Why did you leave?

I received many emails for my column a fortnight ago titled ‘Living abroad.’ All of the senders are Filipinos who live abroad, relating to me their struggles and sacrifices in their early days in a new land.

And invariably they asked, ‘Why did you leave the Philippines?’ I left the country because good jobs were getting scarce. I was head of news research at TV5 until management closed down my unit to cut on costs.

Without a staff and with no unit to lead, I was assigned editorial head of News5 Everywhere, the video news portal of TV5, which was led by Martin Andanar who is now the head honcho at the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO).

When another round of shakeup happened at TV5, talents like me were dispensed with and the only job I had left was as producer and host of ‘Remoto Control,’ a daily radio show at Radio 5. My show aired from 7-9 p.m., and it had a huge audience of commuters and overseas Filipino workers. I liked this job, even if at times I had to wait in the icy radio station for the PBA games to be finished before I could go on air.

One time, the basketball game finished at 11:30 p.m., I went on board for an hour, and then from the second floor of the radio station I went down to the ground floor, for Kayson Tonight where I had an unpaid editorial segment also called ‘Remoto Control.’ News anchor Paolo Bediones introduced my segment and said, “Good evening, Danton.” I could not help it, so I said, on live TV, “No, Paolo, it is already 1 a.m. Good morning to all of you.”

Even if I loved radio work it did not pay as well as TV so I accepted work as dean of Journalism at The Manila Times College (TMTC). Our president, my dear friend Dr. Isagani Cruz, had a stroke so I was also assigned acting president of the Manila and Subic campuses. The first thing I did was to look at documentation and contracts, work flows and operational systems to make sure we were compliant with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Department of Education (DepEd).

The Lord knows I did my best and was patient with everyone, even with parents in our Subic campus who twice brought us to Region 3 DepEd for “change of grades” for their athlete sons. I am in Law School and I plodded through the legalese, conferred with our lawyer and even chatted up the lawyer from the other side, who happened to be a close friend of my friend.

But when one day the mother of one of the students said from out of nowhere, “All of you never considered my son’s feelings when you were computing his grades,” I could not help it any more, the charade and the hypocrisy, and so I said, “But Ma’am, feelings cannot be graded.”

Everybody – and I swear even the higher-ups at DepEd suppressed their laughter. Bejesus, let us dwell on facts so we can discuss dispassionately: don’t talk to me about feelings. That is why we have this epidemic of millennials who do not want to be hurt. Well, I have news for you: school and life will hurt you in ways you cannot imagine, so you have to be prepared for it, with wills of iron and spines of steel. And we are not even talking of how love can make you suffer so.

I liked this job but it was taking too much of my time. I lived in my sister’s house in Novaliches and I shared the company car with the photographers. So when I had no car I would get a Grab to Roosevelt LRT station so I could take the congested LRT train, get off at Central Station, and then take the jeepney going to Port Area. It took ages to do that.

And at 4:30 p.m., I would leave TMTC and since no taxi would take me to TV5, I would take the jeepney to Quiapo, walk four blocks to the LRT station, take the congested train to Gateway, and then transfer to another congested train to Boni Station, where I would take a tricycle for TV5.

It got worse when MRT 7 began to be built at Regalado Avenue in Fairview and another hour was added to my daily commutes. Three hours became four hours going to work, and two hours became three hours coming home. So I was travelling for five hours a day. Such a waste of time and a waste of my life.

I was willing to go back to teaching, but after my parents’ death in 2009 I applied at UST and the chairperson emailed me a day before classes started that “the vice-rector does not like your work with Ladlad Party-list and he said we cannot hire you. Since the rector is your friend maybe you can go and talk to him?” I did not want to beg for a job so I just let it go, since the vice-rector must think there are no gays at UST.

Another university did not want to hire me in 2010 because they said I voted for Jojo Binay as VP and not for Mar Roxas. So there is now a connection between your choice in the elections and your work as a professor?

I was even willing to relocate to Cebu City to be with my partner. I wrote to the deans of UP Cebu and University of San Carlos about part-time teaching. I said I was willing to get a pay cut as well, but all I got was the silence of the lambs.

My friends in these universities said that the academics felt threatened. It’s still turf and territory, really, the way we set borders in this country, like dogs marking boundaries with their piss.

And so when my friend in Malaysia asked me to apply for a post as professor of creative writing and head of English at the University of Nottingham, I sent my papers. It was an international search and the panel interview was the most difficult I had done in my life. I think I got the job not because I talked about myself but about my students whose writing I helped to shape, from sparks of ideas into constellations of stories and poems.

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