HOUSEBAND

Oh yes!!! I was a houseband before, houseband? In 1996 I lost my job that is why I have no recourse but to man the house and the children while my wife is away working at a government office.

The childrens were at age 4, 3 and 1, and I wake up at 4:00 am cooking for the breakfast and preparing food for my wife lunch and at the same time preparing our clothes for laundry, you bet, its a manual laundry as we dont have a washing machine before. I used to soaked it with detergent soap an hour before I started washing it, separating the whites from those colored clothes.

And at 6:00 am, the kids were already awaken and it needs again to prepare for their bottle feeding milk, all of the three were into bottle feeds during those times that you are going to imagine a band of drum and bugle players while they are consuming their milk in line.

Then you start taking your breakfast with your wife who's preparing to go to her work, ho huummm! Im still feel sleepy but you have to start cleaning the house and then do the laundry or else it will mounted up.

The time that I was on the finishing touch of my laundry, you will be surprised that the whole house that you tried to clean and put in order, looks like again a battle zone as the three children who finished their milk, are now running around messing up the whole house, jumping ups and down scattering their toys and screaming back and forth "daddy, daddy ate taking my toys!!!!!!

And at 9:00 am after hanging all the laundry, I begin to gather the three children at the bathroom to bathed them one by one, then clothed them and comb their hair and then again rushing out to play with their playmate, getting mess up from face to foot after a couple of an hour only to find that you need bathed them again as they smelled foul and dirty.

Before twelve, start to cook for our lunch, while busy preparing my childrens bottled milk for their after lunch siesta, while watching eat bulaga occasionally. Oh how I miss those days, of my "housebandhood" with a monalisa smile that came out in me while watching my children consuming their milk one by one. I was thinking that I need to move one more step, not because I dont like the role I am doing, in fact I am enjoying it, because I am with my small children watching their every steps during those critical time, laughing at their every innocent move, but because it is not natural that a man like me are manning the house while your wife is the one who is earning for the family's leaving.

At 5:00 pm while starting to cook for the family dinner while waiting for your wife to arrive, I started thinking of moving forward, prepare all of my documents and resume's then the next day started browsing around the classified ads of the Manila bulletin for an overseas work.

God give me guidance, gave me strength and resolution in life. Thy will makes me now working here in Saudi Arabia to fend for my family's basic needs. And those three small children? The elder currently working in a government agencies and the rest are now in college.

Dick And Jane - Bobby Vinton

It is very hard to forget this song because this is a song mostly triggering me to remember my late mid childhood years when I was in grade 6 studying in Malanday Elementary School in Marikina in 1975.

This is famous amongst us childrens during those years, because of its melody and lyrics which was very easy then when it comes to memory recall. We memorized the lyrics by just listening from the radio.

Most of my childhood spent in Bago Bantay Quezon City, when all of a sudden we need to transfer in Marikina, because the lot where our house built was just a rented lot of 10 pesos a year, and the owner sold it due to financial constraint.

We dismantled our house made of wood and trasported it to Malanday in Marikina where we aquired a right for a small piece of lot roughly 40 square meter, in a place at the end of a sitio that they called then Bulelak. And besides a vast ricefields and corn farmlands. And our story with full of struggle, and dire hardships re started there.

Everytime I hear this music, I can't help but go back down the memory lane of my elementary day's in Malanday Elementary School in Marikina.

When we were living  in Bago Bantay Quezon City. From  first grade to grade five I studied in Ramon Magsaysay elementary school that we called then "PUTI" because of its buildings painted in white. So, when somebody ask us way back then what was the name of our school, we plainly said "PUTI"

But when fatecame into terms, when lot that we are renting has been sold, and we have no choice left but to transfer in Marikina. Although it is very hard for us as a children, leaving the place of your abode in most of your childhood, we don't have any choices.

 We widely sing this song in all type of situation, in a bathroom, during playing and in school. When I started to study in Malanday elementary school, I sang it in every bit of occassion aside from Michael Jackson "Music and Me", Ben and Happy.

BAHAL NGA TUBA

We love different kind of music, we love to hear native visayan songs, we love to sing with an accompanying guitar while engaging in a drinking session of this native drink.

I remember in 1981 when my grandfather died, hurriedly me and my father went back to our home province in Samar, by ship, but due to unavailability of ship schedule directly to Catbalogan, our route diverted to Tacloban City, we reach the port at midnight and that was why we seek refuge to one of my fathers relatives who happens to live near by the pier of Tacloban.

And in the early dawn of the next morning we travel by bus from Tacloban to Catbalogan passing San Juanico Bridge, reaching the port before 11 am, then travel with a motor boat from catbalogan to barrio Tinaogan, where the remains of my grandfather lies, still wrapped in a plastic because the coffin still under construction by the volunteers carpenters.

In Samar, at the wake, singing and any music instrument is not allowed during vigil, and so all the mourners and symphatizers just keep their eyes awake by a drinking spree with Tuba, came in containers.

That was my first time of drinking such a native wine, red in color and it taste like a mixture of sweet and sour with un ripe fruit flavour, but can makes you crazy once you've overdosed, and that was happened to me not just once but twice.

When I wake up in the first night of a series of tuba drinking session, I woke up under the table where my grandfather was lying in state, ha ha ha and I cant remember how I got myself in there.

And then the second night of drinking tuba, I woke up before dawn under an upside down motor boat in the beach side.

KURATSA MAYOR

This music is one of the main fixture in every barrio fiesta in Samar, most specially in  Barrio Arawane, the fiesta is incomplete without a dance feast in the main court, showing their finest skills in dancing kuratsa, where all the ladies and gentlemen where eager to take part.

And there's a practice that we called "pagala", where everybody will give way for the main single pair of man and his partner to dance while everybody who gathered around them will throw in the air a crisp bill of different  peso denomination, and the main character who share the most will be the man dancing with his partner.

Just how I wonder when my father, will save a crisp bill of 5 peso denomination to participate.

I remember all of my relatives who work in Manila way back then, that they will go back to our province to take part in our every barrio fiesta just to take part in this "pagala" practice bringing with them all their savings in a year and spending most of it.

IHILAK KO NA LANG SA TAGO.wmv

It feel so good to hibernate while listening visayan music, maybe because I am a pure blooded visayan. Although I did not lived and raised in the province, but the culture, the language and the music been brought by my parents when they migrated to Manila. And now that I had gone to Saudi Arabia, still I brought with me those memories of lonesome time, figuring out how to play the music with my cebu made acoustic guitar to which my mother had bought for me when she went back to our province in Samar for a short vacation.
In my early years, I had some resentment with my mother because I didn't feel that she loves me, but now only I realized that she'd loved me more than what I am entitled to.

The days were gone when she'd religiously bringing me my daily launch in my early years in highschool at Marikina School of Arts and Trades, just imagine I am the only student that has a hot fresh pack lunch untirelessly delivered by nanay. She brought for me a neclace to be paid by her in installment, and most of it an acoustic guitar when she notice of my passion in music. All through those years that life was not easy and full of torns, I have an iron lady at my back who were always there for me, to support in all of my struggle in life. She is my mother!

FAITHFUL LOVE - DANNY HOLMSEN.wmv

I cannot help but walk down the memory lane every time i heard this music made famous by The Coronets in the philippines, I can't forget what my mother said during those times. She had had been forced by circumstances at an early age to go to Manila from Samar to work as a housemaid in order to help my grandmother in supporting the medication of my uncle who was bedridden because of a mysterious illness that even doctor of medicine cannot explained during that time.

It was said that my uncle was a victim of "barang" a kind of sorcery practiced in the visayas that widely frightened and destroyed the victim physical being more of death sometimes.

The story of my mother is that my uncle is a handsome intelligent young man, studying in his early high school in catbalogan samar, when a young lady, a daughter of their principal became obsessed with him. But he declined her advances due to his tall dreams of finishing his studies and be successful in life. And it was said that due to the girl misfortune, her family in despair decided to harm my uncle thru sorcery.

My uncle became bedridden for nine long years, cockroaches and different kind of insects came out daily in his rotten neck. Its macabre but based on my mothers account it was true.

In this period, this music became a part of my mothers life, and also mine, because this is one of my favorite, its sentimental harmony influenced my passion in music.

Skyline Pigeon - Elton John

The year was 1972, the imposition of martial law, but it did not affected the life of a small boy like me then in Bago Bantay Quezon City, I heard the word curfew, I saw grafitti's on the adobe walls of the army camp in front of our house 'IBAGSAK ANG MGA TUTA NI MARCOS" during this heyday's this music of Elton John makes me happy. "TURN ME LOOSE FROM YOUR HAND, LET ME FLY TO DISTANT LAND" in the early days of my childhood, this is one of the famous song way back then. Where in fact at my age of eight, I memorized the lyrics of this song by just hearing it from the radio, daily, because it was very far from my reach songhits during that years, and I don't remember to see one before due to our dire situation. Suffering in poverty, not just poverty but dire poverty that until now I can barely imagine that during those times, TV sets is one of my dreams. And I firmly believe that God never turn his eyes far from me.