Hearts and hugs at the Araneta

I dashed from the station to the far entrance of the stadium.

Good thing the line was nowhere near the queue the last I came to such a night. I snatched my ticket from friends already inside and rushed in.

Aussie church band Planetshakers would perform their first to a less packed crowd at Manila’s Big Dome.

Sitting at upper box B, my mind recalled that other queue in another arena. That was late 2006, my first as a teen, and also the first for Hillsong United, another band from Down Under.

Understandable, since United songs (like “One Way”) have long filled the worship lineups of youth groups here. The Shakers have yet to enter local awareness.

Three years have changed much. I’m now a single, paying professional. Before, this would’ve been a break from class work. Now it’s a reunion.

Catch up conversations about life–and love–gave way as the arena darkened, the stage lights brightened, the band went up, and a roar arose with the beat.

We asked, “Pwede na ba tumayo?” The stadium lost no time, stood and joined the noise.

Thank God, some things don’t change.

* * * * * *

A tip for worship events: When encountering new songs, try to sing along. They’re usually easy to catch on. One might even become your favorite.

The point, after all, is not what songs you know, but who you’re singing them to.

* * * * * *

These “concerts” though attract mostly those familiar, or fanatical.

Yes, avid followers abound even in Christian music. I was once. With one United album in 2003, I liked their alternative sound and bought them all later.

Soon I knew all the songs, which album had which, who wrote and who sung them. I traced their musical growth. And I studied favorites to play them.

So when I heard rumors United would come here, I rushed to confirm it and tell. I wasn’t that fan or rich to get front row seats, but at the back row, we still sang out loud.

At Araneta, I switched roles. As we softly sang along to newly-heard songs, behind us were louder voices of teens who obviously knew them better. And with every intro they cheered.

Fans? Probably. Or maybe just an album or song ahead.

* * * * * *

At least the Shakers had two Christmas songs and the ever-familiar “How Great is our God.”
One other we did know–”Jump Around,” a favorite in Victory’s youth services.

With it, they taught us “the Roo,” after the trademark move of their national animal.

Our Aussie guests probably forgot that while not many knew the song, we all knew how to jump along.

* * * * * *

Musicians observe fellow musicians. If the Shakers’ keyboardist knew his playing, then I must be complicating my own.

Both his hands played during the slower songs. But with the rocking ones, either his right hand kept on one chord, or he just jumped and danced–all around the stage.

Looking at him, I thought maybe I should back off the organ sometime.

* * * * * *

Near the end, the singers asked for anyone to lead a dance on stage. Two teenage Pinays gladly ran up.

The lead singer asked their names, and with their response–a cheesy hug.

After the dance the two ran across the stage to each singer and player, giving more hugs. The stadium resounded with a “Yee.”

Nothing like love from the Philippines.

*Insert shortened professional title here*

While it is said to breed contempt, familiarity more often breeds fondness.

So, it’s one thing to know older professionals met as acquaintances or relatives. And it’s another to see friends your age each add that exam-earned designation to their full names.

Only before you’ve seen them at their student best and worse. Your concerns just ranged from exams and deadlines to tambays and presentations. And you’ve witnessed each other mature in looks and in life.

Here, then, is my congratulations to college mates turned licensed practitioners with this year’s board exams:

• Engr. Santini Dustin Gesmundo Perez, mechanical engineer;
• Engr. Mary Vermi Aizza Almazan Morales, and
• Engr. Edgar Calolo Amatong, chemical engineers.

(Obviously) not from their college, I knew Dustin, Aizza, and Edgar as fellow members and leaders in Every Nation Campus Ministries UP and at Victory Quezon City.

Circa 2005: Aizza's at the center in red. Edgar the guy in white behind her. Dustin, not in shot.

When I met them in my first year, all three were serving at Victory’s Friday youth service, then at the Katipunan center. Then Kuya Dustin played guitars, Ate Aizza served with the ushers, and Kuya Edgar manned the PowerPoint booth.

All Together Separate*

Once upon a time we all lived together,

and then lived separate lives;

Now we’re connected more than ever,

but miles and minds apart.

It’s the irony of technology, the grand price of the grand prix: how we live some more yet die a little; or come together yet make no more than a superficial connection.

Find it in the themes of recent doomsday and futuristic movies. Even in tearjerkers set in the oh-so-familiar present, with their many-angled takes on the classic carpe diem (Latin, “seize the day”).

They all warn: the price of our progress is the pending harm not only of our planet, but more tragically, of ourselves.

This warning unfolds in the Bruce Willis action film “Surrogates”. In its very-near-future setting, society looks, acts, and feels like our own. But no one’s really there. Instead, it’s virtual reality come alive.

The catch? Almost everyone you see is a physically perfect robotic stand-in (read: surrogate) controlled by the real person lying at home. A situation that can deceive.

Like old Bruce Willis (right) controls younger Bruce Willis (center). Or even female partner (left).

In the eye of 2 storms

Hands down, our country has not witnessed a storm like it in recent memory.

And make that two. Ondoy and Pepeng (alternately Ketsana and Parma) hit at the main artery of our archipelago that their impact was felt far wider and far longer.

Uncannily, few in our typhoon-frequented nation had predicted the terrible flooding that enveloped Metro Manila after Ondoy. That it gradually happened on a weekend delayed the realization and response to the tragedy.

Even the agencies expected to provide that response fell short of workers, many of them stranded by the floods, including media.

At news, our reporters and crews who lived far from Quezon City could not go to work. The extra efforts of the few who did go out produced the weekend’s most dramatic images, like the San Mateo “surfers.”

Living in Las Piñas, I had to wait till Monday to report for duty. There I made up for it–my first output for TV Patrol and my first overnight on the field.

Despite our setbacks, the media essentially “governed” the country that September 26 morning as the nation made sense of the floods and the government was nowhere in sight.

Airtime on TV and radio was given to callers and texters stuck on their rooftops

It was simply rain–an overnight of uninterrupted downpour with few winds. The Metro only under Signal Number 1, Ondoy was assumed to simply pass by.

It simply did not.

To the young Christian lady

How do you squeeze a debut message into the length of seven SMS’s?

Had it not been for the deluge in Northern Luzon last October 9, I would have spent the Friday night at a pink-themed party for a churchmate turning 18.

But instead I had to “text” all those words of cheer, encouragement, and, ahem, wisdom while on our four-hour trip to Pangasinan that afternoon.

I had to type it in full just so it would not lose the formality of a debut message. And with the seven-SMS limit, I had to exercise lots and lost of brevity. Many points and detail thus were lost in imperative sentences two to three words long.

Our youth leader read it by 9 or 10 p.m. Hope I said what I wanted said.

Here’s my “text message” to a Christian woman out to face the world:

Powerful images and the stories behind them

If what Ondoy/Ketsana had wrought were captured by a defining shot, it would be this scene taken at the San Mateo Bridge during the rainfall:

A family stood on or held on to what was left of their house’s roof as it speedily surfed the waves of an over-pouring river, in a collision course with the bridge.

Onlookers there threw ropes, hoping to catch anyone. The floating mass rammed into the bridge, none grasping the ropes. Those there rushed to the opposite end, only to none survived the blow. One later turned up in far-off Cainta, losing the rest of his family.

The picture summed it all: the extreme rains, the high flooding, the damage to property, and the human cost. And courtesy, of course, of ABS-CBN News, it depicted the tragedy to the world.

That’s what TV does best–convey depth and emotion in images. During calamities the best of them compel people to compassion and action.

What you, who have seen them over and over this week, would not know is that they almost did not reach the air.

01:45:00 00:02.01.00

That’s the approximate running time of the first VO or voiceover package I edited for TV Patrol World.

This was Monday, September 28. Typhoon Ondoy/Ketsana had passed, and we were now taking a sober look at the damage it left.

How long it took to edit the piece? Almost an hour. We started to lay the audio by 5:35 p.m. and had it ready for airing just before the headlines ran at 6:30.

Residents in submerged Pasig areas still await help. Report by Jorge Cariño, ABS-CBN News, for TV Patrol World, September 28, 2009 (Click on screen grab to watch via ABS-CBN News Online)

Our Electronic News Gathering Van 4 was set up in Pasig’s De Castro subdivision, which hours earlier was knee-deep, and days before head-high in flood.

Reporter Jorge Cariño had then joined police riding a rubber boat to move displaced residents. Where he stood for his live report that night, the waters were gone.

They left behind tons of garbage–a lot not even from the place–strewn in mud. Carcasses of cats, dogs, and birds mingled with the refuse. What effects families did not move up they piled in the street, all wet and rendered useless.

For my first time with primetime, the output and the batting average was not bad.

So long, SPISian

My high school would have turned ten today.

It was September 19, 1999 when the Second Philippine International School got a permit from the Saudi education ministry to teach Filipino kids in Riyadh. Then, six Philippine schools operated there.

More schools have opened a decade since. But SPIS has dropped from that list. And it’s not celebrating any 10th anniversary.

Instead, on its old locale in Suleimania District now sits SIS, or the Sovereign International School.

There the same buildings remain, the colors maybe a bit different–before green, white and gold, now I don’t know. Many of the same students still attend, a number of the long-time teachers too.

But they’re no longer called SPISians.

Waiting for Noynoy

We waited for him since before dawn. We wanted a glimpse, a few words, even a conversation with him before he went to face history.

He came out of the house an hour after daybreak. No family was with him, only a bevy of bodyguards in blue polo barongs. He wore a black collared shirt, still the image of mourning. Embossed on the upper right were the Philippine islands in yellow, the color of his family name.

He smiled at our crew. We asked if we could join him. He declined. For that fateful ride, he wanted solitude–something he’d been asking all of us for a week now.

Thirty minutes later, Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III stepped on a podium at Club Filipino to finally “accept” the “call,” the “bilin,” and the “challenge” to run for President.

Shots from the past: Block K5

It’s already four years since I started my CMC journey with this upstart group of future journalists/media practitioners I call my block mates.

Only 147 units ago, we started sharing recess or lunch together after we found out we had many same free times and subjects.

A UP lifetime hence, most of us have graduated. Many, like me, went on to media or communication jobs–a lot of them far from what we dreamed of when we took up the BA J.