Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“On days her spirits are low, like now, or between ballet seasons, when she has time to think about herself outside of the roles she plays, when she is not Odette in Swan Lake or Clara in The Nutcracker, she finds her feet reason enough to doubt the grace for which she is applauded when she spins on the tips of her toes.”

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“The show is over, but she cannot bring herself to even slow down. The more she thinks about quitting, the louder the applause, the longer the standing ovations, and the higher the expectations go.”

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“I mean exactly. I'm worried about that child. You want your child to be wild, you bring her to the jungle.”

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“Not the Manila you see on CNN or BBC, whose interest in Manila or the Philippines is mostly limited to its poverty or its morally bankrupt political system or its many Climate Change-induced disasters.”

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“t must be irony that, now that he is back in Manila, poverty is almost a complete stranger. Even his Mamita, the woman who has taken care of him since he was born and who took personal care of his mother before him, is not that poor, at least not desperately poor, in Miko’s estimation.”

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“This is not New York. He does not need to fold in on himself to fit in a studio. He does not need to fend for himself. He does not need to go home to a dark place, where he needs to switch on the light upon arrival every night, and where no hot, homecooked meal awaits him. This is Manila, his home of luxury.”

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“He took pleasure in scandalizing the moralists in his circles, arriving at soireés in the arms of paid escorts whom he dressed up for the occasion not exactly to make them blend in but to make them stand out.”

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“When we do not know who we are, how do we relate to other nations as their equal, how do we know what our fair share is in international trade, how do we even know what’s best for us come election time.”

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“The buzz about the ball has risen to such a fever pitch that two weeks before the event those who had not received an invitation booked themselves a last-minute flight out of town—to Balesin or to Amanpulo or to Pangulasian in El Nido—or out of the country, Hong Kong or Singapore or as far as Tokyo.”

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“The pundits say that Manila! Manila! is the unwitting revenge of high society, under a new republic whose leader won the presidential elections by a landslide on a platform of social equality and poverty alleviation.”

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