Storytelling: A Temporary Epilogue

1

Now—on my third hour aboard Japan Airlines flight 745, on my 23^rd hour in transit since being dropped off at JFK International Airport for my trip home, and with two more hours between now and Manila soil—my journey is about to come to an end.

When I set out on this ten-day trip, I had three simple objectives: first, to undergo the audition and interview process at Berklee; second, to get to know the school and the city of Boston a little better; and third, to have a grand time in New York.

Now, I’m heading home with so much more than I bargained to gain.

The truth is, a much bigger concern than my audition and interview built up inside me early in the trip. Words like “practicality”, “sustainability” and “realism” starting to clamor in my head like the banging of pots and pans.

It started when I told Jett about my plans for earning extra money while studying at Berklee. I told her that I would write freelance for any Boston magazine, website or advertising agency that would take me.

But then Jett told me that, with a student visa, the only place you can work is the school—where pay starts at US$8 an hour, where job options are limited (Jett herself does web development for the school), and where there’s a cap to the number of hours you can work in a week. That isn’t much, when you think that the subway costs US$1.25, a Starbucks latte costs US$4, a fastfood meal costs around US$10, a CD costs US$15, a Broadway ticket costs US$120, a studio apartment starts at US$900 a month, and a roundtrip ticket to Manila costs US$1,200.

And then, while having lunch with Jett at the Berklee cafeteria, I realized, looking around at the people, that Berklee is a college, not a graduate school—hence, I would be surrounded by kids out of high school, 14 years younger than me; whose most-used word was “cool”; and whose conversations went: “That’s so cool.” “Yeah, it’s really dope.” “Okay, gotta split.” “Awesome.” And I genuinely wondered if I could take it.

Sure, I would be “pursuing my passion” and “following my dreams”. But romantic as it sounded—and as much good vibes I had been getting from friends and family the past months—what it would mean in reality was now staring me in the face.

I would be giving up everything I had worked my ass off for the past 11 years: a fully-furnished condo with more space than I needed; a car with more free gas than I could use; a great job in a great company, where I had earned the respect of my team, my colleagues, and my superiors; a very decent monthly salary that let me shop, eat out, work out and travel pretty much whenever I pleased; easy access to laundry services and cleaning ladies who made life so convenient; and the nearness of family and friends whom I could connect with, and whose opinions I respected.

In place of all these comforts, I would be settling for a small room, probably sharing it with a stranger, and worrying each month about rent; mastering the bus and subway routes; learning to cook my own meals, do my own laundry, clean my own house; and having to take what would probably be an unglamorous, unexciting, low-paying job just so I could eat out, hang out with friends, watch movies, and use a gym from time to time. I would be starting from scratch earning the respect of fellow students and faculty who had never heard of me, and rebuilding a circle of friends who would make me feel at home, half a world away. And in this country, I would be at a natural disadvantage because of my visa status, my nationality, my ethnicity, my accent, and let’s face it, my height.

I couldn’t help but recall that, in August 2009, I had resigned from a rosy career in a brainy environment in one of the world’s top corporations, to pursue what I thought then was my fundamental passion for marketing communications—and that it had turned out to be a mind-eroding seven-month disaster that turned me into the prodigal son, running home to the tune of “I told you so’s”.

In short, I was asking myself: What the hell am I doing? What on earth is going to become of me? And—still scarred from my farcical 2009 career shift—is this all going to be worth it?

And that’s where the many hours I had spent talking to friends this trip—extremely unusual for my typically anti-social self, as I had said in a previous entry—came into play.

2

“Practically every Pinoy here has a story to tell about how he or she started out.”

That’s what Lance, an old friend from Hangad and my host while in Boston, said as he shared his own story.

Lance, one of the smartest people I know, graduated from UP-PGH, passed the Philippine medical boards, and passed the US Medical Licensure Exams which would let him practice Medicine in the US. But during his first four months in the US, while sending out residency applications and undergoing interviews at different hospitals around the country, the need for day-to-day funds, as well as funds for trips to his interviews, compelled him to take a phone-answering administrative job in California, for which he was overqualified and underpaid.

To save as much of his salary as he could, and to avoid being a burden to his family back home, Lance had found lodging in the garage of a house, which he rented for US$100 a month; where he would roll out a sleeping bag on the cold concrete floor every night; and which would require a three-hour bus ride to and from work—that is, three hours each way, each day. Further, most of the food he ate was the food at the office; and to keep in touch with family and friends in Manila, he would stay for hours after work each night to get free access to Facebook and YM.

Just when his funds were about to run out, Lance was interviewed at a hospital in New Jersey—where, serendipitously, his interviewer had also graduated from PGH—and he was hired outright. Incidentally, of the hospitals Lance applied for, this was one of those he liked best. Everything just fell into place so perfectly, he recalls, that when he got the news of his acceptance, he broke into tears.

Lance eventually became the hospital’s chief resident for pediatrics; he moved to Boston soon after completing his residency; and today, he is listed as one of the Boston’s top 200 pediatricians. Further, he works only two days a week; and best of all, he has earned enough respect from his colleagues to come to work in a track suit every day.

3

Chad and Leanne, who had invited me to join Hangad in 1995 and who took me to dinner on my last night in New York, had a story to tell as well.

Chad had taken his MBA at Boston College after several years of working with Citibank in Manila, shortly after he and Leanne got married. After finishing his MBA, he had a year to find a job, or else his student visa status would force him to return to the Philippines. He had been confident at first—he did have an MBA—but it was 2004, America was still recovering from the impact of 9/11, and working visas for non-Americans were scarce.

Six months passed, Chad hadn’t yet found a job, and their funds were running short—so much so that he and Leanne, who was also in Boston taking a business program at Harvard, would decline friends’ invitations for dinners out, walk instead of taking the subway, poke their fingers into subway token dispensers in hopes of finding forgotten tokens, and keep their eyes peeled for coins on the street (and many times, actually find a total of US$2 in one walk).

(“Talaga?! Si Chad?!” I had exclaimed, slack-jawed and wide-eyed in shock and deepened admiration, knowing Chad the way I did back in college. Leanne replied, laughing: “Oo, kaya nga ang bait na niyan ngayon.”)

Leanne, who had also been a Citibanker in Manila, worked as a receptionist and filing clerk at Harvard’s admission and aid office; the modest amount she earned was barely enough for groceries. A ray of hope shone when George Bush, out of nowhere, opened 20,000 working visas for MBA and graduate students, which enabled Chad to interview for Ernst & Young in Boston and New York; but even so, the response took so long to come, that they fell back into discouragement.

Just when Chad and Leanne had given up on the East Coast—all their furniture had been sold, and they were ready to move in with Chad’s relatives in California and try their luck there for another six months—on Christmas Eve, of all dates, came the FedEx package from Ernst & Young in New York, telling Chad that he had gotten the job. Though they had had to stay home while their friends watched the annual Boston Pops Christmas Eve concert, it was okay—this was the best Christmas gift they could ask for.

Today, Chad works in Times Square, Leanne works on Fifth Avenue, Chad drives a killer SUV, and they recently bought an apartment by the Hudson in New Jersey, with a clear view of the Manhattan skyline.

“Living here teaches you to swallow your pride and forget the elitist biases you learned in the Philippines,” Leanne said over dinner. Just as Lance lived in a garage, and Chad and Leanne walked instead of taking the subway, Mia, a close college friend taking her PhD at Boston College, operates the photocopier at the college library to earn extra money while studying; and Jeans, a high school friend, was a waitress at Cheesecake Factory. Mia and Jeans—like Lance, Chad and Leanne—were top students from good schools, who had lived very comfortable lives in Manila.

4

And even as Lance got an interview with a fellow PGH alumnus, and Chad got his hiring letter on Christmas Eve, close college friend Mhir also has her own little miracle story.

While taking a masters in International Political Economics and Development at Fordham University, Mhir had started writing fiction for fun. One night, on a whim, she Googled book publishers in New York; e-mailed one of those she found, asking how to go about submitting a manuscript (apologetically, at that, saying she was an “unpublished author”). To her surprise, she received a response to her manuscript; to her greater surprise, the response was an offer to be published. Today, a year after graduating from Fordham, her book is on Amazon, and she is back in New York, working on publicity and distribution for the book while looking for a job in development.

“You’re a published author! In New York!” I exclaimed to Mhir over coffee. “Do you know what that means?! Do you realize how many people would kill to be able to say, ‘I’m a published author in New York’?”

Mhir just laughed. From when it was happening up to today, she can’t believe it either.

5

On my last night in Boston, having dinner with Jett after a just-for-fun recording session at the school, I had asked her, “Are the students smart? I mean, is there anyone you can talk to—that is, about things other than music?”

Jett, who is the type of person who actually does say nothing at all when she has nothing nice to say, was silent for a few moments. I forced a deflated laugh and said, “Oh well. It is a music school.”

And then, a memory grabbed her; and she started to tell me about her friend, Naomi, who held a degree in International Relations from Brown University and who, like Jett (who has a degree in Psychology from Ateneo), was now was taking a second degree in Music Production and Engineering at Berklee.

And at that moment, who should walk into the burger joint but Naomi herself, diminutive and chirpy. I learned, after we were introduced, that she’s part of the school’s musical theater club, and was in a production of The Vagina Monolgues the week before.

“Ooh! I love The Vagina Monologues! Which one did you do?” I asked.

“The ‘Down There’ one,” Naomi replied. “Have you seen the play?”

“Yup. Once. And I have the book,” I said. “I’d love to do ‘The Little Coochie-Snorcher That Could’!”

Naomi laughed. “Yeah, you could probably wear a wig or something.”

“Of course not!” I retorted. “I’ll go onstage like this. I can be Sinead O’ Connor.”

A few more moments of quick, energized small talk, and I learned that, after graduation from Brown, Naomi had worked as journalist in Europe before coming to Boston; and now, she hosts a news and information show on Berklee’s student-run radio network.

At that instant, I knew I had found someone whom I’d probably want as a friend—and in my gut, I was sure that, as long as I kept an open mind to the people around me, there are more Naomis to be found.

6

Throughout my stay, I learned more and more that I would never be alone while living in Boston. For one thing, I hardly had to pay for my meals while I was there, with both old and new friends constantly insisting on footing the bill.

“I’m still working, you know,” I would say, with both embarrassment and gratitude. “I’m not an impoverished student yet. I still have a salary.”

“But you’re a visitor,” they would reply. “You can repay us when you’re done at Berklee.”

“Fine,” I would say. “I’ll remember this when I’ve won my Oscar.”

Generosity is in abundant supply among Filipinos who have made it there—not only with meals, but also in opening doors to kababayans who need a place to stay. Chad, upon getting a job at Ernst & Young, had moved to New York and lived with an uncle he had never met; Leanne, who stayed behind in Boston to finish the final semester of her program, roomed with a couple of Filipinos she had only met there. And Lance calls his apartment a hotel, with Filipinos passing through town always welcome in his guest room—“dahil naaalala ko kung paano ako nag-umpisa.”

And rehearsing with the warm, welcoming Boston Filipino choir at Lance’s house, and meeting the broader Filipino community at Mass two days later—many of who, allegedly, are so accomplished in their fields that even Americans get intimidated—I knew I had found a family-to-be, half the world away.

7

Of course, I just had to learn something from GP—after all, during Hangad’s US tour last November, it was he who sealed my decision to try out for Berklee.

GP graduated from Ateneo High School a year after I did; proceeded to college in UP, then Ateneo, then finally Berklee, where he graduated summa cum laude and delivered his batch’s valedictory address. Today, GP works at St Peter’s Prep School, a Jesuit-run private boys’ school in New Jersey, where he is loved by his students, co-faculty, and school administrators alike for his work as music teacher and head of the school’s glee club. On top of that, he has written music that was used in the score of Days of Our Lives, leads a parish choir in New York, and plays the piano for four Masses every Sunday.

Musicians in the US do have a future, said GP—yes, even church musicians. To illustrate, he said, “David Haas (the man behind ‘Now We Remain’) is a very rich man.”

GP told me how American choirs are conscientious about copyright law, and hence don’t photocopy scores but instead pay for original copies for every choir member. He told me how much one gets paid to lead a choir. He told me how much you can charge a choir that commissions an arrangement. He told me how much you can get paid for playing the piano for a Mass. And he told me that once a song you wrote gets published, you’re made—because unlike in the Philippines, where singers are the stars, songwriters in the US earn more than the singers.

Mikee, a Boston-based friend of GP who was in New York when I visited, who does musical theater and sings in choirs alongside working in a hospital lab, also told me the standard rate for performing a song, even if it’s for a church service; and that you can actually become a professional choir member, paid to sing in a choir, as he is.

“Lots of the stuff you do in Philippines for free, you can get paid for in the US,” said GP. “And if you’re uncomfortable about this being a ‘ministry’, then look at it this way: you’re doing music full-time, it’s your living. In the same way, a doctor, no matter how kind he is, can’t treat patients for free all the time.”

8

In the first few days of my trip, I started questioning the wisdom of pushing life’s reset button on a social networking site. Ritchie, one of my oldest friends, said: “Look closely at the button. It doesn’t say ‘reset’. It says ‘grow’.”

As much anxiety as the idea of resetting brings, the stories I gathered over my ten days in the US convince me that this journey can only change me for the better. There’s so much character to build, so much patience to muster, so many survival instincts to sharpen, so many odds to overcome, so many people to meet, so much about life to learn, so many blessings to discover. There will be times I will hit rock bottom; there will be a time things will fall into place; and there will never be a time I will be alone in this journey.

On the way to the airport on the day of my departure, I excitedly told Tito Joey and Tita Tere, our family friends and my New York hosts, about all these stories of adversity and blessings and success, and how they had allayed my initial worries and cemented my conviction that I’m doing the right thing.

“That’s great,” they said. “But remember, it will be different as a musician. Your lifestyle won’t be as comfortable or predictable as when you’re working in P&G.”

That’s all right, I said. After all—as I had said in my Berklee application—my love for music has outlasted any company, industry, career path, field, interest, and relationship I’ve ever been in; and it has given me more joy and fulfillment than anything my “practical” life has given me.

Music, I said, is what I was born to do.

After Tita Tere hugged me goodbye at the airport, she put her hands on my shoulders, looked at me at arm’s length, and said: “I want to sing to you.”

“What do you mean, Tita?” I asked.

“On a clear day,” she said, beaming with pride, “you can see forever.”

And so cue On a Clear Day. Or Corner of the Sky. Something’s Coming. Defying Gravity. Out There. Just Around the Riverbend. A Piece of Sky. Cue these anthems of characters who, through the decades, have inspired dreamers who caught a glimpse of something bigger and better, and chased madly after it, without really knowing where it would lead. These characters don’t just exist in movies and musicals; with the stories like I learned, they’re all around us.

And they’ve convinced me, on this clear, crazy day, to dive headfirst into forever, and let my own story start to unfold.

A new bite into the Big Apple

In an earlier post, I said I was worried about getting bored and restless in Boston, it being such a small city. But I reassured myself that, small as it is, it’s packed with stuff to do.

Here’s another reassurance I now have: just a US$15, four-hour bus ride away, is New York City.

Sure, I love that Boston beckons you to sit on a park bench with a book, or spend hours in a café typing on your laptop, or just wander the city streets at a slow pace with friends—things that I’d probably feel uncomfortable doing in heart-pounding, turbo-paced Manhattan—but I can’t deny that New York is just so damned exciting.

And this trip of mine to New York, just three months after my last visit, was interestingly atypical. I didn’t watch a single Broadway show; I didn’t visit an art museum; I didn’t buy a single article of clothing; and I didn’t step into the Apple store or Barnes and Noble, even though I passed both by.

I landed in New York at noontime on Tuesday. Tito Joey picked me up at JFK; only ten minutes after getting to their house, I was off to the city. I was scheduled to meet GP and Mikee, who was visiting from Boston, that afternoon; but they in New Jersey, at the school where GP taught music. While waiting, I checked out the TKTS queues at Times Square on the off-chance I’d easily be able to get show tickets (no such luck—the lines were discouragingly long); browsed through the NBC and Lego shops at Rockefeller Center; and had a late lunch at a deli on 50^th.

Mikee called to say he was at St Patrick’s Cathedral; we met there, then walked to Magnolia Bakery, where GP was waiting with Eni, a former Madz member whom I had met during Hangad’s tour last November, and JD from ACS, who was visiting from San Francisco. The five of us went to a Brazilian restaurant that Mikee had found on GPS, where the grumpy old waiter said that Mikee, Eni and I would be charged US$2 extra, since we had each ordered only either a salad or an appetizer, and no entrée; but we didn’t bother arguing. After two hours of chatting and laughing, GP, Mikee and I decided we were still hungry (Eni and JD had plans, and had left by this time) headed off to Dallas BBQ near Times Square for a second dinner, and to chat and laugh some more. We stayed until past 11 PM, after which we parted ways. (Lucky for me, Tita Tere was working late each night that week at the UN, so I could ride home with her and Tito Joey.)

With Ateneo and Berklee alumnus GP during a turista stop in Times Square.

The next day, I rode to the UN with Tita Tere and Tito Joey, and headed uptown to Lincoln Center to pick up the NYC Ballet Swan Lake ticket I had bought online several months before. I don’t claim to be a connoisseur of ballet—my exposure has been limited to standards like Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker, and kiddie ballets like Snow White and Peter Pan—but I’ve enjoyed it since I was a kid, when Inay would regularly bring me to Ballet Philippines productions. So when I found out that Swan Lake would be staged for just eight performances, coinciding with my stay in New York, I just had to get a ticket.

It was my first visit to Lincoln Center, and I loved it! I spent some time wandering around the central courtyard, and the performance halls for ballet, for opera, and for the NY Symphony. I also got my first look at Juilliard (this might sound defensive, but there are no regrets here—I know my musical training and aspirations are better-suited for Berklee than for Juilliard). From there I walked south to the Time-Warner Center at Columbus Circle (nothing much), then north to the Museum of Natural History, which I hadn’t visited since 1994.

Lincoln Center. Across the square is the theater where I would watch Swan Lake that evening.

At the Museum, I approached the ticket desks in the entrance hall and asked how much the tickets were. “The suggested donation is US$16,” said the elderly lady manning the desk, “but it’s just suggested, so that means you can give just as much as you like.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give US$10.”

“Can I know your zipcode?”

“Oh, I’m not from here.”

“Where are you from?”

“Manila.”

“Kabayan!” she exclaimed, suddenly warming up. (In fairness to her, her accent had me fooled.) “Masyadong mahal ang US$10. Magbigay ka lang ng piso, para makakain ka nang mabuti.”

So I handed her a dollar. I learned her name is Flora, from Novaliches; she was married to an American, and had been working in New York for several years.

“At teka lang… bibigyan kita ng ticket sa planetarium at sa featured exhibit…”

And so Flora did. Which is just as well, because the museum bored me to death. The temporary exhibit titled “The Brain” was quite interesting, though I had to rush through it to get to the planetarium show—a much-hyped affair that put me to sleep. And as I looked around at the exhibits of animal models (or were they taxidermically-stuffed animals?) I thought to myself: “If I want to see animals, I’ll go to a zoo. I left after just an hour at the museum, stopping by the food court in the basement to grab a late lunch (which I enjoyed just as much as the museum).

I crossed the street to Central Park, which I enjoyed even more now than I did last November, wandering slowly in the general direction of FAO Schwartz in the park’s southeast corner, stopping once in a while to rest on a park bench, or breathe in the cool air, or take a photo of a wooden bridge, or a skating rink, or the snow-covered ground and the deep blue winter sky.

Central Park, with a view of the southern edge and the Wollman skating rink.

I spent a half-hour at FAO Schwartz before heading back to Lincoln Center for the ballet. Still with time to kill, I got myself a latte at the espresso bar, and finally headed into the theater.

What an experience. The theater was huge and gleaming, and my seat was Orchestra Center, in the 10^th row from the stage. And though the ballet wasn’t perfect, its merits more than made up for its faults.

I had issues with the material itself, with too many divertissements, and too many forgettable, uninspired waltzes in the score (I guess I’m a lot more discerning now because I never noticed these things the last time I saw Swan Lake). The set design, toted in the Playbill as the work of a great Danish modern artist, consisted of sloppily done scribbles meant to represent “palace” or “forest”—I felt Gino Gonzalez could do better. And the dancers’ athletic, angular moves made it clear that, as my officemate and ballerina Nicole had said, the NYC Ballet was better acquainted with modern rather than classical ballet.

Still, at the same time, the dancer who performed Odette / Odile was the most amazing ballerina I had ever watched, not only for her effortless technical ability, but for the delicately nuanced interpretation in her face and body: tormented and vulnerable as Odette, scheming and confident as Odile. The lighting, and many of the costumes, were also exquisitely executed, showing what high-budget production can do (sigh for Ballet Philippines). I could not take my eyes off the captivating 20-ballerina corps de ballet, and I was at the edge of my seat during the pas de quatre. And at the good parts of the score, the orchestra was sublime, building from oboe-and-harp to full orchestra, bringing out the longing and heartbreak in the ballet’s theme.

In short—experiencing the NYC Ballet at Lincoln Center more than made up for not catching any Broadway shows. And I swore to myself to catch more in the future.

A stolen shot of the Swan Lake theater.

For Thursday, I had originally planned to visit the Met—I missed a lot last November, when I had spent all of my four-hour visit on the first floor—but decided to explore the Village instead, which I had never done. It was a happy decision, because the weather today was beautiful—sunny, not too cold, and in fact, the first time since I arrived in the US that I didn’t need my coat. It was a perfect day for walking—so walk I did.

My first stop was the small park at Christopher St., with life-size sculptures of two same-sex couples known as the Gay Liberation Monument; and right across from the park was the historic Stonewall Inn, birthplace of the gay rights movement in the 1960s. I walked several blocks north, and had a disappointing lunch at Soy Café; then walked west to the Hudson River, and strolled along the bank and a few of its piers, which had been converted into a lovely park. From there I walked northeast to Washington Square Park and NYU, where scores of students had gathered to enjoy the sun; and where, to the crowd’s delight, in the middle of the square and right in front of the giant arch, a pianist was performing “Nessun Dorma”.

The Gay Liberation Monument in Christopher Park.

View of New Jersey from the Hudson River Park.

The pianist’s name, I learned, is Colin Huggins. He had studied classical piano in Europe and used to be a classical concert pianist in York, until he learned that he could have more fun and actually make the same money by wheeling his piano into the square each day that the weather permitted it, and just playing for the crowd. I sat and watched him for an hour as he played Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and at my request, parts of “Rhapsody in Blue”.

"The Happiest Man on Earth."

“Are you a musician?” Colin asked me.

“Yup,” I said.

“You wanna play?”

“Haha. No.” Although God knows that inside, I was dying to play—and I would have, if only I had someone with me to take what would be a great Facebook profile picture.

After Colin had wheeled his piano away—and handed me his card, which said “Colin Huggins, Pianist, Happiest Man on Earth”—I walked north a few blocks to Union Square. I sat there a while, watching the people, then took the PATH train across the river to New Jersey and walked a few blocks to St Peter’s Prep School, the all-boy Jesuit school where GP had taught music since graduating from Berklee. There was a small fund-raiser at the school that evening featuring some of GP’s students, and I had promised to attend, mostly out of curiosity about life after Berklee.

The fund-raiser was held in the school’s cafeteria, with a handful of family members and faculty as the audience. Three of GP’s students sang solos of songs I didn’t know—one Elvis song and two emo songs—with GP accompanying. Too bad I didn’t get to hear any group numbers by the choir GP led, since everyone said GP was doing so well and was so well-liked as the school’s Mr Schuster (not that I’m a Glee fan, but from what little I’ve seen of the show, I know that comparison is a pretty big deal).

GP, Mikee (who had also watched the show) and I sneaked out and headed for Manhattan as soon as other kids started singing. We were lucky enough to get a table at Shake Shack, and I wasn’t at all disappointed by the high expectations of the burger that my officemates Pat and Sonny had built up. Even the maple walnut-flavored custard—so sweet that it gave me a sore throat and so rich that it was totally against my “no dessert” principle—was worth it.

After dinner, we (joined by JD) headed to Don’t Tell Mama, the sing-along piano bar near 46^th and 8^th that I had been dying to return to since my first visit with Hangad last November. Apparently it was pop rock night, with the pianist and waitresses belting out songs like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, “Hold On”, “Man in the Mirror”, “Human Nature” (Michael Jackson’s, not Madonna’s), “Rainbow Connection”, and “Hotel California”. But genre constraints didn’t stop me from going up on stage to do another Sondheim number—last November it was “Losing My Mind” from Follies; this time it was “Marry Me a Little” from Company. The pitch was lower than I remembered from the Raul Esparza recording I constantly sing along to while driving; and reading off lyrics from JD’s iPhone proved to be a handicap; but who cares? You don’t often get to sing Sondheim on a New York stage; and as GP had said, “Deadma na. August pa balik mo, walang makakaalala sa ‘yo.”

I stayed at Don’t Tell Mama until past 2 AM—Tita Tere was working especially late that night. GP, Mikee and JD had left around two hours earlier to catch the last train back to New Jersey. I didn’t mind; I love that piano bar.

Friday, my last day in New York, was a day for meeting up with several friends. First on the list was Inay’s friend and colleague, Sheila Coronel, who had offered to take me to lunch, and show me around “her Manhattan.” Tita Sheila was founder and director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism for 17 years; and five years ago, she joined Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism as a member of the faculty and director of the school’s investigative journalism program.

I arrived at the Columbia area early, so I spent a few minutes at the Cathedral of St John the Divine before heading there. According to my Lonely Planet guidebook, this is the world’s third largest place of worship (after St Peter’s Basilica and some place in France I had never heard of); and it was grand indeed, with intricate sculptures and reliefs on the façade, and massive columns, towering ceilings, and a gleaming sanctuary inside.

(Incidentally, after Tito Joey had dropped me and Tita Tere off at the UN just that morning, Tita Tere had said: “Keep your eyes on the road! That’s the way to walk in New York, since there’s a lot of dog poop around.” And on the way from the subway station to the cathedral, because I had been texting Tita Sheila that I was already in the area, I stepped right into dog poop. Thank God for all the unmelted ice around, and for my luck finding patches of ice which weren’t yet blackened by New York pollution, which allowed me to clean it up. I texted Tita Tere about the irony of what had happened; she replied, “I have the gift of prophecy.”)

From the cathedral, I headed to the Columbia University campus—a grand experience in itself, with its wide-open quadrangle and its dignified buildings. I met Tita Sheila at the journalism building. We walked for just under two hours, as she showed me around the Columbia campus, the quiet and elegant Morningside neighborhood, the nearby Riverside park and Grant monument. We ventured farther eastward into Harlem, a seemingly different world of hip-hop music booming from cars’ open windows; the Apollo theater, where Ella Fitzgerald and the Jackson 5 had first performed; sidewalk stalls selling t-shirts and books that glowed with black pride; and throngs of people flashing the don’t-shit-with-me attitude that African-Americans have earned a reputation for, thanks to portrayals on movies and TV. Even as Harlem struck me as gritty, Tita Sheila talked about the gentrification of the district, with the rise of prime real estate in the area.

Touring Morningside with journalist extraordinaire Sheila Coronel.

We had lunch at an American bistro in Harlem, and walked back to Columbia, where we parted with a hug just before I entered the subway to meet another friend, college friend Miriam delos Santos. Mhir had studied International Political Economics and Development at Fordham University for the past two years on a full scholarship, and after volunteer work for four months on Culion Island, the former leper colony in the Palawan archipelago, she was now back in New York to look for a job in development—and also, to promote the book she had written for fun, and which, to her pleasant surprise, got published when she had submitted her manuscript to a publisher on a whim while she was at Fordham. We had coffee and a snack at a deli near Rockefeller Center, with me marveling the whole time at her good luck on getting that full scholarship (“Development wasn’t even your field!” I had explained) and getting published. “I guess good karma comes to good people,” I told her.

Lastly I met up with Chad and Leanne, at Chad’s office on Times Square, for dinner. Times Square was packed with people—I don’t know if it was because it was Friday night, or because it was the warmest Manhattan had been in weeks. We drove down to the Meatpacking district and spent several hours catching up over a delicious Asian dinner at Spice market. I talked about my decision to apply for Berklee, and my seven-month side trip into the world of fashion retail; they talked about their character-building experience of job-hunting during the recession, and the seven years they had spent on the East Coast. After dinner, they took me home to Tita Tere’s in Queens.

At Tita Tere's home with old friends Chad and Leanne, who invited me to Hangad 16 years ago.

And so ended my four days in New York. Again, my stay was interestingly unusual, with no Broadway shows, no art museums, and hardly any shopping; but also because I spent so much more time with friends, old and new, than my typically anti-social self allows me to when traveling. Yet I have no regrets about how I spent these four days, getting to know New York’s less touristy but no less interesting corners, and hearing the stories of the people who live there.

Definitely, I will be back soon, and not just once. US$15 bus rides, here I come.

Audition Day

Saturday, February 12, was the day of my Berklee audition.

The night before, I was confident that I would have a good night’s sleep. I was exhausted from a day of walking around Boston, and practicing for nearly three hours with the Pinoy choir. Besides, with the two hours of piano practice Jett had gotten me at Berklee that afternoon, I thought I had overcome whatever audition jitters remained. After all, GP had advised me months before: “Just be cool and have fun. The panel likes meeting applicants who just enjoy making music.”

But then, after sleeping for just two hours, I woke up, wide-eyed, unable to fall asleep for the next two hours as I watched an epic flashback flicker in my mind: a montage of every piano, keyboard, and organ I had ever played. The miniature, Schroeder-esque baby grand piano I had destroyed when I was three by repeatedly banging out my rendition of Beethoven’s 5^th; the yellow-keyed piano owned by the little old lady who gave me piano lessons as a kid, down the street from Lola’s house; those Electones during lessons at Yamaha in kindergarten and grade school; the monophonic battery-operated keyboard Tita Josie sent from New York one Christmas; the progressively more sophisticated keyboards, and finally the second-hand piano, that my parents bought me as they saw year after year how was serious I was about playing; that hideous, musty organ in the Kingsville chapel during my brief stint with the village choir; that jangly old piano in the high school chapel that I had played for morning Masses and for Days with the Lord; the keyboard in the college chapel, and the keyboard ACMG got the funds to buy in fourth year; every piano and Clavinova and Electone I had played at Hangad weddings and concerts and recordings, in Manila, around the Philippines, and in the US; Hangad’s trusty Yamaha keyboard; and the electric grand piano in my condo, that I had bought for myself two years ago.

I finally fell asleep at 6 AM—which gave me only a 30-minute nap before I had to get up, get to Berklee, have a quick breakfast in the area, and be at the audition venue by 8 AM.

Thank God for coffee—and to Jett, for recommending that amazing Spanish Latte at the Berklee students’ de facto hangout, Pavement Cafe. Kyle and I had breakfast there after he took Lance to work earlier that morning; after which I walked the short distance to the audition venue, Berklee’s Genko Uchida building down the street.

Student volunteers took my name and led to the recital hall on the ground floor, where several kids, around high school age, were seated with their parents. Some kids were happily jamming together on their guitars; some were fidgeting nervously, with their violin and saxophone cases on the floor beside them. Some were in torn jeans, sneakers, and sweatshirts; some were in suits and ties. Ten chairs, numbered one to ten, were set up along the far side of the room. On a large screen at the front of the room were the numbers one to ten, and beside each number the auditionees’ names would flash to call them to the chairs. From watching the names on the screen, I realized that while half of the kids looked like white Americans, there were actually several Europeans among them: Spanish, Italian, French, Eastern European. (The other half of the kids was a mix of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.) Along with auditionees’ names, their principal instruments would flash too—and I found it interesting that for every batch of 10 names, there were only one to two pianists. I had thought there would be more of us. The majority, four to five per batch of 10, were guitarists; one to two were electric bassists; one to two were vocalists; and the rest were violinists, flautists, saxophonists, drummers, acoustic bassists, and more.

It wasn’t long before my name flashed on the screen to call me to chair number four; and it wasn’t long again before a student volunteer, a freshman guitarist named Oliver, led me into an elevator and brought me to an upper floor. An auditionee ahead of me was still using the room, so Oliver used the time to remind me of that I would have 15 minutes in this room to warm up and study a piece of music that would serve as a sight-reading test.

The warm-up room was a classroom, but instead of desks there were rows of electric pianos, totaling about 12, facing the front of the room. Resting on one of the pianos was a binder of music sheets, which Oliver opened to the “piano” tab. To my surprise, there were eight pieces of music that I had to study. Sure, each was only around eight bars, but I also had to do one run of my five-minute prepared piece.

I dove right into the warm-up. I started with studying each of the sight-reading pieces. Most of them had both the treble and bass clefs notated—there was an easy dramatic film score-ish piece, an easy pop piece, a jazzy piece where I had to struggle not to improvise—and there were also lead sheets that just gave chords and rhythm. Luckily, I got through all of them, and had time to do a double-tempo run of my prepared piece.

After my fifteen minutes were up, I was led to another floor to wait for my audition. It was embarrassing that I slightly overestimated my waiting time, and found that my panel had been waiting when I returned from the restroom. Thankfully, both my panelists—they introduced themselves as Danny and Susanna, and I presume they were from the piano department (Jett said later that Susanna is an incredibly talented pianist)—were still good-natured as I entered the classroom that served as an audition room, and was directed me to sit at the Yamaha upright at the front of the room. They asked my name and where I was from (they seemed impressed that I had flown halfway across the world); asked if I had had any piano education; asked what I would be playing; and finally, asked me to play.

“Can I take a video of myself while playing?” I asked before starting. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a very good idea,” Susanna had said; and so all I have is a memory. I remember taking a deep breath, rolling my shoulders back, stretching my arms outwards to loosen them up one last time, putting my fingers on the keys and flexing them there and—taking one more deep, slow breath—starting to play. I remember that my suite from Cinema Paradiso, which I had spent the last weeks arranging and adjusting and polishing and perfecting, had never sounded better. I remember being so happy during those five minutes—so in love with what I was doing, then and there, as I moved from the nostalgic main theme, to the playful childhood theme, to the sweeping love theme—that I almost started to cry. I remember that I had remembered not to put on my dead face, as Anama had so often chided me, and instead put as much intensity and emotion on my face as I could. And I remember that, for maybe only the third time since I had started practicing the piece, I got through it without any mistakes.

I heaved a sigh of relief as I played the final chord. They didn’t applaud or say “good”; I didn’t expect them to, after all it was an audition. They just said “okay” and wrote down their notes.

We moved to the next part of the audition, which was the music tests. There were several parts. First, Susanna asked if I could do blues improvisation; “Kinda,” I said, and she sat beside me on the piano bench, played the notes of the blues scale in C (which I had familiarized myself with some weeks back, with Kenneth’s help), and started on a basic blues progression, while I improvised at the right end of the piano keyboard. My own assessment of my improv was that it was correct, but uninspired.

Susanna moved on to having me form chords. “Can you play a dominant 7^th chord?” Check, with a C7. “Can you do that in G?” Check. G7. “How about a D minor 7^th?” Check. “How about an A flat minor 7^th?” Whoops. I played an Abm+M7, heard immediately that it sounded wrong, and said , “Oops, that’s not right.” Susanna said, “Okay, how would you fix that?” I flattened the G. “Good,” she says. (I figure now that even if I got it wrong, at least I knew it was wrong, so that should get me at least partial points. Haha.)

Then came progressions (“Can you do a II-V-I?” “Okay, can you do it without moving all the notes?”—I think I did okay, with Dm to G chord without shifting the D, and then from G to C chord without shifting the G); chord-naming tests (Major? Minor? Augmented? Diminished?—I had two mistakes, argh); rhythm-matching tests (Susanna counted in the time, played rhythm sequences of two to four bars, and I repeated; I got two right the first time, I had to repeat two); and tone-matching tests (Susanna played sequences of notes while I looked away, which I would then imitate; perfect score for me in this part, hooray).

Lastly Susanna asked if I could sight-read. I said yes. She laid a copy of the audition binder on the piano’s music rack and asked me to play number two, the easy pop piece. I got the rhythm wrong the first time, since I had practiced it much faster in the warm-up than her count-in now; the second time, it came out perfect.

“We’re done. Thank you,” they both said after that. I replied, “Already? I’d love to do more.” And I meant it. I found myself hugely enjoying the tests—particularly, the fact that there were people who spoke and appreciated the same musical bwabwabwa that I did.

Next I was led upstairs to the admissions office, where I was interviewed by an Asian-American student admissions representative, a senior at the school. I honestly found the interview anticlimactic: what I had hoped to be 15 minutes packed with drama and sound bites about pushing the reset button on my very comfortable corporate life to follow my dreams and live out my passions turned out to be boring, even annoying, as my interviewer blandly ran down his checklist of questions—“Why do you want to study music at Berklee?” “What will you be able to contribute to the Berklee community?” “What do you plan to do afterwards?” “In three words, how would you describe your music?”—and just stared into his MacBook, typing non-stop, as I spoke. At one point I stopped and said, “Uhm, should I wait for you to finish typing?” He looked up and answered, “No, just keep talking. I’m trying to get this all down.” The writer and HR person in me was aching to give him a lesson in conducting interviews. No probing of any answer I gave, no reaction to anything specific; only a patronizing, “That’s great! Amazing!” after every answer I gave. No wonder the interview was only 15 minutes long. Or looking at it another way—maybe he interviewed that way precisely because each applicant was given only 15 minutes. Oh well.

After that, my audition and interview were done. My interviewer told me I would get my admission and scholarship results via e-mail on March 31.

I decided to stay on at the school for some activities prepared by admissions team. I headed back down to the hall, where many more students and parents were now waiting. The anxiety and energy had built up considerably, with parents asking the student volunteers in the hall about the audition process, the interview process, housing, and scholarships. A few minutes after I arrived at the hall, an Eddie Murphy-ish student ambassador named Will Wells, a graduating double-major in Film Scoring and Music Production & Engineering (and, I learned from Jett later, one of the school’s star students), gave a talk about his experience at Berklee. He had gone to Finland to perform on the school’s behalf; he had worked in a studio with John Mayer, Wyclef Jean and Sara Bareilles (note to self: look up Wyclef Jean and Sara Bareilles), and he had a job waiting for him (in Hollywood, I think) after graduation.

Joining Will on stage at the end of his talk for Q&A (most parents had questions about financing, scholarships, acceptance rate, and housing) was Todd, the school’s director for admissions. After the Q&A I approached Todd to air two concerns that had built up inside me during Will’s talk: first, that I had been unable to share anything about my songwriting (I had a complete set of Hangad CDs and songbooks, and a MacBook with videos of performances and film scores in my bag); and second, that the interview was short and not very substantial, and that there was much more meat in the 11-page single-spaced set of essays (the Berklee questionnaire had 17 essay questions with no word limit) that I had sent with my application last December.

Todd was very reassuring on both my concerns. First, he said that the audition really was for performance, not for writing, and that if I had applied for the Berklee Songwriting and Composition Scholarship (which I had last January, with a CD and scores of 15 of my songs), then for sure my work would be evaluated by the writing department. And second (in retrospect, it was rather stupid for me to ask, even humorously, “Do you guys actually read the applications?”) he said that the interview is used to validate what’s written in my application, and that the Board of Admissions does read the applications. (GP, who had worked in the admissions office as a student, later validated this.) Whew, I was able to breathe much easier after this talk with Todd.

It was noontime by then, and my last activity for the day was a tour of the campus. While waiting in the lobby for it to start, someone (either a faculty member or an administrator) asked the crowd, “So who’s flown the farthest to audition?” “Chicago,” called out one parent; “Florida,” said another. I, standing at the back of the crowd, raised my hand and said, “Manila.” Everyone turned toward me, beaming with what was either fascination or condescension, and said: “You win.”

The tour was quick: a student representative took us to a selection of the 12 buildings scattered around one of Boston’s busier intersections, that comprise the Berklee campus. Highlights were the performance center, the music library, the practice rooms, and the studios.

We were done around 1:30 PM. Before heading to the nearby mall to have lunch and meet up with Kyle, I stopped again at the Berklee bookshop. The day before, I had been struggling with the decision whether or not to buy a Berklee College of Music collegiate sweatshirt, which I had seen online and drooled over weeks before. Apart from there being no fitting room, or even a mirror at the store; and the Philippines really not being a sweatshirt kind of country; I also realized that, as excited as I had been for the audition and interview these past weeks—climaxing in my previous night’s sleeplessness—now the real excitement began. I had put my heart and soul into my application and audition—the eleven pages of essays, my trips to Ateneo for my grades, the portfolio for the songwriting scholarship, my audition piece, flying halfway around the world to be im Boston, and pouring my whole self into the audition itself—and now, all I could do was wait, and hope.

I walked out of the store, deciding I would get that sweatshirt in the Fall. For now, my fingers are crossed for March 31.

Boston Retrospective

It’s 6:30 AM, and I’m sitting by the window of the food court of Logan International Airport, watching the sun rise over the tarmac, casting golden sunlight and long shadows on the first few flights of the day.

My flight to New York isn’t until 10:35 AM, but Kyle missed his flight to Denver last night and took the first flight out this morning instead; and I decided to already come along so Lance wouldn’t have to make two trips to the airport. Which was just as well, since I wouldn’t have wanted to reel at the US$25 baggage charge and still fumble to move 10 lbs from my baggage to my carry-on luggage at a busier hour of the day. This is the last time I’m taking American Airlines (and probably the last time I’m using that travel agent in Manila as well).

AA angst aside, I had a great breakfast—praise God for club burritos and banana smoothies!—and anyway, why let a few sour minutes spoil what’s been an amazing five days in Boston?

A not-so-brief recap:

Lance picked me up from Logan on Wednesday night, after I had spent over 24 hours in transit. The wait outside the airport was my first ever encounter with subzero weather—piles of ice and gusts of wind all around. I tried to will my body to deal with it, but finally succumbed to the urge to rifle through my bag for my gloves before my fingers turned to icicles on the curb. Lance arrived soon enough, and his apartment in Cambridge is just 10 minutes from the airport. Kyle, who had flown in from Denver days before, had a delicious spaghetti dinner prepared at home. It had been years since I last sat down and talked with Lance and Kyle—and we Skyped with GP and Mikee in New Jersey inbetween—so we slept past 1 AM.

The next day, Thursday, Lance drove us through streets lined with heaps of crushed ice, blackening in some parts, to Harvard Square, where we had breakfast at International House of Pancakes. Mia Cruz had called Kyle shortly before we left the house, and instead of spending the day working on her dissertation, she joined us at IHOP (which led me to ask later, “Ganyan ba buhay mo rito? Pa-shola-shola na lang?”). We walked around Harvard and down to the frozen Charles river, then drove to Boston Common, the city’s version of Central Park (a nicer version, I would dare say, because it’s built on upward-sloping ground, and the size is much more manageable). We walked up to the Massachusetts State House, then down to Newbury Street, where we went inside Trinity Church and had coffee at the Prudential. That evening, Lance and I walked to Marshall’s and Target near their place; then the three of us sat down to a steak dinner Kyle had prepared.

With old friends Lance and Kyle near Harvard Square. (Or is this still part of Harvard Square?)

Friday was to be my first encounter with Berklee College of Music, and my first ride on Boston’s subway, the T. What should have been a pleasant ride and a short walk to the school turned out to be a character-building experience. For one, I learned that the T isn’t your typical high-speed light rail that seats a thousand, runs smoothly, and pulls into a station before you know it. Instead, each train on the T consists of two narrow, 20-seater cars (more like a tram than a train, if you think about it). These trains whine and wheeze, thud and tumble through twisting tunnels under Boston, braking every so often when there is traffic on the tracks ahead. I got motion sickness on my first ride. More than that, on my first ride, I also got off two stops earlier than I had planned, when an announcement came that there was a train stalled at the next station and we would be stuck indefinitely. I figured it was pretty much the same route that Lance, Kyle, Mia and I had walked yesterday, maybe even shorter, so what the heck. What I hadn’t figured was that the walk would be much more tiring without company, with a heavier bag, and with winter winds drying the sweat on my neck and your back.

But anyway, I made it. Jett met me at the lobby of Berklee’s main building at 150 Massachusetts Avenue, and we had lunch at the Berklee cafeteria: eat-all-you-can, with stations for salad, sandwiches, pizza and pasta, Mexican food, smoothies, bread, cereal, beverages, for only US$6.50. After lunch, Jett got me a much-needed two-hour slot at one of the school’s piano practice rooms—my audition was the next day, and I hadn’t sat in front of a piano for four days.

With Jett of the Ateneo Chamber Singers, and one of Hangad's sound engineers (ADMU AB Psy '05; Berklee College of Music, Music Production & Engineering '12).

When my two hours were up, I said goodbye to Jett, took the T to Government Center, and checked out Quincy Market, a shopping and dining complex in a historical square, with an interesting mix of restaurants, stalls, and shops (I enjoyed my first-ever visit to an Abercrombie & Fitch store, with its gorgeous salespeople, and that testosterone-packed fragrance throughout the store that makes you want to pounce on the aforementioned salespeople). Still stuffed from my eat-all-you-can lunch, I just got myself a cup of coffee and boarded the T home.

There was choir practice that evening at Lance and Kyle’s place, in preparation for the Filipino Mass on Sunday. I played the keyboard; Jett led practice; Mia and Joel were there; I met Tina, Rafa and Ene, Mabel, Ian, Ivan, Fanny and Jordan, and some others; and I was thrilled to see Fr Arnel.

Early Saturday morning, after Kyle took Lance to the hospital for Lance’s two-day shift, Kyle and I drove to the Berklee student hangout, Pavement, for a quick breakfast (thanks Jett for recommending that amazing Spanish latte!), before I went to my audition and interview (which I will blog about separately). The audition ended at around 1:30 PM, after which I went to the Pru for a [lousy] lunch at the food court. Kyle met me at the Pru and we drove to the city’s North End, where he had a huge pasta lunch; then we walked around the North End, to the Paul Revere Mall (“If it’s a mall, where are the shops,” Kyle had asked), down to the waterfront, across one of the many bridges, back to the Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall area where we spent some time at the New England Holocaust Memorial; then Mia called to remind us about dinner (with Fr Arnel saying “Don’t be late!” in the background).

Dinner was at Khao Sarn Thai restaurant; dessert after that was at Cabot’s ice cream house. The evening ended with us taking Fr Arnel back to his residence at Boston College—and me playfully stepping on a heap of snow that I mistakenly thought was tightly packed, and sinking thigh-deep into ice and screaming “Save me!”

With Fr Arnel, ACMG friend Mia, her husband Joel (who was also my "angel", or sponsor, when I tried out for Dulaang Sibol in second year high school--"you're a bad omen for my Berklee audition", I had told him jokingly), and Kyle.

I slept so soundly that night—from exhaustion, overeating, and post-audition relief—that I slept through my alarm the next morning, making us 30 minutes late for our call time for the Filipino Mass at Boston College. It was a pleasant Mass, with a friendly congregation in an intimate chapel. I bumped into Carlo, a grade four batchmate and co-reporter in the Ateneo Grade School paper, who now has a doctorate in physics (“I work with lasers,” he had said). Kyle and I grabbed a quick bite at the reception prepared by BC students after the Mass, then picked up Lance at the hospital and drove to the lovely port town of Rockport, around an hour from the city (I wouldn’t know exactly how long the drive was, I was asleep both ways). Rockport is a picture-perfect town, with narrow streets flanked by rows of colorful shops, and a romantic harborfront lined with charming houses—the kind you would imagine in movies. It was freezing and several shops were closed for the season, but I loved it nonetheless. Kyle said (and later showed me photos) that it’s even better in spring and summer.

Rockport.

Dinner that night was at Cheesecake Factory at the mall near Lance and Kyle’s place (nothing at all like Manila’s Cheesecake Etc., as I had initially assumed).

The next day was my last full day in Boston. It was also Valentine’s Day, so I told Lance and Kyle I would go off on my own and let them have “quality time.” I took the T back to Boston Common and went crazy with my camera on Beacon Hill, the old, posh residential neighborhood adjoining Boston Common; then had lunch at Finagle A Bagel and walked around a bit downtown before taking the T home mid-afternoon. As soon as I got home, the three of us went back out to rustic Charles Street (right at the base of Beacon Hill) where Lance and Kyle had a late lunch, and we walked around before I took the T back to Berklee, where Jett had arranged for a two-hour piano recording session for us in one of the school’s high-tech studios; and Lance took Kyle to the airport for his flight to Denver (which, I mentioned earlier, he missed). Jett and I had a burger dinner after the session—my first time to record with a live grand piano, rather than with MIDI—and then I headed home.

In frozen Boston Common. Can't wait to see this place in spring.

And now, here I am on my sixth and last morning in Boston, waiting at the airport for my plane to New York.

This must have been my most relaxed trip ever. I had two guidebooks (I was supposed to have just one, but I found a Fodor’s Boston 2009 for only Php150 at Powerbooks in Cebu a week before I left), but I didn’t have a fixed hour-by-hour itinerary the way I usually do. I had a vague list of places I wanted to go, and I though I didn’t get to go to a lot of them, I’m surprisingly okay with it.

Before the trip, I really didn’t know what to expect. Friends who have lived here (Lance and Kyle, Chad and Leanne, GP and Jett) rave about the place. Those who have visited give mixed reviews: Domi said it was alright, Elaine liked it, Chad S. said his mom loved it. Jia and Karlo said it was boring, with shops that close early and not much of a club scene. My guidebooks said it’s brimming with history and culture, but I’ve never cared much for US history; and that it was a compact, walkable city, but I figured it was just a marketing claim. For the most part, the impression I had was that it was a historical city and a college town. I hadn’t figured it would turn out to be much more.

Boston to me, today, is a charming, classy city, with clean streets and beautiful architecture; a chill city, where park benches and coffeeshops beckon you to just sit, and read, and write, and talk; an optimistic, energetic city, where the rich blue sky in the middle of winter reflects the percolation of thoughts and the creation of great, wonderful things; and yes, a compact and walkable city, where there’s something to see everywhere you look.

I love this city.

I love the open spaces. I love the rich texture of history and modernity. I love the photogenic streets, buildings, and churches. I love the people. I love how it’s a place that’s so relaxed yet so purposeful. I even love its quirks—the way the T goes out of service and make you get off, and the streets which often make no sense at all—which remind you that this city, though imperfect, is so alive.

I’m honestly not sure yet whether Boston has stolen my heart away from New York. I still do love New York’s garishness, its sensory overload, its chaos and pressure, its in-your-face hugeness. But quiet, steady, dignified Boston sure is giving the Big Apple a run for its money.

At times during this brief stay, I found myself wondering if I’ll get bored or restless, the way I got bored and restless living in Cebu nine years ago… but then I remind myself, compact as Boston is, there’s a ton of stuff to do. Because this trip was so chill, there’s still a mile of stuff on my Boston to-do list: the Museum of Fine Arts, the New England Aquarium, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Science Museum, the many towns around Boston. I can’t wait to witness the changing of the seasons, hear the Boston Pops perform live, run 6 miles along the banks of the Charles, and make new friends both in Pinoy community and the international student community. And as early as now, Mikee and I have already talked about auditioning for community theater, and Lance and I are already toying with the idea of running the Boston Marathon.

There’s no rush. Pretty soon, this will be home.

Lost in Enunciation: Epilogue 1 (of potentially many)

Don’t you just love it when, after struggling to remember something and fail to do so, that very something just pops into your head for no reason a few days later?

I had been sorely disappointed with myself writing my “Lost in Enunciation” entry, because I was sure I was missing out on a number of my best “lost in enunciation” moments.

Well, one of these favorite moments came back to me, unprompted, a few mornings back. I was driving by the Globe building on the way to work, and spotted a familiar woman crossing the road.

When I was with Globe HR, this woman was with Globe’s customer service group. I knew her from some trainings and meetings we had attended together. But she stuck out in my mind because, when I was heading out of the building to the tricycle stop one evening in late November after work, I saw her having a hysterical fit on the sidewalk. She was panting, fuming, on the verge of tears.

Well-meaning nice guy that I was—I was in HR, at the time—I approached. With genuine concern, I asked what was wrong.

She told me that she had been standing at the curb waiting for a cab, when two men sped by on a motorcycle and yanked her bag away from her—along with Php20,000 of her Christmas bonus, and the then top-of-the-line service phone that were in it.

She had held fast to her bag for a few seconds, she said, breaking into a run as the snatchers drove away; but her better judgment told her to let go when they started to accelerate. Her wrist hurt, she said.

I put a consoling arm around her as she stomped her foot and whined at her misfortune. “Buti na lang hindi ka nasaktan,” I said. Well-meaning nice HR guy.

I lent her my phone so she could call her husband and ask to be picked up. A teammate of hers arrived on the spot moments later. “Yosi. Yosi!” she demanded. When she seemed sufficiently calmed down by her cigarette and her friend, I told her to take it easy, and headed home.

A few mornings later, we bumped into each other in one of the restaurants in the building. She was with the same friend, and seemed in good spirits.

“O! Kumusta ka na?” I asked, touching her arm with genuine concern. Again, well-meaning nice HR guy.

“Eto,” she said, proudly, “I’m leaving.”

Genuine concern turned to genuine shock. “Ha? Bakit naman?”

“Bakit ano?”

“Uhm, why are you leaving?”

“Ha?”

I don’t know which of us looked more puzzled at that very moment.

Thank goodness for her cigarette-bearing friend, who figured it out for us. “Tsk!” she snapped to her snatcher victim friend. “Akala niya aalis ka. ‘Leaving’.”

The snatcher victim thought for two seconds, then her face brightened and she exclaimed: “Oh! I meant, I’m leaving! You know? Buhay pa ako. You know?”

“Aaaaaaah. Good.” I let out a genuinely relieved sigh, knowing one of our valuable human resources wasn’t leaving after all—and rushed out of the restaurant to hide my embarrassment.

The Threshold

I am standing on the threshold of my life’s greatest adventure.

In less than an hour, I will begin my first solo journey of over 20 hours, to a city halfway around the world that I have never been to.

By tomorrow, I will set foot in my first winter, with “nineteen inches of snow in Queens” and “fifteen degrees below zero Fahrenheit in New Jersey”, as friends have reported in e-mails and Facebook status messages.

And on Saturday, I will deliver a five-minute piano performance which, without exaggeration, will determine the rest of my life.

I am bound for Boston, in the deepest days of winter, for an audition and interview at Berklee College of Music that will determine my admission and scholarship to the school’s Fall semester.

Six years ago, this moment was only a distant dream. Needless to say, the past few weeks have brought back all the sleepless nights and stomach-turning giddiness of counting down to Christmas as an eight-year-old.

I don’t remember exactly when or where I first came across the name “Berklee”. All I remember is Jools giving me the 2005-2006 course prospectus that the school had sent him when we got to talking casually about music studies, a few days after I first heard the name.

Going over Berklee’s prospectus (and later its website), I had thought, what a place—a music school that valued creativity and individuality and self-expression, and not someplace where music was simply about reading notes off a page. After years of teaching myself to play the piano, arrange music, and write songs—with no classical training, with frustrations with organ and piano teachers who had never held my ability in any regard, and fueled all along mostly by a burning passion for the craft—it was exactly the kind of music education I wanted.

But what a price tag too. At almost US$20,000 a trimester for at least two years, it was something I could not dream of affording.

Yet the dream tugged at me ceaselessly, becoming the subject of many angst-ridden reflections during many a Hangad prayer session or retreat: did I want to stay corporate, or become a musician?

I gave in to the angst in 2005, when I applied for the International College of Music (ICOM) in Kuala Lumpur. A member of Berklee’s international network, ICOM came at a fraction of Berklee’s price, and offered the option of moving to Berklee after two years. In June 2005, during a vacation my then-partner and I took to Malaysia and Singapore, I auditioned with Jim Chappell’s piano solo “Otter Chase” and a self-accompanied “Someone Like You” from Jekyll and Hyde; took a written test on music theory I should have studied harder for; and had a rather forgettable interview with a Chinese-Malaysian member of the faculty.

Some weeks after the audition, I got word that I had made it.

But I didn’t push through. After all, what would become of my then-six-year relationship? And, even at a fraction of the Berklee tuition, how in the world could I afford that education? And besides, what renowned musician ever came out of ICOM, that uninteresting, six-storey building at the end of a narrow street, that the cab driver couldn’t even find? For that matter, what renowned musician ever came out of Malaysia?

So the dream got shelved. I took ICOM as a sign that I was meant to continue with my career, and be thankful I had Hangad on the side as my outlet for music.

It wasn’t a bitter decision at all. Life was very good. I had just shifted careers, from Human Resources to Marketing. I left Globe Telecom to join Procter & Gamble soon afterwards, and learned to love it after the grueling six-month adjustment. Two years into P&G, my then-partner and I bought a two-bedroom condominium under a 20-year housing loan. Still two years later, I landed an easy executive job at the country’s second largest fashion retail company, which got me a cooler car than I never imagined I would own. And my then-partner and I kept counting the years to forever.

All this while, I continued to make music on the side, with Hangad. This is life as it was meant to be for me, I told myself—cushy lifestyle on one hand, with a job that paid the bills; and enough music to keep life interesting and meaningful. Practical, sensible, perfect.

But, as I talked about in an earlier blog entry, life as I knew it came crashing down in 2010. Our countdown to forever came to a halt at 12 and a half. He moved out; I bought his share of the condo. A few months later, deciding the condo just carried too many memories for me to move on, I put my place up for sale, and started scouting around for a new condo.

Just as I thought I had found a perfect place—literally, on the day I was going to make a downpayment which would tie me down financially for another 20 years—there came the eureka: The hell with tying myself down again. For the first time in years, I can be free.

Hmm. Berklee?

The idea popped into my head along with this eureka of freedom. But, at first, it was almost as a joke: I’m done with that. …Or am I?

It was Hangad’s US tour last November, coming on the heels of this realization, that sealed the deal. Unexpected conversations with students and alumni of Berklee told me that, yes, there was a place in Berklee for lovers of musical theater and church music. The appreciation of multinational audiences during Hangad’s shows in New York made me come to terms with the fact that, yes, I am a musician, and a pretty good one, at that. Brief exposure to an international academic community showed me that there was so much to learn, not just in school, but from other cultures, from studying in another country. And two weeks of thinking about nothing but music—and the overwhelming fulfillment and peace of mind it brought—showed me that music was no longer just something I wanted to do, but the thing I wanted to do.

I returned from the US in mid-November with the resolve to finally pursue this dream that had been shelved six years ago. I put together the application form; spent several late nights toiling over the answers to 17 essay questions; woke up a few early mornings to put together my academic records in Ateneo; started practicing like crazy; wrote three new songs in a month in a flurry of new-found creative energy and self-confidence; and got my interview and audition sked.

It was time for this hesitant, even apologetic musician, to put aside self-doubt and second-guessing, to throw practicality to the wind, and to finally, finally embrace the gift and the calling that he had downplayed for much too long.

So today, it begins. Am I scared? Nervous? Worried? On the contrary -- right here, right now, sitting in NAIA a few minutes to boarding, I am so happy, so excited, and so grateful, that I have to breathe deep in order not to cry.

It’s melodramatic, I know. But then, how often can you say you’re standing at the gate to your future, waiting for it be flung open to reveal a vast world of dizzying possibility? How often can you say you’re teetering on the narrow precipice of the world you know, just seconds before plunging headlong into destiny? How often can one actually identify the exact day that demarcates who you are, and who you’re meant to be?

Part of me wants to press forward, and breathe in everything that lies in store.

Another part of me wants me to stay here forever, in this surreal, adrenaline-pumped, holy moment before everything changes forever.

But all of me is grateful. For unbelievably supportive co-workers and friends, in Hangad, P&G and elsewhere, who have been cheering me on every step of the way. For fellow dreamers who have had to shelve their own dreams in favor of practicality, and have asked me to dream my dreams for their sake. For fellow dreamers who have pursued their dreams with no regrets, inspiring me to follow mine. For an overwhelmingly loving family, who never ever doubted or faltered in their belief in me. And for a Universe that has led me to this moment after all these years.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all.

And now, the boarding call.

It is time.