reinvention

Andres Ramilo, 2005

At about 9:45 PM, Darwin time, my younger sister Ling called to say that he was gone.

I am deeply sad that he is gone, but not surprised. Two weeks ago he was confined at Veterans Hospital because he weakend considerably. After a week there, and some tests, he went home on a new regime of treatment which we hoped would improve his condition. Last week, he was taken to the Delgado Clinic near our home because he had difficulty breathing; he was sent home with oxygen tanks and breathing apparatus to help him breathe better. When I learned of the oxygen tanks, I was worried that he might go sooner rather than later. Tonight he had immense trouble breathing, my sister said, so they brought him to the Clinic again. He stopped breathing there.

He had been ill for a long time. Diday, the kids, and I visited Manila last December, and stayed there a month, mainly to be with him and Mama. He was asleep, or drowsy, and weak for most of the time we were there. It was then that I decided that we — Diday, the kids, and I — should relocate to Manila to spend whatever time he (and Mama) had left with them. So on our return to Darwin, we started planning and organising for our relocation. We had planned to return to Manila on 4th April, but postponed that because Diday needed medical treatment (which we learned about after we had organised our schedule and booked the flights, etc.). I’ll be coming home earlier than planned to bury him, and to console Mama, and to be with my sisters and our larger family, and our friends. I can’t stay too long this time but we will still relocate to Manila, even with Papa gone; Mama’s there and will need us more than ever.

I didn’t really say goodbye to Papa last January as if it were the very last time I’d say goodbye. I said we’d be back in a few months. Never liked goodbyes. I don’t think he liked goodbyes either. I would’ve wanted to be there when he went, but I wasn’t. I’ll be there when we bury him, but I still won’t say goodbye like its the last time I’d say goodbye. Its not that I believe we’ll meet face to face again somewhere; its just that he will be with me always in my heart, so no sense really in saying goodbye.

On February 8, 1986, twenty years ago, I arrived in Sydney. Much has happened since then, which I hope to write about some day. For now, I can say that after twenty years, I am again planning to live in the Philippines, while not being sure yet whether home is there or Australia. Truly suffering from the migrant’s dilemma, confusion about where home is. More later, but for now: Happy Twentieth Anniversary of Exile/Migration to me!

I wrote this bit using Writely (www.writely.com), an Ajax-based web application that allows users to process words, and collaborate with others on documents, using just a browser. I read about it in Linux Format (December 2005) today and tried it. Works really well. It comes with a facility to publish to your blog(s) so I’ve used that to publish this.

I’m in Alice Springs again (25th January 2006). Been here since Monday, working on software with Felino again; will be here till Friday afternoon. Was in Manila from 21 December 2005 to 19 January 2006. Will write more about that later.

I think it has been ten years since I’ve been to Alice Springs (excepting the brief flight stop-overs on the way to and from Darwin). The last time I was here may have been when I worked on the Alice Springs Multicultural Festival in 1995 — I’m not sure about this date (especially as that festival was a disaster, and one that I’d rather forget about).

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Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law throughout the Philippines on 21 September 1972, thirty-three years ago today. I was a high school freshman then and did not understand fully the significance of Martial Law. I was to become a “Martial Law Baby.”

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Upgraded my Ubuntu Hoary system at work to Breezy Badger recently (13 September, I think).

First, updated the /etc/apt/sources.list so that the system updates to Breezy (with Hoary backports). Used the source from here but edited so that it points to au sites rather than US sites.

As Breezy is still in Beta, I was bound to run into some problems upgrading, and I did. See notes on these problems.

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I started this post after my Tita Eddie Escudero Quisumbing passed away on 18 March 2005. Better late than never.

Tita Eddie was married to Tito Al Quisumbing, my mother’s youngest brother and only surviving sibling. I couldn’t attend her funeral, being in Darwin at the time. She’s the third aunty I’ve lost in the last twelve months.

First to go in the past year was Tita Chedeng Ramilo Fernandez, late in 2004. She was my father’s only sister, and youngest sibling; after she went, my father was (in his own words) truly “orphaned.” I also couldn’t go to her funeral, as I was in Darwin. Then while I was in Manila in January 2005, helping care for my sick father, my Tita Ludy Quisumbing Roxas died. She was my mother’s cousin and my father’s good friend, and close to my sisters and I — wasn’t able to attend her wake or funeral as I was concentrating on Papa.

I was unable to attend the funerals of most of my aunties and uncles as I was usually in Australia when they died. I was in Darwin (visiting, as I still lived in Sydney then) when Tita Madre (Sister Perla Quisumbing FMM) died in 1990; I was away when my mother’s two other brothers died: Tito Rety Quisumbing in the late 1980s (I think), and Tito Apong Quisumbing in 1992.

I was able to be at Tito Mike’s funeral I think, as I was in Manila then (in the 1980s) — he was my father’s younger brother, and the first of the siblings to die. I was away when Tito Tomas Ramilo died in the late 1990s (I think).

I was in Darwin when Mane (Mama Nene, Tita Nene Quisumbing) died in 1994. I flew home for her funeral, as she was especailly close to me and my sisters, and my parents. She died a few months before Bing, my eldest daughter was born; she was looking forward to seeing Bing (and she predicted Bing would be a boy, incorrectly).

I’ve had many uncles and aunties die over the years, but in the last few years I have felt that a whole generation (and their time) was going away. My father and my mother are a few of the last of their generation, so they postpone — for me, anyway — the changing of the guard, so to speak. I dread the changing of the guard.

My struggles with machines and technology continue but these past days I’ve tried to think more about more important stuff: particularly my children, my spouse, my family, and how I can be a much better father, husband, brother, son. I’ve also been thinking about my purpose again, and whether my purpose lies in continuing to work in technology, or is it in the arts, or somewhere else.

I have these spells of thinking about important things, usually after important incidents that get me thinking. Recently, these things have included my father’s deteriorating health, my inability to cope with my younger children’s exuberance (so to speak), my growing marginalisation from the community cultural development/arts sector.

I will have to think harder about more important stuff more and more. Will write about this more and more too, I hope.

The Guitar Festival’s on again; this is the sixth one, the previous one being two years ago (I think). Last Festival I volunteered to stage-manage their outdoor performance at the Territory Wildlife Park — that was hard work but I enjoyed contributing to the Festival and watching the performances. This year, I am just watching.

After resolving the video card issue, I installed vmware and lots of stuff on the box. The one day, my network stopped working. It was the Marvel built-in NIC acting up — Dan at work saw postings about this issue and warned me about it but as Ubuntu saw the Marvel and it seemed to work, I went ahead and used it.

First I thought vmware was messing up the networking, or that something got corrupted on my Ubuntu system so I reinstalled (silly me), this time with Fedora. Had the same problem! Tried putting in a replacement NIC and that solved the problem.

When we first got these Gigabyte boards, the Marvel/onboard NIC port was covered; James and I removed the tabs to use the Marvels, now much to my regret. Maybe that’s why the ports were covered in the first place.

Anyway, with the NIC problem sorted, I tried installing vmware again, and it would not under Fedora (Core 4). So went back to Ubuntu as I knew vmware worked there, and also I found Ubuntu easier to maintain and extend with apt-get.

Anyway, reinstalled Ubuntu and vmware and its all stable so far.