Forrest Gump Made Me Cry

I did not know that Forrest Gump the movie is heart-wrenching.

I read the book eons ago and did not bother watching the film,  thinking that widescreen adaptations are usually mediocre to the paperback.  I felt, for good reason, that there is something like a hex on movies based on bestsellers that make them inferior and disappointing.

However, I was expecting the movie, though it may not be as engaging as Winston Groom's book, to be at least also hilarious.  The book was so funny I was laughing so hard while reading it made my side ache.

I could not forget that part where Forrest said that after several attacks on their camp, the Vietcongs stopped, perhaps realizing that if America was so willing to drop Napalm bombs on their own men, it would have no qualms in doing so on its enemies.  Reading that book was really an  ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing) moment.

So I watched the film one night here in Jakarta, where I work away from family and friends, expecting to be guffawing all the way.

That did not happen, though.  Forrest Gump made me cry.

Seeing the different emotions that he tried to control and hide cross his face after learning that he has a son, and saying the boy was the "most beautiful thing" he ever saw, I just could not help but  shed tears.

I may be emotional, a cry baby if you want,  but that scene struck a chord, and the quivering string in my heart just made those tears fall.

I realized I so sorely missed my children after several agonizing months without seeing them personally and hugging them close.

Yes there is the Internet, the most important discovery of the century, but seeing the kids and their ebullient faces on the computer screen is not enough balm to soothe the pang created by the distance.

Why am I here? Why did I quit my job as a media worker to work in a foreign country whose language I am so unsuccessfully trying to learn?   

Because I want to earn more for my family and be a better provider.

 That is also the reason why millions of Filipinos leave the Philippines and be branded by some quarters as traitors for opting to work in strange lands instead of helping our own country grow.

But who would want to suffer through every waking moment by being away from our precious loved ones if only we can earn better near them?  Not the Filipinos, if they could help it, because family is the world for them.

And while toiling abroad results in happily ever after for many, there are also sad stories, like broken families and children going astray as drug addicts or law-breakers because the parents were  not there to properly guide them to maturity.

One sad story I know was that of my daughter's classmate during nursery school. Both the poor girl's parents worked abroad, so money problem was out of the question.  She did not finish the school year, though.  She died of kidney failure. We were told she actually just bore through the discomforts and the pain silently and secretly.

Her grandmother, who did not know better,  did not bring her to the hospital when her temperature soared. The old woman thought it was just one of those fevers associated with growing up that would as soon just go away.  It was the child who left her family for good.

That is why I am so lucky I have a loving and doting wife who sacrificed a lot, self actualization among them, just so she will be there to take charge of and take care of our kids.

I can sleep soundly knowing the kids are in the best of hands.

But the fear is always there.  Because who would take care of my wife if she is stricken ill?  Who would be there for her, to defend her and shield her from life's tribulations, when I am away?

I promised to man and God that I will be there for her.

That is why Forrest Gump so made me cry.  

King of the Road

In the Philippines, as a sales pitch that may be true or not, a jeepney declares itself as the "Hari ng Kalsada."

In Vietnam, however, there is is no doubt  about it: the King of the Road is the motorcycle, or motorcycles to be more exact.

Any first-timer in Hanoi, or in any other Vietnamese city for that matter, would immediately notice the huge swarm  of motorcycles that crazily squeeze their way through whatever opening there is in the street, red or green the traffic light may be.

And any sane driver behind the wheel should yield if he does not want to hit anyone, or more appropriately, being bumped into by motorcycles.

Any hot-headed driver will lose patience, any visitor will have his heart skip a beat or two when a motorcycle suddenly shows up in front and cut him off while his car crawls its way to whatever destination.

And a blaring siren is no guarantee the motorcycles will keep out of the way. An official-looking black car with "ASEAN" as license plate plus the siren will not work all the time, as what we and several non-Asians I was with during a conference in Hanoi recently learned.

It must have been a "culture shock" for those white men (and women) to see and experience such lithe machines stamping their superiority on the streets.

I, too, could not help but be afraid; not that motorcycles are a rarity in the Philippines or in Indonesia where I currently work.

For a Filipino with parents living away from the hustle and bustle of the city, a motorcycle is like a kindred spirit, a machine that literally brings you to wherever you go, be it across a raging river or through a narrow trail snaking its way up the mountains.

The motorcycle is now even an indispensable mode of transportation in areas where public transport is nil or seldom the norm in the Philippines.

Called a habal-habal in Cebu, a motorcycle can accommodate six people (pardon the unbelievers) as it groans and chokes its way up to wherever the teenage driver (often without a valid license) wills it to go.

That could explain why, though considered a private transport, the local government of Cebu City did not ban it as a means of conveyance in the mountain barangays. Concerned for the safety of passengers, City Hall instead created a body regulating the use of motorcycles as public transport. And as far as a I am concerned, no Philippine local government unit has actively went after the habal-habal.

Indonesia, too, has numerous motorcycles in the streets, with the density much higher than in the Philippines.

But that did not prepare me for what I saw in Hanoi.

The motorcycles were everywhere, including those that the young and the old ride, with children passengers as young as infants, all at once in any given time in any given section of a street. (I may be exaggerating, but this is close to the truth.)

I remember the orientations I attended on the possibility of implementing a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Cebu City, where Jakarta and Hanoi were the examples of cities besieged by motorcycles.

The logic in those lectures is that that if the number of people using their own means of transport is left unchecked, the results are horrendous traffic and dangerous streets; and that using the BRT is an effective solution to make people, both the rich and the poor, use public transport and help unclog the thoroughfares.

Strange as it may sound, however, what I saw in Jakarta and in Hanoi did not make me adopt the viewpoint that motorcycles, or the tricycles in the Philippines or Bajajs in Indonesia, as means of transportation, public or private, should be banned.

What is needed is a collective effort to discipline ourselves and be more concerned on safety.  A healthy respect for regulations will come a long way in preventing the over 1,000 motorcycle deaths, including those caused by trains crushing motorists crossing railways, in Jakarta each year.

And while motorcycle-related deaths due to road mishaps in Cebu City  are not as high as that in Jakarta, motorcycles also commonly figure in traffic accidents in the Philippines.

I am not sure about the statistics in Hanoi, but a report had it that  everyday,  35 people are killed and 60 more are injured in traffic accidents in Vietnam, with most incidents involving motorcycles.

In most cases, reckless driving is the cause of road mishaps.

Good or bad,  motorcycles in the streets have become a mark for Hanoi. And they are not bound to go away in Jakarta or in Cebu City either. Their numbers are even growing in those three cities.

So it is up to the government and the people if they want motorcycles to continue ruling the streets and for bodies to pile up each year, or impose order and sanity in thoroughfares.

To prevent loss of lives, discipline should rightfully be the King of the Road.

The Night it Dawned on Me that I Should Blog

I decided to start a blog during a bout with insomnia.

Twisting and turning in bed, the mind saturated with too many things and soaring away to past and future one October night, I told myself I might as well log my first blog.

So I got up, frustrated and fuming over my inability to sleep, with the wind outside whistling its own tune and the rain making staccato notes on my window pane, and started the journey with the cold keyboard.

The opportunity actually beckoned few years back, when Weblog (or blog for short) was just new and the world was young and simpler. (At least from my point of view.)

Back then, though, I considered blogging as only for those with a luxury of time. I felt I had better things to spend my time on. What with three demanding kids and a strict commander-in-chief. (She imposes curfew and limits the happy hours; not that I begrudge her for it.)  So I watched the world go by, like a fence-sitter, as friends started blogging and I began reading their random thoughts and fathoming the nuggets of wisdom in them.

And now, yammering about sleep while composing my first blog, I paused and reflected on the need to connect, on that yearning to be with others, physically or emotionally.

Why do we reach out? Why do we send that invisible tendrils of hope into space so we touch others?  Is it because of the need to be accepted, to be loved, to be appreciated?

I remember Dr. Alfred Lanning in the movie "I Robot" starring Will Smith as Detective Del Spooner. Dr. Lanning, in one of his lectures, was asking why is it that robots, placed in a dark corner, actually bunch together instead of keeping to themselves.  (He actually said it a whole lot better; I am bad at recapturing quotes from memory.) His narration was juxtaposed with the scene where Spooner was opening the container vans where the decommissioned robots were "stored" and later massacred by the new NS5s.

Another movie, a touching one, is the 1999 hit "Bicentennial Man," where the android Andrew was played by Robin Williams as a robot who gradually acquired emotions and who wanted to be a man. In the end, he was granted his wish to be declared a "human being."

 In both movies, robots were shown to be acting more than just organized chunks of metal that are merely moving about based on their programming.  They exhibited traits of being "human."

Because being human is to have that welling feeling of affection for others and to willingly sacrifice for them, even to the extent of losing one's "life," much like the old robots who got butchered just to save Detective Del Spooner, or Andrew who opted to "die" just to show how "human" he was despite his alloy skull.

Being human is to have that desire to be with others and be there for them through rough and tough, though it means emerging the worse for wear.

In this age of the "Social Network," however, it is a pity that there are those who, though they do blogs and surf the Net, have already lost their "human-ness" and that capacity for togetherness, becoming more and more like the pompous, selfish jerks THAT have blighted the earth.