jet set
My uncle Desi was the sort of man who gave up his youth reluctantly, for it was a youth spent on the sort of pursuits that might occupy a young man with a sense of adventure. He backpacked through Europe, climbed mountains, and rode a dead cool motorcycle -- he was the sort of uncle that could tell stories of hunting warthogs in Africa, skydiving over the plains of Texas or doing shots with smugglers in Thailand, all while idly playing with a butterfly knife, hypnotizing you with the flash of light on the blade.
He was, if you were my mom, an awful example for children -- and she was right. Desi was the sort of guy who would inspire children to live restless lives searching for adventure, the sort of thing that drives mothers to worry while teaching kids to dismiss risk and hardship for that singular wondrous experience. I've thought of Tito Desi while sitting at the door of an airplane, waiting for a signal to jump, and he was in my mind on nights spent in the mountains of Vancouver Island, watching a moon cross a sky shining with stars.
But Desi wouldn't stay a young man forever, and in my third year in high school, he married a woman who happened to be the aunt of Toby, one of my high school friends. Toby and I bonded over being the only Filipinos in that school, but it was still strange to go into homeroom one morning and realize that he was now a cousin ... but then the world of Filipino society can be quite small sometimes.
On Sunday nights, my grandparents have a standing family dinner, where their brood congregates at the house, to talk, share stories, and let the cousins play. Jet lag was starting to wear on me then -- it was still my first night in and Manila's about fourteen hours ahead of Boston -- but I had committed to staying up and falling asleep at a regular hour. All I thought was that I had to stay up until dinner was over, then I could crash, sleep and recover. Then Tito Desi showed up with his wife and six year old son, and he said, "Toby wants you at his house tonight, after dinner. He's having a party and he demands your presence."
"Demands? He knows that I just got in town today?"
"Of course, but what's jet lag to young men? When I was your age..."
"... you flew halfway across the world in your own plane and trekked for four hours into the Brazilian rain forest and killed your own dinner?"
"bare-handed"
"with nothing but a tootbrush in your back pocket?"
"you've heard this story before?"
"or something like it."
"it's good to see you, Chino."
"likewise, Tito De."
My mom was less than thrilled by the news. Freaked out is more like it. Toby moved back to the Philippines after he graduated from Queen's and helped found one of the first ISPs in Manila. Like many .com yuppies the world over, he's developed a reputation for extravagant partying and hardcore clubbing, and for my mom, Filipino nightclubs are places where you get shot by patrons high on coke, who have enough money to discourage attention. It seems that even after eighteen years, Desi still has a knack for causing her worry.
But I went anyway ... it's been an age since I saw Toby, and I wasn't sure if I'd get another chance to hang out with him while I was here. So it was, that after we finished dinner, I jumped in the car with Desi and his family, and we drove off to Rockwell -- one of the many recently built apartment complexes that's home to Manila's new money. We drove past Makati, Manila's old downtown core, rendered strange and foreign with its new office towers, lit up in blue and purple in the neon sky, and realized that all of the mental maps I had of the city of my childhood were obsolete now, the landmarks were all different, the streets mutated by two decades of development.
Toby's party was one of those intensely cosmopolitan affairs that seems increasingly commonplace in the age of globalization, an affair transcendent in its internationalism, the sort of party where Italian bankers chat up Korean engineers about the growing strength of the Euro, and Canadian backpackers hit up Filipino natives for travel tips in Singapore. Toby's happy to see me, and we spend about fifteen minutes reviewing the last eighteen years of our lives before he has to go off and resume his hosting duties, effortlessly introducing me to his friend, Chris, before taking off.
Chris and his wife Claire are on honeymoon, backpacking through Asia for six months before returning to look for jobs in Canada. They're from Vancouver, former techie consultants for Deloitte & Touche, and we talk about cryptography, privacy in the age of terrorism, our mutual awe for the new airport at Incheon and memories of breakfasts at Sophie's in Kitsilano. Claire asks how long I've been in country and I stop, do the math and say, "twelve hours."
And in that moment, all of the jet lag, the lost sleep and travel fatigue slam into my body at once. I steer the conversation to a couch, where I can sit back and slowly shift from talking to just listening to the ebb and flow of a dozen bits of gossip and airline stories and memories of full moon trance parties on island beaches. Finally, I realize that I should just head home and get some sleep, and say goodbye to Toby, who tells me that he wants to have dinner before I leave. Then Desi drove me home, and asked me about life in Boston, and I told him about the skydiving and riding my bike through New York during the protests and I could see him smiling in between streetlights, and I said, "you know, I'm only trying to catch up."
and I'm not sure what his reply was, because I fell asleep, having said what I've wanted to say.
He was, if you were my mom, an awful example for children -- and she was right. Desi was the sort of guy who would inspire children to live restless lives searching for adventure, the sort of thing that drives mothers to worry while teaching kids to dismiss risk and hardship for that singular wondrous experience. I've thought of Tito Desi while sitting at the door of an airplane, waiting for a signal to jump, and he was in my mind on nights spent in the mountains of Vancouver Island, watching a moon cross a sky shining with stars.
But Desi wouldn't stay a young man forever, and in my third year in high school, he married a woman who happened to be the aunt of Toby, one of my high school friends. Toby and I bonded over being the only Filipinos in that school, but it was still strange to go into homeroom one morning and realize that he was now a cousin ... but then the world of Filipino society can be quite small sometimes.
On Sunday nights, my grandparents have a standing family dinner, where their brood congregates at the house, to talk, share stories, and let the cousins play. Jet lag was starting to wear on me then -- it was still my first night in and Manila's about fourteen hours ahead of Boston -- but I had committed to staying up and falling asleep at a regular hour. All I thought was that I had to stay up until dinner was over, then I could crash, sleep and recover. Then Tito Desi showed up with his wife and six year old son, and he said, "Toby wants you at his house tonight, after dinner. He's having a party and he demands your presence."
"Demands? He knows that I just got in town today?"
"Of course, but what's jet lag to young men? When I was your age..."
"... you flew halfway across the world in your own plane and trekked for four hours into the Brazilian rain forest and killed your own dinner?"
"bare-handed"
"with nothing but a tootbrush in your back pocket?"
"you've heard this story before?"
"or something like it."
"it's good to see you, Chino."
"likewise, Tito De."
My mom was less than thrilled by the news. Freaked out is more like it. Toby moved back to the Philippines after he graduated from Queen's and helped found one of the first ISPs in Manila. Like many .com yuppies the world over, he's developed a reputation for extravagant partying and hardcore clubbing, and for my mom, Filipino nightclubs are places where you get shot by patrons high on coke, who have enough money to discourage attention. It seems that even after eighteen years, Desi still has a knack for causing her worry.
But I went anyway ... it's been an age since I saw Toby, and I wasn't sure if I'd get another chance to hang out with him while I was here. So it was, that after we finished dinner, I jumped in the car with Desi and his family, and we drove off to Rockwell -- one of the many recently built apartment complexes that's home to Manila's new money. We drove past Makati, Manila's old downtown core, rendered strange and foreign with its new office towers, lit up in blue and purple in the neon sky, and realized that all of the mental maps I had of the city of my childhood were obsolete now, the landmarks were all different, the streets mutated by two decades of development.
Toby's party was one of those intensely cosmopolitan affairs that seems increasingly commonplace in the age of globalization, an affair transcendent in its internationalism, the sort of party where Italian bankers chat up Korean engineers about the growing strength of the Euro, and Canadian backpackers hit up Filipino natives for travel tips in Singapore. Toby's happy to see me, and we spend about fifteen minutes reviewing the last eighteen years of our lives before he has to go off and resume his hosting duties, effortlessly introducing me to his friend, Chris, before taking off.
Chris and his wife Claire are on honeymoon, backpacking through Asia for six months before returning to look for jobs in Canada. They're from Vancouver, former techie consultants for Deloitte & Touche, and we talk about cryptography, privacy in the age of terrorism, our mutual awe for the new airport at Incheon and memories of breakfasts at Sophie's in Kitsilano. Claire asks how long I've been in country and I stop, do the math and say, "twelve hours."
And in that moment, all of the jet lag, the lost sleep and travel fatigue slam into my body at once. I steer the conversation to a couch, where I can sit back and slowly shift from talking to just listening to the ebb and flow of a dozen bits of gossip and airline stories and memories of full moon trance parties on island beaches. Finally, I realize that I should just head home and get some sleep, and say goodbye to Toby, who tells me that he wants to have dinner before I leave. Then Desi drove me home, and asked me about life in Boston, and I told him about the skydiving and riding my bike through New York during the protests and I could see him smiling in between streetlights, and I said, "you know, I'm only trying to catch up."
and I'm not sure what his reply was, because I fell asleep, having said what I've wanted to say.