Coffee in Paris

While my legs and body aches from oh so, so many sessions on the ramp, yuck, I decided its time to give myself a little gift. So I took a leave from all the gut wrenching, soul stressing work and rested for a few days.

On the fourth day of seeing sights, wandering around the Fashion Capital, Paris, France, I met up with an old friend from Mindanao.

She has a perfume I envy because I cannot buy it since my ex boss owns the company and I hate my ex boss. Her name is Elnorah but I call her Elm Tree and she works like crazy as a publicist at a company called Neo or somesuch, that sells nice and high prized footwear. Oh! I exclaimed, I love thaat sooo - I am so like Imelda, I love shoes soooo much! She agrees, knowing my habits, likes, peeves and every one in my family of asuwangs (which makes her a bit afraid of me a teeny little bit too - I suspect, just a dirty little thought mind you).

We talked about sooo many Filipino things, never using French nor English nor any other language. (I don't know more than 4 anyway and I think neither does Elm - my good friend of long ago.)

Then we veered into the currents in the home country. And I learned once more (my first time was in the international media) and with alarm, the great brouhaha that somebody supposedly called nonoy aquino turned the idea of "term extension" into.

My friend says: "It's not true. It's just a PR campaign contracted to many big individual experts-contractors and a few corporate ones."

Oh? I ask, is that really true?  "Yes, she answered. Coz nonoy is already on the way out and his fame is fading fast more than acid-washed jeans."

That's true, I thought, that's been true for the past four years.

"Also the shit about Palparan?" Yeah I heard about that too, I told her. "It's just a blanket to cover the millions, gazillions of issues plaguing the nonoy administration back in the country. Crimes, Train accidents, disasters, sex scandals in the justice department, graft and corruption in Manila's counterpart of the White House or the The Palais de l'Élysée, lower government functionaries' involvement in large scale thievery of government money, and all that."

How do you know all these, I asked her.  "I'm a reporter remember? Duh!"

Yeah, that figures. "Jove Palpy," she explains, is the tip of a mysterious iceberg. "He used to be the front of one of the so-called large-scale illegal drugs pipelines from-to the Philippines and abroad - specially China. To hide the activities of the drugs pipeline, the masterminds behind the syndicate-and-government-protection-ring, hired former rebels to kill communist young workers as a diversion.

The media publicity became so much that no one turned their attention to the large scale smuggling of drugs in Mindoro, in the South, even in Manila itself. And that shit doubled, tripled, quadrupled in the last three to four years alone.

It was getting too very dark, so late and too fast, so I suddenly told my friend stop. Stop talking, let's have another coffee talk someday when I'll have my beauty rest again. (I had the urge to do my fairy rounds tonight, but I needed to go home first.)

After me and Elm parted ways, in just a jiffy I was in the air. It was already really deep into the evening or night - not that I did not approve.

I followed Elms scent but it led me to a great imposing building near the central complex that included The Palais de l'Élysée.  Its big neon lit sign said: INTERPOL INTELLIGENCE DIVISION.

Fuck shoes, my friend is a stinking cop but I enjoyed her tall tales anyway. And I continued my fairy rounds... thinking of term extension of that abnormal dude who never deserved a first term at all, a malnourished old man called Pinalpagan, and laughing all the way...

As far as I can remember, this army general has never looked brave

or sinister and cruel to me. Maybe Elm was right after all. He could

just be a scapegoat and in fact, I think by the looks of him, he is an old

emaciated neglected senior citizen. He must have children and grand

children to be sure but they can't even touch him with a 10-foot pole

because of the damned stupid stigma. Why is the Filipino population

always so easy to fool?