The idea was brilliant in its simplicity.
I would start an online proofreading company geared towards Chinese and other Asian business people whose written English was not at a native level. Their poorly written documents were always a source of confusion to their Western clients. It made them look unprofessional- it even cost them business. That would be the sales pitch anyway.
I would develop a subscription-based website to proofread their documents and email them back by the end of the business day. My company would be based in Manila, the Philippines- a one hour flight from Hong Kong, the same time zone as Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, Beijing, Taipei- all the big business cities of Asia.
Did you know that Filipinos speak English as well as Americans do? The educated ones know their prepositional phrases and dangling participles. I don’t even know what those are. Most importantly, the Philippines is cheap. US$400 a month is a good salary for recent college grads. I couldn’t afford to pay Americans.
A previous Google search showed me that no such online service yet existed. I was going to be rich! I was going to be the next eBay, the next Facebook! I would have an employee jacuzzi lounge in the office, a company nightclub where I would fly famous DJs in from Europe for our Friday after-work parties, I would show up to press conferences wearing flip-flops and a bathrobe – brilliant entrepreneurial eccentric that I was. I would grace the cover of Fortune under the heading “Maverick Mogul”, eyebrow subtly arched and bottom lip pouting out just so. But first I had to write the specs for the website, design the logo, hire a Filipino Web designer and find an apartment in Manila where I could oversee the whole process.
I flew to Manila and took a cab to the suburb of Quezon City. I had been to Manila, briefly, years before on a short visa run when I lived in Taiwan. My impression of Manila then was that it was a shit-hole like I had never before seen. It had a reputation for danger- kidnappings, terrorist bombings, out of control crime. It was then on the US State Department’s Travel Warning list along with Pakistan, Colombia and other cool places. And now I would be living here.
The taxi ride took an hour in the worst traffic I had ever witnessed, and as an Atlanta native, that’s saying something. The scene from my backseat window sprawled out before me:shantytowns. A motorcycle zoomed past us at 50 MPH, weaving in and out of the cars; a dog on all fours, tongue flapping in the wind, was riding on the back of the seat. It’s going to be fun living here, I thought. And on the horizon beyond the shanties were clusters of modern glass and steel high-rises – Makati, Ortegas, Fort Bonifacio and, where I would be living, Eastwood City.
Eastwood City is, according to its brochure, “a self-contained, high-rise, live-work-play community surrounded by a shimmering sea of slums”. It is like Atlanta’s Atlantic Station, but bigger and nicer, yet equally sterile. There is a seafood restaurant right in the middle of Eastwood that is a wooden replica pirate ship. The waiters and waitresses wear pirate costumes.
“Arrrrgh, would you like to hear about our daily special, matey?”
The Filipinos, I would learn, took to American kitch like none other. They took it to ridiculous extremes. It was an endearing national trait.
Once settled into my new high-rise apartment, I set out to celebrate the limitless possibilities before me. I started off in the theme pubs of Eastwood. They were devoid of both character and customers. I asked my pirate waiter where the action was and he suggested Fort Bonifacio. So I took a cab there.
Twenty minutes later my cab emerged from the crowded slums into a place that reminded me of Beverly Hills. I saw manicured lawns and hedges, flower beds and palm trees and fancy high-rise condo towers. Forbes Park and the Manila Polo Club were nearby- home to the Philippines’ ruling elite.
There are about 500 families who control perhaps 90% of the Philippines wealth and most of them lived here. No self-made millionaires these families. Many are descended from the Spaniards who colonized these islands 400 years ago and they inherited their wealth down through the generations. Some are of Chinese background too. The Ayala, Sy, Lopez and Tan families grace the Forbes’ richest list.
The cab dropped me off at a multi-story outdoor mall consisting entirely of bars, restaurants and nightclubs. It was called the Fort. I picked a restaurant that looked lively, sat down at an outdoor table and ordered a San Miguel from – oh my God! She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. She was light-skinned with a mixture of Spanish and Malay features, tall- by Filipina standards, poised and elegant. She had an hour-glass figure, black almond eyes and a radiant smile. I had never before been so smitten by a complete stranger. She could have been a super-model. What was she doing waiting tables here?
With each beer she brought I would talk to her some more, asking her name, about her life. As I got drunker I grew bolder in my flirtation. I told her she was beautiful- she giggled, covering her mouth and averting her eyes in embarrassment. She liked me. I was getting the signals. I would never attempt to flirt with a girl of this calibre in Hong Kong, much less the U.S., but here I had no such inhibitions.
As I got drunker – was I on beer 10 now? This San Miguel is like water – I grew bolder and perhaps cruder in my flirtations. What time do you get off work tonight? Come with me! What’s your phone number? And she just covered her mouth and giggled. Her name was Jill and I would get to know her better later on in the story.
I was in need of company other than the wait-staff. Drinking alone was no fun. At a table next to me sat two stylishly dressed Filipinos about my age. I introduced myself.
“Hey, I just moved to Manila today. Can you recommend any good clubs to go to tonight?”
“Of course! Come with us. We’re leaving as soon as we pay the bill”.
They both had an air of money about them. Maybe it was the nice clothes they were wearing. I was dressed like a slob- t-shirt and shorts. How could you dress otherwise in this climate?
After settling our tabs the three of us walked to Joseph’s car. It was a new Japanese sedan, worth more than most Filipinos make in ten lifetimes. Dexter rode shotgun and I sat in the back.
“So what brings you to Manila?” Dexter asked. I told him about my business.
“That’s an excellent idea!” he said. “There’s definitely a need for that. I’m an editor myself.”
Dexter’s firm edited and wrote content for American magazines and newspapers. They outsourced this work to him. And Joseph was an architect. Both were members of the Manila Polo Club. Good people to know, I thought.
We drove for twenty minutes though a sprawling part of Manila that, apart from the palm trees, reminded me of any upscale American suburb, though set in the tropics.
As we neared central Makati, Manila’s modern business district, the gated neighborhoods of stately homes gave way to deluxe high-rise condos, glass office towers and finally, Greenbelt- the city’s most fashionable shopping and entertainment district.
Greenbelt consists of five mostly outdoor malls connected by pedestrian bridges and landscaped walkways. There was Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Fendi. Are there really enough rich people in Manila to keep these overpriced stores in business? Apparently so. And at nighttime, the couture shops close and the bars and nightclubs open.
After parking in the underground lot, the elevator deposited us at a long, outdoor plaza that snaked around fountains, fish ponds and palm trees lit up in Christmas lights. Greenbelt’s plaza was ringed by all manner of bars, restaurants and nightclubs, all teeming with revelers. I forgot to mention that this story takes place on a Tuesday night, though it could have been a Saturday night anywhere else in the world.
Dexter pointed out the bars of interest for my benefit as we walked towards our ultimate destination.
“This is Cafe Havana” he said. “Mostly of hookers and old white guys. A scummy crowd, but they have good Latin bands.” I scanned Havana’s outdoor seating and the tables were indeed almost exclusively occupied by older white men and their young Filipina ‘dates’.
We continued along the outdoor walkway, each side flanked with nightclubs and palm trees, different styles of music fading in and out with each passing club – rock, hip-hop, R&B- until at last we reached the end of the mall where we were enveloped in a cocoon of chill-out electronic music. It was called M Cafe.
Did you ever see that Seinfeld episode where George, while out walking, stumbles upon this ultra-hip nightclub full of super models? Not only is the pudgy, bald George Costanza allowed in but once inside, the models can’t get enough of him. Everyone wants a piece of George!
The next day, George excitedly tells Kramer and Jerry about this mythical nightclub full of super models. They, of course, think George is full of shit.
Exasperated, that night George drags his friends to this nightclub to prove he isn’t lying. The three of them arrive at the nightclub only to find an empty, boarded-up warehouse.
I’m reminded of that Seinfeld episode when I think back on M Cafe, there at the tail-end of Greenbelt.
Its patrons were painfully mod; they looked as if they had just stepped from the pages of Vogue.
The DJ was a black guy with a giant 70′s-style afro who, at 11 PM, was wearing fashionably over-sized sunglasses. He was from Brazil. The women there were an international potpourri of beauty- black girls, white girls and Asians from all corners of the world- and many of them really were models! This is Manila not Milan- what the hell were they doing here?
If you recall, I was in shorts and a sweat-soaked t-shirt-and sweat you do in this steam-shower climate. I was too drunk at this point to care.
My rank clothes were not an issue here as they would have been back in stuffy, buttoned-up Hong Kong. Everyone was really fucking chill here. Wanting to fit in, I ordered a lychee martini – Grey Goose please – and set out to mingle.
“Oh, you’re an entrepreneur! There are lots of those here now!”
“I’m here on a six-month modeling contract.”
“I’m an artist. I started an NGO to help the people living on Smokey Mountain.”
“Reuters correspondent. I’m off to Mindanao tomorrow to cover the guerrilla insurgency.”
“I have my own events coordination company. We organize fashion shows…”
“It’s so sad, these children. They spend their days digging through the garbage looking for things to recycle”
“I’m holding a fashion show tomorrow night sponsored by Maxim magazine. I’ll get you a VIP pass if you want. But make sure to dress fashion-forward.”
“I understand why they are rebelling. It’s not so much third-world as it is fourth-world. The poverty is shocking and they are completely neglected by the corrupt government here in Manila.”
“I used to live in Hong Kong, too. What a drag that place is!”
“We teach them how to use the garbage to make really cute handbags. They use newspaper, juice boxes…”
“Outsourcing is where it’s at right now. People are making a fortune!”
“Are you going to the party tonight?”
M Cafe cleared out en masse as we all boarded taxis for the party. It was the first of what would be many more parties just like it.
By the rooftop pool in a high-rise condo, a shirtless DJ with washboard abs was spinning “progressive house”- or whatever the fuck. There was an open bar with free drinks. The bartenders wore bow-ties! The 100 or so guests were a mix of upper-class Filipinos and international bright young things- all of them in various states of intoxication and undress.
Girls in bikinis laughed and splashed water at each other in the pool while, from the 30th floor rooftop, the lights of Manila flickered in a dizzying panorama; its teeming masses of 20 million restive in the tropical night heat. Few of them would ever know such decadence.
“Oh, we have these sorts of parties all the time” the events-coordinator told me with a studied air of nonchalance, waving her hand as if shooing a fly. “Every Friday or Saturday night you’ll find one. Sometimes on weekdays, too.”
It’s going to be fun living here, I thought.
And so ends the first chapter of my story. What happens in the coming chapters is so brutal, so outrageous and so unbelievable that I am once again reminded of that Seinfeld episode. Will anyone believe me? Well… unlike George, I have evidence.








