Jane’s Neighborhood

For Al Robles

Manong Al,
I first saw you in my house
when I was a kid
I rolled my eyes at my sister's
"writer's group"
my eyes focused on McCovey
taking his bat on the tube
while you sat in my living room
with my Ate Jeanie,
and Lou,
and Presco,
and Jaimie,
and Orvy,
throwing out verses
about karabaws
and rice patties,
and barber shops,
and bagoong,
and home

As an adult I saw you again
on Stockton and Sacramento
you were serving lunch
to the seniors in Chinatown
you were like Doc Brown
from Back to the Future
a time traveler who always looked the same
your hair was still white
still crazy
pointing in all directions
like our people scattered across the globe
eyeglasses askew
trying to find a home
on the bridge of your nose
backpack full of community fliers
still spitting poetry
and always about the karabaw
diligent, steady, relentless
your words plowing Frisco streets
like protest marches around the I-Hotel
 
The last time I saw you, Manong,
you were in Oakland Chinatown
baggy panted teens
were hangin' onto your words
like a cool breeze on a hot Stockton day
still rhyming poetry
and always about the karabaw
diligent, steady, relentless

I feel your spirit
on the 38 Geary
on Chinatown streets
on City murals
holding back tanks
holding up protest signs
words floating off your tongue
and always about the karabaw

- J. Cerenio

When I first visited my mother's home province in the Philippines as an adult (back in 1992) I was hosted by my cousin Eva.  Back then, email was not ubiquitious.  My mother mailed a letter back home to inform them that I'd being staying in Manila at the University of the Philippines for the summer, and when I had time I'd visit the province one weekend.  It was a six hour trek north of Manila across dusty, rocky roads, and crowded buses with broken air conditioning.  I remember lumbering off a sputtering tricyle ride onto the dusty main road of Lokeb, Malasiqui.  And wondering who was going to greet me.  I had not met any of my cousins, uncle, or aunts in the Philippines.  I was six years old the last time I set foot in my parent's homeland.  I spent a few days with first cousins, Eva, and Rickard.  I felt blessed to be able to spend time with them and learn about their lives.  The poverty of the country and the lack of economic opporutnity forced many of my cousins to work overseas.  Eva and three other of my female cousins had worked as domestic workers in counties like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia.  Eva was inbetween jobs and was home for the first time in three years to visit the very young she left behind children with her husband. 

Pinay-mideast_abuse

Today's Chronicle article highlights the plight of many of these Philippine domestic workers.  The Philippines greatest export is it's people.  Filipino domestic workers provide cheap labor to counties across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.  The prospect of a steady income pulls Filipinos away from their families and homes and into work situations that offer little protection from abusive employers, and frail support from their host country.  I feel fortunenate that Eva and my other cousins have only told me of positive experiences working overseas.     

We've been at this remodel for four plus months.  The work started downstairs with a new bathroom (where none existed), adding french doors that led out to our common backyard and a new deck, and lastly, an extension of a tiny closet into a full walk-in closet.  As with all our projects Tonia artistic eye took control of the situation and the product is a what I describe as "a king's bathroom in a pauper's home".  Behold Tonia's golden touch:

Check out the same pics on Flickr.

Now that we've been enjoying the double shower, double sink, and easy entry to the unkept garden it'll be hard to move back upstairs.  We may just turn this into our master bedroom.  Tonia has been masterful in dealing with the contractor and his merry crew of non-native English speakers.  There's the Pilipino tile guy who said if we tiled only two sides of the wall it would "p(f)eel like a cave".  And the heavily accented Cantonese cabinet guy who, for some reason, shared that he once punched out his female high school counselor because she said he had to go to summer school.  And the glass guy who supposedly never talks but talked Tonia's ear off about his home country Azerbaijan.  Yep, Tonia may have found a new calling in interior design.  Tonia brought me in to help on the tough decisions like "this light fixture, or that fixture", or "this sink or that sink, actually neither fit, never mind".  But I was most helpful in the negotiation with our TIC partner about our common backyard and the deck we wanted to build.  Tonia claims I yelled at her and made her shake and cry.  I felt that I raised my voice tactfully and told her, "...look you can't have it both ways and dictate the size of our deck and what it looks like, if we really wanted to we could build whatever we want.  You're lucky that we're even checking in with you".  Yeah, I think the should call it "life remodel" because it's seriously changing our life.  No kitchen + no bathroom + 1 toddler = Please have this remodel end.

Next:  Upstairs

The Kitchen

Since we've been in the midst of a home remodel and without a kitchen for three months we've been eating at a restaurant called The Kitchen instead.  Tonia's new favorite Cantonese restaurant is The Kitchen in Milbrae.  It's pricier than Koi Palace, but according to Tonia, they have very authentic, contemporary Hong Kong style dishes.  We went there twice during the holidays, including dinner on New Year's eve.  As with any Chinese meal, Tonia's guiding principal is to order a balanced meal that includes dishes prepared in a variety of ways; something braised, something steamed, something fried, a cold dish starte, followed by a hot soup, and always a crunchy vegtable of some sort.  My favorite part of The Kitchen was the huge photograph of the two all-star chefs posed with their hands on hips and their cooking medallions hung around their necks. 

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Ori Brafman

If you cut a spider's head off the spider dies.  If you cut the arms off of a starfish the starfish will grow new arms, and each dismembered arms grows into new starfish.  Wired Magazine's Ori Brafman uses this analogy to compare organizations that are centralized (spiders) against those that are de-centralized (starfish). 

The Apache Indians, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Napster are all examples of starfish.  They are flat organizations with no hierarchy, no clear leadership, and are powered by the collective force of many people whose primary driving force is to contribute to the better good of the community. 

The Spanish Conquitadores dominated all of the Native Indian groups of North America but couldn't handle the one tribe that had no centrals leadership.  The Spanish would defeat one Apache tribe only to find a thousand other tribes acting independently of each other would be there to replace them. 

There are tens of thousands of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) groups all over the world.  One could travel to any city around the country today and find an A.A. meeting.  Each meeting would essentially be run the same way.  The agenda is known to members and the meetings are self facilitated.  There is no clear leader in any group, yet A.A. is providing support and helping people beat addiction without the aide of any mental health or medical experts. 

We have all see what happens when the music industry clamps down on peer-to-peer file sharing networks.  The music industry may have sued Napster into a pale and legal version of it's former self, but there have been hundreds of P2P/Napster closes to replace the original.

Examples of de-centralized organizations throughout history compared against the democratizing power of the internet make up the back bone of this fantasic read.  It is a great sociological study on the power of groups that has applications in organizational change, business, and technology.

Pacquiao-flag

I was hoping to see De La Hoya kissing the boxing ring mat, but Manny's victory and technical knockout was sweet nonetheless.  In honor of the Oscar De La Hoya versus Manny Pacquiao fight I have a few other Filipinos in the world of sports to point out.

Erik Spoelstra

I had no idea that the NBA's Miami Heat had a Filipino American head coach.  Erik Celino Spoelstra was an assitant coach to the legendary Pat Riley before stepping into the head coaching seat in April of 2008 (after Riley stepped down annointed Erik as his predecessor).  Riley described Erik as "...born to coach".

Spoelstra1

Geno Espineli

Last August as I was strolling through Yerba Buena's annual Pistahan festival, I overheard the MC introduce San Francisco Giant's pitcher Geno Espineli as, "...the first full blooded Filipino to play in the Major Leagues".  Since Kahlo comandeered the television the past two years I haven't followed the Giants and didn't know they had a Pinoy minor leaguer whom they recently called up.

TimLincecum_2007

Tim Lincecum?

As my friend said the other day, "...even if Lincecum is part Filipino, it don't matter unless he claims it".  In a Sacramento Bee article the 2008 Major League Cy Young award winner, Tim Lincecum, was quoted as saying that his recently deceased grandfather was Filipino.  Dude. Timmy is Pinoy. 

I am amazed that Kahlo, at 4 1/2 years old, was able to sit through a three hour Bollywood movie in a Theater.  Tonia's homegirl, Candice invited us to at the Castro Theater to watch the 2007 Bollywood release of Om Shanti Om.  It was a thoroughly entertaining parody of the Bollywood industry.  Kahlo was mesmerized by the grand dance productions and the catchy pop tunes carried by an army of Bollywood stars past and present. I especially liked the main character throwing in American phrases, like "hey dude" or "cool man", in the middle of a long dialogue in Indian.  Awesome.

I really hate my cell phone.  I knew I should have stuck with another Blackberry but wanted to try a Windows Mobile device.  Yeah, it syncs easily with my work Outlook, and it can run multiple apps at the same time, but it's slow.  And the predictive text is not intuitive like the Blackberry, nor does it support copy/paste functions like the Blackberry.  As a media device it's okay, but not worth giving up the rock solid stability of a good smart phone.  Although I'm on T-mobile I've been thinking about it moving back to AT&T so I could get an IPhone.  But this week Google and T-mobile launched their joint product, the G1 Phone.  The G1 is Google's and T-mobile's answer to the IPhone.  It's open source, includes a slide out full qwerty key pad, has instant access to the gmail, google maps, and google search.  It'll launch on October 22nd, and only for T-mobile customers, at $179 (not including the $25-35 data plan).