Mistaken Impressions

I did not feel the need to express this previously but now that this blog is being read by so many people — usually 1,000 but as many as 3,000 in a day — I feel that I must say something about it…

I am amused, but simultaneously alarmed, that many people have mistakenly pegged it as a blog ABOUT Philippine high society; the country’s rich and famous; Manila’s “old rich” and “new rich”; the city’s fashionable people.  It isn’t and I never intended it to be such.

I began “Remembrance of Things Awry” in August 2006 as a compilation of family stories — however trivial and nonsensical — for eventual submission to an archive of Pampanga history.  After so many years, it dawned on me that in my immediate family, I am the last one to maintain ties in the old hometowns of Sulipan – Apalit [ Gonzalez / Arnedo / Escaler ], Bacolor [ Rodriguez ], San Fernando, Angeles [ Quiason, Henson ], and Arayat [ Reyes / Dizon ] in Pampanga as well as perhaps being the last living witness to already neglected and forgotten, but nevertheless significant and considerable,  unwritten familial histories.

Somewhere along the way, I was joined by like-minded people with similar backgrounds and interests.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that so many of them actually came from the country’s most hallowed families.  It is their continued presence and participation that has established the “social” tone of this blog and given the impression that it is entirely about affluent Filipinos, which is not true.

Apologies for the disappointment, but this blog is NOT about Philippine high society; NOT about the country’s rich and famous; NOT about Manila’s “establishment” and “nouveaux riches”; NOT even about the city’s fashionable people.  The unexpected truth is that I, Toto Gonzalez, am not even interested in “Manila society,” if it even exists.  For how can one truly be “society” if one has less than USD $ 10 billion these highly inflationary days???  To me, the only “society” that matters is the fantastically rich international one that shuttles between New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong, and now, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, New Delhi, and Singapore.

In this blog, I write about the things that went the way they shouldn’t have — oftentimes funny, occasionally sad.  Come to think of it, it’s about Life.  Nothing more and nothing less than that.  The notions of “high society” are actually very far from its essence.

Welcome to “Remembrance of Things Awry”…