A what?!?!?!?

A "nation of servants"???

Frankly speaking as a patriotic Filipino woman, the first time I read that article by Chip Tsao (thank you for repost, sassyqarla), it made my blood boil. Srsly. But then I only read it after I read about its existence in another news article. By then it had been much maligned.

Only after the second or, let's be frank, third reading, did the word "satire" sink in. And I happen to love satire. Ever since I read about Benjamin Franklin writing "Silence Dogood" as a 16-year-old printer's boy in his brother's print shop, and setting Boston on its ear... now that was satire. I love it. I even like to write it at times.

The first reaction I had to the article was definitely not good. I kept typoing his name as either Cheap Chow, Cheap Tsao, or Chip Tsap (like chop-chop, comprende?) (I admit to wanting to curse in all the languages I know (English, Filipino, Hiligaynon, Bisaya and Kiniray-a), and then wanting to print the photo of Chip Tsao, stick it on a rag doll, and LBC it to Siquijor.)

Even when the word "satire" came out, there still is this feeling of indignation. *feels a rant coming on. Keep a hold on yourself, Laya.*

*RANTS ANYWAY*

Yes, we know our people go to other countries to look for work. Yes, a lot of them end up in menial jobs. Yes, even if they otherwise have high academic credentials, they end up in menial jobs.

But just because someone has the misfortune of being situated in what you might view as a lower stratum of society than yours, doesn't give you the right to put your foot on their head and make them bow down before you (take that, Boyet Fajardo, whoever you think you are).

As the British say, it's just not good form.

As we Filipinos say, nadapa na nga inapakan mo pa (the person already stumbled and fell, and yet you stepped on him).

*END RANT*

Looking at the article in a more reasonable mood, I guess we Filipinos have really gotten fed up with being considered second-class citizens and being poked fun at. Yes, it's real. Our recruitment agencies send people abroad to become other people's servants. (How ironic that sometimes, jobs in our country with more "prestige" pay less than menial jobs in other countries.) But we hate having it pointed out. We hate being stereotyped.

And that seems to be what happened in this column. Because the prevalent image of the Filipino in Hong Kong is a domestic helper, Tsao has set up that image to represent the Philippines as a whole... only a servant to China. And that's ugly, considering that the reverberations of the NBN Deal, the World Bank blacklist, and other Chinese-connected controversies, are still fresh in Filipinos' memories. Throw in the Spratlys dispute, and you have trouble.

In essence, Tsao may have been sending a message to the Chinese government about bullying smaller nations. But, whether he intended it or not, he has also sent a message to the Philippines reminding us that we have been beholden to China in many ways condoned and even encouraged by the present administration, that we also view China as encroaching on what we consider part of our own backyard, and that because of the loved-hated Filipino custom of "utang na loob" or "debt of honor," we might end up stepping aside rather than be viewed as ungrateful.

Yes, we Pinoys hate to "lose face", too. But instead of killing ourselves when we do, a lot of us would prefer to kill the person we perceive as responsible for our loss of face--- the one who pointed it out.

At least we didn't hire anyone to post those 4 long pages of comments on that article. Our people may work as servants in other countries, but they are servants with dignity. And at least they are servants who keep their minds their own.

Continue if you care...

We reduce capital crime sentences for "good behavior" and let prisoners go free when in other countries they'd have rotted in jail for life. If their sentences can't be reduced, they are pardoned instead. Then we turn around and make a big fuss about opposition politicians who happened to take part in a parade and were assigned a vehicle with a toy machine gun.

If all smoke indicated a fire, we should all be evacuating our homes right now. But despite the blatant warning signs, or at least events and incidents that should be raising ginormous question marks in our minds, we choose to believe instead the excuses that it is all just a huge smokescreen. Far easier it is to believe that Nicole was not raped.

We make a big fuss about the murder of a PR man and his bodyguard, because the alleged mastermind is said to be a prominent opposition politician. Because journalists are not powerful politicians, 24 of them can be killed in the span of a decade and some narrowly escape being killed with impunity, and deaf ears can be turned to cries for justice for their deaths.

We deplore the rising birth rate and poor health of our people, but refuse to allow basic family planning methods and devices because they are immoral. Unhygienic, malnourished, unemployed citizens are not immoral, presumably.

We rarely get salary raises and are granted loans with great difficulty although we are religiously deducted some portion of our salaries every month for social security benefits. While we struggle and sweat for every penny, the money for our benefits are now proposed to be given to those who are unemployed, presumably as welfare checks (what else do you call them?).

Speaking of paychecks, we are religiously deducted a sizable amount of taxes each month and have to pay VAT too. What is left can barely get families through their basic needs and let them send their children to public school, while our politicians amass luxury cars, send their children to exclusive schools or abroad, and vote to raise their own salaries as well.

And on the home front...

"Makakain mo ba ang prinsipyo? Makakain mo ba ang hiya? Mamamatay ka lang na dilat ang mata kasama ng prinsipyo mo."

(Can you eat principles? Can you eat shame? You will only die with your eyes wide open together with your principles.)

"Bakit mo gusto yang kursong yan? Walang pera diyan! Magnursing ka at nang makapag-abroad ka at kumita ng dolyar!"

(Why do you want to take up that (college) course? That won't earn you any money! Take up nursing so that you can go abroad and earn dollars!)

Some parents teach their children that honor, principles, ideals and dreams don't matter in the face of expediency. That it is more shameful to struggle for what one believes in than to compromise one's integrity to live an easier life. That it is more humiliating to one's family that one's child pursue a path s/he chose for her/himself, no matter how hard, than that that child should labor in a field s/he does not really want for the sake of the almighty dollar. Sometimes, even, a daughter's honor does not matter as long as monetary compensation is given for it, for after all honor once taken cannot be restored, while money may be put to use, even if only to purchase some temporary luxury.

This is a country where some parents neglect to feed, clothe and educate their children properly, yet have money to throw away on gambling, alcohol and cigarettes. This is a country where the children of officials get to use airports as their own private driveways. This is a country where people who feel superior may berate an employee who is just doing his job and force him to humiliate himself, then pass it off as artistic temperament.

And we wonder why we seem to be going to hell in a handbasket.

Continue if you care...

Night Shift Taxi, TXL 629.

I took very careful note of that name and number.

That was the taxi whose driver refused to turn on his meter. I had just left NAIA Terminal 3 after a flight from Gensan, and it was about 5 pm. Because airport taxis usually charge P500 and above if you hire them at the terminal, I usually get a taxi out front. Heck, using the taxi meter, the maximum fare from the airport to where I stay in Sta. Mesa is below P150! The driver asked me where I was bound and when I said Sta Mesa, he nodded and opened the door. Only when the taxi was moving away from the terminal, I noticed that the meter was not on, so I told him. He said that the practice was not to use the meter when picking up a fare from the airport, but that the standard fare to Sta Mesa would be P350. This despite the huge sign just outside the airport terminal that said taxis should use their meters and that contracting fares was forbidden. When I told him so, he did me a song and dance about how passengers should understand that taxi drivers were losing money because the fares were too small, and I firmly told him to let me off at the nearest gas station, after, of course, noting down his taxi name and number.

I had taken taxis from that point before, and was usually given by the guard a form with the taxi's name and number on it, as well as hotline numbers to report transgressors. The guard in this instance was chatting to other drivers and neglected to give me any such form. Fortunately, I kept a copy of that form at home and reported the driver to the hotline.

That driver had the ultimate gall to even intimate that I was inconsiderate for not giving in to his demands, even when he was the one breaking the laws. He said that the fares were too low, that drivers could barely feed their families, that the distance was too far (hello, airport to Sta Mesa, doesn't even take an hour if the driver knows shortcuts!), and finally, that he had already paid P50 to be able to wait in line at the terminal and that going by the meter wouldn't even make him back his boundary. Now don't that beat all.

First of all, Manong, it's not your passenger's fault if you paid P50 to anyone so you could go on chiseling your passengers. You shouldn't even have been made to pay anything because there wasn't any regulation at that area and if anyone asked you for money that would have been extortion. Just as you asking for P350 for a fare that cost less than 150 is also extortion.

Second, you are not the only one with woes. We are all living in this Godforsaken country, struggling to get by. We are all burdened with rising prices, with low salaries, with high taxes, so what the Goddamned hell makes you think you're special? I pay rent, electric bills, water bills, and fares. I buy groceries and food. I'm on a budget too. You should not have thought that just because someone takes your taxi instead of a bus or a jeep, he could well afford to pay higher fares. You should not have thought to cheat your fellow man, period.

Third, just because someone comes from the airport and presumably could afford an airline ticket, doesn't mean he has money to burn. I only scraped together enough for my economy fare home to attend my sister's wedding and my budget was already tight enough that I would be pinching my pennies till next payday without you trying to pressure me to pay you more than you ought.

Fourth, I well understand the plight of the drivers. I often add a tip when taking a taxi. But only to those drivers who don't ask me for anything and who show the right attitude. Asking someone for more money without even rendering good service or any service at all? Don't bullshit me. For your information, the meter of the taxi I took after you dropped me by the roadside amounted to only P132.50... I didn't even ask for change back from my P150.

I hope that anyone who reads this will be wary if they encounter this taxi driver in the future. And you, Manong, as we say... Makarma ka sanang bwisit ka!

Continue if you care...

Women's month? It is? Really now?

Well, for one thing, Nicole issued that statement about how she doubted that she was raped.

*START RANT HERE*

(1) That case was supposed to be a vindication. Not a damnation. Not of Nicole, not of other Filipinas, not of the rest of the Filipinos, not of this country and its culture.
(1a) How can supposedly morally upright people condemn a girl, a woman, for being raped because her clothing, her behavior, "invited it"? The heck, how masochistic women must be, to invite their own violation and degradation, then. The implication being that women must be restrained, must be prim and proper. This from the same morally upright viewpoint that family planning is a sin and that really now, people should keep themselves from having sex. Well then, those people who should be disciplined enough to abstain from the act, should be disciplined enough to not assume a woman is "inviting" them just because she wears shorts and a tank top or to not act on the "invitation".
(2) We should be protecting our own. Not, well, pimping them. Really, in this country some people think everything is relative to money. And don't some of us have that practice where, if people accuse our children of wrongdoing, we immediately punish the child without waiting to find out if the accusation was true or not? The reason: the child being accused shamed us, and it didn't matter if he was in the right--- he was just a child, and had no right to shame his parents/family.
(3) Many Filipinas do have dignity. We are not all for sale, not to the first person who offers, not to the first person who offers a reasonable price, not to any person no matter how high the price, dammit.
(4) Not all Filipinos want to kowtow to the Almighty superpowers, either, just because they are a so-called First World country (that went into a recession which infected us). And don't you be calling me a hypocrite now. I have online friends in other countries. But you don't see me deferring to them or fawning on them, just because of where they live, because we are on the same footing and I like it that way. Filipinos are as good as anyone else in the world, warts and all. If you want to insist that other nations don't have any warts, I will think that you are the hypocrite.

*END RANT*

For another thing, Jalosjos just got out of jail.

*START RANT*
(1) Rape is never justified, dammit. That's why it was changed from a crime against chastity to a crime against persons, in the first place. And rape of a child is reprehensible. How twisted would you be, to even think of doing such a thing?
(2) Such statements we see about how he had the right to have his sentence commuted and all that. About his having suffered already and should be given another chance. Suffered, my ass. Spare me. According to reports, he had a pretty cushy cell. And later, he even lived outside of the prison, in his own house, beside a resto-bar yet. And reportedly drove around the prison in his own car. While the other inmates rotted. If he had suffered like them, along with them, I would have believed that talk about punishment.
(3) What sort of message are we sending here? That there are a lot of things you can get away with as long as you have money and power? Two life sentences, PLUS a minimum of 48 years / maximum of 90 years... reduced to 16 + years only by the powers that be. Ain't life grand.

*END RANT*

Such wonderfully ironic timing some things have. Murphy's Law, yet.

Happy Women's Month to all of us.

Continue if you care...

(an open letter to "Nicole" of the Subic Rape Case)

What a Women's Month gift you gave us, Nicole.

After obtaining a conviction in your case, after everything, you suddenly threw it all away. Little by little, you had been working towards victory. He was convicted. He was not being held in our jails, true, but people were working on that. You had faced the public brouhaha the case engendered. You had been through the innuendoes, the malice and the rumors. You were nearly out of the tunnel, Nicole. Then you took it back. Your statement admitted you had behaved improperly, that perhaps you had been mistaken in what happened.

What does it look like now, to us? The newspapers say that you took the 100k he offered and emigrated to his country. They say that you went to join one of his countrymen. We feel betrayed.


I feel betrayed. I had viewed your case as something quite close to the one in "Inherit the Wind." You were a symbol to us of all our countrywomen who had been oppressed by foreigners simply because of our nationality, and far greater insult, this time the oppression had occurred on our own native soil. Would we let the foreigner get away with it? Of course we needed to show that we are not the pushovers they take us to be. We needed to show that the Filipina, despite her submissive reputation as a domestic helper, as a mail-order bride, even as a prostitute, also had dignity and was entitled to respect. Since you were the one involved, you became that symbol, Nicole.

In the end, you stood for none other than our own motherland, which in the words of the song:

"...pag-ibig nasa kanyang palad,
nag-alay ng ganda't dilag,
at sa kanyang yumi at ganda,
dayuhan ay nahalina...
bayan ko, binihag ka, nasadlak sa dusa."

(Love was in her hands,
she offered beauty and splendor,
and because of her gentleness and beauty,
the foreigners were attracted.
My country, you were taken captive and plunged into despair.)

Did it ultimately prove too much for you, Nicole? Did you just want to shout that you cannot be the statue on the pedestal that everyone wanted you to be? Or did you not realize how great a symbol you had become?

A friend of mine says that perhaps you were not strong enough, that was why you gave up the fight. She says perhaps if you had a more activist mentality, perhaps if you had been more idealistic, you might have seen the fight through to the end. As it was, she said, like most of us maybe you just wanted to give up. After all, "what justice could there be in this country?"

Others are only all too ready to heap blame upon your head for your acts, saying that since by your own admission, you were promiscuous after all, you deserved no respect and you proved it by skipping out on the rest of us. Some think that you were all too ready to give up the fight for a little money and the golden opportunity to emigrate to the "land of plenty." Implying, of course, that you are really just no better than the gold-digger which some people in other countries label us Filipinas to be-- all too ready to lie down and spread her legs for a little cash, long devoid of any inherent dignity. And that image does not help us at all.

Why, Nicole, why?

I do not know you as a person. Still, I do not want to condemn you for what many of our other sisters have done by reason of poverty or external pressure. Our country has long rationalized many acts in the name of personal prosperity-- how else would it attain the level of corruption the world perceives in it? We know the concept of "kapit sa patalim" (cling to the knife)-- the justification why so many of our countrymen leave the country to work in other places, no matter if they are overeducated for the job, just as long as it pays better. It takes a person with backbone to stand against that concept, to refuse to be one of those who subscribe to it.

I know too, how in this country things can be deceiving on the surface. I know how innocence can be twisted till it looks the very picture of guilt. I know too how guilt may be whitewashed till it looks the very image of innocence. I know how great a role money and influence play in those transformations, especially when it comes to politics. I know how this can subvert truth till it cannot be found anymore. Which is why, in the face of all the recriminations being laid at your door, even in my disappointment I do not want to judge you, Nicole.

What happened, Nicole? Only you know the truth... but then again, when it comes to this country, does anyone ever know the truth anymore?

Continue if you care...

When BB Gandanghari arrived on the local scene in January of this year, she announced “Rustom is dead.” Her former self was dead. A lot of people have had trouble with this concept: why would she announce that Rustom Padilla is dead when she herself is alive? What was it, a publicity stunt? I do not claim to be privy to what goes on in BB’s mind, but when I heard her say those words, for some reason I thought of Audrina Adare.

In my high school days, I chanced upon a book by an author known for her twisted modern Gothic tales told from the viewpoint of children. The book was hailed as her best, although I didn’t know it at that time. The title was “My Sweet Audrina”; the author was V. C. Andrews, who also wrote the chilling Dollanganger series.

What made the book stand out was its premise that sometimes when a person cannot accept and live with what he has become, and cannot kill his physical self, he might subvert his psyche to the point where it may be regarded as “dead,” and let another persona take over. A fresh start. Someone who is what he wanted to be. That was what happened to Audrina Adelle Adare (see, I could not forget her name, although it’s been over ten years since I last read that book). A victim of gang rape on her own birthday, Audrina could not accept what had happened to her. Aided and abetted by her own parents, her mind created an alternative. She made herself believe that the tragedy had happened to her older sister, the “other Audrina,” who had died before she was born. Her parents, to save their child’s sanity, even put up a gravestone over an empty grave, saying that it belonged to the “other Audrina.” When Audrina grew up, of course, she had to come to terms with her own self-deception, but by that time she was hopefully strong enough to face her traumatic past, as symbolized by the empty grave in the churchyard.

Is not being forced to behave in a way which he knows is not true to his identity traumatic enough for a person to want to “kill” what he has become? To want to be able to show his real self, even after over 40 years? There has to be an end, in order to have a new beginning. Audrina deluded herself, of course, but she was a child. BB would probably not call what she is now a self-deception. She apparently knows what she is doing, and she chose to throw everything away and become BB Gandanghari. As she herself has said, she did not just up and say one day that her old self was gone. She maintains that it took a lot of time and self-searching for her to come to this end.

In the Tarot deck, there is a card called “the Hanged Man”: a man hanging upside down, his foot in the hangman’s noose. According to some traditions, he personifies Odin, the Norse God, who in pursuit of wisdom spent nine days and nights hung on Yggdrasil, the World Tree, “myself offered to myself.” The implication being that the acquisition of wisdom to some degree requires the death of the self.

BB always says that Rustom had to “die” in order for BB to be born. She seems to have wanted a brand new start unfettered by Rustom Padilla’s past as a “macho” man. Seeing what she has accomplished so far as BB Gandanghari, I could very well believe it. She ended up as a symbol of self-determination, someone who teaches the lesson that if you appreciate a person simply as a human being, nothing matters except that—not gender, not associations nor family ties, only the person herself. Perhaps in that context, the “death” of Rustom Padilla had some reason after all.

Continue if you care...

One of my more vivid high school memories is watching some of my classmates perform during a Linggo ng Wika activity, wearing the requisite Filipiniana costumes... and hopping to the beat of "Mga kababayan ko, dapat lang malaman nyo, bilib ako sa kulay ko, ako ay Pilipino... (My countrymen, you should know, I believe in my color, I am Filipino)"

It was the early 1990s, and this new song was all the rage, even though it was rap, a far departure from the ballads and love songs that we were used to. Who could resist the upbeat lyrics? "Kung may itim o may puti, mayroon namang kayumanggi, isipin mo na kaya mong abutin ang iyong minimithi... (If there are blacks and whites, there are also browns, just think that you can achieve what you dream about)"

Then there was the rapper himself. Whenever we saw him performing on TV, he looked no older than we were, in his baggy clothes with a kerchief on his head.

Francis M.'s "Mga Kababayan Ko" was my first introduction to rap music. (Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" was a dance track to us.) For me at least, it was the first rap song, introduced as such, that made it to the Mindanao hinterlands where I was born and grew up. It was the rap song against which all others were measured. The artist, too, was the one against whom all other artists were measured.

More than fifteen years later, he still was. There are other rappers out there now. But the Master Rapper stood out because he sang about something different. Of a genre usually viewed in a negative light, he made something good. Instead of singing about angst, violence and gore, he sang about brotherhood, patriotism and Filipino pride. And because of that, I am glad that of all the rappers there were and could have been, his songs were the ones that reached us first.

In 2007, working at a BPO, my co-workers and I made it a tradition to go out for videoke at least once a month. After singing our lungs out, we always turned the last two songs into community choruses. Those songs were always the same: Orange and Lemons' Pinoy Ako (Pinoy Big Brother Theme), and Francis M.'s Kaleidoscope World.

Months later, it said on the news that Francis M. had leukemia.



Today, a friend told me that he is gone at the young age of 44.

Unbelieving, I searched the internet for confirmation. Yes, it was true. He's gone.

Rest in peace, Master Rapper, and thank you for the songs. Above all, thank you for giving us pride in our nation and our race, for inspiring us to dream, for reminding us that although the world might seem grim and bleak, like a kaleidoscope we can shake to create new shapes and images, the power to change it is always in our hands.

...Every color and every hue, is represented by me and you. Take a slide in the slope, Take a look in the kaleidoscope. Spinnin' round, make it twirl, in this kaleidoscope world.

In Memoriam Francis Magalona, March 6, 2009.

Photo of Francis Magalona by mela sogono on flickr; licensed under Creative Commons License BY-ND-2.0.
Photo "Youth Hands" by Avondale Pattillo UMC on flickr; licensed under Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND-2.0.

Continue if you care...