Sunday, February 06, 2022

5:41 PM | Dearest Concerned People Who Tell Me To My Face That I Need to Lose Weight in the Middle of a Pandemic

I was out in the world for once. It was an increasingly rare thing, to be out this way in a world still teeming with so much uncertainty.

Like many people I knew, I still harbored a suspicious regard for the outdoors, even in the beginning of the third year of this pandemic. A few weeks ago, someone I know had announced in his Instagram that—even after two vaccinations and a booster shot, even after all these time wearing masks and being extra careful—he had contracted the Omicron strain of COVID-19, and was battling a debilitating bout of it. “But I was going out a lot during the holiday season,” he wrote. “I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

I knew several other people who tested positive for COVID-19 in January. And that was enough to keep me indoors for longer stretches, again.

Not that I was already going out even before that. Taking care of my mental health was becoming a full time endeavor, and home and being out of the radar from people was proving to be comfort I needed to have. Or else go mad. Being out meant courting needless anxiety, so I stayed in.

And when I did go out, it was to combat the occasional stir craziness—and much as possible, only in the most furtive way. Like a mouse. And only in the company of people in my immediate bubble. And only to familiar places I felt was safe enough to be in—like the open-air comfort of Caña at The Bricks Hotel, which had become a second home in the pandemic.

And so when I do go out, the effort often feels like a prize, almost.

So I was out in the world at the Valencia municipal plaza for their Sunday tabo, which has also become a gathering place for many of the province’s major restaurants to set up stands to cater to the eating pleasure of the early morning crowd [a lot of them from Dumaguete]. It was my first time to be there, and it was a tentative joy to behold—given that I was also seeing people I have not seen in almost three years.

Near the end of our excursion, I saw a familiar face, someone I had not seen in many, many moons. There was a rush to my steps as I turned to greet her, my smile wide beneath my facemask, my fist ready for a bump in what had become the fashionable replacement for the old beso-beso. Before I could even say a delighted hello, she said:

“Tambok na ka kaayo! You really should lose weight.”



I really should just had taken it in stride.

I knew where it came from. It is cultural. One can even argue that it’s an unfortunate part of our DNA as a people. Even before the pandemic shattered our lives and reordered the way we did things and dealt with each other, Filipinos were wont to say, “You’ve gone fat!” in lieu of hello—and you can, with all honesty, say it is our hello. Apparently even pandemics are not earthshattering enough to change this.

It is rude—but it is also deeply ingrained, most people don’t even realize they traffic in its crudeness.

Still, it’s not easy to take this in stride. Whether in Tagalog [“Tumaba ka!”] or in Binisaya [“Nanambok ka!”], the comment—especially when it comes as a greeting—astonishes because it always seems to come out of nowhere. Your mindset is to be warm in greeting someone you have not seen in so long, and when the response you get is body-shaming couched in tones of concern mixed in with the salutation, your mind reels. You feel attacked just when you are about to welcome the person in your bubble of familiarity. You are never prepared to give an appropriate response.

What is an appropriate response?

Here’s one: “Ikaw rin!” My closest friends tell me this when I ask them over the occasional chat in Messenger.

But it strikes me as a witless, even commonplace, response; never mind that it is also answering passive aggression with equal hostility—and my mother once told me, in what she said was helpful Biblical metaphor, that it is better to throw back bread when people throw stones at you. [The Bible, I later found out, never said anything remotely resembling this maxim. But I was an obedient Sunday School-bred kid. So I learned to throw bread metaphorically, but also to eat them literally when I needed to soothe whatever pain I felt. I was constantly on the verge of becoming a doormat with eating problems.]

Besides, I am always afflicted by what the French term l’esprit de l'escalier, literally “the spirit of the staircase,” or what they call coming up with the perfect response a little too late. So when someone hails me with “Nanambok ka!” I almost immediately respond with nervous laughter—and think of the wittiest rejoinder thirty minutes later, the offending person already out of sight.

I am certainly not alone in this commiseration. In a 2019 paper on the context of fat-shaming among adult Filipinos, Dr. Roberto Prudencio D. Abello of De La Salle University-Manila’s Behavioral Sciences Department writes that “the contemporary Filipino setting is both harsh and humorous toward individuals labeled as ‘fat’ and in local parlance, ‘tabachoy’ that would suggest that fat shaming culture exists in the Philippine society.” He cites depictions [and reception] of obesity in our popular culture—including movies and television [think of Bondying and Dabyana and Vice Ganda’s infamous 2013 fat-and-rape joke involving TV journalist Jessica Soho]—as the battleground figures that codify the popular attitude towards weight. The ramification, he concludes, is a social hazard: many fat-shamed individuals in his study grapple with unending levels of shame that also leads to feelings of invisibility and inadequacy, among other things.

In other words, “Nanambok ka!” is not helpful at all to anyone’s mental health—so whatever friendly concern it may have been intended in its utterance is all for naught.

And besides, we are living in a pandemic!

When COVID-19 started its onslaught in 2020 and we were all forced to stay indoors for months, I knew what it entailed: it was a wholesale disruption to our ways of doing things, including our rites of fitness we once took for granted. Gyms closed down. We had no idea if it was even safe to venture outdoors for a run. And lockdown also meant, for most people, sedentary living bingeing on movies and TV and partaking of food that was closest comfort in precariously uncertain times. On Facebook, I posted: “In the next few months, please, let’s not comment on each other’s weight.”

There were many individuals, of course, who took to the pandemic like the perfect excuse to gain a six-pack. Good for them. Many of them had access to homebound gym equipment—which is privilege. Diet is also privilege. In Dumaguete, so many food delivery businesses sprouted in 2020, a lot of them touting the latest fad in “healthy eating”—but for a price.

I thought the pandemic was enough to give pause to the usual judgments on weight and other ornery things. I was banking on common understanding and goodwill. I thought: we were fighting a battle in this pandemic, surely we could afford to be kind to each other.

But still—after not seeing each other in months and months, there was this: “Nanambok lagi ka!”

In August 2020, actress KC Concepcion shared on Instagram her own experience with body-shaming: “I used to get body-shamed when I went on my 3-year hiatus for not having that Asian, stick-thin body (for an Asian like me), and many women like me get affected by this mentally, emotionally and physically. Going through a pandemic and realizing the big picture issues of the world, I realized life is to be celebrated, and enjoyed... Like, why would I choose to develop an eating disorder over losing all the extra weight healthily?”

Later, in November of the same year, the Department of Education had to issue an apology when a module for distance learning from DepEd-Occidental Mindoro took potshots at a celebrity and subsequently made the rounds on social media. The material, for a MAPEH class, prompted students with the following situation: “Angel Locsin is an obese person. She, together with Coco Martin eats fatty and sweet food in Mang Inasal fast food restaurant most of the time. In her house, she always watching television (sic) and does not have any physical activities.” It went on to ask students what would happen to the popular actress if she “continue[d] her lifestyle.”



Needless to say, I am perfectly aware that I have grown bigger as the pandemic stretches on. But I’ve weighed things—no pun intended—and have chosen to first take care of my pandemic-induced mental health issues. My anxieties add fuel to my being adrift, and I do find myself eating my feelings. [And food is such a glorious escape.] I will certainly get around to keeping fit. It is part of my recovery. I just do not need the casual reminders from the most random people that all they see of me—a person of so much more complexity—is my weight.

Most people I know never do this, I’ve noticed. It is only certain people, and I feel they are guilty of projection: the unsolicited remarks on people’s weight feel like shields to their own insecurities, deflecting their own deficiencies by lobbying petty grenades first. When I think of that, I ultimately forgive them. [But I do not forget.]

A good friend’s boyfriend told me, “You’re fat!” We were in Adamo and I had not seen them in six months, and this was how he greeted me. I forced a smile. Was my hello not effusive enough? But I thought: He has bigger problems than concerns for my weight. In the middle of the pandemic, he opened a milk tea café near downtown, which promptly closed within six months. I must understand. So I just nodded and said, “I know.”

An older woman from a social circle I used to run in told me, “You’re fat!” We were grocery shopping in Lee Plaza and I had not seen her in a year, and this was how she greeted me. I forced a smile. Was my eagerness to see her not sincere enough? But I thought: She has bigger problems than concerns for my weight. She found out her daughter’s a lesbian and had called for a hasty intervention that doubled as a threat—because it was apparently an embarrassment to their tony family. I must understand. So I just nodded and said, “I do need to go to the gym.”

An acquaintance from school told me, “You’re fat!” We were at the Pantawan of Dumaguete to see the Christmas lights and I had not seen her in two years, and this was how she greeted me. I forced a smile. Was my fist bump not cordial enough? But I thought: She has bigger problems than concerns for my weight. Her husband is having an affair with their driver, and she knows all about it—but can’t do anything because her husband is also an abusive prick. I must understand. So I just nodded and said, “I’m going on a diet.”

(I have of course changed details in these blind items so as to spare these people embarrassment—a courtesy they did not extend me. I know they are probably reading this. But they do have bigger problems than my weight.)

Extend understanding, be a bundle of love, and know with all of your heart the difficult circumstances of our lives in these fraught times.

We’re alive! So far! That’s what matters most, I think.

When you meet someone you have not seen in months because of the pandemic, say: “I’ve missed you. And despite everything that is wrong in the world, you look fabulous.”

Labels: coronavirus, fitness, friends, health, life, mental health, social norms

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Wednesday, August 11, 2021

9:52 PM | COVID Porn

With Lockdown [2021], Joel Lamangan continues his streak of godawful cinema with such retrograde sensibilities. He recycles his penchant for sex work stories captured with the pornographic zeal he always mistakes for art film aesthetics, and gives the carcass a new COVID mask. It's only a pretense at social relevance because Lamangan has nothing new to say. [Does not even know that in pandemic times, there is such a thing as onlyfans.]

Labels: coronavirus, film, philippine cinema, queer, review

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Thursday, August 05, 2021

9:11 PM | Today's Random Thoughts

[1] An American missionary in Calvary Chapel [my former church] seems to be a COVID conspiracy theorist, and MAGA to boot. [Sigh.] How is this guy a “missionary”? [Worse: some people I know like his posts regularly.]

[2] Meanwhile.

[3] Dear God, my poor country. The chaotic scene at SM San Lazaro in Manila early this morning, as people ran to secure vaccine slots. The system is so broken, so heartbreaking.



[Video by Anthony Llegue Norcio]

[4] I hate feeling like a spy, but when I see establishments breaking COVID protocol, I report. Even my favorite establishments, I report. I am concerned about COVID above all. The staff usually gets reprimanded when these things get reported. Which is why I feel guilty — but it also feels like a barbed necessity. Because I know a lot of these staff people, and they’re nice. But they’re also steeped in a cultural fix that makes them timid in front of intimidating and demanding customers they see as “important,” especially foreigners. There are class issues at play here.

[5] The Olympic athletes this year have been so amazing and inspiring. [Except you, Novak Djokovic.]

[6] Listening to opera singer Zofia Kilanowicz sing “Symfonia piesni zalosnych” from Henryk Górecki’s ̄Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 while on Ritalin rush is absolute mental orgasm.



[7] The s.o. and I:

Labels: cats, church, classical music, coronavirus, issues, life, love, music, olympics, sports

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Monday, July 05, 2021

11:49 PM | Vaccine Envy, Part 2

First part, here.

In Contagion, the 2011 film by Steven Soderbergh that gained notoriety in our times as an unlikely prophet to the current pandemic [it was subsequently watched by millions, especially in the beginning months of 2020], the virus-ravaged world the film depicts starts going back to normal when a vaccine is finally found to be successful in combating the fictional MEV-1. By this time, the pandemic’s death toll in the story has reached 2.5 million in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide. [As of this writing, COVID-19—our real-life equivalent of the film’s MEV-1—has an official death toll of 3.98 million worldwide out of 184 million cases, including 605,000 dead in the U.S. and 25,149 in the Philippines.]

In the Matt Damon starrer, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] awards the vaccinations by lottery based on birthdates. I kept thinking about that.

Vaccination by birthdates decided by lottery.

And in fact, I’m not the only one who found that detail fascinating. On 2 February 2021, The Guardian reported that the United Kingdom’s health secretary Matt Hancock was obsessed with the film’s prescience, and “constantly reminded advisers … to heed the movie’s depiction of the complexities of an international race for limited vaccine supply.” According to the report, Hancock kept referring to the film’s ending, which made him aware from the very start that, “first, the vaccine was really important, [and] second, when a vaccine was developed we would see an almighty global scramble for this thing.”

The report went on: “Hancock was particularly struck by a scene in which a lottery based on birthdates is used to ration supply—not as a policy prescription but as an indication of how precious the vaccine would be.”

What is now going on, given this race to hoard vaccines, is what experts have termed “vaccine nationalism.” Dr. Amir Khan defined “vaccine nationalism” in a 7 February 2021 article for Al Jazeera as something that “occurs when governments sign agreements with pharmaceutical manufacturers to supply their own populations with vaccines ahead of them becoming available for other countries.”

Dr. Khan wrote: “According to a new report, published in the British Medical Journal, the U.S. has secured 800 million doses of at least six vaccines in development, with an option to buy about one billion more. The U.K. has purchased 340 million shots: approximately five doses for each citizen. Although, on the surface, it may seem these countries have ordered more doses than they need, the truth is many of these orders were put in during trial phases of the vaccines when they did not know for sure which vaccines would be successful. Essentially, countries like the UK have put their eggs in several baskets, which has now proven to be a good idea.” Khan also echoed W.H.O. Director Ghebreyesus’ plea from August 2020: “Whilst there is a wish amongst leaders to protect their own people first, the response to this pandemic has to be collective.”

The Guardian article also quoted Ian Lipkin, Columbia University’s director of the Center for Infection and Immunity and chief scientific consultant on Contagion, about the importance of finding the right formula for distribution, equitable for all the world: “The whole idea [of the film] was to try to inform people about what they needed to anticipate. We have to vaccinate the entire world, there’s absolutely no question about that. As long as there is a population that has not been vaccinated, there is a high likelihood that this thing is going to continue to evolve. So, people who don’t understand or appreciate that—it’s not only unethical, it’s also not in your self-interest.”

If we take away “vaccine nationalism” as a factor in distribution, the question remains: How do we exactly go about vaccinating people?

What system must be followed?

Is Contagion’s birthday lottery proposal a good plan to follow?

Lipkin also gave some insight—this time for Telegraph—about the vagaries of distribution: “Once you have covered the priority groups, health workers and the most vulnerable, and you try to roll it out to the remainder of the population, there has to be some acceptable and equitable way to do that. You could use a random number generator, or you could select birthdays as we did in the film. We used birth date lotteries for the [military] draft in the United States—who was going to go to fight and who wasn’t. This is obviously a different kind of lottery.”

No one, as far as I know, is doing the birthday route for COVID-19 vaccination.

What seems to be the system most nations are going for is distribution via groups stratified by age, occupation, and medical risk. In the Philippines, this stratification covers the following:

A1 includes frontline workers in health facilities both national and local, private and public, health professionals and non-professionals like students, nursing aides, janitors, barangay health workers, and others.

A2 includes senior citizens aged 60 years old and above.

A3 includes persons with comorbidities not otherwise included in the preceding categories.

A4 includes frontline personnel in essential sectors, including uniformed personnel and those in working sectors identified by the IATF as essential during the ECQ.

A5 includes indigent populations not otherwise included in the preceding categories.

B1 includes teachers and social workers.

B2 includes other government workers.

B3 includes other essential workers.

B4 includes socio-demographic groups at significantly higher risk other than senior citizens and indigent people.

B5 includes the Overseas Filipino Workers.

B6 includes other remaining workforce.

And finally, C includes the rest of the Filipino population not otherwise included in the above groups. As of this writing, we’re covering A4 in many places, including Dumaguete.

But vaccine prioritization in the Philippines has also taken in another factor: prioritization by regions, which means supplying the vaccines first to specific areas in the Philippines deemed an “emergency,” especially with surges in COVID-19 infections. In February 2021, when the vaccination program was first unveiled, the prioritized regions came as follows, in order of COVID-19 burden: NCR, Calabarzon, Davao Region, Cordillera Administrative Region, Eastern Visayas, Central Luzon, Cagayan Valley, Western Visayas, Northern Mindanao, CARAGA, Ilocos Region, Central Visayas, Soccsksargen, Zamboanga Peninsula, Bicol Region, Mimaropa, and BARMM.

By June 2021, however, new realities of COVID-19 surges in certain places have disordered this priority list by regions—something Philippine Daily Inquirer journalist Cristina Eloisa Baclig aptly called “the shifting sands of vaccination in the Philippines.” She wrote in her report: “Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal, Laguna, Pampanga, Batangas, Cebu, and Davao now compose a new geographical grouping that authorities called NCR Plus 8 for pandemic response purposes,” and that “a surge in infections outside the capital is redrawing the mapped strategy.” That redrawing has become a constant pressure and an endless challenge—and sometimes politics comes in to suggest further shifts in the prioritization.

In that Baclig report from 11 June 2021, we get the general picture of the national effort at vaccine distribution: “According to the National Task Force [NTF] Against COVID-19, around 64 percent, or 6,580,000 doses, of total vaccine supply were procured using the P72.5 billion allocation for the vaccination plan. Several manufacturers, led by China’s Sinovac, had already delivered vaccines to the Philippines resulting in these brands being available: Coronavac by Sinovac [7,500,000 doses], AstraZeneca [2,556,000 doses], Pfizer-BioNTech [2,472,210 doses], and Sputnik, the Russian vaccine by Gamaleya Research Institute [80,000 doses]. NTF data said that as of June 7, at least 8 million doses had already been distributed nationwide.”

By 29 June 2021, we get this update from Inquirer’s Krissy Aguilar: “[The] vaccine deliveries expected [are the following]: 5.5 million doses of Sinovac; 1,170,000 doses of AstraZeneca arriving between July 5 to 12; 250,800 doses of Moderna arriving on July 12; 500,000 doses of Pfizer arriving on July 12; 4 million doses from COVAX; 800,000 to 1 million doses from the U.S. government; and 1.1 million doses donated by the Japanese government… According to the Department of Health, over 10 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered as of June 27. More than 2.5 million individuals were already fully vaccinated—that is, they have received two doses.”

As of July 2021, there are more than 111 million Filipinos.

Given the disparity between vaccination rate and total population, can herd immunity ever be reached? Herd immunity could indeed be achieved if 85 percent of populations were vaccinated, also taking into consideration the emergence of the Delta variant first detected in India in February. But in a report posted on 21 June 2021, the U.K.-based think tank Pantheon Macroeconomics said that the Philippines would be among the last to reach herd immunity: “The relatively slow pace of vaccination in the Philippines implies that early 2023 probably is the best the archipelago can hope for.”

2023.

Is peace of mind only possible in 2023?

So when I got the call from the City Health Office while I was preparing to do work in the afternoon of June 25, I knew I had to jump at the chance. Waiting was no longer an option, I thought. This call was a promise to some semblance of peace of mind.

Actually, I got two calls.

First, it was a male voice who intoned with some authority: “Can you be here at Robinsons Place Dumaguete before 4 PM?”

I said yes.

“Good,” the voice said. “We will be waiting for you, sir.”

“What should I bring?”

“Bring a medical certificate, if you have one with you. And bring your own ballpen.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay, then. See you!”

I must have danced the jig in my office.

And then my phone rang again.

This time, it was no longer an unknown caller: it was Gem, the City Health Office frontliner who was my guide and angel when I went through COVID-19 in December and had to isolate myself.

“Hi, Sir!”

“Hi, Gem! Long time no hear.”

“Sir, we’re calling about your vaccination—”

“Yes, I just got the call a few minutes ago!”

“You did?”

“I did!”

“Oh, that’s good! So you’ll be going to Robinsons Place later today?”

“I’m ready to go! Will you be there?”

“I’ll be at the office—but there are other CHO people there who will help you!”

I said my thanks, and then immediately called up the significant other to tell him the good news. We already planned for this: he was going to drive me to the vaccination center, he was going to document every single phase of the process, and he was going to be my yaya in my post-vaccination state—whatever that meant. I already surrendered to the inevitability that I was going to get Sinovac, and I’d read up on its reported side effects: injection-site pain, fatigue, diarrhea, and muscle pain—most of which would be mild, and last only for two days.

Going to get my first jab felt like a birthday.

I arrived at the vaccination site close to 4 PM. At Robinsons Place’s Movieworld—which made me think of all the movies I had missed (was this their way of making us nostalgic enough for the old normal so that we’d opt for getting vaccinated?)—I sensed a controlled busyness: beyond the reception desk, you could see people milling about among the carefully distanced chairs, but there was a certainty of process in the atmosphere—something I’d quickly get acquainted to.

At the reception, I had to give my ID to check against their list of appointments made for the day—the policy of no walk-ins remained enforced “to prevent chaos”—and once that was done, I was handed a clipboard filled with forms, five in all, including a procedural checklist and sign sheet, a general information sheet that also tackled allergies and comorbidities, a health declaration screening form in Filipino, an informed consent form, and a health assessment algorithm form. Filling out the forms took the longest time. Then someone began giving us an orientation—what COVID was all about, how vaccination can help, and what the process was in getting one in the center. There was Phase 1—getting your vital signs, then Phase 2—getting counseling, then Phase 3—getting a final go-over by the physician on duty, then Phase 4—getting the vaccination, and then Phase 5—getting monitored post-vaccination. Each phase was marked by a desk manned by people from the City Health Office, and consists of a trail that looped around the area of the Movieworld lobby, with the Movieworld arc being both entrance and exit. I eyed the “photo op” area at the exit with its “I Got My Vaccine Today!” slogan emblazoned in red.

“I am definitely doing that,” I told Renz.

“But you’re not a joiner,” Renz said.

“Well, this is also about fighting misinformation. Me posting my photo on social media might convince some people they could also go for this. This is a bandwagon I’m joining in,” I said.

My number was finally called, and I headed towards the Phase 1 desk, and had my temperature checked, my blood pressure checked, and my blood oxygen saturation level checked. All my vital signs were normal. I chatted a bit with the health workers at this table—but only just enough: there were other people waiting their turn. The process felt smooth.

At Phase 2, the health worker on duty scanned my forms, and took me through a questionnaire, making sure I knew what it was I ticked and wrote down in my sheets, and making sure I knew I was getting Sinovac. “I’m fine with it,” I said. “The best vaccine is the one that’s available,” I intoned the common—but informed—line.

I actually preferred some other brand of vaccine—but now was not the time to be choosy.

“How many times have you gone through this exact questionnaire?” I asked the health officer at the Phase 2 desk.

She laughed. “What priority number do you have?”

“I’m #265,” I said, quickly looking down at my forms.

She laughed again. “That means I’ve given this whole spiel 265 times today already.”

“Oh, dear God,” I said. “How’s your voice?”

“I lost my voice last week!”

“Are you okay?”

“We’ll be fine.” She laughed again.

At Phase 3, at the very end of the Movieworld lobby, I waited to get my final consultation with the doctor on duty. He was alone in his little table, surrounded by dim light, and he looked like a forbidding figure in a mystical quest, the quiet mage who got to determine your fate. He soon motioned for me. I quickly sat in front of him—and got a battery of medical questions, most of which I could not remember now. All I could remember was the comedy of our consultation: with both of us in our garbs of face masks and face shields, we could barely make out what the other was saying. It was a whole conversation filled with, “Come again?” and “What was that?”

But I got through that—and then sat in wait for Phase 4: vaccination proper.

I’d seen the viral videos circulating: the one in Makati, where the health worker on video doing the injection did not in fact plunge the injection’s plunger, hence unable to deliver the content of the vaccine into the vaccinee; and the one in Brazil, where health workers were accused of using empty syringes—a scandal that had given rise to the term “wind vaccinations.”

As I sat in my chair waiting for the jab, Renz knew what to do: document the entire procedure, including the plunging of the injection. But I also did my part, just in case: I watched the nurse on duty take a vial, inject the syringe inside to take in the vaccine, and then do that preliminary plunge into the void to get rid of air, sprinkling tiny liquid droplets in the process. My paranoia assuaged, I waited for the bite of the needle to pierce my arm.

It was the usual needle prick pain.

But in my thoughts, this one felt eventual: I just had my first dose, my thoughts raced. I have the COVID-19 vaccine running in my veins!

For sure, it was just the first dose.

But it was one step closer to achieving the elusive peace of mind I’d been seeking for so long in this long season of the pandemic.

I thanked the jabber, and went to take my place in Phase 5—the final monitoring post-vaccination. I was told this could take as long as thirty minutes. They were going to observe if I was going to get adverse reactions to the vaccine—and in the meantime, they’d check my vital signs once more: my temperature, my blood oxygen saturation level, and my blood pressure. Then a few minutes later, they’d check everything again.

“How many times are you going to check my vital signs?” I asked.

“Twice, sir. But actually before, we used to follow the protocol of checking at least three times.”

“This means then that I’d be getting out of here early?”

“Yes, sir.”

Fantastic. Everything in less than an hour.

Many of the nurses on duty were former students of mine—which felt nice.

One of them, Jake, finally came up: “Sir Ian! This is your vaccination card.”

“Thank you, Jake. I’m glad to see you here.”

“Congratulations on your first dose, sir! Your second dose will be scheduled on July 30. The City Health Office will call you to remind you about your appointment, and also whether there will be changes in the venue.”

“Fantastic! Can I go now?”

“You can go now,” Jake smiled.

And I went, to satisfy my post-vaccination donut munchies, but not before I got my “I Got My Vaccine Today!” photo op.

To be continued…

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, life, vaccine

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Saturday, July 03, 2021

2:16 AM | Vaccine Envy

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, family, life, vaccine

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Friday, July 02, 2021

9:58 PM | Getting My First Vaccine Dose

I did not expect to get vaccinated today. I got a call from the City Health Office in the afternoon, telling me to proceed to Robinsonsplace — and I dashed out of the office as fast as I could, the moment the s.o. came to pick me up. The processing was fast, and the health workers of the Dumaguete City Health Office were polite and professional. I did everything in less than an hour. Kudos to the CHO for the job well done!

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, life, vaccine

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Wednesday, June 23, 2021

10:52 AM | Just Be Considerate

I’m reading a friend’s COVID narrative they just sent me. [Thank God, they’re fine now.] They got it unknowingly from a friend they trusted who knew she had contact with someone infected but didn’t tell anyone. People in Dumaguete, please, just isolate. Or if you can’t, please wear mask. (Double mask if you can!) You cannot let your guard down even with friends and family. This is my constant fear: that I’d be an asymptomatic carrier without knowing it. I had COVID in December, and it was one the worst experiences of my life — and I think led to my final mental health reckoning beginning in 2021. (That’s the silver lining, I guess?)

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, life, mental health

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Thursday, June 17, 2021

7:05 PM | Camp Quarantine

By all accounts, the transmission occurred at home, but its origin was somewhere else: her husband’s office. He worked in a BPO—it involved working as client services manager and supervisor for foreign firms—and like many BPOs of its kind, their workplace was a hermetically sealed environment (blasts of air-conditioning, work stations in close quarters) that, in the pre-pandemic, harkened to a typical corporate bubble. In the pandemic, however, those very conditions proved to be breeding grounds for disease.

Her husband already heard of some colleagues getting sick, in particular one of the tech agents who was suddenly absent one day. “Fever,” he was told. But like many people, he believed himself either impervious or lucky enough not to get COVID-19. After all, it had been more than a year since the pandemic began, and while COVID-19 felt like it was closing in around Dumaguete of late, it still felt like a disease that happened to other people. He also believed in the effectiveness of the protocols in place in his company—the requisite face masks and physical distancing. “You could not return to work anyway if you do not come back with a medical certificate and a fit-to-work document,” he told me.

And then one day, on April 29, at home, there came the fever that could not be denied.

He called in sick the next day, a Friday, and spent that weekend getting himself a battery of medical tests: CBC, urinalysis, x-ray. All results turned out normal. By this time, he heard that the colleague who had gone absent had been told to take a COVID swab test—and at the back of his head, he knew something was up. But the articulation of it, the acceptance of what seemed inevitable felt double-edged: he expected it, and he feared its consequence. The virus, after all, was of a tricky sort: for some people, it was an asymptomatic inconvenience; for others, it was a passing malaise—and at worst, getting ageusia (or the loss of the taste functions of the tongue) or anosmia (or smell blindness); and still for others, it was an unfortunate progression towards hospitalization, intubation, and death. It was a lottery of the worst kind.

He finally got the swab test three days later. On May 6, four medical technologists—all donned in standard PPE, immediately warning the rest of the neighborhood that something was going on in this particular residence—dropped by to administer the test. The next day, he got the dreaded confirmation from the contact tracer: he was COVID-positive.

By then it was too late: at home, he had passed on the virus to his wife and their three young children, including two daughters aged 13 and 9, and a son aged 7. Since the onset of his fever, he had already been infectious, and they lived in a small house without a spare room for isolation. For three days, they lived knowing all of them could be breathing in the virus. They alerted all their close contacts, especially the members of their church, who immediately isolated themselves at the barangay health center even without swab tests.

On social media, the Dumaguete COVID surge was surging as well in news, gossip, and conspiracy theories. The family knew they were caught in a maelstrom and did not know what to expect.

“I wanted the two of us to get the swab test on the same day, since I already developed a fever by May 4,” the wife told me. “And it was already set up. But when the medical technologists arrived, they decided my husband had to take the swab test first, and that mine would soon follow.”

They were told by the contact tracer that the LGU would soon be calling them to discuss what needed to be done.

On the afternoon of May 7, the City Health Office contacted them that they were getting extracted that evening from their residence to quarantine at “City High”—shorthand for the Dumaguete City High School located in Calindagan. They requested home isolation and for everyone in the family to get swabbed, but the request was denied. It was too risky, given the neighborhood they lived in. And then they learned it was only the husband who was going to be placed in quarantine, not all them together, since he was the only one so far who got a positive result.

They could not do anything else, except comply.

When extraction came, it was via a broken down L-300 van from the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office [CDRRMO]—and the driver and his companion could not locate their house. Her husband had to walk about 50 meters from their house to where the flashing lights of the van were. The walk felt like a perp walk, an announcement to the rest of the neighborhood that this guy walking was COVID-positive. He took in the absurd humor of the situation. There was nothing else he could do about it.

He quickly learned that he was going to have to fly blind in this situation. There were no prior instructions on what to bring to the quarantine camp, and no orientation over the phone on what to expect. He simply sat down inside the van extracting him, had it deliver him to City High, and that was that.

Once inside, there was no orientation on what to do or what was expected of him. He was vaguely told about a nurse in-charge who could be found on the second floor. (He never found the nurse.) There was only one guard on duty. He was ushered into a room in a very dark building, where he was completely alone. He felt a wave of anxiety take over him. Thirty minutes later, some more COVID-positives would arrive, and suddenly he had company.

He examined his bed—a standard cot with a mattress with no linens. He was sure this bed had been here since the quarantine camp opened a year ago when the city started preparing for the pandemic. He was sure this bed had accommodated many COVID-positive people since then. His instinct was to disinfect the whole thing before deciding to lay down on it.

He was mostly on his own. Going around the campus, he stumbled on a friend—someone from his old BPO days in Cebu—who was also quarantined and had been there for some time. It was a relief to have someone to talk to. Only then was he able to get the lay of the land from his friend: what to expect, where to get their meals, where to take their showers, where they could do laundry, where they could find the health worker assigned to monitor their condition.

Two words came to mind immediately:

“Camping.”

“Kinawboy.”


The rule of thumb in swabbing was that only those who were showing symptoms could get the test. On May 11, his wife and their two daughters—who were already feverish—finally got their swab tests, and on May 13, they got their expected results: they were also COVID-positive. But by the evening of May 12, they were already told to prepare for extraction as well.

A little drama unfolded: since the 7-year-old was asymptomatic, he could not get a swab test. And since his status was in question, he could not be part of the extraction. The City Health officers determined over the phone that the son had to be left behind—perhaps with his 81-year-old lolo?

His mother resisted that decision. “I could not agree to that suggestion, with only the two of them left behind,” she said. “His lolo would not know how to take care of a 7-year-old. And there was the chance that my son could infect him. I was sure that if we were positive, he was also positive. And there was no one else we could turn to. My husband’s relatives had senior citizens among them, and a cousin was asthmatic. His siblings were all in Pamplona and Bacong, and they also had small children. One of them was also asthmatic.”

The City Heath officers relented: their son could be with them in quarantine camp.

“Grab some dinner first,” they were told. They would get extracted soon after. When they were ready, they were told to text the City Health Office, and the van—the same broken down L-300 van—would pick them up.

“In fairness to the City Health officers, they were generally nice,” she said. “And there was a difference in communication this time around: with my husband, it was done all so quickly. With us, there were several messages exchanged back and forth to prepare us. They were stepping up.”

They ate dinner.

They prepared.

They knew from what her husband had already told her what else to expect and what to bring.

They asked the van driver—through text—to pick them up exactly from where they were: they did not want to do the same perp walk her husband had been through, plus there were things to bring.

Pillows.

Bed sheets.

Electric fans.

Clothes good for at least a week.

Snacks.

An electric stove.

Heater.

Soap.

A thermometer.

“A thermometer was essential,” she said.

When the van deposited them at City High, she knew what not to expect already. There was still no orientation upon arrival, but the City Health Office had already given her instructions over the phone on what she could look forward to. She asked for her husband to be transferred with them to a new room, and they were housed in a building behind the gym, a relatively new one compared to the rest of the campus. And cleaner, too. The room they were in—which they shared with three other people—was essentially a typical public school classroom that was fairly large, with beds arranged around the room to simulate physical distance, and the armchairs all stacked to the side of the blackboard.

That was home for several days.



Quarantine lasted nine days for her and her two daughters, from the evening of May 12 to May 21. By their second swab tests, they tested negative and were sent home. Swabbing was done in intervals of five or seven days while in isolation. Her son was in quarantine for 20 days. Her husband, who was quarantined first, was there from May 7 to June 2—a total of 26 days. He tested positive still for his second swab test, and only tested negative for his third.

In isolation, life took a pause. They could not do anything except wait. The entire experience was a waiting game.

“It was hard, all those days in the camp. You had to take the initiative in order for you to get through the days. The City Health Office’s goal was to ensure that we were isolated so that we could not infect anyone else.”

Which meant entertaining them was not part of the plan. They were not required to participate in any activity, nor was any conceived. The only rule was to quarantine: they were not allowed to go out, they were not allowed to congregate with other people who were also COVID-positive.

“The good thing was, my husband came to camp earlier than us, so we knew what to do on a daily basis,” she said.

Her husband’s friends sent toys and games for the children—Snakes and Ladders, Word Factory, the works. The children were also sent books to read.

Other friends sent food—so eating became occupational therapy.

Her husband’s company soon sent a prepaid wifi kit (because he still had to work in isolation), and that gave them more leeway to access the world they could not reenter. There were many Facebook messages to read, and to respond to, all of them bearing good wishes for getting better. The children, when they were not schooling online, devoured YouTube.

And then, because her husband had brought over a guitar, they began to do sing-alongs: acoustic cover songs, old love songs, gospel songs. They began posting videos of themselves singing in isolation.

They also started cleaning their stations to pass the time. “We made such an effort in cleaning everything,” she said. “My husband insisted on it. We cleaned our room, we cleaned the communal bathroom assigned to us, we cleaned the CR where we did our laundry.” That CR was hideous in its dirtiness from the beginning of their stay—so they attacked it with their cleaning streak, even getting rid of the hair that was clogging the drain. But at least the water pressure was strong—that felt like a godsend.

All through this, they monitored their health. “All of us, except my husband, are asthmatic, so we brought our nebulizers. We had inhalers, our medicines, our vitamins,” she said. “For me, I felt sleepy most of the time. Sige ko gi-kutasan. I had body malaise—but I was generally okay.”

The City provided food for those in quarantine, with breakfast coming in around 8 AM (although most of the time, it was 9 AM), lunch between 11 AM to 12 noon, and dinner by 5 PM. Dinner had to come early, because after six, the skeleton staff manning the camp had to be gone.

And all throughout, the fare remained simple, and soon enough, fairly predictable: chicken. The meals were all chicken done in all sorts of ways. With soup, without soup. Done as adobo, or fried, or with batter. It was a feast of chicken.

To vary their meals, they resorted to ordering via Food Panda. “That was the first time my husband installed the Food Panda app in his cellphone,” she laughed.

She heard from the other people in quarantine that some have resorted to breaking the rules just to escape the blandness of the food. “This is in the tent city at the Perdices Coliseum, though,” she said. “I heard some people would escape their isolation to get food in neighboring restaurants—which was sad, because they were infecting other people. But I don’t remember anyone in City High doing the same. We stayed in, we ate chicken, we ordered from Food Panda.”

But there was one person in isolation with them who did escape.

He was apparently a relative of some person of rank at City Hall, and when he was extracted and placed in quarantine at City High, he began to throw a tantrum. He was throwing things, he was shouting, he was going wild. He found the conditions of quarantine camp insulting, and he was fighting with the staff. Then he escaped.

“I think it was in the news,” my friend said. “Later they found him in isolation at some hotel with his wife. Nag-maoy-maoy, busdak-busdak, saba kaayo. Nag-wild.”

In retrospect, for her, it was not all that bad. “Generally, City High was okay. It was not hot, it was well-ventilated, and we had a nice view from the second floor of our building of a very green soccer field, and a nice view of the mountains,” she said.

Certainly, the man who threw a tantrum was drama in quarantine camp. Most people isolated with them led ordinary lives with interesting stories.

There was the married couple her husband met when he first came in. They were all roommates, with another man, in the first six days. But then the husband had to be transferred to the Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital because his blood oxygen level was going low—and that left the wife alone with two men in the same room. She was the only woman left in that building, but she refused to be transferred to new quarters for one reason: she had brought work with her to isolation camp, and the set-up of all her equipment and office materials were already in place, and she could not spare the energy to uproot all that to another building. “Isog kayo nga bayhana, wala’y kahadlok,” my friend recalled. The woman kept on asking for swab tests, eager for a negative result so that she could go home. She also never hesitated to ask for updates on her husband’s condition at the hospital.

Then there was the long-haired dude with tattoos. He was a member of NORAD-7 and a volunteer for the CDRRMO, and he knew most of the people who worked at the City Health Office. When they extracted him to quarantine camp, it was his birthday. “He looked like a gangster,” my friend said, “but his personality was the exact opposite: he was so kind and considerate.”

Then there was the 14-year-old minor who stayed with them in the same room. She was their neighbor, and a member of the same church. “While she tested positive for COVID, her parents tested negative—so she had to come with us. She was extracted with us. And we treated her like our own daughter.” When she tested positive still with her second swab test, she burst into tears. By her third test, she was negative, and she went home together with my friend’s husband and their son.

At the time, my friend knew that the Provincial IATF was already getting overwhelmed with the surge of COVID cases all over Negros Oriental, and in particular, Dumaguete. It reflected in many ways in the conditions and procedures at camp—but she learned to accept even the inconveniences. “I think it was, overall, a fun experience—especially for the kids. Mura lang jud ga-camping. It was kinda boring, but it also gave us some time to do much-needed reflection, and a lot of heart-to-heart conversations with my husband,” she said. “I was also able to rest from household chores and from my work. I was also able to help out in the online schooling of my children. Our biggest deal was merely waiting for food to come.” She laughed.

If there was one thing she learned the most from the experience, it was that COVID was real. “Dili lalim,” she said. “I started praying with so much zeal. I can say that the whole experience strengthened my relationship with God. And with my husband, he learned to bond with our son, especially when it was only them left at camp. My son had always been a mama’s boy—and so it was great that they got to spend time alone together, doing things together.”

Going home was exactly the same as getting into quarantine camp.

“There was no debriefing, and no more instructions from City Health,” she said.

She rode home in the same run-down L-300 van, this time with a different driver.

When she got home, the first thing she did was to disinfect everything in her house.

“I sprayed Lysol all over. That was the advice I got from a Red Cross volunteer,” she said.

She still did not have her sense of smell back, so they waited outside the house for the strong Lysol smell to settle down—and then much later, her daughter told her it was now okay to get back inside.

Upon their return, her neighbors were largely welcoming—”Okay na mo?” was the constant refrain, to which they’d answer back: “Okay na!” Except for one cautious woman who avoided the family at all cost, by getting out of their way when they meet outside or by crossing the street altogether.

“It’s fine,” my friend told me. “We found it very funny.”

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete

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Wednesday, June 16, 2021

6:42 PM | A City in the First Day of MECQ

It is June 16, the first day of MECQ in Dumaguete City. It begins with some semblance of quiet. Journalist Raffy Cabristante, on the lookout for what he can share on the popular Facebook page of his radio station Yes The Best FM, sets out for the heart of downtown.

He takes photos of the usually busy intersection of San Jose Street and Perdices Street, where Lee Super Plaza, Jollibee, and other big stores are located, and takes a snapshot of the 9 AM scene. The scene is low-key in its bustle—there are only a few tricycles and motorcycles plying the street, and only a handful of people about. It is the same with the Rizal Boulevard stretch facing the sea. The same with Hibbard Avenue, which cuts through Silliman University and goes all the way north to the barangay of Bantayan. There’s more volume of traffic along Veterans Avenue, the stretch most locals call the National Highway, but that is to be expected. This is the artery that connects Dumaguete, a component city in the province of Negros Oriental, to the other towns—it is bound to be busy, if a little less than what it usually sees on any given day, even during the past few months of the pandemic.

Cabristante posts his finds on the radio station’s Facebook page—and immediately there are reactions. Someone comments below the photo of the national highway scene, with the Philippine National Bank building prominent in the center: “Naa ra lagi pedicab diha. All public utility vehicles including pedicabs for hire are not allowed.”

That kind of indignation is rampant everywhere in Dumaguete. It has only increased in the MECQ.


But it has been a rough few weeks for the city, which on June 7 was raised to the level of national notoriety when it was listed as the number one locality in the entire country with the most worrying trend of COVID-19 surge: new cases doubled by 206%, followed by Koronadal with 96%, Cotabato City with 62%, Bacolod with 56%, and Davao City with 54%, according to data provided by the OCTA Research Group.

By then, most Dumagueteños were already getting too used to—and increasingly getting apprehensive by—the rising daily totals put out by Provincial IATF ground commander Dr. Liland Estacion. May 14 was the day that apprehensions began. Estacion announced 168 new cases, at that time the highest number of new cases recorded in Negros Oriental since the pandemic began. She attributed the surge to “local transmissions within households, workplaces, and public places where people converged.”

By May 18, there were 98 new cases, raising the active cases to 615—the same day the Silliman University Medical Center stopped accepting COVID patients, declaring their capacity full.

By May 20, the vaccination rollout for senior citizens finally began—the same day the local IATF countered fake news rapidly circulating that Robinsons Place Dumaguete was a hotbed for the virus.

By May 21, 204 new cases, 709 total.

By May 23, the doctors started calling out for help. In a statement produced by the Negros Oriental Medical Society, they declared: “We call for an ECQ. We call for a lockdown. Call it whatever you like. We are doctors, we are not politicians or businessmen or even lawmakers. But these we know: there is this rapid rise in cases more than the hospitals can handle. We know that we are losing precious lives. We know that we have so many critically ill and not enough sources. We only know the value of saving a life. Please, people of Negros Oriental, do something. Stop parties. Stop gatherings. Don’t socialize. Wear masks. Give us curfews. Give us time to reset. Please do something before health care collapses. The end of health care will be the end of society. Help us health workers.”

It was a plea gunning for what had been the precarious status quo in Dumaguete. There was already a sense of a city relaxing a bit too much in its regard for pandemic dangers: people were going about unmasked, people were going about having parties and weddings and dinners, people were going about thinking they had become untouchable after more than a year of suffering in lockdown. Many would call it “pandemic fatigue”—and the penchant to wring back a sense of pre-pandemic “normal” was high.

By May 24, Dumaguete received a wake-up call: City Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo was stricken with COVID, and was now in isolation. Later reports would indicate that he was going through a “cytokine storm,” an immune response exhibited by many COVID patients where the body starts to attack its own cells. It is often a fatal precursor.

That same day, Dumaguete learned that many members of the City Council were also stricken by the virus. And while President Rodrigo Duterte was in town to lead the Regional Peace and Order Council meeting at the Silliman University Gymnasium, the city began to fear for the health of its city leaders.

A few days later, in the morning of May 30, three days after a lunar eclipse that was also a blood moon, Vice Mayor Alan Gel Cordova collapsed on the way home to Dumaguete after joining a bike marathon in Tanjay—and died of cardiac arrest. He had just recovered from a bout of COVID a week earlier, and should have been convalescing. The city mourned. The city became rattled with what seemed like a crisis of leadership, delivered unexpectedly by a viral scourge.

By May 31, 313 new cases, 1,228 total. The public calls for tighter protocols grew more intense—but Duterte determined that Negros Oriental would remain under the most relaxed modified general community quarantine [MGCQ] from June 1 to 30.

By June 2, 138 new cases, 1,315 total.

By June 4, 429 new cases, 1,572 total. Meanwhile, a total of a 17,891 people in the province had gotten their first dose of the vaccine. Also on the same day, the Department of Health announced it was importing nurses from Cebu to help out the local hospitals with the surge. From his sick bed, Mayor Remollo made an “urgent and direct appeal” to the national government to give more vaccines to the city. Within 24 hours, Dumaguete would receive 10,000 vials of Sinovac straight from the national government. The LGU estimated that 108,624 city residents out of a total population of 137,214 needed to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.

By June 8, 452 new cases, 1,714 total—a day after OCTA released their list of cities with the highest surges in the country. The PIATF recommended placing certain barangays in Dumaguete with high numbers of COVID-19 infections under granular lockdown—Piapi with 22, Bagacay and Daro with 16, Bajumpandan with 14, and Lo-oc with 12. No one knew exactly what that meant.

By June 9, 232 new cases, 1,808 total.

By June 11, 435 new cases, 1,837 total. By the next day, on Independence Day, the Dumaguete City Council requested Governor Roel Degamo to put in place a tightening of the quarantine status of the city, with the approval of the Regional IATF—perhaps a GCQ, or MECQ, or ECQ. The request was tricky to negotiate: Dumaguete being a component city, a change in its quarantine status would also include the entire Negros Oriental. Unlike independent cities like Cebu City or Bacolod City, Dumaguete could not have a quarantine status different from all the other places in the province. LGUs like Dumaguete could not change the quarantine status of their areas on their own.

By then, Cebu Province was again requiring travelers from Negros Oriental to secure a negative RT-PCR or antigen test result before entry. Negros Occidental was also prohibiting non-essential travel to its sister Negrense province.

“We cannot afford a total lockdown,” Gov. Degamo declared on June 14. He said that a total lockdown in the whole province was unsustainable and unaffordable—unless the national government stepped in to help. He saw granular lockdowns as the “best solution to balance both the containment of the coronavirus and preserving the local economy.”

But later that night, Duterte placed Negros Oriental under MECQ until June 30.

This was how we got here.


But how exactly?

A cursory look at many comments on the Yes The Best Facebook page gives us a picture of a community grappling with the varied realities of the pandemic, and could be instrumental in explaining the surge. One type of comment is that of the dismissive variety—that COVID-19 is not real, that people are being overly dramatic. “Just a little bit of coughing, COVID-19 na dayon,” is a typical post. A surprising number of these posts are from expats living in the province. “Exasperating expats,” some people began calling them—and you do see many of these expats in their usual haunts around the city flaunting pandemic protocols. Still, many of the establishments that cater to them have expressed a hesitance to remind them of health protocols. “They are our regular customers man gud,” one cashier in a popular restaurant told me.

Another type of comment is that of the conspiratorial variety—that doctors and hospitals and the LGU were in this scheme to make money. One vicious rumor spread that city leaders were withholding the vaccine to make profit. One Dan Adlawz posted on Facebook: “Malaki [naman] ang kikitain ang mga LGU dito. Curfew violators, pera na. Face shield violators, pera na. Facemask violators, pera na. Swab test, bayad sa laboratory, pera na. Mogawas ka sa balay, dakpan ka, pera. It’s about COVID-19 business.” [Quote edited for clarity.]

These two have been among the dominant mindsets in Dumaguete.

Around the city, you do see many people—a lot of them young—going about without masks, without social distancing. On social media, you do see pictures of people having weddings, having parties, having dinners in intimate places. A friend told me that they had a party in a private residence for friends she did Zumba with. Soon after, more than half of them developed COVID-19—with several needing hospitalization. Another friend confided to me, after her father died from COVID-19 while her mother was also in critical care at a local hospital—that no one in her family knew where her parents contracted the virus given that they mostly stayed at home.

On June 3, when Antonio Ramas Uypitching Sr., the patriarch of one of the wealthiest families in the province died from COVID-19, the city again mourned—but also asked the inevitable question: “If those with means could suffer, how much more those of us without means?”

Meanwhile, there are valid complaints of the vaccination rollout being slow. But from the LGU, we learn that it’s the whole province, not just Dumaguete, bearing the burden of the process: “We are waiting for vaccines, and the process is national government-province-city/town. We have tried to procure vaccines on our own, but we’ve been told to wait for allocation from the national government. And we cannot compare ourselves to Siquijor, for example. They get the same number of vaccines, but they have less population per category. Thankfully, Mayor Ipe appealed to the National IATF and was given 10,000 vials just for Dumaguete. That is the only reason we are vaccinating again.”

From the City Health Office, we also learn that the number of vaccinated residents since June 10—from the 10,000 vials Mayor Remollo obtained—is more than that compared to the more than two months of vaccination using vaccines allocated by the IPHO.

And as of June 16, Dumaguete has begun vaccinating people under the A3 priority group. The LGU promises that it will continue the current pace of vaccination until the supplies are depleted, with Mayor Remollo pledging to find other ways to get more vaccines directly to Dumaguete. Walk-ins to vaccination centers, however, are still not allowed to ensure orderly vaccination and avoid overcrowding.

On June 15, a day after the province was placed under MECQ and a day before its implementation, someone posted a photo of people panic buying at Lee Plaza Hypermart. By then recuperated from his brush with COVID-19, Mayor Remollo implored: “There is no need for panic buying. The public market, supermarkets, grocery stores, and pharmacies will remain open under MECQ. Our health marshals will strictly enforce basic protocols of wearing facemasks and face shields, and physical distancing.”

But how do you keep people from doing what they want to do, at the risk of a further surge?


So this is where we are, on June 16, the first day of Dumaguete in MECQ.

It is 8 AM at the Tabo sa P.A.O. along E.J. Blanco Drive. If it weren’t for the pandemic, the bustle of the satellite market will have been considered completely ordinary. But the city is already at the cutting edge of pandemic tension, and yet—upon immediate observation of the marketplace—there are still many shoppers, and many vendors, not following health protocols: many are not wearing masks, or if they have put on masks, are wearing them improperly.

And then one woman at the tabo suddenly loses it, according to lawyer Golda Benjamin.

The woman is in her mid-40s, with the looks of a middle-class tita, one who could wear the most ordinary blouse and still come off sosyal, the type who’d buy basil and thyme at the tabo. She is wearing leggings and a shirt, complete with a face shield and mask for her ensemble. She is alone.

She begins raising her voice in protest: “Ngano man gyud mo dili magtarong sul-ob sa mask? Abi ninyo dili mo madutlan og COVID? Daghan na kaayong namatay. Mga dato gani wala kasagang. Magtabanganay ta. Hasta na inyong face shield, nganong naa sa inyong mga ulo. Gamita ninyo!”

It is an unexpected demonstration of exasperation completely untypical in the City of Gentle People. But others around her soon join in expressing a mix of frustration and anger: “It has been more than a year since our last strict lockdown in the city. And yet, here we still are!”

“Tinood!” others chime in. “Nag-antos na ta tanan. Balik na pud lockdown. Atong mga doctor, dili na makapauli sa ilang mga anak. Wala’y trabaho na pud ang mga isira na tindahan.”

It precedes a “slow mo” moment at the tabo.

The buluyagons do not say anything. Some go on to straighten their masks and their face shields. Some lower their heads. Some vendors go about accommodating customers, putting vegetables in plastic bags.

The woman then walks away, but not without parting words: “Maluoy mo sa inyong kaugalingon ug ma-COVID mo.”

Upon her wake, no one seems surprised at the outburst. No one goes, “Hala, na-unsa ‘to siya? Ngano siyang nag-wild?”

There is silence instead.

One can hope that this silence at this Dumaguete tabo is some sort of an affirmation: “Hala sa, sakto baya siya.”

[Photo by Raffy Cabristante]

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, life, negros

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Tuesday, June 15, 2021

2:43 PM | No More Old Bags

One of the first things I did when I started therapy was to change bags! The one on the right was my tattered old one I held on to because it felt emblematic of the pandemic—and I guess also my tattering psyche. It felt good discarding it.

Labels: coronavirus, life, mental health

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Monday, June 14, 2021

3:39 PM | Mom Gets Her First Jab Today

I'm so happy! Towards peace of mind, here we go.

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, family, life

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Wednesday, June 09, 2021

8:52 PM | Three Under-The-Radar Restaurants in Dumaguete You Must Try

For the longest time, it felt inevitable: lockdown in Dumaguete and neighboring towns meant lesser foot traffic, non-existent reservations, and newfound difficulties in securing supplies and upkeeping equipment. And so we lost a considerable number of our old culinary haunts. Most of us still miss KRI and Alima Café—although our old favorites from those places can still be had at Esturya along Hibbard Avenue in Tugas. Some opened with considerable promise but eventually proved short-lived, like Bakugo Ramen along EJ Blanco Drive and Sinati over at The Flying Fish Hostel along Hibbard Avenue, which will be mourned. Many closed for good, like Charlene Sweetness, and some closed at the beginning of lockdown and still show no signs of returning, like Halang-Halang and Kimstaurant. Some closed branches and consolidated their space, like Roti Boss and Qing Hia Town Cuisine. Others closed down their old venues only to reappear a few months later in another place, like Poppys, still offering much of the same but somehow lacking the magic of the familiar. It’s an upheaval only a pandemic as pervasive as this one could effect.

And yet, despite the pandemic still raging in Dumaguete City, there are new restaurants and cafes sprouting all over the place, which is something of a culinary miracle and could be the perfect demonstration that in times of great need, we turn to food for comfort—not just in the eating, but also in the making.

As far as I can remember, the first ones to open in the new uncertainty were Sobremesa in the old Daddy’s Gastro Park along West EJ Blanco Drive and Beyond Plants tucked in the premises of Hoy Lugaw along the Rizal Boulevard. Their opening was a gambit for the entrepreneurs behind each venture: if they managed to have some success in a time that was extremely challenging, pursuing more success in a world gone back to normal would be easier.

And now, that gambit has become a kind of a widespread call. There are now new bakeries and dessert shops, new milk tea corners and Korean dives, new coffee pop-ups and barbecue pop-ups, new swanky dining places in swankier venues. North Point along Escano Drive is a delightful dining-out beehive, the final word in the evolution of the Dumaguete food park.

There also seems to be a boom in Southeast Asian cuisine—a hankering for the Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Malaysian, which I will write about soon enough. There also seems to be another hankering for Japanese food and Persian food. And brunch. And coffee. And cakes.

Overall, this culinary explosion does not seem to be a bad thing: what we have is an abundance of choices in dining out, and it seems to be a good problem to have. Now, one’s attempt to sample every new fare in town has become a minor kind of mind-boggling. Truth to tell, if sampling every new eating place is your thing, you will not have to repeat restaurants for a very long time.

But with a smorgasbord of dining choices comes a less desirable outcome: eventually there will be those somehow overlooked by many people in favor of venues with splashier atmosphere, with better locations, with more intensive marketing strategies. As far as I know, the casualty is the often superior culinary offerings many under-the-radar restaurants actually offer.

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, food, life

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Tuesday, June 08, 2021

11:16 AM | Cassandra in Dumaguete

I’ve been a Cassandra shouting myself hoarse since forever about the complacency we in Dumaguete have been exhibiting regarding pandemic protocols. Daghan buluyagon. I’ve turned down parties and weddings and big events, I don’t attend openings if possible (opting to go the next day), I’ve tried to avoid restaurants with too many people (and have reported those who are lax)—but almost to no avail. So now we're currently the top city in community spread. Amping na lang.

Labels: coronavirus, dumaguete, life

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8:46 AM | You Only Live Once

On Grindr, a friend of mine—who will not be named—goes on a hunt. He takes on an avatar for this. On the pick-up app, he’s “David Ezra,” the theatre actor and singer and son of Dulce, complete with a few other candid snapshots of the man ready to send when a prospect asks for more pictures to seal the deal.

“It cushions the blows of rejection,” he tells me. “Before, without the avatar, they rejected me. Now it’s the avatar they reject—but me they accept, if they accept. I call it reverse catfishing.”

And then, after a while, he admits: “David Ezra gives me courage.”

He has been on Grindr with a passion equal to an obsession since February 2021, prodded by a mix of midlife crisis and pandemic anxieties—which snowballed to a kind of marathon of sexual conquests without inhibition, that even he has come to terms with it by philosophizing his need.

By June 6th, he tells me he’s on conquest #261, in a kind of race to accumulate numbers, of which he only has some vague reasons (“midlife crisis and pandemic anxieties”) for reaching. But the accumulation has become a personal goal. “I want to make it to 1,000 by December,” he says. “At the rate I’m going, it’s kaya ra.”

When he tells me this, I am not shocked—but I ask for elaboration. The fact that he is readily giving me his story means he is in need for someone to talk to, perhaps to even clarify for himself why it is something he has to do.

He tells me he has just gotten over his ex-boyfriend, the one he shared years of togetherness before they broke up almost a decade ago when the ex-boyfriend asked for firmer commitment and my friend was not ready to settle for a fully domesticated life regardless of love. They continued living together for sometime, until the ex-boyfriend moved abroad, and met another man—sending my friend to a tailspin of recriminations and regrets, and pushing him to midlife worries that did not seem to dissipate with the years.

But now he tells me he has gone past that.

And also this: “I realized I never whored around my entire life—all 42 years of it. Then on [my adopted son’s] birthday, I had sex with a guy who reminded me of me. Like me, he was young, Chinese, and closeted. And then I decided to get a haircut, after a year of not having one. Then, boom, something clicked. I looked at myself in the mirror, and said, ‘Hey, I’m actually cute. Actually gwapo. And a daddy. And Tsinoy. What stopped me before was all my restrictive social and intellectual filters. I decided right then and there to throw precautions away. I went to have sex. That’s my answer now to things. Damn the pandemic and midlife crisis: just go have sex.”

After Grindr, when the connection is made, he picks them up in his car. “Having a car is having power,” he tells me. The encounter is mostly what he calls “car fun.” Sometimes they go to a hotel. Often he takes them to a friend’s condominium, which is just right near his neighborhood. The friend is a former lover but now based somewhere else in the Philippines. He has given my friend the key to his apartment—and now it serves as a rendezvous for his Grindr pick-ups. But he likes doing the deed in his car. He takes them to different places—beside churches, on side streets, on mall parking lots, even on busy streets, and at different times, too, but mostly early morning or night. Most of the time, he uses a car that’s super-tinted. But he likes using another car that’s only medium-tinted car. “The medium tint is fun and dangerous,” he confesses, “because people can see.”

There are no real names exchanged in these encounters. When asked, he gives them an alias: he’s “Michael Tan,” whose mother is from Taiwan. (Sometimes, when he likes the guy, he does tell them his real name.)

“Are you happy with these encounters?” I ask him.

“Oh, yes,” he answers. “Very much so. I can tell you the stories. Grabe. I like listening to them. I like finding out what they do, where they’re from. I like listening to their love stories.”

There is this local singer he had crushed on for so long, but never had the courage to ask out on a date. “My avatar, David Ezra, made it possible,” he says. “When I finally unmasked myself, he knew who I was, of course. When I kissed him, it felt like one of those moments straight from YA novels.” The encounter, he tells me, was one for the books—they parked beside a church, and when they almost got caught, opted to go to a hotel. “It felt like young and careless sex, or love,” he says. “Wild abandon.”

Then there’s the muscled twink, a model. “One of the best bodies I’ve had partnered with. Iron abs,” he tells me. “He taught me about ‘vibe,’ that it’s not really how you looked—not a matter of being gwapo or panget—but all about your vibe. That was what he was looking for when he asked for photos over Grindr. I sent him three David Ezra photos. After we had sex, I dropped him at his mother’s place. And then he messaged me, that he had fun but was wondering why I didn’t send him my real pictures. He would have had sex with me anyway, because we vibed. I said my apologies and changed the topic.”

Then there’s the triathlete whose real name my friend does not want to know. He calls him “Runtime Error” instead. “He’s very memorable because he’s very gentle, very real—and we have the most intimate sex. He’s probably the person I’ve had sex with the most these days. Usually it’s just once or twice with most people—but this one made it past three. I don’t know his name. And he doesn’t bring a wallet so I can’t peek into it and get the name. And he doesn’t ask me as well. But I do know some details. Like I know he has a girlfriend in Manila, and that he wants to marry—but he is going to tell her that he’s bisexual before he proposes.”

There are so many others. He has a litany of names. “This one is the most beautiful of them all. This one is a staffer of a friend who blocked me on Facebook. This one is an events host and pageant boy. So many stories,” he says. There’s the banker who lives in a posh subdivision. There’s the guy who loves to sing Hamilton and who lives in Danao. There’s the guy who helped push his car when it ran out of gas. There’s the valedictorian from Negros who works for a car company. There’s the freediver. So many stories indeed.

“I like it when they are intelligent,” he tells me. “I don’t have to dumb down my language. I can be as verbose as I am with you.”

Are the boys different because of the pandemic?

“I don’t know,” he answers. “A lot of them are like me, emerging from hibernation. A lot of them haven’t had sex in a long time.”

I ask him why he thinks this sexual marathon is pandemic-related.

“Of course it’s the pandemic. It’s YOLO. You only live once,” he says. “I’ve never felt more YOLO in my life than now. And accepting of fate and magic.”

He is not that deathly afraid anymore of contracting COVID-19 from all these encounters—although aside from sex he is still very paranoid, demanding face masks, social distancing, and open-air spaces only. “I make an exception only for sex,” he says. “I’m not worried because we take lianhua in my family like vitamins. It’s traditional Chinese medicine for respiratory ails, worth about 200 pesos a box. We take it onset pa lang of any symptoms—cough, fever, chest pains, others.”

Any regrets so far?

“That maybe I may have overexposed myself—especially those who have recognized or may recognize me in the future. And that I’m not Michael Tan. Syaro wala’y mo-cross paths nako ani in the future. I wonder how I would handle myself when that happens. It will be awkward.”

I wish him well, “as long as you know what you’re doing,” I tell him.

“No, I don’t actually,” he says. “And that’s fine. YOLO, after all.” Then he quotes a line from Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George: “There are only two worthwhile things to leave behind when you depart this world of ours: children and art.”

“You have your books,” he tells me. “I have my son. That’s all that matters.”

It’s a profound take on his rush to have all these encounters, all in the name of YOLO, all in the name of banishing away the fears of contagion in pandemic times.


What is the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of YOLO—“you only live once”—in the time of the pandemic?

The rush to risky behavior in (or after) stressful time is, in many ways, to be expected. Think of the Roaring 20s when the world burst into excess and the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures right after the Spanish flu and World War I ravaged the world. Today, many people are not even waiting for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic to pursue the crazy and the wild without filter. More than a year into the longest lockdown in the world, many people are too ready to party away their worries—with or without repercussions. On June 6, someone posted on social media a video of young people partying, sans masks and sans social distancing, in a Cebu bar. The backlash was intense, and the very next day, the Department of Health banned partying all over the country.

But YOLO is not just about partying. YOLO is doing something unique in your arsenal of experiences because tomorrow is not assured—and the riskier the experience, the better the high. Although for many others, YOLO is also as simple as gorging themselves on food, heedless of long-held diets, and gaining several pounds in the process. For others, it is becoming and pursuing something else entirely outside their old comfort zones.

Labels: coronavirus, friends, life, sex

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