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Born Free Jr. in Boracay
KRIPOTKIN By Alfred A. Yuson
Sunday, December 23, 2007
It seemed incongruous — the balladeer from London singing a medley of
White Christmas songs by the pool of a tropical resort, amid swaying palms
and other verdant foliage. But then nothing can be out of place in the
jumble of a paradise that’s Boracay, especially if the singer is a
returnee who’s born free.
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Make that Born Free, the monster hit of the ’70s as sung by Matt Monro.
And now his son Matt Jr. was reprising the classic as anticipated, before
a smartly dressed crowd spread around garden tables at One MGM Resort
Village.
The al fresco concert was staged two Saturdays ago, between one-night gigs
by Matt Monro Jr. in Cebu and Iloilo. Charming, mock-rakish, free and
easy, Matt Jr. teased the Boracay audience right from the get-go, saying
we’d be disappointed if we expected Born Free.
But he chortled conspiratorially, and with
his longtime arranger Colin Keyes providing the keyboard spark, Matt’s
raspy whisky voice went ahead and essayed other old familiar standards:
Softly; Walk Away and Go; All of a Sudden My Heart Sings; For Once in My
Life; From Russia With Love...
The baby boomers sighed and swooned through the night of nostalgia, while
Matt Monro Jr. kept referencing back to how his late father had loved the
Philippines, and not just because he had a lot of hits here, but maybe he
was telling him that he just had to find himself a Filipina.
It may not have been to that end that he left the oversized green chair on
the makeshift stage used for the earlier numbers and proceeded to walk
nimbly around the very lip of the pool, circling it while fans reached out
for a handshake, or a quick buss. Matt Jr. was in his element, even
sharing the wireless mic, and obviously delighted to have such easy
rapport with Pinoys.
And maybe he had already found, for the nonce, the Filipina his father had
promised him would be alluring and ideal, occasioning a special number he
had learned while on his trips here: Be My Lady by Louie Ocampo. “I just
love Filipina girls,” he kept enthusing before that number.
Followed other non-Monro tunes, such as Yesterday and My Way. And for a
rousing finale, what else but the number he had held back in honor of Dad:
Born Free. Christmas carols provided warm closure as an extended encore.
For close to a couple of hours we lounged on our garden chairs around
tables full of wine bottles, red and white, enjoying the show, which
featured Faith Cuneta as arousing front act. During the break before Matt
Jr. came on, I traipsed to my ground-floor room-with-a-view at a cluster
called the Villas close by, for a fresh pack of Camels. On the way I
managed to photo-op the friendly Faith, who was being besieged by the
locals backstage. A chance it was, too, to pour myself a whisky glass to
take back to our table. Not that the wine wasn’t enough. Something about a
clear night sky full of Orion and twinkling cohorts made me want to raise
a more spirited toast.
A freebie weekend in paradise, attended by a top-class music concert, good
company, fine dining and wining, plus the usual dramatic sunsets, all
added up to gratitude in default mode. I had earned this, after long
having had to hack away across thickets of metropolitan traffic for
bread-and-butter chores, profitable socials, or reckoning with a Christmas
shopping list. Why, this recharge came a mere 35 minutes from mad Manila.
We were guests of Seair of the Dornier jetprops, fastest in the territory,
as well as One MGM Resort Village, formerly the Paradise Garden Resort
Villas, until it was purchased late this year from the original German
partners by a Pinoy consortium. It has since been handed over to
GHPIRESORT, Inc. as the new management team, led by Rey L. Fuentes,
formerly of Ayala Land Cebu and now One MGM’s COO and general manager.
Happenstance also dictated that we’d be welcomed at the island pier by an
early buddy, Manolito “Lito” Ocampo Cruz, holder of many hats, among these
being project consultant for One MGM. As he explained, the resort’s new
name meant “One of My Greatest Moments.” Mwahaha. Honest. The rest of the
company couldn’t help quipping that it was actually a movable feast of an
acronym. “Grandest Moments” could also be it, or “One Magical Glorious
Moment” — which could well refer to any old Boracay sunset.
Lito also turns out to be co-publishing a fine quarterly magazine billed
as Muse, covering the arts and culture scene. With him in the venture is
his brother Ramoncito “Chito” Cruz, as co-publisher, and himself a painter
who had a recent one-man show. Lito I recalled to have authored a poetry
book in his salad days, maybe after DLSU where he batched with Ricky de
Ungria. In any case, we had a lot of catching up to do, re art and poetry
and muses for an MGM type of lifestyle.
We had flown into Caticlan with Jingjing Romero, who takes care of public
relations for Seair. Patrick Tan, the airline’s VP for Commercial Affairs,
met us at the Caticlan lounge, and made sure we boarded a boat from
Fairways & Bluewater’s private jetty to avoid the bustle of the incoming
weekend crowd early that morning. Rina Jimenez David and her husband Pi
joined us in the afternoon, as Rina had just come in the day before from
Bangkok.
Another quality host was Nikos “Nick” Gitsis, Seair co-founder and
director, whom we first met at Mayie Delgado’s Poetic Images book launch
some months back. Nick also co-owns Zuzuni, a Mediterranean resto right on
White Beach, together with Geni Psinakis. That was where he showed us, on
Geni’s pink laptop and over Sunday lunch of Greek fare, the latest
aircraft models that Seair intends to associate its pioneering spirit
with.
Together with Iren Dornier and Tomas Lopez, Nick had set up South East
Asian Airlines (Seair) in 1995 by investing in two nine-seaters plying
“missionary routes,” namely Manila to Caticlan as well as Rodriguez and
Busuanga in Palawan. Within a decade, despite also servicing light cargo
such as fowl and fish, Seair reached the one-million-passenger mark.
In 2005, Seair introduced the state-of-the-art Dornier 328, a 32-seater
twin-engine turboprop that takes Caticlan from Manila in only 35 minutes.
Eventually phasing out its original LET410 planes, Seair now offers the
most flights to Caticlan (28 flights daily in peak season, taking off from
Manila in 30-minute intervals) and Busuanga (as many as eight flights
daily), as well as other Palawan destinations, for up to 40 flights per
week.
Seair has now flown almost two million passengers in 22 routes to 16 local
tourist destinations: Manila, Caticlan (Boracay) and Cebu in Visayas;
Clark in Northern Luzon; Tablas in Southern Luzon; Busuanga, Cuyo, El Nido,
Puerto Princesa and Rodriguez in Palawan; and Camiguin, Cotabato, Pagadian,
Zamboanga, Jolo, and Tawi-Tawi in Mindanao.
For his part, Patrick Tan is bullish on the Seair Adventure Pass for
frequent flyers and thrill-seekers. A bearer can take an unlimited number
of flights to any of Seair’s regular routes within 45 days from date of
purchase at a base rate P18,500.
There’s also the Seair Visa Credit Card, which grants holders free flights
through privilege points earned for every P40 spent. “Cardholders also
earn double points when they buy their tickets at Seair ticketing offices
using their card,” says Patrick of the privilege card that goes with a
rewards redemption fast-track option. Cardholders also get as much as a
35-percent ticket discount in non-peak periods and 20-percent discount at
peak season, except on black-out dates.
Indeed, the second oldest airline in the Philippines, still the only one
that maintains its headquarters in Clark, has come a long way since its
early days of transporting chickens and fish.
Speaking of which, our last engagement with the merry company was for a
drawn-out Sunday dinner, a Spanish-style degustacion, at the Al Andaluz
room of Doz Mestizos restaurant at Fairways & Bluewater. Binggoy Remedios,
the affable, Crocs-clad owner and chef, plied us with assorted tapas that
almost had us crying “Tito” before the advent of paella and couscous with
skewered lamb.
Former deejay “Long Tall Howard,” the man behind Matt Jr.’s gigs in these
here parts, as well as those by retro/reunion musical artists, kept us
entertained with anecdotes dating back to the ’60s. The sangria kept
flowing, while the amihan winds whipped away at the patio where Matt Jr.
kept finding himself out for a smoke after each distinctive plate. Faith
and her company joined us, too, as well as former Congressman and
newspaper publisher Toti Cariño, our neighbor in Pasig.
The drizzle turned diagonal then horizontal, so Matt Jr. and Colin were
worried about managing to play a round of golf the next day. Now that
would be a real holiday break to look forward to before they drove down to
Iloilo for the next gig. Both stayed optimistic, however, enough to feign
practice swings at the amihan front.
Back in Manila, we heard that the sun shone all of Monday, so that the duo
did get to enjoy Fairways & Bluewater’s premier layout. So much so, in
fact, that after Thursday’s last stand at Manila Pavilion’s Alegria
Lounge, Matt planned to fly back to Boracay and spend Christmas there
instead of London. Maybe he had found his lady, as a proper guide to the
place he repeatedly called paradise.
As for the rest of our brief time on the world’s best beach, suffice it to
say that the night at Summer Place, which has replaced Bazzura as the
happening site for late nights of salsa dancing on tabletops, might have
been the intermediate coup de grâce. For that Sabado night also featured,
other than the Seair band onstage, a company of fire dancers outside.
Twirling their poi-style wands ablaze, they were a study in illuminating
motion, arc-ing fluid flame to the beat, arrested sparks signifying the
persistence of vision.
I have to turn in early, I said to the beer-guzzling rapper son who had
served as weekend caregiver. That’s all right, I’ll stay, he replied. And
maybe still do Cocomangas. Oh, well. Fine. I walked back alone at midnight
towards One MGM, picking up chicken liver barbecue from a stand along the
way. Farther down was a beach bar named Charlie’s, where the music blared
What A Wonderful World.
Then the persistence of clairaudience took over, guiding me all the way to
the Villa suite, where I hummed myself into Morpheus’ arms. Er, make that
Louis Armstrong’s.
Published in the Philippine Star, December 23, 2007.
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