MANILA, Philippines — O be cool in today’s generation can mean a lot of things. Being a member of rock band is cool, while playing for a marching band, for a lot of young people, may be not. Playing for the school’s varsity basketball team is cool while playing for the school’s chess team, for others, may qualify as uncool.

Coolness today depends on what’s hip and new, that kids will allow themselves to be caught doing. Uncool, lest they be embarrassed in front of their peers.

Thristan “Tum-Tum” Mendoza, 20, used to have this perception of coolness that one had to be the school jock or the school rock star to be labelled as cool. “When I was a kid I thought that if I wanted to be cool, I had to play sports.

In high school I thought being cool meant being able to sing pop songs, or play a guitar or drums. So I took extension classes in drums,” recalls the senior college student.

But still, he could not achieve the ultimate cool. His younger brother would win most of the time against him in matches of bowling or billiards. Playing drums really didn’t feel right either.

So he decided to stick to what he knew best and just be himself. Not known to many, Tum-Tum is one of the coolest guys whom people in his community look up to. He’s a marimba prodigy and has been labelled a gifted child prodigy. What makes him more different is the fact that he has Asperger’s Syndrome.

“Now I know that being different is okay. I thought I had to be a drummer in order to be cool but then as the years passed I realized that being cool could come in different forms.

Not all percussion majors in college start out as drummers of a band, some have really intricate techniques and show versatility in playing different percussion instruments,” Tum-Tum shares who is now a senior student at the University of the Philippines Diliman’s College of Music majoring in Percussion.

Musical prodigy

Tum-Tum was diagnosed with the disorder when he was two years old.

Asperger’s Syndrome is considered one of the parts of the autism disorder spectrum that has lesser impact on one’s mental development than most conditions in the spectrum. The disorder is also characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.

But it differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development.

Beyond his condition, Tum-Tum is considered a gifted child because of his musical talent. He was also a consistent honor student in primary and secondary school.

In preschool, he instantly fell in love with marimba's wooden keys and metal pipes. Marimba is a type of xylophone but with a broader and lower tonal range. It is a percussion instrument with a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators (metal pipe bars located underneath the keys), arranged as those of a piano’s. The keys are struck by a set of mallets to produce the musical tones.

His love for the instrument really pushed him to be good at playing the marimba. He learned to play marimba through his teachers Margie Austria and Alba Samano.

It also helped that his family was also into music. His younger brother Rainier plays the cello, his sister Via plays the piano and sings as well. Another sister, Reena plays the lyre and sings as well.

At a young age he was already considered a marimba virtuoso. In 1997, at eight years old, he was awarded as a gifted child prodigy by the University of the Philippines. At 10 years old he already played in 120 different national and international shows.

His first big performance was in 2001 when he played at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC, USA. At the same time he was also awarded by the VSA (Very Special Arts) Arts as the 2001 Rosemary Kennedy International Young Soloists Award.

At age 14, he had experienced performing with local and international artists like Regine Velasquez, Jose Mari Chan, the Philippine Madrigal Singers, Jim Chappell, Tadao Hayashi, among others.

College life

From a private school, going to the country’s state university was a real shock for Tum-Tum.

“UP is a big place and I have to get used to it. There are cultures that I have to get used to like even the way they speak,” he shares.

Tum-Tum also had to adjust to the way people regard him, being a person with special needs. “When people snob me, it was such a big deal and I would be really, really sad whenever they did so. But I have learned to move on because I learned that friends cannot be with you all the time. Sometimes when they see you, don’t expect them to say ‘Hi’ to you first, sometimes you make the first move, even if they may not notice you,” he adds.

Initially, his classmates didn’t know that he has Asperger’s. They only knew about it when they discovered that he performed for the World Autism Awareness Day, organized by Autism Society Philippines.

“I don’t mind being different, I want to show them that being different is okay. I don’t mind as long as I get to be myself so that with being different, I can probably change the world,” he says. His ultimate dream is to perform, to be an inspiration to others, and put Original Pilpino Music (OPM) on the world map.

“My biggest dream is of course performing and become an inspiration to the world. I dream to make OPM reach the corners of the earth, and perhaps replicate myself by teaching others,” he says.

After college, he plans to teach kids, with autism or not, how to play marimba and love music itself. His stepdad plans to build him a studio after he graduates.

“You have to find your niche and your strength. Don’t let school get away of your education, let the world be your campus so you will be able to find that passion. And make sure to keep practicing every day. Aside from that, you have to keep track of your habits and always listen to your parent’s advice.

Most of all pray so that God will give you all the wisdom you need to be able to control yourself,” he ends.