Ultimate 101

I  PERSONALLY know only a few people in the show biz entertainment industry. I added one to my list recently.

Derek Ramsay, who attended the press conference  of his newest action thriller over TV 5 “Undercover” at Anabel’s in Tomas Morato, was introduced to me and another sports colleague by TV 5 publicist Peachy Guioguio.

Derek said he was pleased to meet us and added he was extremely lucky that he  did. He had just returned from the United States and was fortunate to have made it back to Manila in one piece.

“You see, we were originally booked in that Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 flight that crash-landed at the San Francisco airport last week. But as fate would have it, my manager decided that a direct flight from Manila to San Francisco  would fit in to our schedule better, so we took a Philippine Airlines flight instead,” related  the actor who flew to Sanfo to accept an award.

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When Derek learned about the crash, he said he was both dismayed and relieved. Two young Chinese died, both of them  female students, while 180  were injured in the accident.

The death toll had gone up to three by Saturday, with another student  dying in a hospital from wounds and injuries sustained in the crash

Derek looked very tired after the presscon but he found time for a short chat with us sportswriters.

That’s probably because, as he had revealed to us,  he had a deep passion for sports—many sports—and these include basketball,  football,  golf and  Frisbee.

“Actually, the name of the sport is not Frisbee, but that’s how they call it here. The sport is called “Ultimate”, and Frisbee is the instrument you play it with. That’s still wrong, though, since Frisbee is a brand, much like Frigidaire is to refrigerator,” Derek explained, as he gave  us a seminar on Ultimate 101

We listened since he’s the expert in the game, being a member of the Philippine national Ultimate team.

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“This is my trophy,” he said, as he  stretched his  left arm to show  a very long scar  on the inside.

While playing for flag and country,  Derek was seriously injured and the broken bones in his arm had to be replaced by tin plates.

“Three titanium plates in all, attached to the healthy bones with 15 screws, ” Derek said like a math instructor,  assuring us that he still plays the  sport as well as he did  before the tin plates. If he were younger, he said he would have  pursued a sport like football, which he learned to play in England, his country of birth.

Yes, Derek was born in Great Britain 34 years ago to a Filipino mother and an English father who unlike him, he said, is “white as snow.”

Few people know this but several years ago when the Philippine Basketball League was still alive,  this athletic Filipino-British played for the Toyota team. I forgot to ask him who his coach was and who, among his teammates,  eventually moved up to the pro ranks.