When 53-year-old Jay Daniel Rodriguez Santiago, general manager of the Philippine Ports Authority, recently watched the play “Huling El Bimbo” for the second time, he could not help crying.
He had come to watch his theater actress-daughter, Julia, who plays one of the supporting characters in the latest revival of the widely acclaimed play with a sad theme and plot. What brought tears to his eyes was the scene showing the three male lead actors in their ROTC uniforms.
“The first time I watched it, I couldn’t breathe,” Santiago said in an interview with the Daily Tribune when he visited its offices for an online show appearance.
“It reminded me of my college days. Because the setting is UP. So you remember everything that you went through as a freshman, ROTC, and everything. Exactly the same. In fact, even the pa-merienda (snack time) when the cadets were required to buy sandwiches from a favored ambulant vendor.
“So when I saw it again I told myself I was not going to cry. But with the opening scene showing a dead body barely five minutes into the play, I couldn’t help shedding a few tears.”
Long-haired public servant
Jay, who sports long hair, is a dashing lawyer. It is his cool and relaxed mien, though, that makes him even more personable. In his recent visit to the Daily Tribune, where he shared his accomplishments and plans as PPA manager, we had a chance to do a side interview, one that focused on his lifestyle choices and circumstances and how these have informed his career. While his is a story of professional success, his ideal relationship with his children as their father stands out as his foremost accomplishment in life.
“I am fighting for a cause,” he said of the reason he has let his hair grow down to his nape. “When I am through with this challenge, I’ll have my hair trimmed.” He clarified, though, that “at certain periods in my professional career, when I’m focused on something, I do not take care of myself, or at least not have my hair cut, because I’d like to focus on what is pressing, what needs my utmost attention.”
Jay is a Palawano on his father’s side and a Zambaleño on his mother’s.
“The foundation of my education is the public school system,” he proudly declared. “I spent my grade school years in Bataan because my father used to work with the enterprise operation of EPZA until he died.”
Next, he attended the University of Santo Tomas pay high school. In college, he chose the University of the Philippines. He majored in Humanities.
I said that a professor of Humanities (later Art Studies), Brenda Fajardo, is my aunt.
“Brenda Fajardo was my thesis adviser,” he said. “She was my professor in Modern Art. Also Pre-historic Art. I shifted to Humanities as my pre-law course.
“First, I wanted to major in Political Science. But I kept failing my Math subjects — Algebra and then Trigonometry. That was when I shifted to Humanities.”
He was only in grade three when he began dreaming of becoming a lawyer.
“The president at the time was Ferdinand Marcos. So, being impressionable, sabi ko (I said) gusto ko parang Marcos. And since I heard that Marcos was a lawyer and that he reviewed for the bar while in prison, that left an imprint on me so I wanted to become a lawyer. And the only school I needed to go to was UP. So I applied to UP.”
Isko in Iskolar ng Bayan
He joined the UP Repertory Club when he was a freshman. So that’s how “I ended up participating in street plays. I played the role of Isko in the Iskolar ng Bayan,” he shared.
“Theater was something new to me,” he related. “So, sabi ko (I said) I wanted to explore it. Behn Cervantes was my director in Batang Hiroshima. He threw a shoe at me during a rehearsal because I was singing out of tune. I passed the audition for the lead actor. In the script, there was a monologue but Behn decided to turn it into a song. So I had to sing the monologue. The problem was I could not carry a tune. So I returned the shoe to him and he asked somebody to sing for me, all the time that I was emoting.”
I applied to two law schools, the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University. “The Ateneo results came out first and I passed, so I immediately enrolled. And then UP came out, and I also passed, so I enrolled there too. For two weeks, I was enrolled in both.
“I had mornings at UP and then, from 6 to 9 in the evening, at Ateneo on Dela Rosa in Makati. Since we lived in Quezon City, and we were nearer Diliman, I opted to stay in UP. Now that I had more time, I decided to work during the day and attend classes at night.”
He worked for Mobiline, the first cellular phone company.
“I started law school in 1992 and finished in 1997. A week after taking the Bar exam in September, he joined the Feria law office where he stayed until 2010. The cases he handled had to do with labor, immigration, taxation, customs and local government.
(To be continued)