bucket list

Had it not been for the movie of the same title, I would not have known, even vaguely, what a bucket list is.  The movie starred two of my most favorite actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, who met in a cancer ward, were initially at odds with each other until they found out they shared a lot in common.  That’s when they decided to pursue things, a bucket list, they still have to do before they step into the Great Beyond.

The question is, do I have one?  

I don’t.

Why?  More likely, it’s the anti-bourgeois in me—a carryover of my social activist days—why I haven’t got one.  I can’t imagine myself delving on something that I consider so crass and so bourgeois.

But, if forced to have one now, what would be in it?

I can’t come up with ten no matter how hard I’ll try.

But without making an effort, the first thing that came to mind was an academic degree from the University of the Philippines.  I’d spent seven years, from 1976 to 1983, inclusive of my leaves of absence (LOAs), at the University of Philippines at Los Baňos but did not earn my undergraduate diploma in Agriculture.  I opted to discontinue my studies when it was clear that I can never finish my academic program within the prescribed Maximum Residency Requirement of the UP System.  My sight was pointed elsewhere then, or was nowhere the more appropriate term?

It was never a big disappointment, but for my parents, it was, especially for my father.  With my failure, he lost, what I believed, was his biggest bragging right—an offspring with a UP diploma—over his peers.  Until his death, he always boasted, whenever he had the chance among those who cared to listen, that I studied in UP but never added that my undergraduate diploma was from the Gregorio Araneta University Foundation.     

I suspect I’m in self-denial for this, I believe, occupies a niche in my deeper psyche.  That’s why it popped up first when I tried to come up with my list.  This probably is the same reason why I keep on applying for readmission and enrolling at the UP Open University for my Master of Public Management program only to be either absent without leave (AWOL) or apply for LOA in the middle of the school term.

One thing I’m very sure of, this will end up in my bucket till I gasp my last breath.

Next would probably be a 250-cc Enduro motorcycle.  A Kawasaki or a Yamaha would be great, but a KTM, 450-cc, would be super.   Although not an Enduro, I might settle for a 500-cc Royal Enfield Classic Chrome.   The first two Japanese brands are practical choices. The Europeans are purely to feed my ego.

Ever since I was nine years old my ride has always been an owner-type jeep.  Yes, I started driving at nine!  There were no police in the barrio where I grew up and started driving and had a father who wouldn’t bar me from tinkering with our jeepneys.  But, every now and then, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I would drive around with my friends and our girlfriends in one of our Sarao passenger jeepneys. 

When I oversaw the implementation of a community-based disaster management project in landslide-ravaged Dingalan in Aurora province in 2005, I was charmed by the practicality and versatility of an Enduro motorcycle, a 125-cc Kawasaki.  I was able to go to the remotest mountainous villages of Dingalan in no time using trails blazed by loggers in earlier times.

Even if I now can drive around in my wife’s sub-compact SUV, this will still be in my list.  An Enduro motorcycle, aside from being a practical ride to monitor the more than 550 public elementary and secondary schools under threat from various hazards and disasters in Pampanga, is indispensable to my other wish; which is to see every nook and cranny of rural Pampanga and Central Luzon.  It’ll be my La Poderosa to live up my own version of “Motorcycle Diaries”, following what Che Guevara did before he embarked on a revolutionary career.  With or without a pillion rider, I’m going to do this, i.e. if I have my Enduro.

One of the last two that I could think of is to travel and see our neighboring Southeast Asian countries; Vietnam and Cambodia.  Add Timor Leste, the other predominantly Catholic country in the region.  And it’s never acknowledged that it’s more Catholic than the Philippines.  Although colonized by the Portuguese and not by the Spaniards, I want to see what we have in common culturally as a people. 

Vietnam has always been an enigma; I want to know what is it about the place and its people that enabled them to spring back to life, so to speak, after the devastation caused by imperialist greed.  First, the country was dragged into the second Imperialist War (World War II) when it was “handed over” to the Japanese by the French government when Nazi Germany had partial control over France.  Adroitly playing up their cards with anti-fascist capitalist bloc, they defeated the Japanese imperial forces.  After the Japanese, they took on the returning French colonialists anew. But before they could completely humiliate the French in defeat, the Americans, in the guise of keeping the Free World safe from the “Communist menace” came into the picture. 

The White Monkeys—in contrast to us Brown Monkeys—did not expect the Vietnamese people to be as hard as nail and were forced to humiliatingly admit defeat in 1975.  It was to me the greatest victory of the underdogs; THE country that had just emerged as the greatest capitalist victor and the undisputed capitalist kingpin had been soundly beaten by the ragtag but deeply committed army of Ho Chi Minh.  There must be something about the Vietnamese people not only to withstand three successive imperialist wars but, more importantly, spring back to life with heads unbowed from the rubbles of wars.

The temples are the reason why I want to be in Cambodia, as well as the devastation brought about, this time, by communist insanity.  I want to see how the people are doing after enduring the excesses of the brutal Pol Pot regime.

The last in my list, which is the most surreal, is having a son!  After the birth of my second daughter, it’s common to hear comments from friends and acquaintances that I should have a third child, a son.  They told me that I’m squandering my lineage (lahi) if I don’t sire a son as my lahi will cease as soon as my two daughters marry and discard their SARMIENTO family name. 

My wife was all for the idea of a third child but it was me that reacted strongly against it.  I told our friends and acquaintances that it’s not that easy to raise children.  Bringing a child into this world is the easiest part—pleasurable, in fact—but ensuring that they can ably join and compete in the rat race is the hardest. 

Raising rat race-ready offspring, in this day and age, will toll heavily on your pockets.

With our current situation, my wife and I are practically left on our own as our grown up daughters are busy building their own lives, it’s inevitable not to think of that third child.  True, we’re more stable financially, especially with my recent employment and my wife’s successive promotions in the education department.

But my wife’s child bearing years had long been over.  Even if we wanted to, we can never have that son.

That son could of course be our first grandchild.  The elder of our two daughters had just gotten married and if their plans won’t miscarry, we’ll have our first grandchild next year.  But our apo can never be our “full-time” third child.  At the most, he’ll stay with us only on weekdays when his parents are in Metro Manila to work. But once he’s of school age, or even earlier, he’ll surely live permanently with his parents.  And we’ll end up where we are right now.

That son will definitely be in the bucket too in the end.

I enjoyed making up my list.  It actually served a purpose:  it made me to look back and assess how I lived my life so far.  And, in a way, it helps me to realize what I can still do to optimally enjoy my remaining years before I finally hang my bucket upside down.  (30)