Dengan Cemerlang / With Distinction / Summa cum laude

The European Union education system has finally recognised the International Masters degree (with distinction) conferred to me by the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya. As such, I am now eligible to pursue doctoral studies in any European university.

After receiving the call in the office from the credentials evaluator of the academic recognition centre, I had a look at the diploma and transcript of records which I submitted to them for assessment. I glanced at the diploma in an offhand manner. Nothing special; and I thought it was even printed in an ordinary paper. What struck my attention more was that the paper was a bit crumpled due to the careless handling of the courier despite my friend Tina's (who I know to be very particular and caring) all caps notice to the courier in Malaysia when she mailed it to me here in Estonia: ‘PLS. DON'T FOLD. IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS INSIDE. THANK YOU!’

When I got back to the dorm, I thought of sending emails to my former professors - each of them has actually made an original contribution to their respective fields, making them to be among the world’s most distinguished scholars in the fields of development economics, regional integration, and political economy. I sent emails to them, expressing all over again my gratitude to the wonderful learning encounters I had with them when I was doing my MA, and also sharing with them the honour of receiving the ‘dengan cemerlang’, which is truly special to title-obsessed societies like Malaysia.

I never consider myself a great student. In fact, I had each and every mark in the University of the Philippines’ grading system encircled in my undergraduate classcards, from 1.0 to 1.75 to 2.25 to 3.0 to 4.0 to 5.0 to ‘inc’. The only grade I never had was ‘drp’ since I always said to myself then ‘tuloy ang laban’ (the fight shall continue) even though I could have handily opted for this grade when getting a 5.0 in Math 17 was already too imminent. I still keep all these undergraduate classcards in my ‘suitcase of memories’ (which is literally a suitcase where I have tried to keep memorable stuff since elementary and high school - and yes, including those cheesy love letters to my old crushes!). I was not in the top 10 of the graduating class in both elementary and high school. I had also my time in Row 4 (yes, that row for the slow, naughty pupils in the class!), kasama ng mga kakosa ko (with my fellow inmates), our groins always got pinched when I was in grade school. I did not even come from the top section in our high school when I graduated.

I received awards of recognition for leadership though for both the graduations in high school and college - as the highest boy scout leader in the former and as member of the student council and leader of several student organisations in the latter (I was even nominated to the UP Diliman Gawad Chanselor Para sa Pinakamahusay na Lider Estudyante [UP Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Leader] which, I was told, I could have won had it not for the ‘inc’ I had during that semester – long story). But then I do not consider myself to be academically excellent. During the time he was president of UP, my former professor, Francisco Nemenzo, even described me as ‘flippant at times’ in one of the ‘handwritten’ recommendation/reference forms he filled out for me. (Yes, I've kept that recommendation letter in my suitcase)!

In other words, getting a ‘summa cum laude’ for my International Master’s degree feels too good to be true, if not funny enough. Until I received replies from my former professors.... And these lines flattered me but saddened me as well (especially when this wonderful and passionate teacher said his teaching stint is now over):

Dear Bonn,

…[T]he honorific "dengan cemerlang" is entirely merited - whatever...you went through in...Malaysia could never take away from the fact, pure and simple, that you are an outstanding scholar with a tremendous passion for knowledge. You deserve everything, Bonn!

Though you are in my heart for many reasons - not least your high-level monkeying around - I also realise that you were my last great protege as a student and, if I may say so, the best of the bunch. Sometimes I pass a few moments thinking of those whom I have taught - [IP, LC, AN, DK, RR], and the rest. They're all in the academic world, ploughing their furrow, teaching a new generation, writing their findings. But you were the best and you will go furthest in pushing our understanding of critical political economy. I feel my teaching stint is done ... time for other things now.

Thanks for the very kind words, Professor, especially for the reminder that what has been awarded to me is full of meaning. I'll try to carry on. Now I have understood more than ever why my mother was disappointed to learn that I did not attend the convocation to receive this distinction. I have once again discovered how the mundane can be extraordinarily special, how one thing can contain everything, and how the commonplace can be deciphered to understand its beautiful mystery.

I had a sentimental glance at the diploma, embraced it close to my heart thanking those who have blessed, helped, and motivated me, including the Malaysian people, especially the workers, whose sweat has cultivated and fertilised me with so much blessings. And I said to myself that I will never look at that crumpled paper indifferently again! It is a token readily retrievable from memory to keep me inspired especially during times of doubt when a dormant optimism needs to be awakened. Indeed, like any other objects, that piece of crumpled paper is inanimate. It is I who shall give life to it.

Well-meaning friends and family often ask me: Why Malaysia when I could get to Singapore? Why Estonia when I could get to the UK or the US? I thank Robert Frost for providing the answer:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

P.S. The other day I received another beautiful inspiring letter from my first ever boss and former professor, who is well-regarded as a serious scholar with multi-awarded research and who recommended me to do my MA at the Asia-Europe Institute.

Dear Bonn,

It looks like you're living a charmed and charming life out there getting to places we can only imagine and meeting all kinds of interesting and important people. You also work with a very solid core of scholars who are on the cutting edges of unorthodox but compellingly relevant academic and policy approaches to the social sciences.

Indeed, we grow and progress in life remembering what motivates and inspires us, and forgetting the old things of no value that have once stolen our dreams. This, I – we – must take to heart and keep in mind. This is how to play a good game dengan cemerlang, with distinction.

A Meaningful Easter in this Wonderland

During the Holy Week I've been writing to friends that I felt the Holy Week more when I was in the predominantly Muslim country of Malaysia a couple of years ago than here in the predominantly Lutheran Estonia. But after some heartfelt encounters I had with an old working woman in the laundry on Holy Wednesday and Maundy Thursday, I could say I have not only 'felt' the spirit of Lent here, I have soulfully 'experienced' it. This heartwarming experience I hold between me and my God. I go BAGETS for the Holy Week; thanks to a reminder from Fr. Jerry Orbos, whose reflective message I also forwarded to family and friends for Lent: Balik Panginoon, Alis Galit, Gawa Mabuti, Express your love, Tanggal Bisyo, Sacrifice, Smile, Secret. I thus keep these things a secret, something between me and my Master. As Fr. Jerry wrote:

S-Secret: If you want to experience real joy, do all of the above in secret. Let it be something just between you and your God, and you’ll experience a joy which the world cannot give or take away. Come to think of it, maybe this is the reason I started this column with a note about being a secretary—a reminder to keep our Lenten project of transformation and communication a secret.

As I am not familiar with the changes in the schedule the church here made in observance of the Holy Week, I thought of dropping by the church yesterday to see whether an English mass would be celebrated. There I found myself as the only member of the faithful, aside from the two guys fixing some decorations in the altar. I knelt down and stayed awhile for some quiet moments. I then proceeded to the bookstore where I found myself holding Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (1871). I bought it, as well as Jorge Luis Borges' The Mirror of Ink (1933) -- both I intend to read when I leave Tallinn and travel around Europe in the next few weeks.

I am a child again. I have started reading Alice in Wonderland this Easter Sunday. I am enjoying it. The book has both pictures and conversations! As Alice said to her sister at the beginning of the book: 'and what is the use of a book without pictures or conversation?' This line immediately hit me, and made me smile, being reminded of those moments when I used to candidly say to my bookworm friends that I don't read novels because I find them too long and all letters! But then a friend once teased me during one of our trips to Puerto Galera when she caught me relaxing in my cottage holding a heavy read, and she said to me: 'Why are you reading Marx on the beach?!'

Thus far, I have now encountered several characters in Alice's Wonderland. The first was the White Rabbit with pink eyes (whose figure is also the illustration in Chapter One) which ran close by Alice uttering, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!', and taking a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket. To her burning curiosity seeing for the first time a rabbit with a waistcoat-pocket and a watch, Alice followed the White Rabbit and there she found herself down the rabbit-hole to experience the adventures in wonderland. (Interestingly, since this classic work the image of a 'white rabbit' in many folklore has been related to a sign of a new adventure and even good luck.)

Upon searching for e-cards to send to friends this morning I have noticed that the images and symbols that are associated with Easter include eggs, flowers, ducks or hens, rabbits or bunnies, and crucifix or the risen Lord. I am reminded of the Philippines where most people observe the Lent in the sorrowful passion of Christ, and hence the images of the cross and the performance of various penance. In other countries, however, Lent is observed with symbols of eggs, flowers and bunnies, which may appear to some to be only about a celebration of the glorious moment of Easter without the sorrowful mystery of the season. I do not want to go deeper into a discussion of this seeming difference in observance of Lent in various places and its implications for peoples' worldviews.

Cultural symbols signify a great deal about the way of life and thinking of people in a given territory. But I must also hasten to say: cultural symbols are not only bounded in space, or in a given territory, but also in time. It is sad to think that important cultural symbols that can be said to comprise a 'good life' only take the spotlight during occasional specific time frames (e.g., the images of rabbit and the risen Lord are only prominent during Lent). Such is the tragic case in my dear country. Rather than being truly integrated into the lifeworld of people, the symbols of Easter -- which all point to the virtues of faith, hope, and love -- will be corrupted by the vicious curse of the materiality of the political economy of poverty and plutocracy. The reason ain't mystery, it's history: people's way of living, or their happiness, is profoundly link to the wider material and social world.

After reading the first chapters of Alice's Wonderland, I flicked through the last pages of the book and there I found this beautiful and timely letter from Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, which I am reproducing here. I imagine this letter to have been written to me, both as a child of my dear mother and as a child of the struggle for change. Too, I wish I could have written these lines to the children of the world, especially the hopeful children in the Land of the Morning, the Pearl of the Orient, my dear country, Pilipinas. Sadly, like many other classic works, Carroll's story endures but the impact of its message is obscured in the history of human relations. Written in the spring exactly 131 years ago, we may cry a la Alice, becoming 'Curiouser and curiouser' and later on find ourselves swimming through the pool of tears we have had wept in the course of our adventures in this wonderland we call our world. But then again, it is the challenges and adventures, and our reflection upon our past, present, and future, that make life worth living.

An Easter Greeting
TO EVERY CHILD WHO LOVES
Alice

DEAR CHILD - Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter, from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can seem to yourself to hear, wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a happy Easter.

Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling, when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window — when, lying lazily with eyes half-shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one’s eyes like a beautiful picture or poem. And is not that a Mother’s gentle hand that undraws your curtains, and a Mother’s sweet voice that summons you to rise? To rise and forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams that frightened you so when all was dark — to rise and enjoy another happy day, first kneeling to thank that unseen Friend who sends you the beautiful sun?

Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as Alice? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all, except in Church and on a Sunday: but I think — nay, I am sure — that some children will read this gently and lovingly, and in the spirit in which I have written it.

For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into two halves — to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as to mention Him on a week-day. Do you think He cares to see only kneeling figures and to hear only tones of prayer — and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children, as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the 'dim religious light' of some solemn cathedral?

And if I have written anything to add to those stores of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows.

This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, feeling your 'life in every limb', and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air — and many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and grey-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight — but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the 'Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings'.

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this — when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters — when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day — and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!

Your affectionate friend,

LEWIS CARROLL
Easter 1876

I could so well relate to this letter. I have discovered the child in me again. This, especially, I personally dearly miss:

Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling, when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window—when, lying lazily with eyes half-shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one’s eyes like a beautiful picture or poem. And is not that a Mother’s gentle hand that undraws your curtains, and a Mother’s sweet voice that summons you to rise? To rise and forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams that frightened you so when all was dark — to rise and enjoy another happy day, first kneeling to thank that unseen Friend who sends you the beautiful sun?

And this, particularly, for all the children of the 'Sun of righteousness', I earnestly pray:

...[B]ut it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the 'Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings'.

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this — when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters — when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day — and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!

Wishing you and your families all the blessings Easter brings. May we all keep the Easter virtues of faith, hope, and love alive in our hearts. And may we not forget that the greatest of them all is love. Let the invincible love in us conquer the alienating curse of wickedness, anger, hatred, and fear haunting many of us.

Have a meaningful Easter down the rabbit-hole in our adventures for the good life in this wonderland!