the tao of helmut
TRANSCRIPT
THE TAOof
HELMUT
AUTHOR OF THIS IS YOUR KUNG-FU: 17 MINDSETS FOR NON-HERMITS
RODOLFO AZANZA
Illustrations by
Christine Ayn Rand Azanza
Contents Acknowledgements ................................................3 About the Author .......................................................5 Introduction ..................................................................6 The Crash .......................................................................9 Enter the Minot ..........................................................11 I, the Nose ....................................................................14 Down in Mississippi .................................................17 What's in a Name?..................................................19 Chronicler & Validator ..........................................21 Games People Play ...............................................24 Protect Zi Base ...........................................................26 Alexander D. ..............................................................28 Protrusions ....................................................................30 Kuznets ..........................................................................32 The Tao of Helmut ....................................................39 The End ..........................................................................49
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NOTES
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Acknowledgements
I believe that the Big Boss up there has the last say on everything, so I thank Him foremost for allowing this project to come to fruition.
In a different light, I would also like to thank my non-fair weather friends in the Manila Poeticons e-group: Glenn De Guzman, Gina Ledesma, Lardy Caparas, Raymund Addun, Nonoy Oplas, Joey Sescon, Adora Navarro, Che Santos, Joy Castro and Kat Firmeza. Thanks to Monching Romano as well, who never cease to amaze me with his gift of gab. When I am with this bunch, my cup runneth over.
I also thank my wife, Christy, for all the great decaf coffee and Korean black noodles that sustained me through long evenings in front of the computer, my eldest daughter Christine Ayn Rand who fueled my imagination and gave Helmut a face through her beautiful drawings, my youngest daughter, Maria Zinia, for taking the position in my life as My Weakness, to my dad, Rudi,
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who once said, “Don’t do anything unless at the least it will improve your complexion”, and to my mom, Nene, who can really weave the scariest bedtime stories in the whole planet.
Finally I would like to thank some people I’ve fortuitously met in my journey; people who turned out to be gemstones in their own right: Renato Azanza, Cesar Sarmiento, Sam Aherrera, Cathy Bascos, Arlene Macaranas, Jannicke Steen, Ponly Pena, Bong Verzosa, John Mayang, JCI Sen. Levi Cabeliza, Obet Evangelio, Ferdie Vasquez, Bong Dimafelix, Jon Puma, Kenneth Tanate, Susan and Gerry Gerardo, Carlo and Pam Borlaza, Boss Benny Reinoso, Boss Budoy Quitoriano, Erik Knive, Torbjorn Kirkeby-Garstad, Manny Rubio, Anne Margrethe Platou, Suman Basnet, Sunny Malimit, Erick Planta, Evelyne Santiago, Anne Orquiza, Rommel Regacho, Czar Lapuz, RV De Guzman, Alberto Canlas, Nestor Aliman, Andy Estrellado, Nomer Reynaldo, Celso Caballero III, Carol Ballesteros, Theresa Gonzales, Biyen Paul, Mike Hosillos, Ferdie Blanco and Darvin & Kathy Yambao. If I took a sip of Aquavit for every good stuff I absorbed by interacting with all of you, by now I would be an irredeemable alcoholic.
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About the Author
Rodolfo Azanza grew up in a barrio in the
small island-province of Catanduanes, Philippines, daydreaming about comic book superheroes and wondering about what lies beyond the clouds. His mom primarily influenced his literary inclination.
Rodolfo Azanza’s academic background is in Economics. He went to the University of the Philippines for his Bachelor’s degree. He also holds a Master’s degree in Urban & Regional Planning from the University of South Australia.
Today, he works as Country Representative for a global power company based in Norway. In his free time he writes blogs and keeps in touch with friends and family through Facebook.
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Introduction
Helmut is of course just a figment of my
imagination. The main inspiration for the character of Helmut is a little ninja called Ninjai. It is a flash animation project by a group called the Ninjai Gang. Their work can be found in www.ninjai.com. I watched the adventures of Ninjai one chapter at a time because that was how the developers posted the flash movies in their internet site. After posting a chapter or two, there would be a lull of a few weeks, sometimes even months. I remember anticipating the posting of the next chapter right after finishing the last one. Between Chapter 4 and 5, a character of my own sprang to life in my head. I guess it was my way of coping with the waiting that I had to contend with.
Helmut turned out to be a smash hit to my eldest daughter. She was then about 3 years old.
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I would read to her the usual fairy tale books but she would insist that I tell her another story about Helmut. So I started concocting story lines around the little fellow. In time Helmut became part of our day-to-day lives. For instance, as we would eat dinner, my daughter would insist she sees Helmut also gobbling up his meal while seated at the edge of the microwave oven.
I guess Helmut, by and large, is an extension of me. Things I cannot do, or afraid of doing, I let Helmut do it. I think he has become a tool for me to expand my universe. I am afraid of skating, so I let him skate. He became a way for me to meet the interesting people I have dreamed of clasping hands with.
I discovered about two years ago that that When I would think out things in my head, Helmut would pop up and start taking the other side of whatever is the position I am gravitating towards or biased about. In short, Helmut has become an analytical tool, almost like a built-in shrink, if you like.
I hope he does not end up controlling me, because two month ago, he asked me if I could write a book about him. Of course I said no.
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THE TAO of
Helmut
By Rodolfo Azanza
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The Crash
It was night when I first met Helmut. Dark as
usual, it was pretty much an ordinary night. Only
that night, I met Helmut. I guess that made it a
little less ordinary. I was already tucked under the
sheets, my eyes were already closed for two
seconds, and I was at the brink of singing myself
to sleep with my favorite song. I was softly going,
"Love, is a many splendored...” and then I was
rudely interrupted by a loud, "THING!"
As I later found out, it was the sound of
Helmut crashing through my smoked-glass
windowpane. He landed right inside my
Starbucks coffee mug. By the sound of it, no
Minot could have survived that crash. The impact
shattered the aircraft's protective
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electromagnetic cloak, and had it not been that
coffee mugs are typically made round, Helmut
would have died before one can say “Arnold
Schwarzenegger”. The starboard of his spaceship
caught the arc of the rim near the handle, and
sent the ship going in a smooth circular motion all
the way to the bottom of the green Starbucks
mug. The vessel smashed right into an ort of
Skyflakes semi-dissolved in a pool of leftover
coffee.
I heard the last drowning gasps of the
spaceship's engine before it died down and
slipped into utter stillness. As I peeked inside the
mug, Helmut was already disembarking. I saw a
little fellow walking down the tiny plank of a small
spaceship in such a majestic stride. Only, he
tripped on some fine wires hanging out by the
exit door, and fell straight into the pool that was a
fusion of disintegrated crackers and leftover
coffee.
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"Xyz", he said as he picked himself up.
The voice was rather clear and
resoundingly loud coming from a fellow whose
spaceship can fit in a coffee mug.
Enter the Minot
Helmut is a Minot. He came from a planet
unknown to Earth people. He tried too many
times to tell me the name of the solar system he
came from but I just could not get myself to say it
correctly.
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Well, just to give you an idea, it sounds a
little bit like French. Something like, “Les goûts et
les couleurs ne se discutent pas".
Helmut tried pointing me to his planet out
there in the wide expanse of the evening sky that
same night he landed in my coffee mug. He said
that if I look right into the belly of a constellation
called Scorpio and adjust my line of sight about
10 degrees to the left, then I will be looking
exactly where "Les goûts et les couleurs ne se
discutent pas" is supposed to be.
I must have stared and squinted a hundred
times but I could not see any slight indication of
that thing, so eventually I decided to just pretend
to see a shimmering light from where he was
pointing at.
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It was night when I first met Helmut…
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I, the Nose
Helmut can speak many Earth languages.
He told me that he had been to Earth seven times
already; the seventh being the night we met. He
tried communicating with me at first in what I
would realize later to be a mix of German,
Vietnamese and Spanish. Right after he was fully
recovered from the close acquaintance with the
leftover coffee in my mug, Helmut looked up to
me and mumbled a mouthful of gibberish, but
my ears could not make a recognizable word out
of it. It was all Greek to me, or Germanic, as it
turned out. I thought I picked up some words like,
"Spraken, spraken, slazen, oten!", or something
close to that.
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Later on I was able to work out that his
name is Helmut, because he shouted it three
times as he repeatedly stabbed his chest with his
pointing finger. Then he said something like, "Y
tu? Y tu?”, while pointing right into the center of
my face.
I reluctantly said, “Nose?”
So he called me “Nose” from then on.
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Helmut and his grain of rice.
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Down in Mississippi
As not to complicate matters with Helmut, I
did not try to change his thinking that my name is
Nose. And it worked out quite well. Besides, I
leaned towards simplifying my life given the
initial language barrier.
Fortunately it turned out, Helmut can speak
English. Only it was awkwardly very much
Southern; much like this Forrest Gump character.
He said he learned it during his sixth trip to Earth,
from a friend who lived in a place called
Tennessee. He recalled that he saw from the sky
a long and winding river and thought he would
go “like a water lily” and let the river carry his
spaceship to wherever he is destined to be for
this trip. He ended up in a town called Memphis.
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From there he chased a bumblebee all the way
to a cool place called Nashville. There was a
young lady that he met in 1971who taught him to
speak English. She was a broadcaster in a local
radio station. Helmut testifies that the young lady
was incredibly talented but she was stuck as a
faceless voice in the radio. He talked her into
moving to television and pit her talent against the
challenges of TV anchoring. Five years after, she
moved to Baltimore to heed Helmut’s suggestion
and be a TV anchor. Helmut had to stay in
Nashville to continue searching for a good
transceiver location (whatever that is).
Many moons later, he saw her on TV, in a
show called “People Are Talking”.
“Ms. Winfrey, she really made a career out
of talking”, Helmut explained.
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What's in a Name?
Helmut told me about his harrowing
experience enroute to my coffee mug. He
explained how he lost control of his spacecraft.
As he was jettisoned from the Mothership towards
the general direction of the Earth, he did not
switch on the reverse thrusters as he entered the
Earth's atmosphere, on the expectation that as it
did before, the Ozone layer will slow down his
entry anyway. Unfortunately, he chanced on a
hole in the Ozone layer and down he plummeted.
He thought he was going to die as his life flashed
before his eyes.
“Maybe we should write Mr. Obama,”
Helmut suggested. “With our intercession, he
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might sign the Kyoto Protocol rather than play
around with the Copenhagen Accord."
"Don't worry", I jokingly told Helmut. “When
I become President of the Philippines I will patch
it up myself”.
Anyway, that was the start of a very good
friendship. At first I felt very awkward calling him
Helmut. To me it sounds like a name of a cartoon
character. Pretty much like Hagar the Horrible. I
told him that his name sounds very foreign to me,
and perhaps we can agree to a more familiar
name, like Ding-Dong, or Jing-Jing. Helmut did
not agree. He said the names I suggested sound
too much like doorbells. He counter-suggested
shifting to Arnold Schwarzenegger or
Nebuchadnezzar.
So we ended up agreeing to stick to
Helmut.
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Chronicler & Validator
Helmut is a Chronicler. All Minots are.
Helmut said that the Minot race was tasked by
the Supreme Being to travel the vastness of His
creation and record the events that take place
practically everywhere. The Minots are highly
technological and have actually constructed
transceivers in every galaxy to monitor all events
in every planet, moon and asteroid. Helmut said
that they have installed two of these transceivers
in the Solar System. One is on a rock that forms
part of one of the rings of Saturn, and the other, a
fairly new installation, is right here on Earth. I
recall Helmut mentioning a couple of times that
this transceiver is called "The Wall". Totally
discounting the possibility that he meant the
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album of Pink Floyd, I simply made the
conclusion that it is the one in China.
With the transceivers, the Minots can stay in
their home planet and observe the events in the
universe from the comforts of their living room (I
reckon all living bodies need a sofa, or
something of similar nature). However,
sometimes the transceivers need maintenance
works due to ordinary wear and tear, and they
would send their engineering teams to fix the
technical problems.
Helmut however does not belong to an
engineering team. He is a field operative called
a "validator". Sometimes, signals from a
transceiver encounter anomalies in space.
Therefore, the signals that reach the Minots in
their living rooms are corrupted. Afraid that they
might make some mistakes in recording the
works of the Supreme Being, the Minots send field
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operatives like Helmut to chronicle events in
certain locations via the empirical method.
Helmut fixing his spacecraft with
epoxy.
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Games People Play
Helmut, he was funny. One instance he
caught me playing Starcraft on my PC. I thought
he was already asleep as it was already 2:05
ante meridian. I was in the act of merging my two
High Templars in order to create an Archon when
I heard him. He was sitting at the edge of the
coffee mug and his head was thrown backwards,
laughing his heart out. I asked him why he is so
wildly amused, and he told me he was so wildly
amused because I was so wildly amused with the
game. By the way, he thought the Zergs are an
ugly lot.
He explained to me that Minots do not play
games. Even as Minuettes (little Minots that is)
they do not play games. Every day in the life of a
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Minot is spent in preparation for becoming a full-
pledged chronicler. He said that in all the planets
he chronicled, it is only on Earth that beings play
games: sometimes for money, sometimes for love,
and sometimes just for the sheer entertainment
value.
I explained to him the mechanics of
playing a game. First, that the rules must be set
and all the rules must be followed all the time
come hell or high water, just like how the Minots
follow all the orders of the Supreme Being.
Otherwise, the game will not be a good one.
It was tempting to also explain the Game
Theory in general, and the Prisoner's Dilemma in
particular, but I held back. I told him that a game
should be enjoyed, and that's all about the
essence of it.
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Protect Zi Base
Later on, after we repaired his space craft
using a bit of synthetic thermosetting resin (which
is actually just Epoxy I bought from the Wilcon
Depot) and a few hours of recharging from a
triple-A battery, Helmut figured out a game with
mosquitoes called, "Protect Zi Base". I would be
the base and Helmut would buzz around me in
his spacecraft (the fuel for which we figured to be
just a good mixture of Russian Vodka and a tinge
of olive oil) and would not let a mosquito touch
me. Sometimes I would put the pressure on him
by announcing that three more are approaching
from 6 o'clock while he is busy driving a couple
of "enemies" under my chair. But Helmut, he
would always manage. That I was sure about,
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because I never got ill of Dengue Fever. He was
always flying around me like a Mormon casing
the house of a prospective recruit.
It was mostly like that with Helmut. From the
office I would go straight home and have a chat
with him about life. While I am away he would
spend most of his time watching TV and then go
inside his spacecraft to record human events. He
also fancied giving technical names to places
inside the house. He calls my work station as the
Captain's Bridge, my bed as the Sick Bay, the
kitchen is the Engineering Bay, the car is the
Teleportation Device, and the toilet is the Warp
Zone. Indeed, it was all so amusing with
Helmut. Eventually I got used to referring to my
PC as the Captain's Log, and the curtains as the
Electromagnetic Shield. He would laugh because
instead of raising the Shield for protection, we
had to bring it down when the sun is up.
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Alexander D.
Helmut likes rice. He also said he tried
caviar about a hundred and fifty years ago
during his fifth visit to Earth. There was this fellow
he met somewhere in France. He was then
scouting for a good site for a transceiver in case
"The Wall" gets demolished by the tides of world
history. Apparently, this fellow whom he became
friends with did nothing but write. So they would
chat for long hours weaving one storyline after
another.
One of those stories, Helmut told me, was
about three soldiers who were supposed to be
good in using muskets, but were way a lot better
with their swords.
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Another story was about a sailor who was
framed and was thrown behind bars. While in jail,
the guy met another prisoner who happens to
have information about a hidden fortune.
Eventually he was able to escape, and using the
discovered wealth, exacted his sweet revenge
against those who perpetrated his imprisonment.
It was during these long chats with
Alexander D. that Helmut tried caviar. Apparently,
this writer lives a lavish lifestyle and was a big
spender; always living beyond his means.
"But rice is so much better", Helmut said.
I believed him because often he would
sneak away carrying on his shoulders a grain of
rice and would haul it into his spacecraft. Then he
would not come out for long hours.
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Protrusions
I never saw the inside of Helmut's ship. Well,
foremost it was too small for the naked eye. I
never tried to anyway, in the same way that
Helmut never tried to look inside my cabinet.
Privacy, I explained, is something that humans
value a lot. Helmut kind of liked it too as it
amused him tremendously when he would walk
out of his spaceship (my mug became his regular
parking bay) and "Nose" will be there staring at
him with huge question marks in his eyes. It was
not really that I did not know he just spent two
hours devouring a grain of rice because I would
always note his belly protruding out of proportion;
like Italy sticking out into the Mediterranean. It
was more like I did not know if he eats rice with
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something else. Later on he was to tell me that he
never ate rice with something else. But he always
drank something afterwards: the fuel.
Playing “dodge the claw”.
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Kuznets
Helmut once asked me when it would snow,
because he was looking forward to skiing.
Apparently, in the 1890’s, Helmut came to Earth
for his fourth mission, in a land where people are
called Originals. These people do some kind of a
cultural journey that Helmut called a
“walkabout”. The Originals travel on foot to a
place full of “sand and dry stuff”, and after days
and days of walking they would reach a place
where a huge, huge orange rock stands.
In this place, Helmut met a white stranger
that looks pretty much different from the Originals.
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This one does its own walking, but always into
forests and bushes and never into the sands. He
likes to put words into lines and arrange them in
such a way that it would be nice to listen to when
recited. I told Helmut that his friend was most
likely a poet, because that is what poets do.
Helmut’s friend apparently carried with him
all his stuff. He rolls everything with a blanket and
ties a rope from end to end so that he is able to
sling it around his body. Helmut laughed about it
while he was describing it to me. He said that his
mate looked like he was waltzing with a girl when
he carries his stuff this way.
“Clancy, he was a funny swagman you
know!” Helmut exclaimed.
“So his name was Clancy?” I asked.
“For a while it was Clancy but I later
convince him to change his name to Banjo,”
Helmut replied.
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Helmut said he once went with Clancy (or
Banjo) bush-walking, and they kept climbing up
and up and up the mountains until they found
themselves in this place where there is white stuff
all around.
“Apparently it is also called snow, but it
looks whiter than what can be found in
Alexander’s town.” Helmut explained.
This is where Helmut learned how to ski.
I explained to him that it does not snow in
Manila at all, or the Philippines for that matter.
"Sometimes we get hail in Baguio, but never
snow". I told him.
It made him sad. For like a week he did not
play with the mosquitos, and likewise he was not
interested in playing "Dodge the Claw" with my
cat, Kuznets.
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And here I digress. Kuznets is a tomcat. I
found him in a Sketchers shoebox in a back alley
at the U.P. Diliman Shopping Center; just outside
the stall of Diliman Republic (they sell nice shirts
and jackets there!) about six months before
Helmut came falling down from the sky. At first I
thought of naming the cat “Paul Krugman” just for
the heck of it. But later I decided it should be
Kuznets, because it is a shorter name. You do not
want to have to yell more than three syllables
when you want to call the cat, I figured. It could
be very tiring, not to mention that the cat might
feel too important.
Black as coal, Kuznets is the nicest cat I
have seen in my waking life; perhaps also the
laziest. Helmut learned about "Pavlov's
Conditioning" with Kuznets. The feline would not
play "Dodge the claw" with him unless he would
first levitate a piece of Oreo in front of his
spacecraft as the reward. But I digress.
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After a week of silence (kind of a
melancholic stupor, as Helmut would later say) I
became concerned that Helmut will give me the
cold shoulder treatment for the longest time. I
decided to bring him to the mall to cheer him up.
“Would you want to go to Megamall or the
Mall of Asia?” I asked Helmut.
He picked Megamall because he thought
that to go to the Mall of Asia we will have to book
a flight. He figured his spacecraft still needs a few
more flight tests before declaring it in good order.
He was ecstatic about going to Megamall
but it took some convincing for him to leave the
spacecraft behind “for a short test flight”. With a
grain of rice for snack and a piece of
marshmallow for cushion, I place Helmut inside a
film canister (with a window cut out so he can
peek outside). It was a short drive from
KaimitoVille to Megamall but Helmut's constant
chattering made it even shorter.
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Every time I would overtake another car,
Helmut would go, "Captain! Evasive maneuver!"
And Helmut constantly egged me to shift to
higher gear and drive faster, hollering, "C’mon
Nose, Warp Speed Ten! Warp Speed Ten!
It was mostly like that with him along the
way. He was in high heavens when we entered
the mall and saw the skating rink in Building A. I
bought a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream, paid
the entrance to the rink and sat down at the far
end, near the dressing room.
Helmut skated on ice cream for almost two
hours. I had to promise him we would do it again
before he acceded to my plea that we should go
home. He said we should try a different flavor
next time.
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Helmut’s self-portrait (he used my
laptop).
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The Tao of Helmut
But we did not get to do it again. Just last
week, when I came home from watching the
Pacquiao-De La Hoya dream match at Silver
City-Tiendesitas, I found a note on my desk. It
was from Helmut. I knew he did not use the anti-
gravity machine of his spacecraft to lift the pen in
writing the note. He must have scribbled the
whole thing painstakingly because I noticed a
good number of smallish footprints on the paper.
The note read:
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********
-Please insert Earth Date here-
Dear Friend Nose,
First of all, I think you should change
your name. Nose is quite funny, but you deserve
a more decent name, perhaps something like,
Ronald Reagan, since you like him a lot.
I received a signal from my beacon this
morning while you were asleep. I decided not to
tell you I have to leave. Twenty-five Minots before
take-off from the Genki Deska galaxy
encountered an anomaly. Uh, I have to explain,
Genki Deska is 10 degrees north of the Belt of
Orion from the Earth's point-of-view. Somebody
has to shoot a spacecraft into a basket of
rotating energy to free the twenty-five Minots,
and I am one of the last 2 Minots in this Region
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that must make that shot. In Minot, we call this
act a free throw.
I thank you for the data and information
I was able to gather and send back to my
principals. The Supreme Being will now be very
happy to know that he can now retract his
previous order to annihilate planet Earth from the
face of the universe. Many moons ago, our
transceiver in your planet sent a signal to us that
Earthlings have been terribly destructive. They
have found ways to destroy the things they love
for reasons unexplainable and unknown to us,
Minots. And the Supreme Being's explanation
was only that humans have become too self-
centered.
First there was nuclear testing in an atoll
that killed a lot of flora and fauna. Then there
were planes smashing into buildings, killing a lot
of people. War ensues in many fronts, as if war is
as easy as eggs for breakfast.
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Earthlings take life for granted. For many
years they have killed whales for their fat. They
kill sharks for their fins too, so that their dumplings
would taste better even while just with a little slice
of mushroom it would taste better nonetheless.
They kill rhinos and elephants for ivory, as if ivory
would cure hunger. They kill tigers, otters and
crocodiles for their skin. I do not understand this
because I think earthling skin is great already.
Why put on something else’s skin over one’s own.
They kill turtles for their shell, to adorn houses and
furniture. Destroying somebody else’s house to
make your look better?
Loggers kill trees. Consumers kill trees
too under the pretext of wealth by refusing to use
the other side of a bond paper. Others kill
vegetation for the sake of business, but what is
worse is that some businesses kill vegetation just
for the heck of it.
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What has become scary is the
propensity of humans to kill each other, as if it is
just like stepping on ants. People shoot other
people both in times of war and in times of
peace. Business rivals, or even partners, kill each
other over profit. Kinsmen kill each other over
inheritance, and motorists kill each other over
parking space.
But what we shared in the last few
weeks point to a different direction. Humans,
other than they tend to invent plenty of fun
games, are capable of friendship. The Supreme
Being will not want to erase a race capable of
such loftiness.
Hurry up and be President of your
country so you can plug the hole in the Ozone
Layer.
I will try to send you some pictures from
Minot. Just bring your Blackberry close to The
Wall in Intramuros, and our gadget there will
THE TAO OF HELMUT Rodolfo Azanza
44 | P a g e
activate your Bluetooth and then my photos will
automatically download. Just press “accept”.
And please, upload my photos to my Facebook
account so my friends see them too. My
password is [unprintable due to privacy
concerns].
Your friend,
Helmut, it means.
A long P.S.
I hope Earth would not mind that I
brought with me 7 mosquitos so we can play
"Protect Zi Base" on the way to Genki Deska.
I considered bringing Kuznets too but he
is awfully heavy so I dropped the idea. Besides
he won't play "Dodge the Claw" without Oreo
anyway.
THE TAO OF HELMUT Rodolfo Azanza
45 | P a g e
I heard that Mr. Pacquiao won over Mr.
De La Hoya. I am sure all the people in the
Philippines love watching Mr. Pacquiao’s fights,
perhaps with the exception of Christian Bautista.
Tell your neighbor to stop believing
about that stuff that apparently make you slim, or
make your skin whiter. They just airbrush those
models on TV.
And when Kuznets sleeps, don’t wake
him up. He is busy with his Avatar trying to tame
that dragon.
Finally, before I end, please go over the list
below. These are just 17 Minot reminders:
1. Big stuffs only look big when they are really
big. And also when you think small.
2. There will always be a mosquito to chase.
There is no room for boredom if you really
think hard about it.
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46 | P a g e
3. Treat all coffee mugs the same. They are all
crafted for one purpose.
4. Keep your windows open. Fresh air is great
for your agility and hand-eye coordination
when you play Starcraft. You also avoid
having a broken window in case a Minot
comes to crash-land.
5. You can wear any hairstyle that you want.
Ask Ms. Winfrey.
6. Human events are recorded in small
fragments but stories are not. You have to
see the whole bit in order to understand the
whole story.
7. Like all Minots, be a Visualizer. What you can
visualize, you can make true.
8. Practice makes practice easier. Ask Kuznets.
9. You can't repair a spacecraft on an empty
belly.
10. Believe that planet Minot exists, even if you
can't see it.
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47 | P a g e
11. Social beings must choose Facebook over
Starcraft everyday of the week and twice on
the weekend.
12. After attaining perfection, brush your teeth.
13. You may name your kids Jupiter, Venus or
Mars, but never Uranus.
14. Charge your phone before leaving the
house.
15. Keep a Captain's Log, especially of your
dreams.
16. After using the Warp Zone, flush.
17. The Supreme Being will always know in the
end.
Oh, and one more thing, remember always
what I said about you living as part of a larger
society. You are not a hermit and you must try to
leave your house more often and interact with
people. You must strive to live as a non-hermit
and therefore you must know your KUNG-FU.
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48 | P a g e
Your friend again,
Helmut, it means.
********
That was pretty much about Helmut, the
Chronicler from Minot.
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49 | P a g e
The End
THE TAO OF HELMUT Rodolfo Azanza
50 | P a g e
Aya Azanza is the author’s eldest daughter. She is now 9 years old. She drew Helmut based on how she imagined he looks like from daddy’s storytelling. The little one is Enya, who until now opens the window at night “in case Helmut comes home”.
Sometimes big lessons in life come in small packages.The Tao of Helmut packs a heavy punch for its size andsimplicity.
“It is a children’s story for grown-ups, and yet also agrown-ups’ story for children. It is a great source ofinsight and inspiration.”
What separates this book from the rest is the absence ofpretension. It employs the most basic storytellingtechnique: linear and colourful. The illustrations weredone by a 9-year old girl based on her owninterpretation of the characters and settings.
Email: [email protected] Blog: heybuhey.blogspot.com
Rodolfo Azanza lives in Quezon City, Philippines. He hasdone civic work for 9 years as member and officer of theJCI-Philippines-Mandaluyong City. He also handles thelocal Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) portfolio of aglobal power company. He is a bonafide member of thePublic Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) and aNational Book Development Board (NBDB) RegisteredAuthor since 2005. He is also the author of the renownedThis is Your Kung-Fu: 17 Mindsets for Non-Hermits. Heattends the Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) Men’s Class inMakati City.