Editing Service (ATV Speakers Network)
Elite Skills: Provocative limericks, poetry club
View of China: objective articles & amusing photos
My resume
Kamusta? Ni hao?
I'm an English teacher at NUS High School. I dream of shaping the region's future in the classroom and, soon, in the marketplace of ideas.
During study breaks, I do research in literature, especially St. Augustine's interpretive ideas, Chaucer, Pope and Flannery O'Connor. Like those writers, I hope to share my perspective on things that matter.
I'm also a veritable citizen of the global economy, with some achievements in editing, journalistic writing (for the English-language Taiwan News, Asian Infrastructure Monthly and the Far Eastern Economic Review) and teaching overachieving students (e.g., in Hwa Chong Institution [College] and NUS High).
I’m a kind of displaced person: born Filipino, with a Chinese (what some mistake as Japanese or Korean) face, a Spanish family name and creative work in English.
In my 20s, I became like Clark Kent—that is, a journalist. I was so for an English-language daily in Mandarin- and Hokkien-speaking Taiwan. I reinvented myself and, along the way, picked up a foreign tongue, that of my maternal grandfather.
In the prime of life, I teach English—spelled in British fashion—in a place that is uniquely Singapore. This island is both Asian in its vaunted Confucian values and Western in its occasional high-risk, high-gain investments.
I face the future with a sunny outlook that has served me well but with slight quavering.
Let me tell you what else keeps me busy for most of my waking hours: I'm exploring the use of St. Augustine of Hippo's interpretive theory of reading (distinguishing between literal and figurative interpretations) in the study of cupiditas (disordered love of self that prevents communion with others and the Other) in the works of Chaucer, Jonson, Pope and Flannery O'Connor.
St. Augustine says that the end of interpretation (principally of the bible and secondarily of other Christian-inspired texts) is charity, the ordering of values with turning to God on top and turning to the self at bottom. It follows then that any allegorical text that may seem to subvert this order should be interpreted not literally but figuratively.I am trying to see now just how each writer brings the uniqueness of his or her time and culture to the shaping of allegory in depicting evil or the lack of good in fictional characters. In so doing, I am testing just how fruitful still is the classical interpretive mode of St. Augustine in generating criticism and, in that light, will outline some fictional models for the depiction of cupiditas (which necessarily presupposes a prior and superior caritas).
Singapore is a grab bag of things representing the full continuum of goodness (It's clean, all right, but no Disneyland.). The heat is unbearable (worse than in Manila), but its lush gardens make it a pleasant home (Looking out the living room window, I'm treated to a soul-soothing sight of a palm-lined garden that conceals the awkward backhand of some NUS dormers at the tennis court.).The weather here sort of reminds me of Taiwan's spring: it rains at least once a week. Because of that, Singapore's shrubbery looks a deep shade of green all year round --unlike Japan or Texas in late winter.
This city-state is not really as uptight as most people think. Some people jaywalk; I've seen a housemate without a car seatbelt on; teenagers can now stand up and dance at concerts; a pair of my slacks once got smeared with -- chewing gum. Hey, they're loosening up!
Prior to postgraduate research, I worked in Taipei as a business reporter and columnist at the English-language daily Taiwan News. I stretched my mind by covering diverse fields from information technology to cross-strait relations. That experience gave me opportunities to grab freebies and to chat with world shakers (great salesmen too) such as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Intel Chairman Andrew Grove, Acer Chairman and CEO Stan Shih and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang.
A decade ago in Manila, I tried to put sense into the papers of woolly-headed economists as an editor for top think tank and academic institution University of Asia and the Pacific (formerly Center for Research and Communication). I was also privileged to have taught Composition to four batches of "creme-de-la-creme" students at UA&P.
As there are many sources and intensities of light, so are there many shades of truth in this fractured world. Given our very limited stay here, I think it is quite good to reach for the fullness of truth that faith and reason can make us attain (As Pope said, "What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,/ The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,/ Is virtue's prize.... [not] 394 erring Pride....").
This is a struggle for me and most people.
Notes on Holy Purity: 6/08
Locution (Rosa's Story) on Wickedness.Net (11/03)
Flannery O'Connor's Finicky Saints and Chaucer's Pardoner Uncovered (UPDATED 12/01)
NEXT II
Aceh Reborn (in Thirty-First Bird Review) [7/09]
My Fave Spots (UPDATED 11/05)
Millennium Blog 2 (UPDATED 3/08)
Vintage Column
Hundred Islands, Pangasinan, Philippines Photo from http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/3712/tcristy1.html
(My Fave Spot # 9 Click for complete list)
Music keeps me sane. I have a very eclectic taste, with my faves ranging from Bach's Brandenburg concertos to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour to the Black-Eyed Peas' "APL Song." Among current pop artists, I find Maroon 5 and Kanye West good.
'Used to be a big film buff ("Seventh Seal" and "ET" top my list). Film is to our generation what theater was to the Elizabethans and the novel to Victorians.
'Am an aspiring poet and non-fiction writer. Here's a tribute to St. Josemaria Escriva:
EL PADRE (May 2004 draft)
A marble-white face,
Eyes half-open, glass-framed:
Josemaria, a mute guardian
On a card as I prayed.
One autumn morn--
Like today as I bolted past the Tiber--
Leaves ignited with strange fires,
God�s Spirit his heart stirred.
Chanted the man of 26 years,
"That I may see...."
"A good spot at St. Peter's,"
To the same Spirit I whispered.
Darkness and frailty
Lingered but then set apart
In each of our souls.
I looked on his other children.
No glint of silver,
No title royal or office of state
Ushered their birth,
Yet here they stand by grace.
A mere sapling,
The Work was trampled
By threshers but sprang up,
By Our Lady's touch healed.
Josemaria, my soul Father,
Strained war-weary sinews,
Endured taunts and scowls
Of grand conspiracy theorists.
"Mangy donkey,"
as he called himself,
Labored at the water wheel
'Til all the sod was fallow.
While he slept,
The Spirit tilled the clod;
Hardy riceshoots sprang,
Covered the earth as near Angat.
From Compostella
To Cagayan the grain spread,
Sown in praise of the Maker,
By the Castillan blessed.
Behold the field of St. Peter's
Emerald-gold as the mid-morning sun
Bathes his visage on a tapestry;
I hear him proclaimed on the rolls of saints.
Pangs of flesh
Trip me up,
But his quiet smile assures
I too am for heaven bound.
"Go on, pilgrim,
Grace and brute force
Divine out of rock brittle
Clear, honeyed streams."
Firm, warm hands within mine,
A sharp gaze sweeps the depths of my soul,
Padre, your spirit in these my brothers
Breathes in my flesh and bones.
My blood family is doing well: my mother, Aida T. Valles, has been blessed with good breaks in her new career as a seminar speaker; my father, Mariano C. Valles, works for a Japanese consultancy; my younger brother Edwin markets Van Melle confectionary and is a tenor for singing ensemble Hiraya.