Random thoughts about Alecks

N.B. – This is a simple eulogy for a special person named Alecks Pabico (April 19, 1967-October 7, 2009), my best friend in college. Some colloquial terms and acronyms are defined below.

Dada Bacudo, Drea Pasion-Flores, Danny Arao, Dennis Gorecho and Alecks Pabico
Dada Bacudo, Drea Pasion-Flores, Danny Arao, Dennis Gorecho and Alecks Pabico at the Kule office, Vinzons Hall, UP Diliman. Thanks to Dennis for this undated picture.

Alecks and I joined the news section of Kule in the late 1980s. If memory serves, I was just a few months ahead of him.

He was my best friend even if we were the complete opposites – Alecks was funny and level-headed, I was serious and hard-headed. Alecks was always smiling and sometimes self-deprecating, I was always unsmiling and sometimes self-conscious. If our sense of humor were beer, Alecks’ jokes were Red Horse (extra strong, on target!) while mine were Super Dry (corny, off the mark!)

Chip in for Alecks!

How could one forget his countless jokes and pranks? Let me give you a classic example: One day, he found a bat on campus, brought it to the Kule office and borrowed a friend’s paper fan. He put the bat on the conference table near him and covered it with the fan. For every person who would enter the Kule office – the door was very near the conference room – he would request him or her to hand him the fan. I could still see the smile on his face whenever someone shouted or cursed upon seeing the dead bat underneath the fan. He would then ask his victim to sit beside him and wait for the next one. If I recall correctly, I was Alecks’ third victim.

Antics like these made presswork from Friday night to Sunday afternoon fun, not to mention unpredictable. Because of Alecks, we would forget the hard work that we did, just so many UP students would have a copy of Kule which they could use as seat cover for dirty benches on campus.

Oh yes, as Alecks jokingly said before, there had been a few who would bother to read our issues, and unfortunately some of them would end up sending complaints to the editors of Kule.

For those who had not been involved with Kule, each section (News, Features, Kultura, and even the Editorial Board) had a log book where we would write important announcements and report the progress of our articles.

How was the News logbook related to complaints from irate readers? Proof of Alecks’ irreverence was his introduction of the “Slandering Newsies” section in the News logbook where he identified (and jokingly congratulated) all Kule news writers whose articles became controversial due to such complaints.

He started “Slandering Newsies” when a group of faculty members complained about his article’s alleged lack of objectivity. He had written about a faculty member’s conflict with the dean of her college. Our editors at that time thought Alecks’ article was balanced and fair, but the dean herself and her allies thought otherwise. Even if the letter of complaint had been signed by most faculty members of that particular college, Alecks was not so affected by it. He even found something funny in the situation – at least he had one fan in the college, i.e., the dean’s enemy!

When it was my turn to be complained about by a high-ranking UP official because of a news article I had written, Alecks made me suffer by not just simply “congratulating” me but by drawing a not-so-flattering caricature of me on the News logbook. Looking back, it’s clear that his light-hearted manner helped me and the others withstand the pressures that went with taking our journalism too seriously, even if we were only students then.

Alecks obviously took his job more seriously than others so he ended up being appointed news editor of Kule in 1990. Initially I was assigned as his assistant, but after a few months I became classified as co-editor though the kind of collaboration that we did for the News section was the same. That’s one thing you could say about Alecks: For him, it was not an issue of title, position or power but how we could all work as co-equals. Because of his work ethic and dedication to Kule, he eventually became our managing editor.

How seriously did we take our jobs at Kule? Alecks and I would encourage the newsies to write about topics beyond UP. As section editors, we agreed to also find the time to write news and column articles on top of the responsibilities of editing, designing and laying out the news pages. And so Alecks, I and other newsies would find ourselves being in the same room with reporters of the mainstream media, who ask questions both probing and irritating like “Isn’t UP too far from where you are right now?” and “Why should a campus publication be concerned with an issue like this?”

If there were no one willing or available to write about important stories that require traveling very far from UP, Alecks and I would actually go ourselves. For example, even if we had not yet recovered from the July 1990 earthquake – Alecks and I, together with other friends at Kule, were on the fourth floor of Vinzons Hall when we felt the strong tremor – we decided to go to Pangasinan which was one of the hardest hit areas. Armed with tape recorders, notebooks, pens and a camera we borrowed, Alecks and I traveled around Pangasinan talking to different kinds of people and taking pictures. We ended up spending the night at an evacuation center and taking the next available morning trip to make it to our classes at UP on that day.

Alecks also had no second thoughts about sharing his experience as a campus journalist. In between presswork (and acads), we traveled for three hours to UPLB to conduct a workshop for the writers of Perspective, UPLB’s student publication. After the workshop which ended late at night, our friends at the Perspective gave us an envelope containing some money apparently meant for our transportation back to Manila. They also said that we could spend the night inside the publication office. Very tired and sleepy, we readily accepted the envelope and slept on our makeshift beds consisting of small tables put together.

You could see Alecks’ selflessness when, upon waking up, he asked me if we should accept the money even if Kule could reimburse us for our travel. We agreed to return the money, knowing fully well that Perspective could put it to better use, even if it’s just a small amount.

Many don’t know that Alecks had a way of making things work in a manner that was both fun and systematic. As a way to motivate the newsies to write on the News logbook, he came up with his own “SWS Survey” documenting the most number of notes addressed to a newsie. It was actually a self-serving survey as he and another newsie always got the top spot, conniving with this other newsie in writing notes to each other even for just the smallest of details. In a way, it helped expose the inactive and unproductive newsies as there were no notes addressed to them.

How could one describe News or EB meetings with Alecks? That he made people laugh is an understatement. I distinctly remember one newsie laughing so hard that she had to go out of the meeting to laugh some more. Another newsie who was just recovering from a sickness had to ask him to stop because she found it hard to breathe. Yes, his humor also proved to be hazardous to one’s health.

Of course, he could be serious when necessary. I remember a time when some newsies ignored deadlines, failed to report for presswork and submitted badly written articles. Instead of giving a warning to the erring ones, Alecks and I announced that both of us would resign if the entire section does not shape up. Our ploy actually worked because all of us beat the deadline and participated in the long hours of press work in the weeks that followed. Looking back again, the newsies were obviously worried about losing Alecks.

It was not surprising that all Kule editors and staff were very ecstatic when Alecks topped the Collegian Editorial Examination and consequently became Kule’s editor-in-chief for Academic Year 1991-1992.

As his best friend, I was very happy for him. He wanted me to help him run the paper. Unfortunately, I had graduated in April 1991 and made the hard decision to move on. Up to now, I still remember the disappointment on his face when I said that I cannot stay at Kule any longer.

His busy schedule and mine prevented us from seeing each other often, even if both of us were introduced to the small world of NGOs after Kule. I was with the now defunct CPD, of which a member-network was the CDRC where he worked. Later on, he would find himself working for TABAK, a PO affiliated with CPD.

It’s a strange coincidence that he started to work for PCIJ in 1994, the same year that I joined IBON Foundation, an independent research think-tank. We somehow renewed our friendship when I helped in the PCIJ’s training for journalists on computer-assisted reporting in Baguio, Cebu and Davao, after which I co-authored PCIJ’s The Electronic Trail which was nominated for the 1998 National Book Awards.

During late-night gimmicks after our training, we shared stories about the fun times we had at Kule. Yes, the friendship was still there but we somehow grew apart.

Perhaps it was due to political differences. Being familiar with each other’s post-Kule writings, we were aware of each other’s convictions that put us on different pages of pursuing both journalism and social change. Unlike in our student days, I was not able to talk to him like a kasama (comrade). (Even at the risk of speculation, you can blame it on the unwritten rule among former comrades not to talk about IPO lest civility be replaced by hostility.)

I learned about Alecks’ serious liver ailment in the early part of 2009. But I already noticed that he had lost weight when I saw him at the awarding ceremonies of the 4th PopDev on November 25, 2008 at Gateway Mall in Cubao where PCIJ was an awardee and I was one of the judges.

We talked for a while and he flashed an enigmatic smile. Had I known that it would be my last time to see him (and that his death would come a year later), I would have introduced him to my wife Joy so that she could finally meet my best friend in college.

The strong rains (and the consequent flooding it brought about in Marikina where I live) prevented me and Joy from attending Kule’s reunion (which served as a fundraising for him) last July 17. I sent a message to Alecks through FB asking him if it’s possible for us to meet before I return to Korea. He gave me a short reply (July 23, 7:08 p.m.): “Salamat, Danny. Sayang nga at wala ka sa reunion. Sige. Kailan ba balik mo sa Korea?” (Thanks, Danny. It’s indeed unfortunate that you were not at the reunion. Sure. When will you be back in Korea?)

I now write this in the middle of the fall semester in Korea, regretting that I did not see him before I left the Philippines. My biggest regret, of course, is not being able to pay my respects for very obvious reasons. I take consolation from the fact that I am not alone in grieving over his untimely death. With the number of lives he had touched in his 42 years of meaningful existence, I am certain that they are grieving as much as I am, if not even more.

Goodbye, Alecks. And don’t worry about your other secrets (especially your lovelife in college). They’re safe with me (I think!).

Definition of terms:

  • Alecks – real name: Alexander Pardo Pabico (April 19, 1967-October 7, 2009)
  • Acads – academic work
  • CPD – Council for People’s Development
  • CDRC – Citizens Disaster Response Center
  • EB – editorial board of Kule composed of the editor-in-chief, managing editor and the section editors (news, features, kultura)
  • FB – Facebook, a social networking site
  • IPO – ideology, politics and organization
  • Kule – Philippine Collegian, official student publication of the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman
  • Newsie – a member of Kule’s news section
  • NGO – non-government organization; provides support to a PO
  • PCIJ – Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
  • PO – people’s organization; a community-based, grassroots organization
  • PopDev – Population and Development Media Awards organized by the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development Foundation, Inc. (PLCPD)
  • TABAK – Tunay na Alyansa ng Bayan Alay sa Katutubo (Genuine Alliance of the Nation for the Indigenous Peoples)
  • UPLB – University of the Philippines in Los Baños

3 thoughts on “Random thoughts about Alecks”

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  3. I got the news from my best friend when I read his e-mail dated October 10. I read it late (‘coz I don’t open much of my e-mail kasi I am not good in writing letters, that’s why I am very lazy in opening e-mails) about the death of Mr. Alexander Pabico. He was my schoolmate when we we were at St. Joseph School in Juan Luna, Tondo, Manila. He was our Salututorian in our school, a very simple person and intelligent. My best friend knows that I admire him so much for his simplicity, walang yabang sa katawan and he was a down-to-earth person. I know I have a lot to say about him but I am still saddened by his death as young as he was, coz I know he would achieve a lot more if he were given more years to live. From me, goodbye to you, Alex. You had made me admire you more.

    Victor M. Almazan

    Reply: Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Victor. I wish you all the best.

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