Opera and dinner

I’m told: write while it’s fresh—“it” referring to a memory of a person, place, or thing. The person who told that statement to me was referring particularly about travel. If you allow your memories to linger for longer than what is necessary, they can latch on to new meanings. Or you’ll find that writing becomes stale, bland, unable to capture the anxieties and excitement of the moment in question.

But there’s wisdom in waiting before writing things down. Certainly some impressions of a person, a place, or a time ripen to a greater level of wisdom, when one waits for the right time when the correct insight can be had, when a new sense or understanding descends from where these things come from. The cloud of memories, ripened by time, like fine wine.

I navigate both approaches to writing. But these days I need to force myself to put words onto the blank page. Writing is essentially a muscle that must be exercised—and often.

A week has gone by since I had returned to the real world: the endless daily tropical sunshine of my hometown, the patients and their cancers, and the household errands I’m obligated to perform because I am the only one left at home to become my mother’s personal assistant. But a week is not a very long time. There’s a certain freshness to the memories, of course, but unhurried insights have emerged, too.

So I’ll tell you about the food in Rome—a mere sampling—which I thoroughly enjoyed. Enjoy might be a narrow term, but as with most words, it is limited but sufficient to convey what I did feel. I eat for nourishment and also for pleasure: that much is clear. But what I don’t particularly understand is how people can both eat for nourishment, pleasure, and research. For such is the case with my brothers and friends, whose passion is to cook meals, discover ingredients, and spend time in the kitchen. The very essence of creation in the most gustatory of terms excites them.

I realize now that many of my close friends who are dear to me are passionate about eating. I can’t imagine traveling with someone who is indifferent to food. The food table allows conversations to flow, cultures to be experienced, and so on.

So Jef takes me and Manong to Romanè, and tells me all about the food we should try. The restaurant is unassuming, and you’d probably miss it if you passed Via Cipro without paying much attention. (I will return to it after three days in Naples; it's that good.) There are some places he had previously discovered, some he’s trying out for the first time. Google Maps offers a good starting point. It’s imperfect, certainly biased, but it’s a good place to start. Usually, he reads reviews, a summary of positive reactions of people who have experienced eating in those places. Then we trace the way to the restaurants or cafés, and order what feels right at the moment. It could be a dish that Jef had previously tried and wants to try again, or something he is curious about. With Jef and Manong, I don’t have to think about what I should order. I get overwhelmed with the plethora of options, up to the point of paralysis.

Jef tells me Italians typically only have a pastry and coffee for breakfast, but they indulge in a four-course meal for lunch and dinner.

We watch opera at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. Our course we are underdressed, a fact we can’t possibly hide because the seats we’re given are in the armchairs of the theater: the first row, to the left of the stage. I struggle to understand what La Piccola Cubana is all about. Sure, it’s a vaudeville in five scenes by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, but it’s not the typical classical opera I’d previously seen. I should have done my reading in advance. I crane my neck to see the libretto, displayed on the wide LCD screen on top of the stage, while I struggle to understand the play. During intermission, I ask Jef what he thinks the play is about. His statement echoes my understanding about it: I have no clue. But I’m surprised that there are young people in the theater who pay attention. There are the elegant Italians, likely intellectuals or simply plain opera fans, who discuss the show in the lobby. 

We head out to a much subdued city at around 9 in the evening and look for a place for dinner.

We find the restaurant: Trattoria Vecchia-Roma. Jef orders antipasti — starters. There’s carciofi fritti — fried artichokes; fiori di zucca — friend zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies; and melanzane alla parmigiana — along with tomato sauce and cheese. Then that should have been followed by a pasta. And then the segundo, and then dessert. But we are full, and it's getting late. 

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What I do with pictures

I’m not so sure what to do with most photos I’ve taken from a trip, but I store them in a private folder in Flickr. I forward the link privately to friends who might be interested in them. Otherwise, they stay in the safe Flickr cloud, that marvelous repository of photographs that I subscribe to yearly. I remember, more often than not, the general circumstances of when they’d been created.

Photographs therefore function as timestamps for me. If you asked me when I’d last been to, say, Boracay, I won’t be able to answer you right away. But I have memories of the white sand, and how warm the water was, and how, at the mere sight of clear waters at the pier, I had wanted to jump and swim already, despite my bags being hauled to the small boat that would take me to the resort. My photographs, timestamped and geotagged, provide me the details of the trip. I could give you an answer after I’d scrolled through my album.

There are days when I want to head to the shop to get them printed and framed. But those intentions are ephemeral, overtaken by more pressing needs of the day—work, errands, and, sometimes, rest.

But why take pictures anyway? Behind each photo is a creative act, I suppose. For me, photography is a way to remember, to enjoy the present, and to capture that enjoyment for future reminiscence, in the same vein as writing about an experience or a trip. I’m certain that taking pictures can sometimes distract me from the actual moment. The distraction largely comes from my personal impulse to perform—in other words, to show off, when the intention should be to show. I take measures to keep myself from that, but I’m a work in progress. Such measures include distancing myself from social media—a great step towards a healthy mental and spiritual state—and using a single-function device. I love my Olympus OM-D Mark IV and the two lenses of my choice—the pancake 14-42 mm and the 45 mm. It’s a small and powerful mirrorless camera I bring with me when I travel.

Consider these time-tested suggestions: get a Flickr subscription, and get an actual camera that's not in a phone. 

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Breakfast

Travel days are not normal days. While I’m in Italy I have breakfast in a pistacceria, where people, dressed in their work clothes, say “Buongiorno,” then: “Un caffè, per favor.” Caffè typically means an espresso, a small volume of concentrated coffee which takes some getting used to. But I've liked it. Weeks earlier, a barista in Marbel—my hometown—cautiously warned me, “Gamay lang na siya, Sir, ha.” She apparently got a lot of flak for the small coffee sizes.

I noticed that nothing savory is eaten; heavy meals are reserved for lunch. In Italy, breakfast means coffee and pastry. People stand in a bar, sip their coffee, and off they go to wherever they need to be. There are tables around if you have time: people in Milan, Rome, and Naples seem to have a lot of time to kill. Adding cream or milk to coffee is acceptable around this time, but not after lunch—a story told to me by my friend Luther who received curious looks in Milan when he ordered a cappuccino in the afternoon.

I normally skip breakfast. My physiology allows me to get through the morning with a cup of coffee—a pour-over, a French press, or an espresso. I drink coffee for the taste and for the stimulation. This is providential. I’m not passionate about toasting bread, frying longganisa, or cooking rice while the sun is rising and people are still emerging from sleep. Mornings don’t find me particularly hungry. If I must eat—a morning workout or some tedious physical activity for work or a future arrangement that does not allow for a later meal—I will have brunch or a heavy lunch.

Before heading out to the pasticceria, my friend Jef shows me how to make a proper moka pot—an Italian friend had taught him. Prior to my lessons with Jef, I’d seen videos on YouTube, but they add too many specific details, making the instructions more complicated than an analytical chemistry laboratory manual. So Jef keeps things simple for me: fill the bottom chamber with water just below the safety valve, add medium-fine grounds of coffee to the basket, and close the pot, but not too tightly. I ask, “Do I have to tamp the grounds?” to which he says, “I don’t.” The water must boil under low heat; you’ll know it’s ready if you can smell the coffee, beckoning you to taste and see that it is good.

 


We walk to La Siciliana Roma, along Via Cipro. It’s a perfect day—the sun shines on this spring day, a light cool wind pushes us along. In Rome, even the dogs are always smiling.

 

I have caffè con panna (coffee with whipped cream), Manong has caffè pistacchioso (pistachio coffee), Jef has marocchino. Jef orders these on our behalf: he is fluent in Italian. It’s the first time I’d ever seen a marrochino. There’s a dusting of unsweetened cocoa powder at the bottom, a strong shot of espresso, a layer of frothed milk foam, and a final dusting of cocoa powder on top. We share farcito pistacchio (pistachio-stuffed pastry) and breccia miele e noci (honey and walnut “breccia”). White powder is all over my clothes and mouth. The food is so good. 

What a blessing to be alive, with a hearty breakfast and good company!

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When in Rome, do as the Romans do

The thing with travel—to make it work, to make it actually happen—is to plan ahead with reckless abandon. You don’t know what will happen in the future, except that you will grow old, your knees will give up on you, and you will eventually die. So book an overly discounted ticket months earlier, free up your calendar, and see what happens.

My college friend Jef and I did all of the above. I’d last seen him in December 2024, when Manong and I went around New Jersey and explored New York City—that “concrete jungle where dreams are made of.” Jef met us in San Antonio, where I attended a breast cancer conference. He drove us around Texas, and we met some of his family. I tell him to this day, Texas is my favorite state, a statement he finds fascinating, understanding, perhaps that pretty much of the United States remains unexplored territory for me.

I remember I was in between rounds, and he was at work in Dallas, when we made a video-call. This was in 2025. As with many of my friends, who think the same way as I do, we both came up with the idea of meeting halfway, somewhere in Europe. He did his graduate studies there; he is conversational in Italian and Spanish and French. How he learns languages quickly, how he managed to get straight unos in subjects many UP freshmen failed in despite spending the night playing table tennis in the basement with me instead of studying, are proofs of his brilliance. His face and voice brightened up, “I know a lot of good places there.” Soon, Manong would move to Sweden to do his graduate studies, and we decided he could join us in the tour as well.

The tickets were booked. Immersed in the daily routines of clinics and classes, I saw the email reminders for the upcoming trip to Rome as a kind of a reward, a beacon of hope for the future. I hadn’t been to Rome, but it was the closest city to Naples, which fascinated me more. Naples is where the characters of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet lived and breathed. I prayed that the trip would push through. Weeks before the trip were flight cancellations because of the war in Iran.

During a brief layover in Abu Dhabi, which is geographically closer to the Strait of Hormuz than my home, a fact that led me to more intense prayers for safety, Jef sent me a photo of Manong eating carbonara in a Michelin-rated restaurant near the Airbnb that he had booked previously. (Jef asked us where we’d like to stay: in the city center, or in a typical Roman apartment, where real people lived? We chose the latter, “Gusto ko ng real.”) Jef said it was so good, meaning the food, possibly my brother’s company. I would meet them in about eight hours: a six-hour flight to Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport, then immigration, the luggage counter, and the Leonardo Express that would take me straight to Roma Termini, the central train station.

Jef asked me where I was. I said I was near the Swatch store, a few meters from the turnstile. He said I must have walked passed him.

There I saw him—my dear old friend and brother of many years—smiling, walking towards me in a blue shirt, shorts, and Islander slippers, how he had looked when we ate breakfasts together in Kalayaan Hall or walked to AS Lobby in 2004, with no care in the world that the people who were passing by were in tailored suits and shiny shoes in typical elegant Italian fashion. He remained unchanged and untouched by time. His boyish laughter could be heard in the entire hall when I said something piercingly witty. So much has changed, and yet, as he and I would realize, we are still the same people.

He asked me what I’d like to do in Rome. I said I hadn’t thought about it, so much so that I got worried I’d be asked for an itinerary during the immigration check. He mentioned coffee in a pasticceria, a walk around the Vatican, a visit to the ruins, a hike to the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, and many more, interspersed with comments about where we’d eat and have coffee. He assured me, “We’ll figure it out.”

On our way to Baldo degli Ubaldi, where we’d be staying, he said, “Oh, and I’ve made reservations to Romanè, where Manong and I had dinner. The carbonara with guancale—so so good!”

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Closest view to the Vatican

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My student Hannah weaves her Tnalak into a white coat

Teaching is my happy job. The classroom is a balancing mechanism for an otherwise tedious clinical practice in cancer care. (The heaviness in oncologic practice emanates from an almost daily proximity to death and dying. There are days when meeting five patients in a day feels like a lot. Some of my friends will agree with this.)

Interspersed in my otherwise packed Google Calendar are lectures, seminars, and meetings. Behind them are the quiet tasks I often do after clinic hours: preparing my lectures, crafting my evaluations, grading my students' research protocols. These academic routines activate another part of me that is separate, but somehow still related, to my day job. In a sense, clinic work is my vocation; teaching my avocation.

I've been teaching since the launch of the College of Medicine (COM—as in "see-oh-em") of the Mindanao State University - General Santos, a fact that gives me much pride and joy. I find it a privilege to interact with bright students who would otherwise not have the opportunities to become doctors if not for government support. Half of our student population are from underprivileged Muslim and indigenous communities, many of them from Mindanao. COM is my happy place: the faculty members I work with, the college's support staff, even the canteen owners who give me an extra helping of pastil. 

A number of our students are scholars of the CHED Medical Scholarship and Return Service (MSRS) program, part of the provisions of the Doktor Para sa Bayan law (RA 11509). One of them is Hannah Joy Bento-Billones, one of my mentees! Dr. Popoy de Vera features her in his Philippine Star Column, Edukampyon. The article is entitled, "Weaving her T’nalak into a white coat," which you can read in full. 

Here are some excerpts. Dr. de Vera writes this about Hannah:

I met Hannah Joy Bento-Billones, a bright, articulate and self-effacing medical student. A T’boli from Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, she is the first in her community to study medicine and become a doctor. I told myself her story had to be told.

He continues:

Like the T’nalak, medicine was once a distant, impossible dream. When I first told my family I wanted to pursue medicine, my father grew quiet. I sensed both fear and disappointment – not in me, but in himself, for not being able to support his daughter’s dream. His line was, “Kaya ng utak, pero hindi kaya ng bulsa.” It was beyond what we could afford. For a time, I convinced myself that maybe medicine was not meant for me – maybe it’s for my children to fulfill someday.

When MSU GenSan opened its College of Medicine, it gave me a chance to revisit a dream I had once buried. I carry the reality of being a first-generation doctor in the making – the first pure Lumad in our family to pursue this path. My education has always been supported by scholarships, from high school through college. Still, there were moments when even that was not enough. At one point, my family had to sell a portion of our land just to sustain my studies.

I am also a product of a learning environment that prioritized inclusivity. At MSU-GSC COM, opportunities were never withheld because of ethnicity, social background or life circumstances. This support, together with the MSRS program, made it possible for me to continue even in seasons when continuing felt hardest. Tey bong slamat! Thank you very much!

Today, I am one step closer to becoming a physician. I will graduate this June. This milestone is not mine alone. It reflects the impact of programs like MSRS that invest in students who are willing to return and serve. It is shared with my tribe, the T’boli, and with every Indigenous community striving to be seen and heard.

We're so proud of you and your class, Hannah! 

—

In 2012, during a day trip to Lake Sebu with classmates, I took several photos and stitched them in an imperfect panorama.

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Some books

I read with curiosity the personal diary of Dr. Michihiko Hachiya, who ran a hospital in Hiroshima, when the atomic bomb exploded. The incident would usher the end of World War Two. He did not intend for his personal diary to be published, but he wrote with vivid description and clinical accuracy. So much pain and compassion could be gleaned from his daily account. I loved that most of his entries started with descriptions of the weather. Despite his personal injuries, he kept working, ignoring otherwise sound advice to recuperate. What struck me was how much Dr. Hachiya loved his country and his people. He also loved science. In the midst of so much work of caring for the ill and dying, he continued to pursue clinical questions, particularly on why patients who did not suffer obvious physical injuries deteriorated after a few days or weeks, often of internal hemorrhage.

 

I'm preparing my creative non-fiction piece for an anthology I'm also co-editing. To get my brain pumped up, I'm turning to John Jeremiah Sullivan's Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son. I thoroughly enjoyed Pulphead, Sullivan's collection of essays. I'm also revisiting the Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror, which the wonderful doctor-writer Dr. China Castillo gave me last year. So, so good. 

I'm writing all about these to remember and to inspire you, dear reader, to get away from your smartphones and read a proper book. 

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