Edsa II: From the Outside Looking In

WHEN THE Kapampangan Rep. Oscar Rodriguez and his fellow prosecutors walked out of the impeachment hearings in the Senate seven years ago, I knew the end was near for Joseph Ejercito Estrada. When an outraged public started gathering in prayer and in protest at Edsa, I knew it would soon be over.

It was history repeating itself and I knew I had to be there.

After seeing action in the frontline that was Pampanga before, during and after the People Power Revolution of 1986, the gathering storm at Edsa in 2001 was one thing I could not afford to miss. I had to be part of it.

This, even if I knew I could not. When the second revolution broke out, I was nowhere near Edsa. I was in the middle of an oppressive New York winter, watching and listening as the Estrada Government slowly started to crumble.

I was on the third day of a two-week holiday in New York, my first real break since I joined the Foreign Service three years ago, when it happened. Had I known that I would be returning to a different milieu, I would not have left Manila at all.

Having been a journalist for many years, I always had to be where the action was. From my baptism of fire as a 16-year-old cub reporter covering countless anti-Marcos demonstrations in the streets of Manila to my reckless adventures as a news correspondent covering a real revolution in the countryside of Central Luzon, I was there.I was there to chronicle history as it unfolded.

One can just imagine my consternation when I was relegated to the sidelines by a revolution that would not wait for me. For the first time in my many years, I was in the outside looking in. I had to content myself watching Edsa II unravel right before my eyes from where I was on the other side of the globe.

There was nothing much I could do. I stayed glued to the developments in Manila, going with little sleep for three straight days, ignoring the bitter winter chill, burning the lines, shouting and cursing and wishing that I was with the throng that gathered for the final showdown back home.

I wished I was there when Oscar Rodriguez walked out following the narrow Senate vote on that Manila envelope that started it all. I wished I was there when my fellow officers at the Department of Foreign Affairs exercised their rights as citizens and lent their presence at Edsa.

I wished I was there when the leaders of the Armed Forces and the National Police came out in open defiance of their commander-in-chief. I wished I was there when our very own Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took her oath as the 14th President of the Republic. I wished I was there when an angry sea of red forced a shamed leader out of Malacañang.

I guess I would just have to console myself with the fact that I was not alone in my frustration. I am sure that countless other Filipinos who, like me, were caught outside the country during the revolution share the same misgivings of having missed out on Edsa II.

Like all the others who would have wanted to be at Edsa, I would just have to find solace with the thought that even if I was thousands of miles away, it was as though I have never left. All throughout, I was there in spirit.

Encounters with Amang

I WAS waving him goodbye at the end of our Strategic Planning Workshop at the Holiday Inn Resort at Clark Field when I was called in to accompany him. He wanted to go to his favorite Pampanga haunt—Everybody’s Café, in San Fernando—for some betute and other Kapampangan dishes he had long been craving for. His aides do not know how to get him there so I ended up in the passenger seat of the Ford Expedition, breathing cloud after cloud of second-hand smoke the man in the front seat was notoriously known for.

From where he was seated, Blas Fajardo Ople, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Philippines, asked me where I was being proposed for my first foreign assignment. I told him I was being groomed as Vice Consul at the Philippine Consulate General or as Third Secretary at the Philippine Mission to the United Nations in New York. Unfortunately, our Home Office in Manila had still not decided where exactly to send me although I had this inkling that since I was head of a regional consular office, chances are I would end up in the Consulate General.

In his trademark baritone, he told me: “I think the United Nations will be a good training ground for you.” Who was I to dispute what the Secretary of Foreign Affairs just told me? All I could say to him in reply was that just being sent to New York—one of the much sought after posts in the Philippine Foreign Service—would be more than enough for me. Secretary Ople apparently did not forget our conversation. Ten months later, I would find myself in New York as a member of the Philippine Delegation to the United Nations.

I will always remember that trip to Everybody’s just as I remember all the other encounters I have had with the man who ironically served in a regime I detested and, in my own little way, helped overthrow. The Martial Law baby that I was, I grew up knowing him as the Secretary of Labor and Employment and later as one of the stalwarts of the ruling Kilusang Bagong Lipunan representing Central Luzon in the Batasang Pambansa. After Edsa, he resurrected as a member of the Constitutional Commission. He later ran successfully for the Senate where he became one of the longest-serving chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee. He held that prestigious seat until he was called to serve as Secretary of Foreign Affairs.

I never had the chance to serve directly under Secretary Ople. I was already serving my exile at the Regional Consular Office at Clark when he took over the Department of Foreign Affairs from Vice President Teofisto T. Guingona Jr. Before that, the closest I ever made it near the man was during the campaign for the ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States.

I would have several close encounters with Secretary Ople during my term as consular officer of his beloved region. I was first formally introduced to him in October 2002 when he dropped by unannounced a day after we moved in to our new offices at Clark. I would see him again the next month when he returned for the Strategic Planning Workshop at the Mimosa Leisure Estate where the Holiday Inn was. In December, he honored us with his presence during the inauguration of our consular office that, to this day, remains the biggest and busiest outside Manila. In February, I stood next to him as he handed out passports to his townmates in Hagonoy during the serbilis project we conducted on the occasion of his 76th birthday. Two months later, I was with him at the Lubao Parish Church for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s annual birthday ritual. There were a number of other encounters with him whenever I get the chance to visit our Home Office in Manila.

It was during those encounters that I got to know more about the man. He was a self-taught individual from a poor family in the fishing town of Hagonoy across the Rio Grande de Pampanga. He fought the Japanese during the last war and was a journalist and labor organizer before joining government. These encounters afforded me the chance to know and appreciate the man who became a father figure we in the Department came to love and respect.

In early November 2003, he came to New York to take part in a conference at the United Nations. We were at the Intercontinental to welcome him that Sunday morning. Later, we heard mass with him at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and then had lunch at the Ambassador’s Residence on the Upper East Side. A few days later, we were back at the hotel to see him off. As his van left for the airport, he smiled and waved us goodbye.

That was the last image I would have of Amang. On 14 December 2003, Blas Fajardo Ople entered immortality in a foreign land while on a diplomatic mission for the country. I will always remember Amang and my encounters with him, especially that ride on the Expedition where he expressed his desire to see me at the United Nations. It has been four years since our hands clasped one last time in farewell and I am still here in New York where I continue to hone my skills as a diplomat. The man who sent me here is no more but I will be what he wanted me to be. I will not fail him.

F Train Interlude

I GAVE way to a teenager when he boarded the F Train at the Lexington Avenue subway stop one early evening in July. The train was full but was not packed like it would be during the late afternoon rush when Midtown Manhattan becomes one big ocean of white collars.

He found a spot in front of where I stood near the door. He must be in high school, judging by the blonde kid’s shirt, denims, worn out sneakers and backpack. Trying to balance himself before the train was swallowed by the East River, he took out something from his Jansport and pieced together what turned out to be a clarinet.

Ah, one of them subway musicians, I told myself. Unlike the others before him who I have rode with to Queens a countless times on the F or the V, this kid seemed better dressed and did not seem to be in need. I would actually rather have him on my train than the malodorous homeless or jobless who terrorize subway riders from time to time. Somehow musicians like this kid entertain the commuting folk as they make their home after a hard day’s work.

This kid who just boarded fidgeted with his instrument before starting off with something familiar. It was the love theme from the 1971 film “The Summer of 42” which I have not heard in a long time. The first several notes brought me back to my childhood days in Magalang thousands of miles away where I first heard Michael Legrand’s Oscar Award-winning “Summer Knows,” from the music cassette tapes my Auntie Lita’s suitor Andy sent all the way from faraway Nigeria where he toiled as one of the Philippines's first manpower exports.

This was followed by two fast tunes that sounded familiar but whose titles escape me. Then he played the love theme from the “Godfather.” “Speak softly love and hold me warm against your heart. I feel your words the tender trembling moments start…” How can I forget one of the songs I used to play on the piano as I was growing up in Villa Angela. There is a chance that I could still probably play it. But then of course, the fingers are now more at home with my PC keyboard than with the old ivory keys.

I was hoping our teenage artist would continue leading me down memory lane but after the Roosevelt Island Station, he stopped. As was the ritual, when he finished, he pulled out a New York Yankees cap and held it out for the other passengers to throw in their change. All throughout I had my hand in my pocket. While listening to his performance, I quietly crinkled a dollar bill and when the time came, I smiled and handed it to him.

Somehow, he reminded me of Eyron, my 10- year-old and his clarinet and the fact that I will be picking him up from his music lessons when I reach home. I just wish that when he grows up, Eyron, who, aside from the clarinet, is also learning to play the keyboard and the drums, will not end up on the F Train like the kid who just rendered a fine performance before me.

9-11

TUESDAY, 11 September 2001.

I was airborne that morning and just 30 minutes from New York when the pilot announced that the connecting Northwest Airlines flight I took from Minneapolis was being diverted. New York's La Guardia Airport had just been closed to traffic and the pilot had been directed to proceed to Detroit's Metropolitan Airport.

All the passengers of the Boeing 767 could do was shake their heads in disbelief. After all, we were already close to our destination. It's either our plane had mechanical trouble, which required us to make an emergency landing elsewhere, or something happened at La Guardia, which necessitated the closure of its runway.

I was particularly exasperated. This could not be happening. This was a short side trip I was taking--just three days--and I want each and every moment to count. I just hope this would be a short stop. I did not fly all the way from Honolulu just to get stuck in Michigan for I do not know how long.

Just shortly after, the plane touched down at Detroit Metro. While the aircraft was taxiing, the flight attendants gave the go-ahead for passengers to turn their cellular phones on and get in touch with those waiting in New York.

Phones were ringing as soon as these were switched on. I heard someone seated in the forward section say something about the World Trade Center. I could not easily make out the rest of what he was saying but I think I heard him say "bomb." Another passenger said something about an explosion. I heard another passenger mention an airplane. Someone said something about a fire raging.

What could be happening, I asked myself as images of the bombings a few years earlier of the World Trade Center and of the Federal Building in Oklahoma crossed my mind. I tried to reassure myself. It's just an accident. It's just a fire. It will soon be put under control.

I was listening to my seatmate, a guy named Nathan, as he talked to someone on the other end: "An airplane crashed into the World Trade Center. Wait, two airplanes, not one. They were commercial aircraft? And both towers are on fire? Okay. Thank you."

Nathan shook his head and then turned to me. "Did you just say commercial aircraft?" I asked. He nodded. "You mean those were big jetliners with passengers and not single-engine Cessnas?" Yes. "My God," I remember telling myself, "this is not an accident."

Nathan's phone then rang. He excused himself to take the call. "What? Another plane crashed into the Pentagon? And that another went down in Pennsylvania? There are other planes that are unaccounted for? " I could only shake my head in disbelief as I listened.

It took quite a while before we passengers found ourselves inside the terminal building. Plane after plane started coming in--Northwest, American, United, Delta--creating a monstrous jam at the parking aprons. We found out later that all flights across the US have been grounded. I am stuck in Detroit.

At one of the restaurants inside the terminal, I saw the first images of the destruction. The towers were gone. The World Trade Center is no more. The once towering New York landmark was just one big heap of smoldering ruins. All of us there were in a state of shock. What now?

I was to stay in Detroit for three days. Luckily, we have family friends there. Dr. Rey Franco of Angeles City, his wife, Rosario Malonzo and their daughter, Regina, were kind enough to have me stay in their apartment at Royal Oaks. It was Reggie who rescued me at the airport.

I finally made it to New York on Friday but not after having to go through one cancellation after another. Northwest flights to La Guardia and John F. Kennedy were being cancelled one after the other. I reached New York only because I took a chance with a flight to Newark. From the New Jersey Turnpike, I saw the still smoldering clouds from Ground Zero.

It took quite a while for reality to sink in on me. I thought it was just one of those scenes from a Hollywood action movie. But when it did, there was this sense of anger, of fear, of anxiety. I just do not know how to describe the feeling. I just know that those behind such lunacy will have to pay. They do not deserve a place among us.

First and Last

DESPITE ITS proximity to the Philippines, I never had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong until a couple of weeks ago when I went with Ninang and some friends. The former British colony had always evoked images of a shopper’s paradise brought about mainly by stories my mother told me about the trips she made there as a viajera in the early Eighties. It was a week after Hong Kong marked the 10th year of its handover to China when I took the late morning Philippine Airlines flight to the special autonomous region.

I went there to unwind. I wanted to put myself in an environment different from the Holiday Inn Clark where I had been under virtual house arrest for almost two weeks while helping run a United Nations peacekeeping course there. Since it was my first time in Hong Kong, Ninang insisted that we go to Disneyland or take a tour of the city. But seeing Mickey Mouse and the other tourist attractions was not really the kind of unwinding I had in mind.

By unwinding, I meant shopping and by shopping I meant the bargain stores my mother told me about, most particularly the plethora of shops that made Hong Kong a byword among photo and airsoft enthusiasts. Unwinding, of course, also meant going on a food trip and renewing ties with old friends who are now based there.

In addition to Peking duck, I wanted to see Meyo Abada, my kumpadre and neighbor at Lippo Karawaci in Jakarta, who is now a top insurance executive in Hong Kong. There is also Consul Vicvic Dimagiba, my Foreign Service batchmate, who is assigned to the Philippine Consulate General. While I did enjoy my fill of luscious Hong Kong duck during my three-day holiday of sorts there, I was, unfortunately, not able enjoy the company of my two old friends.

We checked in at the Park Lane shortly after arrival and began hitting the malls a couple of hours later, starting with Pacific Place in the Admiralty area. This giant mall was so impressive. It is a virtual cornucopia of retail shops offering the same name brands you can find here in New York. But, to my dismay, the price tags are simply just out of reach for a government functionary like me.

Well of course, I was in a high-end shopping mall but I just would not be paying hundreds, even a few thousand pesos more for the same item that is available for a much lower price in Manila or New York. I told Ninang I would rather while my time away in Macy’s or the outlets in Woodbury or Riverside where I would get more value for my money.

It was such a disappointment that Hong Kong turned out to be not the shopper’s paradise I pictured it to be. It was just so expensive Manila ended up being much cheaper. As such, most of my time was simply spent window shopping. While I ended up getting nothing I took comfort in the fact that we will cross into Kowloon the next day and hopefully find some real bargains there.

After breakfast at the Conrad, we took the Mass Transit Railway and found ourselves exploring some shops at the Jordan area of Kowloon. We eventually ended up in Tsim Sha Tsui where I got sales-talked into getting a set of replica samurai swords similar to those my brother-in-law brought with him from Tokyo. I always wanted to gift myself with some samurai swords since I took on the airsoft nom de guerre Shogun three years ago. I imagined the sword to blend well with the rest of my weekend wargear.

The saleslady immediately sensed my interest and initially priced the three swords—long, medium and short—at HK$500. She tried to go for the kill by lowering the price to HK$400 and then HK$300. I was fortunate to have sharpened my haggling skills at Greenhills just a week earlier so I offered to buy the three swords for HK$200. She shook her head in seeming disbelief. I then walked away only to find her running after me, saying she will take my two hundred. That’s how I got the three swords which eventually ended up on display at my in-law’s receiving room on Embassy Road.

So there I was lugging a box of swords and trying to wriggle our way past a sea of humanity to the harbor for the Star ferry ride across the bay. It was at that point that I found myself stepping into a camera store eager to seek out some items for my Canon 30D digital SLR that I have checked online while in New York. I was hoping for a repeat performance of my victory over the samurai lady just a few minutes earlier. I asked the middle-aged salesman if he had a hand-strap for the 30D. After going through one shelf of assorted straps, he said he did not have the item.

I then asked if he had the protective hood cover for the camera’s sensitive LCD screen. He said he has it and showed me the same item I was checking out on eBay just a few weeks earlier. How much is it I asked him. He quoted a little over HK$700. Wow! That’s roughly US$100 or four times the amount I will pay for the same item if I purchased it at my favorite Circuit City store here in Queens. I can get this for only US$25 in New York I told the salesman. He looked at the other salesman, said something in Chinese, got his calculator and punched some keys. “Oke,” he told me, “I will give it to you for $25.” Fine, I said. I will get the item.

I then asked for a shutter release cable. He has it. Realizing he could not get away with his earlier pricing, he offered it to me at the equivalent of US$55 which is more or less the same amount I would get it for online. All right, I will also get the item I told him.

I took out my wallet and was getting ready to pay when I decided to ask if he had some China-made shutter release cables that are being sold like hotcakes online. I was hoping to see how the Chinese clones would fare in comparison to the original Canon piece. I don’t know what I did or said but the salesman just went ballistic.

He angrily muttered something in Chinese which I have no intention of finding out. All I know was that it was not nice to hear. “Whoa! We not sell China. We sell only original Canon. You wasting my time,” he told me. He punctuated it with a yell of “Get out! Get out!” with the accompanying saliva barely missing my face.

Having been used to the way shoppers are pampered here in the States, I was naturally taken aback with this kind of treatment. Here I was being treated rudely by a salesman who only minutes earlier tried to make a fast buck at my expense.

I must confess that at that instant I was feeling a bit murderous. I imagined myself as the swordsman portrayed by Jet Li in Hero and making full use of the samurai blades I had in the box. Instead, I simply smiled at the salesman, muttered something unprintable in Kapampangan and stepped out of the camera store.

As I hit the street, I shook my head and swore that this visit would be my first and last.

Toy Soldiers

IT WAS Vegetius who once wrote: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you wish for peace, prepare for war. As a diplomat, I am a peacemaker. While I remain true to this responsibility, I believe that this should not prevent me from learning the art of war. Somehow, war and peace go together. How can one appreciate peace if he has no idea about war?

And so almost every other weekend for the past three years, I take on a different persona, replacing coat and tie with camouflage uniforms; my laptop with a replica M4 assault rifle; the skyscrapers of Manhattan with the hills of Connecticut or New Jersey and become Shogun, overlord of Filforce, one of the biggest groups of so-called airsoft warriors here in the United States.

Airsoft warriors what? For those encountering it for the first time, airsoft is basically a sport or recreational pastime in which players don military uniforms to participate in the simulation of military or law-enforcement-style combat using replica weapons that shoot plastic pellets. It is very much like playing hide and seek or baril-barilan using gas-powered or battery-operated, realistic looking toy guns. As a sport for the big boys, airsoft provides a different kind of rush for those who play it—something that first-timers would look forward to doing again and again.

Airsoft traces its roots to Asia where the sport has been played since the late Seventies but it is also past becoming popular in Europe and the United States. In the Philippines alone, airsoft players number in the thousands. The United States is no exception with a growing number of players, including Filipinos, getting hooked into the sport.

I organized Filforce three years ago primarily to share the Philippine airsoft experience with other teams here in the United States, particularly the East Coast. Having played the sport in the Philippines as part of the Angeles-based Semper Fidelis, I started seeking out other Filipino airsoft enthusiasts in the tri-state area shortly after I was assigned in New York in 2004. From an original group of seven, Filforce has grown by leaps and bounds with as many as 80 members in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia.

Our membership base is predominantly Filipino and Filipino-American but we also have members who are of Chinese, Guyanese, Nigerian, Korean, Thai and Laotian descent. They include diplomats, former military and police personnel and health, information technology and art professionals as well as students.

Filforce draws its inspiration from the secret society Katipunan that led the Philippine revolution against Spain in 1896. Like the katipuneros of old, Filforce is made up of men and women who are bound by a creed that requires members to exhibit a strong sense of kinship or Kapatiran; great courage or Katapangan; loyalty or Katapatan; and dignity and honor or Karangalan.

Filforce's Katipunan roots are evident in its team logo, which was derived from the personal red and white standard of Katipunan founder Andres Bonifacio. The Filforce flag features an enhanced version of Bonifacio's sun symbol to represent the East—Asia where most Filforce members trace their ethnic roots and the East Coast where team members are now based—that shines over a black background to symbolize the threatening unknown.

Filforce had its baptism of fire on 29 January 2005 when we played against a local squad in Long Island and had since seen action in New York; Connecticut; New Jersey; Pennsylvania and Maryland. The team has also been making a name for itself and is now being supported by airsoft retailers such as Evike, Airsoftone and Krukspec.

Last year, Filforce helped win Operation Independent Will in New Jersey to end the four-part series with a final score of three wins against one loss. It ended 2006 by defeating the top two teams in the Northeast during the Tolcom Team Challenge.

Just this May, Filforce successfully mounted Balikatan 2007-01: Operation Sulu Storm—its first major event that was participated in by more than 100 players. In the coming weeks, we will stage Balikatan 2007-02: Operation Basilan Fury. More events are also being lined up to address the growing clamor for airsoft action among us big boys.

All I could say is that airsoft will continue to attract not only us big boys but men and even women of all ages because it brings out the warrior in each and every one of us.

Resurrected

IT WAS an invitation I could not refuse. The email actually went unopened in my inbox for several days as I thought it was just another e-vite to one of the usual parties that take place here in New York when the year approaches its end. I was just about to consign the email to the recycle bin when for one reason or another I decided to give the sender the perfunctory courtesy.

As it turned out, the email came from a very dear friend—the poet-novelist-artist-journalist Titus Toledo. It was actually a follow up email reminding me of his invitation for me to write for eK, which he explained in a way only he could as a web-exclusive journal of Kapampangan ideas, a logbook of sorts of mental transactions open to everyone and anyone who cares to inquire into the Kapampangan state of mind.

The invitation came with a deadline I knew I could not meet. I have never been good with deadlines. Worse, I have not written anything of late that Kapampangan readers may find worth their while reading. It has been almost eight years since I left journalism to embark on a new career in the Foreign Service and I must confess that the words no longer flow out of me like they used to.

Titus and I, of course, go a long way back. We went to the same school, grew up in the same Angeles neighborhood, and even came to fight the same causes together. Along with me, Jay Sangil and Francis Sison, Titus was a member of our so-called Gang of Four, who in the halcyon days of our youth attempted to redefine Pampanga journalism with the experiment called The Angeles Sun.

Titus and I were also together for quite a while in K, the Kapampangan Magazine, which I published sometime after my return from a year-long sojourn in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1998 until I left the country again in 2003 for my first diplomatic assignment as a member of the Philippine Delegation to the United Nations here in New York.

Since joining the Department of Foreign Affairs, I have written very little of public interest and the few journalistic pieces that I came out with were published in K some years back. Most of what I have been writing about in the past several years is pure bureaucratese—a bottomless sea of official reports and memoranda that we government factotums always find ourselves drowning in.

But in all the years that I have been out of circulation, I always carried this desire to return to journalism in one form or another. I envy my contemporaries—Bong Lacson, Ding Cervantes, Tonette Orejas and even the more senior Ram Mercado—who are just so prolific their works are more than enough to fill the pages of several books about our province and our people.

Before Titus’s invite, I was seriously considering coming up with a blog about my experiences past and present, in the Philippines and elsewhere. I also entertained the idea of writing several books of my own, including an account of my adventures and misadventures as a journalist during those days of disquiet and discontent and one or two coffee-table books festooned with the photographs I captured of that bygone era.

All these ideas, unfortunately, remain on the drawing board of my mind as I somehow could not compel myself to start the process of putting my thoughts on paper. I am some sort of a writer lost in New York, suffering from the effects of a jetlag that I have been trying to shake off for the past three years.

I keep telling myself that if I were to find my way out of this literary imbroglio and start writing again, it would not only have to be at the right place and the right time but also with the right hardware. I have actually lost count of the number of occasions I ascribed my failure to write to the lack of time supposedly due to the need to balance the demands of diplomatic work with those of the family.

And when I finally find the time, the onus would now be on finding a nice, quiet spot in our lilliputian apartment here in Queens where I could work. Yet, when I have both the time and the space, I think of some other reason to put off the writing. My last pretext was the need to replace the six-pound tablet PC I got last year precisely to get me to start writing simply because I now want a smaller, lightweight notebook that I could lug around.

I just never seem to run out of excuses. When I came across the electronic invitation from my kumpadre, the immediate reaction was to wriggle myself out of it in a diplomatic sort of way. My reply was an admixture of yes and no—something like “Of course, I would love to contribute to eK and will submit my piece when I find the time to sit down and write.” Titus is not someone who would take that for an answer.

Having the same December birth-sign as mine, Titus never had the makings of a diplomat but carries the traits of the persistent man that I am. He extended the deadline and told me in no uncertain terms that he wants to see my piece in eK or else. I guess I finally have run out of excuses.

Titus left me with no choice but to find myself a nice cozy corner at home, start to figure out what to write about and make full use of this tablet PC that up to now I am still planning to get rid of for something lighter.

Getting started is, of course, the most difficult part but I am convinced that once I do, the words will flow like they used to and there would be no turning back. There are just so many stories to tell, so many experiences to share. This is one opportunity to resurrect the writer I once was. So here I am with the introductory piece to what I hope would be the first of many that would eventually fill my blog and the pages of a book.


The ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu once said the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I finally have taken that initial step. I now start a much-anticipated journey.