pasión

It's 4 in the morning and I'm running down the Gran Via towards Hotel Alberto Aguilera with my friend Sarah (the Danish woman seated beside me in the preceding post).

In Plaza de España, three homeless teenagers taunt her with obscenities- she screams Spanish epithets at them in return.

"Ay dios mio," I laugh, looking behind us. "You'll have us both mugged."

Just a couple of hours earlier, we had been staring at a sign on a building beside Sol & Sombra disco in Calle Manuel Fernandez Gonzalez: it said Rizal had been there, that much I understood.

"You need help with translation?" someone said behind us. He was a dark Spaniard, probably of Moroccan descent, who wore a suit and spoke English fluently. "It says Jose Rizal met his friends here to plan reforms for the Philippines... By the way, yo soy Enrique. I'm an economist and I need a drink. May I invite you both to come with me?"

Enrique took us to El Burladero, a bar where famous matadors like to hang out and celebrate their fights. It was literally a stone's throw from the very modern disco where we had been dancing with our friends.

In the back room of El Burladero, together with the matadors gazing out of posters on the walls, I watched Enrique teach Sarah how to dance the Spanish flamenco.

"Remember to always look your partner in the eye," said Enrique, "as if challenging him. 'You think you're better than me? You think so? Prove it!' It's a battle. The physical movements of flamenco should express the passion within you- in this sense, it is spiritual."

heritage

The topic of our conference was human security, a relatively new concept for understanding global wants and fears. Its advocates challenge traditional notions of national security by arguing that the proper subject for security should be the individual rather than the state. This world-view asserts that a people-centered approach to security is necessary for national, regional and global stability.

The sharing of different ideas on human security by Asians and Europeans was interesting, especially in the light of Balkin's theory of cultural software (I'm reading Florin's book- a free copy is here). Balkin writes about how information unites the ideas of culture, personhood and historical existence:

To be part of a culture, to be socialized or acculturated, is to possess a certain kind of information- cultural know-how. Cultures are populations of individuals with relatively similar kinds of information...

We are the bearers of this cultural information; indeed we are constituted by it. And its constitution of us is our constitution as historical beings. It is the source of our historical existence.

I call this cultural information cultural software... The different beliefs and worldviews that human beings possess are the product of the evolution of cultural information that is instantiated in human beings and helps make them the unique individuals that they are.

Whereas in the past, cultural information (or software) was usually limited geographically, to the places where people were born or where they lived, modern ways of networking and communicating allow the development of new cultures and even new identities.

I was thankful to Rizal and our other heroes for their sacrifices which enable me to enjoy freedoms that they dreamt of for us. A hundred years after their struggles in Madrid and Manila, a Filipino is seen as one of the most beautiful- La Reina de Corazones- in Spain and Latin America; a Philippine choir is the two-time awardee of the European Chorale Grand Prix; and Filipinos can face the world with greater confidence in our abilities, our history, and our cultural contributions to the patrimony of humankind.

Photo by Sungjin Kang (South Korea, AU-2).

threshold

I was surprised to receive my visa to go to Europe five days before the start of ASEFUAN's AGM. As an austerity measure, I try to travel by plane only once every year and I had just returned from the US. I saw "signs" pointing towards a continuation of my journey, however: dreams, photographs, an email message. Perhaps I wasn't following any external sign, I was only listening to the promptings of my heart.

I was already in undergrad the first time I thought of visiting Europe, when Anna mentioned that one of Jan's goals was to backpack in the Continent. It was the first time I heard the word "backpack" used as a verb. I was inspired and challenged by thousands of young men and women who travel overland in Europe every summer. So I read E.H. Gombrich's The Story of Art, cut pictures of bridges and gondoliers from travel magazines and- semi-consciously- prepared for the time when I too would see Europe on my own.

It was exam time.

Dose of Asia

Because of the many people going to the Rugby World Cup in Paris, I was on the waiting list of several airlines before finally getting a ticket from Korean Air. I arrived in Incheon Airport before dawn of September 1, ten hours before my connecting flight to Madrid. When I read brochures promoting a Transit Tour- one to six hours of visits to nearby sites- I decided to sign up for the tour of Yonggungsa Temple, where a revered 1,400 year old tree still stands.

At first, I couldn't get past Immigration because supposedly only US citizens with flights bound for the US could take the Transfer Tour without a visa. "But there's no such requirement in the brochure," I told one officer, "it says only the passport and flight ticket are required."

I wanted to see a bit more of Asia before going to Europe, to build up the fiber of my Asianness. I needed to use what Kidlat Tahimik calls the "indi-genius." I filled up another exit form and whispered a short prayer.

Three hours later, I was standing in the rain before Yonggungsa's fabled tree.

Magnification

I arrived in Spain a day too early and didn't have a hotel reservation.

"You can stay in my place," said James, an acoustics engineer who had been sitting in front of me on the plane. "I'm renting an apartment near Plaza de Espana."

The following day, after a breakfast of churros con chocolate, we visited El Escorial, built by Felipe II, after whom the Philippines was named. We entered the crypt where he and his wife Isabela- together with almost all the Spanish monarchs from Charles I to Alfonso XIII- are buried. I thought, wouldn't it be nice if Spain could give her sister the Philippines one of her castles as a sign of partnership and friendship?

Here's my friend in the fortress-monastery's garden:


I liked Spain because it reminded me of home: kumusta in Spanish is simply "como esta;" the buildings have design elements that are similar to those found in Intramuros and Ermita; the Catholic churches display many paintings of saints and dying martyrs; and the pace of life is languorous and sybaritic. The best word I can think of to describe its culture is hyper-Filipino: imagine magnifying a walk in Intramuros four or five times. You would see that Madrid looks similar, except it has bigger plazas, more statues, and wider rivers of people ambling in the streets in the late afternoon and early evening.

I even developed a hypothesis as to how "Filipino time" came to be, since Spanish time appears to be yet another magnification. Many Spaniards, for example, have lunch between 1 and 4 PM, tiny meals called tapas from 5 to 8 PM, and a light dinner at 9:30 or 10 PM. I saw the sensibility behind such a daily rhythm however and was able to embrace it, as if I'd practiced the tapeo all my life.