An Extension of the Human Mind

What is the best way to save old pictures, old files?  I have a one terabyte SATA HD, hundreds of thousands of files and digital images.  Probably doomed in a few more years.  Remember the Iomega Zips, the Bernoulli Box, the Laser disc, the floppies?  All gone.  I woke up from a nightmare last week — the world had moved on to new storage media overnight.  All my writing, my photos, my memories were gone.

     

         

            

             

When we are gone, only the stories about us will be left.  It is important for those stories to be told again and again.  Otherwise all that we knew and all that we ever were, will fade away.
       
So it’s time to tell another story about my Dad.

    

       
It was the 1960s.  Remember that.

His father gave him an old car, before he got married.  A 1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster.  My Dad said the design really dated back to the early 1940s.  Because General Motors produced tanks and not cars during the war years, they sold pre-war cars in the post-war years.

  

I flew many bombing missions over Germany in that Chevrolet.  The windshield looked exactly like a B-17 bomber’s windshield. 

There was no internet, no big bookstores in Manila, few toys.  I had only Twelve O’clock High, my beloved childhood TV series.  When it rained, the big spattering raindrops on the windshield was murderous Messerschmitt machine gun fire.  Flak rocked my Flying Fortress as we hit potholes on Aurora Boulevard.

 

My Dad and I were driving home from Cubao.  I still remember exactly where we were, a few hundred meters from home.

The engine stopped. 

We were surrounded by grass fields.  I held the flashlight, and he lifted the hood.  The engine bay of that old Chevy was HUGE.  It was like diving down into the engine room of a ship, with the motor way down there.

The fuel line was blocked.  Imagine that.  In a couple of hours, in the dark, on the road, Dad had eliminated the breaker points, plugs, carburetor and fuel filter as causes.

He disconnected the fuel line and ran a long wire into the tiny pipe to push out whatever was blocking it.  I was getting tired and sleepy. 

He needed me to hold the flashlight.  So he told stories, to keep me awake.  While he worked with greasy tools on a tiny fuel line.
  
  

I remember exactly what he said.

In the future, Tonet, every home will have a computer.  Some families will have more than one. 

The computer will be an extension of the human mind just as the car is an extension of the human foot.  It will be unthinkable for a family not to have one.

 

     

 

Ten years or so later, my Dad passed.  I was in the UP College of Engineering, using the IBM 360 on time-share.  The whole university was using that room-sized computer.  Three years later, the first Altair, Tandy and Apple II computers came out.  IBM quickly followed with the “PC” – the Personal Computer. 

Suddenly, it was true – one man, one computer.  Dad was right.

Today, my BlackBerry has more computing power than the IBM 360.  Geez, even the remote of our LCD TV may have more computing power than the IBM 360. 
  
  
Posted from Bangkok, September 2, 2012
He would have been 86 today.

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Plays and Phantoms

          
Neil Armstrong died two days ago.  All over the web, people asked, “Who was he?” 

Has it been that long ago?  Here’s a list of things that happened during one of my favorite years — 1986.  I can see you all asking, “Who are these people?”  Or, “Wasn’t that just this year?”

The US bombed Libya
Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika 
A nuclear reactor melted down 
Israel revealed to have nuclear weapons 
IBM unveiled the PC Convertible, the first laptop 
TOPGUN catapulted Tom Cruise into stardom
Whitney Houston topped the charts with “The Greatest Love of All”
Voyager circled the earth, non-stop
A housewife became President of our country
Hill Street Blues, A-Team, Dynasty, Falcon Crest ruled the airwaves
Halley’s comet zipped by the earth to presage a birth
Carlo was born

Yes.  Twenty-six years ago today.  Look at him now.  Pilot, English teacher, and still full of wonder about the world.  Happy Birthday, Carlo!

— Tonet
        
          
               
             
             
         
      

A month ago, I found myself giving an interesting lesson plan to my Introduction to Ateneo Culture and Traditions (InTACT) class.  I was supposed to discuss the phenomenally dry topic of the rights and responsibilities of a student. 
          

            
With a new Spider-man movie rampaging through theaters, the old quote about power and responsibility came up.  Every right comes with its own responsibility, says my lesson plan.  But what happens when you decide to take on responsibility just for the heck of it?

A few months ago, my Development of Drama professor, an affable genius of a man with nine Palanca awards under his belt, invited me to be a member of a panel that would judge the final project of his class that year.  Flattered, I played the Simon Cowell of the committee and was rewarded with both pizza and a chance to see how creative some of our students can be – including, incidentally, a lovely young woman who had been my student at Saint Paul College Pasig during my first year as a teacher.  My professor later invited me to act as a commentator for the graduation project of one of our theater arts majors.  My input was well received, I ended up writing a review for another play, one thing led to another, and now, less than a year later, I found myself at the PHILSTAGE Gawad Buhay awards. 
           
        
PHILSTAGE is an alliance of the country’s leading theater companies, and the awards are basically the Philippine equivalent of the Tony awards.  I’m now on next year’s jury, a position I had never dreamed I would qualify for.
         
               

The story has a curious parallel with my involvement with the Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta.  I started out as a gofer for my Dad, the Air Boss.  I kept accepting additional responsibilities until one day, I found myself directing aircraft movement myself, working alongside generals, air traffic controllers, aviators from around the world, and the cream of our armed forces.
             
            
To this day, I remain rather bewildered at how I ended up with that kind of responsibility and that caliber of colleague.  All I remember is habitually saying ‘Yes’ when someone needed me.
            
                 

That’s what I told my students. Keep saying yes.  Keep volunteering. Keep accepting responsibility.  Because, to reverse the old Spider-Man quote, with great responsibility, comes great power.
        

The Gawad Buhay awards were a joy to watch – the thespians involved insisted on turning an otherwise mundane awards ceremony into a theatrical extravaganza, with play excerpts, sophisticated dance numbers, and touching tributes to mentors and friends. 
       
       
Periodically, the music would swell ad mutate into the classic theme from The Phantom of the Opera, and a garishly caped masked figure would be spotted on the balconies, trolling the performers.  It made me think of my first experience with musical theater, when Dad took me and my younger brother to see Phantom live onstage for the first time during a trip to San Francisco.  I am fairly sure that that was where my affinity for theater started.  If not for that, I would likely not be teaching a poetry and drama class every year, let alone be on the PHILSTAGE panel.  I’m glad Dad took on the responsibility of sharing the awesomeness of theater with me.

It’s an honor to do the same for my students.
         
            

              

    
      
Posted from Manila, August 28, 2012

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One Hundredth Percentile

  

  

My son Julio is still the only person to ever get sick while flying with me.  He also attracts flying near-misses like a magnet pulls in nails.  There was the time we took off with full flaps, and then that Level 3 thunderstorm.  It’s gotten so that when Julio flies with me I do the pre-flight inspection twice.  Before takeoff we double check that we are in the right airplane, and quiz ourselves on each other’s names.
  

  

  

  

Julio sometimes has a curious vocabulary breakdown.  Like his mouth suddenly gets dyslexic, or his tongue gets Alzheimer’s.  When they were kids I took them to see the Christmas Gingerbread House at the Manila Peninsula Hotel.  They gazed in awe at a house made of gingerbread, with M&M and marshmallow jewels, candy pane windows and lollipop Christmas lights all around the eaves and window frames.

Later, Julio bragged to everyone else at home that he had seen the Garlic Bread house.

     

Garlic bread?

         

Seeing everyone laughing our lungs out, Julio shrugged it off.  “Well, I just know it was Garlic-Something house.”

 

 

He gave us fits when he said ‘hesitating bomb’ instead of ‘delayed-action bomb’.  He complained that white socks were not registrated (duh) in school.  One day we passed by a hearse, and he said, “Look, a death wagon!”

 

Many years later, when he was a senior in high school at the Ateneo, Julio asked for money (he is always doing this).  He wanted to take the US Scholastic Aptitude Test, the SAT.  This is the entrance test for colleges in America.

I told him that there was no way I could afford to send him to a university in the US.  He assured me that he had no plans to go to the US, that he was already scheduled to take the Ateneo College Entrance Test, and that he just wanted to benchmark himself against his peers worldwide.

I gave him what seemed like enough money to buy a new car, which was barely enough to pay for his ‘benchmark’.

 

Months later the SAT percentile scores arrived.  They placed Julio in the 99th percentile.  He looked smug all day.  So I told him that more than 2 million people take the SAT every year (this was a wild guess on my part, and it turned to be spot on – made me look smug, too).  With 2 million examinees, and Julio in the 99th percentile, I reminded him that,

“All this means is that 20,000 people scored higher than you, Einstein.”

Carlo and David thought I was being too tough.  I was unrepentant.  Our standards had to be kept high, you see.

“You need to concentrate on that Ateneo College Entrance Test, because they take only a few students into Eco Honors every year, out of 20,000 or so examinees.”
   

 

  

Now, I admit that Julio is a bit good at Math.  He beats us all in mahjong.  One of my most expensive mistakes was to teach him poker.

    

           

Julio used Math to nail me for more allowance money.  One day he said that I should give his allowance on a weekly basis, instead of four times the weekly amount every month.

“Uh, I don’t know what Math they teach you in the Ateneo, man, but 750 a week is the same as 3,000 a month,” I smirked.

He politely, almost humbly (he was negotiating, the wise guy), pointed out that there are 52 weeks in a year, which is not the same as 4 weeks in each of 12 months.  So 750 a week is 39,000 a year, while 3,000 a month is only 36,000.

     

He had me boxed in.  We were in an elevator, so I couldn’t walk away or pretend to make a phone call.  Painfully, I had to concede.

   

  

Weeks after the 99 percentile notice arrived, we got the actual raw scores.

In Math, in the US Scholastic Aptitude Test, out of a highest possible score of 800, Julio got 800.

That got my attention.

      

   
Today is Julio’s birthday.  This story waited four years to be written.  He will graduate with an AB in Economics Honors from the Ateneo in March.  Then he will get filthy rich.

 

Happy Birthday, Einstein!  In my book, you’re in the 100th percentile.

  

   
    

 

Posted from Manila, August 2, 2012

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Pas de Deux

 

I waited all year for my two weeks of home leave.  But things got truly toxic at the office, many folks were off fishing or cruising, and I had to go back to work.  Meetings abroad on Christmas week, conference calls on New Year’s Eve.
   
   
   
  
I did fly for two days, with friends.  In the first week of 2012, I called Carlo and told him I was tired of flying with passengers.  I wanted my copilot.  

On the ground, Carlo is not the most graceful person (some of his university students may dispute that).  I tease him about being the second clumsiest person I know. 

 

              

In the airplane, Carlo morphs into an artist.  He starts as a conductor — meticulously procedural as he tunes the airplane for flight.  At takeoff, Carlo slips past the curtain of ground haze and ascends to an aerial stage, bands of light and shadow wheeling around the cockpit.

  

     

Responding to his fingertips, the airplane pirouettes, the engine sings, the instruments wind through orchestrated scales and bars.  The horizon dips, leans and rolls.  Straight and level is for train drivers; Carlo and I FLY.

  

 

  

In past years we pushed north to the Cordilleras and tracked coast-to-coast across Luzon.  This year we performed our repertoire at home.  Polishing, not exploring.  Stalls, over and over until they became pitch-perfect poetry.  Arcing chandelles, twisting 400 feet higher in a single 180-degree turn. 

  

  

  
For two days we exercised the airplane vigorously, getting 720 kilograms of aluminum, fuel and father-son airborne from just half the runway.  An hour of aerobatic adagios and petite allegros specially choreographed for the Cessna 152 followed.  Then, as an encore, we touched down softly on the threshold, wake vortices applauding.

               

  

All too soon, the flying days were over.  It was time to go back to the crush of email, conference calls, lesson plans and research papers. 

  

Memories of our flights are starting to fade as I return to Bangkok.  They will never leap off these pages as intensely memorable flights, laced with glamour or punctuated with drama.

Instead, our aerial art, nearly a month ago now, was a tapestry of emerald green rice fields, friendly radio calls from pilot friends and readers who recognized our voices on 118.70 Mhz, and our own giddy laughter as we banked into 2G turns 1,500 feet above Earth, a million miles above its travails.

  

“I’ll do the next one, Dad.”
”I have it, Carl.”
”Dad, I’m already on it.”
”My airplane.”
”I have control, Dad.”
”Let go, Carl … .“

           

So I honor the memories of those flying days as healing days.  Father and son days.  The medicine will wear away, in the years to come.  

           

“I’ll take the left seat, Carl.”
”Dad, we’ll put you in the right seat.”
”Left seat.  And call me ‘Captain.”
”Here you go, Dad, right seat, don’t kick the wheelchair.”
”This is the copilot’s seat, this is for wimps!”
”Yes, Dad.“

       

       
Posted from Bangkok, January 22, 2012
Chinese New Year!  Gong Xi Fa Cai  恭禧發財

  

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