Chapter 1 - So it begins

WHEN everything is said and done, I will blame Teresa Pacis and Arlita Narag for it. Or probably even Butch Abad and her auntie, Fe Hidalgo, for that recognition event at the Department of Education that brought me and those two Intel lady executives together. Or even my principal, Mayor Jesse Robredo, who sent me over in his stead.

It was one cold day in December 2005 at the DepEd central office in Pasig. Previously I’ve been trying to get in touch with Intel Philippines, with the hope of initiating talks on bringing the Wimax technology to Naga City. Call it a quirk of fate, I shared a table with Tere and Arlita. The discussion went on to my baby -- the school board reinvention -- and how we are using local resources to bring public school students into the 21st century.

My eldest son Ezekiel, his brother Jack Ryan and sisters Sofia and Hilary are among those students. It is therefore in my best interest that the public schools in our city are kept abreast with modern technology. Including Wimax, Intel’s own baby that promises ubiquitous broadband internet experience within a radius of 8 miles. It might as well be into 8 thousand years.

“Why don’t you visit my city, and see for yourself what I’ve been blabbering about over the last 15 minutes?” I challenged the two nattily dressed execs sporting the latest gadget out there in the market. Tere, from time to time, would check emails on her Treo 250, Arlita would accept some calls through an IPAQ personal digital assistant with quadband GSM capabilities. I kept my Nokia 3220 firmly in my pocket, as showing it would reinforce the technological divide between a 39-year old local state worker on the one hand and his private sector counterparts, already in their late 40s, on the other. But I had all the confidence in the world that we had been doing the right things in Naga -- and no amount of gadget inferiority can change that fact.

After us visiting the Intel plant in Cavite in February the following year, and seeing Wimax in action, followed by two more meetings in Manila, including their Bangkal, Makati office, Teresa finally showed up and returned the compliment in October. It was smooth sailing from there on: last Saturday, we were setting up the final Wimax transmitter in Panicuason that will guarantee that Naga becomes the first digital city in the Philippines. Joe Baligad, Erwin Oliva and Richard Parcia were there representing Intel, and the wide smiles plastered in their faces are as priceless as those Mastercard moments: they have delivered the goods insofar as setting up a Wimax pilot city in Southeast Asia is concerned.

Jaime Casin led the Bayantel contingent: unlike the conventional WiFi setup (where all one needs is a decent DSL connection that he can farm out to WiFi-enable gadgets within a 150 yard radius), Wimax needs a carrier -- a telco -- to buy into the technology, provide the backhaul, and adjust its equipment to optimize delivery of wireless broadband internet service of up to into a 15 kilometer non-line-of-sight service area. A non-believer at the outset -- mainly because Bayantel had been cash-strapped by a receivership arrangement it grudgingly entered into to stave off lurking creditors thirsting for blood -- Jimmy was advocating CDMA. The receivership was a bitter offshoot of bad technology decisions made by the Lopezes who decided on a fixed line network instead of GSM, and of a financial disaster arising from a botched foray into wireless telephony that was the Extelcom investment.

But Intel would have none of that proprietary CDMA technology and vigorously pushed Wimax instead: the Naga City Government had to advance the P4 million capex required, in exchange for perpetual wireless broadband internet connection for all 36 public high schools -- including Grandview Elementary which is a stone throw away from our house -- and the 14 connections for City Hall, to be shared among its 28 agencies within the compound as well as the nearby Civic Center two blocks away.

One Wimax transmitter planted on top of the main building at the Ateneo de Naga High School campus in Pacol, two kilometer from where we live, would have sufficed for Naga, as the farthest built-up areas are only 13 kilometers from end to end. But Mayor Robredo did not want to leave anything to chance: it’s either boom or bust; service quality should be impeccable, or we might as well forget our dream for Naga as digital city, about Wimax and the partnership with Intel that we’ve painstakingly built. So, on top of the two antennae set up at the city center and the ADENU campus in Pacol, we finally put up the third transmitter at the Mainit Hotspring -- with permission from the Tan and Teclo families -- to create a three-point Wimax umbrella that will envelope the whole of Naga and nearby towns.

My mistake was to bring Ezekiel along. I did not like the idea of him joining our party at first, but my eldest, a graduating 19-year old 3D animation student at the Ateneo main campus at the centro, was relentless in his insistence on joining.

“I cannot afford distractions here. You know how important this is to me,” I said while poring through a stack of papers containing the work and financial plan for the final Wimax antenna.

“I’m old enough to take care of myself,” he shot back. “Besides, Jack is responsible enough to look after Nokie and my two sisters,” referring to the two other recent additions to the Prilles household. There was that deliberate emphasis on “responsible” -- responsibility being a constant touchy subject between a growingly disappointed father and his eldest son who doesn’t seem to belong.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay so invisible your guests will not even feel I’m around. I’ll just take a dip at one of the steam pools,” he pleaded in a soft but firm voice. The tone was a stark contrast to the stony silence that would always rise, wall-like, between me and my son. A reserved, quiet young man, Boke as well called him endearingly was Jack’s exact opposite, who is naturally gregarious, outgoing, highly sociable and popular -- attested by the many boy and girl friends he has made at the Grandview and Green Valley communities.

Little did I know that seeing him dip into that particular Mainit steam pool would be my last. Or so I thought.


THE PRILLESES of Pacol are transplants, part of the low- to middle-class families that trooped to socialized housing projects mushrooming in upper Naga. Stumped by the sudden rise in land values at the fringes of the city center, property developers like Fil-Estate, Ayala and the Jamaica groups struck an agreement with the Naga City Housing and Urban Development Board in the late 1990’s: they can put up the required 15% socialized housing component of their upscale projects in the peripheries of the city, where land is still a lot cheaper.

My wife, Lynn, was one of the audacious takers of these housing projects. A high school math teacher over the last 11 years, she signed on the contract with the Grandview developers against what I thought was my better judgment even before the first cornerstone was built. When things cleared, it was a windfall decision: a small downpayment netted us a two-story terraced house in the eastern part of the subdivision, with a practically painless P2,500 monthly amortization spread over the next 10 years. Households who invested later had to pony up at least 50% more than we did. After pouring in another P100,000 in improvements, we joined the ranks of the new homeowning class of Naga, a city of 150,000 in central Philippines.

The main basis of my opposition was the fact that the planned Grandview subdivision will sit alongside a thriving community of urban poor settlers in Naga, who later called theirs Green Valley to distinguish it from ours, divided only by a creek that flows from Inarihan River in Mt. Isarog. They came in ahead of us, driven by the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan socialized housing program of Mayor Robredo which in the late 80’s sought to ensure affording homelots for all urban poor residents. Benefiting no less than 25% of the total city population, that pro-poor program also ensured that his administration will control City Hall come hell and high water. Whatever remains of my castilaloy bloodline tells there me something irregular with the idea, rooted on the fear that my children will be corrupted by their counterparts in that community.

Those fears were proven mostly wrong by time. A symbiotic relationship arose between our communities, as Grandview residents -- who mostly had to travel to the city center to work during the day: as teachers, government and private sector workers, businessmen, enterpreneurs, practically everything there is to be done under the Bikol sun -- had to rely on the Green Valley neighbors -- who came over to do the laundry, watch over our children, and provide all-around help -- to ensure that their households will run properly and efficiently. It was the practise of game theory at its very best: mutually beneficial cooperation yielding the most optimum outcome.

And so for close to a decade now, we have come to love the conventional union of these two communities, evidenced by the rise of a Catholic parish that serves both, with its church built beside the creek; and Grandview Elementary School just right across the street -- where Jack aka Budi graduated from, and Sofia and Hilary aka Pep are currently enrolled. Grandview is a veritable melting pot of families from different parts of Camarines Sur. The neighboring Pardes just right across the street are from Tinambac, along with many others; the Bucos are from the Sipocot-Libmanan area; and the Ordases from Iriga City in the Rinconada section of the province. The Martins, Ruizos, Razons, Primaveras and many others like them have moved in from the urban lowland barangays of the city itself, enticed by the powerful appeal of finally owning one’s house after years of moving and renting from one unit after another.

Our family is no different: my parents are from Pili by way of Iriga and Nabua, my wife’s from Oas in the neighboring Albay province. She is three years my junior but twenty years ago, we were classmates in a physics subject at the University of Nueva Caceres, one of the three in Naga; fell in love and got married on the basis a common faith, found work in here, and finally moved over and rented houses -- first in Bagumbayan Norte then in Calauag -- when commuting daily from Pili to Naga and vice versa is no longer practicable.

That partnership produced six wonderful children, each one uniquely fashioned: Jack was a born leader who has a way with people regardless of age; Sofie was extraordinarily responsible, caring and hardworking, a boon to Lola Oas aka Corazon, her grandmother that manages the household when we are off to work; Pep was the straight-shooting, highly sociable and fashionable girl who sings as well as she dances; Patricia aka Nokie is a walking contradiction: a dervish of a girl who, on the one hand, fearlessly stands up to Budi’s cariño brutal but on the other can give Pep a run for her fashionista ways; and then Bianca aka Lambada, the burly self-proclaimed enforcer of the house whose constant battles with the smaller Nokie is a common sight in the Prilles household.

And then there is my enigmatic Ezekiel: he graduated at the top of his elementary class in Pacol, but somewhere somehow lost zest in his high school studies at the science-oriented program of Camarines Sur National High School. All his teachers, from freshman to senior without exception, said that intellectually, Boke is a class by himself. When at his elements, he can be eloquent in languages, and exceptionally sharp in math and the sciences. But disappointed with mostly uninspiring teachers -- my wife’s diagnosis of this sorry episode -- he progressively withdrew into a shell, and breezed through high school with minimum effort but without the distinction that her parents dreamed of upon graduation. But in all those years, he remained a voracious reader with an eclectic taste -- ranging from the adventures of Harry Potter, the Fellowship of the Ring in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, contemporary space travel, and Bicol history and culture. The last one is our common interest, and in my opinion the redeeming value of what I thought was an uneventful high schooling in the city’s best public school program.