The Absolute Hassle of Renewal (10:46 AM)

It was supposed to be easy. Everyone said that it would only take 30 minutes. And then you're done.

Two mornings ago, when I tried renewing my NBI Clearance at one of their "satellite offices" in a Makati mall, I had assumed that all I needed to endure was the long line and I would be scot-free, so to speak.

But I got a "hit".

"A hit?" I asked the girl punching the keyboard. I felt like an unpopular website.

"Someone also has your name," she said.

She kept on punching the keyboard and never looked at me. The line was about a hundred people long. She had a long day ahead.

I had no choice. I was avoiding it. I had to go to Manila and visit the famous NBI Carriedo.

"It's easy to find" an office mate said. "Just go down from the LRT station and you're there."

NBI Carriedo is not NBI headquarters, it turns out. It is three whole floors of a building on top of a Greenhills-type market, full of stalls selling beads, step-ins, bags, and pirated VCDs. Welcome to the New Quiapo Shopping Centre (Carriedo Plaza), aka NBI Carriedo.

"Go straight to Step Three and Four," I remember the satellite kiosk girl saying.

I skip Steps One and Two, and headed for Step Three (computer verification), then Four (picture-taking). So far, so good. I skipped Five and gave my forms to the large man sitting behind the Step Six table.

He filed my forms and stamped my receipt.

"Come back at 3:00 PM," he said.

What?

"Come back this afternoon?" I asked. He was already looking away, signaling to someone across the large room. "Can I come back another day?"

He continued to ignore me.

Then he said, "They need you there."

What?

He pointed at me, "You want this guy?" He was talking to someone else.

I was in NBI territory and they want me. I was ready to have a minor panic attack.

"They want me?"

I looked across the room, where the Step Six man was looking. Amidst the crowd, I saw a familiar and smiling face. Thank goodness. An old acquaintance, the NBI husband of a former office mate.

"So, you're the boss here?" I said to my NBI friend. We shook hands.

He said he was just passing by--for some secret NBI stuff, I assume. He asked what my NBI Clearance was for. "Are you going to be a seaman?"

Seaman? There must be joke here somewhere.

"No, I'm applying to New Zealand."

"Really?" he said. "My brother and mother are in New Zealand. They've been there for four years."

After a month of working there, his brother bought a house, then a second-hand Honda Accord. Things he couldn't afford here as an engineer for PLDT. What an amazing coincidence. Proof that people do go and live in New Zealand.

"Do they like it there?"

"They love it there," he stated.

I noticed that he had a gun strapped to his waist.

A Few Seconds Deliberating the Merits of Traditional Chinese Dance (1:29 PM)

"Happy New Year," I greeted him as we shook hands in the Lobby Lounge of Shangri-La Makati hotel.

I was a bit early. They (he and his brother) were still meeting with someone else at another table, across the room.

"Don't worry," I reassured him. "No problem."

"Happy New Year," I thought to myself, as I picked a table where I can wait and plug my laptop. I didn't dare try pronouncing "Kung Hei Fat Choi". Apparently, as they said on TV last night, that's in Fookienese. In Mandarin, it's said another way.

I also caught the live broadcast of the celebration in Mandarin Hotel. They showed several dance performances. Recalling all the movies I've seen, and Discovery documentaries, I began thinking that there's a signature move in traditional Chinese dance.

In Indian movies, especially the Hollywood spoof, The Guru, traditional Indian dancing has a lot of torso, shoulder, and arm movements. And swaying.

What was it with traditional Chinese dance?

And there it was: their heads snap to the side, their legs kick backward, their arms askance. They were like happy deer in a Disney movie. (I had explained all these to my wife. "Watch this," I said as I demonstrated.)

Later, as we wrapped our meeting, I asked, "How often are you in the country?"

"Every two months."

"So you're just here for the vacation?"

"Yes," he said, then he explained that in China there are three major holidays, each of them with a one-week holiday, instituted by the government to encourage consumer spending. There's New Year, Labor Day, and the National Day.

"National Day?"

He gave me a sly smile, as if he was about to deliver a punchline. "The day they founded the Communist Party, of course."

His brother comes back from the washroom and I give my good byes. Thank you. Have a safe flight back to Shanghai. And Happy New Year.

Our Time in Eden: Part 2 (1:39 PM)

Half past eight in the evening. I parked beside the organic market in Greenbelt, where the old fine dining resto, La Primavera, used to be. Past Netopia, past Books For Less, past Max's Fried Chicken. I crossed the street and headed for Dulcinea to meet old friends from college.

"He had leukemia while I was pregnant," said my friend whom I haven't seen since 1998.

They met online, got married twice, here and in the US, and settled there. I was invited to the wedding, but couldn't go. I've since forgotten my excuse.

I met her in the hot summer of 1991. We became classmates for PE 101, part of a group of people who wanted to get this subject out of the way. We were practical people, hoping to put our summer to good use.

She was already part of Heights, the college literary journal. I was a new Lit major (transferred from PolSci) and joining Heights was in my plans. This was before she played the lead in a Shakespeare production.

One time, while waiting for class, she recited Romeo and Juliet for me. But soft what light through yonder window breaks and all that. Line upon line, she handed it to me, without blinking, without pausing. I then realized what that phrase meant--"knowing it by heart".

A year after, I joined Heights as well, and confirmed what I guessed before. She was a literary person, an artist, but she had decided on becoming a doctor. Now, she's practicing family medicine in Missouri.

"We live near Smallville," she joked, referring to the TV series.

It was about them, that night, her and her husband, not about the rest of us, we locals. I had one question, I realize now, that wasn't really answered.

"Did you change?"

She seemed the same. Sounded, looked, smiled, all the same way. We all did, it seemed.

What I didn't dare ask was this--Do you still write poetry?

"You look more mature" I told another friend and she rolled her eyes. "I mean, you look more sophisticated."

"I have short hair now," I joked, in a gesture of self-deprecation, conjuring up the image of my ponytailed youth. I am balding, fatter, and bearded, and miles away from our shared past.