When Pacquiao Cheated

“While Manny Pacquiao is now called the best boxer in the world, he has not always dominated his opponents, including some that were evidently inferior. On October 14, 2000, Pacquiao took on Nedal Hussein in a half-filled Ynares Sports Center in Antipolo City, the Philippines. Filipinos were hardly gracious hosts to Hussein, who is known as Skinny. Maybe they were worried. Before the fight, Skinny’s record read 19–0 (11 KOs) to Pacquiao’s 29–2 (20 KOs).
Skinny was put up three hours away from the venue in a one-star hotel. “Wasn’t pleasant, that was for sure,” says Hussein, an Australian. “But if you can’t handle the challenge, you shouldn’t be a boxer.”
In the first four rounds, Hussein dominated Pacquiao. Then Pacquiao started outboxing Hussein. “He had a reputation as a bit of a gambler, and someone who drank more than he should have, but he had stamina,” Hussein told me between selling used cars at Knockout Autos in Sydney. In the fourth round, Pacquiao walked into an ordinary jab and fell to his knees. The count went to eighteen seconds. Pacquiao, brain throbbing, was visibly hurt, gasping for oxygen and equilibrium. The crowd was silent, arms crossed. As Skinny went in for the kill, Pacquiao desperately held on. Hussein couldn’t get Pacquiao off him and tried to muscle him away. He accidentally elbowed him. “Just trying to push him off, to be honest,” says Skinny. Carlos Padilla Jr., a Filipino referee who had worked the “Thrilla in Manila,” deducted one point. After the long count and the iffy deduction, Hussein was rightly livid. He nodded fatefully as if to say, “This is sorta fucked up.” Pacquiao was tired. The hometown announcers were calling Hussein a dirty fighter, but it was Pacquiao who was wrapping his elbow around the Aussie’s neck, trying not to fall down. As the fight wore on, Pacquaio, clad in black trunks, recovered well and started outboxing his opponent. In round seven, Hussein, now the exhausted boxer, bull-rushed Pacquiao and knocked him down.
Between the ninth and tenth rounds, the fans threw bottles into the ring. In round ten, Skinny had a cut, not too serious, on his cheek, and Padilla stopped the fight. It was a premature stoppage. “I felt cheated by the referee,” says Hussein. “As long as the fighters keep fighting, let them fight.” (Hussein made $8,000 for his controversial loss, while Pacquiao soared to fame and fortune. Hussein still feels robbed but expresses no bitterness toward Pacquiao, who he says has developed into an even “better offensive fighter, he is smarter, and more disciplined and dedicated.”)
At the end of the controversial fight, Pacquiao seemed more relieved than giddy. He was still a world champion, but barely. He hadn’t even gone against the true class in his division, which were Mexicans and Americans.”

Excerpt From
PacMan
by Gary Poole

Dishwasher hands

I first heard this phrase from a poem of Jennifer Weber, back when she wasn’t even a mother. Now she has two gorgeous daughters who are now artists. 
Do artists have dishwater hands? Only if they are watercolorists. 
I didn’t look at Jenny’s hands the last time we saw each other two years ago at Baguio Brewery. Dishwater hands are temporary even if the small brews were cold and Baguio was nippy that night. 
Now I recall that poem was about daughter defiance. Maybe Jenny uses an automatic dishwasher.
I, on the other hand, loves to wash dishes the old way. Using a sink, sponge and dishwashing paste. 
Recently, I got a scare about the billions of bacteria sponges were supposed to harbor and bought the brush with fill-in dishwashing liquid but it wasn’t the same.
I didn’t get dishwasher fingers because I don’t allow the dishes to get so high anyway. Dishwasher hands are when they become wrinkly or, as the Americans call it, pruny. 
There was another recent science news that wrinkled fingers are an evolutionary advantage because they perform like “tire treads” which allow for heightened grip in wet environments. 
Well, good for our ancestors who need to grasp mudfish so they can eat or our future children in Waterworld but this is not what I want to talk about. 
It’s why I like to wash dishes. Sometimes when I’m rushing things especially writing, I absentmindedly find myself in front of the sink and preparing to clean the dishes. Then I immerse myself in it and my stalled ideas return to me. 
There is something about the mess you are confronted with and then cleaning them and organizing them into spoons, bowls, plates, and utensils. Then the white sink wiped clean. 
Then I can easily go back to what I was writing and often they clear themselves to me. 
My friend Wilfredo Pascual wrote this in his poetics: “Nothing beats washing dishes in the sink, to me one of the most comforting household chores, very contemplative, a lot of unclogging, outpouring and cleansing taking place, an extremely beneficial time to scrub my memories through running water and soak my stories. It composes me. It also develops the mind’s fluidity and grip. You can’t let one soapy chinaware slip from your hand and shatter everything.”
I tried to recall when we did tandem dishwashing. Never did. In parties, we shy away from the kitchen. I recalled just one such scene in his Bangkok loft: 
Me: Ako na maghugas
Willi: No, hindi pa tapos. We still have wine. 

Sometimes he washed dishes ala Rita Gomez in New York, with left hand holding a cigarette. 
But that’s it. Contemplative washing. Wash the grime and be served anew. 
I scanned my favorite reference book, “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work” by Mason Currey and not one of the more than 100 artists there included dishwashing in their routine.  The included artists were mostly dead so automatic dishwasher was not part of the common appliances then. 
But it worked for us and I again have science to back me up. Time Magazine wrote about a Florida State University study of 51 students who were asked to wash dishes. 
“The researchers found that people who washed dishes mindfully (they focused on smelling the soap, feeling the water temperature and touching the dishes) upped their feelings of inspiration by 25% and lowered their nervousness levels by 27%. The group that didn’t wash the dishes mindfully did not gain any benefits from the task. “It appears that an everyday activity approached with intentionality and awareness may enhance the state of mindfulness,” the study authors conclude.”
It’s all about mindful dishwashing then. Otherwise, you end up with broken ideas and broken dishes, anyway. You mind your dishes and inspiration, courage and, hopefully, words will come. 

From “Curiosities of Literature”

Incompletions

Great works of literature, left uncompleted by the untimely visit of the Grim Reaper:

The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens
Don Juan, Lord Byron
Denis Duval, William Makepeace Thackeray
Answered Prayers, Truman Capote
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The Landleaguers, Anthony Trollope
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell
The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sanditon, Jane Austen
Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway


Death, one concludes, is a lousy literary critic.”

Manila, 1662

Bartolome de Letona described the extent of Manila’s trading network in 1662:
[T]he commerce of this city [Manila] is extensive, rich, and unusually profit- able; for it is carried on by all these Chinese and their ships, with those of all the islands above mentioned and of Tunquin [Tongking], Cochinchina, Camboja, and Sian [Siam] – four separate kingdoms, which lie opposite these islands on the continent of Great China – and of the gulfs and the numberless kingdoms of Eastern India, Persia, Bengala [Bengal], and Ceilan [Ceylon], when there are no wars; and of the empire and kingdoms of Xapon [Japan]. The diversity of the peoples, therefore, who are seen in Manila and its environs is the greatest in the world; for these include men from all kingdoms and nations – Espana, Francia, Ingalaterra, Italia, Flandes, Alemania, Dinamarca, Suegia, Polonia, Moscobia; people from all the Indias, both eastern and western; and Turks, Greeks, Moros, Persians, Tartars, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, and Asiatics. And hardly is there in the four quarters of the world a kingdom, province, or nation which has not representatives here, on account of the voyages that are made hither from all directions – east, west, north, and south.

A whiff of Amontillado

I just came from a whiskey tasting in Taipei, in Kavalan Distillery which produced the best single malt whiskeys in the world at least for 2016 and 2017. Kavalan is produced by the same conglomerate called King Car which makes coffee, bottled water, noodles, and orchids.
So we had this blind tasting and there is this one Kavalan blend which struck me — Number 5 — because it smelled like old books.
This is a weird revelation because I don’t connect books and whiskeys. You may not believe me, people, but I don’t drink and write. I’m no Edgar Allan Poe or Bagnos Cudiamat. I can’t write under the influence.
Maybe now, because I had shots of different Kavalan including Amontillado which won in 2016.
It cost 10,000 Taiwanese dollars per bottle, which is equivalent to a laptop in the Philippines, a Taiwan-made one.
Also, amontillado reminds us of A Cask of Amontillado, a short story of Edgar Allan Poe I first read in Grade V which made me claustrophobic. Later, I would ask, what is in amontillado that entraps and thralls people? Now, I know.
But books and whiskeys.
An article entitled Material Degradomics said: On the Smell of Old Books, scientists at University College London used “headspace analysis” to measure the volatile compounds produced when paper decays: among others, rosin, acetic acid, furfural, and lignin. It’s the latter that does most of the work. In his review of Dzing!, perfume critic Luca Turin explains that lignin is a polymer that stops trees from drooping, and is chemically related to the molecule vanillin.
“When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.”
So what I drank must have that vanilla hint.
Argentinian writer Alberto Manguel said he likes old Penguin books because they smelled like biscuits.
Some Filipino books smell like dried seaweeds because the book paper quality wasn’t that good.
Maybe Inquirer smells like soy sauce because they use soy-based ink?
For old books, the chemicals responsible for the sweet smell of old paper are benzaldehyde, vanillin, ethyl hexanol, toluene, and ethylbenzene. These chemical reactions, which produce such volatile compounds, are called ‘acid hydrolysis’.  Chemical reactions spanning a considerable amount of time making these compounds produce sweet odors.
For new books, the smell can be attributed to three factors: the paper itself (it smells good because of the chemicals used to manufacture it), the ink used to print the book, and the adhesives used in the process of book-binding.
If we look at the smell of paper itself, we would find that a lot of chemicals are used to manufacture paper (although it is largely manufactured from wood pulp). Furthermore, there are certain chemicals, such as sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), that are added to the paper to diminish its acidity and swelling of the fibers of the wood pulp used in the paper.
But I’m writing this on an iPad, which never smells like anything unless I burn it.
So if this sounds uninspired, blame it on the disconnection of electronics to the sensorial experience.
No whiff of Amontillado to inspire you and entrap you till you lose your breath.

The curious case of the found left arm

A man’s arm was found in Nangalisan River in Sablan, Benguet last July 17.

According to Police Inspector Douglas Akistoy Jr., they received a report regarding the found arm and they immediately responded with Scene of the Crime Operatives (SOCO).

Akistoy said that the arm may possibly be from a person who drowned and his body got dismembered from the rough current of the river.

However, Akistoy also said that it is possible that the arm may have come from a hospital where its hospital waste recently polluted the river.

But according to Cordillera SOCO Chief Rodrigo Leal, one person went to their office to inform them about a relative who was missing since Sunday.

“The parents of the missing person will be brought to the SOCO office tomorrow for the collection of standard or reference DNA sample. Antemortem fingerprints from the NBI, police or COMELEC will also be retrieved,” he said Thursday.

“Another body part was discovered in the same area after lunch last Thursday but my examination concluded that it was non-human (it was a slab of a decomposing thigh part of a cow actually),” he added.

The arm was brought to a funeral parlor for fingerprint test and DNA examination.

The Secret Museum

The Baguio metanarrative

Last July 16 was a Monday. Likewise, July 16, 1990, was also a Monday. For some then, it was the first day of the week.
Today, because of the shift in the academic calendar, the universities and some of the private elementary and high schools are still on their summer break which meant that there are relatively fewer students now. Classes at the Saint Louis University in 1990 was suspended because of the student strike so they were spared from major building damages.
Last July 16 had a grey and rainy weather, similar to what it was 28 years ago. Some started calling this the earthquake weather although the US-based US Geological Survey said there is no such thing as an earthquake weather. It was Aristotle who coined the connection between “earthquake” and “weather” and said that “earthquake weather” should be hot and calm.  A later theory stated that earthquakes occurred in calm, cloudy conditions, and were usually preceded by strong winds, fireballs, and meteors.
It was 28 years ago when we had that terrible earthquake which became the city’s metanarrative. In critical theory and particularly in postmodernism, it is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.
Which meant, the 1990 earthquake was the story that defined the generation. And this generation is now the generation that went past if we go by the definition that a generation consists of 20 years. Some of the so-called earthquake babies who were born that week are now themselves parents.
So a huge chunk of our city’s population did not experience the 1990 earthquake. There was nothing as strong as that since, God forbid.
We tried to relive it to them through books, documentaries, stories and even earthquake drills which they often laughed off because it was never the same.
They never knew the terror, frustration, grief, melancholy, and resignation most of us felt. They never knew the kindness, sacrifice and stubborn hope that came after.
People thought Baguio will never rise again and yet less than a year again, Baguio was back on its feet and never looked back. This is something our youth will never understand because it was born out of experience.
Also, add to this our politicians who forgot the earthquake. Scan the newspapers. The only story related to the earthquake was the media people planting 100 pine trees in memoriam to the dead. They had been doing this every year, God bless them.
Other than that, nada. Our officials, who ironically rose to fame after the quake, decided to let the day pass.
Months after, the city council became introspective. They passed the 19 conditionalities for the development of Camp John Hay. They passed an ordinance banning buildings higher than four storeys, for example.
A few months later, many of these ordinances were forgotten. Worse, the officials permitted buildings twice the four-storey limit. There was no remorse, maybe because they thought the earthquake was forgotten.
A simple Facebook post last July 16 told people to contribute their stories during the earthquake. People submitted their stories by the hundreds. No, we did not forget.
The faults may have been buried by the earth but they remain there, waiting to move again. People’s memories were like that. It was our leaders who thought we forgot and it’s their fault again, as usual.

With the Vigan Mayor

Joybus schedule. Because you will need this

Fidel Go

We chanced upon Folk Artist Fidel Go spinning the potter’s wheel at his pagbirnayan. He rarely does pottery now as he is almost 80 but they were rushing some souvenir jars for the Palaro and he decided to pitch in. He hardly signs his works because he simply didnt when he wasnt famous, he said.