Asumen Acumen

Week 2012W05 Featured Pages

2012-01-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

One of the strongest motivations which propelled me to publish the book (at a considerable drain to my meager if not altogether non-existent retirement fund) was to answer, for the record, anyone and everyone who pestered me with the question of when I was going back to the Philippines, that vaunted “Pearl of the Orient Seas,” “birthplace of the glorious day,” the Paradise Lost of Jose P. Rizal’s [nuestro perdido Eden]. Well, the answer in all its bluntness and pathetic hapless futility has been laid out on pages 43 and 44, the concluding section of the first chapter of the book.

From here onwards, I can tell anybody who poses the question to please go to Amazon.com’s “look inside” feature and search for the text string “Residual Repercussions.” Chances are much higher than average that you will find the section in its entirety available for you to peruse without violating copyright protocols. Better still, you can actually buy the book. There is more to it than superficially meets the eye. You may even learn something from it while actually enjoying the read.

Once again, as has been my wont, for the benefit of those who cannot be bothered to click the hyperlinks, the featured pages are reproduced in full hereunder:

=== Begin Excerpts === mid p. 43 =

Residual Repercussions

The proposed trip to Saudi Arabia, including the authorized detours to the United States, was of course funded in its entirety by the Philippine government. I was a government official on an official mission. On the completion of the mission I committed, among others, to tender a detailed written report about the trip to the Department of Foreign Affairs in addition to that required of me by the university.

A case can be plausibly made that I did not only willfully abandon my mission but rather premeditatedly conspired to sabotage it maliciously from the very start. Having not completed the mission, I am liable to be brought to court for breach of contract and malversation of public funds. The former may have a statute of limitation. I know for a fact that the latter does not.

From what little I know of the Philippine judicial system, I’d be most likely to be hauled off to jail than see the light of day in a court of law. Although I have somewhat of an adventurous disposition, battling with mosquitoes and bedbugs, among others, in some god forsaken jail in the Philippines has not been my idea of enjoying my retirement years.

It is therefore with dejected resignation that any speculation on physically going back to the geographical roots of my heritage had to remain vibrant only in the La Manchan realm of impossible dreams, too effervescent to abandon, too inscrutable to pursue. One impossible dream should remain intimately entangled with all the ruminations I venture upon through the remaining days of my sojourn in this mortal coil.

Consequently, it had become more urgently incumbent on my creative faculties to nurture the imagination and keep the embers of inspiration smoldering in the inner chambers of my soul so as to afford a pleasurable promenade along nostalgia lane into the portals of Shangri-la, unencumbered by the lethal inertia of hubristic indifference which could prove a tragic millstone around the neck in the twilight of my years. Such eventuality would most certainly render the magnificent bliss of reminiscences in solitude into a barren desolate desert of remorse and pointless, if well-deserved, contrition.

Granted, I might have mercifully fallen short of my goals. But having passionately pursued my convictions, I had achieved peace with my conscience that I had remained honest and true to myself. If I had to do it all over again, I would follow the same deliberations and most likely would end up on a kindred side of the bifurcation at every decision point.

=== End Excerpts === top p. 44 =

A Parable of the Lost Finger

2012-01-24T05:57:00.000-08:00

Blogger's Note: The following material was forwarded to me by my youngest brother, an ordained and practicing Seventh Day Adventist Minister. Rather than forwarding the message by email which can often prove unwieldy, I find it expedient to give it further circulation through this blog site. The email message distribution list and forwarding history indicated that it was in turn forwarded to him by the oldest of his brood of three, who is a medical student; and that the original distribution was confined to their immediate family. I found it singularly touching that I got the mail as a sole recipient. It almost felt like I have just been adopted into their fold. On the merits, I found the story worthy of a wider circulation. So here it goes, enjoy the ride.

============

Amazing: God Never Lies!

A king who did not believe in the goodness of God had a slave who, in all circumstances, said:

My king, do not be discouraged, because everything God does is perfect, no mistakes!

One day they went hunting and along the way a wild animal attacked the king. His slave managed to kill the animal, but could not prevent his majesty losing a finger.

Furious and without showing his gratitude for being saved, the nobleman said "Is God good? If He was good, I would not have been attacked and lost my finger."

The slave replied only "My king, despite all these things, I can only tell you that God is good, and he knows the "why" of all these things. What God does is perfect.

He is never wrong!"

Outraged by the response, the king ordered the arrest of his slave.

Later, he left for another hunt and was captured by savages who made human sacrifices.

In the altar, ready to sacrifice the noble, the savages found that the victim did not have one of his fingers, so he was released. According to them, he was not complete and could not be offered to the gods.

Upon his return to the palace, he authorized the release of his slave and received him very affectionately.

My friend, God was really good to me! I was almost killed by the wild men, but for lack of a single finger I was let go! But I have a question: If God is so good, why did he allow me to put you in jail?

My King, if I had gone with you in this hunt, I would have been sacrificed for you, because I have no missing finger.

Therefore, remember: everything God does is perfect.

It is never wrong.

Often we complain about life and things that appear to be negative when they happen to us, forgetting that nothing is random and everything has a purpose.

Every morning, offer your day to God.

Ask God to inspire your thoughts, guide your actions, to ease your feelings. And do not be afraid. God is never wrong!

You know why this message is for you? I do not know, but God knows, because he never makes mistakes.......

The path of God and his word is perfect, without impurities. It is the way of all those who trust in him, as he says in 2 Samuel 22: 31

Surely the message arrived at the right moment. May God put in your heart the desire to send it to someone. Do not be ashamed to send it to the right person. God knows, He knows why.

God is never wrong!

Week 2012W04 Featured Pages

2012-01-21T22:52:00.000-08:00

I had prepared a set of pages to highlight this week. But the events surrounding the Costa Concordia disaster had outweighed the choice in favor of something much more deserving of our undivided attention. In an event which has been so appropriately deplored as illustrative of the death of chivalry in the Western culture, reports of unbridled heroism exhibited by the Filipino kitchen crew is like a breath of fresh air in a suffocating miasma of “each man for himself, God for himself” ambiance of selfishness and unmitigated greed.

The report had brought to the fore my unshakeable and deep seated faith and belief that heroism is integral to the cultural DNA of the Filipino people. The highlighted sonnets were minted with an altogether different set of events for inspiration. But acts of chivalry and heroism are rather portable and applicable to a different set of circumstances, because they emanate from within the soul of the doer. They embody the very essence of being of anybody who is so heroically inclined.

To the heroes of Costa Concordia, regardless of nationality or ethnic background, as my modest salute to your act of heroism, I highlight the below excerpted sonnets. May your heroism be so contagious that it reverberates into the consciousness of the younger generation who badly need the inspiration and guidance of the generation before them, and may the impulse survive the corrosive ravages of the ruins of time.

Once again, as has been my wont, for the benefit of those who cannot be bothered to click the hyperlinks, the featured pages are reproduced in full hereunder:

=== Begin Excerpts === top p. 146 =

XXIII

Should lessons gleaned from History provide

Due faith and courage for your future course,

Be best prepared to emulate with pride

The brave defenders of your sacred shores.

Allow not blunt your own awakening

By rhetoric that politicians use

To thwart your conscience into weakening

The selfsame vehemence of vengeance's cause,

The which would break the fetters of your soul

And tear the mask of shameless tyranny.

Default's the cross of falsehood bearing all

Unreason for your seeming destiny

To drown, in surfeit, bliss of ignorance,

To crown, in glory, sweet irrelevance!!

XXIV

Of friends and foes you earned the poets' praise,

Your legend beauty fared romantic fame,

Your languor proves the vanquish of your race,

Your wants and woes, their very sins proclaim.

The insolence of your perdition made

An otherwise noble inheritance

A mockery of aspiration's need

To cross the threshold vagaries of chance

That though subdued, undaunted yet in quest

To brave the tide, sans fears of the unknown.

Conquered yet undefeated, unredressed,

Let grievance architect your own renown:

Or tears, or sweat, or blood, such price defray

For priceless proves the prize of liberty!

XXV

So often did you pay the price before,

What cause have you to now so hesitate?

With cross and sword Magellan [1] reached your shore,

With spears and sword, his death, Magellan met —

Who came to make you vow to Philip’s [2] fame,

Your sons, unbowed, preferred Magellan slain,

For which you got the mark of Philip's name,

Imposed by legions of the realm of Spain.

The name you took, you fought the insolence

With del Pillar [3] and Rizal’s [4] arguments,

And Bonifacio [5] with more forceful means

Imposed on Spain defeat's predicaments:

Retreat, did Spain, in came th'Americans

With Monroe's Doctrine [6] and George Dewey’s [7] guns!

XXVI

Weakened, outgunned, you fought George Dewey's force,

With precious lives defended Tirad Pass, [8]

Your weak ones did provide the dismal course

Of your demise, and Aguinaldo [9] was

To self-exile consigned to negotiate

Your sole surrender to an enemy

Who promise of reforms did elicit

In lieu of much coveted liberty.

Reforms enshrined your glory as Rizal,

And martyrdom enthroned, you idolize

Inaction's cause and lose the wherewithal

To build a nation strong, and free, and wise:

Martyrs are but a nation's mournful loss,

The nation must survive a martyr's cause!

=== End Excerpts === top p. 148 =

For those unfamiliar with Philippine history, the following notes on the proper names referenced in the sonnets may prove instructively helpful.

=== Begin Excerpts === mid p. 150 =

[1] Ferdinand Magellan was the commander of the Spanish Armada, which first landed on Filipino soil in 1521; was killed in the ensuing battle when the natives refused to pay homage to the king of Spain.

[2] King Philip II of Spain's name is the origin of the name Philippines; the term Filipino originally meant Spaniards born in the Philippines, as opposed to ones born in Spain.

[3,4] Marcelo H. del Pilar and Jose P. Rizal were the main leaders of the Reformists, who argued for Philippine representation in the Spanish Royal Courts. Rizal, executed by the Spaniards for sedition with his literary works, was subsequently consecrated under American occupation as the National Hero.

[5] Andres Bonifacio was the founder of the first organized revolution against Spain; later slain in an internal power struggle with factions supporting Emilio Aguinaldo.

[6] By the principles of Monroe's Doctrine the United States declared war on Spain; the American colonization of the Philippines was a spinoff of the Spanish-American War.

[7] Admiral George Dewey was the commander of the Asiatic Fleet which sank the Spanish Armada in Manila Bay in 1898. Most Filipino historians consider the encounter a "mock battle" since Spanish forces were already under siege by the Philippine revolutionary forces, and confined to a few blocks of Manila.

[8] Tirad Pass was the only access to the Headquarters of the Philippine revolutionary forces in the Filipino-American war. The fall of Tirad Pass directly resulted in the surrender of the Filipino forces.

=== End Excerpts === mid p. 151 =

Subject: WOW !! WOW !! AND WOW AGAIN

2012-01-15T21:09:00.000-08:00

95 year old hero!
Letter To Obama at Whitehouse Sent from 95 year Old Pearl Harbor Survivor !! Fantastic!!

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now. He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president.

Dear President Obama, My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.
I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a "rest home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor , allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.
One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.
So here goes.
I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.
I can't figure out what country you are the president of. You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like: " We're no longer a Christian nation" " America is arrogant" - (Your wife even announced to the world," America is mean- spirited. " Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.) I'd say shame on the both of you, but I don't think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.
After 9/11 you said," America hasn't lived up to her ideals."
Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.
I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.
Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.
Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue . You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.
And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don't want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts , who was putting up a fight? You don't mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.
One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you're the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of.
You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president. You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now. And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle...
Sincerely, Harold B. Estes
Snopes confirms as true: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/haroldestes.asp

When a 95 year old hero of the "the Greatest Generation" stands up and speaks out like this, I think we owe it to him to send his words to as many Americans as we can. Please pass it on.

This blogger concur: the letter demands sharing, especially with those Obama acolytes.

Week 2012W03 Featured Pages

2012-01-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

The whole notion of “Featured Page(s)” was initially conceived to bring an historical context to the contents of the chosen page(s) through the prism of the author’s most immediate concerns and obsessions. Thus, for instance, the “Seasons’ Greetings” for the turning of the years at Yuletide, and last week’s lament on inflation resonating with the unemployment report, etc. fit this template to the proverbial “T.”

Having embarked on what I hope to be the concluding phase of a healing process from the ravages of a debilitating traffic accident last summer, the physical and emotional experiences surrounding the minting of the poems highlighted this week were ineluctably brought to the fore from the cobwebs of my mind. It is most appropriate to bring into focus the poems on the Flirting book’s pages 143 and 173 as the website’s new featured pages, this week.

It was during the middle of the first term of the Clinton Presidency. I was then determined to fully recover from the residual paralyzing effects of a stroke suffered on 1-Feb-1993 which put me out of commission for the entire month. Call it karma or just the vagaries of chance, I was fortunate enough to enlist the services of a Licensed Massage Therapist who used modalities which were just what “the doctor ordered.” There would be no use denying, she was definitely all of the object, subject, and inspiration for the excerpted poems.

A bit of historical background may prove instructive. As a school boy I used to perennially suffer severe migraine headaches, in the order of at least three to five days a week. As far as I could remember, the episodes were immune to the traditional headache medications that were available in a farming/fishing village. The only effective remedy was my father’s ministrations of his masterful expertise in amma, a traditional massage modality. He would massage my entire body to locate what he called “the eye or head of the migraine.”

The culprit, in the form of a pulsating almond-shaped migrating gland, could be found anywhere in the body, typically where one traditionally feels for your pulse. Once located, my father would molest the gland with pinching finger pressure for upwards of fifteen minutes until it was rendered “benign,” or annihilated to surrender. The process was excruciatingly painful but at the end of the ordeal, the migraine would be gone and the relief would invariably induce a rejuvenating stupor culminating into a peaceful if not a totally blissful slumber.

It is mainly due to this history that as I alluded to on page 113 of the above referenced book, (which may be ordered

from http://www.flirtingwithmisadventures.com/orderthebook.htm)

giving and appreciating an effectively healing massage is very much in the DNA of my heritage for at least three generations. So when a massage provider’s methodology resonates with the healing needs of my physical wellbeing, it necessarily affects my emotional impulses and over all demeanor. This, in a nutshell is the emotional backdrop of the featured poems.

As has been my wont, for the benefit of those who cannot be bothered to click the hyperlinks, the featured pages are reproduced in full hereunder:

======== Begin Excerpts ======

(p. 143)

XXXVI Why, or Why Not?

Should the vibrant summer of your blooming

Grace the autumn of my apprehension

And make heaven of indulgent dreaming,

Shades of reality, to obsession?

Suchlike notions born of sordid fear

Bid oblivion build a frail memorial

To the boldness of caprice unbridled

By the frigid fetters of common sense;

Cold sacrifice charging the pedestal

Of calculatingly unprincipled

Surrender to hubrid incompetence

Much taking liberty of blind despair.

To have met you and yet let you alone

Is my soul’s insufferable treason!

(p. 173)

Oh Marie, You're Therapy!

Oh, how I am so sore!

Sore, but I yearn for more

More, of that magic touch

Touch, that I love so much:

Much consternation dwell

Suspended in the spell,

Delicious agony

Of partial therapy —

The which be incomplete

Ere I reciprocate

Your traces magical

With much less clinical

Responses of my own

Unbridled expression

Of this sweet compelling

Hunger for the healing

Promised by your finger

I fondly remember,

To tease eternity

The possibility

To commit my soul

To the incredible!

======== End Excerpts ======

Revisiting Recent Personal Milestone

2012-01-15T13:18:00.000-08:00

I have often referred to the traffic mishap of 6/30/2011 from the effects of which I still am trying to recover. In order to preserve the accessibility of online documentation, I decided to publish this post to facilitate a visual reference to the event.

Just Lucky, I Guess

To be imbued with such irresistible charms that bewitched, bothered, and bewildered 18-year-old females don't let me be. This time around she just happened to cross my path at the wrong mph while I was behind the wheel of the pictured Lincoln Town Car below.

Result: W. Ernst Hanley moment, viz., "my head is bloodied but unbowed.”

Prognosis: Never a dull moment for up to six months to mend from a compression fracture of at least one lumbar vertebrae. The good news is, there is no evident injury to the spinal cord. It only hurts when I cough, laugh, clear my throat or make any sudden moves. I still can proof the book in a wheel chair and still make it a rewarding experience.

Reaction: We have to play the cards we are dealt with and leverage the most we can get from the hand.

Lingering Enigma: It’s most astounding that my Physician cannot seem to imagine or believe that I could possibly be seriously injured from it. I’m good but at the end of my wits I come up empty. I refuse to attribute it to possible “malicious indifference to the patient’s well-being” because I otherwise consider her the most pleasant physician with impeccable professional decorum that I have had the privilege of being a patient to in almost 67 yearsJ

For now, I have no choice but to defer to good old Khayyam:

XXXII
There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was--and then no more of Thee and Me.

Can anybody out there hazard any viable alternate explanation? Your only possible reward would be the knowledge of helping out one of God’s creatures in the throes of senilityJ

This Week’s Featured Page at Flirting with Misadventures

2012-01-09T08:20:00.000-08:00

Notwithstanding, or rather especially because of, the White House spinmeisters’ painting a much rosier scenario than warranted by economic reality, just to sell the narrative for Obama’s re-election bid to a gullible public, I deem it most appropriate to highlight the poem on the Flirting book’s page 171 as the website’s new featured page.

The piece itself was originally written in the workplace, when inflation was barely half what it is now. The national debt was about $771.54 billion. Compared to today’s humongous $15.3 trillion and counting, those were the proverbial “halcyon days of yore.”

Those were the glory days of the Carter Administration when national malaise and stagflation were dominant components of the national lexicon. Compared to the contempt with which the Obama regime is lambasting the American public and dividing and fragmenting the national consciousness, it is very tempting to embrace Jimmy Carter as a pampering benevolent father figure.

For those of you who are less inclined to click on any hyperlinks, the poem is reproduced in full below. Enjoy the ride, the rest of the week, especially the GOP Primaries festival of trivia, banalities and insufferable irrelevance.

A W O R K E R 'S L A M E N T

(Typesetting at 4th Quarter Lobster Shift!)

Last page is done, so is the day

And one by one, we take our way

The time we spent pasting those pages

Gladly we sent to distant ages.

What words to speak, what verse is there to write?

What device can make reason usher in some respite?

Give me words of wisdom to save the common sense

From such taste of boredom akin to violence!

Oh, these newspapers, Why! they're such a crowd

And their publishers all seem so pleased and proud

With odds and ends to drown the bliss of ignorance

Prose and verse to crown the Glory of Irrelevance.

One might argue: Why get so annoyed?

Tough work to pursue, tougher still unemployed

What with inflation going up by the hour

'Tis no simple mission to get worth for your dollar.

Well, then, it is obvious, there isn't any choice;

Methinks it takes genius, takes cunning otherwise;

Some take the drudgery, all day, nine to five,

Mischief and trickery, nay, sin to survive!

A Delicious Food Metaphor

2012-01-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

“I enjoy your writing (even if I do not comment or reply); it is like a good sour cream ~ quite thick, a bit bitter but with a smooth texture and refreshing aftertaste, and more, ~ it can be applied to many occasions… Keep on.”

–Oleg Gang, Leader for Soft/Bio Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Labs.

Truth be told, I don’t even like sour cream. It gives me heartburn. Both its consistency and aroma remind me of pa.tun.ug, the porridge which, I, as a farm boy, used to produce out of coconut milk in my father’s barn, in a huge wooden barrel or a clay pot, fermented overnight and chilled by the tropical mountain air. It was used mainly to bathe the water buffaloes with as a lice killer and repellent.

Admittedly, there is no debating when it comes to taste. The proclivities of my taste buds’ are more inclined toward Uni (sashimi than sushi) and Oysters on the half-shell, sans horse radish. I habitually spike my Kim Chee with a generous splash of Tabasco sauce. I know more than a few people who consider these culinary inklings as bordering on the abominable.

Nevertheless, I must concede, this food metaphor accolade of my writing endeavors stokes the ego in a most inspiringly pleasurable manner. Just from the locution “I can taste it with my eyes,” I tend to believe that the faculty of taste can be considered the most susceptible of all the senses. It is therefore, the most flattering whenever it is invoked. That the comment has been imported as the latest entry on the Flirting Website’s Testimonials page, is as natural as day follows night.

It is understood: when compliments are rather few and far between, every single one that comes your way is treasured as the most priceless and rarest of all gems, much more than all the jewels in Sheba or Cleopatra’s crown.

Random Notes in the Ruins of Time

2011-12-31T15:38:00.000-08:00

It is within the realm of reason to stipulate that any calendar throughout recorded time was devised for accounting purposes. The rulers of the realm needed to levy taxes from the inhabitants so the former could sustain their ruling ways. It however was untenable to collect taxes every time the manor’s coffers needed replenishment. The collection had to be predicated on the ebbs and flows of the inhabitants’, mostly peasantries, revenues.

For the most part this was determined by the production cycle of seasonal crops. The masses were better able to pay the taxes during harvest time. Farming, especially of the primitive variety, was ineluctably associated with all seasonal changes which had become a convenient means to calibrate the passage of time.

So as the changing of the year approaches, it behooves to take stock of anything and everything that caught my attention. Hence, “with malice towards none and charity for all,” below is my proverbial laundry list, in the sense that it is a random enumeration of unrelated topics without any implied order of importance:

1.) Austerity Christmas Vacation for Democrats

In this year of record unemployment, indebtedness, foreclosures and failed financial institutions our top two Democratic elected officials had to curve their hedonistic bacchanalian impulses and settled for much less just to keep in consonance with what their traditional constituents, the hoi polloi masses, would comfortably live with for holiday expenses. Both top Democrats had to be content with more modest lodging accommodations.

Reportedly, President Obama had to make do with a $3,500/day beach front digs while House Minority Leader Pelosi settled for a $10,000-per-night suite at a Four Seasons Resorts. They are both braving the Anthropogenic Global Warming elements in Hawaii. A noteworthy difference between the two is that speculations abound that Obama’s was taxpayer-subsidized while Pelosi paid for her own. There are definite benefits to being a President.

2.) A Dollar and a Dream

Since I became aware of its existence, I played the New York Lottery with a minimum investment of $6/week, $1 for each of the jackpot games, Mega Millions, Powerball, and Lotto for every drawing cycle which is twice a week. I have not had the time or patience to figure out what Sweet Million is all about so I confine myself to the first three in the roster.

An erstwhile friend and colleague had conscientiously admonished me some seventeen years or so ago that if I had the prudence to deposit in the bank every dollar I spent on lottery, I would have been appreciably the richer by now (then). He has become an “erstwhile friend” not because we disagreed on my proclivities with the lottery but because I discovered that he despised my version of pursuing the American Dream, which essentially means anything and everything that I held and still hold near and dear, i.e., the opportunity to give vent to express my mind regardless of who is displeased or offended in the process.

For the record, I still play the lottery and I still have not won. I continue playing for as long as I can afford it because if there is any possibility of retiring in comfort if not luxury if I hit the jackpot without bankrupting myself in the process, then it is all worth the gamble. This brings me to a rather note-worthy conversation with yet another colleague.

3.) I Miss Pipe Smoking and Seriously Consider Going Back

Before I started consuming tobacco, a one-pack-a-day cigarette smoking colleague lamented that if only he had saved all the money he ‘wasted’ on cigarettes he could have been much richer than he was then. I pointed out that I did not smoke for over twenty-one years and yet I feel just about as non-wealthy as he was if not worse so. That was not the reason I picked up the habit.

Between circa the summer of 1966 to 1-Feb-1993 I was a proud devoted member and denizen of the tobacco consuming universe. Make no mistake about it. I was an unapologetic tobacco smoker with an attitude.

To illustrate: I was waiting for my would-be second wife of eight years in a Japanese restaurant in the vicinity of University Place and East 9^th street in Manhattan, a.k.a. New York City. As was my wont, I was smoking my pipe away like a wood-fired locomotive chimney. The aroma of the tobacco blend I was using was guaranteed to saturate any decent size party room.

Adjacent to my table were a couple of ladies seemingly in their upper twenties who earnestly urged me to stop my smoking because both the smoke and the aroma were bothering them. In response, I politely offered to make a deal with them. Namely, if they could go off and take a shower because their perfume was bothering me, I would gladly refrain from smoking my pipe.

They walked out of the restaurant and I had a rather pleasant dinner date with Nancy who became my significant other for the better part of twelve years, nine of which as husband and wife. But I guess I digress.

My tobacco smoking career started off in unmitigated innocence. In 1966 I matriculated in Kyoto University without any friends to speak of, and less than adequate knowledge of the Japanese language. Then I developed the habit of making smoke rings as a diversion, nay, main means of relaxation. My pack of cigarettes was in the desk drawer. I used to put my feet on the desk and smoke ringed away while waiting for the dormitory cafeteria to open for dinner.

Two weeks later the pack of cigarettes migrated from the desk drawer to my shirt pocket. It got so out of control that while I was cramming for the first semester finals I had to take a fifteen-minute cab ride in the middle of the night when all the local stores were closed to get a couple of packs of cigarettes in downtown Kyoto, where the bars and Pachinko parlors were open through the night. Six months later I was burning five packs a day.

To put it in perspective: then my preferred Highlight cigarette was sold at 70 Yen per pack. This translated into 350 Yen a day. At the much discounted university cafeteria 150 Yen could get me a decent lunch. Two hundred forty Yen did the trick at the local restaurants outside the university. Even with my relatively lucrative scholarship stipend my smoking expenditures was definitely unsustainable even if I sacrificed lunch for it.

To counter the economic argument, I switched from cigarettes to the pipe. I bought my first pipe at 350 Yen. A can of pipe tobacco was all of 350 Yen and it lasted me a full month. Thence pipe smoking became the hallmark of my persona for a good part of twenty-seven years.

I wish I could claim I quit the habit cold turkey on 1-Feb-1993. It could have constituted a perverted badge of accomplishment. However, a shade before 8:00pm that day while unit testing a COBOL program, images of dominoes falling in concentric circles suddenly invaded my field of vision. A massive stroke induced by a blood clot in the brain compelled me to drop the pipe as one of the hallmark accoutrements of my persona. The event rendered me out of commission for the entire month of February. However, getting my smoking pipe back was unfortunately not part of my recovery.

4.) Flirting with Misadventures

The publication of my book was a definite milestone for the year 2011. It is my first book. I hope it would not be the last.

“Leverage of Second Chances” was the book title I had in mind before I embarked to write in earnest. Towards the end of March 2011 when I was about ready to submit the manuscript to the publisher, the title evolved to “Leveraging Second Chances.”

In an email to supportive friends and acquaintances, I justified the change as follows:

“. . . I think it has more zip to it because of the transcendental nuance that a gerund as a quasi-figure of speech lends to the phrase. It gives the connotation of the dynamic state of becoming (ongoing) instead of all done or just in a static state of being.”

Then Joan Swirsky sent me this rejoinder which I quote in its entirety, lest I inadvertently omit something subtly important:

“Stan... I think the title is too abstruse and not very reader friendly. Most people ~ even very smart ones ~ don't know what leveraging means and "second chances" sounds like someone who has recovered from an illness. Your life and your writing are too exciting to be sabotaged by a bad title. Try to think of something as tantalizing as With a Song in my Heart! I mean it.”

To those who are not familiar with her work and cannot be bothered to click on her hyperlinked website let me just note that Joan has been the most consistently and generously supportive of my endeavors to write. She is the author of more than twelve books. She has been a journalist for more than two decades with major newspapers, including The New York Times. But most important to me, she has been proactively unsparing in affording me her constructive criticism. For this I am eternally grateful and she knows.

It sent me scurrying back to the drawing board and another few days or so of intensive brainstorming. I decided on the final locution, “Flirting with Misadventures: Escapades of an Exotic Life” after numerous rounds of polling the opinions of those generous enough to be bothered. Concurrently with polling on the title, I was furiously working (and polling) on the cover design. Finally all the trimmings were in place, and just one final element to the puzzle needed attention. Raising the funds for the project was the real proverbial show stopper.

A good long-time friend and colleague offered what seemed to be an easy way out. She volunteered to underwrite, as a personal loan, the publication of the book on one condition. The contents must be limited to just the narratives. She opined that the Poetry and the Essays could only undermine the marketability of the book.

I conceded, she might have been correct on the marketability angle. But without missing a heartbeat and “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” I politely declined the offer. The crucial desideratum for me was: If I could be bribed to do far less than what I wanted, there is no conceivable limit to what I could be bribed to do, regardless of whether or not I would be in a position to deliver.

One final note on the book: Most of my family on both sides of the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans are of the opinion that the book is basically and thoroughly unreadable for being too erudite. While I think I had sufficiently made my defense in the foreword and introduction to the book, this much I would like to add, for whatever it is worth:

All of my skills in the English language have been acquired. They were mostly learned in educational institutions and mostly at the expense of other people’s money mainly through rather lucrative scholarship grants. Thus, I cannot, with a clear conscience use the language on the cheap, for the sake of reaching out to the amorphous masses whose consciousness I may not be equipped to touch in a million reincarnations through time immemorial.

=== Entr'acte ====

Either the calendar has crept up on me unawares in my senility or that I simply had bitten off more than I could chew in my old age. In any case, the New Year has already been at least 12 hours old on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I am therefore compelled to publish this before it is ready for prime time.

I am an ardent subscriber to the dictum that selling Christmas Trees on December 26 in any year was never a hallmark of commendable professional or business acumen.

Below is the rest of the program with the rest of the topics I intended to cover. Where I am able, I left a synopsis of what it is all about. Where I am not, you’ll have to be content with what your fertile imagination can afford to offer.

If intentions matter at all, let me assure you that I intend to expound on the rest of the program wiga28.

=== End Entr'acte ====

5.) A Generation Gap: The Tricky Art of Growing Up

{While I left my father’s house at the age of 13 to hack my own way in the world at large, the Federal government, starting with the IRS encourages Americans to be their parents’ dependents to the age of 26. What gives? Are we conscientiously grooming a generation of wimps and spineless incompetents to take custody of the future of our civilization? As John Wayne used to say, “that will be the day.” And what a scary day it may prove to be.}

6.) The Political Calculus of Agitating the Masses

{The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and kindred movements that sprung out in 2011 was praised by the main stream media (MSM) as the quintessential token of the First Amendment, i.e., freedom of expression. In the media’s zeal to sell it as a bona fide expression of Americanism, they deliberately glossed over the fact that union organizers were behind the OWS “ferment.” While this deliberate subterfuge may work with some segments of the body politic, it can potentially backfire as most Americans may prove to be more enlightened than the MSM is willing to concede.}

7.) The Prospect of an Obama Re-Election

{While the record of his administration is indisputably dismal, the fact remains that the stupidity of the body politic which elected him the first time around is still very much alive and well. Galvanizing class envy as the main driving force in his re-election campaign may prove a winning calculus based strictly on the numbers. But the intangibles embedded in the spirit of American Exceptionalism can still prove the arithmetic to be untenable and America may still prevail over the evils that lurch behind the subterfuge of the Obama Regime’s effort to deceive the nation.}

Random Notes in the Ruins of Time

2011-12-31T15:33:00.000-08:00

1.) Austerity Christmas Vacation for Democrats

2.) A Dollar and a Dream

3.) I Miss Pipe Smoking and Seriously Consider Going Back

4.) Flirting with Misadventures

The publication of my book was a definite milestone for the year 2011. It is my first book. I hope it would not be the last.

In an email to supportive friends and acquaintances, I justified the change as follows:

Then Joan Swirsky sent me this rejoinder which I quote in its entirety, lest I inadvertently omit something subtly important:

=== Entr'acte ====

I am an ardent subscriber to the dictum that selling Christmas Trees on December 26 in any year was never a hallmark of commendable professional or business acumen.

If intentions matter at all, let me assure you that I intend to expound on the rest of the program wiga28.

=== End Entr'acte ====

5.) A Generation Gap: The Tricky Art of Growing Up

6.) The Political Calculus of Agitating the Masses

7.) The Prospect of an Obama Re-Election

A Reply from WWP

2011-12-24T09:53:00.000-08:00

In my blog post on 15-Dec-11 I volunteered my impression of having been ignored and disregarded by the Wounded Warriors’ Project. I am pleased to announce that Ann Zarrelli, representing the organization’s Strategic Partnerships, sent me a reply which in the interest of full disclosure I reproduce in its entirety below.

=========Begin Excerpt========

From: Strategic Partnerships Generic (sp@woundedwarriorproject.org)

Sent: Mon 12/19/11 3:57 PM

To: asumenstan@hotmail.com (asumenstan@hotmail.com)

Constancio,

Thank you for your interest in supporting Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) and the wounded heroes we proudly serve. However, we regret to inform you that we are unable to support your request to form a strategic partnership with WWP at this time. While you are more than welcome to donate proceeds we cannot endorse your book because we have made a decision to align with books on a limited basis. We do hope you understand this decision.

Even though we are not able to align on a strategic partnership level at this time we would be more than happy to refer you to our team members that handle third party events for fundraisers or our donor services department.

As always, we are very grateful of your interest regarding WWP.

Kind regards,

Ann Zarrelli

azarrelli@woundedwarriorproject.org

________________________________________

From: WWP Information

Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 1:17 PM

To: Donor Services Generic

Subject: FW: WWP General Information Email

=========End Excerpt========

Evidently WWP’s information processing cycle (IPC) is in the order of one week. Considering the scope of its activities and commitments one week seems a reasonable par for the course. In comparison, in my organization the IPC is WIG28. That is my original coinage for the cyber parlance meaning “whenever I get to it.” It behooves to note that with a dysfunctional right leg resulting from a motor vehicle collision on 30-Jun-11, my organization has a staff of less than one, i.e., exactly one functional leg less. I can safely claim that WIG28 is a reasonable par for the course as well.

For the record, I should note that I have not responded to Ann Zarrelli’s email. I intend to send her a reply after I have adequately thought out loud (publicly at that) what I should say to her. My difficulty stems from her suggestion that I solicited WWP’s endorsement for my book, Flirting with Misadventures. I’ve searched my records and I have not such evidence of having sought anybody’s endorsements, least of all from the wounded heroes represented by WWP to whom I genuinely feel indebted, and wish I could contribute more to the Project.

Admittedly, the book’s performance in the market has been definitely dismal. This assessment is mainly based on my daily monitoring of changes in Amazon.com’s published ranking for both the printed and electronic editions.

I started the chore on 22-Nov-11. Except for a positive bump on 6-Dec-11 of 567 in the “paid in kindle store” category and a jump of 1,757,754 on 8-Dec-11 for the “in books” category, the trend has been consistently and dismally negative, i.e., an increase in numerical value, which translates into a decrease in ranking order.

With apologies to Brianne Wilson, my book promotion/marketing coach from the publisher, FriesenPress whose efforts at educating me I have not responded for more than a month, I console myself with a quotation from page 138 of the book, to wit:

True, I can't lose the which I have not won,

Nor count the merits should such lose incur;

Ill happenstance, no kin to oblivion,

No lighter make the injury endure.

This I do know — just good intentions make

No substitute for actions we should take!

As for an appropriate reply to Ann Zarralli, let me borrow the locution immortalized by Paul Newman and quote, "What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate."

Here’s wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas. Or as Tiny Tim would say, “God bless us all, everyone.”

Added A Current Featured Page(s)

2011-12-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

In consonance with the yuletide spirit, page 170 of the Flirting with Misadventures book has been unbundled as a Featured Page on the book’s website. And for the benefit of those who have been worn shopping weary by traipsing tirelessly through none too crowded, nay, eerily almost empty malls, or simply cyber-surfing in whatever networking device you are hooked on, I’m going to save you yet one more click of the mouse by reproducing the page in its entirety below.

In Lieu of a Greetings Card*

Often the truth we sadly miss

As we see only what we know.

Nor each occasion could reveal

The gravity of what we feel,

On things we dare and dare not do.

Yet, though in vain, let me express

One simple thought, one sincere wish:

That may with love and peaceful bliss

Replete you find the Holidays!

And may the seasons thereafter

Be seasoned with mirth and laughter.

The rare occasioned somber sky

May not but serve to amplify

The happiness of days gone by

And glories of unyielding prime,

And promises of days that lie

Uncharted in the blue abyss

And daunting vagaries of Time!

May each grief find sweet redress;

Alien to fears, much less to tears,

May triumphs and exploits increase

All through the fast succeeding years!

H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S !!

This piece was minted in 1980 and it has been regularly recycled since then and imposed on anybody unlucky enough to have touched my trajectory, no matter how tangentially or peripherally it might have been. As long as I keep renewing my faith in Divine Providence, I don’t expect the spirit of Christmas to grow stale on me. Ergo these verses would live on to be a most appropriate expression of my sentiments. I therefore both expect and intend to continue sending it around yearly for as long as I have the strength and wherewithal to click a mouse.

As for the new page to the website, it’s going to remain an integral feature and the contents will be changed according to whatever tickles the whimsy and captures the caprice of the author/webmaster. This should remain true for as long as the site is operational and the book is in the market.

It has been said of old, especially in the old country: “entre el gusto no hay discurso.” My translation: “inclinations are off limits to negotiations.” So with malaise towards none and charity for all, let me enjoin you to take the page for an occasional test drive and enjoy the rideJ

A Donation to the Wounded Warriors’ Project

2011-12-15T07:34:00.000-08:00

Barely a month after my book was released by the publisher I filled out a form at the New York City chapter website of The Wounded Warriors’ Project (WWP) to the effect that I wanted to pledge to donate a certain percentage of the book’s accrued royalties to that organization. Having not heard anything from them, I repeated the same exercise last week, albeit directing it to the Jacksonville, FL site.

Apparently my attempts have been summarily ignored by the organization. Not prone to give up easily, I sent out the message below to info@woundedwarriorproject.org hoping that I would at least get some feedback of sorts. I have not heard from them yet so I’m going public with it anyway. They can sue me for good intentions if they so choose. I am aware of the cliché that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I concede that 25% to 40% of nothing (yet) does not amount to a hill of beans. I however contend that the intention to share constitutes a decent start for this season of giving, especially that it is about what I have left to give.

=========Begin Excerpt========

My recently (9/12/11) released book constitutes the entirety of my personal estate. As a modest token of my gratitude and appreciation for their service to my country, I pledge to donate to the Wounded Warriors’ Project (WWP) a percentage of the royalties from the book according to the schedule below.

Wounded Warriors’ Project Donations Schedule:

First 200 copies 25%

Next 300 copies 30%

Next 500 copies 35%

Every copy thereafter 40%

This schedule applies to BOTH the electronic and printed editions tallied separately.

I would like to publicize the Pledge on the book's website, http://www.flirtingwithmisadventures.com/aboutthissite.htm Please advise should you foresee any legal impediments or untoward ramifications to this scheme.

Your feedback would be most gratefully appreciated.

Dated 12-December-2011 in Coram, NY.

With a song in my heart: regards & carpe diem,

C. Stan Asumen. Jr.

http://www.flirtingwithmisadventures.com/abouttheauthor.htm

Being connected makes all the difference!

=========End Excerpt========

A Hint of an American Resurgence

2011-12-07T08:45:00.000-08:00

After losing the Solheim Cup in Ireland last summer in the wake of the 2010 loss of the Ryder Cup in South Wales, it was difficult to avoid the eerie feeling that golf in America was in a decline trajectory relative to the rest of the world. Eerie because it seemed to be consistent with the decline of everything else that was American, since the Obama regime embarked on “apologizing for America” as the hallmark of its governance.

Against this backdrop, capturing the World Cup of Golf title in China last week following a successful defense of the Presidents’ Cup in Australia the previous week lent a hint of a triumphal resurgence in American golf. With the vile defeatist pessimism spewing out of the White House itself respecting the state of the national psyche, every bit of good news goes a long way to prop up the nation’s morale. Being myself an eternal optimist to a fault, I cannot help but hope that this is just the beginning of a winning trend that should culminate through the national elections next year. We definitely can use every bit of good news.

Kudos to captain Fred Couples for pre-empting the talking heads of punditland and naming Tiger to the Presidents Cup team long before he had to. His message to the world was that golf needs Tiger and Tiger needs golf. Further that given the chance and some moral support, Tiger belongs to a winning team. Tiger promptly returned the favor by placing third in the Australian Open, capturing the winning point in the Presidents’ Cup, and bagging the trophy in his own Chevron invitational tournament. If it ushers in the resurgence of Tiger’s winning ways, it certainly would not be asking too much to expect it to infect the overall pulse of American Exceptionalism.

With all the miasma of class warfare emanating out of the Oval Office, the entire country can use a breathe of some air of the fresher kind.

A Passport to Disaster

2011-12-01T03:27:00.000-08:00

Monetizing sovereign debt by printing ‘enough’ money as The New York Times advocated in a recent editorial, is a recipe for economic disaster.

“European nations with triple-A ratings — like Germany, the Netherlands and France — could jointly issue “euro bonds” to help finance their weaker neighbors. The best solution would be for the European Central Bank, which can print money, to become the lender of last resort and buy the bonds of distressed European nations. That would force down yields to where the countries could afford to pay them.”

What the economics wizards at the Times don’t seem to understand is that paper money not supported by tangible wealth, i.e., goods and/or services with use and exchange values in the real world of economic activities is as worthless as the pipe dreams of NYT editorialists.

Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) are only as good (and worthless) as the economic viability of the collateral associated therewith. It should not take a legion of Nobel Laureates to figure out that Mortgage Backed Securities as commercial products or instruments would necessarily devolve into Toxic Assets whenever the mortgages “backing” them proved to be the sub-prime mortgages spawned by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Printing money alone has no power to rescue any distressed economy. Pretty soon you shall have printed enough money that the output of the printing press would not even be worth the ink and paper and the printing press which produce the instruments. It requires people to get to work to produce commodities which are useful to people to enhance the wellbeing of the society they constitute. This is the only way that you reproduce the society endowed with the faculty of self-perpetuation.

What's in a Word, in one which is not a Rose, if it Stinks as Offensive

2011-10-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

"Barak Hussein Liar Obama said his father faught in WWII Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (Obama's father) Born 4/4/36 - Died 11/24/82 at the age of 46 He was 5 years old when WW II started . . ."

If, for the sake of political correctness, you cannot call this President a liar, the only appropriate word that I can think of is that the President is Delusional. For the American populace to give him a pass for calculated statements of this genre, i.e., made confident that the public is too stupid to catch the falsehood contained therein, constitues a blatant abrogation of the responsibilities of citizenship.

In the name of anything decent in our history, this President has to go. Re-electing President Obama is tantamount to a national political suicide.

Concerns on the Coratian Front

2011-10-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

The Croatian portal selling the “Flirting” book,

http://www.superbookshop.net/index.php?page=book&ean=9781770676145

carries this prominent announcement on the website:

“All products on www.superbookshop.net buyer will be delivered within 25 days from receipt of order (customers within Croatian). Delivery times for overseas orders is approximately 35 days. In some cases it may be a delay in delivery.”

This does not seem to be a promising strategy for selling any product in any market. Somebody’s got to do something about it and that somebody’s got to be me. The something is still quite outside of my deployable arsenal of actionable options.

The Italians Have Gone Out of Stock

2011-10-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

I wonder if I should notify the publisher about this. The Italian portal Amazon.it

http://www.amazon.it/Flirting-Misadventures-Escapades-Exotic-Life/dp/1770676147

featured this announcement on its page:

“Attualmente non disponibile.

Ancora non sappiamo quando l'articolo sarà di nuovo disponibile.”

Translation into English:

Currently not available. Still do not know when the item will be back in stock.

To run out of the product you are supposed to be selling is no way to flourish in the marketplace.

Surprising to See it in Some Unexpected Places

2011-10-16T23:23:00.000-07:00

The Flirting book has been advertised in French:

http://www.amazon.fr/Flirting-Misadventures-Escapades-Exotic-Life/dp/1770676147

And in Korean:

http://book.nate.com/detail.html?sbid=9831235&sBinfo=bookinfo&mode=search

Now all I need are a few hearty souls in these marketplaces who are ready willing and eager to read it in EnglishJ

Hubristic Exuberance

2011-10-06T05:54:00.001-07:00

Hubristic Exuberance: A Memo to Bill O'Reilly

There is one word that most appropriately characterizes the Obama Administration: Arrogance. If one is a stickler for modifiers, the phrase would be Unbridled Arrogance. In essence, it is borne of, if not the exact equivalent to the memo headline, Hubristic Exuberance.

The underlying premise evinced in Bill O'Reilly's Factor interviews with Joe Trippi, Lanny Davis, Karl Rove and Denis Miller is demonstrably an unadulterated fallacy. It is a mistake to attribute the seeming bungling incompetence exhibited by the Attorney General Eric Holder and Presidential Press Secretary Joe Carney as stemming from not having been adequately briefed by their respective staff. The reality is far worse than that. It is that plainly and simply this administration just does not care an iota of what we the people think.

As aptly emphasized on page 202 (and several other parts therein) of my recently published book,

"We are at a crossroads when political decorum disregards well established protocols of intellectual inquiry in order to pursue and forcibly implement political agenda as demanded by ideology of the Progressives genre. The will of the governed is completely and unabashedly ignored by the ruling elite so obsessively blinded by their determination to control and lord it over the political landscape."

The list is legion to illustrate the Administration's total disregard for the will of the governed. To cite a few examples, it includes the manner with which ObamaCare (cf op cit pp 291-292 ff) was enacted into law, not to mention the very substance of the bill itself. The czaring of America is an attempt to implement policy by bureaucracies not accountable to any kind of monitoring by the governed citizens. The circumvention of congress respecting implementation of the Immigration Dream Act by the bureaucrats at ICE after the idea was summarily rejected by Congress approaches the apex of lawlessness.

Don't be fooled by the seeming clumsiness of Holder and Carney. This Administration needs to be stopped sooner than later by whatever means we can legally leverage to deploy to countermand its none too subtle subterfuge.

Mahidlawong Paghandom (Nostalgic Remembrance) with Audio

2011-09-17T08:04:00.001-07:00

Greetings, world, especially the Southern Bisayan speaking sector!

Below is a modest product of my effort to celebrate the halcyon days of yore, those good old days which brought us to this, our ever treasured here and now. The musical score of this obsession has been the classic Russian folk song dubbed in English as "The Long Road Ahead," and popularized in the '70's by Mary Hopkins as "Those Were the Days, My Friend." It has been lyricized in almost every language you can think of. When I could not find one in Bisaya, I decided to write my own.

I first intended to circulate this effort in an audible form. But I discovered my many attempts to vocalize it has been hindered by my being choked with emotion. Maybe someday when I am less sober than I am now, I'd be able to sing it to my heart's content.

In the meantime, I enjoin everyone familiar with the tune to take it for a test drive. It goes without saying that I solicit your feedback, constructive, disparaging, indifferent or otherwise. Here's hoping I hear some from a lot of you sooner than later.

<><><><><>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-OApxb0kN0

Bisayan lyrics for "Those Were the Days, My Friend" or "The Long Road Ahead."

By Constancio S. Asumen, Jr. 8/25/2011

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(1)

Kahapdus handomon ang kagahapon

Ta'ng lundag sa pagandoy'ng nawagtang

Tubod sa kalimot ang mga luha

Nga naghugas ning kalag nga samaran.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(2)

Sugyot sa kahidlaw nga dalikyaton

Kanhing gitagbo-an tang dalan

Dili mahimong mausab langkaton

Ligdong pasalig tang gi-usikan.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(3)

Tugob sa pagla-om king handurawan

Nga magdasig sa damgong gui-hidlaw

Uhaw sa pag-amuma nga makapukaw

Sa mithing banag-banag nga tuman.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(4)

Hilaw ki'ng baraha sa kapalaran

Ug walay tupong ang kapintas

Walay bili'ng ilang ti-aw-ti-awan

Hingpit nga pakig-bisog dili mokupas.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

Questions for Republican Primary Presidential Candidates

2011-09-16T20:17:00.001-07:00

Questions for Republican Primary Presidential Candidates:

Good evening, fellow Americans. I have two questions:

(1) How would your administration propose to deal with the intricacies and ramifications of baseline budgeting?

(2) I have painstakingly demonstrated in a recently published book {chapters 11, 18, 19 & 20}*

(Cf., http://www.flirtingwithmisadventures.com/)

that to as much as pay a lip service to the narrative of Man-Made Global Warming as the gospel minted in Copenhagen purports, you have to be either intellectually incompetent, or politically dishonest, or both. How would your administration propose to deploy the enormous human and infrastructural resources at the Federal government's disposal already invested to promote and implement the popularly accepted Global Warming agenda?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdfAFi1XeSY

*Now available at these locations:

FriesenPress.com (Canada);

http://www.friesenpress.com/bookstore/title/119734000001612306/

Amazon.com Whispernet (United States); and

http://www.amazon.com/Flirting-Misadventures-Escapades-Exotic-ebook/dp/B005MCCBZS/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316191673&sr=1-4

Amazon.com Whispernet (United Kingdom)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flirting-Misadventures-Escapades-Exotic-ebook/dp/B005MCCBZS

The Dignity of Labor

2011-09-05T08:46:00.001-07:00

Labor Day Song I Vaguely Remember

There is a song I learned in my fourth grade ('53-'54) which seems most appropriate for the Labor Day celebration. I don't exactly know the title to it. I vaguely remember it as "The Dignity of Labor." But I remember singing it with my chapter delegates at the provincial 4H-Club rally during my junior year in high school ('60) to the generous acclaim of both the judges and the general audience.

If anyone knows anything about it, please be kind enough to fill me in. I want to put it in some historical context of sorts.

The clip below is just to give you an idea on how the music goes,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGPS7K7250c

The lyrics goes like this:

The Dignity of Labor

Out in the world we are going

Striving in life's glorious den

Joy and success ever seeking

Hoping to conquer and win

Labor's our best inspiration

Thrilling both body and mind

Labor enriches the nation

God's gracious gift to mankind.

Refrain:

In loving world there is honor

Labor with love wins the strife

Dignify and cherish labor

Giving our nation with life.

The Dignity of Labor

2011-09-04T09:10:00.001-07:00

Labor Day Song I Vaguely Remember

If anyone knows anything about it, please be kind enough to fill me in. I want to put it in some historical context of sorts.

The lyrics goes like this:

The Dignity of Labor

Out in the world we are going

Striving in life's glorious den

Joy and success ever seeking

Hoping to conquer and win

Labor's our best inspiration

Thrilling both body and mind

Labor enriches the nation

God's gracious gift to mankind.

Refrain:

In loving world there is honor

Labor with love wins the strife

Dignify and cherish labor

Giving our nation with life.

The Dignity of Labor

2011-09-04T06:51:00.001-07:00

Labor Day Song I Vaguely Remember

If anyone knows anything about it, please be kind enough to fill me in. I want to put it in some historical context of sorts.

The lyrics goes like this:

The Dignity of Labor

Out in the world we are going

Striving in life's glorious den

Joy and success ever seeking

Hoping to conquer and win

Labor's our best inspiration

Thrilling both body and mind

Labor enriches the nation

God's gracious gift to mankind.

Refrain:

In loving world there is honor

Labor with love wins the strife

Dignify and cherish labor

Giving our nation with life.

The Dignity of Labor

2011-09-03T21:58:00.001-07:00

Labor Day Song I Vaguely Remember

If anyone knows anything about it, please be kind enough to fill me in. I want to put it in some historical context of sorts.

The lyrics goes like this:

The Dignity of Labor

Out in the world we are going

Struggling in life's glorious den

Joy and success ever seeking

Willing to conquer and win

Labor's our best inspiration

Thrilling both body and mind

Labor enriches the nation

God's gracious gift to mankind.

Refrain:

In loving world there is honor

Labor with love wins the strife

Dignify and cherish labor

Giving our nation with life.

Mahidlawong Paghandom (Nostalgic Remembrance)

2011-09-02T13:12:00.001-07:00

Greetings, world, especially the Southern Bisayan speaking sector!

<><><><><>

Bisayan lyrics for "Those Were the Days, My Friend."

By Constancio S. Asumen, Jr. 8/25/2011

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(1)

Kahapdus handomon ang kagahapon

Ta'ng lundag sa pagandoy'ng nawagtang

Tubod sa kalimot ang mga luha

Nga naghugas ning kalag nga samaran.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(2)

Sugyot sa kahidlaw nga dalikyaton

Kanhing gitagbo-an tang dalan

Dili mahimong mausab langkaton

Ligdong pasalig tang gi-usikan.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(3)

Tugob sa pagla-om king handurawan

Nga magdasig sa damgong gui-hidlaw

Uhaw sa pag-amuma nga makapukaw

Sa mithing banag-banag nga tuman.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

(4)

Hilaw ki'ng baraha sa kapalaran

Ug walay tupong ang kapintas

Walay bili'ng ilang ti-aw-ti-awan

Hingpit nga pakig-bisog dili mokupas.

Refrain:

Di ko hikalimtan, Atong kagahapon

Sa paningkamot bug-os nag antos

Atong gui-ampingan, Pagandoy'ng matuman

Bisan ug damgo lang ang madangtan.

Tra la la la la la la, etc.

Teaser for Flirting with Misadventures, Escapades of an Exotic Life

2011-08-31T14:20:00.001-07:00

Teaser passages from

Flirting with Misadventures (Escapades of an Exotic Life)

pages 78 – 79 (middle of chapter 4)

As the outer rim of the sun deigned to caress with a kiss the majestic top of the purple headed mountains receding in the horizon behind, as if at a flip of a toggle switch, a foreboding calm enveloped the entire Creation, reminiscent of the Rhyme sang by the Ancient Mariner of Coleridgean fame. We had to deploy oar and paddle to reach our destination. No sooner had we dropped anchor, than materialized a rapidly thickening ominous dark clouds, threateningly pregnant with mischief, imbued with the purplish hue of dark molasses by the lingering relics of the setting sun, to engulf the seaward eastern hemisphere with the unbridled fatalism of the Omar Khayyam quatrain:

LXXII

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,

Lift not your hands to It for help—for It

As impotently moves as you or I.

When the retiring Helios completed its surrender to the bowels of night, the sea which theretofore was as smooth as a cold vat of oil in a frigid Siberian kitchen began to stir with increasing hints of bubbles bursting out to the surface. It seemed the bowels of the sea were threatening to froth away to an impending boil. Forthwith, total darkness reigned supreme. The only remaining source of light came from the silver sheen ever fleetingly flashed by the persistently and boldly growing sneer of the awakening depths. The not too gentle breeze soon brought with it a wolfish howl heralding the gloom of oncoming doom.

{from the Author's Foreword & introduction [reproduced in part on the back cover]}

The material represents a due diligence attempt to chronicle, via a series of seemingly random and incidental episodes narrated in the first-person, the evolutionary journey of my consciousness from the edge of the wilds of Mindanao* (Philippines) to the rough and tumble of the streets of Manhattan (New York City), with all the tedious yet not the least thrilling detours in-between. Random in the sense that I had to single out and focus on specific and discrete pivotal decision points which ushered in a definitely recognizable qualitative change in my perception of my unique attributes as an individual, on leaving such decision bifurcations.

. . .

In a broader context the three parts of the book represent three distinct non-sequential evolutionary phases of my consciousness. The Narratives represent the aspirational age of ambition, when the drive to transcend . . . reigned supreme. The Poetry I deem to represent the seemingly unquenchable deliberative age of simultaneous inspiration, enlightenment, and illusion. It was at this stage that you pushed the envelope of the imagination in quest for a reason to go on, to latch on to a sustainable justification for being.

The Essays represent the age of rational resignation, or better yet, resigned rationalization, when you give in to the impulsive reflex to explain away the developments which you know affect your physical and spiritual well-being but they unfold far beyond your sphere of influence. You are effectively out of the arena. Your mission is no longer to do or die but simply to reason why, as an inconsequential observer of, to paraphrase Robert F. Kennedy, both the "things that are" then ask why, and the "things that are not" then ask why not?

The cover art work submitted to the publisher (FwMC47 below):

and

About the Cover: Conceptually designed by the author, the cover is a collage photo-shopped by Louis Marek Tobar, based on a photograph of an original reproduction (bestpriceart.com) of the Satire of the Debauched Revelers, oil on wood painting by
Jheronymusvan Aken (Hieronymus
Bosch) [Musee du Louvre, Paris, (c.1490-1500)] and a photograph reproduction, furnished by the artist herself, of an original oil-on-canvass portrait of the author by Ziba Bastani (1971). It depicts the recognized transcendental nature whereby any consciousness is aware of itself, while being simultaneously oblivious of both the gravity and the dire implications, respecting its well-being, uniquely imposed by ambient circumstances.

First Edition – August 2011

Published by:

FriesenPress
Suite 300 — 777 Fort Street
Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 1G9

www.friesenpress.com

For information on bulk orders contact:
info@friesenpress.com or fax 1-888-376-7026

Distributed to the trade by The Ingram Book Company.

Roast In Hell Usama Bin Laden

2011-05-02T03:07:00.001-07:00

Roast in Hell Osama, Bravo Navy Seals,

Long Live Freedom and Liberty, God Bless America!!!

Now that he had been buried at sea, does every drop of sea water become a shrine that every hater of Freedom and Liberty should worship and sanctify?

This is also good news for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Imagine with millions of UBL acolytes who would feel uncomfortable about relieving themselves because of the thought that their waste may eventually mingle with the remains of Bin Laden, and therefore defile his memory!?!?!

In and of itself, the discomfort factor could be worth the billions of dollars and thousands of lives, not to mention the tons of tears, sweat and blood and countless sleepless nights for both principal and peripheral players, we have spent on the worldwide war on terror.

But America lest we forget: Momentarily we might impute to President Obama the moniker of being the "Captor of Osama Bin Laden." In the final analysis the eventual downfall of America can come from the evil effects of Quantitative Easing. The lunacy of promoting economic growth by printing tons of money is certain to be the Achilles Heel that would cripple American Exceptionalism.

Wake up, America: make sure that Obama should be a one-term President!!!

Leverage of Second Chances, Prologue

2011-03-12T07:08:00.000-08:00

Author’s Foreword and Introduction
A journey back to your heritage always invokes a modicum of soul searching because the question of what brought you here, at this stage in life at this particular point in time, both demands and allows the unadulterated honesty associated with the benefits of hindsight. When you look at childhood from your prism as an adult it lends a measure of satisfaction that notwithstanding the notorious sarcastic laments of George Bernard Shaw, youth after all had neither been exactly, nor entirely wasted on the young.

The material represents a due diligence attempt to chronicle, via a series of seemingly random and incidental episodes narrated in the first-person, the evolutionary journey of my consciousness from the edge of the wilds of Mindanao* (Philippines) to the rough and tumble of the streets of Manhattan (New York City), with all the tedious yet not the least thrilling detours in-between. Random in the sense that I had to single out and focus on specific and discrete pivotal decision points which ushered in a definitely recognizable qualitative change in my perception of my unique attributes as an individual, on leaving such decision bifurcations.

It behooves to emphasize that any attempt to present or examine a slice of reality along the dimension of time, the present—the here and now—is the only valid starting point, i.e., coordinate zero on the time-axis. This stems from the requirement that the end points of the time-axis, i.e., the beginning and end of time, have to assume the value of infinity as coordinates. For this very reason it has become inevitable that life can only be properly viewed retrospectively. The locutions “before the beginning of time,” and “beyond the end of time,” denote points of reality which become tangible only with poetic license in the fertile and prolific realm of the imagination.

This argument alone, ipso facto, justified my taking the “Rubicon” piece as the starting point of the narratives. The here and now being the most fleeting point in all moments contained in that time continuum we call eternity, it became inevitable that the events as segments of memory have to be viewed in time frames of ample duration to fully elucidate the context within which the mindset undergirding any decision had evolved. The Rubicon episode defined the conscious abandonment of the ego identity directly derived from my formal education and training, in favor of what was construed to be the higher pursuit of nobler ideals.

In a broader context the three parts of the book represent three distinct non-sequential evolutionary phases of my consciousness. The Narratives represent the aspirational age of ambition, when the drive to transcend any given set of circumstances reigned supreme. The Poetry I deem to represent the seemingly unquenchable deliberative age of simultaneous inspiration, enlightenment, and illusion. It was at this stage that you pushed the envelope of the imagination in quest for a reason to go on, to latch on to a sustainable justification for being.

The Essays represent the age of rational resignation, or better yet, resigned rationalization, when you give in to the impulsive reflex to explain away the developments which you know affect your physical and spiritual well-being but they unfold far beyond your sphere of influence. You are effectively out of the arena. Your mission is no longer to do or die but simply to reason why, as an inconsequential observer of, to paraphrase Robert F. Kennedy, both the “things that are” then ask why, and the “things that are not” then ask why not?

The impetus to write has been derived from a multitude of sources with varying degrees and dimensions of motivational impulses ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. On the most pedestrian level, has been the fact beyond dispute that the journey has been arduously long, and storiedly colorful, with a treasure trove of memories screaming to be told, for the simple reason that they are too effusive and effervescent to remain buried in the bowels of oblivion, at home amongst the unknown and the unknowable.

It all started in the desolate isolation of the evacuation camps of World War II, where I was born. Thence, trudging barefoot on at times literally improvised pathways through the underbrush, the journey proceeded through thick and thin, to bear witness to the magnificence of what the human mind is capable of conceiving and achieving. The gamut of wonders encompassed supersonic transport, particle accelerators, man’s round-trip journey to the moon, instantaneous internet communications, and Skype technology video teleconferencing, to name a select few.

In the recent couple of years, many a few times when I left home without my cell phone I felt helpless and deprived, like a fish out of the water. Considering that I did not experience the chance to use a telephone until the tender age of eighteen, it is one more eloquent testament to the human mind’s seemingly limitless ability to adopt, absorb, assimilate and adapt to and flourish with the ever accelerating developments in technology and stay comfortably acclimatized and snugly enculturated therein.

On the more mundane, egotistical level, it was propelled by the belated poignant realization, that in this, what I consider to be the twilight of my years, I have not done much to leave behind for posterity: not even children of my own to contribute to the perpetuation of my genetic DNA. Ever the believer that human events occur for a reason, I am resigned to concede that the absence of a bloodline progeny is prima facie evidence that my genes were not worth perpetuating, in the broader scheme of things. It probably could be construed as the equitable and just rewards for the abandonment of my professional commitments.

On an inferential level, regardless of the official version of suicide as allegedly arrived at on the ensuing inquest surrounding the demise of my brother-in-law, the late Manuel Bravante, I am convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was liquidated as a retribution for my unceremoniously abandoning the IPT program, if for no other reason than that he was available and I was not. In a very modest way, I offer the book as a token of my esteem, apologies, and gratitude to Manny, as I knew him, that he took the blows for me, and paid the ultimate measure of his devotion to principles and personal loyalty. At least I heard more than enough anecdotal circumstantial evidence to arrive at such a grim conclusion.

Admittedly, I do not have concrete evidence to prove a causal connection. In the movie “Ronin,” there is a line by Robert de Niro which seems most appropriate to my conclusion. To wit, “if there ever is any doubt, there never is any doubt.” It has been said of old that vengeance is a dish best served cold. What more could be a colder serving than liquidating a newly minted proud father by throwing him off the roof of a multiple-storey building while taking final examinations in graduate school? It was rather well known during my tenure in MSU Marawi that he and I were of kindred spirits and attitudes, respecting university politicking.

Furthermore, inherent to the controversial nature of my departure in 1974, there have been various versions of the narrative attempting to explain the method to the madness and wherefores of that event; none of them accurate and all of them necessarily derived from baseless conjectures fomenting wild speculations. With the publication of this book the definitive gospel narrative of that event shall have been available to the inquisitive public. Any further speculation on the matter should thenceforth be dismissed as no more than an attempt to deride and maliciously impugn the integrity of my judgment.

Finally, my endeavors would be less than forthcoming if I did not acknowledge the incidental inspiration which triggered to open the floodgates of narratives included in this work. I was a couple of chapters into Henryk Sienkiewicz’s In Desert and Wilderness, when I was awestruck and fascinated by the unique beauty he imbued his story with the perspective of a child telling an adult’s viewpoint. While I have been scheming to tell my story for a long time, that rare Sienkiewicz moment propelled me to write the “Jellyfish” narrative in chapter 6. I posted the piece in one of my blog sites followed by the “Fallout” piece in the same chapter.

To my pleasant surprise, the blogpost elicited some encouraging comments from, among others, Ziba (Bastani), Sam (Prasad), and Larry (Goldstein), in that order of email arrival. To all three, I want to record herein my immeasurable gratitude for the encouragement. Both Sam and Larry I have known and worked with for a number of years as an IT consultant. I credited Larry with the singular misfortune to have saved me, in the winter of 1993 when I suffered a massive stroke, from becoming at best, a vegetable or at worst, a delectable if unwilling victual to fat and unappreciative nasty little earthworms. Ziba, I have known since graduate school in my days in Kyoto University. She is probably the only person who had seen every bit of the narratives as they unfolded. Theirs along with cheering on the sidelines from four of my lovely and lovable nieces: Chell, Yak, Gay, and Joy had made my dreams of telling the story, a reality ready for prime time. I salute all of you:

May your glories multiply
As the stars up in the sky.
The rare occasioned somber sky
May not but serve to amplify
The happiness of days gone by,
And laurels of unyielding prime,
And promises of days that lie
Uncharted in the blue abyss
And daunting vagaries of Time!

Additionally, it behooves to pay a special tribute to Mana, my only older sister (Lalai to the rest of the clan older than her), not only for her valuable contributions, respecting accuracy of recollection, in my effort to put together the narratives but also, and more importantly, for her priceless assistance while I was living the life narrated herein. Without her help, no part of my life would have been worthy of telling in any manner, shape or form.

The saintly patience with which Krystyna, my lovely and lovingly devoted wife, endured the seemingly endless clicking of the keyboard even as she struggled to catch some sleep so she could go to work to support me and see the project to fruition deserves to be mentioned for the record. That the book is ready for the press is proof positive that her admonitions remained unheeded. To her, goes my endless gratitude.

To the rest of the family: Robert, Renata, Marek, and Nikki who deplore my writing style as inherently unreadable for being too erudite, but whose filial affectionate devotion only waxed more generous with the passage of time despite my perennial absence at family huddles because of the book, I commend you to the gods of prosperity and thank my lucky stars that I am part of your family, the House of Kaczmarski in St. James. In my defense let me remind you that you can only reveal to the world the essence of what you are. The insinuations of what you are not, the rest of the universe will eagerly supply sans your behest, nay against your ardent wishes.

Undoubtedly, some who were familiar with the events narrated herein and inclined to look deeper enough into the substance of the narratives are bound to find crimes of omission which may be hidden in the gaps and void interstices of the story. To them I pledge my intent to flesh those out into a coherent legible whole. Whether or not they will eventually see the light of day in print only time will tell. It all depends on the free emotional and intellectual energy at my disposal, not to mention the material wherewithal necessary to midwife their incarnation into prime time existence.

Ergo, if there is any financier out there ready willing and eager to underwrite the project, I implore you to contact my publisher post haste so we can get to work. I enjoin you therefore to look over whatever is offered here with guarded leisure. There might be more to follow. This might be the last of its breed. The most important thing is, may you have half as much fun reading it as I have had both living and writing about it.

With a song in my heart: regards & carpe diem,
Constancio S. Asumen. Jr.

Chapter End Notes: The hyperlinks and notes are itemized below in the order that they were referred to in the preceding text. They have been transliterated herein to facilitate the curious readers’ penchant to verify any and all information that has been only tangentially mentioned in the text.

http://www.nysun.com/arts/george-bernard-shaw-placed-in-perspective/20227/

{*I refer to the Philippine Mindanao, the second largest island member of the Philippine archipelago with geographical coordinates of 9° 37' 36" North, 123° 22' 53" East, where the province of Surigao del Norte is located. This should not be confused with the Honduran Mindanao, situated in El Negrito, Yoro, Honduras, whose geographical coordinates are 15° 27' 0" North, 87° 41' 0" West. It was such a total surprise to discover that there allegedly is another place in the sun, other than my native island, that is named Mindanao. But after learning in the internet that there reportedly is a village in Ghana named Asumen [(with geographic coordinates 5° 35' (5.583333°) North latitude, 0° 36' (0.6°) West longitude, elevation 71 meters (233 feet)], nothing much ought to be surprising to discover, as far as I am concerned. I sincerely hope that this village is not the cumulative result of my younger brother’s unbridled escapades in the youthful exuberant days of his philandering ways.}

http://www.maplandia.com/philippines/region-7/cebu/mindanao/

http://www.maplandia.com/honduras/yoro/el-negrito/mindanao/

http://mapcarta.com/16953628

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyR.htm

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122690/

http://www.robertdeniroonline.com/

http://www.readbookonline.net/title/37071/

=====================================

In Quest for a Niche

2011-02-05T14:19:00.001-08:00

Leverage of Second Chances (4)

In Quest for a Niche

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

--William Ernest Henley, Invectus

Growing up in a farm, fifth in the picking order of over-achieving older siblings, did not make the mission to earn bragging rights on anything as easy as a Sunday morning stroll in the park. It was no secret that the reputation my parents were unabashedly proud of was their children being awarded top honors at the end of every school year. But finishing number one in the class after three siblings before me had already established it as a tradition, did not leave me much of anything to cackle about.

To make matters worse, it was an integral part of our upbringing that we were duty bound to emulate our older siblings, rather than endeavor to compete with them. Coupled with the schedule of domestic and field chores strictly assigned for us to dispose of there was hardly any chance to compete with our peers, i.e., children our own age other than in the classrooms. To earn any subtle praise, explicit accolades, or just a hint of recognition for the performance of any tasks within the realm of the routine, we needed to deliver with the bravado of shock and awe.

The first such instance I remembered my father exhibited open appreciation and compliments for what I had done was when he came home from the farm after twilight one day and I proudly showed him my handiwork. I crafted the handle of a flat-ended bolo, the kind used for digging out weeds, from a piece of the root of a mango tree. I knew that he planned to do the job the next day and the bolo was consigned to my personal use. I figured, my crafting the handle myself was a token initiative to strive to be independent of my father. After carefully inspecting the handle he squeezed my shoulders and told me in a quivering voice that he was proud to have me as a son. I was touched in no small measure because my father was habitually frugal in dispensing praise for his children's skills outside the classroom.

The second occasion I had a chance to be proud of myself vis-à-vis my role in the family was when I managed to serve the entire family, practically when nobody was expecting it, with a complete lunch consisting of dried fish in gabe stew and hard-boiled corn grits, the latter a perennial family fare. For some reason I could not remember, I was left all alone at home while the rest of the family went off to haul logs and lumber needed to complete the construction of the house. The materials were to be transported by boat from the lateritic iron deposit locality some thirty-five kilometers due south of our village, where magkono, the famed Philippine variant of the ironwood, legendary for its strength and enduring tenacity, thrived in abundance.

The prevailing wind for that time of the year would normally have been the landward northwesterly, translating into a forty-five degree tailwind for the homeward route. However, Mother Nature played its capricious tricks. For inexplicable reasons the exact opposite, seaward southeasterly, ruled that day. It meant a grueling forty-five degree headwind on the homeward leg of the trip when the boat was heavily laden with cargo. Unfurling the sail and maneuvering the boat forward in a counter-crosswind with over capacity cargo proved prohibitive even for a sailor as seasoned as my father. That resulted into an unanticipated delay of more than three hours without any provisions for lunch.

When there was no sign of the family hauling party by lunch time, I decided to prepare a meal for everybody. That was not the first time I cooked lunch. It however was my first attempt at a full complement of hard-boiled corn grits and a meticulous dish for viands. Because of the anticipated employment of hired hands for the construction of the house, there was a stack of premium dried fish in the pantry. They were absolutely appetizing but I demurred from consuming some just for myself. That propelled me to cook for the entire household.

From the nearby creek I harvested a couple of clusters (whole plants, really, consisting of tubers and leaves attached to longish stalks) of the vegetable wetland gabe, which abundantly grew in our farm since the early days of my grandfather's tenure. Saving the leaves for later use, I sliced up the tubers and stalks for boiling in the same manner I observed my mother had done on several occasions. I boiled the chopped ingredients, starting with the tubers, then the stalks, until they were thoroughly cooked to an even lumpy chewable gruel.

I threw in a couple of pieces of dried fish for flavor. Leaving the pot over charcoal embers to simmer, I sautéed it with coconut milk and garnished it with a moderate portion of scallions and ginger which I gathered from the back yard garden. Seasoned to taste with salt, fish sauce, and a splash of nipa lambanog, also popularly known as Gigaquit Rum, the alcoholic drink distilled from the sap tapped from the flower of the swamp-growing nipa palm, I kept the pot simmering over charcoal. When the starved hauling party finally arrived mid- to late-afternoon, I served lunch to the unconcealed delight and genuine appreciation of everybody.

Coming up with an element of a pleasant surprise was not a feat sustainable as a matter of routine, especially in a relatively well established farm, where desirable results memorialized by sheer repetition in the ruins of time precipitated the essence of success. I needed to discover areas of endeavor which I knew to have not been conquered nor claimed by any of my older siblings, to stake out a domain of sorts within which a measure of accomplishment could be claimed for myself, with some degree of excellence.

Night deep sea fishing with hook and line was one such field of endeavor. I was aware that our second eldest, Manong Titing, did occasionally get involved with night fishing but only for a short period and of the near surface dragnet variety. It was more a mobile operation and its typical target quarries were surface to moderate-depth near-surface prowling schools of fish which were unpredictably on the move. The net was cast within a fathom or so beneath the boat, which under the influence of both the wind and the current, was allowed to drift dragging the net along to trap any unsuspecting creatures in its path.

By contrast, hook-and-line deep sea fishing of the method I engaged in, required being stationary by dropping anchor and targeted three levels of quarries. These included, inter alia, sea bottom species such as barracudas, gropers, and rock snappers, etc.; medium depth prowling species like tuna, king fish, yellow-tail red snappers, sword fish, etc.; and surface to near-surface feeding species such as flying fish, squids, anchovies, sardines, sharks, butter fish, and several varieties of mackerels.

I got initiated into this enterprise by my father. One day, out of nowhere, while he was preparing to go out to sea he casually asked me if I thought I could handle keeping him company for the night's endeavors. When I assured him in the affirmative, he instructed me to pack our provisions for the night. These mainly consisted of freshly boiled cooking bananas and steamed cassava tubers moderately garnished with freshly grated coconut to preserve their delectable succulence, tidily arranged in a covered bamboo basket. This was supplemented with two bivouac-sized canteens of drinking water and a bottle of chili-spiked vinegar, for seasoning in anticipation of consuming some of the catch of the night for super.

This took place around the beginning of the period when I had to quit school for two years, after I graduated from grade school because our parents just did not have the finances to send any of us anywhere. Three of my older siblings had to quit school for three years so we were not exactly short of farm hands. My parents' financial demise came in the wake of our eldest, Mano Sering's, completion of college. Unschooled in the subtleties of college expenditures, my parents ended up committing every parcel of land they owned as loan collaterals to underwrite my brother's college career. They effectively became tenants to oversee the production operation of the coconut plantations that they had given their entire beings to develop from the bowels of the wilderness. It would take them more than a couple of years to as much as partially recover.

I was not sure exactly whether father's motivation was grooming me to inherit his craft as a fisherman or in his calculating ways he reckoned I represented a lesser drain to the pool of farm hands. On hindsight, I concluded the latter reasoning was operative and more plausible, although absolutely irrelevant. In the ultimate analysis, what mattered most was that the father-son bonding that ensued resultant to my accompanying him fishing was invaluable in more ways than I could catalogue for posterity. Most of all, the fact that up to that point no other sibling had the privilege of being with him that far away from land in isolation had the air of exclusivity I could hardly dare to fathom. It was an experience I treasured my entire life, long after it became just a distant memory.

Moreover, observing him up close apply his navigation skills to locate prospectively prolific fishing grounds made me realize just how resourceful my father was, given his rather limited schooling. There could be no more edifying experience to an eleven-year old soul than a first-hand confirmation that he had every reason in God's creation to emulate the grit, if not to altogether worship his father. Theretofore, I only heard glowing stories on the winning ways of my father's.

That first venture out to sea, I was awestruck at his tricks of the trade as he matter-of-factly explained how he was using the faintly visible mountain ranges, triangulating with the naked eye, to fix the direction we were heading. He further explained the relative positions of the three most prominent mountain peaks which would indicate our arrival at the spot where we intended to drop anchor for that night. He even baptized those peaks, which collectively he dubbed as the "three kings" (of biblical fame), with his own personal arbitrary labels, enabling him to explain how several other anchoring spots in that general vicinity might be located, based on the relative positions of the "three kings" with one another.

On hindsight, how father originally got wind of those fishing grounds was inexplicably amazing. To the best of my limited boyish knowledge there was no bathymetric chart of any kind to be found in our house. It was not exactly the kind of question I would be asking while being awestruck. Meanwhile we arrived at the spot where the top of the "three kings" depicted a perfect equilateral triangle. Father let loose the sail by facing the wind and I dropped the anchor which bottomed out at twenty-eight and a half fathoms. Allowing two more fathoms for tidal surge, I secured the anchor rope to the appointed latch and helped father roll up the sail around its boom and secured it to its appointed place on the boat safely out of the way of the night's proceedings.

The order of business for the night was centered around the two air pressure fuel-injected incandescent kerosene lamps mounted on both sides at the mid-section of the boat. The incandescence attracted surface-dwelling creatures which were somewhat rendered blind by the intense brightness and vulnerable to being harvested at will with hand-held fish nets. A sword-pointed machete, a harpoon-like hand spear, and a lead-plated mallet complemented the fish net as each person's on-board arsenal.

Out of the early surface catch we used the better portion for baits and cooked some to augment our provisions for dinner. It was one of father's cardinal rules to never fish with hook and line on an empty stomach, if you could swing it because only a starved fish would be tempted by a hungry fisherman's bait; no self-respecting fisherman would be interested in catching only starved fish. After dinner we set out for the night's agenda, essentially consisting of setting the bait, laying the line, and waiting for a nibble. Every operation was manually accomplished, devoid of mechanical assistance in any way, shape or form. We laid the line for three different depth zones: the bottom (hand held), the middle (tied to each knee), and three-quarters of the way up (tied to each ankle).

At the sign of a nibble, you gave the line a sharp vertical jerky tag, strong enough to cover the distance between the sinker and the hook to give a swift upward motion to the hook, hopefully catching the feeding offender by the upper lip. When that happened, the fish would pull the line and the contest boiled down to a tag of war between the fish and you. The trick was to keep the line sufficiently taut to prevent the fish from unhooking itself. If you got lucky and felt simultaneous nibbles, you snatched back at each line and hauled the one with the strongest tag back, as it usually meant the bigger fish.

On hauling the fish close enough alongside the boat, you scoped it with the fish net and load it on board. Depending on the size of the fish, you might need to disable it with the mallet or spear it with the harpoon before loading it on board. If the fish was too big for the net you latched on to it with the harpoon and killed it the most expeditious way you could, preferably with the mallet since the less blood you spilt, the tidier the proceedings would be. My prized catch for that first night was a red coral grouper, big enough to need disabling it with the mallet to the head. It was the biggest fish we caught for that night.

I passed the first night's ordeal with better than passing grades. First, and most importantly, I did not get seasick. Secondly, I hauled in the most prized fish for the night's catch. Thus my fishing apprenticeship with my father was launched. It lasted for about six weeks. It was interrupted when father suffered an acute episode of gout which lasted for about a week. The six weeks were essentially an uneventful break-even period. A night with moderate catch brought in enough provisions to our kitchen for about three days. Anything less was considered a poor outing. A bountiful haul would require preserving some for long-term reserves either as salted, smoked and/or dried. When we had to sell some to the local fish mongers, it was considered an extra bountiful haul.

In retrospect, that stationary hook-and-line fishing was basically an arduous waiting game, requiring the collective patience of a legion of saints, had its corollary benefits. The privacy imposed by the vast open sea in the deafening tranquility of the night seduced father to wax lively loquacious on his reminiscences of my grandfather. Thus my brief apprenticeship with him in night deep sea fishing assumed the added dimension of being a rite of passage into adulthood that I felt uniquely privileged to have been given the exclusive chance, unbeknownst to and unshared with my other siblings.

By the beginning of my out of school sojourn it was determined that our finances had moderately recovered. My three older siblings were slated to be sent back to school the following year while I would by myself remain on furlough to somehow soften the impact on the family coffers. Father had to transition back to being a farmer more than being a fisherman. The occasional escapades to sea did take place as desperate measures to put victuals on the table without further taxing the family coffers, especially when hired farm hands were expected to cover for the absence of my older siblings. Meanwhile I was deemed neither a dependable farm hand nor a fisherman expected to conquer, in all dimensions, the unfathomable vastness of the sea and the known vagaries of the vocation.

As a countermeasure to that imminent dilemma, father recruited the services of my first cousin, Hermogenis (Ingko Mening to us, for short), with a proposition he really was hardly in a position to turn down. Father offered him the use of all the equipment, with operating expenses on condition that he partnered with me on the fishing enterprise. The proceeds were to be equally shared three ways: a share each for the operating partners and a third for the equipment.

Ingko Mening was sixteen years my senior, four years older than Mano Sering, my oldest brother. My parents raised him as their own son up to and including the cumbersome process of getting married with all the orthodoxy that tradition required. I sensed that he resented the equal partnership proposition, for reasons that he was a seasoned hand at night deep sea fishing, and I was just a tiny little boy. But the arrangement offered him somewhat of a viable alternative to the waning fortunes from his farming endeavors. Thus my fishing career flourished further under his tutelage, replete with all sorts and flavors of exhilarating thrills and unsettling misadventures.

One such episode which left an indelible impact on my psyche was the sudden summer storm which found the family spellbound in a solemn novena for the safety of our flesh and the salvation of our souls, when we got home, pulled through by the grace of God, shielding the instinctive seasoned seamanship mustered under duress by my cousin. We set sail mid- to late-afternoon riding a moderately strong but soothingly pleasant steady breeze to our appointed fishing ground for the previous three successive nights, hoping our lucky streak would hold on for one night more. The promise of another dreamily intoxicating night under the stars, punctuated by the coveted tagging at the baited lines by the fish routinely feeding underneath, coming in monotonic intervals, permeated the ambiance of that late summer afternoon.

As the outer rim of the sun deigned to caress with a kiss the majestic top of the purple headed mountains receding in the horizon behind, as if at a flip of a toggle switch, a foreboding calm enveloped the entire Creation, reminiscent of the Rhyme sang by the Ancient Mariner of Coleridgian fame. We had to deploy oar and paddle to reach our destination. No sooner had we dropped anchor, than materialized a rapidly thickening ominous dark clouds, threateningly pregnant with mischief, imbued with the purplish hue of dark molasses by the lingering relics of the setting sun, to engulf the seaward eastern hemisphere with the unbridled fatalism of the Omar Khayyam quatrain:

LXXII

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,

Lift not your hands to It for help--for It

As impotently moves as you or I.

To fully appreciate the gravity of the situation a brief description of our boat's construction would be instructive. The boat was designed to safely accommodate two adults sailing as far out to sea as desired, short of the inter-island trans-oceanic shipping lanes. The hull was crafted out of solid log with wedge-shaped prow and a roundish paraboloidal rare end, akin to the ends of a chicken egg. The transverse cross-section of the hull was a cross between a wedged "U" and a roundish "V" resulting from the personal proclivities of the designer. It was outfitted with a main sail and a forward sail, both supported by a shared single vertical pole located roughly between two-fifths to three-tenths of the length of the boat from the prow.

It had a vertical extension to its side walls built of pliable thick strips of bamboo skins intricately woven and sealed water-tight with the resinous balao glue locally made from the sap of the tree which thrived in most neighboring forests. These bamboo wall extensions, roughly two to three times the depth of the hull in width, were supported by studs anchored to the side edge of the hull reinforced on top with a wooden frame which circumscribed the working area of the boat. A pair of ballasts made of solid bamboo poles were attached to the body, on each side, with wooden and bamboo rafters about a third of the length of the boat distant from the side walls.

The design concept was intended to functionally achieve the happy compromise between strength attendant to bulk on the one hand, and agility implied by lightness on the other. Under normal conditions, the boat could withstand the rough and tumble imposed by the seascape but could be delicately vulnerable to wreckage under the extremities inherent to a storm.

Promptly my cousin tied a double loop mariner's knot closed with a fisherman's bend to both our waists and securely fastened us to the plank supporting the base of the sail pole with enough give for mobility on board. We pulled anchor and set sail for shore. Fortunately our onshore destination was squarely leeward of the storm. We only needed to directly ride the wind, avoiding a nosedive by judiciously modulating the wind intake to the main sail. The most hazardous hurdles were presented by a group of intricately dispersed shallow lying breaker reefs guarding the shoreline where my parents' property was located. They were a challenge to navigate through in broad delight. They became veritable death traps in the darkness and roughness of the storm.

My cousin's skilled seamanship proved more than equal to the challenge. Because of the storm-swollen tide we landed ashore under the coconut trees, much further inland of the shoreline, without losing a single item of property on board. Except for everything being thoroughly drenched the only casualty was the relatively short piece of rope we used to harness ourselves to the boat and to each other. This piece was pruned off a longer rope used to secure the boat at a moorage. We arrived home to the genuine grateful jubilation of both families when they were just concluding the novena on our behalf.

Another noteworthy episode pertained to the night we were literally overrun by a school of thirty- to fifty-inch long blue-backed tuna, with some even bigger appearing to be chaperon or parents or guardians to the smaller ones. It was one of those nights when the earlier part was practically uneventful. Roughly two hours before daybreak all our lines were jumbled and there was a sharp jolt on the boat from the bottom. A large school of tuna swarmed about, as if some of them were attacking our kerosene lamps.

I was acutely apprehensive that they would shortly turn the boat upside down with the momentum of their collective upward assault. Seeing that many big fish that close was the most terrifying event I had ever experienced at sea. It felt like we were at the biblical altar of reckoning brought face to face with our sordid intentions and evil deeds. We frantically had to disable them with our mallets and literally manually picked them off the water one after another by their tails, at a pace of singular frenzy.

Within thirty minutes or so our boat was overloaded with the catch. We had to head for shore before the rest of the school left the area. That was the only occasion when we had to tell the fish we have had enough of them. Unfortunately there was no way either to tell them to hang about because we would come back for the rest of them the following day or rendezvous with them for yet another day.

A few weeks later we were subjected through the agonizing ordeal of the counter bonanza. We typically laid out six baited lines each, as a matter of routine. For that entire night not a single hint at a nibble took place. Even from the surface dwelling creatures which used to be attracted by the incandescence of our kerosene lamps, not even a hint of a shadow of any one of them showed up that night. We were so unceremoniously snubbed by our quarries we had to ask for a couple of mackerels from another boat anchored some forty yards nearby so we did not go hungry for the night.

Those were the three most remarkable episodes of my fishing career. The other days were characterized by a humdrum monotony but by no means dull. It simply was conducive to letting my imagination go wild with introspective ruminations. For instance, I always found it fascinating to picture how my baited hook would appear to a fish routinely prowling about, minding its own business of survival. How the topography of the bottom where we were anchored at differed from the features of the coral reefs in shallow waters was the constant subject of my imaginary explorations.

We ventured out to sea five to six nights during the week depending on the cumulative catch for that week. If we had three bountiful outings out of five, we usually skipped the sixth. If we only had two of five, we ventured out on the sixth hoping for the third night to be bountiful. This much I could say without fear of having exaggerated my worth: during my fishing career, our kitchen was never bereft of a dish of fish for victuals. Also, I dared claim to have managed to contribute to the family cash flow, in no negligible measure. I was convinced that I earned some measure of success and accomplishment and it boosted my sense of worth and self-esteem, although I never discussed it with anybody until this writing.

My cousin was an accomplished fisherman on almost all counts. The one skill I sensed he was not equal to my father was in using triangulation, neither with the stars nor with the landscape, to find obscure potentially prolific fishing grounds. I sensed that he tended to join the crowd and dropped anchor in the vicinity where other boats were already anchored or were obviously speculating in doing so. I also confirmed that he did resent the asymmetry in our equal partnership because of the depth and breadth of experience he brought into the mix, which I willingly conceded were far superior to mine.

Unfortunately for him the events which made the confirmation possible ushered in the dissolution of our partnership. Everybody knew that I was heading for high school the coming school year, which was already loudly knocking at the gates. My fishing career was destined to come to an end unless I matriculated at the local high school which would have allowed me to venture out to sea some Friday and Saturday nights. The repercussions on me were far less severe than on my cousin. He had a family of four to support with nothing but farming and/or fishing skills to pull him through.

There were a couple of non-contiguous weeks when we were blessed with exceptionally bountiful catch. On a few random days in those weeks, my cousin decided on our way home to take a detour to a rendezvous point where the town fish mongers, as opposed to the ones serving our locality, congregated to procure their trading supplies for the day. We sold them a portion of our catch. He proposed to keep the sale a secret from my parents with an even split of the proceeds between us, as my incentive to stay mute on the matter. It was amazing how even the conniving innocence of youth was vulnerable to the friendly persuasion and promise of monetary gains.

I dutifully kept my end of the bargain. But in a small community where practically everybody knew everybody who was anybody, the illicit trade eventually reached the ears of my parents. The family protocol on accountability demanded that the oldest party in any conspiracy had to answer for all the ramifications of the sordid affair. I did not even get interrogated by my parents to confirm the breach of trust, let alone being admonished for it. My father did not exactly disown my cousin for it. But I suspected he never trusted my cousin on anything ever again thereafter.

Before the entire sordid affair sorted itself out to a relatively harmonious quietude, I was already engrossed on a disagreement with my father concerning the high school I should enroll into. My father's choice was the town high school slated to start its inaugural school year. I was intent on matriculating at the high school in the adjacent province of Agusan, where two of my older brothers were enrolled. Although he did not explicitly say so, I was absolutely certain that had I studied locally, I could for sure occasionally be deployed to the farm when the work load was at its peak, a prospect that I promised myself to avoid at all cost.

Moreover, at the conclusion of Mano Fito's freshman year, he was sent to Manila to represent the school at a national students' conference and my parents were vocally very proud of his feat. For reasons I really could not explain, I was equally certain that if I went to that same school I could replicate if not surpass the glory imputed to his achievement. I demurred from vocalizing these sentiments in such explicit terms. But without giving any reasons, I claimed open defiance as a badge of honor and went against my father's decision to the bitter end, for the very first time in my thirteen years in the sun.

It was one of my father's cardinal rules that as long as you lived under his roofs, you did things his way or hit the highway. Most probably emboldened by my success as a fisherman (or fisherlad), I was ready willing and eager to hit the highway had I not gotten my way. To my pleasant surprise, with my mother's relentless coaxing, my father relented.

Matriculating in the same school as two of my older brothers gave me an entirely new dimension in sibling relations management. While we adhered to the age-old familial protocol that the oldest, Manong Titing, had a final say on matters that affected the well being of any of us, the school hierarchy compelled us to compete with one another unfettered by any conventions imposed by family bonds. Manong Titing only had two subjects to take that year. They were the residuals from the three additional subjects added to the curriculum when he had a three-year furlough from school. He could only accommodate into his schedule one of the three during his fourth year.

He needed a fifth year in school to take care of the academic deficit. During that extra year he was exempted from operating an independent farm and engaged by the school as Assistant Farm Manager without remuneration. He was delegated to supervise the farm operations of all independent student farmers, and report to the Farm Manager, the second most powerful member of the faculty, anything he deemed untoward practices. A sense of empowerment was deemed sufficient compensation. It was the school's version of exploiting student labor akin to the way tenured professors exploited the services of graduate students in most prestigious universities.

Due to that special arrangement with the school, and to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, instead of all three of us sharing the same cottage, he made arrangements for both Mano Fito and me to partner with a full time senior student to share both a cottage with, and the required cultivation of at least a hectare of rice field as student independent farmers. That served the double benefit of being under his peripheral supervision while we endeavored to hack it out on our own. While he was only a part-time student in terms of academic load, he was eligible to join any extracurricular intramural competitions as a full time bona fide representative of his class year.

One established venue for such activities was the Future Farmers of the Philippines (FFP), an organization of all students in high schools with national agricultural vocational charters. The organization's architecture was vertically integrated on a national scale governing its proceedings. Its basic unit was the local chapter comprised of sectional chapters representing the various class years in the school. An arbitrary grouping of local chapters constituted a regional chapter. Competition on the national level was reckoned in terms of regional representatives. A direct link between the national and local organizations transcended this intricate hierarchical structure in the sense that the local chapters were required to vote directly in the election of national officers.

About the middle of each school year, before the onset of the rice planting season which fell in late November to early December for our locality, an FFP local convention took place to showcase the students' abilities in both vocational agricultural practicum skills and musical and literary talents, assessed in the context of a competition amongst representatives of sectional chapters. The winner of each event would represent the school in the regional convention, typically taking place during the period when the rice crop was approaching its flowering stage, about two months into the rice growing cycle. Whoever won at the regional gathering competed at the national convention which was typically held at the end of the school year.

It was during my first FFP local convention that all three Asumen brothers represented their respective sectional chapters in the extemporaneous public speaking event which was a perennial feature of FFP conventions, though rarely if ever, contested at the national level. The standard operating procedure for this event in essentials consisted as follows: Each contestant was assigned a subject matter to discuss by randomly drawing a piece of paper from a closed box. He was allocated one to two minutes to mentally develop the topic into a coherent speech and three to five minutes to deliver the speech. The performance was rated by a panel of three judges, each one independently making an assessment in terms of quality of the composition, diction, and delivery. The combined ratings given each contestant by all three judges decided the outcome of the competition.

It had to be acknowledged that the elements of chance, inherent to drawing at random the topic you needed to discuss played a major role in that competition. It was entirely possible that you could draw a subject matter about which you were an absolute ignoramus. At that particular setting however, I was very lucky to have drawn something that I could talk about. When the verdict was returned by the judges, for the first time in my life, I bested my two older brothers at something independent of any familial constraints, under rules of engagements construed to be a level playing field.

Needless to say, I was elated beyond words. But even more importantly, my older brothers made me feel they, although tacitly, were genuinely pleased and proud of my triumph. For me it proved that I had arrived as an individual on my own right, no longer just their younger brother. Furthermore, it vindicated my defiance of my father when I earlier insisted on matriculating at that school rather than at the one he had chosen. Having won that title contributed, in no small measure, to my being anointed to represent not only the school but the entire province to the 4H-Club national rally at the end of the school year. It validated my earlier held convictions that I could make a name for myself by studying in that school.

I defended the extemporaneous speaking championship title for three more years of high school. It was my personal trademark along with the distinction of being a master parliamentarian. I got stuck with the latter moniker after leading my regional team into capturing the national title in my junior year with my keen mastery of Robert's Rules of Order, the recognized parliamentary procedures bible governing the conduct of any formal deliberative assembly. I demurred from claiming the laurel because the feat was a team triumph. I was only presiding over the team's staged deliberations; and the strength of any team was determined by the strength of its weakest member, a designation I maintained to never claim for myself.

It might seem that high school was all a bed of roses. It would only seem that way if you didn't appreciate the inherently selective nature of memory. We had been most inclined to record and recall those segments that reinforced our will to live and propelled us to aspire for bigger and better things. But the tradeoffs we were compelled to make, the ones which made the difference between just getting by and going forward, that enabled us to put the other foot on the upper rung of the ladder, were never forgotten. They simply were not casually dwelt upon that often because they embodied the solemn purposefulness of the human soul. As such, they were imbued with some fleeting dimension of sanctity as a conscious inner conflict that defined the ultimate essence of being.

One such perennially recurring mundane tradeoff was between food and kerosene. The food we filled the belly with to fuel the body. The kerosene we fueled the primitive lamp with which we illuminated our books to feed the mind. In retrospect, it never ceased to amaze me how kerosene always won out over food. What made the decision somewhat easier was the abundance of wild water spinach [kangkong (Tagalog) or tangkong (Bisaya)] in the irrigation canals we could gather for free. Boiled to taste, they made a decent imitation of food for dinner. They were sometimes supplemented with the occasional mudfish which wondered into our earth worm baited woven reed basket traps at some strategic locations in those irrigation ditches.

On the other hand, there never was a convenient substitute for the kerosene lamp to make studying at night remotely possible. And there simply was no substitute for studying as it was the entire point of being enrolled in school. Ironically, making the tradeoffs seemed to have made life that much more worth living. Under the flickering glimmer of the kerosene lamp, I hacked and hoed for a way out of the bind with the somnambulant certitude of the desperate determination of youth.

So it came to pass that when I finally happened upon the niche I was in quest of, it was nothing more than the ever recurring struggle to repeatedly liberate myself from the clutches of the Chill Penury that was so solemnly immortalized in Thomas Gray's elegiac lamentations. The most crucial operative modifiers were repeatedly and ever recurring. I just could not muster enough acumen to generate the free energy sufficient to liberate myself once and for all to the point that I did not have to repeat the experience. Nevertheless, I still considered my high school years as definitely the Halcyon days of Yore, confirming once again that George Bernard Shaw's pedantical aphorisms, notwithstanding, youth absolutely had after all not been wasted on the young.

A Tribute to SS Columbia7 Redux

2011-01-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

On the anniversary of the SS Columbia mihaps, and at a time when the transformational Obama statist regime has no qualms on transforming NASA into a vehicle of outreach into the Muslim world, it behooves to revisit and reiterate our homage to the SS Columbia crew who had rendered the ultimate measure of their devotions to the cause of Libert and the Pursuit of Happiness, the proposition on which this America we inherited from our Founding Fathers, have flourished for than two centuries which is not being mortally threatened by the machinations of the statist Obama regime. So once again I beg your indulgence to share with me these sentiments which I rendered into verse, minutes after I heard of the mihap.

God bless you and God bless America

=========================

To Columbia 7: A Tribute

To you, the valiant heirs of Prometheus,

Of Liebnitz, Kepler, and Copernicus,

We mourn our lose but celebrate the cause

That caused the ultimate measure of your

Devotion, proclaimed in blazing glory,

And sealed your rendezvous with Destiny.

In votive gratitude and homage pledge

To keep your tourch aflame and let endure

Ages of unbegot posterity.

Hence every fragment that your ship had strewn

Should our ambitions amply leverage

And claim your vintage courage as our own:

All wholesome sacrifice to Liberty

The ransom price for Immortality!!

Contemplation

2011-01-15T05:54:00.001-08:00

Whither find I the dawn

To dreams I see obscure

Of fate that I may own

My thoughts did long venture

The boast of opulence

On earth the greatest joy

And fountain of much sins

We welcome or endure

To naught sans recompense

Which mortals can deploy.

But sure I of His pure

And keen intelligence

That showers to him peace

Who holds faith in His Grace.

Reflections on Employment

2011-01-06T14:48:00.001-08:00

Soliloquy: Reflections on One Year's Employment

(XIX) [1]

When I consider how some days are spent

Toiling away at boring odds and ends,

Passing from one to next predicament,

I pause and ask: why can't I make amends?

Yet oftentimes the answer never comes;

Or if it does, rather belatedly.

And yet each day, by work, attains its charms;

Or else each day would pass begrudgingly

Unmarked, unwelcomed, not a tear to mourn

Or wash away frustration's epitaph,

Nor hymn to herald those days yet unborn,

Nor elegy when going gets too tough:

Such work as deemed no worthy selfexcuse

Its sin in content does its form abuse!!!

(XX) [2]

Proceed, courageous friend, for glory bound,

Secure much better ends than thus been found.

While shines the beacon from more fertile ground,

Why dwell a penitent of schemes unsound?

All have regrets, and some their penance bear,

But only those defying odds, still dare

The risks of failures could abodes repair

To breathe, in ample fields, Elysian air!

Uncertainty replete, may be the way,

Selfdoubt can yet your self assurance breed

If for each doubt you ample toil defray

With reason's temperance for errors made:

Triumph may not be seen for each attempt

But not attempting breeds but selfcontempt!!!

Conventional Wisdom and Its Ramifications

2010-12-22T21:08:00.001-08:00

Conventional Wisdom Canonizes Mediocrity, Glorifies Incompetence

One might argue: Why get so annoyed?

Tough work to pursue, tougher still unemployed

What with inflation going up by the hour

'Tis no simple mission to get worth for your dollar.

Well, then, it is obvious, there isn't any choice;

Methinks it takes genius, takes cunning otherwise;

Some take the drudgery, all day, nine to five,

Mischief and trickery, nay, sin to survive!

--A Worker's Lament

It has been commonly said (and betimes accepted as gospel) that the most hackneyed cliché embodies the essence of the distilled wisdom of the ages. A plausible argument can be made that the stubborn tenacity of a cliché transitions the practice of traditional therefore casual adherence to common sense into a timeless enshrinement of any aphorism or ritual in the hallowed pantheons of conventional wisdom, as originally coined by John Kenneth Galbraith of The Affluent Society fame. There may not be any specific GPS coordinates to locate that pantheon. But no less a luminary than the New York Times resident economist Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman had alluded to both its power and preponderance.

Conventional wisdom had it that the bureaucratization of national security would produce both efficiency and effectiveness. Thus when the Jamie Gorelick "Wall of Separation" was blamed for the breakdown of intelligence sharing amongst the various agencies which could have conceivably prevented the disaster of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was born. This was nothing more than a superimposition of another layer of bureaucracy upon an already dysfunctional mosaic of quasi-autonomous bureaus. DHS begot the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one of its primary tentacles of implementation.

Since then the TSA's modus operandi had been primarily characterized by an effort to catch up with and prevent or contain the further deployment of the terrorists' latest weapons of attack as revealed by the last failed attempt gratuitously foiled by the perpetrators' bungling incompetence. Lest I be misunderstood, it behooves to emphasize that I have nothing but respect and awe for the individuals who devote themselves to the service of their community and country in these agencies. I however contend that the barren rigidity brought about by bureaucratization corrodes the human dignity which is intrinsic in every human soul. Hence the various personages in these agencies devolve, in varying degrees, from being decent caring human beings into senseless and meticulously rules-driven insensitive therefore nonsensical bureaucrats.

This unintended consequence makes the TSA perpetually one step behind every aspiring terrorist. How does that exactly make the travelling public safer, is anybody's "suspension of disbelief," as more recently famously formulated with her avowed "willingness," by then New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton respecting General Petraeus' progress report on Iraq. Only a bureaucracy can seriously propose that profiling the various trinkets and array of gadgetry that the Jihadists had thus far deployed is a viable method to engineer effective counter measures to neutralize the threat of terrorism. Human beings with a modicum of common sense would propose to profile both the people and the modus operandi of the enemy as essential to the task of architecting an effective strategic counter measure to prevail over the enemy and ensure victory.

When the TSA institutionalized full body scans or a more thoroughly intrusive pat downs, as the latest fail-safe counter-terrorism preventive measure, the air travel public collectively sought solace in the mantra "better safe than sorry," and willingly if begrudgingly adapted to the new security regimen as a way of life. Thus a new equilibrium of civil decency has been inducted and canonized, fait accompli, into the pantheons of conventional wisdom by bureaucracy.

The path of least resistance still remains ever reliable as the overriding determinant to the evolutionary trajectory of the equilibrium of the universe. Alas, to our collective misfortune the truism encompasses societal attitudes and their compelling attendant consequences. Thus the seductive inertia of "Being There" canonizes acceptance of the status quo as the latest variant of conventional wisdom that warrants the perpetuation of the catatonic bliss of ignorance and apathy. It conveniently eluded the national consciousness that the new intensive TSA pat downs had nothing to do with security. Rather it had been a subtle probe into how much government intrusiveness can the public tolerate without being incited into an open rebellion.

It was precisely in this context that the "Revolt of the Masses," as unmistakably evinced by the last midterm elections, assume its full measure of historical significance. The institutionalization of incompetence as most fragrantly showcased by President Obama when he nonchalantly turned over the Presidential lectern to ex-President William Jefferson Clinton, encapsulated the new mindset that would most certainly crystallize in all its grotesque splendor as conventional wisdom for the Obama paradigm of governance, and its repugnant implications.

So it came to pass that the Republicans after winning an electoral mandate conceded a $313 billion in superfluous spending to buy a two-year lease on life of the Bush era tax cuts. It used to be a nugget of conventional wisdom that when and where any policy benefited the national polity, such policy should be worth keeping in perpetuity until such time as the benefit would be negated by a changed configuration of reality. But political spin works magic on the delusional conscience of professional politicians. For reasons only they are biologically equipped to comprehend, every policy that has been deemed and proved to be beneficial to all has to contain a sunset provision.

It seems to be the karma of Republicanism to maintain a congenital deficiency in the DNA that supports a backbone and a commensurate abundance of the DNA that compellingly urges to compromise whatever priceless evanescent vestiges of political capital and personal dignity one may have heroically salvaged, and wallow in the delicious agony of defeat on the intoxicating lap of victory. The latest manifestation of this phenomenon was the 71-26 grotesque ratification of the New START treaty, despite this terse condemnation by Sen. John Cornyn (R- Texas):

"I fear that the New START treaty will serve as another data in a narrative of weakness, pursuing diplomacy for its own sake or indulging in a utopian dream of a world without nuclear weapons divorced from hard reality."

Republicans just seem to be congenitally incapable of resisting the penchant to self-destruct without any prodding, or incentive of a prima facie political gain. Their urges to compromise seem as irresistible as the pre-pubescent initial awakenings of the libidinal hormones of adolescence.

The celebration of incompetence ever so vainly camouflaged by political spin as the hallmark of sophistication and pizzaz, lends the aura of credibility to a gullible nation, a prima facie façade of due diligence at promoting the national well being. The jury is still out whether the Bill Clinton deployment to the press briefing on the Bush era tax cut compromise would prove to be a stroke of genius for President Obama's political comeback or the moral equivalent of a political hara-kiri, as laid out by Peggy Nonan:

The president must have thought that distancing himself from left and right would make him more attractive to the center. But you get credit for going to the center only if you say the centrist position you've just embraced is right. If you suggest, as the president did, that the seemingly moderate plan you agreed to is awful and you'll try to rescind it in two years, you won't leave the center thinking, "He's our guy!" You'll leave them thinking, "Note to self: Remove Obama in two years."

It all depends on how forthrightly and how much backbone the new breed of Republicans can muster to give the country the overdue wake-up call thereby enabling them to wrestle the helms of power to restore the country on the right track, after two years of the Obama regime's conspiratorially unadulterated reckless plunder of the national soul, on the promise of a
vaingloriously vacuous transformational post partisan national well-being. In the spirit of the Christmas season, when charity behooves to be the order of the day, I grant the Republicans the benefit of the doubt, and just hope that they shall see for the coming New Year the guiding light to gain prudence in all their political decisions.

For everybody else, regardless of political inclinations, goals, and prejudices, I send the following recycled wishful sentiments for the season from my family and myself:

Seasons' Greetings

Often the truth we sadly miss

As we see only what we know.

Nor each occasion could reveal

The gravity of what we feel,

On things we dare and dare not do.

Yet, though in vain, let me express

One simple thought, one sincere wish:

That may with love and peaceful bliss

Replete you find the Holidays!

And may the seasons thereafter

Be seasoned with mirth and laughter.

The rare occasioned somber sky

May not but serve to amplify

The happiness of days gone by,

And glories of unyielding prime,

And promises of days that lie

Uncharted in the blue abyss

And daunting vagaries of Time!

May each grief find sweet redress;

Alien to fears, much less to tears,

May triumphs and exploits increase,

All through the fast succeeding years!

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year!!

MyArchives

2010-11-22T07:12:00.001-08:00

Greetings,

I am a tendentiously opinionated free-lance writer unabashedly unapologetic of the bias of my ideas. I am exploring the prospects of transitioning my free-lance status to a money-making proposition.

I am pleased to report that in the first week of April 2011, I entered into a contract with FriesenPress for that organization to publish my first book, "Flirting with Misadventures (Escapades of an Exotic Life)" which is scheduled to hit the market before July 2011. Above is a rough motif of the book's cover.

Below is a selective list of samples of my writing, in reverse chronology, which I invite you to peruse at your leisure. These essays have been reproduced as part of Part 3 of the book, along with other yet unpublished works:

NewMediaJournal.us Cross-Vetted Recent Articles

Conventional Wisdom Canonizes Mediocrity, Glorifies Incompetence
(2010/12/22)
Civics101: The Calculus of Political Polarization (2010/11/22)
Being There: The Tragic Legacy of Voting Present
(2010/07/21)

Incidental Lessons from Fluid Mechanics
(2010/06/19)

In Search for Governing Virtues
(2010/05/25)
Slouching Out of National Dyslexia
(2010/04/27)
Dissonant & Delusional: The Activist Ideologue
(2010/03/03)
Obama's Contempt: Vestige of His Incompetence
(2010/02/01)
Green Technology: A Poverty of Philosophy
(2010/01/20)
Global Warming: The Religion that Failed
(2010/01/04)
Consensus Does Not a Science Make
(2009/11/27)
Historical Parallels & Intersections
(2009/11/16)
The Repugnant Obama Paradigm
(2009/11/11)
The Myth of Moderate Islam
(2009/11/06)
ObamaCare: How Lucky Can You Get?
(2009/11/05)
Assimilation Overkill Begets Bigotry
(2009/11/02)

I am broadly interested in any human endeavor that pertains to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as protected by the U.S. Constitution and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Two casual essay writing samples are found in the following URLs:

http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/2009/12/13/dearth_of_accountability%e2%80%94tangling_with_a_tale_of_the_tiger.thtml

and

http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/2009/12/02/no_longer_a_church-going_christian.thtml

Narrative writing samples are found in the following URLs:

http://asumenacumen.blogspot.com/2010/09/misadventures-with-jellyfish.html

http://asumenacumen.blogspot.com/2010/09/fallout-from-blind-encounter-with.html

My technology profile is posted here:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/asumenstan.

Poetry samples are found here:

http://acelilacs.webs.com/schumanspinozasonnets.htm

and, http://acelilacs.webs.com/patrioticsonnets.htm

more, http://acelilacs.webs.com/awkwardtoilsomeyears.htm

Blog sites are found here: http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/

and here: http://acelilacs.webs.com/apps/blog/

more here: http://asumenacumen.blogspot.com/

I look forward to hearing from you really soon.

A Gateway to my Writing Profile

2010-11-07T11:32:00.001-08:00

I am a tendentiously opinionated free-lance writer unabashedly proud of the bias of my ideas. I am exploring the prospects of transitioning my free-lance status to a money-making proposition.

Below is a selective list of samples of my writing, in reverse chronology, which I invite you to peruse at your leisure:

NewMediaJournal.us Cross-Vetted Recent Articles

Being There: The Tragic Legacy of Voting Present
(2010/07/21)

Incidental Lessons from Fluid Mechanics
(2010/06/19)

I am broadly interested in any human endeavor that pertains to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as protected by the U.S. Constitution and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Two casual essay writing samples are found in the following URLs:

http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/2009/12/13/dearth_of_accountability%e2%80%94tangling_with_a_tale_of_the_tiger.thtml

and

http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/2009/12/02/no_longer_a_church-going_christian.thtml

Narrative writing samples are found in the following URLs:

http://asumenacumen.blogspot.com/2010/09/misadventures-with-jellyfish.html

http://asumenacumen.blogspot.com/2010/09/fallout-from-blind-encounter-with.html

More introspective/reflective/contemplative type of writing is illustrated here:

http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/2010/03/29/completed_contribution_to_an_inquiry_into_the_nature_and_understanding_of_knowledge.thtml

My technology profile is posted here:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/asumenstan.

Poetry samples are found here:

http://acelilacs.webs.com/schumanspinozasonnets.htm

and, http://acelilacs.webs.com/patrioticsonnets.htm

more, http://acelilacs.webs.com/awkwardtoilsomeyears.htm

Blog sites are found here: http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/

and here: http://acelilacs.webs.com/apps/blog/

more here: http://asumenacumen.blogspot.com/

I look forward to hearing from you really soon.

Decision Day Is Upon Us

2010-11-01T23:02:00.001-07:00

"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." – Barry Goldwater

Tuesday, November 2, 2010 marks the first crucial step we have to make to take back the U.S. Constitution, which from the very inception of the Obama Administration has been maligned, mocked, molested, abused, and brutalized. There is no more formidable shrine of liberty than represented jointly by both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Casting your vote in any election is one of the most fundamental steps we can take to galvanize and fortify that much needed defense. So get out there and exercise your responsibility of citizenship and cast your vote. Take your family, take your friends, take your neighbors. Offer your assistance to anybody who needs it to facilitate that person's going to the polls.

Senator Goldwater may have gotten the short end of the Johnson landslide in 1964. But there is hardly any doubt that the spark of conservatism ignited by that campaign smoldered into the Reagan landslide in 1984. Likewise, the blatant disregard of protocols of civility so eloquently showcased in the processes leading up to the enactment into law of ObamaCare had awakened the fire in the belly of Americanism.

So after the polls are closed, the votes are tallied, doubtful results litigated, after the electoral dust settles we can regroup and recalibrate our bearings to take stock of how far ahead have we advanced the cause of liberty. After the Murkowski's the Castles and the Crists of the world have had vented their last lament of entitlement denied, or God forbid, hurrah for vanity absolved as the case may be, we can once again be at peace with the reality, no matter how harsh may be, that elections always have consequences. And some of them may not be to our liking.

But as I had repeatedly pointed out elsewhere, any and every national polity always deserve the leadership they get regardless of the means by which they had gotten it, or the errors that happened unto them. Electoral accidents can happen and the same process which brought us the detestable Al Frankin, Barney Frank, etc. also brought as the venerable Daniel Patrick Moynihan. We just have to endeavor to assure ourselves that a next cycle would still take place.

Electoral shortcomings as the nation obtained in the ascendancy of Barack Obama, is not the worst thing that can happen to a country. There is always the next election cycle to look forward to and work for.

Memo to All Californians

2010-10-30T04:15:00.001-07:00

Jerry Brown has been a permanent fixture of the State Government infrastructure even before he became governor way back when. He is, in no small measure, responsible for the fiscal mess the California has become. It's time to retire Jerry. Send him home and put Whitman in. It needs the intuition of a woman to clean-up the mess.
Boxer's most notable accomplishment has been to rename buildings and streets, and facilitate immigrants' documentation processing towards a green card for all of 18 years. That's 3 full Senatorial terms. It's about time to give another woman a shot at representing California in the National Polity: send in Carly Fiorina, you'll all be the better for it.
As a matter of general sanity and intellectual hygiene, it's about time to seriously consider an Abortion Litmus Test: Any political aspirant for any office whatever which has leverage over fiscal policy and budgeting should be screened respecting support or opposition to government funding of abortion on demand. At a time when the national fertility rate barely passes breakeven only because of immigrant population who are less prone to kill off their offspring, it is unconscionable to have taxpayers' (some of whom are definitely against abortion) money be allocated to kill off the nation's future.

A Short Note of Consolation

2010-10-13T12:05:00.001-07:00

Reflections and Condolences

No words bedeemed e'en halfway adequate
Echo of such event unfortunate
When one beloved through the threshold pass
To leave the field resignedly for us
To reap the harvest from the seeds she'd sown
So from that harvest e'en more seeds be grown
So from the field yet be more harvest reaped
And through the seasons thus the field be kept.

No matter that she may behold no more
All those blossoms she so enjoyed before
It is for us to let the flowers grow
And of our best endeavors to bestow
That of her virtues we may dare extend
Of the shortcomings amply make amend.
If through our days we can this task sustain
She shall not have been in this field in vain.

Let tears flow free now to our sorrows' vent
Sad thoughts are lighter made if by tears spent;
Receive the cheers that whosoever sends
Sorrow is lighter made if shared with friends.
May the lines that hereinunder follow
Which, mine wanting, from the sage I borrow
Be of help to mitigate the sorrow
As we face the yet uncharted morrow:
***
"Many we love the loveliest and the best
That Time and Fate of all their vintage prest
Have drunk their cup a round or two before
And one by one crept silently to rest;
***
"And we, that now make merry in the room
They left, and summer dresses in new bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the couch of earth
Descend ourselves to make a couch for whom?
***
"So make the most of what we yet may spend
Before we too into the dust descend
Dust into dust, and under dust to lie
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and sans end.*"

*Quotation is a modified rendition to E. Fitzgerald's
translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat

Original: New York City, April 6, 1987
Revisited: Rocky Point, NY December 23, 2007