Background:
From May 1-3, 2003, we had our 10th year reunion of Jesuit Volunteers Philippines, Batch 14. Thus, just as the weekend was filled with reminiscing, my dreams were filled with imagery from my memories of that year of service back in 1993.

May 2, 2003

MIAMI VICE CORRIDORS

There is a maze of corridors. Filled with ultra-bad thugs who know their kung-fu. I am traversing the maze in fear. When suddenly, a theme song rings out, and the Miami Vice cops come out to save the day. Leading the good guys is JVP batchmate Perse, dressed in a sporty blazer and espadrilles, just as Don Johnson once wore them, and brandishing a gun. Our hero!

May 3, 2003

TEACHING THE LAZY STUDENTS

I am in a classroom that's housed in my lola's old house in San Juan. I am teaching a class of students from my JVP area, and I am complaining that they are lazy. They don't do their homework, they don't read. I ask them "What is LAZY in Bisaya?"
___Also my co-teacher is Lara T., who I accuse of being too nice to the students and thus spoiling them. I am mad at her for spoonfeeding them instead of teaching them to stand on their own two feet. (Strangely enough this is the very mindset which made me such a woeful teacher back in 1993. Oh well.)

May 15, 2003

MOTORBIKING THRU PALAWAN WITH A PISTOL

I'm on a motorbike, on a dusty province road. It looks like any provincial road, but I know it is Palawan. I am meeting up with my lover at another landmark down the road... at one of those pillars that mark the end of one town and the start of another. Except that there is danger.

Another man on a motorbike is following me, and ends up beating me to the marker, taking my lover (a faceless, unidentified woman) as a hostage. Or is it me? It is me. He has beaten me and threatened me with death so when i face her, I am beaten. A spineless husk of a man.

When I come near her, she slips a heavy, german-made automatic pistol into my hands and tells me to stand up for myself and for her. And I do, threatening the bad man. Telling him to get the hell out of our lives. I am successful. He rides away. And my lover and I ride our bikes away. I dont know where to stick the pistol, whether in the wasitband of my loose jeans or in my backpack.

And then we are off. We visit a Chinese botanical garden in the middle of nowhere. It looks empty and dilapidated. Like it was supposed to open years back but never did.

I end up outside some provincial headquarters for the police.... where I find a faucet and proceed to wash my underwear. After I finish wringing the water from them, I walk down the town square and a loose soccerball comes from a group of football players. Looks like they are asking me to kick the ball back to them.

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