Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Yap: Useful knowledge
By Januar E. Yap
Meanwhile
SUMMON Frank back, but my first sip from a fare called “batchoy ramen,” a postmodern fusion of “La Paz with a Japanese twist,” simply steals thunder.
Today, we’d rather contain Japanese invasion in the kitchen. But, okay, I’m a sucker for noodle soup.
While I feast, a heap of books on the side gets a share of soup spattering: Michael Ondaatje’s “Divisadero,” Michael Dirda’s “Book by Book,” Erica Jong’s “The Devil At Large” (her recollections of Henry Miller), David Brook’s “Bobos in Paradise,” Zadie Smith’s “The Autograph Man.” I am thinking of putting them back on the shelf, and begin reading “The World is Flat.”
With the sticks, as I clipped on a morsel of pork, I was trying to grasp for clues about my future. I am likely to finish my graduate degree in literature, finally, after a long shameless slack. I vowed never to study literature again in a classroom.
Literature, as I always thought, is best learned through tickling a loved one. I recall Henry Miller’s strategy: show your readers two people in a sexual act first, and once stimulated, tell them the problems of the world.
Three devils are at large and lurk in some dark corner, ready to launch an attack. I am thinking of doctoral studies in anthropology even as the temptation of law or economics haunt me.
While my noodle soup remains steamy hot, the spattering extends to the other side. This time, pork broth blots out a newspaper heading that says the Philippine’s outstanding foreign debt is down by 0.7 percent, which is about P28.6 billion.
The outstanding debt now is P3.872 trillion. To simplify this by theory, this means that each of us, 88 million Filipinos, is indebted by P44,000.
Why is this happening? I tried to consult Shakespeare, the conspiracy theories and maybe Shylock, who wasn’t too clever with his coffers. Or maybe Sherlock, to see if some entanglement in my batchoy can hint me of what’s between the lines in the Department of Finance’s report. Beowulf was a mercenary, an axe-for-hire with a messianic complex. He eventually became king. On the other hand, I was almost branded sacrilegious in a class blinded by everything Anglo-Saxon. So, drop it.
The report says the decline is brought about by a combination of factors: the dollar’s state of gout, government’s net repayments, and the “overall decline in borrowing requirements as the fiscal deficit narrowed down.”
It must’ve been one of those Elizabethan sonnets, I’d like to think, that suggests we should pass the Reproductive Health Care Bill. Ah, maybe some post-Darwinist, anti-God literature will explain the economics behind condom use. If each one of us owes P44,000 in foreign debt, by all means, imagine a state-sanctioned orgy. The forecast is that, with our annual growth rate of 2.36 percent, we’re likely to double our population in 29 years. We can’t wait, let’s split the P44,000 now.
Our economy, one MBA lecturer told his students once, is propelled by remittances. I wish it can be explained by way of the iambic pentameter or the haiku meter. I was thinking Basho or Li Po must’ve encrypted some solutions to the oil price hike between the frog and the moon. I don’t know.
“You can’t feed a family with rhymes,” my parents warned me once when they knew I was stuck in my room counting syllables when I was in college.
Someday, I’ll try to dig economics. Go to school if I need to. I’m thinking of the La Paz batchoy being given a surprising Nippon twist by some innovative wok wizard. It’s a useful formula.
Another report says one in every six kids is out of school in our country.
Many and many a year ago, poor in math, Edgar Allan Poe instead wrote “Annabelle Lee.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 16, 2008 issue)
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