Channeling Joseph Conrad at the Raffles’ Long Bar

I am volunteering.”

This is what I tell Monique Toda, who is the Raffles & Fairmont Makati director of communications. It is high tea time at the hotel’s Writers Bar. A piano player — who a while ago was ruminating on a starry, starry standard — shifts to pop. Guests are meeting over scones, Pomeranz and espresso. It is sunny outside. Monique and I are marveling at the elegant black bookcases that punctuate the bar. The idea is to sit down, order afternoon tea, and cozy up with a slim volume or two.

“Let me, Monique, pick out more books for the bar,” I tell her. I promise to not choose titles as if I were a member of Se7en’s Jonathan Doe Book of the Month Club. Go easy on St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica or Murderers and Madmen. We won’t pass on The Divine Comedy, though. Nick Joaquin wrote about how the late poet Jose Garcia-Villa was asked by a late President to procure books for Malacañang. I want to be a pedestrian version of Villa, going to Book Sale in Virra Mall and Harrison Plaza, the ukay-ukay bookstores on Maginhawa Street or in Cubao X, just grab entire Penguins or Vikings or old Vintages. That would be the most awesome chore in the world: hunting for titles by Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham or Rudyard Kipling. Lugging around a military backpack, Kurtz with the heart of “swag-ness.”

(A digression: That’s why I dismiss people outright who claim to have no use for reading — since all the eye tracking they need to do is posted online or couriered via cell technology. Reading a book, any book, is setting out on a quest of sorts. These people are missing out.)

“Exactly!” says Toda. “Those three were among the many writers who stayed at Raffles Singapore.” One website points out, “Somerset Maugham once called Raffles Hotel the legendary symbol for ‘all the fables of the Exotic East.’”

Imagine the author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and Lord Jim lording it over one of the long tables, contemplating one of his nautical parables, nursing a tall glass of pop nepenthe. Or Ernest Hemingway conquering writer’s block with booze ‘n’ breakfast.

“That’s why the Raffles Makati Writers Bar looks like a parlor, or a library,” Toda reveals. “I want to fill the shelves with the classics — such as Emma by Jane Austen and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Leather-bound books that once you read them, they’ll bring back memories.” (To add local color, I’d love to add titles by Quijano de Manila and Doveglion — with essential reads by Krip Yuson, Butch Dalisay and absolutely Erwin Castillo.)

Raffles Makati has already sponsored two book clubs. The members came in, had high tea, and dissected an old George Eliot book — not just a title filched from Oprah’s book sorority. An Eliot would be a nice addition to the bookshelf. Gaiman also. 

As if on cue, the pianist starts playing You Decorated My Life.    

Every beat of art

Who curated the hotel’s art spaces? Hala Jaber.

“Hala is a Lebanese art consultant and sociologist. So when she came here she really studied our culture,” Toda explains. Hader has done art consultancy work for some of the Raffles properties abroad. “She picked out artworks — not based on how popular the artists are. She made her choices based on her own art appreciation as well as the vision of the interior designer Grace Soh who was working at that time with Singapore-based interior design group Bent Severin & Associates.”

Jaber’s choices reflect the Raffles philosophy: putting emphasis on local culture.

Toda shares, “In our property, the way we can show that is in our art and our cuisine. Here at Raffles Hotel and Residences, we have 2,700 commissioned artworks by local artists. That’s how much we’ve invested on Filipino art. It’s a good thing because of the resurgence of Filipino art in the past years or so.” 

Writers Bar has strategically-located pieces by Anthony Palomo, Edwin Wilwayco and Daniel dela Cruz — all have something to do with music. Palomo’s “The Serenade” is a suite of paintings that show how love could be both musical and magical. “Scherzo XXIV” and “Scherzo VVX (Beethoven)” are Wilwayco’s abstract rhapsodies. And Dela Cruz’s “Magnificat 2” depicts a voluptuous cellist or bassist playing a silent counterpoint to the house pianist.  

We retire to the Long Bar for cocktails and are greeted by Pedro Garcia’s painting featuring faceless figures captured in an eternal “eleven o’clock.”

“Delphine Delorme is a French lady who lives in Cebu,” Toda says. She created these collages that highlight Filipino culture: from carnival queens and beauty pageants to the Pac-man himself.

A Charlie Chaplin painting occupies one corner of the Long Bar. The great comic was a longtime resident of Raffles Singapore.

“Even the restrooms have whimsical artworks,” she enthuses.

We order a refreshing pair of Makati Luxury Sling and the Panutsa Old Fashioned bourbon. The Makati Luxury Sling is the counterpart of the Lion City sling. It comes with 24k-gold dust flakes. (“When you drink it,” Toda gushes, “you’ll feel really luxurious.”) And the penuche bourbon will do an MC5 in your head; it will kick out the jams, I tell you.

Speaking of jamming, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and the rest of Aerosmith stayed at The Raffles for five days, followed a few weeks later by Vin Diesel (in a white sando during daytime; a more “formal” black sando in the evening).

“That was cool!” describes Toda. “When one of the Aerosmith handlers saw our Writers Bar pianist playing I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, he recorded it on the cell phone and sent it as MMS to Steven who was up in his room.” The singer went downstairs and promptly hugged the pianist.

Tyler even walked all the way to Landmark and Greenbelt, and when he got out of the Louis Vuitton boutique, hundreds of fans were waiting for him. Singing.

More stories are shared to us by the bartenders at Long Bar. With motorized bamboo fans flapping from the ceiling, with peanut husks falling like downbeats on the floor, with more Slings being slung... a man would feel this might be the start of an excellent adventure.

And it begins like so...      

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The Raffles & Fairmont Hotel is at 1 Raffles Drive, Makati Ave., Makati City. For information, visit www.raffles.com or www.fairmont.com. For reservations, call the Writers Bar at 555-9888 ext. 6840.