A Silent Witness

Old hotels fascinate me.

They fascinate me because they've been witness to so much history. As places that provide transient accommodations and as points of rendezvous they inevitably serve as vital crossroads for interesting people and produce stories that are often more interesting than most.

The original Manila Hilton was put up in 1968 and in the ensuing 50 years before a fire engulfed it in 2018, served as the setting for many tales of the sort I personally find interesting.

When Muhammad Ali visited Manila in 1975 to fight Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila, he stayed at the original Manila Hilton. At that time he was still very much married to wife Belinda Boyd, but had already met, and was apparently totally smitten with, future wife Veronica Porche. So on his trip to Manila he left Belinda stateside, and took Porche. By her own account, Belinda had an idea what was going on, and was, surprisingly, even willing to go along, up to a certain extent. The limits of her longsuffering however, were apparently exceeded when Ali took Veronica to a reception in his honor held at Malacanang Palace, and with the international press present, allowed everyone, including First Couple President and Mrs. Marcos, to assume that Porche was his wife.

So Belinda hopped on the next plane and flew to Manila. By most accounts she "swept regally" into the Hilton, headed straight to Ali's suite, and proved once and for all that even the greatest of heavyweight boxing champions was no match for the fury of a woman scorned.

Even more fascinating for me is the story that supposedly, for years, a suite at the old Manila Hilton was home to one Severino Garcia Diaz "Santy" Sta. Romana, a man so mysterious that the only way for me to tell you about him is to tell you what I have come to believe about him. I hope that serves as a sufficient disclaimer that the story I am about to tell you is probably partially true, partially false, and partially unverifiable. It is merely a composite of different things I have read about Sta. Romana, and cobbled together with the glue of what makes the most sense to me.

"Santy" Sta. Romana was a Filipino who supposedly controlled a staggering amount of wealth all over the world. I purposely used the word "controlled" because no one knew exactly who the real beneficial owners of that wealth was - whether it was actually Santy or some other parties - but he was nominal account holder of an incredible amount of wealth in many forms - ranging from cash to stocks to gold bullion and gold certificates. In their book "Gold Warriors", Sterling and Peggy Seagrave quotes Tarciana Rodriguez, a Filipina accountant and cousin of Santy's mistress, who served as something of an executive assistant to Santy for years: "It was in my mind then that he must be somebody because, to be billeted in a five-star hotel in the 70s was an indication of a... VIP, especially he was only a Filipino. In my going to and fro to his hotel accommodation, what amazed me so much, there were many people of different nationalities who often visited him... Bankers, Brokers, Business associates... he was a very famous personality especially to all the Banks concerned throughout the world." Both Rodriguez and her cousin Luz Sambrano, Sta. Romana's mistress, also spoke of transactions in tantalizing amounts - a $43M deposit in the Manila branch of the First National City Bank, a $500M wire transfer to HSBC Hong Kong, 20,000 metric tons of gold in UBS Geneva, transactions in amounts that sound incredible but with details that provided a ring of authenticity.

Personally, I find all of this to be plausible, because Sta. Romana emerged from the second world war an intelligence operative. As a spook he probably served multiple masters, but primarily Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. He was, in fact, likely the most prominent Filipino operative of the OSS and all the OSS's future iterations and mutations. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, one of the OSS's primary objectives was bound to be the discovery of where the Japanese war loot was, and this Japanese war loot from World War II was legendary in its size:

As the Japanese Imperial Amy had swept through Asia in their march towards regional domination, it was well-known that they had accumulated vast treasures every step of the way. Much of this war loot had found its way to the Philippines to be catalogued, inventoried, and readied for eventual transport back to Japan. But as Japan started to lose the war to the Allied Forces and made plans for a retreat, the decision was made to bury the loot for later retrieval. It is, to me, only logical that the OSS surely made it their top priority after the Japanese surrender to discover where this loot was. Furthermore, it makes perfect sense to me that any part of the treasure OSS operatives did find was not officially transmitted to the US government but kept as a slush fund for intelligence operations. Intelligence organizations operate in, at least partial, secrecy and cannot constantly be justifying requests for funding to Congress. It is only to be expected that they would want alternate sources of funding that they have full control over, to be used in what they deem to be the patriotic task of fighting imperialism and communism and thus preserving the American way of life.

As a top operative of the OSS in the Philippines, Sta. Romana would have participated in every step of the process: from extracting information from Japanese military officers by whatever means necessary, to digging up war loot, to setting up safekeeping arrangements. Since, as I have speculated, any recoveries would have been set aside as an unofficial slush fund so critical to black operations, it was even highly likely that Sta. Romana was assigned to be something of a placeholder of sorts, a dummy in short, for wealth recovered by the OSS. It makes a lot of sense, Sta. Romana was not an American, not answerable to the US government, much less the US Congress, and as someone who had fought in a World War side by side with OSS Warriors, was someone they felt they could trust. Hence, his shadowy life, times, and evident control over much wealth.

By the way, it is also quite clear that Sta. Romana had dealings with Ferdinand Marcos, but that is a part of this story so complex I choose not to go there, except to say, in much simplified outline form, that there are some who firmly believe that Marcos learned about Japanese war loot from Sta. Romana, got his hands on some of it, became a very rich man even before he became President of the Republic of the Philippines, and continued to dig up buried treasure long after he became President. Marcos' hoard supposedly grew so large that if all of his overseas deposits were ever turned over to the Filipino people, we would be able to pay off all of our external debt with much left over. For precisely that reason, the developed countries cannot ever allow the Marcos Gold to ever be returned to the Philippines, because it would totally mess up the global financial system as we know it today. Now you know why, apart from mentioning this "theory" floating out there, I refuse to really dwell on this part of the story, it makes me sound too much like a crackpot. 😁

It's enough for me to believe that Santy Sta. Romana was a living person, that so few know his name in spite of the outsized role he played in Philippine history as an operative for the OSS/CIA complex, and that he used to stay at the old Manila Hilton and walk the surrounding streets. It reminds me that old Hotels stand in perfect, if silent, witness to so much history.  

The old Manila Hilton during its glory days:

Philippine History and Architecture @ Facebook

The new Hilton, located at the Resorts World Hotel and Entertainment Complex:

How to Keep it Up Longer

In the 2008 film Gran Torino, there was a scene wherein Clint Eastwood said that any man "worth his salt can do half the household chores with just... WD-40, vise grips, and a roll of duct tape." What he meant was that a man "worth his salt" would understand the basic principle underlying common handyman tasks and thus would be able to improvise accordingly. Yesterday, I replaced the insides of an aging toilet tank with spanking new fittings, including, of course, the central stem and its flapper, as pictured on the right. Soon after, I realized that the flapper would not seem to stay up long enough to get a good, proper flush. I could still get a proper flush if I held down the flush lever long enough, but I knew that ideally, for a system working perfectly, I only needed to press the lever once, and the flapper would take care of the rest. Since I think of myself as a man "worth my salt", I immediately thought I knew what the problem was, the chain that pulled up the flapper was probably too long and loose, and therefore it wasn't pulling up the flapper far enough for it to stay open. But after adjusting the chain and making sure that it would pull the flapper as far up as it could go, I found that the flapper still would not stay up and would clamp shut as soon as I let go of the lever.

I went to YouTube for answers. (See, it isn't true that men refuse to ask for directions. We do ask for help, as long as the source is not a living, breathing person and we can still feel that it was our own "research" that came up with the answer.) Anyway, what I discovered on YouTube absolutely...

...blew. my. mind.

Okay so apparently, these flappers that are so commonplace that we take them for granted are actually works of high science. Seriously. Turns out that the flapper stays up while the cone shaped thing is still filled with water. The water serves as a weight to hold the flapper in an upright position. As the tank empties of water as we flush, eventually that hole at the bottom of the cone is no longer covered by water and the water inside the cone flows out also. Once the cone is empty, then there is no longer any weight to hold the flapper in position and it clamps back down.

Wow. Who knew?

And get this, that's only half the story. There's more good stuff.

Think back to when you were a child and first learned to punch a hole in a can to pour the contents out. To get a good flow it's not enough to have one hole right? You need to punch a second hole to get a good flow going. The reason is because to get a good flow going, air has to flow into the can, and if you only have one hole, that single hole cannot accomplish the dual tasks of letting fluid out and letting air in. Anyway, the reason is not even important. We just have to remember the principle we learned with those cans and understand that it applies to our flapper cone as well. To get water flowing out smoothly, that one hole at the bottom is not enough. We need a...

 ...second hole!

sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit... (said in a low and awed tone).

And all this time I thought the small hole was just there for decorative purposes. And if your mind isn't totally blown by now, there's even more! That second hole begins to serve its function of allowing water inside the cone to flow out of the first hole when, and only when, it itself is no longer submerged in water. So on some of the newer flappers you can even control when the second hole becomes exposed. In so doing you decide when it begins to serve its function of allowing water to flow out of the first hole. Controlling when water flows out of the cone allows you to control when the cone empties, because in controlling when it empties you also control when the flapper drops back down. I want to know who the people are who sit around thinking up these things! They are geniuses whose names need to be in science textbooks that are used in our high school classes.

So to keep water inside the cone for as long as possible, you need to move the small hole to a lower position, say from (1) to (2). This way, water in the tank will have to have dropped to a lower level before the small hole is exposed and it begins to let water inside the cone flow out. The flapper stays up much longer because only when the flapper cone is finally empty of water does it clamp back down.

As a last word, all this doesn't mean that adjusting the chain is unnecessary. You still need to adjust the chain so that it pulls the flapper up to the correct starting position whenever someone flushes. However, whether the flapper will stay up, and how long it will stay up, is not related to the chain at all. 

whoa!

Roaming with a Cherry

I recently purchased a CherryRoam - a roaming pocket wifi unit. My thinking, and hope, was that it would be a good investment that would save me money in the long run. When one is abroad it is often difficult to find the best deal for data service. One is often forced to make a choice on the basis of what is available (whether it be SIMs or rentals or network access) and not really what offers good value, so sometimes the choice might be less than ideal. Worse, one is sometimes forced to knowingly over-pay for data service simply because the urgency of the situation demands it. So I figured if I had my own roaming pocket wifi I would, in theory at least, always have internet access at a cost that I would know in advance, and could manage.

I've since used the CherryRoam in two foreign countries, and I would have to say that I'm pretty happy with it. Tuwang tuwa is a good way to describe how I feel. I first used it in Hong Kong but held off coming to any conclusions about it at that point given how famously good Hong Kong's data infrastructure is. I then had the opportunity to use it in South Africa and there wasn't a significant drop-off in the quality of service so now I can really say that I think it's great. In fact, I had it with me on safari and was still able to send messages, images, and videos with no issues. I must point out that it was very much an entry-level safari and not some grand adventure in the wilderness. But still, there was often not a building or man-made structure anywhere in sight so I had some uncertainty about what to expect.

The CherryRoam device is managed via an app that you download onto your phone. The first step is to associate or pair or bind (whichever word you want to use) your device to your app. This
is, of course, so your app will "know" which device it's supposed to communicate with and subsequently command and control. This process is not too difficult, especially if you have enough tech savvy to consider owning a pocket wifi device to begin with. After this associate/pair/bind process, the only other thing you do on the device itself is to define a password so that you don't have unwelcome parties connecting to it. From thereon the only other thing you do on the device itself is to turn it on and off (and charge it of course). All interaction from this point onward is done on the app. On the app you load money into your account, and use this money to buy data packages. Paypal is the only alternative for loading money. Some might find this limiting but I actually like it because Paypal adds an additional level of security. Besides, you can add an almost limitless number of credit cards, debit cards, or bank accounts to your Paypal account right?

Once you have money in your account then you can buy the data package that's best suited to you, and this is the part that I like best about CherryRoam. Aside from day passes they also sell bulk data - say, 1GB good for three days, or 3GB good for seven days, and so on and so forth. Being able to buy data like this is a great way to manage costs - because if you actually sit down and analyze your data usage, you'll quickly realize that especially when abroad, your usage will actually be quite inconsistent from day to day - so paying the same rate everyday isn't exactly the most cost-efficient thing to do. With bulk data you can pay only for what you consume to a larger degree. Take note that I said "to a larger degree" because of course you're never going to get it perfectly - i.e. that 3GB you bought isn't going to run out exactly as you're about to board the plane for your flight home. Still, this kind of flexibility is a lot more cost-efficient for the variance in daily usage you're bound to encounter. Additionally, CherryRoam adds an additional layer of flexibility by selling bulk data that's good for regions - say "Asia" or "Europe" or "Middle East" - and not strictly for specific countries. This leads to even greater cost-efficiency especially if you're visiting multiple countries. Not only do you more or less pay for only what you consume across multiple days, but also across multiple countries. I imagine it would be particularly useful for European trips.

Just a tip - the app needs an internet connection to function so remember to do your work on the app - loading it and buying the applicable package - while you still have internet access (say while you're still in your home country) - lest you be caught in a situation wherein you don't have the internet access necessary to get internet access. Don't worry about your validity clock (i.e. the "three days", for instance, in the "1GB for three days") starting to run. It will start to run only when your device initially connects to networks in the region that you bought data for.

The one gripe I have with the CherryRoam, and it's a very small gripe, is that the home screen on the device shows the network name and the password that the owner created. So if you ever turn on the screen in a public area, it's practically an open invitation for strangers to connect to your device because the credentials they need to do so will be prominently displayed. While there's no way to change the display, it isn't a huge problem because you just have to remember not to expose your screen if and when it's lighted.
 
I do wonder though, if all the things I like will be sustained. As they get more and more customers, will they have enough bandwidth with their foreign telecom partners to keep up the service level I experienced? As my device ages, how will battery life hold up? Currently, I was impressed with their customer hotline because every single rep I spoke to turned out to be truly knowledgeable about their product; but as they grow their market  share they'll have to increase the number of reps and I wonder if this will dilute service quality. Finally, as they win more market share, will they start to raise prices and reduce the flexibility on their data packages? These all remain to be seen; and as I'm more than satisfied with my CherryRoam thus far, I truly hope this product won't be a victim of its own success.