WELL, what can I say? As always, I say it like it is. I learned early in life that if you tell the truth, you will never go wrong. Things will go naturally, as in a river that runs deep, flowing symmetrically, seamlessly flawless. You can’t disrupt, fight, nature.
And so, it was then in the just-ended Tokyo Motor Show, that I got holed up in a hotel room. All the time that my fellow motoring journalists—all distinguished guests of Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP)—were lapping it up at the Tokyo Big Site, the usual venue of the iconic motor event, I was moping. Alone. Lonely. And, yes, sick.
We arrived last Sunday before noon in Tokyo and had an exotic, sake-laced seafood lunch at the 300-year-old Chrysanthemum Restaurant by the foot of the massive Narita Buddhist Temple aged 1,600 years old.
After dozing off for a couple of hours at the hotel, we had dinner at New Otani Hotel, which is about an hour by bus from Keio Plaza. Grilled shrimps and steaks were the main menu, again flushed down by Japan’s good ole sake.
In short, it was all very fine, thank you.
Until the next morning.
When I woke up, I could barely stand up. I virtually crawled out of bed to make it to the breakfast table.
“Hot milk, please?” I implored on the waiter.
“Sorry, Sir, self-service,” he said.
I begged of him.
He went to the chief waiter, who came to me and said, “Sorry, Sir, but it’s self-service here.”
I couldn’t say I was sick; it might cause panic to the other guests.
So, I kept my peace. I got up—very, very slowly—as my knees had begun to weaken.
I got my hot glass of milk, rice topped by scrambled egg, two pieces of sausage and one banana.
As I reclaimed my seat, Jade B. Sison, our superefficient drillmaster from the TMP, happened by and gave me a beso-beso.
“Always, it’s Tito Al who is first to arrive,” Jade said, super-resplendent in her blue sweatshirt.
When I finally got to sit down—laboring already to do it as fever seemed to have set in, not to mention joint pains—in came Carlo S. Ablaza, the dashing vice president of TMP. That’s when I finally got the nerve to say it.
“Carlo, I think I can’t join you guys, today,” I said. “I am sick.”
“Yaiiks!” he said. “OK, please rest then. Do you need meds?”
“No, I am fine,” I added. “I just need to rest.”
Wrong. I needed more.
Like, my own medicines were not good enough to arrest my fever, severe headache and joint pains.
Next afternoon, Carlo brought me to the Sendagaya International Clinic, where I had undergone IV for massive infusion of antibiotics, dextrose-style.
Carlo was actually my Mr. Toyota Fix all this time that I was down, including supplying me with Motor Show photos that are spread all over here. Bless you, Carlo. Lawyer Rommel Gutierrez, watching from a distance, is so proud of you.
Thus, home to me for six straight days was Room 1937 of the 19th floor of the Keio Plaza Hotel that towers 45 floors up in the Shinjuko skyline.
From Sunday to Friday, I have mastered every nook and cranny of Room 1937, including the crawling sounds of ants.
Only last Thursday night was I able to break free—a trip to the iconic Abbey Road on Roppongi to fulfill the pilgrimage (too bad my podner, Danny “Sir John” Isla, wasn’t around) of watching Japan’s best-performing Beatle copycats. Before that was a sumptuous dinner date with Vince Socco, the Filipino giant in Singapore’s Toyota Motor Asia Pacific. Not to be missed out here was our farewell cocktails with TMP President Satoru Suzuki, who was so gracious enough to host us on the eve of our departure for home.
In my 41 years of pounding the beat, this marked the first time that I got sick while on a coverage overseas—the first one being in the 1976 Pesta Sukan Basketball Games in Singapore.
I came. I got sick. I saw nothing at the Tokyo Motor Show.
And this was my 13th straight Tokyo Motor Show coverage since 1993; my 10th successive with Toyota.
I fell prey to the curse of the (Un)Lucky 13th?
PEE STOP A collateral damage was my Tokyo vacation with my beloved, the writer/journalist Sol F. Juvida, after the Motor Show. She cancelled her Tokyo trip on October 27, our holidays supposedly lasting up to November 3. I’m sorry, my dear.