Well, looks like it's been quite a spell since I managed to get a new Pearl up - gee, I missed the whole month of May! Sorry 'bout that, but have been busy negotiating my way through gauntlets and keeping my neck above the alligator line. Given that most Pearls require considerable time to create (related to a certain obsessive-compulsiveness on the author's part), it's getting harder and harder to come up with a fresh piece each month. Matter of fact, no time now to do any research, nor inclination to return to one of the several folders strewn about that contain materials, notes, and ideas just waiting to burst into brilliant prose. Sigh...

So... on a drizzly Saturday morning, I find myself sitting in a Makati coffee shop, writing gonzo-style on pink paper on a clipboard, planning on minimal if any editing later, my humble version of Hunter's toilet paper roll-like typewriter, generating words as rapidly as possible, each typed page of precious text being immediately ripped off and faxed to the rabid Rolling Stone editor in San Francisco coming up on final countdown to print. Forgive the off-the-cuff nature of the piece, and I make no guarantees of transitions or subtle text massaging to lead things up to a good punch line as I do in some Pearls, credit it to my spaced out condition after an intense month of May. I shall fuel the endeavor with megadoses of Vitamin C (caffeine, not coke!), as Aretha on the increasingly eclectic Starbucks soundtrack generates internal flashbacks to a time when life was not quite so complex and demanding.

I've been out of town on consulting gigs a few times lately, mostly for strategic planning retreats, generally held at venues close enough to drive to comfortably but far enough away to escape the distractions of the office (although cell phones are ubiquitous and I have yet to sit in a strategy session where at least one Filipino wasn't texting at any given point in time). One of the more popular nearby locales for such organizational planning sessions and/or teamwork playtime events is Tagaytay, just a couple hours drive south, featuring hilly country, beautiful scenery, and cool air - welcome relief from Manila's sweaty urbanity, with plenty of resorts of highly variable quality catering to corporate HR departments.

Another nice outing is down to Laguna, home of Los Baños Hot Springs and the University of the Philippines Los Baños, not to mention IRRI (the International Rice Research Institute). If you're headed down there on leisure, try to locate some of the rich folks who lease out their summer homes to groups, the main attraction being warm, bubbling hot springs. The source of those hot springs is nearby Mount Makiling, a dormant volcano that you can climb if you take a notion (it's 1090 meters high), or you can hike around its base in a few hours.

One of the more beautiful retreat settings I've encountered is a former mountain getaway "cottage" of Imelda Marcos, located at the far end of the National Arts Center, way up on Makiling, also home of the campus of the Philippine High School for the Arts. I spent an evening meditating on the balcony of that rustic dwelling, enjoying a stunning vista overlooking Laguna de Bay, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Southeast Asia. As dusk approached, I watched the lights of the fisherfolk flickering down below, still living the simple lifestyle of their forebears. On the way home we stopped at a roadside vendor to get a couple of buckets of live tilapia, still jumping around, for frying up back in Manila.

There are, of course, sites of such scenic beauty all over the Philippines, and many readers have visited more of the exotic locales than I have (has to do with the fact that I've spent almost five years (see below) fighting my way through the urban jungle, and have seldom traveled out of Manila unless it's associated with a planning retreat or out-of-town workshop). Indeed, the Philippines is one of the globe's most ecologically diverse locations, with over 3,000 unique and endemic plant species, and more than 500 of the world's known 700 coral species.

Unfortunately, I fear for the future of the archipelago's natural resources. The land's ability to sustain a rapidly growing populace is a big question. Only 5% of the country's coral reefs and old growth forests remain in excellent condition, only 20% of the original mangrove forests are still in place, and small scale fisheries have seen their productivity decline by 75% over the last two decades. With population likely double to 160 million human beings by 2030, there is a very real question how long the Philippine's natural beauty and resources will hold out.

One thing I noticed early on in Manila is that there's an underground mafia of gremlins working overtime to keep ex-pats from finding favorite items from home. Prototypical example: You remember seeing some chutney of precisely the type you loved so much when you were a kid when you were at the supermarket yesterday, but for some reason you didn't buy any. You dream about the chutney and wake up the next morning, a Sunday, and quickly mobilize yourself for a quick foray to the market to pick some up for brunch.

Unfortunately, however, the gremlins swing into action even quicker, little green creatures with headphones receiving real-time messages from the probes that were surreptitiously implanted in your frontal lobe when you weren't looking. The message: "chutney alert, chutney alert!" They rush to the supermarket and sweep the offending items off the shelf, just in time for your arrival. When you get there, you go right to the place you saw the stuff - you remember it precisely - and of course there is none to be found. You ask the stockpeople whatever happened to the chutney, and they either look at you like you're crazy, or simply shrug their shoulders and say "wala" (which means none) or "out of stock". You'll probably never see the damn stuff again.

Lesson: If you see an imported item or one of your old favorite comfort foods from back home on a market shelf, purchase it then and there. Consider buying out the stock so the gremlins won't get the best of you.

One of the better books I've read recently is Slum as a Way of Life: A Study of Coping Behavior in an Urban Environment, written by F. Lando Jocano; originally published in 1975, but out of print until recently. I have long known of Professor Jocano's work, both through his multicultural books (like Working with Filipinos) and because I bid against him on a couple of multicultural training gigs a while back (he won).

I recently had the privilege of having breakfast with the Professor, and got a signature on the Slum book in the deal. Over three decades ago, the earnest young anthropology professor from the University of the Philippines relocated his wife and young children into a nasty Manila slum to live for three years, immersing himself in the community, ethnographic research at its finest, not being judgmental, just observing and recording his observations. His insights and commentary are about as authentic as you can get, the methodology is first rate, and the tale is well-written; it certainly helped me deepen my own understanding of the Philippines. In fact, I now realize that many of the cultural commentaries I made early in the Pearl archive are hackneyed and rely on inappropriate stereotypes, a fact that Jocano's work in part brought to my attention.

Professor Jocano, who holds MA and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from the University of Chicago, has highly original theories explaining most any phenomena you could describe, and the breakfast discussion was lively and entertaining. Knowing that he still writes his books on a manual Smith Corona and doesn't deal with computers, I provided him with a bound copy of Pearl (reluctantly), and asked his forgiveness in advance for my presumption and oversimplifications. (To purchase any of Professor Jocano's books, contact PUNLAD Research House (63-2-931-80-57 or punlad@edsamail.com.ph), or look for them at National Bookstore or Filipinas Heritage Library bookshop.

Sitting in the lounge of the Peninsula Hotel in Makati watching the rich and famous come and go is one of my wife's favorite pastimes; I occasionally join her there for afternoon merienda and drinks (in her case, high tea, in mine Jack Daniels, thank you very much, Tennessee charcoal-filtered whiskey in the tropics can be an ideal tonic at times). The chamber music wafting down from the balcony, real and make-believe tycoons wheeling and dealing, aristocratic Senators being kowtowed to, it's quite a scene, certainly brings home in crystal clear focus the gulf between rich and poor in this country.

But the real appeal of the Pen lobby is that it was the scene of the crime a bit over 20 years ago, an evening in late 1982 when I had my first date with my wife and we had drinks in that very same lobby. We had just met, and I proposed to her three days later just after she told me just how extensive her family was and how many obligations I would de facto take on.

I suppose it's ironic how hard I fell for her, given the many attributes that should have, on the face of it, sent me scrambling for cover: she was skinny, almost anorexic (I liked my women with a little meat on 'em); she was Mestiza (read white), albeit stunning, but not exotic in the traditional Asian sense that had previously been my preference; a devout Catholic who had been raised by nuns in a Manila convent and who had just finished a novena (I had grown up largely on the back pew of a Pentecostal church, also raised in a repressive environment, but had rebelled strongly and left an entire world behind); she had been raised in high style on money earned from the sweat and blood of peasants on a sugar plantation, accustomed to hanging around in five-star hotels with movie stars, a former fashion model, although now the family had fallen on hard times (I had grown up in a blue collar environment with the Protestant Work Ethic practically tattooed into my brain, then been a left-leaning graduate student intent on critiquing colonialism and helping the poor cast off their chains).

Given those similarities, plus the fact that I had recently been battling my way through my second divorce, I had no choice but to fall in love with her (congenital irrationality being what it is).

Fortunately, the stars were in alignment, we have enjoyed a wondrously intimate relationship, and recently celebrated our 20th anniversary.

Despite my early rebellion against organized religion and fundamentalist approaches to life, I find that we have reached a nice accommodation over the years. I encouraged her interest in New Age sorts of things in LA (heck, when you live near Venice Beach you have little choice), something that she took to like a duck to water, and my own earlier-in-life immersions in Buddhism have played a role in deepening our communications (and increased my tolerance for ambiguity, which is also a good thing).

Nowadays I enjoy going to church with her, whether stopping off in Tagaytay at the Pink Sisters' Chapel (the Sisters of Divine Mercy) to write prayer requests and pray, or walking in the evening to the nearby Catholic Church to meditate in the Adoration Room. Indeed, my wife assures me that I am actually a gift from a certain group of nuns who prayed for me to pop into the picture back in the days of desperation before we pulled off our lightning flash romance number.

Which is not to say that others necessarily understand what goes on in our family. I can't give too much detail in this public forum, but suffice it to say my wife is in a prototypical Filipina matriarch role and that her caregiving and charity responsibilities know no bounds. In Los Angeles, where we lived for 15 years, most of my American friends perceived our marriage with a combination of awe (related to the intimacy and trust) and disbelief (related to the lack of boundaries and sheer craziness per their worldview). Even here in Manila, Westerners sometimes ask prying questions or otherwise roll their eyebrows when they learn this or that detail about our complex lifestyle.

I have finally developed an effective strategy for dealing with this situation. I have decided that there is a certain quadrant of my brain - the Filipino lobe - that does not operate by nor obey Western values. Whenever people start to ask probing questions about my family life or about specific aspects of my lifestyle that they find unusual or of interest, I simply stop them and draw my index finger theatrically in an arc across the right side of my head.

"Don't go there, that's in the Filipino lobe"

Case closed

Well, it has been nearly five years since I relocated my family to the Philippines from California. As those of you who have perused the Pearl archive know, it has not exactly been a cakewalk. If you're ever thinking about pulling up roots entirely, packing up a huge dependent family, putting everything you own in a 40-footer, and relocating to a third world country on a shoestring to hang up a shingle that says "Management Consultant, great white bwana come to save little brown brothers," - don't.

Fortunately, I seem to have finally broken through in the development sector, and am now doing meaningful and rewarding work with both multilateral and bilateral agencies. Still not a bed of roses, but I am at least no longer on the verge of swimming back to El Lay. If I can travel as far the next five years as I did the last five, then all should eventually work out for the best.

However, there are potentially problematic implications for Pearl. First, I am working large number of hours and am always under the gun to produce high quality deliverables, which (as mentioned earlier) makes it harder and harder to write new Pearls. Second, the nature of the work makes it advisable for me to somewhat censor myself, both with regard to Philippine development issues and to global politics (and especially the foreign policy of the current administration).

This is the 58th Pearl over the last four years, and represents in a sense a pivot point. I've covered a lot of ground, and the archive will continue to exist in cyberspace even should I stop writing columns tomorrow. Hopefully it provides readers with valuable information or, at least, an off-the-beaten-track perspective on this archipelago.

That said, Pearl has become a labor of love, with a regular readership and intermittent evidence it may have some intrinsic value (that evidence includes both kudos and critiques, reflective of the fact that the pieces engage (provoke?) readers, which is sort of the point of the endeavor). I appreciate your e-mails of whatever type, and do my best to answer and respond as best I can to requests for information. Apologies if you happen to have sent me a cyber-comunique that now languishes in one of my "to answer" folders. S*** happens, as they say.

Over the next few months, as time permits, I plan on returning to some grittier takes on life in the Philippines, perhaps revisiting Eva from Cebu yet again, maybe taking a look at the Philippines within the broader regional context, perhaps reflecting on Fil-Ams in California. Or maybe I'll just keep spinning off gonzo reflections like this one. We shall see.