Learning early
March 11, 2007 | 12:00am
This Week’s Winner
Phillip Kimpo Jr., 21, is a recent computer science graduate of UP Diliman. By day he’s a working fellow, by night he"pretentiously postures as a creative writer and poet." When his literary muse is on hiatus, he works as a freelance writer, web project manager, semi-prolific webmaster, and professional blogger (http://corsarius.net).
In her optimism, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proclaimed this year, 2007, the "Year of the Filipino Entrepreneur." Or so the business headline said; I never bothered to read the article.
I don’t need to learn the statistics or hullabaloo forecasts. Trust me, I know with certainty that the Prez was talking about my generation, barely into their 20s and barely free of their parents’ reins, brimming with reckless imprudence possibly resulting in career-cide. Specifically, Madame President was pointing to my batch: well-trained and educated in the art of trading; educated not in college (that would be too uninspiring), but in grade school.
A decade ago, we were already master entrepreneurs in our little 40-student classrooms.
If our collective experiences were chronicled into a book, it might’ve become Carl J. Schramm’s The Entrepreneurial Imperative. Or it might have not. After all, Schramm’s masterpiece is an imperative for Americans; ours is an imperative story for Filipinos.
Each of us had his or her own wares to market. We traded among ourselves all the little things we could get our hands on  paper clips, sharpeners, Mongol pencils broken in half. Sometimes the negotiations involved money ("Fifty centavos for your ball pen cap," "No way, it’s one peso! Add two more for free staple wire.") But most of the time, we’d do it the way our ancestors did  through bartering. The shrewd one would say, "Three sheets of paper for my inkless pen, deal?" The burly one would say, "Gimme that cute pebble or else you’ll get a punch, free."
We carried out our transactions face-to-face during recess, through emissaries (who charged fees) during class, and through signed contracts and promissory notes written on torn notebook pages. In short, it was a thriving industry.
And it didn’t end there. Like any respectable 10-year-old capitalists, we had our personal business empires that we meticulously and ruthlessly expanded, sometimes at the expense of others. We ran our own tabloids, though we preferred to call them newspapers, painstakingly written with colored ball pens and Pentel pens. Our publications served the latest news about our beloved teachers, the latest views on hated disciplinarians, the latest praise of our business partners, and the latest dirt on our business rivals. We were our own propaganda machines.
We ran our own basketball teams, one-man squads that played in several competing leagues put up by polarized business camps. The courts were makeshift, with a folder as the hardwood, the classroom ceiling as the roof, a 25-centavo coin as the ball, and a 10-year-old as both league owner and referee.
One-kid companies, one-kid media outfits, one-kid sports franchises. What was next? One-kid nations, of course. We took our ambitions to the next level by governing our own countries forged from our juvenile dreams. Our nations had names (mine was Cathphillines, from a childhood crush’s name and mine; how imaginative!), capital cities (Lalkim, from her surname and mine), maps, currencies, and armies.
Armies, yes, for which we made alliances and fought wars, invaded other nations and created vast empires. Wars were fought on paper, yet the animosity sometimes spilled into real life, mostly through transient snobbery and refusal to lend school material. Like children the victors gloated and the vanquished were embittered. But of course, we were children.
We were children  did that make it all fun and play? No. There were the sordid affairs as well.
There were the three claw marks I got on my right temple from a friend (yes, he really was) who was asked by a business competitor to do a "hit" on me. There was the darts player who accidentally hit the bulls-eye on a classmate’s forehead (why is it that accidents always happen in fiercely competitive environments?). There was the newspaper owner who shouted in glee, "I got a scoop! I got a scoop!" when a boy broke his elbow and had his bone sticking out of the skin. There were the sickening snickering and salacious gossiping that went unabated for days when two boys supposedly harassed their classmate in the restroom. All three were not from our "cream of the crop section," and all of us in the school were boys. Catholic boys.
Years later, a great number of our batch entered the esteemed colleges of this country. A couple of them, including me, became the nation’s scholars in the state university.
We learned early, unfortunately.
Now that I think of it, I don’t miss those days. What’s there to miss? All the action still happens around us every day, carried out on a grander scale and by older, but definitely not wiser, personages.
Phillip Kimpo Jr., 21, is a recent computer science graduate of UP Diliman. By day he’s a working fellow, by night he"pretentiously postures as a creative writer and poet." When his literary muse is on hiatus, he works as a freelance writer, web project manager, semi-prolific webmaster, and professional blogger (http://corsarius.net).
In her optimism, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proclaimed this year, 2007, the "Year of the Filipino Entrepreneur." Or so the business headline said; I never bothered to read the article.
I don’t need to learn the statistics or hullabaloo forecasts. Trust me, I know with certainty that the Prez was talking about my generation, barely into their 20s and barely free of their parents’ reins, brimming with reckless imprudence possibly resulting in career-cide. Specifically, Madame President was pointing to my batch: well-trained and educated in the art of trading; educated not in college (that would be too uninspiring), but in grade school.
A decade ago, we were already master entrepreneurs in our little 40-student classrooms.
If our collective experiences were chronicled into a book, it might’ve become Carl J. Schramm’s The Entrepreneurial Imperative. Or it might have not. After all, Schramm’s masterpiece is an imperative for Americans; ours is an imperative story for Filipinos.
Each of us had his or her own wares to market. We traded among ourselves all the little things we could get our hands on  paper clips, sharpeners, Mongol pencils broken in half. Sometimes the negotiations involved money ("Fifty centavos for your ball pen cap," "No way, it’s one peso! Add two more for free staple wire.") But most of the time, we’d do it the way our ancestors did  through bartering. The shrewd one would say, "Three sheets of paper for my inkless pen, deal?" The burly one would say, "Gimme that cute pebble or else you’ll get a punch, free."
We carried out our transactions face-to-face during recess, through emissaries (who charged fees) during class, and through signed contracts and promissory notes written on torn notebook pages. In short, it was a thriving industry.
And it didn’t end there. Like any respectable 10-year-old capitalists, we had our personal business empires that we meticulously and ruthlessly expanded, sometimes at the expense of others. We ran our own tabloids, though we preferred to call them newspapers, painstakingly written with colored ball pens and Pentel pens. Our publications served the latest news about our beloved teachers, the latest views on hated disciplinarians, the latest praise of our business partners, and the latest dirt on our business rivals. We were our own propaganda machines.
We ran our own basketball teams, one-man squads that played in several competing leagues put up by polarized business camps. The courts were makeshift, with a folder as the hardwood, the classroom ceiling as the roof, a 25-centavo coin as the ball, and a 10-year-old as both league owner and referee.
One-kid companies, one-kid media outfits, one-kid sports franchises. What was next? One-kid nations, of course. We took our ambitions to the next level by governing our own countries forged from our juvenile dreams. Our nations had names (mine was Cathphillines, from a childhood crush’s name and mine; how imaginative!), capital cities (Lalkim, from her surname and mine), maps, currencies, and armies.
Armies, yes, for which we made alliances and fought wars, invaded other nations and created vast empires. Wars were fought on paper, yet the animosity sometimes spilled into real life, mostly through transient snobbery and refusal to lend school material. Like children the victors gloated and the vanquished were embittered. But of course, we were children.
We were children  did that make it all fun and play? No. There were the sordid affairs as well.
There were the three claw marks I got on my right temple from a friend (yes, he really was) who was asked by a business competitor to do a "hit" on me. There was the darts player who accidentally hit the bulls-eye on a classmate’s forehead (why is it that accidents always happen in fiercely competitive environments?). There was the newspaper owner who shouted in glee, "I got a scoop! I got a scoop!" when a boy broke his elbow and had his bone sticking out of the skin. There were the sickening snickering and salacious gossiping that went unabated for days when two boys supposedly harassed their classmate in the restroom. All three were not from our "cream of the crop section," and all of us in the school were boys. Catholic boys.
Years later, a great number of our batch entered the esteemed colleges of this country. A couple of them, including me, became the nation’s scholars in the state university.
We learned early, unfortunately.
Now that I think of it, I don’t miss those days. What’s there to miss? All the action still happens around us every day, carried out on a grander scale and by older, but definitely not wiser, personages.
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