Mang Kiko Meets Steve Jobs

Mang Kiko Meets Steve Jobs | Daily Tribune

A stirring fictional story of how Steve Jobs saved a Filipino senior citizen from darkness.

Jessica, a ballet student, is totally drowning in her iPod music inside a train station. She dances around on tiptoe, arms up, forming a heart-shaped arc, unmindful of the rush-hour crowd regarding her as a deranged mad lunatic (redundancy intended).

She closes her eyes in ecstasy, and when she opens them, she is jolted, seeing Mang Kiko, in his seventies, totally wrinkled, totally bald, waving at her wildly from six inches away with a smile as wide as an expressway. She hands over the earphones to him. He puts them on, then frowns.

Mang Kiko — Change music, please.

Jessica — Looks like you’re ecstatic, gramps.

Mang Kiko — No. Totally depressed. Don’t know what to do with myself. I just know how to hide it.

Jessica — You hide it pretty well. (Pointing to the earphones). Well, what do you want, gramps?

Mang Kiko — Surprise me. Fire me up. Make my day. Something exotic. (He puts his arms up and stomps his feet).

Jessica — (Staring at him, trying hard to discern his spirit. She manipulates the iPod quickly). Hmmm. Let’s see. Latin? Flamenco? (She gives a soft scream, then puts the earphones on him.) Yes, here we are. It’s called Fondo Flamenco … ojala .. contracorriente. This will kill you, grandpa.

Mang Kiko freezes, then suddenly jerks. He starts vibrating like a teen. Jessica gives another soft scream. People gather around, as he gyrates like a jackhammer. No one can hear the music. A teener approaches and connects the iPod to his portable player. Instantly, the music echoes across the train station. The crowd gives a scream as Mang Kiko mimics a gypsy. The music is finished. The train arrives. The crowd vanishes instantly. There is only Jessica and Mang Kiko.

Mang Kiko — How many songs you got in there?

Jessica — Hmmm. About two thousand.

Mang Kiko — In that lousy thing, two thousand?

Jessica — It can easily hold five thousand, gramps.

Mang Kiko — Wow. I’m living in the past.

Jessica — Nope, gramps. The way you gyrated, you’re living in the present.

Mang Kiko — Who made that magical music?

Jessica — You want some history? It actually has an ancient origin. Flamenco music evolved from southern Spain colonized by the Moors for 800 years.

Mang Kiko — The guitar was a product of the Arab Renaissance, spread by the Moorish empire.

Jessica — Wow. You know this?

Mang Kiko — The flamenco spirit, the stomping of the feet, the frenzied rhythm are a product of Arab spirituality mixed with the Castillan. It is a merging of Islamic and Christian.

Jessica — Wow. Tell me more, gramps.

Mang Kiko — Tell me. Who invented this machine?

Jessica — It’s called an iPod. It was invented by a genius named Steve Jobs.

Mang Kiko — Give me his cellphone. I wanna thank him.

Jessica — He’s dead, gramps.

Mang Kiko — Does the world know he is a superhero?

Jessica — More or less. They made a movie about him. He was an intellectual and entrepreneurial rebel who changed the world with his innovative ideas on marketing. He said enterprise is based not on profit — the old paradigm of Wharton and Yale — but on love. He said “please not fleece” your customer. Do so, and he will please you back a hundredfold.

Mang Kiko — Wow. Love and business, huh? Strange partners. Enterprise imbued with spirituality, huh? Never done before. Before Steve, there was only profit as the god. That is why businesses today are amoral, no conscience, no morality, no awareness of good and evil, only profit profit profit. That’s what Wall Street is, a product of the old paradigm, selfish power players imbued with greed and deceit.

Jessica — Now comes Steve. Not profit but prophet … of a new paradigm. Steve was thrown out of Apple, the company he founded after he catapulted it to huge profits. When he refused to conform to the Wharton boys, he was thrown out, much like Jesus came to His own and His own knew Him not. (To be continued)

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