How to stop an asteroid from killing your family

By Paolo Mangahas

"The strangest things happen to Paolo Mangahas, maybe because, by his own admission, he's a tad strange himself. There's the friend who used to chase his school bus and scream his name, or the strangers at parties who end up telling him their deep, dark secrets. Then again, this is the same fellow who can't abide by wrinkled sheets, who keeps th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Apr 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9789361728426

Book preview

How to stop an asteroid from killing your family

and other essays

Paolo Mangahas

Ukiyoto Publishing

All global publishing rights are held by

Ukiyoto Publishing

Published in 2021

Content Copyright © Paolo Mangahas

ISBN

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or experienced in person.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

www.ukiyoto.com

Author’s Note

This book is a compilation of previously published essays that I wrote sometime between 2007 and 2017. They appeared in various print and digital publications throughout that decade, and I’m thrilled to now be able to share them with you in one book.

When I was first approached by the publisher with the idea of turning a selection of my essays into a book, I was skeptical. How could an assortment of musings on diverse topics be cohesive enough for one publication? But after I had carefully gone through each of them again, I recognized the common thread that somehow managed to weave this collection together—the earnest pursuit of understanding myself, as a way of understanding life.

Never mind if it was as trivial as looking down at the food mixing on my plate, or as irrational as looking up at the sky to check if an asteroid was falling—I never seemed to pass up an opportunity to look beyond the obvious.

And I still don’t. The fact that I continue to write means that I’m far from figuring it all out.

Writing has always been a cheap form of therapy for me; it’s helped me grasp the oftentimes baffling, yet inspiring ways of the world and people around me. It’s no surprise then that the repeating themes of childhood, family, and navigating through adulthood pervade this book.

Henry David Thoreau, the famous essayist, poet, and philosopher, once said, How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

And indeed, writing, in many ways, is a form of vanity, but I think only because it forces you to look at yourself in the mirror and then share that reflection—what you’ve learned about life and living—with others.

So you could say that these personal stories reflect my own attempt at living and learning. Some of my views presented here may have changed overtime. However, my passion to capture simple, but profound moments in life has remained the same. And I’m hoping that as you sit there reading them, you’ll find some nuggets of truth that will resonate with you, and get to see your own reflection staring back (not mine, I hope, because that would be, well, creepy).

CONTENTS

Moving South      1

Unwrapped      7

In the meantime      13

Mixed rice      22

Learning to live with dirty dishes      28

Between poverty and paradise      34

The scent of ‘morcon’ is calling me home      40

How do you say ‘thank you’ in English?      44

All you need is saliva      49

Beware of bad advice      55

Volunteer spirit      63

What getting stuck can teach you about moving forward      68

Help! My mother’s on Facebook!      74

Excuse me, miss, I think you left your tampon in my sink      78

How to stop an asteroid from killing your family      83

Making friends with monsters      99

Why the Olympics makes me feel like an alien      103

How I got fat and loved my grandmother for it      113

About the Author      120

Moving South

W

hen my parents moved to Southern Manila in the mid-’70s, the area was a vast expanse of rice fields, salt beds, and fish farms, with cool breezes and hardly a building in sight. It was a pristine place to raise children, they decided, compared to the more congested North where they came from. Their peers found this move slightly strange, unable to grasp why anyone in their right mind would want to live so far away from civilization, in what looked like killing fields.

I would go as far as to say that my parents were pioneers, along with the many other intrepid Baby Boomers who made the urban exodus from North to South, each carrying a trunk full of boxes and suitcases filled with gumption and dreams of an exciting future.

The booming real estate market in this municipality brought a surge of young families from far away who all tightly held on to the blueprint of a more laid-back, suburban way of life—one with sprawling lawns, low fences, and a ticket out of the more rigid lifestyle carved out by the generation before them.

As we were among the early settlers, our house was one of the few in our gated community, where the next-door neighbor was several streets away and could be seen across vacant lots without any obstruction, save for trees and high-growing weeds and brambles.

Growing up in uncharted territory made for an interesting childhood. With the number of houses being built around us, my older brother Miguel and I mainly had construction sites for playgrounds. Seeing a new house being built down the road gave us the same thrill any kid would feel when receiving a new toy.

We would jump for joy seeing trucks drive by overflowing with sand and gravel, as if Santa himself were delivering gifts—except that instead of a sleigh, it was a mud-covered 10-wheeler, and instead of a jolly old fellow, Santa was a dark, topless driver with his shirt wrapped around his head and a cigarette in his mouth. He also reeked of gin.

We felt grateful for these gifts nonetheless, which included sacks of cement mix, boxes of five-inch nails, bundles of wooden planks, steel beams, lead pipes, stacks of hollow blocks, and rows of galvanized corrugated GI sheets. It was the ultimate mother lode of all Lego sets.

My parents’ friends were probably correct in calling our place killing fields, because with the kinds of games we played at these construction sites, one wrong move would’ve led to either debilitating injury or sudden death.

Just before dusk, when all the sawing and hammering had subsided and the carpenters had gone home, Miguel and I would sneak into one of the construction sites and dangle on partially assembled steel beams, jump on wooden planks, and run up unfinished concrete staircases. We would climb mounds of gravel and burrow through heaps of sand, which sometimes had dog poo hiding underneath. And if we were lucky, we would find some leftover wet cement to mold and splatter on the walls. We felt like magical elves helping the carpenters while they were away.

Building a house with nuisances like us was probably more like taking two steps forward and one step back because of all the little damage carpenters had to undo the next morning. And based on the Spartan-branded footprints (from the popular rubber slippers of the time) we left on wet cement, I’m sure the carpenters clearly knew they weren’t dealing with mischievous elves in this case, but two nosy brats from next door.

Needless to say, we had our share of scraped knees and scratched elbows, along with the occasional splinters in our hands and feet. And wearing thin rubber tsinelas didn’t help much when it came to protruding nails. One time, I stepped on a wooden plank with a rusty old nail