Book: Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

I never liked books of the magical realism genre.

I bought Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude years ago and I still haven't gone past the first chapter. I figured it would probably take me 100 years of utmost solitude before I would pick that book up again.

Last week, I bought the English translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I didn't know why I chose that book. Probably because there were not much to choose from. Japanese bookstores have only limited display of English titles, and many of them are translations from Japanese originals.

I thought I would find Murakami's book a rip-off.

I was wrong.

A real page-turner.

As with other magical realism books, one has to suspend disbelief for a while. Tuna and leeches raining from the sky. Cats and crow talking.

The genius of Murakami lies on his ability to get his readers indulge on the surreal, strange world he created, making it hard for them to separate the real from the metaphor.

How to spot a Geologist

from Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.

To spot a geologist in the wild, look for:


Hand-lens, compass, pen-knife, handcuffs etc. tied round neck with string.

Ownership of a pet rock (in the case of paleontologist, this will be their closest friend) often found hanging from keys.

Overenthusiasm on the subject of dinosaurs.

Someone explaining to airport security that a sidewall core covered in gunpowder residue isn't really a weapon.

Takes photos, includes people only for scale, and has more pictures of rock hammer and lens cap than of his family.

Someone with unnatural amounts of facial hair (or in the case of women - leg and armpit hair) and wears lots of polar fleece.

Someone whose lunch consists of rocks, instead of ordinary bread.

Someone who consumes tonsil-killing chili for dinner every night of the week, and warms it up in a can on the drill rig engine block.

Someone whose child is trained to know the geological timescale before it can walk.

Often has hair in a pony-tail (this applies to male or female geologists).

Someone who considers a "recent event" to be anything that has happened in the last hundred thousand years.

Someone who licks and/or scratches & sniffs rocks or in case of china clay will eat it to prove its perfectly safe.

Someone who eats dirt and claims to be "getting an estimate of grain size"

Someone who will willingly cross an eight-lane interstate on foot to determine if the outcrops are the same on both sides.

Someone who can pronounce the word molybdenite correctly on the first try.

Someone who has hiked 6 miles to look at a broken fence that was "offset by a recent earthquake".

Someone who says "this will make a nice christmas gift" while out rock collecting.

Someone who hires student assistants with an eye to whether they can run slower so the bears get them first.

Someone who can jump start a campfire in wet weather with the judicious application of a beer fart.

Someone who from personal experience knows the difference between Arctic grade and summer grade diesel fuel.

Someone who even on an average day in the field can make Indiana Jones look like a bit of a clutzy wuss.

They look at scenery and tell you how it formed

Pockets tend to be filled with bits of rock.

The rockery moved into their spare room.

They have more pairs of walking boots than shoes.

Wears walking boots constantly,even for formal functions, occasionally sandals with (obligatory) socks

They think of woodlice as trilobites but would tell anyone off who said so.

When on a beach will collect shells and try to explain their muscle scars to you.

Someone who prefers to explain the sequence of events shown in a cliff face to sunbathing.

Their collection of petrified wood samples are stacked like cord wood.

They plan extra time on trips to investigate road cuts along the way.

Often explains how their boozy coffee with whipped cream resembles a layered igneous complex.

Their radioactive ore specimen collection glows in the dark. It is so bright you can:
use it to read by.
illuminate your front yard.
use it as a landing beacon.
See it from Mars.

From Taongbato's fieldnotes: Images from 2006 Luzon GPS Fieldwork

Southern Luzon

Nov. 30, 2006 at 3 pm. CASIFMAS (Camarines Sur Institute of Fisheries and Marine Sciences) dormitory in Pasacao. Second day of their GPS fieldwork. It was still 3 pm yet it was already pitch dark outside as it was at the height of the typhoon Reming. At 9 am earlier that day the super typhoon, which had sustained winds of 190 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 225 kph, made a landfall in Virac, Catanduanes. It was expected to move north-northwest, towards Quezon Province, then to Metro Manila. It changed its course however and moved towards west, sparing Metro Manila, but placing Camarines Sur, including Pasacao, on its path.

Taongbato and his two colleagues started to feel the onslaught of the typhoon at around 12 noon, but it was not until 2 pm that they experienced the brunt of its force as it pummeled Pasacao and nearby places. At around 4 pm, there was a brief lull for about thirty minutes, when the "eye" passed over them. Shortly after, it regained its strength, stronger than before. The pressure was so strong that their ears got blocked, as if they were in a plane moments after its takeoff. They could hear the howling of the winds and the sounds of crashing trees and branches outside. This lasted until midnight.



Above is a short video posted by Taongbato in Youtube. The video was taken outside the CASIFMAS dormitory in Pasacao 2 hours before the typhoon arrived.

Above is Taongbato, pushing the table hard as the door threatened to implode as the howling winds kept on slamming it from the outside.

Nov. 30, 2006. Just minutes after Taongbato moved to the opposite side of the room, the glass walls fell down. That was a very close call. He could have been hit and hurt by glass splinters.

Dec. 1, 2006. The Day After. Glass shards all over the place. Broken branches and leaves were scattered outside.

Dec. 1, 2006. The Day After. Their vehicle was unscathed after all. Their driver could not sleep the entire night as he was worried that the vehicle got hit by flying roofs or branches, or worse, turned turtle.


Dec. 1, 2006. This man said that he and his family were inside when the house collapsed at around 10 pm the night before. They decided to stay inside rather than go out for fear that they would be hit by flying debris. Fortunately, the house was made of wood and nipa, no one got hurt.

Dec. 1, 2006. The Day After. Uprooted trees everywhere.

Dec. 01, 2006. The Day After. Electric posts were thrown all over, some houses crumbled like deck of cards. A NAPOCOR transmission tower along the national highway 'wilted' like dying plant.

Northern Luzon

Dec. 6, 2006. On their way to Pangasinan, Taongbato and his colleagues witnessed a road accident. A tricycle driver from the opposite of their lane made a sudden U-turn, and was bumped by the car ahead of them. They actually saw the driver on air as he was being thrown out a few meters away from the tricyle he was driving. They thought that was the end of him.

Dec. 6, 2006. Fortunately, the driver was still ok, he stood up but appeared to have been badly hurt.

Dec. 7, 2006. Dried fish vendor along the national highway in Pangasinan.

Dec. 10, 2006. Capas, Tarlac. A 70-meter obelisk at the Capas Concentration Camp. It was on this place that survivors of the infamous Death March during the Second World War were incarcerated.

The plaque attached to the obelisk.

Taongbato at the Capas Concentration Camp.

The Vow

Ann, God gave you to me as He gave me to you; as your husband I will treasure you as long as I live, and nurture with you a life and a love toward which the Father has both called us. Together, through the frailties of our human lives, we will seek to build together a family that is our own. Before God and before this assembly of faith, I declare that I love you, and I pray that such love God will deepen and enrich even more, and that in whatever I do as a husband and friend to you and a father to the children whom God in his infinite wisdom blesses us with, such love does not become an empty platitude but a promise observed. I will find joy in knowing you as my wife, my friend, my helpmate, and in being faithful to you, who are now joined to me in one shared life, through its joys and pains, tests and triumphs. Ann, I only ask that you stand beside me, and serve God with me through a life that from now on, becomes our shared existence. Today, I pledge to you my love, my protection, and my faithfulness as your husband, your friend and your helpmate. Ann, I love you.

From my field notes: Homonhon and Ginsaugon

One of the things that I like about my job as a government geologist, despite the meager salary I receive everymonth, is that I get to visit places I will have no chance of seeing in my lifetime if I were, say, employed as a banker.

A. Homonhon Island

Every Filipino grade schooler knows Homonhon Island. It's the bean-shaped landmass south of Eastern Samar facing the Pacific Ocean where the Spanish (actually Portuguese) Magellan and his men first set foot on the Philippine soil after almost two years of travel from Europe.

Although it is an important landmark in the Philippine history, but because of its location, I never imagined I would be able to set foot on the island.

So eat your heart out, Yoyoy Villame! I have been to the island you have immortalized in your Philippine Geography song, not only once but thrice in the last two years!

This is very shore where Magellan and his fleet of five ships landed five hundred years ago (March 16, 1521).

A cross and a mural with a plaque marking the site where Magellan and his men took rest after reaching the Philippine soil.

A plaque commemorating Magellan's landing on the Philippine shore.

An artist's depiction of Magellan and his men reaching Homonhon.

This creek runs for about 100 meters before emptying into the sea. Magellan and his men followed the creek from the shore until they reached this place where they replenished their water supplies. At the background is the mural and the cross where Magellan and his men took rest for 8 days.


B. Ginsaugon

Ginsaugon. I have been to this place two years ago. I rented a habal-habal and followed the trace of the Philippine Fault which passes near the Ginsaugon village.

When I reached the place again early this month, I was dumbfounded by what I saw. What used to be a lively village is now but a desolate heap of rocks and white boulders. I felt sad knowing that under the place where I stood were villagers, numbering to around a thousand, including two hundred school children, buried under 30-meter debris.

A cross was constructed to remember those who were buried under tons of debris.

I came across two former Ginsaugon residents who were there to light candles for their love ones: a man who lost his entire family and a lady who lost her mother, daughter and two nephews.

Teary-eyed, the man described to me how he and three others saw in horror, from a safe higher ground where they were tending their farms, the tons of debris that engulfed the whole village, his two school age kids and wife included- in less than two minutes. He and his three companions could only cry in despair.

Tent city- this is where the landslide victims are housed.

Business as usual for this lady tending her sari-sari store inside the evacuation center.

It's also business as usual for the usual suspects. The streamer reads... " Millions of donations, but only a fraction reached the intended victims...the following government agencies... to erase all doubts, should explain and provide a detailed accounting for the donations." SHAME!

Sisibol pa sana ang magandang umaga para sa mga taga Ginsaugon.

Pinoy Pride

Below is another article I submitted to the Youngblood section of Philippine Daily Inquirer (came out July 29, 2000). I hope this article would help us feel better about ourselves as Pinoys.
-----
Frites et poulet (fries and chicken).

"Not again," I muttered to myself as I sat down for dinner at the restaurante universitaire in the dormitory where I am staying in Paris. I was contemplating the prospects of yet another boring dinner when an equally bored-looking African student took his seat in front of me. He watched his plate, took a few bits of fries, then pushed it away and shook his head. Obviously tired of having to eat almost the same stuff every night, he looked at me and then started to ask in French peppered with thick African accent, "Where are you from?" "From the Philippines," I said.

His eyes grew wide. From the way he looked at me, I could guess what his next question would be. "Ah, a Filipino!" he exclaimed, his voice brimming with excitement as if he had found the answer to an eternal question that was bothering him for a long time. Then between chewing his fries and drinking his Coke, he asked me conspiratorially, "Are you a Muslim?"

I pretended not to have heard anything. This guy was obviously misinformed about our country's religious statistic, which was quite pardonable since the Philippines and Africa are world's apart. What is more outrageous is when someone from Imperial Manila looks at you with suspicion because you happen to have told him you came from Mindanao. This happened to me many times before. People tended to keep their distance when I told them I was from Zamboanga del Norte, thinking that I was a Muslim. Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim. What pisses me off are the shallow perceptions of some people from Luzon that all Muslims are war freaks and are bound to run amok. That is prejudice pure and simple.

The African student ignored my silence and asked his next question: "Are you a Muslim? Are you an Abu Sayyaf?" The mention of Abu Sayyaf woke me up from my dreamless stupor. "Nope," I replied. "And granting that I am, do you have a problem with that?" Surprised by my heated response, he took his plate and transferred to the next table. "Serves him right," I told to myself.

I could not blame him though. It all started when a cargo vessel was shipwrecked off the coast of Jolo in April, killing at least 100 on board.

That story caught the attention of the French media. This was followed by the crash of Air Philippines Flight 407 in Davao a week later.

A French colleague noted that news from the Philippines were being featured more frequently on TV. I did not give it much thought. I told him developed countries did not have a monopoly of CNN, and people around the world needed a momentary respite from l'affaire Elian Gonzalez and his feuding clan.

I reassured myself that news like these happened very rarely. When was the last time we got really bad publicity in the world media? Was it during the Manila Filmfest scam? Or was it when a Filipino geologist, who was supposedly a genius, jumped to his death in the jungles of Indonesia after being implicated in a scam that rocked the world's mining industry? When such stories came out, people around the world talked about our country for a fleeting moment and then went on with their lives. I never imagined there would be bigger stories that would be featured by every major newsmagazine around the world, giving our country a reputation as one of the world's most dangerous places to live in.

What I am talking about are, of course, the abduction of 21 people, 10 of them Westerners from a tourist resort in Sipadan, Malaysia, and the infamous and fatally attractive "ILOVEYOU" virus. And who can forget the tragi-comedy of the PAL hijacker and his improvised parachute that refused to open. That episode must have earned us the title of Capital of the Absurd.

It makes me sad and very defensive to learn about the things going on in our country. How I am supposed to reply when people ask me for an update on the hostage drama in Sulu? Should I tell them our President considers the situation nothing but a minor problem that is happening in a far-flung island of the Philippines?

How would you react when your Swiss dorm mate tells you pointblank that the Philippines is not only an exporter of domestic helpers but Internet viruses as well? How do you answer a German student, frustrated over the very slow pace of the negotiations for the release of the hostages, especially a sick German woman, who posts a message on the Net that says, "A dumb president plus a dumb people equals a dumb country"?

I have no problem with Erap being called names. Ever since the President landed on the cover of Time Magazine, everyone around the world knows that when nature handed out brains, Erap was with Fernando Poe Jr. drinking Johnnie Walker Blue. As president, he has demonstrated little more than the false bravado of an action star. But I am not about to let any get away with an insult such as the German student delivered. I told him terrorism was not a monopoly of our country. Such things happen everywhere. Ireland has the dreaded IRA, France and Spain have the Basque separatists and England has the hooligans and white supremacists. And there are misfits in American schools who sow terror among their classmates. I reminded him that about the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust. Finally I wrote, "And between a maniacal leader like Hitler and a dumb one like ours, it's no contest: I will always choose the latter." He never replied.

But since the story about the "ILOVEYOU" virus and the hostage incident came out last month, not a few Filipinos have told me they no longer wanted to be associated with our country. Two Filipino tourists I met last month admitted that they passed off themselves as Thais. A Pinay married to a Frenchman said that she would reply in general and vague terms ("an Asian") whenever somebody inquires about her origins.

Since it would be futile to pretend to be somebody we are not and since we cannot hide the truth that we are Filipinos inside out, I told them, why should we not be proud of it? Oh, there are many positive things we can be proud of as a people. We are known for our hospitality, despite our material inadequacies. Our indomitable spirit allows us to smile despite economic woes. We may have yet to produce religious giants in the league of A.W. Tozer, Mother Theresa and Billy Graham, but our people have a deep, solid faith in God, which allows us to endure and keeps us resilient in times of difficulties.

More than this, we are a people whose heroism, selflessness and courage are worth more a thousand Nobel Peace Prize accolades. Our people venture into distant lands unknown, giving up the protective warmth of their families so they can build roofs over their children's heads and give them better chances of succeeding in life through education. I have known many of them here in France. I have heard many of their stories a hundred times. I have seen the sacrifices they make just so the family they love and left behind can lead better lives.

Indeed, notwithstanding the Love Bug virus and the hostage taking, I can say with confidence that no other race around the world could be as generous, dignified and noble as we are.

Of books and immortality

There are three tasks to be performed to ensure immortality, so they say: plant a tree, write a book and build a family.

****
Writing is corollary.

I could not remember exactly when I was bitten by the bug to write, but I believe it was on the same time when I started reading abridged stories of the Count of Monte Cristo, Treasure Island, Rip van Winkle, Guilliver's Travels and the Bobbsey Twin Mysteries in grade school and high school.

Later on, I came to realize that the allure of natural science is much stronger than the calls of writing. This and the realization that I did not (and still do not) have the talent for writing. I forayed into composition, mostly short essays in our high school newspaper but as you can now attest, my writing skills are raw and crude. I have been telling myself that I should leave writing to those who really know how write, to the likes of those who have been gobbling up Orwell and Hesse and Tolkien even before they were able to walk.

And so I took geology in college.

The call of nature (chuckles, no pun intended) proved to be irresistible for Taong Bato, as he stood in front of an old volcanic edifice in Babuyan Island.

Most of my college nights were spent learning triple integration, petrogenesis and plate motions. As an average student, I was constrained to spend a few extra hours every night scavenging my notes in order to remain in my major. I did not have the chance to read much history, a subject I have learned to appreciate in high school. The five more busy years in graduate school were splurged reading geology books and scientific journals and writing dissertation. I got acquainted with the scholarly works of Edward Said and Francis Fukuyama and the fine stories of Camus and Hesse and H.G. Wells just recently, after I got my graduate degree. It was only then that I realized I had been missing a lot.

This is not to say that I regretted the day I chose to become a geologist. If I were to live another life, I would still choose my present profession.

****
Travel books fascinate me. Most of the books in my shelves are about the adventures of people who spent years of bohemian living in the edge. Everytime I read their memoirs, it seems like I am transported from my dreary existence in UP Bliss to rugged terrains where real and exciting actions take place- trapping wolves in the windswept hills of Alaska or crossing the perilous Kashmir frontiers in Afghanistan under the heavy Russian artillery.

I also have a share of light and funny travel books, most of which are written by Bill Bryson and Peter Mayle.

****
If I were to write a book and become immortal, I will probably write about my travel experiences, as I have been travelling a lot lately.

One problem here is that I am not very diligent in jotting down notes, a virtue innate among travel writers. At the end of a tiring field work or exhausting travel, I would rather sleep than write about the places and people I met that day.

One friend suggested that I write my life story. That had left me laughing no end.

And who will read my autobiography? I am not the president of this country, I do not hold an important government position. I have never been a privy to shady, crooked government deals. I have never been elected nor ran for any public office, not even as a village councilor. In short, I am nobody. If I were Virgilio Garcillano, perhaps things would be a lot easier.

I am afraid I will remain a mortal for the time being.