It was a job I never applied for, never sought out and didn’t want. I was a columnist for that paper though, but was taken in as editor when the late great Joe Burgos decided to expand Malaya after EDSA I.
I didn’t even have the chance to go through my appointment papers. I only learned about it when I read an item on the front page announcing new editorial positions.
I accepted the job with hesitation, but at the same time flattered that I was put there by Joe Burgos, who will go down Philippine history as one of the greatest freedom fighters during martial law. (His son Jonas, equally as patriotic as the father, still hasn’t been found to this day, unfortunately.)
Originally, my position only required me to handle the entertainment section, which was a huge earner thanks to movie ads. In time, I was also assigned to go over the features and lifestyle pages.
The workload was tough. I was in the office at 9 a.m. in the hope that I could put my sections to bed by early evening and enjoy my nightlife. That never happened. Whenever our editor-in-chief Chuchay M. Fernandez would see that I was done with my official duties, she (or at times city editor Yvonne Chua) would pass on photos to me for captioning. Or go edit manuscripts of beat reporters. Somehow there was always something extra to do and I hardly got home before 2 a.m.
My parents wanted me to quit. They could not understand why I had to put in so much work hours when I could enjoy my privileges as the youngest child and simply sponge off them. Since they were lawyers and had no idea what presswork was like, I had difficulty pointing out that the training I was getting there was invaluable. And the pay wasn’t cheap. I had three sections, so multiply that thrice.
Since I couldn’t rely on the family car all the time, I decided to pick up driving again and attempted to get to the office with me behind the wheel. But passing through the Quezon Memorial Circle in the morning was never a joy ride.
Bus and jeepney drivers can always tell who are new at driving and for some sadistic reason bully the still inexperienced by sticking close to your vehicle and terrorize you by pretending they’ll graze your car. You can sense that they derive pleasure from that.
By the time I got to the office I’d be a wreck. But I quickly recovered because we worked as one family. I always looked up to Joe’s wife, the former Edith Tronqued, as my mommy there. I may not have seen her for the longest, but I love her to pieces to this day.
It was too bad that Joe decided to sell Malaya only after a couple of months and in came a new executive editor who launched the most expansive witch-hunting since Salem. Jobless all throughout martial law, he turned into a power tripper and flushed out all the Burgos appointees.
I was the fourth to get it and that was bloody. The new editorial boss screamed at me one afternoon and so I snarled back. An indefinite suspension followed, until I got fired because I wouldn’t apologize.
The union backed me up, but nothing could be done anymore. If there was anything positive that came out of that, heads stopped rolling after me.
I was this close to kissing journalism goodbye to apply as a flight steward with the help of Boy Abunda (through Bong Quintana) when Ricky Lo told me to write for this paper.
I only spent eight months in Malaya and that did not allow me to develop deep friendships with my co-workers. But there is still this fondness in my heart for them.
Among those I worked with there was Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan. Yes, she was the journalist-UP professor whose case hogged headlines starting the other week after she died in a vehicular mishap. It was a bus that did her in.
A few years back, another Malaya co-worker, Carmelina Monroy, was in Commonwealth Avenue (the killer highway) and was hit by a bus and was run over by another one which I was told was what killed her.
Every so often we see on the news passengers dying in vehicular accidents caused by reckless bus drivers. There had been so many that the dead only end up as statistics in my head.
But what are the chances of having two former co-workers from the same office where I only stayed eight months dying in separate bus-related accidents?
I am lucky to still be alive despite the fact that I take EDSA every day. Truth to tell, however, those buses are slowly killing me with the fumes those vehicles emit and how they cause traffic that gives me a heart attack every time I’m late for appointments. They block intersections and don’t care if they have to spit out or take in passengers in the middle of the highway.
Jeepney drivers give us the same kind of headache, except that their vehicles are smaller and cause less harm.
This piece may come out anti-poor because these bus and jeepney drivers as they always reason out are only trying to make a living. But lives are at stake here.
Around this time three years ago, after I covered a Mass for the then already very ill Rudy Fernandez, I tried driving back to GMA 7 and along Tomas Morato Avenue my car got hit by an overtaking jeepney. The driver got off his vehicle and managed to only scratch his head. I was overcome with compassion and let him go.
When I told my compadre Cesar Apolinario about the accident, he told me that I should have made the driver liable for the damage. “I’m sure he only scratched his head,” the award-winning news reporter quipped. Obviously, that’s what they all do after they’ve caused an accident.
In the case of the bus driver involved in the accident that claimed the life of Chit, the driver must have also scratched his head initially. Later, he fled. He surrendered last Thursday, which somehow must have caused relief to Chit’s loved ones, especially her husband, Prof. Roland Simbulan.
Unfortunately, I don’t expect Prof. Simbulan to be merely scratching his head now. It would be difficult for him to scratch his head while he holds with both hands his bleeding heart grieving over the loss of a beloved wife in a vehicular accident that could have been avoided if we only had more responsible bus drivers.