A foot in the door

I had a very pleasant reunion last week with two old friends, editors Thelma Sioson-San Juan and Jun Engracia, with whom I go a long way back to our activist days in the 1970s, before we all joined one newspaper or other. Our hostess for lunch at L’Opera was another friend, the vivacious Fe Perez-Agudo, EVP and COO of Hyundai Asia Resources Inc., whom I’d met on a visit to Korea last year. It was fun because we chatted about everything but real work. We did talk cars—which is fun anytime, as far as this old boy’s concerned, even if Fe knew a whole lot more about cars than I did. Which was fair enough, since she sold them—a lot of them, even or maybe because of these penny-pinching times. Known for their fuel economy, Hyundai had sold more than a thousand cars locally just the past month, a hefty number considering what everyone else was going through. The last time I looked, Hyundai was fifth in the ranking of car companies in the Philippines; it was now No. 4. One of these days, I’d like to personally contribute to Hyundai’s growth. In the meanwhile, I’m going to have to be happy tooling around town in my ’79 VW, which can still turn heads in a way its owner can’t. If I only put as half as much time, effort, and loose change into restoring myself the way I pamper my Beetle, my pens, and my watches, I’d be giving that Piolo and that Dingdong guy a run for their money. Or maybe not. I should be happy just to be this old, if a bit decrepit. Let’s get back to that lunch. Jun Engracia recalled how, as a greenhorn at the Daily Express in the early ‘70s, he was sent off to cover the Senate—the turf of grizzled veterans whom he found playing poker the day he walked into their press room. Someone called him to order him out for a pack of cigarettes. “Uhm, boss, he’s a reporter,” the guy was told. And thus was Jun’s career as a newspaperman launched. I shared my story of how, as a brash 17-year-old dropout at about that same time, I’d tried to convince Amando Doronila at the Manila Chronicle to take me in. “Come back in a few years” was what I was kindly told, more or less. Instead of waiting a few years, I went to the Philippines Herald, where city editor Nemesio Dacanay—perhaps thinking to get rid of the pesky boy as well—asked me to come back in three days with a story, any story. I did; after waiting for three days in Quezon City for the sky to fall so I would get a scoop (it didn’t), I saw a bad movie at the Delta Theater, typed up a review, and got my foot in the door of journalism. Those were the days when I would’ve given my right arm for a byline, and in a way I did, with my deskman reducing me to tears by demanding a rewrite of a story half a dozen times. I was thin as a rake, with a shock of wavy hair, chain-smoking Marlboros, and convinced that I was chronicling the inevitable collapse of a bankrupt regime, especially when I got assigned to the police beat and to the demonstrations at the US Embassy, which I was now witnessing—for a change—from the other side of the police lines. The “inevitable”, as it turned out, would take 14 more years (if at all), but journalism has a way of chopping history up into Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I was glad to be young, alive, and acutely aware of events brushing my cheek, sometimes too roughly, and I’m sure Jun and Thelma shared the exhilaration. I savored the grilled salmon at L’Opera, but relished even more, I think, the survival of good company into a benign middle age we never thought we’d see. Speaking of a foot in the door, I received a message from a reader named Anjeline de Dios, who’s now studying in faraway Trondheim, Norway. She wasn’t excited for herself but for another friend of hers named Gianpaolo “GP” Eleria, who was finishing his Bachelor of Music degree at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. GP, she said, had just given a speech to the college on its opening day on September 5, and did I want to read and share the speech? Now, I normally toss forwarded material aside, but since this was personally addressed to me, I thought I’d take a look, and it was a good thing I did, because this fellow made a lot of sense as he wrapped up his US experience. Here’s an excerpt from that speech, the full text of which I’ll publish on my blog: “First, poverty is not an obstacle. Not everyone who goes to Berklee can actually afford to go to Berklee. A lot of us here have had to fight tooth and nail just to get one foot in the door. Many, like me, struggled to keep that foot in the door. Armed with student loans and an incredible amount of audacity, we stayed on, betting on the belief that we will make it pay off someday. “Second, networking-schmetworking! The first tip I ever got starting out at Berklee was that I should start networking. These past four years have shown me that there is one better, more powerful, enduring thing than networking—and that is friendship. Networking can be overrated. But the essence of it never is. What people eventually learn to do here is to forge meaningful relationships. And to achieve that, there is one simple thing to remember: exchange a relationship, not just contact information. Resist being one of the many with a bloated address book and FaceBook friends that don't show. “Third, English sure isn't my first language—and I’m proud of it! The prejudice that arises from the seeming lack of a common language is a debilitating disease. And there is no better place to find that out than here at Berklee. But don't get me wrong. Everyone here actually works very hard to understand everyone else. You know why? Because while English sure isn't my first language, at Berklee it isn't anyone's first language. Music is. And the sooner students realize how eloquent they can be at speaking it, the sooner they are able to share themselves with each other. “Fourth, doors are better opened. Forget your comfort zone. It is a prison. Many would attest that there are not a lot of things as risky as shelling out a hundred and sixty thousand dollars to go to a music college, especially for this generation of musicians who grew up downloading and sharing their music collections online. So, for those of us who came here anyway, there is absolutely no reason to shrink back into any form of comfort zone now. Being here, by definition, means choosing risk over caution—it's improvisation. And those of us that stayed in character found that the opening of doors never ends.” Many thanks and all the best, GP. Here’s to your own long career in art and its special language. Email me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.