Friday afternoon was already weird...
I have been spending 12 hrs day over my mac preparing a preliminary report that I kind of finished this afternoon...I had read somewhere that in the neighbourhood there was a massage “clinic” run by blind masseurs, so I decided to go and see them.
As I suspected it was in the complex of the Salesians in the Don Bosco school, while been “allergic” to dogmatic religions in general, I’m very conscious that in many countries education is key to opportunities, and if that education comes with an attached dogma... so be it... good on them.... you can quit the dogma part later on...
I can’t be partial... I did my primary education in backwaters of Argentina at a salesian school “Escuela San Rafael” in Curuzu Cuatia in the province of Corrientes
Anyway, there I went and after wandering around the school for a while I found the clinic, a small room with 3 blind masseurs at that time... I guess not many foreigners go there... so they were quite surprised, and they started asking me questions about where I come from and so on...
As I lie down on the stretcher I realise the bizarreness of the décor and colours combinations of the whole place... which kind of made sense based on the fact that they wouldn’t really know, and most sheets and curtains must have been given to them...
I was kind of carried away by my daydreaming about blind decorators, and the masseurs started his job... he started, i guess... checking my body out... and saying: Oh you very big person... and then I realize that there was no way that they could have known that I’m almost 2 m tall... he started having the giggles... and me too... he kept going down my legs and realize they were hanging out of the stretcher like by 40 cm... By then he was laughing full on... and obviously me too... then his colleagues must have asked him (in Tagalog) something like:
- hei broh what going on?
And the laughing dialogue must have gone on something like:
- I have a very long guy here, man this funny...
- Really?
- Yea man...
- Can we check it out?
And then the question (in English) came: Can my friends come and help me?
At that stage, all was very surreal, so I say: yeah sure... you can all come...
So they came, and it was one the most bizarre situations... I’m used to people “checking me out”, seeing me tall, and making comments about it.... but I never before I had people “touching me out”, feeling me tall, and cracking up laughing.... and in a room with the most bizarre colour combination in terms of sheet, different colour curtains, and so on... it was just... fantastic... again... these situations are my fuel and my drug...
So basically I had the 2 guys going over my whole body for 1 hour for the equivalent of 250 pesos (5USD)... It was very good by the way... (I left then 500 pesos)
So I come back home and the Team Leader of the mission, Alejandro de la Peña, a VERY nice and relaxed mexican guy (former Mexico’s ambassador to WTO), and his (as nice as him) Uruguayan wife Lujan, invited me to dinner in a very posh restaurant as he hosted the Mexican Ambassadress here in the Philippines, and some other Mexican diplomats here in the city...
So there is was surrounded by this very non stereotypical diplomats, drinking wine, eating gnocchi with the local band singing to us mariachi songs.... feeling overload by life and wondering how can I REALLY take my life seriously.... when Imelda Marcos... (the 3000 shoes woman, that in reality were only 1060) sited next to us!
I was like... no way... this is just like... tripping... Imelda is an icon... for most of the wrong reasons of course... but... you know... like in 1993 she was sentenced to 1,824 years imprisonment on charges of corruption... but then... like a present day Evita....
She has incredible pearls of wisdom, like:
“If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are.”
"I was born ostentatious. They will list my name in the dictionary someday. They will use 'Imeldific' to mean ostentatious extravagance."
"It's the rich you can terrorize. The poor have nothing to lose."
"I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty."
"It is terribly important to do certain things, such as wear overembroidered dresses. After all, the mass follows class. Class never follows mass."
And my favourite:
“When they see me holding fish, they can see that I am comfortable with kings as well as with paupers.”
Anyway... there she was... as we spoke Spanish, and we had ambassadors and so on... she sat with us... and talk, being very taken by us... while in our case we just like seen her like a cultural panache... and of course the compulsory picture...
Where I have the biggest, and at that stage of the day permanent grin in my face.
I guess having Vibeke next to me, and look each other with kid in a toy shop understanding we have, was the only thing I could have ask the make the day better
Anyway...that was enough for that for Friday... so Saturday I work on a proposal for a job in Vietnam (Hanoi) so be aware of next postings!
Then at night (after great tacos and quesadillas by Lujan)... I went into as place I wanted to check out for a while, and that I can only recommend, and it would be my favourite place in manila the SaGuijo Cafe. A very cool place, downstairs a grungy live band venue, café, bar and so on, and upstairs a very cool op shop and a gallery. It was packed, as I imagined because was a gig organised by ternorecordings the local label of the Radioactive Sago Project, Wajijuara, and the incredibly pumping Brownbeat, were funk meet Ska... it was fantastic night and again o had the great feeling of being the only obviously foreign guy in the whole place... this produced some conversations, which took to other conversations, and to know other people, and so on...
I’m looking forward to be a guest DJ at 88.3 JAM FM, and seeing the Milagros Dancehall sound system... that apparently are the bomb...
Saturday night in one of many Manilas... see it for your self:
