Week 0

The first thing Ed told me was: "The rules are different in Asia. No one cares about institutions. No one cares what your job is or what bank you represent. The only thing that matters is who you know, and what you are willing to do for each other." Ed will be my boss at the Asia-Pacific arm of a private equity firm in Manila from June 14 to September 14, and then I will come home.

I do not know much about where I am going. My family in the Philippines has been extremely helpful with arrangements, but they have not left much of the planning to me. At 5AM on June 12 I will be greeted in Manila's Centennial airport by the gentlemen below and taken to my family's home in Atabang. Apparently it is customary that photographs such as these be sent before one arrives, in order to preempt the advances of kidnapper gangs that operate at the airport gates. The most famous of these, the Ativan gang, befriends a tourist and offers him a drink spiked with the tranquilizer Ativan, which rewards his trust with two days of unconsciousness.

Americans I have talked to about the dangers of 2004's Southeast Asia are anxious and pessimistic. They assure me that terror is on the rise in the East, that I will stick out like a sore thumb, that Americans have been kidnapped and killed by Muslim Filipinos before, that Manila's 200 kidnappings a year have a locus in wealthy foreigners, and that there is no guarantee my bodyguard will not betray me and send me off to be beheaded. Many have expressed concern for my health, and a few have asked me to reconsider leaving California. My doting father has eagerly forwarded me newsclips like "typhoon kills 9 in Quezon harbor" -- "kidnappee found with throat slit in Metro Manila" -- "election violence leaves 30 dead" -- "State Department issues security warning for Americans in the Philippine Islands." The situation, from American eyes, is mortally grim.

Yet, Filipinos express almost indignant disbelief at these claims. They point out that thousands of ex-patriate foreigners live in the city, that kidnappers target mostly Chinese-Filipinos and rarely Americans, and that life is generally peaceful in the city. They are quick to extol the welcoming nature of their culture, their warm relationship with America, their Westernized economy and position as Asia's second largest trade hub -- the only things to worry about, they say, are the smog and the traffic.

I am losing about $5000 on this trip because my company's honorarium is adjusted for Philippine wages, and the average Filipino in Manila makes about $150 a month. No ritzy $10K bulge bank stipend, no paid travel, no London School of Economics, and no Hermes ties. The purpose of this journal is to quantify the main profits of my trip: experience and knowledge. Thanks for reading! I hope that my blundering through a third-world country will suffice for entertainment, at least until I get kidnapped.

Week 1 -- Safe and Sound

This place is not America. The Philippines is a society organized around waiting for extended periods of time and then hurrying very fast and working very hard to make up for it. For example, it is customary to be 30-40 minutes late to an appointment; any less is considered rude. The government has egregiously failed, again and again, to install a highway system sufficient for the needs of the population, resulting in some of the worst traffic in the world. Last night, I waited for 2 hours in traffic (“trappic”, as the drivers say, and which seems to have evolved into an adjective – “Makati Ave. is trappic”) to travel about 5 miles. Our lunch break can be two hours (siesta!). Yet everyone works incredibly fast; the driving here is insane – it’s not uncommon for a car to swerve out into incoming traffic just to bypass a slow bus or cart. People get angry when something is done slowly, so that when something is done, it is done with maddened haste and exertion. A servant bringing your eggs late is grounds for dismissal.

I arrived here last Sunday at 5AM. The first thing I saw was a huge crowd of people staring at me because I am white. This is something that I am still not used to. Everywhere I go, stares follow me. I am about a eight or nine inches taller than most people here. I stick out, but I have learned that sticking out in a good way has its advantages. Now I know what people like Matt Lottich feel like at Stanford parties – things just work easily; people are nicer; they give you a wider berth. Security guards don’t hassle you. Chicks drop to their knees – all because you are deemed attractive (white) and because you have cash, which brings me to my second point.

Everything is cheap. I eat dinner at places like UVA and Ocean Garden, sharing menus with Manila’s crème de la crème – the family of president Arroyo, professional models, actresses, titans of industry. I will spend about $15. This includes lobster salad, filet mignon, beers, a round of shots for the hot girls at the next table, dessert, and a 5 minute complementary neck massage. This is all because of the ridiculous exchange rate; the city bows to the almighty dollar. America may be a great place to earn money, but nothing beats the third world for spending it. Let me quote for you some more statistics:
average salary of a driver (monthly) $20
San Miguel beer (think Corona) 30c
Negra beer (think Guinness) 40c
Lacoste shirt (fake, NWT, high quality) $10
Polo shirt (fake, NWT, high quality) $8
movie ticket $1
model (drinks, nothing illicit) $10
massage $2-$10

Please pay special attention to the next two:
text message 1/50c
phone call $2

Two dollars is a lot of money for many, many Pinoy. So much that the telecommunications sector here has shifted away from actual voice communication. There are over one hundred million text messages a day in the country. Even when you consider that cell phone penetration in this third world country is an astoundingly high 27.3%, that is an average of 18 messages per day per cell phone owner. Socially active people send about 50 to 100 in a night. I blew through the 35 free texts that came with my phone in a couple hours. Text messaging is a huge phenomenon with the young. It has superceded AIMs, phone use, and, of course, good old face-to-face communication. It has been officially labeled a vice by the archbishop.

This has a number of interesting effects. It takes me about a minute to dash off a ten word “text”; the Pinoy can do it in about 20 seconds. Still, this takes time. I woke up this morning with a bad hangover and five unanswered texts; it took me an hour and a half to sort out business with these callers, going back and forth painfully slowly, correcting the god-awful Nokia word guesser, inserting words, symbols, smilies, blah blah blah. In the states, these conversations would be handled by phone in a matter of minutes. This all goes back to the duality of time in the Philippines – the country has embraced the efficiency of modern telecommunications, but resorts to using its slowest and most tedious feature, exclusively.

I have a computer now and should be updating this more frequently. I forgot my camera cable at home, so no pictures until I get it shipped over. Sorry. I've uploaded two pictures I found on the web. The first is Makati, the business district of Manila where I work. The second is a jeepney; the city is PACKED with these ridiculous things. The cheapest form of public transportation, they are responsible for most of the accidents in Manila -- their drivers have to bring in 1000 pesos ($20) a day or they get fired, so they drive about as dangerously as you can imagine. If I don't get kidnapped, I'll probably get run over by one of these.

Week 2 -- Routine Play

Every day I wake up at 8AM, stretch, do pushups, shower, dress, take a multivitamin, and eat a bowl of substitute Cornflakes in RGHB-fortified milk. I live on the 8th floor of the Park Regent condo complex on de la Costa Street in downtown Makati City, Metro Manila, Manila, PI. Bob is my bodyguard, shown to the right. I pay $150 a month to have him after 5PM. When he was younger, he was a sergeant in the Philippine army, and has since guarded everyone from the son of President Estrada to the 5-year-old daughter of the country’s richest citizen. If Bob is around, he will take me down in the elevator and drive me three blocks to our office tower. On the way we will pass about ten security guards holding everything from military shotguns to M-1 machine guns. If he’s not around, I have to walk. Bob always carries a Hungarian-made sidearm and a radio, which he claims he can use to get every guard on the street to start shooting at whoever is bothering me. I asked Bob what he would do if someone tried to start a fight with me at a bar, and he said “shoot them in the legs immediately.” Apparently Philippine law is a little more punitive than back home.

One of Bob’s most valuable functions is that he is able to indicate whether or not a girl I am interested in is a transsexual. I wont escape embarrassment by saying that its often very hard to tell here, and commonly Filipinos will provide horror stories of an American friend ending up in bed with a “vampire.” I generally check with Bob when a girl approaches me. Thumbs down means we hop bars or he tells her to get lost. I asked Bob what the transsexuals want from straight guys, and he said it's a kind of sport for them. The Pinoy call all transsexuals “gays” – homosexuals who don't genderbend are “respectable gays” – lesbians are “dykes”. The uneducated Pinoy (including most servants) also seem to refer to blacks as “niggers” or “negros”. Yay for the third world.

Speaking of bars, let's talk about Greenbelt. Greenbelt is currently the trendiest area in Manila, containing hip bars like Ice, Temple, Absinth, and Havana. The hotspot seems to rotate every few years from Greenbelt to Eastwood to Fort Bonifacio to Malate and back again. Malate has been compared to the Castro district of San Francisco, whereas the others are more upscale. All contain essentially the same mix of bars – the college hotspot (Temple), the trendy EuroAmerican-style club (Ice), the punky druggie roost (Absinth), and, of course, the whore-packed dive filled with old white men (Havana). In its defense, Havana has cheap drinks and is pretty clean. They have a good Salsa band and the guard at the door kicks transsexuals out, so you don’t have to worry about getting vamped. But, as I said, it’s packed with whores and dirty old men. The D.O.M. mostly keep to themselves; they seem to be made up of investment bankers and industry managers who were unlucky enough to land a stint in Manila rather than Hong Kong. They sniff a lot of coke and spend most of their time talking to the whores and drinking scotch.

Temple is probably my second favorite spot. On the north wall is a huge golden Buddha that serves as the bar. There is a balcony that goes along the 2nd floor around the dance floor, and which opens into a smoking-room where most of the cool crowd hangs out, playing cards and writing text messages. The security here is excellent – they actually had the balls to tell me not to dangle my San Mig over the edge of the balcony. Temple is great fun. Ice is too expensive and is more crowded than a Kappa Sig foam party, but it’s the only place I’ve found that plays rap music. Most people who go to Ice seem to be foreigners who haven’t figured out that it sucks, or vamps looking to prey on said foreigners. I met a bunch of U.S. marines here who told me that it’s easy to get laid if you have dough, but they ran out a few years ago. Absinth is risky unless you are gay.

Across the street from Greenbelt, on a plane of its own, separated from the masses, is V-Bar. V-Bar is Manila’s equivalent of Studio 54. It is difficult to express how cool you must be to enter V-Bar and actually have a good time. Most people seem to be basketball players (flashbacks from SAE) or wearing Lakers jerseys and sideways hats. The chicks are ALL models. ALL. I counted more hot girls here than anywhere else I have ever been.

Models turn out to be flighty creatures with uncertain goals. They are the only girls here – and praise the powers of Jebus for this blessing – that dance in American style (actual physical contact between partners). They don’t seem to want money, and they don’t seem to want to have sex. I watched one of the most famous actors in the Philippines get smacked down by a girl in V-Bar last night. It was painfully cruel. Mostly it seems like they just want to dance and look hot, which they do a good job of. I watched one girl slice her leg open on a shard of broken glass, bandage it up with napkins and her gum , and keep on dancing while one of the Low and Miserables mopped up the blood on the floor. I sometimes wonder if V-Bar pays these girls just to hang out there and never leave.

I apologize for not taking pictures of more interesting stuff (people with guns, hot girls, flashy cars, suitcases of coke). Will try to snap some good ones tonight. Here are:


palm trees outside my place





a transvestite or a model?





Tagi Tai volcano (there's a golf course up here too)



Bob’s report on my activities for the first week (partly censored)
1
2

Clipping

Week 3 -- Glam

I don’t know how to record this event without sounding like an asshole. I apologize in advance.

My two best friends here are Gillaume and Joji. Gillaume is a French venture capitalist stuck in the embassy here for unclear reasons (wants to learn Mandarin, wants to make Asian connections, running from the fed, etc). Joji is a gay entertainment manager who spends his evenings hitting on me and Gillaume, buying us drinks, and introducing us to the women he manages. Both are fairly normal compared to most people here, even if I have a hard time understanding Gillaume and must resist Joji’s occasional coke-induced advance. Not being a homophobe has its advantages – last week, Joji invited us to the Manila Academy Awards, a fairly prestigious affair in Filipino circles. Of course, like most else in the Philippines, their film industry is completely off international radar, so this falls to the level of yacht-club hobnobbery in American terms. Gillaume told me “Ve can meet zome modelz zere”, and it was on.

We showed up in Joji’s van-limo and got out onto the red carpet, although we were half an hour late and didn’t really get the formal reception you see on TV. The crowd paid some attention to us (“Hiiiiiiiiiiii Joooeeee!!!!” – they call all white guys Joe), and I shook hands with the idiotically dressed host, but soon we were upstairs inside the Philippine Cultural Center. This was certainly my first time on any kind of red carpet, and it was surprisingly cheerless; I suppose when you’re having cameras shoved in your ass and making millions of dollars it’s a little more enjoyable. We were ushered into the ballroom, where the show was currently paused for a commercial break. Prophetically, we would spend most of our time there sitting around during commercial breaks – the Philippines seems to have about 7 minutes of commercials for every 5 minutes of television. We scooted past some people into one of the middle aisles near the outside edge, so Joji could get up and smoke when he was bored. All around us were the Filipino A-crowd: actors and actresses, beautiful girls, tuxedos, dirty old men, all kinds of dresses. A lot of the people I’ve seen out in Temple and V-Bar turn out to be actors and actresses; one guy I met the other night was up on stage announcing an award. It was quickly impressed upon us that we were Small Fish compared to most people in the room, and Gillaume intoned “It vill be hard to meet ze girlz here. Lotz off competition.” The event had the personality of the Oscars, but lacked American expertise – things were done poorly, hurriedly; the dancing and music mostly sucked; the awards screen fell down halfway through the show and had to be righted by a crew of panicked looking women. Best actor turned out to be an 8-year old boy who was the star of a film about epilepsy and monkeys. I couldn’t understand anything since everyone was jabbering in Tagalog, but it was all very exciting. Three years ago, the host got paid off to swap the best actress award at the last second. Cheers to graft.

The ball afterwards really saved the evening. It turns out that Joji manages this singer/starlet Vina Morales who had performed in the awards show, and by some act of God was at our table sitting next to me. I shit you not, this is one of the most beautiful women I have ever shared air with, let alone spoken to for three hours. Joji walked around and hobnobbed while Gillaume and I sat in a growing pool of our own saliva, making pathetic conversation and grinding our teeth. She seemed even less interested in having sex with us than any of the models at V-Bar – this, I realize now, should be taken as an indicator of status and refinement. We had shaken hands with some other Filipino celebs, most of whom were either gay or ignored us, but somehow Vina managed to come off as charming without being a colossal bitch. I was extremely into her, and I have never had less of a chance. Later, Gillaume told me, “If you believe ze girl iz not in love viz you, zhe vill never be.” Wise words, but his French game failed just as completely as mine. We went dejectedly back to V-Bar after the party.



Apart from Vina, the ball was scrumptious. A five course meal with everything from steak to saffron soup to sorbet served in an ice sculpture, unlimited Grey Goose, Bailey’s, Johnny Walker; all served by a veritable army of red-clad waiters enslaved to a ridiculous, trumpeting maitre d’ who kept hitting them with a flyswatter to move faster. When the next course started, the DJ started playing really loud techno music so that you would know to finish your fucking food, or else. We also got gift bags from Escada. If I give you Escada cologne or perfume when I get back, it’s because I forgot you.





From Left: Vina, Me, Gillaume, Joji




Ice Sculpture Sorbet




With my friend Michelle at V-Bar

Week 4 -- Paradise Found

Puerto Galera is a sparsely inhabited island three hours by motorboat from Manila.  Last weekend it became engraved in my memory as something approaching paradise. After a week of endless TPS reports and Stolichnaya 7s, the Frenchies and I chartered a boat and sailed south out of the port of Batangas to P.G., accompanied by Norman, an ex-Goldman associate, Bob, and two chicks – a 21-year-old British embassy clerk and a 5’11” Spanish-Filipina model.
 
The beach, almost uninhabited, surpasses anything in Hawaii – white sands, perfectly clear water backed by mountainous jungle, pristine coral reefs about ten minutes offshore.  The prices were almost a third of what we faced in Manila, a twelfth of those in the US.  $5 a night for a bungalow on the beach -- running water, lights, not much else; $2 for a pail of San Miguels; 50c for a tuna sandwich and a coke; $20 a day for a boat, split six ways; $2 for an hour long massage on the beach. 

It is difficult to express the sense of relief this place brought me.  After weeks of ten hour days banging my head against investment manuals, building PowerPoints, and baking under fluorescent lighting, followed by ten hour nights drinking, dancing, and partying, my spirit was about to give out.  I had been surviving on four to six hours of drunken sleep a day; I was exhausted, sick of Manila, and ready to lie on the sands and wilt.



When, in this state, you are suddenly confronted by nothing but peace and warmth – a whole island dedicated to relaxation at a nominal fee – the sensation of release is without comparison.  I can perhaps now understand why people in Manila don’t go insane under the heavy traffic, thick smog, and mindlessness of the work they are forced to endure (Bob, for instance, who has to sit around 60% of his day waiting for me).  They work so they can get out into the country, which is the true jewel of the Philippines.   The transition from Manila to Puerto Galera recalled for me Dante’s passage from hell to the beaches of Purgatory – utter constriction to open air.
 
The Philippines is an archipelago of over 7,100 islands – many of which are nothing but a few acres of beach and scattered coconut palms.  We chartered a small boat and spent the whole day sailing around the coast, exploring deserted beaches and small islands, snorkeling, reef hopping, swimming and diving.  On the reefs, fishermen keep small stores on their boats, selling coral shoes and barbequing squid and catfish for passersby.  Despite the shoes, I ended up ripping my foot open on coral while we were crossing the reefs.  The fish are just like Hawaii, if not better – big schools of neon colors – bright blue, orange, green – in a pool on one island we swam with ten or twenty baby sharks.  If you sail into deeper waters, you can scuba with dolphins and whale sharks, the largest fish in the world.   Scuba is big here; they can certify you in Manila in a couple days, but I haven’t had time – apparently the certificate is pretty dubious, like most things in this country.   Looking back, I have not had a better day in a long while – eight or nine hours in the sun, in the surf, swimming through reefs, lying on beaches, being massaged for pennies.  We ended up at 5PM sitting on a deserted island drinking milk out of baby coconuts with straws.  My Manila hangover had been all but washed away.
 
Ask me about the jellyfish.



Going to the reef.


Hiyana Beach.


Workin' it.


Drunkenly molestin' it. Look at that hand placement.

Week 5 -- Singapore, Malaysia, Subic Region

In my fifth week I went to Singapore, Malaysia, and the Subic Region of the Philippines. Singapore was business. In sharp contrast to the decaying economy of Manila, this city-state is perhaps the most inspiring example of Asian power in the world; going to Singapore as an American really makes one pause and think, "If this is what we are up against in the new economy, we are fucked." Boasting a 10% GDP rate, Singapore is up there with China in terms of steamroller growth. But instead of manufacturing, the Singaporean economy is almost exclusively finance and tech. This is a country of order and progress -- diligent worker bees, high tech aero-rails, flat screens, equal opportunity employers, mirrored skyscrapers -- San Francisco after a long, hot bath. Everyone has heard stories of the famed Singaporean legal code, where one is whipped for chewing gum, loses his hands for stealing, and is shot with his own gun for robbing a bank. Well, it works. You can walk around at 3AM in any part of the city, and no one will bother you. There are no drugs. There are no gangs. There is no pornography. Singapore is a country where you don't fuck around. Somehow I ended up with 12 fake Zegna ties.


Pictures I Elphed in Singapore. Merlion statue in the business district, Chinatown, Fire Pagoda.



The Subic Region is north of Manila on the island of Luzon. It was formerly the largest U.S. naval base in the world, but the Americans pulled out following a volcano eruption in the '90s. More expensive than Puerto Galera with more beautiful beaches -- we found one where you could walk about 200 meters offshore without the water reaching your chest, hotter than any pool. We also took a jungle safari. I encountered:

monkeys shitting on us

tarantulas

giant monitor lizards

a butterfly sanctuary

an old man with a bunch of eagles chained to a post

a stuffed tiger that scared the crap out of us

17 mosquito bites

a huge tree filled with love birds

a peacock shitting on us

Fear me.


Miracle beach, love birds.

Here is a letter to Chan Kok Pun, our MD in Singapore. He asked me to offer him my experiences in Malaysia.

Dear Kok Pun,
I found Malaysia to be a difficult country. Not difficult in the sense of transportation or security, but difficult culturally. As you advised, I remained largely in the Petronas Towers area, except for a few jaunts into Chinatown and my day tour (which was, of course, very touristy). The bus ride north was uneventful. All the early buses were booked when I showed up at 7:20, so I had to wait until 10AM to leave. The palm fields were pretty, and for five hours I was once again the only white guy for miles and miles.

In KL I discovered a population of ancestral farmers who had, for one reason or another, ended up in the city -- in this regard, Malaysia seems to have developed problems in parallel with the Philippines: a level of poverty that, while not as blatant as the squatters in Manila’s outskirts, distinctly hangs in the air; a conflict of orientation between the urban and rural classes, along both racial and economic lines; and a slightly perverse integration of Muslim ideals with Western bawdiness -- women in Burkas chuckling at sex jokes in a packed, month-old showing of Spider Man 2. It seemed as though a conflict of interest exists as far as Westerners are concerned: on one hand, Western culture and investment is appealing – the white man is massaged for his wallet; on the other, asserting a Malaysian identity is needed to maintain a stable society – the white devil is hustled and brushed aside – the result is a strange fusion of indifference and opportunism.

People in Malaysia were ruder to me than in either Manila or Singapore, or at least more aggressive in jockeying for my wallet. I asked the hotel to call me a cab for the 5AM trip to the airport, only to find -three- taxi drivers awaiting me in the morning, each pleading their own story about their starving children and hospitalized parents. When I finally forced my way into one of their cars, the driver wouldn't shut up about stopping for coffee and breakfast (I assume, to extend the fare). He ended up giving me his phone number and demanding that I make him my personal guide the next time I was in the city. In Singapore when I was fumbling around with my first rail pass, three people stopped to help -- in Malaysia, I got the feeling I would have been impatiently ignored.

I got a similar vibe from the nightlife in KL. All the bars had hawkers in the streets promising you special deals if you went inside. The bar fronts were opaque so you couldn't see in. I think I might have been in the "scam the tourist" district, because all of these bars were equally empty and the "great deals" on drinks turned out to be 16-ringgit beers and 20-ringgit cocktails. In one case I filled out a lengthy survey after a hawker promised me "free flow for an hour", which I took to be an open bar. It turned out to be the opportunity to sing on their microphone. Asking questions about these promotions was equally useless -- the hawkers just stared at me dumbfoundedly or gave a misleading answer.

The Petronas towers were certainly impressive, and Chinatown was inspiring in its bustle of counterfeits and barbecues. Whereas the Malay in Singapore seemed to be jealous of the Chinese, here the tables had turned. Chinese & Indian taxi drivers regaled me for hours with tales of Malay oppression -- all the jobs are in greedy Malay hands, all the votes are controlled by corrupt politicians, and if you speak up the Malay will kill you. "Why don't you leave?" I asked -- "The exchange rate sucks," was the reply.

I enjoyed the Moorish architecture throughout the city, and certainly got the sense that I was in a Foreign Land. I'm wondering if the aggressive opportunism of the people there is something distinctly Muslim, or if Singapore would be the same if the wealth was gone.

I'm glad I went to see Malaysia, but it's not somewhere I'll settle down.

David Lipa
Venture Capital Group -- Asia-Pacific


Far from home.

Week 6 -- Grindstone

It's now 12AM and I am on my third Tanduay and coke. I am sitting in my bedroom blasting out a 20 minute PowerPoint for the charity council we are attending tomorrow. I have been here since the office gnomes left four hours ago and kicked me out of my cube. Ironically, my mad pursuit of the dollar has landed me with more community service than I ever suckered onto my college app. I thought I had forever escaped crack babies, hungry Croats, endangered marshlands, and self-righteous commserv pretty boys; instead, at the auspicious beginning of my corporate climb, perched in the penthouse of my first banking skyscraper, I'm closer to them than ever. This is the tenth hour I have spent on the third version of this PowerPoint; I have eight CDs of pictures and two binders of documents; I have done more research on the Bagong Silang Resettlement Project than anyone in the history of mankind.

These people were squatters that came to Manila from the farmlands to find work, and basically failed or ended up strung out on crack or detergent. Instead of sheltering them, the government bought a couple farms north of the city and dumped ALL of them out there, then locked the gates and hired a bunch of mercenaries with machine guns to make sure they didnt come back. No houses. No water. No electricity. Just people. You can imagine the kind of environment this produces after ten years. One guy told Ed (my boss) when he was visiting, "We'll join your [charity] program, just let me kill this bastard down the block first. And his family." Gangs are everywhere. No one has an education or any money. The only money that flows in is through crime and politicians buying votes. If businesses set up shop, they get robbed within a fortnight. Bagong Silang is the WORST of the third world: starving, displaced farmers hopping on meth, brandishing AK-47s.

Slum decor.
Angry slum dwellers.



For some reason, our firm wants to get involved cleaning up this mess. Ed told me that if the rich in the Philippines don't do something about the poor, eventually they will rebel and everyone will die. Makes sense when you consider that the rich are about 2% of the population and control 70% of the wealth. That's a big, big disparity -- much, much, much bigger than the United States, and it is felt in every interaction, every aspect of the society. Overall, though, this is really the definition of a bitch project; it has nothing to do with finance and I basically just research poor people and make pretty slides. You probably want to hear that I've had some kind of epiphany regarding the poor, but if anything the Philippines makes me realize how completely retarded poor people can be given a completely retarded government. We offer to build them houses to replace their cardboard shacks, and they refuse out of spite. When we do end up building them, they sublet them to drug lords then spend all the money on gin and crack. We build them schoolhouses and they loot them. We build them sustainable businesses (bakeries, meat shops) and no one shows up for work. We start school programs for their kids, and they force their kids to work so they can sit at home and drink rum. We dig them a well and they use it as a latrine. The problem is actually more a factor of the corruption of local politicians (taking dough from the pork barrel instead of spending it on utilities) than inherent stupidity in the population. It's pretty hard to build a functional community when you have no local representatives. This has just demonstrated to me that if you make someone REALLY REALLY poor, poorer than the poorest shithead in America, they become utterly retarded. Their focus shifts from the future to: rape anything that moves, snort anything that is granular and crushable, and kill anyone that walks by who isn't sporting your gang's tattoo. Oh, and take shits in your drinking water. My solution? Hang all the senators and set fire to the city.

This is not my only function as an intern. Ed is an incredibly gifted mentor and somehow finds at least an hour out of every day to sit down and talk with me about private equity. I realize now how little I knew about finance or business, and what a shithead I was in the Merrill Lynch interview I bombed last year. "So, what other banks are you applying to, David?" "Uhhh, if I don't get this job I'll probably just write stories." Ding. A few days ago I got to grill the CEO of a company we are looking at. Apparently this happens a lot, and they throw the job of roughing the execs up to the interns and analysts. Think police interregation, with coffee and groveling lackies. Imagine me, a 19-year-old indolent, sitting across from a guy who has poured thirty years of his soul into his company, demanding useless statistics and spurting obnoxious quips for three hours . "What's your plant capacity?" (like I know what this has to do with anything) "It sounds like your company has places to go in the industry. But can you crunch the logistics? Can you replicate? Can you scale?" (Econ 1 to the rescue) "Did you get that designed by a consultant?" (nggg...consultants good...entrepreneurs bad...) "Whose logo do you prefer -- Goldman or Morgan? Yuk yuk." At this point he was squirming uncomfortably and I launched into an unduly fraternal monologue about how we were both entrepreneurs and should learn as much as we can from each other (Honor, dude!). Then I told him I was still a college sophomore. At the end of the day, I write a report about whether or not we should invest, based upon my interview and other analysis. Partly it comes down to looking at their financials and seeing if the CEO's schpiel lines up. Mostly it's completely arbitrary.


From left: sweatshop gnome, me, my CEO

Weeks 7 & 8 -- Record Book

After getting punked by 3 corrupt Manila cops and coughing up $100 in intimidation bribes, finding myself in a photo shoot wearing pathetically skimpy D&G bathing briefs, writing a 100 page legal agreement for our fund in three days, raving with three E-induced Iranian chicks until eight A.M. on a Tuesday, and witnessing the purchase of almost a KILO of marijuana for $20, I must say that this stretch has been one for the record books.

How to Die in Manila
The French and I were seduced by an offer to shoot M-16s at a Manila Police open firing range about an hour from my condo. This turned out to be a very bad idea. We reserved 6 people for Sunday morning at the price of P10,000 ($200); unfortunately, we went to a rave on Saturday until 7AM. Even to shoot M-16s, no one was waking up dehydrated, groggy, and E-hungover after 4 hours of sleep. We thought this would be fine until -3- cops with huge guns showed up at my condo. They were there to pick us up to go shooting, they said. Were we coming? We were already half an hour late. Why weren't we ready? Why were three people missing? The range was very busy, they said, and they were on very tight schedules, and they didn't like feeling rushed. And, most importantly, where was their money?

When one's bodyguard starts getting nervous, one starts shitting his pants. The cops wanted P5,000 to go away and leave us in peace. Unfortunately, the Frogs were outraged and refused to pay -- that the spittle continued flying from their mouths even in the face of three AK-47s speaks volumes about French pride. The Frogs thought my bodyguard, who had suggested the outing, was in on the deal and was getting a cut, and they weren't going to let him off easily. They were arguing very loudly and angrily, and everyone had guns except us; Bob looked upset and anxious, and I got the feeling he wasn't going to jump in the way if the cops tried to pile us into the happy wagon. I seriously spent about 30 minutes convincing the French that we had better pay or else, while these three guys with AKs stood, stone faced, at my door, refusing to bend. The Frogs wouldn't give in either. They were completely livid. They didn't even have their wallets. They didn't see why they should pay, and they couldn't speak English well enough to handle negotiating. Everyone was going to die.

Finally I buckled and threw down 2K, at which point the French, still foaming at their collective mouths, stormed outside to the ATM and took out the other 3. The cops smiled and faded into the shadows.

La Tigra
The modeling shoot, which I will decline to post the juicier photos of (on the advice of the unfortunates among you who have seen them), was really about the most ridiculous thing I have done here. Filipinos are so madly obsessed with Western culture and Westerners that any non-hunchbacked white guy or girl is immediately labeled a 'potential model' and hounded by agencies high and low. Agents offer you cocaine, cash, free drinks, sushi, hot dates; they court you under the guise of 'friends', 'admirers', and 'fellow businessmen'; and they are at once flattering, sickening, and annoying. Most of my friends here have, at one point or another, fallen into the modeling trap, and I'm not trying to claim that Hanselhood is anywhere in my future; indeed, my experience before the camera has convinced me that I certainly could not and would not do this for a living. This is a horrible, horrible job, one where you are made to focus on every flaw in your appearance, where assholes are PAID to remind you of them, and where the money is so good you can't escape. This made me understand why girls are generally so miserable, and why Zoolander is such a great film. It is unsurprising that anorexia is so prevalent when the American fairer sex has to do this every day of their lives in front of every person they meet; I would be anorexic after a month of this ("Dayvid, modeling is all about discipline. You have to make some sacrifices if you want to look your best. You have to watch what you eat and go to the gym regularly. You need to work on your abs. Suck your stomach in please."). I only spent about 3 hours at this place, and I left feeling dirtier than a jizzmop at San Francisco Centerfolds. On the upside, I made $300 and created unlimited ammunition for gay jokes at my expense. Have at it.




Thankfully the girl came with the contract.

Papermill
100 pages of paper is very, very thick. It weighs almost five pounds, and it makes it difficult for people to add more material to your inbox tray. This was about the only upside of the Flagship Capital Corporation Limited Partnership Agreement, the most hellish document ever to have crossed my sleep schedule. Worse than the IHUM final paper; worse than E40 labs; worse than the CS106X final. In private equity/venture capital, the money is put into the fund by Limited Partners (investors) and invested by the General Partner (us) for shared profit. For any partnership, the LP Agreement basically consists of 100 pages of legal jargon designed to confuse the investors into thinking they are getting the good end of the deal. In between the huge paragraphs of dogshit are tiny, important clauses detailing everything from how much cash we take as our fee to what happens if our partners die or quit. For the last three(!) days of the week, it was my task to transform the LP Agreement of our last fund to the terms of our new offering. Unfortunately, our old agreement was a PAPER COPY and did not exist in electronic format. This meant I had to use a flatbed scanner and OCR, feeding in one page at a time, to transfer the paper LPA into a completely error-ridden Word document. OCR is such a young technology that it errs on perhaps one out of every ten words and destroys all traces of formatting, meaning the user has to go back into the document and fix everything by hand. This takes a LONG, LONG time, and it is a horribly tedious process. After the scanning, I had to add some clauses and change terms around to reflect the new fund. This is what corporate paralegals do, and it isn't much better than shoveling shit through a screen door -- doing this for 20 hours showed me why people think finance is better than law. All in all I pulled two 17-hour days and shoved the LPA out the door at 8PM on Friday night. Huzzah.

Week 9 -- Heaven and Hell

I started writing another update about the debaucheries of Manila, but the topic has, frankly, worn thin, and I felt disgusted enough with myself to start over. It will suffice to say that one of my friends from Menlo, Steve Golod, showed up here last Thursday for a manic weekend in all the hotspots: Jools, Athena, V, Greenbelt, et cetera, and that he will validate all my claims about this great city. At 6AM on Tuesday, two hours before his flight, he stumbled, completely hammered, into my room (where I was fast asleep awaiting work at 9AM), vowing gravely that his ticket must be extended, that he did not want to leave. That was about the last I saw of him.

One Hundred Islands

Steve and I traveled to the 100 Islands Region four hours north of Manila. Many Americans I have talked to find it difficult to believe that one hundred deserted islands exist anywhere in the world, let alone in one country, in one chain, only a few hundred kilometers from the capital city. Traveling here is really quite distinct from the California mentality, which distinguishes trips to exotic locales as more than weekend fare – to go to Tahoe or Yosemite or L.A. or Mexico is a big deal; it requires planning, scheduling, reservations, friends, credit, notification, not to mention transportation. In Manila someone just says “lets get out of town” and you hop in a car with a couple thousand pesos, and you’re there.

This, of anywhere I have been in the world, approximated Eden; I will let the pictures speak for themselves. One rents a boat and is left to explore any island in the chain – each one an uninhabited, volcanic formation lipped with sandy beaches and crowned by jungle. Ironically, after five or six hours in the chain, we realized that life on a sandy beach surrounded by palm trees is actually a very boring affair, and we packed up and went back to Manila. But that sensation of riding out – the wind off the boat, the spray, the smokestacked cost receding behind, the open islands ahead – that is the true heaven of the south Pacific. It is not the hours that follow, and it is a very fleeting thing, but it is worth the journey. People often romanticize the castaway, but in reality he is a very listless man; he watches for the ship his entire day – he is driven only by ennui and the inflated faith in a home that exists only in his mind. But on those first hours in the wild he is truly Adam, cut from every responsibility and worry, released only to care about the sun, surf, and sand. And getting drunk to chase hookers around a bachelor party.


Unnamed Island, 100 Islands Region


Steve ponders starboard


"HECCCTORRRR!!!!"



Smoky Mountain

There is in Manila a placed called Smoky Mountain. It is, by one story, a dumping site for organic and metal waste in Tondo Sector 7 on the north side of the city. Its location moves every few years, but only by a few blocks; sometimes it moves several feet a day. Sometimes it collapses and kills a few of the thousands of squatters that crawl through it like perpetual fleas, picking through the rubbish for a few pesos of scrap metal, erecting shanties from old bins and tires, shitting, fucking, murdering, and creating every kind of misery. Smoky Mountain is Hell, pure and simple. It is the most toxic, burning place that I have ever been, and it is one of the only things in the world that has struck me as truly evil.

I am not a moralist. I do not believe in a metaphysical right and wrong; I do not believe in a deific God with any interest in mankind; in fact, I do not believe in any good but the elimination of ignorance (even this, for me, is a questionable good if hastily completed or in the hands of the wrong people).

Smoky Mountain is evil because it is a foundry of the worst kind of ignorance: it makes whoever goes there ignore the human condition. I did not pity the people I saw living there – revulsion is a more appropriate term, although contempt and hatred come close. I wanted to burn the entire place to the ground. There were no humans there. The creatures living in the trash had been reduced so far from their origin that they were beneath dogs, beneath rats. Covered in shit, shambling monsters lurch around through the rubble, playing basketball, squatting in groups, plucking lice from their hair, speaking in guttural tongues. They stare at you like you are insane.

Even this is bearable. Then you roll down your window to take a picture, and the horrible, raking stench of a thousand bags of flesh, shit, and bile moldering in that ancient sun blows eagerly off the Mountain into your lungs. In an instant, you realize what Hell is – the hot wind blows all year; it never gets cool, and it is always humid; it runs miles and miles around the Mountain; it creates cancer, infection, and pollution; it renders all water impotable and all food spoiled; it kills by the hundreds; it drives the people who live there, day by stinking day, year by fetid year, utterly mad. It convinces you that the things living there are not humans, but demons – and that is the evil in Smoky Mountain. I lasted about three seconds before wanting to vomit.


Will gather dung for food


About as close as you can get without puking


Rubble tilling: consumer surplus at its finest

The Diligent Bob

As a reminder, Bob is my bodyguard. He told me yesterday that he has killed four people. As a young sergeant in the Philippine war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, his patrol came under fire from Muslim insurgents -- for five hours he and his companion crouched behind a bombed out wall, trading shouted insults with the Muslims ("Fuck you! Come out here, you coward!" "No, fuck you!" "Rat tat tat tat!" -- Bob's powers of eloqution are, as ever, exemplary). Five hours. Finally the Muslims, three of them after all, got fed up and fled. In some kind of jubilant Rambo-esque move, Bob and his friend popped out of their wall and mowed them all down with their AK-47s. Muslim warriors in the southern island of Mindanao ritually taste the fresh blood of those they slay in a gesture of disrespect -- Bob made it a point to tell me that he returned the favor.

Bob is one of the most diligent and patient people I have ever met. It does not surprise me that he was able to wait out the Muslims -- indeed, he spends most of his day waiting. Waiting, waiting, and waiting. Waiting for me to do all sorts of things -- watch movies, work out for hours, eat, work, ramble on the phone; driving me everywhere, escorting me everywhere, rarely speaking, rarely offering anything except respectful advice or a quip about the traffic. Bob has a pregnant wife in the Laguna Province about 3 hours from Manila. He gets to see her once every two or three months. He told me that if he ever earns $2000, he will be able to start a rice farm and retire with his family forever. Until then, he is stuck waiting around, guarding small fish like me who don't really need guarding. A tragic life by Western standards, but, like most people here, he seems to have gotten used to it. After all, I pay for his food and cigarettes.

If you recall, Bob said he killed four people. Three were the Muslims. The fourth tried to go after one of Bob's bosses with a butterfly knife -- "I shot him three times -- two in the head and one in the chest. Blam blam blam!"

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Week 10 -- Visayas

The Visayan Islands are the middle band of the Philippines, separating the northern island of Luzon from the southern Muslim state of Mindanao.


Cebu City
Cebu is the capital and trade hub of the Visayas. It is a dingy, bustling port town set amidst plantation islands of sugarcane, mango, mahogany, and coconut palm. The color of Cebu is predominantly grey; the vibrant paints of its old farmhouses have faded under a masque of soot, grime, and jeep exhaust; its old cathedral stands gloomily at the end of a string of neon-lit whorehouses. Dusty motorcycles labor up and down its hills like beetles, carrying missives and parcels for the rich Chinese families in the outlying settlements. On a warm night, you can ride with these carriers in the open air, packing two, three, even four onto one bike. There are no traffic laws in the Philippines -- the bikes hurtle along with abandon, passing beggar boys, trundling jeepneys, farmers laden with cane and wheat, collapsed houses in the road, and the inevitable packs of pregnant strays that seem to infest every corner of the country. Traveling in Cebu reminded me of the immense antiquity of this country -- its old Spanish churches, the cross Magellan erected upon beaching here, the lazy key palms drooping over its roads -- and how all this has faded -- its stacks and stacks of garish billboards, the kids playing in its streets with silver handguns, the transsexuals and pimps leering at you from its street corners. It is a world well removed Manila, closer to the fresh roots of the islands than the engines of the West; it is even sadder to see the corruption beginning here.


City Hall, Cebu City


Temple of Lions, Cebu Island

Panilau Island / Bohol Beach Club
One takes an open-air ferry from Cebu to Panilau, a sleepy isle ringed with white and gold beaches, coral reefs, and dark blue water. Divers come from Australia and Greater Asia to scuba here, and little bars and shops cluster on the coast to hawk conch shells and fake Rolex watches. There is a terminal wind from the southwestern sea -- hot, clean, and unflinchingly intense. The palms all bend backwards before it, and the wind never seems to cease. Prim white diving boats and cattarans idle in the surf, hooking anchor lines around the boulders on the beach. You trip over these lines when you walk the beach at night. Quiet, quiet, interminably quiet, one listens only to the wind; even the waves seem to hush for it. Sunburnt dogs and white cats sleep on piles of broken coconut shells, and dusky red kelp drifts through the warm shallows. Panilau remains silently noble, untarnished by the traffick and opportunity of larger settlements; it is a dying breed.


Bohol Beach


Bohol Beach, Twilight


Lake Laguinita

Tarsier River Region
In the heart of Panilau is the Tarsier River, so named for the tennis-ball sized monkeys inhabiting its banks. Ridges, actually walls, of old green foliage enclose the river on either side; the trees are mahoganies, mangos, sycamores, and key palms; here and there you will see a chocolate-colored farmer, barebacked, scaling one of the coconut trees on footholds hacked out by bolo knives. Fisherman drift in warped little boats through the shallows, dangling nets and bamboo poles -- the water is an idle green, murky, but not polluted if you stay far enough upstream. We took a motorboat up to the riverhead, where the water tumbles down from low, fern-dense waterfalls into a deep basin suitable for diving. The lower walls are covered in slippery moss, making ascent nearly impossible. I fell twice back down into the basin, sliding on the stone and nearly decapitating myself on the projecting sycamore roots. We had to be guided up by a local boy with rope and hook -- the leap was almost twenty feet. Sailing through the warm summer air into the ancient waters of that river, one can hardly help but savor the simple history of these river people, their persisting liberty from modern toil, their remote pursuits and pointless businesses, their ugly children and tasteless food; they have achieved a kind of superiority by humble, humble means.


I am small, blind, and ready to be devoured



Charlies in the trees

Weeks 11 & 12 -- Overcome

This is my last update of the summer, and I will try to write honestly about what I got from this trip. For the young, white, adventure-seeking, leisure-oriented swashbuckler in each of us, the Philippines hovers as an unspoiled Bacchic mirage on the rim of Asia, hot, cheap, sandy, and filled with drooling women -- a fragment of an old (and, notably, racist) paradise where upstanding men and women grovel before your wad of greenbacks, where dropping the S bomb gets you laid faster than ice melts in hell, and where everything from Lacoste shirts to lobster bisque can be had for an unthinkable pittance. But these tangibles turn out to be mere garnishes on the icing -- the real hardon comes when you realize the whole country, rich and poor, dark and not-so-dark, from farmers to fishermen, bartenders to strippers to politicians, thinks you are The Shit.

The Philippines is obsessed with you from the moment you step off the plane. They want you -- they really, really want you and everything you stand for. They want you desperately, burningly: you are their every hope and their greatest dream. It is hard to understand the intensity of their infatuation! They want your Stanford shirt and your white skin, and they want to go to America and earn dollars and spend dollars, and come back home and tell their friends about San Francisco and New York, and one day they want to move there (even if they are penniless), and they want to go to In 'n Out and Krispy Kreme, and they want to wear real Polo, and they want to hear everything about what its like to live in the States, and they want you to point out everything wrong with their country, and they'll buy you beers to do it, and if you don't or if you're too tired they'll do it for you, and they don't care if its hard or cold in the US because it's the US and everything will work out there, and they wear Lakers jerseys and sport sideways caps and say 'nigga' to each other even though they'd back down to Aron Heygi, and they want to wear Abercrombie and UCLA shirts even though they dont know what those are or what they stand for, and they say 'hella' and 'sketchy' and 'shady' and 'big pimpin', and they do all kinds of drugs, and all kinds of vices, and they rap and freestyle and breakdance, and they want to sleep with you, and if you dont want to sleep with them they'll even offer you money for your sperm (not a lie), and they really, really want you to be friends with them, they want your approval, and if you don't give it they'll often pay you for that too, and if they are tactful, they'll get away with it, and the hookers fall in love with you and offer themselves for free, and they cry to you about how horrible their lives are, and they ask you about your life and how good it is, and how graceful and handsome you are and how could you like the Philippines since its so worthless, and they pay you to wear a speedo and frolick in front of a camera; and the boys want to play football but find it too hard so they play flag football instead, and they're amazed you played football in high school even if it was only for a year and you were a skinny lineman, and the girls dump their boyfriends to hang around you because their boyfriends are Filipino, and the boyfriends don't do anything about it except cry and cry and cry and threaten to commit suicide, and even if they did do something you have a bodyguard who would kill them if they came near you, and even if they did something your family would hunt down their family and put them out of work or murder them all. With every model you fuck, with every drug you do, with every picture they snap of you, with every love note they slip you on a napkin, with every beautiful beach you sail past, with every Lacoste shirt you get for $2, with every basketball player who lowers his eyes to you, your ego gets bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And it is an amazing 3-month high -- incomparably complex, indulgent, radiant, selfish, even religious; the resolution of all desires, insecurities, etc. -- that vice and money could purchase this, and for so little! This, the psychological terrain of the country, is the icing on the cake.

But when you have your fill of this lovely icing, and it takes about three months, you dig further and find, to your great surprise, that there is no cake. The icing seems to go on forever -- it is woven very thick, and it tastes so good that few people actually make it to the other side; most languish here and there, dreamily enjoying their girls or their lobster or their beaches, until they inevitably leave for home, satisfied, unconcerned with more. But if you are resolved to dig, and if you keep digging, the icing thins slightly after a while, and what you begin to taste is revolting. Rot. Shit. Offal. Pain. Beyond the island mirage of the Philippines is a realm of sadness, disillusion, and real, abject inhumanity. The Filipinos have lost their identity to the West, and with it they have lost their sanity. The poor lurch on in a haze of struggles, fighting now for food, now for medicine, now for clean air, unresolved to do anything but outlive the day, bereft of all intuition, faith, vision, emotion -- they are really the closest things I have seen to robots or monsters; the rich (the young) are even more pitiable, in that some glimmer of humanity still dies within them -- feebly limping towards others to imitate, now America, now Japan, now Europe, backs broken by corruption and murder, clinging to this and that, addicted, decadent, miserably feigning happiness, they are a sin on their legacies. What ridiculous waste is in this country, what spoiled flesh -- I never thought I would pity a whole nation!

And there are sad, wise old men like Ed, Filipinos who have struggled through decades of corrupt regimes, clinging to their Bibles, noble hopes alive (not for foolish imitation, like the young, but for forging a nation), only to see their dreams shattered again and again by the decadence, impulse, and poison of the young, the immoral, and the treacherous. I am the saddest for these wholesome men and women, who try as hard as they can to save their race, but cannot, in their age, see down to the rot spreading through the culture of their young. My respect is immense for these patriots, and I wish them strength and godspeed in their work. Their time is certainly running out.

As for me, I am on my way home. Veni, Vidi, Vici, and I feel filthy for it. But through filth I have learned more about myself than I expected, and, perhaps, absorbed a little of Plutarch's old motto: "The mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled." I have had my fill of cheap tricks and Stoli 7s, martingales and models, beaches and big rollers. It has come time to move past this place of illusion to the real business that awaits.


Pretty much sums it up