A Filipino summer

South Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay in July 2011. (Photo by Christian Thomas)

Pinoy in America was on the road again this summer. In July, my wife and I took our annual road trip—actually, it’s fast becoming more like a pilgrimage, given that we do it so religiously—to Northern California to see our friends and family there.

But this time we did something different. We camped out in the great outdoors for a couple of nights with my friends C., who brought along his cousin D., and J. and his two kids. It was at lovely South Lake Tahoe, so even if overnight temperatures dipped to the 30s and 40s—and I had only a 50-degree sleeping bag—it was all worth it. Just the view of the lake was enough to make the long drive all worth it.

But of course we had much, much more than that. We had a chance to catch up with one another and, in the case of D. and his family, to make new friends. And we met, too, for the first time J.’s two sons—they are 11 and 7 years old, I think. The two are turning to be such fine young men and bear a striking resemblance to their dad, now that I think about it, when he was their age. Kevin and Kyle were no first timers to camping, but they were very eager to take part in its rituals—the barbecue, tending to the campfire, and, in particular, the scary stories. I obliged them with one or two that, I think, did the job. I told scary stories I remember from my own childhood in the Philippines no less.

The following morning we all hiked first, up to a promontory which gave a good view of the crystal blue lake and then down to the shore, where a few of us braved the freezing cold water and took a dip. D. took out his fishing pole, and Kevin used it and thought he caught a fish. In fact, it was a rock from which I had to dislodge the hook. On the way back to camp, I made the mistake of kidding him and saying it was a big fish, and he never left it at that. “What kind of fish was it? And how big?” was all we heard from him.

But it was all good.

Unfortunately, what was to be a three-night campout ended up becoming a two-night one because I had to rush back to San Francisco to take part in an author’s event at the Daly City Public Library, where I and the writer Gemma Nemenzo talked about, and read from, our books on the Filipino-American immigrant experience. (Her book is called Heart in two places: An immigrant’s journey).

It was a small but very lively crowd, and it made for a memorable first author’s event for me. And it was, as it happens, the first of a series of activities that I took part it in this summer that had a distinctly Filipino flavor. 

Filipino jazz singer Mon David performs at Savanna Jazz Bar in downtown
San Francisco on July 16, 2011. Playing the piano is Rey Cristobal, and on bass
is Emerson Cardenas. Both are regulars at Filipino jazz events in California.
On drums, hidden, is Donald “Duck” Bailey.

The next one was jazz singer Mon David’s show at the Savanna Jazz bar in downtown San Francisco. I’d seen an ad for the show before we left Southern California and I’d wanted to see it because Mon David is one of those Pinoy singers I grew up hearing about but whom I’ve never really had a chance to watch or listen to. So I thought it would be interesting to watch his show.

While I’m not a jazz enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination, I have to say I was glad we went to his show because his singing is something else. His scat singing, in particular, was, I thought impressive. I don’t know of any other Pinoy artist who does that or can. The fact that Mon David does in three languages (Tagalog, Kapampangan and English) makes it all the more impressive. His show was sponsored, incidentally, by the San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival, which was my other discovery during this Filipino summer.

The San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival is a group of Pinoy jazz artists based in the San Francisco Bay Area that’s been promoting jazz by Filipino artists. It has hosted, under the leadership of Carlos Zialcita (a mean harmonica player) such artists as Annie Brazil, Anne Marie Santos and the great Jo Canion at different venues in San Francisco. David’s show was a good example of the kind of events the Jazz Fest puts together. David, though based here in Southern California, “goes home” to the San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival when he’s in the Bay Area.

That nicely rounded off our NorCal trip this year. 

Lea Salonga serenades the crowd at the  20th Festival of
Philippine Arts and Culture at Point Fermin Park in San Pedro,
Calif., on Sept. 10, 2011.

 And then in September I went to FPAC. FPAC stands for the Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture, an annual Filipino-American “fiesta” held, quite fittingly, right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, on the San Pedro coast, facing the motherland. As it is a fiesta, it’s a merry time, when everyone takes a break from their American lives and for a weekend celebrates their Filipinoness. 

All things Pinoy were on
display at FPAC 20, including
this basketball jersey sporting
the Philippine flag.

There’s Filipino food (served up by Filipino food trucks), music, art, clothes and businesses on display during the two-day festival. At this year’s FPAC, the 20th year of the festival, the special guest was Lea Salonga, who serenaded the crowd with some love songs on opening day. Standup comic Rex Navarrete brought the house down on the second day. Between the two of them came all kinds of acts celebrating Pinoy culture. There was an arnis demonstration, a performance by a Filipino-American symphony, a host of singers and dancers, tinikling, Pinoy jazz, etc. You get the point. Anything Pinoy took the stage. And all around the grounds of Point Fermin Park were booths for Pinoy-American nonprofits and businesses selling shirts, books, paintings, etc., all run by kababayans.

Finally, on Oct. 1 and 2, 2011, I was back in San Francisco for the  Filipino American International Book Festival. FilBookFest, as the event was dubbed by the organizers, gathered Pinoy book lovers to celebrate books by Pinoy writers, both those based in the Philippines and those based in the U.S.

Pinoy in America, left, aka Lorenzo
Paran III, hangs out with Butch
Dalisay, one of the Philippines'
most important writers, at the Filipino
American International Book Festival
in San Francisco's Civic Center on
Oct. 2, 2011. (Photo by Christian
Thomas)

It was a wondrous time if you were Pinoy and a book lover. Writers read from their works, signed books., and took part in panel discussions on culture, history and the Diaspora, just to name a few of the topics covered in the program. I got to meet the Filipino-American writers I’ve always only encountered through books, and I saw those whom, until recently, I used to bump into at literary events in Manila. Butch Dalisay, my teacher and thesis adviser at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, was in town. So were Pete Lacaba, Vim Nadera, Mike Coroza, Teo Antonio, the historian Ambeth Ocampo (who gave a talk on “Queridas ni Rizal”), Isagani Cruz, Marites Vitug, Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, and many others. Special mention might be made of Samantha Sotto, who’s become the toast of the Filipino writing community after her first novel, Before Ever After, was picked up by no less than Random House Publishing. Present also were representatives of Manila’s biggest publishing houses: Carljoe Javier of the U.P. Press, Maricor Baytion of the Ateneo de Manila University Press and Karina Bolasco of Anvil Publishing.

The group of U.S.-based Pinoy writers featured the likes of Oscar Penaranda, who played a key role in organizing FilBookFest, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, the poet and historian Luis Francia, Marivi Soliven Blanco and John Blanco, R. Zamora Linmark, and Barbara Jane Reyes, and, truth to tell, many, many others. For that was the point of FilBookFest, after all: to gather and recognize Filipino writers from both sides of the Pacific and to celebrate Philippine writing.

And that was it, my Filipino summer.