Penman for Monday, October 10

OVER THREE days a couple of weekends ago, San Francisco was the place to be if you were a Filipino-American, or a Filipino visiting the US for a late fling with autumn. The event bringing everyone together was the first Filipino-American Book Festival, organized by the Literacy Initiatives International Foundation under its executive director Gemma Nemenzo, with assistance from the Asia Foundation and a host of other sponsors.

        Comprising panel discussions, lectures, demonstrations, stage presentations, signings, and book exhibits, Filbookfest 2011 was a great success, with over 100 authors, publishers, and booksellers—both Filipino and Fil-Am—turning up for the September 30-October 2 weekend. The Manila contingent was a formidable one, headed by no less than National Artists Virgilio Almario and Benedicto Cabrera, and by former President Fidel Ramos, who was there to promote his biography. My fellow Filipino authors included, in no particular order, Pete Lacaba, Isagani Cruz, Ambeth Ocampo, Vim Nadera, Mike Coroza, Teo Antonio, Marites Vitug, Cris Yabes, Marily Orosa, Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, and Carljoe Javier.

        The Filipino-American literary community was ably represented by the likes of Paulino Lim (whose story “Curacao Cure” is on my syllabus), Oscar Peñaranda, Lou Syquia, Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard, Marivi Soliven Blanco, John Blanco, Tony Joaquin, Luigi Francia, Reme Grefalda, and Boying Pimentel. The publishers included the usual suspects: Lirio Sandoval, Karina Bolasco, Gwen Galvez, Maricor Baytion, and Ani Almario. A special note was added by the presence of my US publisher Tim Schaffner, who took out a booth to sell the combined US edition of my two novels, titled In Flight, for his Tucson-based Schaffner Press. (In Flight, incidentally, is now available on Amazon, also in an e-book edition.)

        Every gathering of Filipinos overseas is always a reunion of old friends from way back when, and Filbookfest was no different in this respect, putting me back in touch with friends whom I hadn’t seen for as long as 40 years. The ex-Mapuan Gerry Socco, still looking trim, picked Beng and me up at the airport, and later hosted a dinner for us with his charming wife Chete; as fate would have it, Gerry also became a collector of vintage watches and fountain pens, so we had a lot to talk about besides the struggle against martial law. Another old buddy I had the pleasure of seeing again was my Philippine Science High School classmate Don Rodis (the younger brother of Fil-Am busybody Rodel, whom I also met at the book fair); Don and his wife Jocelyn brought fellow PSHSers Tem Gopez, Mimarts Aguilar, Emilia San Gil, Chat and Butch de la Vega, and everyone’s mates together for dinner in his Balboa Park home. We were later joined at the book fair by other PSHS alumni: Letty Quizon, Pepo Chanco, and Ernie Cordova. Beng, for her part, hooked up with UP High batchmate Vangie Poe Quesada, who was one of the festival’s sponsors and whose talented and handsome sons Gabe and PJ performed and emceed for the festival program. To all of these friends who opened their doors and hearts to us—let me not forget filmmaker Gil Magnaye—our deepest thanks.

        I learned a lot about the state of Filipino and Fil-Am literature over that weekend, but the one statistic that I couldn’t forget was contributed by social scientist and author Juanita Tamayo-Lott, who mentioned during our panel discussion that as of the 1960 census, there were only 100,000 Filipinos (or Americans of Fiipino descent) in the US; within 20 years, by 1980, that had shot up to 1 million, and today the official figure stands at around 2 million. One of those 2 million is our daughter Demi, who’s been living in California for the past four years with her husband Jerry. And then there’s my mother Emy and sister Elaine in Virginia, and Beng’s sister Jana in New York. I can’t even start to think how this all happened, how you wake up one morning to find half of your family living half the world away. Any novel we write from now on will have to contend with this reality, with the idea of a nation spread out over many continents. Thank God for Skype and Steve Jobs for Facetime.

* * * * *

SPEAKING OF Steve Jobs, I’m writing this on a rainy Thursday in San Diego, California, a few hours south of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino and Palo Alto, where Steve died yesterday. I actually got the news first in a text message from Manila, from my good friend and fellow Mac freak Sarge Lacuesta. Soon my SMS and email inboxes were filling up not just with more news and details of Steve’s passing but with condolences, as if I were among the bereaved—and indeed I was. Call it overreacting, but I soon felt tears streaming down my cheeks as the messages came in.

        One of them came from a faithful correspondent, director Freddie Santos, who said that “I am not a Mac user and may never be one but I cannot begin to measure the enhancement brought to my work of directing concerts by iTunes (mine contains 13,000 tracks, edited) and my iPod. Ultimately, I think, that is really what Steve Jobs brought about in this world: an absolute, undeniable enhancement, one which we are no longer willing to go without.” Another message came from reader Jon Sazon, who wrote: “I know you are not related to him in any way, but when I was writing an entry to a contest, [I titled it] “Of pens, Beng, and Macs,” with reference to those whom you hold dear to your heart, and with Steve Jobs’ demise, I offer my condolences.”

        Two media outfits asked me for interviews, remembering, I suppose, my longtime advocacy of the Mac platform and my having served sometime as chairman of the Philippine Macintosh Users Group or Philmug, which now has several hundred active members out of the 20,000-plus signups online at www.philmug.ph.

        But what else could I say about Steve Jobs that hasn’t already been said? I did meet the man once—although I’m using “meet” fairly liberally here, having come no closer than ten feet to him, thanks to his security cordon. I was covering Macworld 2006 for the Star—the highlight of my reporting career—and had dashed to as close to the front row as I could to hear him deliver the keynote (and, at that time, introduce the iPod shuffle). The thought crossed my mind to swipe the water bottle he had sipped from and left onstage, but the professor overcame the fanboy in me, and I unhappily desisted.

        So what can I say but thanks, Steve, for all the good times, for making life easier and more pleasant (if a tad more expensive), and specifically for Facetime on the iPhone, with which the world has become a lot less lonely.