NO hyperbole here.
It is a literal expression of what I would have turned into had I remained in my state of things in the late 1970s, when seeking to escape the political chaos of the city, I sought an isolated nook in which to stay in the outskirts of Antipolo, then still a poorly developed municipality.
The spot was perfect for my calling as a writer.
By a brook that runs pristine from the adjoining Valdez Farm, owned by former ambassador Carlos Valdez, the place was, in my humble estimation, much too irresistibly idyllic for a young bachelor pen pusher ever in search of muses: large acacia tree here whose roots, digging deep into the water, did make for the gentle melodic murmurs that mixed with the breeze whispers from the bamboo grove there, with the aroma of ripening fruits of two century-old mango trees sweetening the air all day and night long.
Paradise now, one would say.
Except writing was best pursued only on the day when sunlight provided the illumination.
It was good anyway while it lasted — in my single blessedness, I didn’t have to write all through the dead of night.
Only when the kids started coming that I needed light to keep burning all night long. Most especially when the script I was writing was needed the next day — both for the film shoot and my one-year-old’s daily milk; mostly, I got paid COD.
At the start, Robbie Tan, Seiko Films producer, sought to solve the problem by gifting me with a kerosene-powered Petromax, whose light indeed was quite bright. Trouble was the stuff needed to be pumped with air every once too often. Every true blue writer would attest to the fact that doing so is the height of torture. Just as when you reach the climax of the scene you are writing, your thought flow switches off abruptly since at that precise point you must pump the lamp again.
Oh, what a job it is to recover a climax aborted right at its point of glorious explosion.
In many instances, you completely lose the muses, so to speak.
After that, I had to make do with the next best thing: fashion a kerosene lamp from a used pomade bottle, equipped with a wick that lit steadily without much attention. I plastered the contraption on top of my Olivetti — and it did the trick of lighting up my work since then with no more thought-flow disturbance.
Except for one personal idiosyncrasy: I always get carried away by the emotion endemic in the scene. The frenzy of a fight scene is reflected literally in the violent manner my fingers bang on the keys of the typewriter, while my mouth voices out all the cusses between the protagonists: “Anak ka n*****a! Eto’ng sayo!” And that, with a violent wallop from my hands that upturns the typewriter — sending flames from the kerosene lamp to the wooden table.
Ah, all the horrible things you get from not getting electricity.
That rather primitive atmosphere of churning out film blockbusters are inevitably called to mind by a PNA news account that ran lately, thus:
“The high demand that cannot be met by supply due to the sustained unavailability of several power plants again resulted in the issuance of a red alert for the Visayas grid from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday.
“A yellow alert, meanwhile, is in effect from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m., according to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).
“The NGCP estimated the available capacity at 2,410 megawatts (MW) and peak demand at 2,502 MW, noting that units 1 and 2 of Therma Visayas Inc. remain on forced outage, and electricity imports from Mindanao remain low due to coal plant outages and high demand.
“It said eight power plants in the Visayas are on forced outage while 20 others have been unavailable since 2021.
“With 13 others working at derated capacities, total loss to the grid has reached 836.9 MW.
“Authorities have said that measures are being taken, such as installing battery-powered generating sets, to address the situation in the Visayas grid.”
This was my condition in Antipolo in the late 1970s!
The news is datelined Aug. 18, 2026, way, way past the heyday of my filmmaking career, when during a year I made the most number of films by a movie director — all six of them, all blockbusters, not to mention launchers of stars like Cristina Gonzales, Lani Mercado, Cesar Montano, ah, the list is long.
Confronted with the news of perennial electricity outages in the Visayas, and realizing how immensely my writing and film career had progressed from scratch, I inevitably settled on one incontrovertible realization: Thank God there is Meralco.
In the early 1980s, when the kids kept coming, I finally decided to apply for electrical connection, knowing already well how difficult it would be under my circumstances.
The lines that ran through my area were the high-tension ones operated by the NGCP. The only way to bring down the electric voltage to the necessary level was to put up a transformer for the purpose.
Thus did it come about that to get my needed electrical connection, I had to course it through a step-down transformer by Meralco.
Which I did by buying Meralco shares; you get regular returns for those shares anyway.
But the truly big return was that all of a sudden, my long epoch of darkness was a thing of the past.
All things bright and wonderful.
But, in fact, not just for me and family but also for all residents in the area.
Hey, wait.
I alone spent for that transformer. Why was everybody else getting an electricity connection through it?
It took these many long years — and with the experience of the Visayas constantly riveting into my consciousness — for me to realize that no electricity is the most expensive electricity.
I would rather pay than suffer blackouts.
This is precisely the reason why system loss is only a negligible side issue.
The real concern is power availability.
If we continue to spook investors, then we run the risk of having no one to put up those power plants.
The poor budding scriptwriter at the start of this narrative did go on to enjoy all the perks of a well-blessed life: good education for the kids and the subsequent respectable social standing for themselves and their own offspring.
Amazing that into his late 80s, the guy has retained his fertile mental faculties, writing four columns a week for The Manila Times and its Tagalog sister publication Pinoy Peryodiko.
He remains there, in the irresistibly idyllic nook by the brook, enjoying life to the fullest.
Some people would tend to attribute this fortune to divine fate.
But then again, having gone through all imaginable trials and tribulations from not having electricity for a long period, the once struggling pen pusher refuses to deny that all the beautiful blessings he has had would not have come about if he had not had the benefit of a Meralco connection in the first place.
