Mark's Artist Spotlight
Francis: My version is, I have this friend who was about to get married when I was working in Singapore. She didn't want the traditional hen’s party. She said, "I want like a month of hen’s parties, but just the two of us.
So every other night we went drinking. And this is drinking, not to have fun, but drinking to get drunk. And then this one night I think we went out on Sunday. It started at 8 in the evening until 2 or 2:30. We were on the 10th bar, and then we were just on top of the Marina Bay where there was a bar.
Mark: It wasn't a Monday. It was a Sunday.
Francis: Oh Sunday. Yes, that's right. Yeah. We were on top of the Marina Bay Sands. And we saw something like, "Oh, there's actually like a happening on the ground floor." So from the top of Marina Bay Sands we were in there, and it so happened that we didn't realize it was a gay night bar in one of the places there. And we saw Mark and Mark was alone. What did I ask you?
Mark: Francis walked up and said, "You look like you have no friends." And I said, "Will you be my friend?" And he said yes. And then he went to the bar and spoke to all the Pinoys behind the bar, pretending like he knew everyone. And we ordered a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and some Red Bull, and he drank some more. And then he dragged me onto the dance floor, and as he was dancing he started taking his clothes off, and I said —
Francis: —I did not!
Mark Chambers: You did, too! When Francis drinks too much he likes stripping. He doesn't strip down to his underwear. He just takes his tops off. Actually, no, he took off his pants.
Francis: No, not really.
Mark: And then we won't say what happened after we left the club, but he tried to escape the next morning, and couldn't open the door because the lock was too complicated. So he snuck back into bed, and when he left he gave me his real number instead of his dating number, and I called him, and we caught up the next night.
Francis: It's not a dating — we call it a clubbing number. So I used to have a prepaid card and my real number. So when you do clubbing and you meet someone, and you have to give numbers, I usually give the prepaid number so that I could just ignore the calls or messages. I didn't realize that I gave him my real number. And then, yeah, he started calling me, said, :You wanna go for dinner?" And then, yeah, I met some of his colleagues after that, and I think I met him in September 2011.
Mark: Yep.
Francis: And yeah, we were a couple in December. And one year later we moved to Africa. We moved to Kenya, and then from there we were traveling between that and Singapore, because at that time I was still a permanent resident in Singapore. So we traveled between there and Kenya. Mark was working, and I was volunteering.
It was fun, because while I did, I was telling Mark one of the days that I did have a hesitation, and leaving Singapore because I was comfortable there, and most of my friends are there. In fact, I feel more at home in Singapore compared to the Philippines, because I've left very early, and most of us (relatives) are in Batanes.
Most of my classmates and my friends have left and have their own family now. So Singapore was home to me, and so when I left it was a little bit tough, but we had an exciting life in Kenya. Mark was working. I was volunteering in one of the informal settlements. Mark worked his magic on sponsoring the school that I was volunteering at.
So there's like a thousand kids, mostly orphans and people living with HIV and informal settlement residents who studied there. So from nursery all the way to form 4, which is 4th year high school for us. And yeah, Mark found a way to sponsor the feeding program, which is a 2-year funding to feed a thousand kids and teachers for breakfast and lunch every day and then pay the teachers — there's 33 teachers to pay. So yeah, Mark's company sponsored them.
That's also a way for them not to — what do you call it — prostitute themselves for lunch? One of the reasons they go to school is because they want to be fed. And you know, "Ubusin mo pagkain mo, dami-daming nagugutom sa Africa." Eat your food. There's a lot of people that are hungry in Africa. It's true, not just in Africa, but even here but that's what we used to say. So, if you can feed them, they go to school.
And then one of the (things I learned) when we tried to help people at that time is that you can't educate a hungry person. That's what one of Mark's bosses (said) and I remember it because, yeah, actually, it's true. How would these people learn if they're hungry? So that was a good decision to fund, because there was a lot that the school actually wanted; computers, wanted something else. And the boss had the hindsight and said that, "Actually, we probably have to sponsor the food." Because, again, you can't educate a hungry person.
And yeah, attendance went up. And we had some comments from the teachers and parents that kids are actually forcing their parents to send them to school, because there's lunch and there's breakfast.
Mark: Oh, really, I didn't know that.
Francis: Yeah. So the attendance went up. I asked them to submit to me the attendance we saw every day, because I wanted to see. And yeah, you can see that some days are even like continuous days where there's perfect attendance.
And that's because there's food. They're expecting to be fed. So if you don't go to school, you don't get fed. And before that, some of those secondary high school students — who they can't feed because there's not enough food because they prioritize the younger kids — were usually let out of the school. So, I asked them, "What do they do?" Oh, they find food! And one of the teachers jokingly — but it wasn't a joke — said, "Oh, they'll probably be prostituting themselves for food."
Which they are because they need food. They need money to buy food. and that's what they do. So when we feed them, at least they don't have to go out of the school to get themselves into trouble.
So Africa was good. So we were sad to leave. I think.
Mark Chambers: Yeah.
Francis: And at the same time we've met a lot of people. Been to a lot of places.
The composition (A Star, A Journey, A Fire) was taken inspiration to a lot of places that Mark and I lived. I think Bahay Kubo (from the Philippines) is there, which is the inspiration of one of the pieces. We have the inspiration of that Kenyan song (Jambo Bwana) where we lived for a while. Australia, obviously. And what's the other one?
Mark: Debussy because you like Clair de Lune
Francis: Yeah, and talking about perspective, I think when you have gone through a lot of places where there's a lot of perspective, you experience it yourself, not just watching it on Tiktok or watching it on Youtube. Sometimes you learn from the vibration of others, and you take inspiration from that. And you change perspective. So I think the composition is like a testament to how you can make something out of like a combination of things that you have in life, and it will change. Your perspective will still change. It'd be a boring life if your perspective will be the same.
So we're very privileged that we've traveled to a lot of places, and we've experienced it firsthand, different perspectives. And I think even in Melbourne again, we're lucky that we have a lot of different people, from different countries, different cultures who like, came here.
I think we have almost every citizen of the world in Australia and whereas I think, like any other places where there's a lot of people that comes into one from different places, you learn from each other, and sometimes conflict happens, and sometimes, you know, there's a readjustment that need to be done. But that's how it goes.
But hopefully, when you have those perspectives respected and you learn from them, and you don't necessarily need to follow them, but learn to respect and learn to disagree. So I think that's the best way to go. And that's what some people are still learning to do and so hopefully, it doesn't need to go through full on conflict.
Mark: I think as the world, I think we've forgotten how to talk to each other, and we've forgotten how to disagree.
And the world's not about agreeing with each other or the world's not about everyone being a hundred percent happy with what other people do. But it's about accepting and trying not to judge. I mean, people have their value systems, and they'll judge. But you know, acceptance and kindness is really, you know it's the most important thing.
And if you can't accept, at least be kind.
— Mark Chambers and Francis Ponce