Beefcake of the Month

Because, after many visits to the mechanic's, the secondhand motorcycle that he bought for himself last Christmas is finally in good working condition.

Because never mind that the mechanic called the Honda a "grandmother," this motorcycle is exactly of the same type he used when he was in his teens and twenties driving all around Europe being young and absolutely crazy.

Because extra insurance money let him buy a spanking new leather jacket.

Because even if he was a hardcore biker, he never did buy a motorcycle jacket ever before, the last one he was using was a hand-me-down from friend Babs, and even that was already 10 years old when he was given it.

And really just because I think he's hot.

Tsismosa, Ako

May ilan akong kakilala na ang buong akala ay sumkinda wild child ako. Sumkinda true naman. Aaminin ko, may pagka-lukaret ako. Pero dito, sa bagong bansang ito, naipamukha sa akin na meron din akong aspetong konserbatibo. Hindi ko alam kung bakit (nasa alignment kaya ng planets?) pero sa kasalukuyan ay napapaligiran ako ng mga babaeng may asawa o nobyo, pero mayroon ding pangalawang pag-ibig. Pramis, hindi makitid ang utak ko. Naniniwala ako na kailangan nating hayaan ang bawat isa na buhayin ang buhay na magpapaligaya sa kanya. Pero pag kuwentong kalaguyo na, napapanganga ako. Kapag nagsasalaysay ang mga girl friends ko tungkol sa kani-kanilang pamamangka sa dalawang ilog, sa loob-loob ay napapa-ohmygod ako. Tapos, natatawa ako sa sarili ko. Kasi kahit saanman ako dalhin, hindi ko yata talaga makakalimutan ang mga turo ng loka-loka-pero-relihiyosang nanay ko.

They're Back!

I blogged about them last March, and here they are again: a family of five flamingos (one is camera-shy) has, for the last two weeks, been coming every few days to feed in our marsh. Last Friday there I was, eating the best oysters in the world that Tonton Dedou gathers from where they grow wild in the Salins du Midi, squeezing on them drops from the lemons freshly picked from Tante Jackie's garden, in between slurping down mollusks looking out the window to admire my occasional neighbors, thinking that life rarely gets better than this.

Sigh...

Maybe because it's the first day of spring, but I really can't get any work done. Instead I'm sipping a glass of California zinfandel (Ssshhhhhh.... Don't tell my vine-growing neighbors!), looking at all the new pictures sent by a best friend in the cusp of a romance, wishing Pierre and I were back on that island in the middle of nowhere, not thinking of grownup responsibilities, instead playing footsie on the beach and watching sunsets, falling in love all over again. What can I say, today I'm 34 going on 16.

Everybody Has An Accent

My friend Garch is impossibly adorable, so every time he would nag me about how I pronounced certain English words, I would humor him. I say "chocolate" as regular Filipinos would, "cho-ko-leyt," but I think he found this insufferably pedestrian. He insisted that I say it brisk. So "choc-lit." Same with "Jesus." I say it "jee-soos," with the lips rounded off at the end; but Garch always corrected me. "It's 'jee-saz.'" He would make me say it with the lips stretched out. As I said, he's adorable otherwise, so I'd say the words like he wanted to hear them whenever he was around.

If you grew up in the Philippines, you'd be conscious of a certain snobbery--let's admit it now--a feeling of superiority amongst people who said those English words perfectly correct. There is a wrong way and a right way to pronunciation: Very wrong would be how the Visayan nanny stereotypically spoke, pronouncing pink as "penk" and tricycle as "tray-si-kol." So right would be, for example, the articulation of former ABS-CBN TV show host Cher Calvin, who grew up in the States. We try oh-so-hard to do it how it's supposed to be done, that is to say, with an American twang.

I land here and in the very beginning speak French like I'd hear in their movies, with the curt, Parisian accent. My husband and his family would have none of it; they always corrected me. It didn't take long for me to be using the deliciously robust word endings of the South. Last December, I go to language school in the nearby city of Montpellier. One of the teachers think I'm almost a real bilingual (she only knew I spoke English aside from French, as there was never any occasion to communicate with her in Filipino), another tells me to tone the accent down, try to sound like they do in Paris.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, when I introduce my southern-French husband to a couple of Swiss friends. "The Swiss really speaks French funny," Pierre said after they had left. Later on he meets my Belgian climbing buddy, who speaks French, Flemish, and English. "You're not French, right?" Pierre asked her. "You have an accent." The Belgian replied, "No, I'm not, but it's only now that I'm here in France that I find out I speak the language with an accent." Spunky girl that she is, she adds, "Hey, you're French, but you also have an accent."

The brouhaha is not limited to the Philippines, France, Switzerland, and Belgium, I tell you. In the climbing club there are three Spaniards and one Ecuadorian who always hang out together. "So it's the same kind of Spanish in both your countries?" I ask Marcos, the scientist from Ecuador. "Pretty much," he replies, "just certain words are not the same, and also the pronunciation." A pause and he adds, "The Spaniards, you know, they don't speak Spanish correctly. They don't have the right accent!"

So Garch, I know you speak Spanish and you do it like your insulares ancestors did, but I'm not going to go all Ecuadorian on you. After that long blog post all I really want to know is this: Can I just keep on saying "cho-ko-leyt"?

Love at 64

A table for two, photo by Nicky Sering.

They met at a New Year's Eve ball. She was feeling lonely, and he asked her to dance. At the end of the night, he also asked for her phone number, and while usually she doesn't do such things, this time she scribbled it down. Maybe it was his friendly blue eyes (definitely it was not the mustache that reminded her of a rat's whiskers). Soon they were dating regularly. Once they went for a wintertime walk on the beach. Often, they would have dinner at his place. He made her feel special, how he would insist that she do nothing, just sit down and listen to some music or watch TV. He, meanwhile, took care of everything else, cooked the meal and even insisted on washing the dishes. He paid attention to what she had to say, did things to please her (yes, even trimming his whiskers!). This was so different from what she had been used to, when she had first been in love many years ago.

But, no, she would tell family and friends, this was not love. She was not in love, she insisted. She just enjoyed his company, that was all. Yet given the chance she could talk about him for an hour. Also, she maintained, she had no intention of ever living with him. She was perfectly fine being a single girl, treasured the fact that she could do what she wanted when she wanted and how she wanted. She had every intention of keeping her independence, she declared. Despite the speech, in the mornings when they look out their window, her neighbors have gotten used to seeing the car of the man who is not supposed to live there still in the spot where he had parked it the night before.

My girl friends, take heart! I have recently discovered that romance can be available to women all their lives. The lead character in this story--the one who smiles all the time now, who these days is always well-coiffed and well-dressed, and who talks about her dates as effusive as if she were a teenager--the woman is my mother-in-law Jeanette who, after nine years of widowhood and at the age of 64 has, without expecting it, found Alain. Believe me when I tell you: Sexagerians still bloom!

Performance Anxiety

I knew that this blog was going to be featured as some kind of must-read in Mabuhay magazine, but the writer is someone I know and love, so when she told me, I was thinking quite foolishly that it was going to be just a little piece passed between girl friends, no biggie at all. And then I read Katrina's comment in the last post, and I looked up the blog where she found out about the writeup, and because I am admittedly tsismosa, I went to the comments box of that blog and found people I do not know at all talking about "the provenciana." I was a magazine writer for a decade, so I was surprised to find myself going inside my head, "Oh my god!" But there it was. I was nervous and, I have to admit, a little bit afraid. These readers may well find my accounts of gendarme visits and fighting with ignorant barmen banal and self-absorbed. Nyarks! went I. Must I now start talking about Sarkozy's immigration policy and the traitorous nature of a dual citizenship? All that important stuff, you know.

Carnavaling in Nice

I swear I try my best. I go somewhere and start out acting all cool and proper and my age,

BEFORE: around 7 in the evening,
at a café in the old part of Nice, having
delicate glases of kir with friends.

but as my mom will tell you, I was born hyperactive. And I haven't been cured of the malady. Give me any reason to have fun and make a party, I'll be grabbing it.

AFTER: At the Promenade des Anglais, at the height of the
Carnaval , bombarded with silly string and confetti, some of which
I'm sure I swallowed, given how big my open mouth was.

I imagine I'll be one of those grandmothers wearing feathered purple hats and dancing the mambo into their eighties...

(Maya took the pictures. For deeper insights on the merits of silly string, go to her blog through my links.)

Back from Nice

Utah, the monster dog.

I am barefoot on my terrace, swinging on a hammock, the unseasonably warm weather making me think of Camembert left to melt on the grill at the end of a summer barbecue. The husband is working just a few meters away, the cat is in her basket napping, and the dog who is visiting for a week is slobbering copiously. Five seagulls are making a racket as they dive for the old bread I had left for them on the marsh. I don't think dogs eat live bird, but it does make me wonder. Does the labrador hear their cries as a dinner bell's clanging?

The weekend in Nice with old friends was very, very interesting, but it feels good to be home.

People in My Neighborhood

Her name is Gudrun, and she runs a bed and breakfast some two kilometers from where I live. Born East German, she has called France home for the last thirty years.

"I came before the Wall came down," she told me over coffee and biscuits.

Looking at the cane she held in her right hand and remembering how earlier she had had me run up to the second floor to fetch a forgotten key because she managed the stairs but with difficulty, I went for the obvious; I asked, "So you jumped over from the other side?"

"Ah," the reply came with the appropriate enigmatic smile, "it was much more complicated than that." Gudrun paused for a beat, and after would give me nothing more to satisfy the curiosity. She changed the subject.

Impossible to resist whispers of intrigue and mystery! I have turned village tsismosa, and am determined to get invited another time for coffee.

Ranting and Raving

Art shot that has nothing at all to do
with the contents of this blog entry.

Every Filipino immigrant will have tales of little indignities and humilations to tell, injurious encounters with stereotypes and prejudices. Each one will tell you his own way of dealing with being a stranger in a land where the locals are occasionally assholes. I'm betting that majority will say that the best defense is no defense. Either get away from the situation or, if that's not possible, swallow your hurt and smile if you can. Unfortunately, I'm no Gandhi. What suits my temperament best, I find, is to look the monster in the eye and tell it to go back to the dark uneducated hole it came from.

The monster this last time was a small-village barman in his sixties, and the eyes, as is often the case with people of his profession, were rheumy. If that weren't enough to tell you who he was, just look at the popped blood vessels of an old alcoholic all abloom on his nose. We were there for hot chocolate, but he decided he'd also serve us with conversation. The group being multicultural, naturally he began by asking from where we came.

"Ah, the Philippines," his eyes lit up when he heard it. He proceeded to say he had friends over there--presumably as ancient and as potbellied as he--prolonging the life of their retirement euros where everything costs three times less. "It's a poor country," he said. "For you to be studying here, your parents must be capitalist businessmen. Are your parents rich?" I just looked at him, mildly appalled at the tactlessness.

The Belgian girl beside me corrected the assumption, saying I was here married to someone French. "Ah," he was at it again. You knew from the tone of his voice and how he smiled that he actually thought he was being friendly. "You got lucky. You found a way out."

Stunned, I was silent for a beat, during which the Belgian chick tried to come to my rescue by saying, "But no, it was her husband who got lucky!" But I never needed any saving.

"Monsieur," I finally found my voice, icy-cold though it was this time, "I did not get married to my husband to escape my country. Rest assured that I had a very good job and a very good life over there." I looked at him with what I tried very hard to be a withering stare. "I am not some poor, ignorant country girl, do you get that?"

At least he got that he wasn't welcome near our table, so he muttered something unintelligible before lumbering away. One of the French guys with us tried to calm me: "I don't think he meant it." And that is exactly my point. Very few of them mean it. They open their mouths to display how their thinking has been malformed by stereotypes and prejudices, and when confronted with how they had been offensive, they'll say they didn't mean it. They just didn't know any better. Are we to let them continue using ignorance as an excuse to do harm?

That's a big No for me. I take their education as my own personal responsibility. I open my mouth in turn and tell them off so that next time they see an Asian girl, they'll think twice about labeling her a spoiled brat, a poor island girl, or--let's not forget the great big scarlet brand--a whore.

Of course, my goals are not all lofty. "I don't think he meant it," Thomas said. "No, I'm sure he didn't," I replied. Then in a voice I made sure was loud enough to carry to where the monster was wiping glasses behind a counter, I continued, "He's just an idiot!"

Meeting

I met a girl who just recently moved here. She was peppy, which is refreshing for a European chick, and with clever layering managed the feat of being fashionable while engaged in the very unglamorous task of rock-climbing. Like regular girls, we started talking about the soldes, happening right now, with most shops selling their wares at a discount. Think Midnight Madness, only nation-wide. She really had to go visit the boutiques this Saturday, she said, it was her only day free. You can rush it a bit after work, too, I suggested. No, she replied, she works almost every day well into the evening, until 8:30 or nine. I hope they pay you overtime, I sympathized. Whereupon she gushed, No, it's my choice really, I like staying late at work. I really really love my job. Really love it. Given a statement like that, of course you have to ask, What's your job?

Her response was not quite what I expected: "I do research on evolutionary biology. We're studying the asexual reproduction of these multicellular creatures that have existed on earth since life began--how they have managed to survive the environmental changes, how they have done that solely with females, by cloning, and what, in the evolutionary sense, their existence means to humans." A pause which I used to search for the signs that scream Nerd! that I must have missed, but, no, there really weren't any thick glasses. Then she thrilled with the same enthusiasm I've heard former colleagues use when talking about fashion styling and beauty reportage, "There is just so much to do and to know!"

And so now let me display my awe of humanity by saying, it really takes all kinds to keep the world moving and shaking. Ang galing, ano?

Cure for Boredom

This is what I feel:

i.e., exhilarated, exuberant, excited

Because this is where we went:

village of Collias, near Nimes

This is who we were:

Sebastien, Emeline, Apol, Sebastien (yep, there are two of them),
Stephane, Sarah, Rui, and Karin taking the picture

And this is what we did:

Climbing rocks! (Excuse the pun.)

Pulis!

Dolly disrupts critical state matters.





There was a gendarme at the gate this afternoon, catching me with a shovel in hand and digging a man-sized hole.

He told me that he was there on an investigation, and that he had to enter the premises.

"Do you have a warrant?" I've learned from watching American films to say on these occasions, but I don't know the French word for "warrant," so all I could manage was a lame, "What investigation?"

"It concerns Monsieur Pierre Massebieau," he said, "and Madame Rosalinda Massebieau." Uh-oh, I thought, looking at the mud on my clothes, what did we do now?

No worries, no murder was committed. We just got married. Gendarme Pecheur (the fishing policeman, if you translate) was there to check that this wasn't un mariage blanc, a marriage contrived for one of the two parties to get citizenship papers.

"Oh," I said, finally getting it, "you just want to see if I actually live here with Pierre!"

So I started by showing him where he had interrupted me while I was digging to build a pond in the garden, and then I asked his advice about what plants grow best in our sunny, salty climes. Would you send me to prison if this were a fake marriage, out of curiosity I asked. Do you catch a lot of people at it? I continued. Do you like your job? I couldn't stop.

He finally managed to sit us down so that it was him who could ask the questions and fill out some papers, but by the time I was screeching, chasing our cat Dolly who had managed to trap a bird half its size and was dragging it all around the living room, I think he had no doubt in his mind where I lived.

Still, he tried to be thorough. He asked to see where I kept my clothes. You're going to see my bras, I warned him. Then he looked in the bathroom, to check that I had perfumes and lotions there. The obedient immigrant, I handed him my bottle of green tea lotion from L'Occitane, while with the other hand, I pushed a dirty panty further down the hamper.

If you ask me, I think Gendarme Pecheur, fishing for illegal immigrants, has a very unfortunate job.

Ennui

I think it was Lille who told me, after she had moved to the US, that whether what was happening to her in her adopted country was good or bad, it was all new, therefore always interesting, often even exciting. I had just moved here, too, and could relate. I found the food deliciously rich, the people quaint, all the cobblestoned streets and restored castles charming. Even the sense of alienation I studied like a rare jewel. I've never been part of the minority before, never have had to struggle to belong, so I figured I'd milk the experience for all it was worth. Don't they say adversity builds character?

But this last week, I was suddenly overcome with a feeling that I'd almost forgotten. It was that antsy, can't-stay-put, gotta-go-somewhere-anywhere feeling that drove me all the time I was in Manila. It was bearable when I was at work, but made it so that I couldn't stay too long at home and pushed me either to party or to shop. So I was on my way to Montpellier to buy clothes I really didn't need when I realized what it was: boredom, that traitorous devil that posseses us to do things sometimes useless, and often stupid.

Am I adapting too well that after a mere 20 months here, nothing seems fresh anymore?

And While We're on the Subject of Transportation... (and because this is the first time I'm seeing this photo again after one year)

Pierre and I were on a pre-wedding road trip of Luzon in 2005 and wanted to get ourselves from Manila to Bicol. Looking at the map, we decided to take the coastal route. It should be more scenic. So we turned left.

A few kilometers in, we were struck by the isolation. No other vehicle shared the road with us. There was a lone jeepney, but it was going the other way. Disrupting the calm would be the children of the occasional roadside community, shouting something as we'd pass. Figuring this to be the usual "Hey, Joe!" screamed at every male foreigner, regardless of nationality and actual name, we paid no attention. We were actually a little sick of it already. Stupid us, they were only trying to help. Two-thirds in, just when we thought we'd reach Legaspi in no time, our car ran into this:

Rock and earth piled at a minimum of four meters, and maybe quadruple that at its highest. A young man who had just clambered over from the other side told us that there was another landslide some kilometers forward. So of course we turned back, passing several of the children as we went. This time they kept silent.

Why I Know I'm Getting Old, Part 3

Not an Ikot jeep, I know, but you've got to love the Hello Kitty door.

Now don't get me wrong, I actually like being in my thirties, and even if the devil offered it to me, I will never ever agree to becoming a teenager again (such an angry phase). It's just sometimes I come across little things that make me go What?! as they remind me too brutally of how fast time runs.

My latest discovery: To ride the Ikot jeep that gets you around the University of the Philippines in QC, you now have to pay P6.50. You read that right, six pesos and fifty cents. In my day (student number 89-09717, now how come I remember that more than a decade after graduating?), we paid P1.25.

A pause here to point out that another way I know I'm getting old is that I've started to write sentences that begin with, "In my day."

Now that I think about it, my real question is this: Where does the driver put all those coins? A plastic Orocan I think could do the job, but how do you drive with that between your knees?

Marseille Day Trip

10 Jan 2007

We start our day in Marseille at the fish market at the Quai des Belges. We should have been looking to buy fishes, but it's the dried starfishes and these round orange shells they call l'oeil de Sainte Lucia that attract us. The first are happiness charms, the second are for good luck. An old woman--a Marseillaise from her accent--tells us that she's bought some of the trinkets. With the vendor right there in front of us, the dissatisfied shopper announces that she doesn't think they work.

Emptyhanded, we go up the Canèbiere. After asking a fashionable Asian lady if this is indeed the city's most ancient street, we march ahead, only to spend our time zigzagging people and construction work. The city is building a tram system. We turn left into Belsunce. This, we've read, is the Algerian district. Maybe we can find a restaurant that serves good couscous. There is road work here as well. Sandra and I will eat anything, Sarah is a vegetarian, and not one of us feel like lunching to a view of big machines and hunks of broken concrete.

We give the city map to Sarah because she is Swiss, and they're supposed to be good at these things. A wrong turn brings us to a streetcorner where North Africans have spread blankets on the road and are selling belts, leather bags, and plastic toys. We look, but nothing takes our fancy.

Our Swiss guide finally leads us through a warren of streets into Le Panier, Marseille's oldest district. The many dwellings are separated only by walls, and run a few storeys up. There are clothes hanging to dry on lines strung over the streets. I smell dog shit and cat piss, and under that something else. There is a heaviness to the air, as if here the hydrogen and oxygen molecules have added weight from being breathed in and out for so long by so many people.

Artistic types have invaded the quartier. We find a pottery workshop/boutique. I buy myself a souvenir, a pendant that reminds me of an oyster shell. I even get to meet the potter. Photos are taken at Vieille Charité, a chapel and a building so pristine you have to read the commemorative plaque to realize that in the 17th century this housed the unwashed multitude, the city's orphans and paupers.

We lunch on bouillabaise at Chez Fonfon in our dreams. We're not spending 100 euros per person today or any other day. Finding a sunny courtyard overtaken by restaurants, we choose the waiter with the warmest smile and order salads.

On a lark, we get on Le Petit Train de la Bonne Mère. We ride the funny vehicle all the way up to the city's highest point, the Notre Dame de la Garde. Making like real tourists pays off: The view is almost overwhelming. Down in the streets, you feel a certain energy, something old and layered and alive. Up on the basilica's viewing deck, you see it, looking at the sprawl of buildings (and buildings and buildings) and roads moving all the way from the Mediterranean sea to the nearby mountains. Marseille is breathing.

Back at the Vieux Port to walk beside the sea, we find street performers. We are amused by a group of teenaged Christian evangelists who decide to take the cute route to spreading the word and do one pop dance number after another. Sundown is hidden by grey clouds. We sit down at a café to drink hot chocolates.

(A travelogue without photos sucks, I know. I forgot my camera, but will filch pictures from the girl friends and post them here soon.)

Story Telling

Hey, the year's starting out great already! I got an e-mail from literary editor Sarge Lacuesta saying that my short story "Knowledge" is in the current issue of The Philippine Free Press. Since they're not selling the magazine alongside Figaro and Midi-Libre at my neighborhood presse, if you live in Manila, buy a copy and tell me what you think. C'mon, do it, today's my birthday after all. (Yes, I'm fishing... I love birthday greetings so send me some, please.) And, yes, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Loud Mouths

Can you hear Angie begging, "Save me..."

I've never been able to relate to other foreigners who say that they find the French distant, reserved, very polite. Most of the French I know, they're exuberant people of the south. Take, for example, Pierre's family. Christmas-eve dinner and Christmas-day lunch were, as expected, a riot, with everyone talking all at the same time and doing it throughout the meal, too.

At one point during dinner, the very beautiful but perennial malcontent Cindy, our niece, turned, rolled her eyeballs, and told me, "We're all going to end up deaf, with the noise they're making." I raised my eyebrows. "They? Cindy, you're shouting right into my ear!" I guess it runs in the family.

The volume was upped considerably by Pierre and his mom Jeanette. I always say that in a past life, they must have been married because, in this life, put them together in one room and in no time they're at it, bickering like children. No subject is too innocuous, they'll find something about it to disagree on. To such success that sometimes one ends up in tears, or the other walks out.

On the night before Christmas it was, aptly enough, firewood they got hot about about. (Of course, they had tried numerous other subjects before that, electric heating and children's party food among them. All in keeping with the spirit of the season, you understand.)

Jeanette said, pointing to the unused chimney, "Well, I was sick, so I couldn't cut firewood this winter." Pierre took the bait and responded, "You should have asked me to do it for you." Jeanette had the perfect reply: "And then I'd have had to wait a loooong time before you got it done. You're alwaaays busy." To which Pierre tried to retaliate: "But if you never tell me, it will never get done." And on and on and progressively louder for the next ten minutes.

Now, normally, I would've have just stared at my plate and folded in my toes, waiting for one or the other to give up. But I had had enough. It was Christmas. A time for peace, was it not? Summoning my newly polished language skills (I tell you, I managed to throw a couple of subjunctives in there.), I opened my mouth and uttered half a dozen carefully chosen sentences. Essentially, I practiced my French by screaming at my husband and my mother-in-law, "Shut the hell up!!!"

I felt immediate remorse, but to my surprise everyone carried on as usual, only a tad calmer. Jeanette gave me a warm hug and kisses before the night was out. When I asked him later if it was all right, Pierre told me, "Honey, don't worry about it." Then he went on to reassure me, "You're just turning into one of us." I smiled, but in my head I was still screaming: Oh! My! God!