Author: Pinoy Penman

Penman for Monday, June 2, 2008


ALMOST AS soon as I checked into my hotel in Sydney a couple of weeks ago, a woman jumped or fell into the harbor and drowned. When I pulled my curtains open—drawn to the window by the buzz of a helicopter and a speedboat casting searchlights onto the water—I saw nothing at first, and proceeded to unpack my bags.

I was there for the 11th edition of the Sydney Writers Festival, reputedly the world’s third largest literary festival (don’t ask me what the other two are—I forgot to ask), bringing together over 300 writers, some 70 of them from overseas like myself, to what had become a very fashionable corner of the harbor city. This was Walsh Bay, and our hotel, the Sebel Pier One, was, as its name suggested, a rough old 1920s warehouse on the pier converted into a posh hotel. Form a vantage point you could see both the Harbour Bridge very close by and the Opera House in the distance. The venues for the SWF were mainly the buildings on the other piers—so, as with much of Sydney, we were never too far from the water.

It was an apt metaphor—the water as our Mother, our blood, our home—underscored by the woman’s sad demise (I’m presuming the sadness; I didn’t even know it was a she, until I read the papers the next morning; when I opened my window again, the harbor police were loading someone onto a body bag and a gurney, so I knew something terrible had happened.) It wasn’t the best of omens for the week ahead, but I wasn’t about to trivialize one person’s passing into a sign; I chose to take it as a reminder of the urgency of what we artists do—to capture the passing scene and then to redraw and to frame it for others to marvel at.

Indeed, Jeanette Winterson’s opening address—delivered before a capacity crowd at the Opera House, many of them having paid good money to hear her speak (as they would all week for us writers—how amazing is that?)—dwelt on the necessity of art, on its even more vital role in a world taken over by pragmatists, corporations, governments, and Disney mania. “Festivals like this [respond] to a need, to a hunger, to an impulse in people. That tells me that people's genuine natural creative impulses, both to make and participate, are real and they want those instincts to be fed." Winterson added, quoting Susan Sontag: “Art isn’t just about something; it is something.”

And what a something it was from Wednesday to Sunday, as the SWF got into high gear and I dashed like a madman from session to session, catching up with Filipino-Australian writer Merlinda Bobis in one of the SWF’s most intriguing panel discussions, on “grit” and “gloom and doom” in literature; her new novel, The Solemn Lantern Maker, had just been published by Murdoch Books. My own Soledad’s Sister had also just come off the press, rushed by Anvil Books so I could have some copies to show and sell, and a trade was quickly made. (Fellow UP professor and ANU graduate Jose Wendell Capili was also at the festival, to launch a new book on Filipino-Australian writing that he co-edited, titled Salu-Salo.)

Over the week I would make the acquaintance of writers of all kinds—subdued, funny, sensational. On the bus to the Opera House a gentle, bespectacled American in his 60s took the seat next to me and we began chatting about our daughters, both of them now in California; his name sounded familiar; he was his father’s junior, and James Reston had been a titan of American journalism, but James Reston Jr. had, I would later find, written more than a dozen scholarly books on everything from the Inquisition to the Civil War and Richard Nixon. Over cocktails at the Sydney Club, I ran into another fellow named Matt Costello, who had also written crime novels and screenplays but whose most interesting work, to me, was scripting computer games. Another man, only in his early 30s, had written and published a thick memoir—normally a presumptuous exercise at such a young age, but then Naldo Rei had joined the guerrillas in East Timor as a courier at the age of 9, and had gone in and out of prison since then, before studying in Australia and seeing freedom come to his country, whose government he now advises.

Sunday was my busiest day; in the morning I sat on a panel with Indian-Canadian novelist David Davidar and Singaporean poet Felix Cheung, for a “Spotlight on Asia” session, where we gamely took apart the notion of a single, inscrutable “Asia”, as we were as different from each other as Australians were from Americans. That afternoon I shared a session with the festival’s other big star aside from Winterson, Pulitzer prizewinner (for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) Junot Diaz; what a privilege and challenge, I thought, to be the only other one onstage with him, aside from our moderator, Australian novelist Antoni Jach. But Junot was such a warm and friendly person (and did I say brilliant?) that our one-hour conversation went by in a flash, and before I knew it the festival was over.

The exposure to a foreign audience was bracing and encouraging, but the most satisfying part of my Sydney sojourn was meeting with our compatriots, some of them old friends from the ‘70s. I gave talks to two groups in the public libraries of Parramatta and Hornsby in the Sydney suburbs, and was much heartened by the attendance and their response to a kababayan most of them had never heard of, much less read. Many also came to my session with Junot, and they went home poorer in the pocket but richer in signed copies of books by the both of us. (And here go my deepest thanks to Consul-General Tess Lazaro and her staff, and to Violi Calvert, Raych Stafford-Gaffney, Vicky Manalo, and so many others whose hospitality flattered me enormously. The NCCA, I should also say, supported my travel.) I shared a very special evening with two long-lost friends from high school, Nitz Axalan and Edwin Avila, and their spouses.

Oddly enough, I hardly spent anything on this trip—my only souvenir was a $15 cap I had to buy to ward off the chill of an Australian autumn—but my homebound luggage was seven kilos heavier, from all the books and, ah, the bottles of wine my Sydneysider friends sent me off with.

My last afternoon in Sydney went to a harbor cruise; writers begin as tourists, and maybe they also end as such, ever the visitor in a mutable landscape. The water sparkled everywhere I looked; I’m not sure what drove that woman to desperation, but there was something in the water that she saw, and which I didn’t, not just yet.

Penman for Monday, May 26, 2008


DESPITE THE ordeal we had to go through to get there (as I recounted here last week), Beng and I had a great time in Dumaguete with the fellows and staff of the Summer Writers Workshop, now lodged once again with Silliman University.

This year’s fellows were Lawrence Anthony Rivera Bernabe (UP Visayas), Noelle Leslie G. dela Cruz (De La Salle University), Ma. Celeste T. Fusilero (Ateneo de Davao), Rodrigo Dela Peña (London PR Consultancy, Dumaguete), Arelene Jaguit Yandug (Xavier University), Bron Joseph C. Teves (Silliman University), Marguerite Alcarazen de Leon (Ateneo de Manila University), Dustin Edward Celestino (UP Diliman), Joshua L. Lim So (De La Salle University), Liza Baccay (Cebu Daily News), Fred Jordan Mikhail T. Carnice (Silliman University), Ma. Elena L. Paulma (Xavier University), Anna Carmela P. Tolentino (De La Salle University), and Lamberto M. Varias, Jr. (UP Diliman).

Arriving midway through the three-week workshop, we caught up with the fellows frolicking on a break at Antulang Beach, a first-class resort about an hour out of Dumaguete. The ride’s worth it, because of the spectacular ocean view over an infinity pool, and the tastefully appointed cottages and cabanas available to the harried weekender.

The workshop itself proved fruitful, with National Artist Edith L. Tiempo and her daughter Rowena providing the fellows with a taste of what it was like in the old days, when the Tiempos held forth on “objective correlatives” and other notions that critics today may find outdated but which, to creative writers, make intuitive and everlasting sense.

Over dinner hosted by SU President Ben Malayang, we were assured of the university’s continuing support for the workshop, and of Ben’s own commitment to liberal education—to ensuring that all SU graduates, be they writers, nurses, or mathematicians, get a proper grounding in the humanities. I’m confident that, with sustained cooperation and consultation between SU and the writers who’ve kept this endeavor alive since 1962, the Dumaguete writers’ workshop will remain an indispensable guidepost in the development of the Filipino writer in English.


ANOTHER PLEASANT discovery in Dumaguete was Bethel Guest House, a relatively new hotel on Rizal Boulevard facing the bay. In years past, we’d favored staying at the South Seas on the other side of campus, because of its seaside location and its poolside rooms (and, for inveterate smoker-friends Krip Yuson and Jimmy Abad, its liberal smoking and drinking policy). But last summer we were disappointed by the creeping shabbiness of the lodgings and the slowness of the restaurant service, so Beng and I decided to try out Bethel—which, to begin with, cost half the South Seas’ tariff, and was much more centrally located.

Run by Christian owners (thus a strict no-smoking and no-liquor edict in the rooms, no great loss to me), Bethel turned out to be cleaner and quieter than most hospitals, with all the amenities you can expect from a modern hotel: air-conditioning, cable TV, and, boon of all boons, wi-fi on all the floors (not free, but cheap at P100 for five interruptible hours). The ground-floor cafeteria looked out on the sparkling bay; the food was good and reasonably priced. The staff was smart and courteous, handling our requests for a late checkout and airport transfer with a smile. On every floor was a balcony that hovered over Rizal Avenue and a view of the bay. That prospect alone was worth all the trouble of getting there.


I WROTE in praise of painter Jason Moss a few weeks ago, forgetting that I had another talented painter to recommend to my readers, one to whom I had an even more personal connection: my second cousin Lotsu (yes, that’s his name) Manes, a former winner (in 1996) of the Shell Art Competition and a prime exemplar of the realist tradition brought up to date.

I knew Lotsu (or “Nonong,” as we more prosaically call him) since he was a shirtless kid with a play trowel and a bucket in Romblon, and—as an artist of another sort—I‘ve been very happy to see him come into his own as a serious painter devoted to his craft, aside from being a doting father and husband. When Beng and I decided to leave our house in San Mateo, we turned it over to Nonong for his use as a studio, and the last time I visited there, after an absence of many years, I was glad to see the evidence of his labors. An abandoned house taken over by an artist is never wasted; it becomes decrepit only as a cocoon is later shredded; new wonders and beauties are birthed, even in grime.

You can see some of those wonders in Nonong’s second one-man show titled “Kamunduhan” (at Blanc, 2E Crown Tower, H. V. de la Costa, Salcedo Village, Makati, running until May 31). Let me quote from the catalog notes, written by Karen Ocampo Flores, to give you a sharper idea of Manes’ work:

“Manes’ figuration is borne of careful skill and keen sensitivity to light, shade and color. These are the basic demands of traditional realism, which he manages to honor and subvert with his subtle iconography. By utilizing realism’s power to unravel iconic scenarios from everyday objects, Manes attempts to fuse two perspectives: the sundry of domesticity as seen by a typical father, and the musings of an observer of social realities partly distilled from mass media.

“This play on reality is conveyed quite literally with a thing common to nurseries and classrooms: the inflatable globe, that piece of plastic used as representation of the world. A child easily encounters the twin functions of this object altogether: it is both a teaching tool for the rudiments of geography, and a plaything for all sorts of imaginings. Truly a laudable invention for the stimulation of left and right brain functions. This model world and its presence in his home provide for Manes opportune ways to expand the specific into generic models of positions and situations that not only bespeak of global affairs but about human behavior in general.”

Penman for Monday, May 19, 2008


THIS SAGA began with me booking our airline and hotel reservations in Dumaguete a month in advance, on the Internet, as soon as I knew I was going to be a panelist in this summer’s writers’ workshop in that southern city. (That’s typically me doing the predictably Capricorn thing; with 2008 shaping up to be the busiest year of my life travel-wise, I’ve made online bookings for flights, hotels, and shuttles all the way to December; that way I lull myself into thinking that all these nice things will actually happen as they should, without a wayward asteroid or a bathroom fall to spoil the fun.)

So I had every reason to believe that the universe would simply follow the dictates of the Internet when I chose to fly to Dumaguete early in the morning of May 12 on PR291 (Air Philippines, ticketed by Philippine Airlines), in time for me to catch the writers’ workshop at 9:00 am—where, jolted by two cups of coffee, I would launch into the usual disquisition on plot and character before a roomful of fellows probably even sleepier than I was. At least that was the plan.

As it turned out, it took less than an asteroid to remind me that Nature (as Thomas Hardy suggested) was indifferent to man and the Worldwide Web. About a week before May 12, I got a call from PAL Reservations, telling me that PR291 had been canceled for unspecified reasons, and that Beng and I had been moved to the afternoon flight, PR293, departing at 1:00 pm. I was mildly annoyed—I prefer to fly early in the morning, to avoid the midday traffic and to be able to enjoy a full day in a new place—but not surprised; with luck I could still catch the afternoon session and earn my day’s keep.

On May 10, I got another call from PAL, saying this time that our 1:00 departure had been moved to 2:40. There goes the workday, I thought, but at least I could just stroll along the boulevard in the late afternoon, chug a couple of beers, and enjoy the sunset.

By 11:30 am of the 12th, Beng and I were checked in (I’m also one of those early-bird freaks; being claustrophobic, I try to get an aisle seat as close to the front as possible). Holding Seats 3E and 3F, all was well with the world—at least until about 2:15, when, instead of a boarding call, we heard an announcement saying that PR293 was canceled, because of bad weather in Dumaguete. It looked sunny right where we were, at least until that moment, but I wasn’t about to argue with how the Almighty dealt the weather cards (“God has his reasons,” a friendly fellow passenger named Eric would say to me, shrugging his shoulders).

We all moaned and groaned, but thinking ahead I had Beng collect the baggage while I made a beeline for the Air Philippines ticket office, where they said we would be rebooked for the next available flight the next day. I felt proud to grab something like Stub #3 in the waiting line—only to be told, when it was my turn to be served, that I had to go to the PAL office across the hallway, since my ticket had been issued by PAL. Cursing under my breath I dashed over to the other queue—and got Stub #822; I looked up at the monitor; they were still serving customer #741.

Flash forward to a couple of hours later. Glassy-eyed from monitor-gazing, I’m finally talking to an agent, who tells me that all flights to Dumaguete are booked till May 15; but—for a surcharge—I could go via Cebu early the next morning, and take the ferry from there to Dumaguete via Tagbilaran. The idea appeals to me; I’ve become obsessed with just leaving, period, and getting to Dumaguete has now acquired all the urgency of one of those TV-trekker challenges.

Beng and I go home to Diliman, shower, work, then suddenly it’s 1:30 a.m. and time to scoot back to the airport. Maybe it’s just really dark, but I can’t see a drop of rain. Our plane takes off as scheduled at 4:30; I’ve texted some friends for help, and as soon as we step out of Mactan at 6:00, a van comes along to scoop us up and bring us to the ferry terminal, which we catch with more than a few minutes to spare. We settle into our seats, I text the workshop folks to announce my now-certain arrival, and at 7:00 the Weesam fastcraft revs up for the commute to Tagbilaran. A light drizzle is falling, but I think it’s just pretty.

Midway through our two-hour journey it becomes clear that the weather gods are feeling naughty, and our ferry starts pitching and rolling in huge arcs; through the portholes the ocean looks like a sudsy carwash. People start praying and puking; the crew hands out barf bags. Highlights from my 54 years flash before me (ie, my tomcat Chippy when he was a baby). We straggle into Tagbilaran and everyone cheers in relief—at least until the crew announces that the onward leg to Dumaguete is now canceled, because of bad weather. We could try again tomorrow.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’ve already lost a day, but then I remember Eric’s line and decide to take things in stride. Beng’s never been to Bohol; it’s too rainy to see anything like Baclayon or Loboc, so—after checking into a cheap hotel near the pier, beside a funeral parlor—we do the next best thing and hit the local mall. At the Book Sale, I find the perfect companion to my Crime Fiction course, and Beng picks up a P200 pair of Harry Potter specs. We’re happy campers—at least until we return to our hotel, to find that a karaoke marathon has just begun beneath us.

We stroll along the waterfront, and find a dampa-type resto called Joving’s By the Sea. I order the local tinola, and one slurp of the smoky fish soup tells me why we were delivered here. A light rain starts falling peacefully in the gathering darkness, but I say, it’s just God giving us a final rinse.
The next morning we’re back at the terminal, and take another rollercoaster ride to Dumaguete. Our hotel, Bethel Guest House, turns out to be a clean, well-lighted place—but our room’s on the fourth floor, and the elevator’s out of order. We march up, then down, then an SUV comes by to bring us to the workshop, which is taking a break that day at Antulang Beach, about 30 kilometers away—the last ten of them on a dusty, corrugated road that wrings the last drop of perkiness out of me.

“Hello, fellows,” I mumble when we get there. “I feel like a dirty sock that went through the washer on the ferry, then the dryer on the road!”

Penman for Monday, May 12, 2008


I’LL WRITE about them at greater length another time, but let me just announce that tonight and tomorrow night, one of my favorite singing groups—the UP Singing Ambassadors, led by conductor Ed Manguiat—will be holding farewell concerts before they embark on their next European tour. The concerts (at Teatrino in Greenhills, San Juan on May 12, and at the Church of the Risen Lord in UP Diliman on May 13, both at 7:30 pm) will help defray expenses for this prizewinning group, the only Asian group to win the 2001 Grand Prize in the Guido d’Arezzo competition in Italy. Catch them while you can! (Tickets at P300 and P500, half-price for students with IDs.)


I'M NOT an art critic, but I have this pedestrian conviction that the best art of whatever kind speaks to you across all times and spaces, and says something not just about the circumstances of its creation but also about who, where, and what you are, right now.

I’m always prepared to be surprised and entranced, even enchanted; I like to think that I’m as hard-boiled a writer as they come, with few illusions left about the harshness of life, and I don’t respond well to art that tries to pretend otherwise. On the other hand, if all the artist does is tell me what I already know, and make me feel even more miserable than before, then I don’t feel enriched or enlightened, either. If I start smiling despite my dourness, or look at a piece for more than a few minutes—whether it’s a bronze fish by Brancusi or a father-and-son pastel by Roel Obemio—then something’s happened, and I’m in touch with something far larger than myself.

That’s what happens every time I look at a painting by an artist I’ve known since he was in his teens, and whose work I’ve followed ever since. Jason Moss put up his first exhibition in 1993, when he was only 17; last Saturday, he opened his 18th show (which he tongue-in-cheek calls “Debut”) in 15 years, a testament not only to his prodigious energy but also to his unflagging vision. Exactly what that vision is is something that art-studies theses and dissertations will be written about, and it’s best appreciated up close—or rather, as a cluster of paintings on a wall, from about 15 feet away.

Jason’s work blends grotesquerie—his manifest suspicion that our world is beset by demons of one kind or other, some of them within the self—with humor and wit. His latest collection, Jason says, “pokes fun at the superficialities of the age,” but there’s no doubt that Jason himself is having fun, no matter how dark his view of life may be. I don’t usually bother much with the titles of art works, but it’s hard to resist taking a longer look at anything titled “The end of the word organic,” “The Dull and the Dutiful,” “Play this game by yourself,” “It will kill you to trust me,” and “What some gay folks end up with.” (In the last piece, two men hold up a blue-headed, pink-bodied baby between them—except that the baby looks like a happy hybrid between a dog and a dolphin.)

When Jessica Zafra first encountered Jason Moss’ work 12 years ago in his second one-man show, the first word that sprang to her mind was “Europe.” She would later describe it with more specificity as “Berlin of the 1930s, cross-pollinated with goth-rock: Kurt Weill meets X-Mal Deutschland, Lotte Lenya meets Siouxsie and the Banshees.”

I bought a pastel piece (high praise from a UP professor with a pauper’s salary) from that show that Jessica saw titled “Mother and Child with Faun,” and to this day it hangs in my office, an inexhaustibly enigmatic triad that makes me want to write a book around it. Most recently something of the reverse happened. When my new novel Soledad’s Sister was being readied for publication (it should be out by the time you read this, courtesy of Anvil Publishing’s Karina Bolasco, who had patiently waited for over seven years for the manuscript to be finished), there was no doubt in my mind whose artwork I wanted on the cover, to capture all the dualities in the text. I’ll leave you to guess—when you go and see the exhibit (at the Blueline Gallery on the 4th floor of Rustan’s Makati, entrance at Glorietta 4 near Starbucks, running from May 10 until June 7)—which work might best represent the dark comedy that I had in mind. “Dark comedy” might not be too bad a description for Jason Moss’ work itself. He doesn’t let one element get way too far ahead of the other.

The Moss mystique also made itself felt to the late writer-painter Andres Cristobal Cruz, who invited then 20-year-old Jason to exhibit some of his own early Picasso-inspired works alongside Andy’s in a show at the Lyceum. “The young students immediately found themes in Moss’ paintings familiar,” Andy would recall in mock lament. “They identified more with him than with me and my landscapes and mass protest images.” (Pointedly, one of Jason’s pieces in that show was titled “No More Pablos.”) Painter Marcel Antonio was “struck by the nature of his themes, most of them transgressive in a genuine, non-contrived way that dares to push the borders of the limits of taste. He’s evidently an artist who helped redefine certain grand narratives in art, at least in the local scene, and puts into question what constitutes taboo for one person yet is liberating for another.”

Those are fine words to be said of anyone, but again the best test is in a personal encounter with the work of the man. (It’s a poor substitute, but you can also go online and check them out at www.weloveintimidation.com/jasonmoss.) It’s sometimes hard to reconcile the painter of “Manners and Etiquette” (showing a restaurant full of dead monkeys, with the only one left alive, in the foreground, suffering a nosebleed as he contemplates eating a crab on his plate) with the passionate illustrator of children’s books that he also is (he has also been, at one time or another, an editorial cartoonist, a bartender, and TV art director).

But it’s one and the same complex sensibility, this fusion of power and charm that sets off Jason Moss as one of the most original and compelling Filipino artists, in this casual gallery stroller’s eye, of our time.

Penman for Sunday, May 5, 2008

This came out in last Sunday's Travel Section in the STAR, but I was out of town and didn't get the paper, so here it is now.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING, Honolulu was the first American—indeed, the first foreign—city I’d ever been to. It was September 1980, and I was 26 years old, winging my way to Washington, D.C. on my first trip abroad; our flight stopped over in Hawaii, and I took the opportunity to step into my first American restroom. I’d pass through Honolulu again a couple of times after that, but never went beyond the airport. I actually had a chance to study in Hawaii—the PhD program in Manoa had accepted me—but I felt that Hawaii was a bit too close to home, literally and climatically, so I opted to freeze out in the Midwest instead.

But everybody dreams of going to Hawaii. You can’t escape it; it’s one of those fantasies hardwired into the 20th century mind, generated by wobbly hula-girl figurines and Elvis serenades beneath the palms. I remember having a favorite Hawaiian shirt when I was a small boy—or maybe it was my mom’s favorite, because she kept dressing me up in it—and what fascinated me about it were its coconut-shell buttons. Now and then my mom also served up something called Hawaiian Punch out of a colorful can. On truly special Christmases we ran into a box of Hawaiian Host chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. When Ferdinand Marcos got shipped out in 1986, we all thought he deserved a sorrier outcome than exile in Hawaii; it didn’t seem right, since Hawaii’s supposed to be a reward, not a punishment.

“Rewarded” was certainly how I felt a few weeks ago when a message dropped out of the sky sending me to Honolulu to check out the award-winning service of Hawaiian Airlines—which, after almost 80 years of shuttling people around the South Pacific and to the US mainland, was inaugurating its Manila-Honolulu route. It seemed a bit overdue, considering how many Pinoys populate the Hawaiian islands and how long they’ve been there, but better late than never—which was also true for this one passenger in Seat 40C.

It’s a ten-hour flight to Honolulu, and it helps those easily disoriented by time zones and jetlag that Hawaiian Air’s four-times-weekly flights (Mo-Tu-Th-Sat) leave Manila at 7:00 pm, touching down in Honolulu at 11:15 am—of the same day! (That’s right, you actually go back in time.) So it’s just like sleeping the night away, something easy enough to do in HA’s spacious cabin. (A big guy like me often has to ask for the bulkhead seats to hang loose; this time, I didn’t have to, and had enough space to work on my laptop.)

Our hotel turned out to be the 101-year-old Moana Surfrider, the so-called “First Lady of Waikiki,” whose only sign of age was its exquisitely preserved frontage and lobby (and the huge, triple-trunked banyan tree in the back, fronting the ocean). Ah, yes, the ocean—you stepped out the back door and it was right there, a broad sweep of blue flecked by sailboats and surfers, and fringed by a creamy curve of sand called Waikiki, with the famous Diamond Head at the far end. I got my feet wet, but never did get to swim in the water, preferring to observe, uhm, the local beach culture, which seemed to involve a minimum of fabric and a maximum of skin. (It’s hard to be an old man on Waikiki beach.)

After a day of contemplating navels (not mine) and convincing myself that there was more to Hawaii than Waikiki (of course there was, but I pointedly avoided calling my university contacts, to imbibe the tourist experience), I joined my Hawaiian Air group on a visit to the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and, the next morning, to the Polynesian Cultural Center across the island. I have a nearly morbid fascination for war memorials and museums, but the one thing that impressed me about the Arizona—whose hulk remains embedded in the mud below the elegant white memorial that now crowns it—was how oil continued to bleed from its tanks 67 years after it sank, casting a rainbow sheen on the water.

The Polynesia Cultural Center, on the other hand, showcased the major ethnic groups of the Pacific, and here (as on the tour bus) we realized that every guide in Hawaii calls their visitors “cousin”; our guide himself was “Cousin John,” a Samoan Mormon ex-missionary who spoke fluent Tagalog. It was at the PCC that we got treated to the inevitable (and why, indeed, avoid it?) luau.

A famously finicky eater (translation: I avoid things most normal people enjoy, like cheese and curry), I didn’t think I’d like the food, especially after an initial encounter with fish dipped in coconut batter and a swig of coconut beer (strangely enough, I love coconut, all by itself). But I discovered, at the luau, that I could live on Hawaiian staples forever—okay, maybe not the sticky poi, but the Chinese “chicken long rice” (dried chicken sotanghon, to you and me) and the imu roast pig (lechon served in strips).

On the way back to the hotel from the Arizona, the bus let us off at the Ala Moana Mall, and like a homing pigeon I went straight to the Apple Store and picked up my Hawaiian souvenir: a USB-Ethernet adaptor for my MacBook Air. I successfully resisted buying an aloha shirt, despite the tremendous pressure to do so; the only ones I really liked—those that came in pure silk or cotton with just the barest hint of a bamboo or a vegetal curl on them—cost over a hundred dollars. (Why is it that the simplest looking things always cost the most?)

It’s easy to dismiss much of the Hawaii we saw as a tourist trap, but if you’re a tourist, there are worse fates than being trapped in Waikiki, watching the sunset with a cold beer in hand. Waikiki was indeed teeming with boobsy babes, Pat Morita lookalikes, ABC Stores, barrel-chested Samoans, Filipino shop clerks, and camera-toting tourists like us in cargo shorts and flip-flops, living out their memories of Hawaii Five-O and Magnum, P. I. The killjoy academic in me kept thinking what a different experience the first Filipino sacadas had when they came over to the islands in 1906, and what it must feel like today to be among the 1 percent of pure Hawaiians left in the population.

But whichever Hawaii you’re looking for, Hawaiian Air will help you find it, and if you book before the end of May, it’ll cost you less than $500 round-trip (plus taxes) to see Hawaii for yourself. And the tourist hordes aside, any place where they still give up their seats for old ladies on the bus can’t be too bad.

(More pics from Hawaii on my Flickr page here.)