Live your life by a compass not a clock. —Stephen Covey

BY AA PATAWARAN

Jan 23, 2024 08:09 PM

  

---

AT A GLANCE

• Live your life by a compass not a clock. —Stephen Covey

---

Full steam ahead, that’s how 2024 is going, but where are we headed this year? Better yet, where are we aching to go?
The Philippine Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) of the Department of Tourism (DOT), along with Tatler Philippines, threw an intimate cocktail party at the Samba Restaurant at Shangri-La The Fort.
There were no more than 50 guests, each handpicked by Tatler Philippines managing director Irene Martel-Francisco because they, as she told me, “love to travel and explore, all of them very much attracted to wandering in places both new and favored.”

Marga Nograles, Rocio Olbes, Kelly Misa Fernandez, Irene Martel Francisco, Vicki Belo, and Ching Cruz

TPB chief operating officer Marga Nograles was, of course, the life of the party, whose raison d’etre, after all, was the Travel Philippines app, now enhanced with more features. We were all there to see how it could help us make 2024 the year we would see more of the country. “It seemed fitting to gather the people I chose around the COO as she shared the latest insights on the enhanced Travel Philippines app,” said Irene.
Incidentally, Ana Lorenzana de Ocampo, Stephanie Zubiri, and I have been asked by Irene to highlight why the Travel Philippines app is essential to our travel plans across the country. We all agreed that among its most appreciated features is that it’s easy to download and use. It’s a credible source of information on destinations, activities, what to do, where to stay, what to eat across all the regions of the Philippines. The app is designed to be your pocket assistant, where you can store, manage, and easily access e-copies of your travel documents, such as passport, boarding pass, hotel and restaurant reservations, and more. Plus, with the app in hand, it’s so much easier to avail of the latest, hottest deals and promos from accredited and trusted partners of both TPB and DOT.
It was a night bubblies, cocktails, and other heady drinks, delectable pica-pica with a clever Pinoy twist, not to mention a kilawin bar! But, champagne in hand, I made myself busy asking everyone about the pleasures and treasures they are aching to discover in the Philippines. Here are some of the answers. 

Irene Martel Francisco

I have always been fascinated with Batanes! It seems far removed from our amazing beaches. There is something raw, authentic in the photos I see of it—the scenic waters, terrain, and clean environment. I will find the time to visit and yes, I will make use of the TravelPH app in planning our trip. —Irene Martel Francisco

Ching Cruz

Tawi-Tawi is in my bucket list for its breathtakingly beautiful islands with almost untouched beaches and forests of corals and reefs, and lots of underwater life. They say it has the most beautiful seas on earth. But I find the sea nomads, the Bajaus, so intriguing, their way of life is so unique. I don’t know yet how to get there, but if I could, I would at the first opportunity. —Ching Cruz

Stephanie Zubiri

Mt. Banahaw! I would love to explore our deeply mystical and spiritual ancestral heritage. I believe there is so much wisdom we can learn from our indigenous ancestors and how they connected to Mother Earth and the elements and saw the divine everywhere. I’m also fascinated by the marriage between the Catholic faith and our ancient beliefs. These are sacred places where these practices are very much alive! —Stephanie Zubiri

Monique Madsen

It’s only in the last few years that I got to see more of the Philippines and I get filled with so much pride each time. We really have beautiful beaches! I’m not much of a beach person so I think my top destinations would be more of the north. Growing up we drove up to Baguio every summer, riding horses and enjoying the cooler weather. I still remember my trip to Banaue, Sagada, and Vigan a decade ago, which really stuck with me. So much history, so many heritage sites, which I love, also the culture, the people, the food—the coffee!—the views up there, and the way of life. La Union, Laoag, Pagudpud, and Batanes are on my bucket list. —Monique Madsen       

Kelly Misa Fernandez

Last year, my destination of choice was Siquijor, so I made it a point to go and I did! I was there for almost a week. It was such a fun trip! The place is gorgeous, I was pleasantly surprised. And the food was really good. I had such a good time I made it a point to explore a new place every year. This year, a part of the Philippines I want to go is Tawi-Tawi. I’ve heard a lot of wonderful things about it, from its pristine beaches to its beautiful underwater life, food, and culture. —Kelly Misa Fernandez

Rocio Olbes

I am very intrigued by Iloilo in the southeast portion of the Visayan island of Panay. It’s rich in historical beauty. I have deep family ties in Iloilo on my grandfather’s side and I hope one day to explore not only my own family history but the picturesque surroundings as well. —Rocio Olbes

Ana Lorenzana de Ocampo

Batanes has always intrigued me, not just because I have never been, but because of what I’ve seen and heard from others. It feels entirely different from any other part of the Philippines. Its location on the northernmost islands of the country, its unique weather and topography (and architecture), the different culture, flora, and fauna have always piqued my interest. I hope to experience them myself in the future. —Ana Lorenzana de Ocampo

Chinkee Koppe

Because I have always enjoyed our beaches more, now I am more curious about the mountains. I would love to go up north to Sagada and to the seaside cliffs of Batanes. Or maybe farther south to Bukidnon and Davao. —Chinkee Koppe

Nicole Ortega

I’ve never been to Cebu, can you believe it? I am dying to explore its food scene, which I know and hear is excellent. I also want to go to Sagada for the weather, the small cafés, and the solace. —Nicole Ortega

Farbricio Sordoni

I would love to explore more of Mindanao. In terms of landscapes, people, food, colors, and fashion, it looks quite unique and different from the rest of the Philippines. But I don’t know where I would start. Maybe Siargao, definitely for the vibe everyone talks about. I’d also like to go to Siquijor and Camiguin for the landscapes and the stories of friends who have gone and loved them. —Farbricio Sordoni

Ella Pangilinan Miranda

I have always wanted to visit Batanes, especially because apart from the scenic views I’ve heard it’s one of the places that have been able to really preserve traditions and keep its rich Ivatan culture! —Ella Pangilinan Miranda

Issa Litton

I’d like to go to Siargao. I’m a creature of habit so we usually go to our favorite spots in Coron, like Club Paradise, and Boracay. I look forward to exploring new beaches around the Philippines. —Issa Litton

What’s your favorite Tagalog word or phrase?

Notable figures share their favorite Tagalog words

BY AA PATAWARAN

Aug 29, 2023 10:35 PM

  

---

AT A GLANCE

• My current favorite Tagalog word is pasasalamat. My heart is full of gratitude. —Ben Chan, founder, Bench (who gave this answer while in Hong Kong with 475 loyal employees of Bench to celebrate its 35th anniversary)

• Halakhak, It’s onomatopoeic and it makes me less grumpy. —Robina Gokongwei-Pe, president and CEO, Robinsons Retail Holdings

• I like sige na. It’s friendly persuasion. —Nedy Tantoco, chairman and CEO, Rustan Commercial Corporation

---

Illustrations by Randrian Panopio

Dapithapon. I’m sure my memory is playing tricks on me, but I believe that I must have encountered this word for the first time in fifth grade while my teacher, Mrs. Gualberto, was telling us about Sisa, the unfortunate character in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere.

A TIMELESS CLASSIC Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere

If my memory were to be relied upon, the word dapithapon revealed itself to me while Mrs. Gualberto, obviously a Rizal fan, was telling us stories about Sisa and her sons Basilio and Crispin. The day I came upon dapithapon was when she told us about Sisa preparing a hearty meal of dried fish, dried wild boar meat, duck leg, and fresh, plump tomatoes in anticipation of the homecoming of her sons Basilio and Crispin, who worked as sextons in a parish an hour’s walk away. Sisa started to get busy in the kitchen at day’s end, in the late afternoon, or at twilight, that time of day at which light and dark played a game of tug-o’-war—dapithapon in Tagalog. 

Of Mrs. Gualberto’s Noli Me Tangere stories, the most memorable to me were the chapters on Sisa and her sons, too tragic for, and therefore that impactful, on a gradeschooler like me. The Rizal novellas, after all, wouldn’t be required reading until four years later, in junior high school. This was because her stories were also my introduction to the Filipino language or at least to Tagalog. It was only on fifth grade—not before and sadly not after—that I would rush home after school to write stories of my own in Tagalog, determined to mimic the joys I drew out of Mrs. Gualberto’s stortytelling.
No other teacher in my entire student life was as powerful and so my affair with written or even spoken Tagalog had been terribly brief, but Mrs. Gualberto’s legacy is lifelong, and I’m still achingly in love with words like dapithapon, even if we hardly use them in everyday speech or even in modern writing in the vernacular. 

My current favorite Tagalog word is pasasalamat. My heart is full of gratitude. —Ben Chan, founder, Bench (who gave this answer while in Hong Kong with 475 loyal employees of Bench to celebrate its 35th anniversary)

As we cap off Buwan ng Wika, National Language Month, I am reminded of Tagalog words that I continue to find lyrical, the language of the kundiman, some of which are now considered “sinaunang” Tagalog or old Tagalog, such as lumbay, a synonym of the more modern lungkot or sadness, or maralita, less popular than the synonymous mahihirap or the poor. By the way, the word kundiman, meaning “serenade,” by itself sings a genre of its own. 

I don’t know if the Tagalog words I love are as old as sinaunang Tagalog, but they have modern counterparts that are far more common in daily speech, the typical Filipino nowadays and even decades back being given to using English when referring to them. 

Halakhak, It’s onomatopoeic and it makes me less grumpy. —Robina Gokongwei-Pe, president and CEO, Robinsons Retail Holdings

Think bukangliwayway, such a poetic word, artfully descriptive, visual, even seeable, which means “dawn” or “break of dawn” or “daybreak” or “sunrise.” These English words come up in everyday conversations among Filipinos about mornings as often as the Tagalog iterations of bukangliwayway, such as pagsikat ng araw, madaling araw. 

In Tagalog, words that refer to the position of the sun or the spread of darkness on the horizon are masterstrokes of language. Takipsilim, for instance, is just as poetic, meaning “nightfall,” almost synonymous to dapithapon. But there are other equally beautiful words that mean the same thing, such as agaw-dilim. And then, there’s hatinggabi, meaning “midnight.”

I like sige na. It’s friendly persuasion. —Nedy Tantoco, chairman and CEO, Rustan Commercial Corporation

Words are beautiful, in general, whether English or French or even German, but Tagalog has charms distinctly its own. There are clever phrases in Tagalog like Kakabakaba Ka Ba, the title of a 1980 comedy film, whose official translation is Does Your Heart Beat Faster. The English translation cannot hold a candle to the artistic, alliterative original.  

Words are a vivid portrayal and a silver-tongued articulation of the size, shape, sound, smell, texture, color, and sensations of life and nature. 

In Tagalog, words like halimuyak, meaning “scent,” or aruga, meaning “tender, loving care,” or silakbo, meaning “an outburst of feelings or emotions,” or haplos, meaning “caress” are a piece of art, a clever play of expression, a song, a poem, a dance. 

What’s your favorite Tagalog word or phrase?

Why we must get away

 We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls. —Anais Nin

BY AA PATAWARAN

Jun 23, 2023 09:25 AM

  

---

AT A GLANCE

• Travel if you can, when(ever) you can, while you can.

---

9,627KM The Parthenon is the most iconic of ancient ruins in Athens, which can also take you as far back in time as 2,500 years ago

I might have gone very far, but surely not far enough. 

I’ve been 200 kilometers into the Arctic Circle, crossing the white vastness on a snowmobile and a dog sleigh to make it to Jukkasjärvi in Norbotten, the northernmost county of Sweden, where I stayed for a night in the Icehotel. But that’s only 8,928 kilometers away from Manila, 4,737 kilometers nearer than New York and only 113 kilometers farther than Lalibela in the northeastern tip of Ethiopia, where I went on a pilgrimage to the 11 medieval monolithic cave churches.

8,928KM The author in an igloo en route to the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

Even Los Angeles is farther from Manila than Jukkasjärvi by 2,808
kilometers. To put it in further context, Tokyo is about 2,995 kilometers away,
Hong Kong is 1,128 kilometers away, and Davao City is just 150 kilometers
closer being only 978 kilometers removed from Manila. I’ve never been to South
America, but should I have the opportunity to go to Ecuador, I would be 17,498
kilometers away from my life.

9,635KM Graffitti in Athens, taken while Greece was deep in a debt crisis in 2018 and mired in a recession that didn't end until 2019

But I’m no good at numbers, and I don’t know if they are a good
measure of how far we can go. It’s possible to go to Ecuador, still feeling trapped
in your skin, bound to and burdened by the same, old familiar things. On the
other hand, it is also possible to stay where you are and feel like everything
is new, new, new, possibilities throwing doors and windows open all around you.
But why do we get away? I suppose it is wired in our DNA to always
wonder what’s out there. Way before the Grand Tours of 17th century Europe—when the young nobles would go on trips around France, Germany, Greece, and Italy to open themselves up to history and culture—to which modern tourism traces its roots, human history has been rife with stories of brave souls crossing great distances, often at the risk of death, in search of land, in search of food, in search of power, in search of knowledge, or in the interest of trade.

8,760KM Up, up, and away on a hot air balloon in Capadoccia end of spring in Turkey

 In fact, a paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science by George Ferentinos and colleagues has revealed evidence, such as stone tools dating back 100,000 years found all over the Mediterranean, that the Neanderthals, considered a sub-species of modern humans, if not a totally different species, had figured a way to travel by boat and by sail before it even crossed our minds to cross the seas that way.

When I was a child, I used to wonder if there were anyone on earth who looked at the far horizon without ever imagining what it would be like to be on the other side. Maybe that is what contentment means, but as the late Vogue editrix Diana Vreeland, my favorite editor and also my imaginary style dictator, had said, “To be contented, that’s for cows.” So we get away, if not for good, then for a while, some more than others, but sometimes I’d like to think it’s a matter of opportunity or the lack thereof or a matter of circumstance, say, being in jail or suffering from an extreme fear of traveling, hodophobia or what some people call “trip-o-phobia.” We will go, if we can, when we can, while we can.

8,928KM The author with mountain village kids Martha and Teshagar at Blue Nile Falls in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

And it’s good to go too. In the late 1980s or early 1990s, “a time period characterized by rapid technological advancement and ever-increasing
indoor entertainment,” according to research scientist Courtney E. Ackerman,
environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan developed what is now
called Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (ART), whose main premise is that
a trip to nature or any trip that gives, in Ackerman’s words, “the sense of
being separate from one’s usual thoughts and concerns” positively affect our
mood, state of mind, and even relationships.

9,913KM The famous red rooftops of Prague in the Czech Republic

How getting away benefits us is not only a romantic notion. It’s
also scientific. Getting away restores us, refreshes us, rejuvenates us. It
allows us to step back from our life to see it more clearly. We learn along the
way not just about the world, but—more important—about ourselves.
Travel if you can, when(ever) you can, while you can.

The route to writing is solitary

 Or why writers tend to lend themselves to melancholy

BY AA PATAWARAN

  

---

AT A GLANCE

• Happiness leaves such slender records; it is the dark days that are so voluminously documented. —Truman Capote

---

In his acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize banquet in 1954, which the American ambassador to Sweden at the time read in his behalf, Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Writing at best is a lonely life.”

It’s ironic that in order to connect with the world, a writer has to be alone through torturous hours, the more removed from the world, the better his chances to write something true and beautiful.

Vladimir Nabokov said, “Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind, it is an incurable disease.” Even of happiness, he could not speak, unless in the context of its opposite. Thus he said, “The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness, dear, my happiness will remain, in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal’s black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.”

Solitude, more than a tool, is a writer’s workshop. The blank page is his weapon but he must draw from silence and stillness, often from sorrow and sadness, to fire it up. “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind,” said Marcel Proust.

“But that was the impetus to understand the world, get closer to the world by writing about it, writing about the world that I was in,” said Bret Easton Ellis. “I was never lonely, but I was a solitary figure, and I have pretty much always been that way since I was a teenager.”

I thought that maybe Truman Capote was happy when he was best friends with Babe Paley, hanging around the New York swans, but all that ended and he was never happy again. In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, before he was shunned by New York society after the publication of “La Cote Basque,” he might have been prophetic when he wrote, “A disquieting loneliness came into my life, but it induced no hunger for friends of longer acquaintance: they seemed now like a salt-free, sugarless diet.”

Maria Popova wrote that for John Keats, the sacred road to love and beauty passed through the gates of solitude. And true enough, in Bright Star, he wrote:

“Closer of lovely eyes
to lovely dreams,
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above
all other glories
That smile us on to tell
delightful stories.”

Ah solitude, are you a muse, who vanishes when I am surrounded by people or when I am filled with joy? Solitude, such jealous creature, who possesses me in those lonely hours of writing, must I embrace you so you will let me write, let me write, let me write something terribly true?

Petal power - An ode to the flowers of May

 BY AA PATAWARAN

May 17, 2023 08:35 PM

  

---

SEASON OF BLOOMS Flowers give the browns and beiges, the tans and taupes, the off-whites and ochres of Cappadocia's volcanic landscape in central Turkey in May (Photos by author)

I will take inspiration from a flower, in eternal bloom, for if it has wilted, is it still a flower? The remains of a flower, a dead flower maybe, but is it still a flower when it is no longer in bloom?

I say flower—and you think petals unfurled, in vivid reds, or blushing pinks, or virgin whites, or sunshine yellows, sometimes blue or violet or orange, the full spectrum. We don’t think brown and brittle like fallen leaves that we can crush to bits, crackling like crackers, when we hold them in our hand or step on them as we walk down the street strewn with poetry in deep caramels and delicate beiges under an arch of slumbering trees.

In her wake flowers shoot forth, a dance bursts out, harmonies awaken, and choirs of devils, nymphs, satyrs, spirits, country maidens, angels, and shepherds dance, shake tambourines, gesticulate wildly, and lay tribute at the goddess’s feet.
—Jose Rizal, Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)

Flowers are forever. In their period of wilting, their colors remain ablaze in our mind’s eye, their petals soft and velvety, their scent lingering. A short memory is all we need for in the nature of flowers life follows death follows life follows death follows life... whether in the cultured gardens, or in our potted paradise, or in the wild. Everlasting is the woman who walks with a spring in her step—and a garland of daisies in her hair.

Little wonder a single long-stemmed rose can perk us up as much as a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley, as much as lavender buds and chamomile flowers sprinkled on top of the water in our bathtub or a carpet of rose petals on the walkway. There is a sonnet tucked in a crystal vase on the corner table. There is a rainbow perched on the windowsill. There’s a burst of sunshine climbing the fence. There’s hibiscus flowering in your teacup. Between the pages of your chosen novel, pressed hydrangeas and Queen Anne’s lace bookmark your progress, dead as in dead, but alive and abloom as you remember them.

Carry, carry, O flowers,
my love to my loved ones, peace to my country and its fecund loam, faith to its men and virtue to its women, health to the gracious beings that dwell within the sacred paternal home.
—Jose Rizal, ‘To the Flowers of Heidelberg

Were they an expression of love? Were they a note of tenderness? Did you pluck them out of a wreath delivered by courier in a tribute to your achievement? Did someone sling them over your head in a lei that tickled the back of your neck? Or did you pick them off the tree or the plant or the shrub on an afternoon walk, pressing them gently on your nose to get a whiff of the wonderful world? Ah, the language of flowers! How articulate is beauty! How eloquent is silence! Hushed as baby blue eyes in the meadows. Magniloquent as a bird-of-paradise.

A flower holds the answer: He loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, he loves me not... Like a symbol of faith hung like a sampaguita chain on the statue of a saint. All the secrets of the universe are embodied in a single bloom that draws its revelations from light that travels 169,600,000 kilometers from the sun and from the water of life deep in a primeval pool underground. It is speckled with stardust, colored by the entire history of the planetary system, nourished by the good Earth, and worshipped by the birds and the bees on a nectarine feast. Was that the guru Deepak Chopra who said, “In this rose, behold the universe!” as he raised a rose to the view of his audience in Manila decades back, just as we began to embrace New Age lessons as children of a loving, forgiving, generous God who was not above us but within us?

But don’t expect thanks and laurels, crowns of flowers and laurels are the inventions of free people. But perhaps your children may gather the fruit of what the father planted.
—Jose Rizal, Letter to Blumentritt

People are like flowers—we bloom, we wilt, we live, we die. Unlike flowers, however, we can bring as much darkness as we can bring light to Earth’s every corner, death as much as life, mourning like white chrysanthemums at a funeral or bright and cheery like sunflowers at a baby shower. But unlike flowers, there is a chance some of us cannot fully unfurl who we are, unfolding like petals the outside of us to bring out the inside that needs sunshine, moonbeams, and starlight, earth, wind, water, and fire. All in a clamor to return to Eden, which is, in fact, what life is like even now, if we only learn to stop and smell the flowers.

(These photos have been taken during the author’s ongoing exploration of springtime in Türkiye.)