer spoke to me.

Curation, ultimately, is about knowing yourself. At a certain point in your collecting life, you have to take stock of your collection and ask yourself, “What do these objects say about me?” Is this the self-image I want to project, the one I’m happiest with? 

My answer to my own question is, I’m an old guy who likes old things, because they offer physical proof of life after death. We die, but our words—and the wording—go on. A vintage pen is an old guy lucky enough to find a new home. I’m happy to give him a shower and a warm bed, and all the ink he wants to drink.