Tall order
published 23 Feb 2009, Manila Standard Today
A healthy dose of insecurity is the antidote to complacency.
The Internet is a vehicle for venting anything – pitches for products, the merits (or demerits) of public figures, jokes, conversations, social or professional networking systems, even one’s most intimate thoughts. But while there is so much information available, there is no easy way to ascertain the legitimacy or origin of whatever comes your way. Woe to the gullible who takes everything he reads at face value.
Moreover, since everything is easily made accessible in cyberspace, anybody can claim anything. Forwarding links and messages, perpetuating the chain, is a matter of a mouse click. The speed (real time) and scope (www is not “world wide” for nothing) with which the information travels, perpetuating the chain, is unnerving. Damage is just as easily done; “make or break” has never been so instant.
Then again, if you are driven to desperation and feel you have exhausted all means to achieve your purpose but are faced with a dead end, the Internet is probably your last resort.
Several weeks ago, I received an e-mail forwarded by an officemate who claimed her sister had a friend who knew the Zambales-based dentist who authored the original piece and narrated her experience in a Subic hotel. The dentist said her and her husband’s hotel room was robbed. Upon complaining, they were met with lukewarm reaction from the staff and hostility from the Korean owner.
Abigail Fernandez-Bautista alleged that this nightmare of sorts happened in May last year -- on her wedding night, no less. Assuming for an instant that her account was accurate, it was easy to empathize with somebody who married “the man of my dreams” and carefully planned her wedding to make it as special as possible. Instead, Fernandez-Bautista claimed that the actuations of the hotel’s staff and owner tainted her memories of her wedding day, possibly for the rest of her life. It was not so much the items lost, she said in her e-mail.
I was prepared to dismiss it as a variation of those chain letters one regularly receives. However, I was disturbed by the extraordinarily anxious tone of the author. On the other hand, if this were mere fabrication, it was grossly unfair to the hotel mentioned – the obvious message was to boycott the hotel for its poor security and customer relations. I sent an e-mail to the official address of the hotel as listed in its Web site, asking for a statement.
To my surprise, Vista Marina Hotel and Resort replied in a matter of days. Officer-in-charge Eva Gadin acknowledged that the robbery in Fernandez-Bautista’s room in fact took place. But she denied, and quite expectedly, that the complaint fell on deaf ears. Gadin said that the hotel paid the complaining party the amount of the missing laptop and the father of the groom, Mr. Edgar Bautista, “voluntarily signed the quitclaim [to] release the hotel from any and all liability and for full and satisfactory settlement of their claims.” Gadin added that despite this, Bautista thereafter went to the office of the president and “yelled at him [the president] right in his very office.”
The hotel officer said the circulation of Fernandez-Bautista’s letter caused the “severe crisis that befell the hotel.” Still, Gadin added that the incident gave rise to improvements in their premises to ensure similar events would not happen again.
**
I have been writing a column for a little more than two years already. It's amazing that I have managed to come up with topics to write about for more or less a hundred times (okay, I've missed five or six weeks and been threatened with a libel case). I know I'm still considered a novice compared to those who have been doing it for decades, and who write more often in a week than I do. I also still have a little too much naivete and idealism; sometimes I feel my middle name is Pollyana. But two years is two years. As I turn a year older today, this is something to celebrate.
Believe it or not, however, I still get the same feeling every Sunday night when I have to turn in my piece for the Monday issue. Last week I wrote about a sarsuwela I saw, on account of the National Arts Month. The week before that, I shared my thoughts on the stuff leaders are – and should be – made of. But if I had written about a personality I interviewed (usually on governance or women’s issues), shared parenting anecdotes (believing my concerns and insights universal) or reviewed a book, I still would have felt the same.
Fretful, insecure, scared. Worried I may have done irreparable damage, wondering if I could have done better, and always, always, towards the end, willing myself to quit obsessing after I’ve put my page to bed. What price do I have to pay for offending certain sensibilities? What if I bring upon myself and my bosses the inconvenience of a suit? What if I conduct myself in a manner I would later on regret? How much reaction will I generate this week compared to this week, or the week before that? During my maiden column in December 2006, I vowed to be a breath of fresh air, among others. Am I staying faithful to that commitment?
I wonder whether other columnists, or at least the up-and-coming ones like myself, feel this way all the time. Certainly this is different from writing editorials, which I do besides, and three times as often each week, because then I merely act as mouthpiece for my paper. There are no by-lines, no column name, and especially no picture.
I have always known writing was what I was born to do. And so much is expected of me as I use this gift. What if I take this gift for granted, squander it, laze around and die regretful? What of my dreams of making a difference? Falling short of one’s own expectations is not so easy to take.
I also landed on this opportunity upon recommendations. My late mother used to be a reporter for this paper and knew some of the people I am working with now. Hence there is a constant nagging feeling that I should shed these associations and justify that I’ve earned my place here.
Given this pressure, every time seems like the very first time. Every piece seems like the first submission.
But now that I’m supposedly wiser, I have decided that these feelings are not altogether bad; they are the antidote to complacency. If only for this, my readers can be sure I would be diligent, fair, ethical and honest – an apt reward for reading this column in the first place.
They deserve no less.
