Orange

It was the first year of the new millennium, and my last summer at the De La Salle University. I just graduated, but technical errors stopped me from marching. Not that I cared. I just wanted to be done with that degree. Actually, Dad wanted me to take that Economics program. You see, I wanted business management, but he wanted something pre-law so I’d be a lawyer, just like him.

And that sucked, of course. Dad was some senator here in the Philippines, and honestly, he threw his weight around too much, so he wanted me to do things his way. Maybe he thought he was such big news, with people always ogling at him, hanging on and following every frickin’ damned word he said.

Anyway, I was just bumming around that summer, so Dad took me with him to Villa Nuñez, a vacation house we had in Ilocos Norte, this province way up north in this country. So here was this 20-hectare mass of thick foliage, coconut trees, and… you know it may have actually housed a few communists from that New People’s Army? Them and their little straw hats, nipa huts, and sniper guns veiled somewhere in those bushes. Well, I figured it was communist territory, given how close we were to those NPA-infested Cordillera Mountains.

Actually, Villa Nuñez was okay… I guess. From MacArthur Highway was this narrow dirt road snaking through the shrubbery and ending up at our vacation house. Our lodge, located on a hillside beach, had satellite TV, centralized AC, and… that’s all, really. There were no phone lines, no Internet, or anything close to modern technology.

I doubted I’d get a signal on my cellphone. Cher, my girl back in Manila, had no way of reaching me. Not that it mattered. Honestly, I was getting sick of her. If she were also from the US, I’d bet you she’d be blonde. Beauty, but no brains. It’s like God put everything up front but forgot about her noodle.

Villa Nuñez was fine, but three weeks in that place would drive you nuts! Sure, the beach was a short walk down the hill, and there was this dock to go fishing and a wavebreaker for snorkeling. But I wasn’t really into that stuff.

So there I was, on vacation mandated by the Philippine Senate. Dad always took his work home and thought I was part of his Third World Republic.