REMOTE CONTROL By DANTON REMOTO | 01/12/2010 Francisco "Franz" Arcellana was my teacher. Like many writers, I first read him before I met him. On my own, I had read "The Mats" and "The Flowers of May" when I was a young and sullen undergrad at the Ateneo. Instead of reading my books on Financial Accounting and Business Statistics, I sat on the table beside the PS 9991 shelves in the Rizal Library every afternoon, and read the books of Filipino writers. One day, I said to myself, keeping the secret deep in my heart, one day I will also write a book. I liked the subtlety of "The Mats," how it showed that at the core of the Filipino is his or her love for family. The word "Recuerdo" woven on the mat for the dead daughter captured this vividly. And "The Flowers of May," which won a Palanca Award in 1952, isn’t it in a way the flip side of "The Mats," since it talked about the death of Victoria recalled just as the...