Mabuhay!

(Mabuhay means welcome in Tagalog, the main language of Luzon, of which Manila is the main city. That’s pretty much all the Tagalog I know. Check back with me later.)

Well, after about 24 hours of air travel, I made it to Manila in the Philippines on January 4. Friend-of-a-friend (and now just a friend!) Ramon Dimacali was incredibly generous to host me in Makati, a pretty affluent area of Manila, for my first week while I got over jetlag and readjusted. (If you’re looking for insurance in the Philippines, you can’t go wrong with his FPG Insurance: http://fpgins.com/ph; he’s a really savvy businessman.)

Moreover, Mr. Dimacali provided an invaluable connection to the family of Carlos P. Romulo (CPR), the politician whom I am studying here. So, last Thursday, I got to meet Roberto Romulo, the son of CPR—and a fascinating figure in his own right. The former head of IBM in the Philippines, Mr. Romulo then served as the Philippines’ ambassador to the European Community (now the European Union) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mr. Romulo provided helpful insight into CPR as a man and a father—perspective you don’t usually get from archival documents.

With Mr. Roberto Romulo (on the right, in case you don't know what I look like).

I also got to meet Mr. Romulo’s daughter Liana, who is responsible for taking care of CPR’s papers and created the wonderful content about CPR at the Carlos Romulo Foundation website (http://carlospromulo.org/). She also curated an amazing set of photographs to decorate Romulo’s Café in Makati, a delightful restaurant which she showed me around after lunch with her dad. If you’re in Manila, be sure to check it out!

I’ll have more in the coming days on museums in Manila, as well as where I’m working (the University of the Philippines). Until then, here is some footage of CPR on a 1955 TV program very different from what passes for news these days.