HermieGarcia.net

TORONTO — The recent concert produced by Studio Six, “Celebratel Music with Josie de Leon,” was a major production where the performers were all local talents. This is a remarkable effort by our local producers to harness the local musicians, singers, dancers and choreographers to produce a major event comparable to those where the stars are imported from the Philippines or the U.S.

Much like locally-grown produce whose freshness and price benefit local consumers, our local talents shine on center stage when given a chance, not as front-acts nor one-or two-song time killers, but as stars in their own right.

There have been other attempts like this before but I haven’t seen one so elaborate and so filled with varied artists. First, there’s Josie whose effortless stage presence and ease at musical performance fill the stage and stir anticipation in the audience. I’ve watched her sing modern Tagalog love songs that required both energy and lilting tunes but the recent concert revealed she could spar with tenor Leander Mendoza and hit the high notes with aplomb doing a Phantom of the Opera number. And her repertoire included classic Broadway, pop songs, Natalie Cole (“Unforgetable”), Imelda Papin (“Kung Liligaya Ka”), Hot Dog (“Pers Lab”) and numbers with Canadian Idol Mikey Bustos.

Mendoza was a treat with his mastery of the piano and his gift of voice that easily filled the auditorium. Bustos was pure energy on stage with his dances and songs. They are only two of our local stars who made the show worth seeing.

There’s Karen Tan, whose powerful rendition of Kuh Ledesma’s “Dito Ba?” almost mersmerized the audience. I wanted to have more of her songs but her newborn baby rightly deserved time with her more than her stage appearances.

I was reminded of Vonnie Beltran, Chyrell Samson and Rodney Ronquillo whose star quality performances in our Ginsaugon concert in 2006 wowed the audience. Why were they not asked to showcase their talents here? Lilac Caña’s and Emilio Zarris’s appearances could have completed the local cast of stars.

But of course, there was Marvin de Guzman whose rendition of a Gary Valenciano number was done with much feeling. And there was Julius Tinsay whose Spanish numbers entertained the audience no doubt.

Mon Torralba of the Hot Dog fame was the musical director of the show. His handling of the lead guitar kept the musical numbers in order. His band was wonderful. It gave the show a professional sound that filled the air. It was like the glue the kept the show together.

Classical violinist Alex Cheung’s Phantom of the Opera truly held us breathless. And the dancers? With Josie singing and the band playing, the dancers drew the crowd up on their feet singing and dancing towards the end of the show.

The Celebrate magazine published for the show was glossy, had some interesting pieces on the artists and had more ads than it needed.

It could have been a perfect show had the Chinese Cultural Centre auditorium in Scarborough been filled to capacity that night.

Which brings us to a side issue. Why aren’t the usual suspects in the community, some of the high profile personalities not around? I’m sure Josie and her group of artists were not amiss in supporting their events, performing for free many times. Where were the massive crowds that thronged to the events of PIDC, Gawad Kalinga and the regional associations that had our local talents volunteering their time?

We owe these artists the support they deserve. I have always called them diamonds in our backyard. Our existence in a cold country like Canada would not have been richer without them.

Two quick updates:

1. A NEW Philippine Reporter website has been uploaded. Check it out at http://philippinereporter.com and enjoy the new design. We have also installed videos that are footages from the July 19, 2008 Mabuhay festival at Metro Convention Centre and the Juana Tejada press conference on July 18. We are using a software template that is similar to those used by CNN and other mainstream media sites. So you’ll sure to benefit from the leading edge features.

We at the Reporter are very excited by this new development. Now we can update the site with new stories and photos quickly and easily. No more tedious work with HTML stuff. No more waiting for the print edition to be finished. No more waiting for those trained with uploading to be free of their other work. I myself can upload stories, photos, make corrections, etc.

And the most exciting thing is when we cover stories, we can videotape the interviews and the events and upload the video footages the same day!!! I imagine this can be an exhilarating experience for our readers. It’s like, after attending a Filipino event or hearing about it, you check out the Reporter website and you find out what you just saw or heard about can be watched on video on the same day or a few days after.

So check it out now at http://philippinereporter.com and post your comments at the end of the stories and the videos. Bookmark the site because the url is different from the old site’s. Check out the Tinikling video and the other Fiesta Filipina videos. The music, the dances will mesmerize you.

2. At the top of the homepage you will notice a banner ad announcing a brief Free Review of the top 3 weight loss products. Check this out too. But don’t be scared, there is no product offer at the review page, only information. But of course, if you’re a bit interested in more information, you may read the linked pages which themselves contain a ton of great and useful info. They are well-researched and educational on the topic.

Since I am a health and wellness buff myself (I don’t eat meat, fastfood and greasy stuff, I drink Pimag oxygenated water, I take calcium, Coq10, Saw Palmetto supplements, etc.) I learned a lot just reading those pages. I even practiced some of their recommendations. And you know what? I lost 14 pounds in three weeks just using a couple of them. No kidding. Go check out those pages. They are highly-recommended by yours truly.

For a short cut, here’s the url: http://WellnessHealthWise.com

Following is my column for the July 1-15, 2008 issue of The Philippine Reporter:

Education for Change

I was invited to give the keynote address in the graduation ceremonies for the Grade 12 graduating class of the Jean Vanier Catholic Secondary School last June 24.

It was a special honor for me for two reasons. First, it was my first time to speak before a huge audience of youth where their parents, teachers and school authorities were present. There were about 120 graduating students and the audience was more than 400. Second, it was the school of Jeffrey Reodica, the 17-year old who was fatally shot by a Toronto police officer in May 2004.

Here is my prepared speech, some parts of which I omitted due to time constraints.

* * *

I have agonized over what message I’m going to deliver to you. You are younger than my children but you are older than my grandchildren. I have spent decades relating to my kids and some years relating to my grandkids. I don’t know if I know your generation enough to be able to stimulate your mind and touch your heart.

I decided I would just speak from the heart, from my perspective as an immigrant who brought his family from a Third World country. I understand a vast majority of the student population of your school come from Asian or African or non-English and non-French speaking backgrounds. A significant number come from Filipino families living in Scarborough.

When I graduated from high school in the Philippines, and that was 44 years ago, 1964 to be exact, I was extremely excited. During our graduation ceremonies, aside from the excitement of having pictures taken with my classmates, with a medal or so pinned on our white robes, my mind was preoccupied with the prospect of soon becoming a university student with all the stature and prestige that would come with it. We had a distinguished speaker, a famous economist who later became a Senator. But I didn’t listen to a word he said. All I could remember was his American accent, he having been schooled in a Jesuit-run university.

So you see, if you now have the attitude I had then, you wouldn’t hear a word I say here. And I don’t blame you. Your mind must be pre-occupied with what suit or dress you’d be wearing on your prom night, if you haven’t had it yet. Or maybe on how you now look in the eyes of your girl friend or boy friend. But still, if you listen enough, I’ll share with you some life lessons you will still remember forty years from now.

When I asked your guidance counselor what was I expected to say on this graduation day, I was told I need to inspire the graduating students. I assume it is about inspiring you to succeed in your chosen careers. But that is assuming you already know what career you want to build, which is not a reasonable assumption to make. Many young students of your age do not know what they want in life. In a vague way, maybe many of you want to go to university or college and eventually start a profession, start a business or just have a good job.

But in the pursuit of your goals, if you have set them up at this time, you will be doing so in very specific and given political, economic, social and cultural environment. You are not pursuing your career goals in a vacuum. And these conditions either help you or work against you. What do I mean by this?

Let’s start with the economic conditions right now. We are either seeing or facing a recession in north America. Thousands of people are losing their jobs. Millions of houses in the United States are being foreclosed – being taken by the banks from owners who could not pay their mortgages. The price of oil keeps on rising which pushes the price of everything to go up. More and more people are realizing their money is buying less and less of what they need. More and more people are being driven below the poverty line. More and more people are going to the food banks. Child poverty is in an all time high.

In other words, times are getting more difficult. Life is hard, times are tough. There is an economic crisis that is building up.

Where does that put you, the graduating Grade 12 students? How will this affect your pursuit of your careers?

It is said that today’s adult population, including the baby boomers – those born from 1946, after the war, to 1964 – are having a tougher time coping financially than their parents did. And you, the generation younger than Generation X, or Gen-X, will face even tougher times than your parents are experiencing right now.

This will mean, the cost of university or college education will be harder for your parents to shoulder. Even if you get part time jobs or summer jobs, post-secondary education will be costlier and harder to save up for. Your parents are working very hard to put you in school and maybe even university. Understand their situation. You cannot and should not blame them in case they couldn’t afford your university education. Believe me, they want you to be in university. Some of your parents may be holding two or three jobs to raise their families in an expensive city like Toronto. Add to that responsibility the cost of your university education, which is no joking matter in Canada. Have a heart big enough to understand their situation. Help them out if you can.

If they cannot afford to send you to university at this time, don’t get upset just because some of your classmates and friends will go to University of Toronto or York University, University of Waterloo or Queens University. If they can only afford to send you to Ryerson Polytechnic University or George Brown College or Seneca College, be thankful and finish your course with distinction. You are lucky that you have parents who send you to school. There are thousands and thousands of youth in Canada who haven’t seen the inside of a high school or even finished Grade 8. There are millions or maybe hundreds of millions of youth in Third World countries, especially war-torn countries, those plagued by unimaginable poverty and disease, who have not spent a single day in school. Some of them have not experienced being cared for by their parents who had died of disease, poverty or in wars.

Believe me, even as some of you have parents who could not afford to buy you an iPod or a fancy cell phone, you are still wonderfully blessed you have your parents and you are graduating from high school. You are blessed you have your school, your principal and vice principals and your teachers and support staff whose job it is to help and guide you earn a decent education.

So that is my first advise to you: Be grateful for what you have. Rest assured there are thousands in Canada and millions in the world who don’t have what you have.

Now, whether you get to university or college, or you don’t get to pursue post-secondary education at all for whatever reason, or you don’t get to register in a course you’ve always wanted, always take it with a positive attitude.

Whether you become a university student or a college student or needed to get a job right after high school, you should always be guided by one thing and only one thing: Do what you love, pursue your passion and excel in what you do.

When you enter the university, it will be a whole new ball game. You will be given heavy academic responsibilities. You have to read more books, stretch your brain more, spend sleepless nights studying. You will be required to write and speak out your mind on subject matters you hardly know about. But your gains will be bigger. You will discover new fields of learning, new sciences and the arts, history and social studies. Your horizons will be wider, your view of the world will be bigger. You will learn deeper about the cultures and histories of other peoples and countries. You will understand the world better. You will mature intellectually and with your association with other students, academic experts and school authorities, you will also mature emotionally.

In your journey to higher learning, a whole new world will open up to you. And you will develop critical thinking. You will be able to form your own opinion with conviction. You will develop an insatiable thirst for knowledge. You will ask many questions and will not be satisfied with traditional answers. You will learn the value of excellence in your academic pursuits. If you achieve this level of intellectual sophistication, all the money and time spent for your university education, all the blood, sweat and tears that were shed so you’ll be a university student, will not have been in vain.

It was Albert Einstein who said that “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”

In short, education is not about grades and diplomas, though they are important in getting jobs and they could be a measure of academic achievement. But education is more of what remains in your mind, how you think and how you connect information and ideas to the real world you live in. It is about the quality of your mind and not the quantity of information you have gathered for your exams and term papers.

Einstein also said: “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

We used to say in our university days, “Don’t let your schooling interfere with your education.” Some of those who said that took it so seriously they dropped out of school. For good reasons, like the political turmoil that defined those years in that country.

And there are distinguished dropouts who were stupendously successful. Bill Gates of Microsoft, the world’s richest person, dropped out of Harvard when he, at 20 years of age, found it too boring. He is now worth $58 billion. Michael Dell of Dell Computers dropped out of university as freshman at 19 years of age in 1984. Today he is worth $19 billion. In the Philippines, a school dropout became the country’s President with the highest number of votes ever garnered by a President. (Though he was later convicted for plunder.) A Filipino writer, awarded National Artist and was one of the most highly regarded for writing in English, was a dropout. The list goes on.

But don’t get me wrong. If you start university education, by all means, finish it. That distinction alone can be crucial in how people regard you in this society. And there’s too much to learn in university you won’t exhaust it in a lifetime. University experience can give you a kind of confidence in your intellectual capacity for whatever field you’re in.

Another clarification: I don’t mean to say that success is measured only in terms of how materially wealthy one becomes. You can be successful in life without being filthy rich as the billionaires I have mentioned. It all depends on your life’s purpose. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years and wealth was never one of his goals in life. Yet he led the liberation of South Africa from the clutches of apartheid, a form of racial discrimination. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not one of America’s richest. Yet he was a leader and now a symbol of the American civil rights movement.

There is one last message I’d like to convey to you. You will recall that 17-year-old Jeffrey Reodica was a student in your school when a tragic incident ended his life in May 2004. He was fatally shot by a Toronto police officer.

As a result of community protests and cries for justice, with the active participation of students in this school, a public inquiry was called by the Ontario government where the police officers involved and dozens of witnesses were questioned to determine what really happened that led to his death. In that Inquest that lasted for months, Jeffrey’s family’s lawyers and the lawyers of the Community Alliance for Social Justice (CASJ) engaged the lawyers of the police in tough arguments and debates. The Inquest jury adopted seven recommendations, five of which required the Toronto Police to implement certain changes in their policing practices. And they cost more than $400,000 in the police budget. The community advocates and Jeffrey’s family won certain changes that were supposed to prevent a similar incident from happening again. Although the perpetrator of the killing was not brought to justice, a qualified victory for the community and the family was apparently achieved.

The incident and the resulting policing changes provide us life lessons even the police authorities now recognize and one of them is that community concern and action can lead to positive changes no matter who were responsible for the wrongdoing.

My final word to you, graduating Grade 12 Class of 2008, is this: As you reach this milestone in your education and as you pursue higher education in your journey to start your careers, be deeply aware of the political and economic environment. The world out there will not always be kind to you. Some of the individuals and institutions you will encounter will not be fair to you and will treat you unjustly. Some of them you will see blatantly victimize others. You should have the courage to fight them for the benefit of those whose rights are trampled upon. You should always be on the side of those who are victimized and oppressed. Like the boy from your school who should have graduated years before you — Jeffrey Reodica, had his life not been taken by an officer of the law.

After all, what’s the value of our education if we allow the wrongs to prevail in our midst? What’s the value of our education if we look the other way when others are being robbed of their dignity, and worse, their life?

I believe education’s primary purpose is not only to deepen our understanding of the world but also to strengthen our humanity so we may become more just and humane to have the courage to change the world for the better.

Thank you and congratulations.

Here is the column I wrote about Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran published in the June 16-30, 2008 issue of The Philippine Reporter:

Working Class Hero

THIS ISSUE is like a Special Issue on Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran. (Check pages 1, 8, 9, 11, 22 and other pages.) Ka Bel is fresh in the memory of many of us in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver and Winnipeg. He, together with Rep. Satur Ocampo and Rep. Luz Ilagan, visited those cities last April and spoke before audiences and met hundreds of mostly Filipinos and Canadians. The three Filipino solons were on a mission to ask the Canadian government to help stop the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. They also presented to many groups and in many events in these cities the state of human rights in the Philippines and asked support for the struggle for freedom and to end poverty in the country.

It came as a shock to us that Ka Bel, who we listened to as he spoke passionately and tirelessly about the poverty, the hunger and desperation among the working classes in his country, died on Tuesday, May 20 after an accident in his home.

In Toronto, I attended three of his speaking engagements. I met him first at the York University campus, then at OISE, University of Toronto and then at the Casa Manila forum of the Philippine Press Club-Ontario.

On the day of the three solons’ departure from Toronto to Manila on April 18, I was in the group who saw them off at Pearson International Airport. That’s when I interviewed him after a late lunch before they boarded their plane.

I had read a lot about his deep involvement in the anti-Marcos dictatorship struggle when he was imprisoned for years, his escape from detention, his leadership in the strong labor movement, capped by his years as the leader of Kilusang Mayo Uno, his enormous work as People’s Parliamentarian at the Philippine House of Representatives and his tireless participation and leadership in the parliament of the streets to his last days. No wonder, the present Arroyo regime had tried to silence Ka Bel by putting him in prison for one and half years which caused the dramatic deterioration of his health.

At age 75 and with a track record of more than 50 years of involvement in the struggle for meaningful social change for the working poor people, Ka Bel is a working class hero.

He’s been called the New Andres Bonifacio during his funeral. That title he rightfully deserves. Not only because of his total devotion to the working class as he was known as the leading advocate for workers’ rights and welfare in the Philippine scene. It’s also because he came from their ranks, being a worker himself, and never left their ranks throughout his life.

In Congress, he was known as the poorest parliamentarian in terms of material wealth but the richest in contribution because he was the partylist representative who filed the most number of bills and resolutions (130) in the 13th Congress, a feat recognized by the prestigious Philipppine Center for Investigative Journalism. He was chosen Most Outstanding Congressman for four years, from 2002 to 2005.

On the three occasions I listened to him in the Toronto forums, he was soft-spoken and always took the side of the oppressed in any topic. He was impassioned and emphatic when he spoke in Pilipino.
At the PPCO forum, he talked about the hard struggle in Congress which is overwhelmingly dominated by the Arroyo regime’s stooges and allies. Yet Beltran performed his job tirelessly and meticulously working on legislation after legislation that served to uplift the condition of the workers, mainly through wage hikes, opposition to anti-labor laws and policies and to the current land reform program that ironically has resulted in further depriving the peasants of the fruits of their labor for decades.

To those who knew him personally, Ka Bel, as tough as he was a figther, had a big heart for everyone in the rank and file of the countless mass organizations he led and related to. He was even known to be soft to the policemen assigned to demonstration sites, calling them kababayan (countrymen) and asking them to open their eyes to the conditions of the country.

During those days he was in Toronto, he had a ready smile for everyone but he never tired of talking about his people. He said the situation was simple: The Filipino people are hungry and they are oppressed. And people have to do something about it.

Ka Bel is truly a working class hero. He will be remembered in history as a valuable contribution of the Philippines to the international movement to liberate the working class in the league of Isabelo de los Reyes, Crisanto Evangelista, Felixberto Olalia and Rolando Olalia. He is truly the New Andres Bonifacio.

I am so grateful I met the man.

Welcome to my blog site.

My name is Hermie Garcia. I am a student-at-large.

That means I am out of school but still a student… of history, of society, of people’s humanity, literature and the arts, culture, but not the elitist, high falutin’ kind of culture. I’m more into movies than into museums, more into people’s movements and street art shows than into elitist art galleries. In Tagalog (I’m Filipino), more masa than culturati.

Back to my being a student-at-large. Just so I don’t give a wrong impression of my age. I’ve been out of university (UP or University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City) for 39 years. So now you have an idea of my age.

But I went back to school in my early 40s in the early 1990s at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto where I took a mix-match of courses in business, accounting and statistics and journalism courses such as reporting, interview and newspaper layout.

OK. Rewind to decades back to the 1980s in Manila. I was a full time journalist as a senior writer in a weekly magazine of a chain of publications which included daily newspapers. After the magazine was closed down because management would not have anything to do with labor unions, I was given the job of a desk editor and editorial writer of a daily newspaper.

Rewind again. In my UP student days I took a bachelor’s course in economics. They called it then AB Economics which essentially worshiped the Keynesian school of thought in economics. So it was the capitalist philosophy of economics where the utmost motivation for people or enterprises was profit. Profit was supposed to be the prime mover of any economic endeavor.

But I was basically a rebel in thinking. I don’t know why or when I started harboring this attitude. Even in high school I rebelled against school authority and the idea of learning by rote. I read Bertrand Russell and other authors and thinkers who ingrained in me, though in a seminal way, a preference for having an independent mind as opposed to following the mores, customs and prevailing ideas of the time or the rules and the ways of authority. I wrote a sophomoric poem early in high school which reflected my dislike for authority and conventions. That was the time too when, together with a clique of peers, I rebelled against religion and its minions in the school. I rebelled against the way teachers taught and the way students were made to memorize information without appreciating its significance. Memorizing the dates and places in history without learning their meaning to people. And facts and formulas in biology, math and algebra without grasping their places in whole field of the sciences. I felt there was more to learning than information and facts and figures and formulas. It just didn’t make sense why one should punish his or her brain with an enormous quantity of information without knowing how they all connected. In other words, we were made to see the trees but not the forest.

That attitude was disastrous for me. My grades fell. I used to be among the top five or so in the whole high school in my freshman and sophomore years. In my junior year, I hovered close to the 10th place. That’s because I stopped memorizing facts and figures, I stopped memorizing dates and places in history. I had the attitude that my schooling was interfering with my education. (Talk about intellectual arrogance at an early age.)

I wrote in the school paper and criticized what I wanted to criticize, the learning by rote, the shallowness of the subject matter being taught, the imposition of religious education though the school was a non-religious and non-sectarian one, etc.

But I did salvage my grades. I graduated fourth among about a thousand students in the morning session. Not bad for one who refused to memorize.

That was my frame of mind when I entered the university.

(To be continued…)