Tag Archives: Filipinos

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Accepting the Fact that Filipinos Help me

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It’s been about seven years since I first met Janet in person. We’d been chatting online for about a year. I had already visited the Philippines twice but hadn’t met her. She’d refused to meet since she wasn’t interested in my “collecting and selecting,” but that’s another story.

Finally we met and traveled to Southern Cebu to meet her family. I arrived with a large, heavy camera bag, crammed with camera gear and anything else I could manage to stuff into it. Janet’s younger brother, Leo, approached me to take my camera bag. I refused. Oh, I tried to be nice about it saying something like, “That’s OK. I can carry it. Thanks.” But the truth is I’m an American; we’re independent; we carry our own shit; we don’t need help from anyone!

The more I travelled in the Philippines the more I realised that people actually do want to help. The cynic in me assumed there were ulterior motives but my experience is that it ain’t necessarily so. A couple years after the incident with Leo, Janet, who I was by then married to admitted that Leo asked her why I wouldn’t allow him to carry my bag. She probably gave him some line about “crazy foreigners” but I learned my lesson and from then on allowed him or anyone else to help me when I visited the family.

Since I moved to the Philippines this has continued to be an issue for me, not because I don’t like to be helped but because I have a lifetime of American experience at how I never got helped. The benefit of growing up in such a culture is independence, self-reliance, and the ability to develop skills that I was forced to develop. The negative is it’s hard sometimes and that damn camera bag is getting heavier as I age.

But I’m learning. A few weeks ago we were in Southern Cebu visiting the family. Janet had to travel for the day north to Cebu City and I decided I would return to Dumaguete. She left at 3:00AM. I got up at 6:00, got myself ready and prepared to walk the ten minutes to the national highway from where I would get a bus. As I said my goodbyes Janet’s youngest brother and a cousin jumped up to accompany me to the road. I am experienced enough now not to say as I would have in the past, “I know the way to the road. You don’t need to get up.” One boy grabbed my backpack and off we went. When we arrived at the highway I did say, “You can go home and get back to sleep now. I can wait for the bus.” “No,” I was told. We all waited. The bus came about ten minutes later and I said goodbye to the teens and thanked them.

Yesterday I was preparing for a mini-trip on my own. I laid out my clothes and backpack. Before I knew it Janet had packed the backpack. She also added a few items I’d forgotten. I was ready to tell her that “Hey I’m an independent American. I can pack my own backpack.” Instead I just thanked her. It’s nice to be taken care of but it’s been seven years and I’m still learning to appreciate it and not resist.

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Frankly one of the delights about living in the Philippines is that many Filipinos want to help you; people you don’t know at all. I like it and have tried to stop being an Independent American and just accept it.

I know what some expats think. “They” all have an ulterior motive and want something from you. In this theory the “something” probably involves money. I’m sure that happens from time to time but in my experience the desire to help is genuine.

A couple months ago I was getting ready to meet a buddy to play golf. I got a call. He’d had a flat and could I come and help. I left immediately. By the time I got there I found my friend with three Filipinos changing his tire. After they’d finished he tried to give the lead guy some money but the man refused.

You know – I think I could get used to this being helped thing!

OK, the pic I selected has nothing to do with Filipinos helping, but it’s my Goddaughter, Mia, and she’s cute!

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Rude Foreigners

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So we’re sitting in the USSC store in Robinsons Mall waiting to get served. We filled out a little form and got a number. Yes, in the Philippines there are still places that you “take a number.” Turns out our number was to be the last one called before the employees took their lunch hour. USSC must be rare because a lunch hour is almost never an hour in the Philippines.

Several people walked in afterwards and were politely informed that there would be no more service until after lunch. Then an elderly (defined as older than me) foreigner walked in, was politely informed of the upcoming lunch break. He got pissed off, yelled, threw out an F-bomb and stormed off. There was no reason for the tantrum. He was treated politely and told he could come back after the break.

This is behavior that Janet and I witness pretty regularly in Dumaguete and most of the time the offender is a foreigner.

Now as it turns out that while Janet and I were the last to be served before the break and therefore the office was empty by the time it was our turn, we were missing a crucial document to finalize our business and were told if we brought it in that day, we would be served right away without needing a number or waiting.

We returned a couple hours later. In the interim we had talked about the rude foreigner. As the USSC Clerk was finalizing Janet’s business I decided to ask a question or two. “Do you often have rude foreigners?” I asked. She smiled at me. “Only one today, Sir.” I laughed. “Well I know who that was. His behavior was ridiculous.”

“If he comes back, I will of course treat him respectfully,” she said. “But he did say the f-word.” She and the other clerk had heard and would not be forgetting. Clearly she considered it part of the job, but it also stung the employees there.

A few week ago we were in the bank. Simultaneously there were two rude foreigners. One cut ahead in line since his concern had to be handled immediately. It wasn’t. He stormed off, returned about five minutes later to vent again at someone else.

In the meantime another elderly (aka, older than me) foreigner was sitting next to me making a request of the banker that would never be granted in any bank in the Western world. When he was politely informed what would be required to meet his request, he grumbled, cursed under his breath about the lousy country and terrible customer service.

We observe behavior like this a couple times a week at least. It saddens me for what I realize is a foolish reason; that it reflects badly on me. It doesn’t of course but I feel like it does.

Now going back to the experience at USSC, while conversing with the Clerk about rude foreigners, she admitted she was worried that I was going to react similarly when she told us we would have to come back to finalize our business. I laughed but felt bad. “Of course I wasn’t mad. Now my wife? That’s another matter.” Janet playfully hit me.

My life wasn’t over after all! To my surprise there were plenty of http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/mac/ online cialis treatment options at my disposal. It is generally advised that you do not have to go out and run a marathon either. online levitra prescription Plus, buying generic viagra smoking can purpose several health problems consisting of heart disorder, high blood strain, low testosterone, and so on. bad lifestyle has already a toll at the sexual fitness of millions of men. In the old age, men used to suffer from ailments like weak immune system, low sex drive, low semen volume or no semen at all and then order generic viagra inevitably it moved on to not being able to prevent or slow its growth is attractive. In the car on the way home Janet and I once again talked about this. Now the point isn’t that Filipinos never get mad or never behave rudely – of course they do. But the rude behavior from a minority population (the foreigners) is hard to ignore.

For over two years in the US Janet worked in a supermarket. She had rude customers every day. It was a big part of her indoctrination into life in America. She quickly learned to give it back as much as take it. My wife is sweet as can be, but has a quick tongue when mistreated.

So why we asked ourselves did this all bother us so much; we both were used to it in the US. And that I suppose was the answer. In the US witnessing or being confronted by rude  people is a daily event and we realized that here in the Philippines while it does happen, it’s uncommon enough to be more noticeable.

One more story, not that I am trying to prove anything. Early that evening we went into the grocery store. The cashier is ringing up our items. The Filipina behind us in the line asked “where’s the divider” – the bars you put to keep your items separate from someone else’s. In my modest experience, most stores in the Philippines do not have these dividers. The clerk looked at her with that deer in the headlights look. “There are no dividers,” I said. The lady huffed.

I handed the clerk my debit card – my debit card from our Philippines bank account. Now debit cards here are not quite as reliable as in the US. Sometimes it goes through, sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes the clerk has to put it through as a credit instead of a debit, and sometimes you’re just best off having cash.

The woman behind me spoke up in perfect English. “You have to select credit for a foreign debit card,” she announced. I turned to her and politely said, “It’s not a foreign debit card.” The clerk continued to struggle with my card. The woman behind me announced again, because clearly the clerk was too stupid to have understood, ” You have to select credit for a foreign debit card.” I turned back to face her again but less politely and repeated, “It’s not a foreign debit card.”

The clerk continued to struggle with my card and mumble apologies. And once again the woman stated her view, “You have to select credit for a foreign debit card.” I finally got it. The woman may have once been a Filipina but she was clearly now an American. I glared at her and snarled, “It’s – not – a – foreign – debit – card!” Janet calmed me down. “Just pay cash,” which I did.

So you see, it’s not just foreigners who are rude in the Philippines. It’s Fil-Ams too 🙂

PS: Based on further thought and a few of the comments I have received I wanted to add something. Now this may be splitting hairs, but here goes. I think there is a difference between inconvenient/ annoying behavior and rude behavior. You’re driving down the road. A little old lady is slowly crossing the street and you have to stop and wait. It’s annoying. You drum your fingers along the steering wheel. But she’s not doing it to personally harm or offend you. OTOH, if you stick your head out the window and yell, “Hey old lady, get the “f-word” out of the damn street,” – well that’s rude behavior.

 

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Home vs. Away, Foreigners vs. Locals

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Not to get overly philosophical here but human history can be summarized into the universal divisions of us vs. them: country vs. country, religion vs. religion, race vs. race. Or in the case of the Philippines, “foreigners” vs. “locals.”

Now I know that some foreigners don’t like being called “foreigners” and I get it, I suppose. But it makes me wonder how Filipinos feel about just generically being lumped together as the “locals.” If any Filipinos/Filipinas want to weigh in on that question I’d be happy to hear from you. My guess is that you’re too polite to call the “foreigners” who refer to “locals” with the word you’d really like to use and it ain’t foreigner. Janet, OTOH, would have a choice name and it ain’t exactly “Joe Kano.”

I got to thinking about this, something I do far too much at present, particularly since I hope to retire soon and lay around on a beach drinking San Miguels, chasing Janet and certainly not spending much time thinking. But for now I’m allowed to think and here’s what occurred to me. Often the “foreigners” who don’t like being called foreigners, but like calling Filipinos the “locals” have another pair of words that get in the way of their happiness: “here” and “home.”

I was talking to my friend Robert the other day and we were pontificating on the differences between guys who are able to expat (or even travel) successfully and those who can’t. The former are the ones who adjust, instead of expecting the Philippines and Filipinos to adjust to them. And again it occurred to me that the key might just well be how we define “home.”

In a couple of months I will have lived in my “home” city for 40 years. It’s hard for me to believe. I came here less than a year after college on a complete lark. Bought an old Beetle, loaded up all the junk I owned in life (which filled about half of the VW) and off I went. When I arrived here I told my friends and anyone who might listen that I was only here temporarily and would be returning “home” in a year or so. “Home” was Philadelphia, where I grew up, although it could have just as easily been New York City, where I went to school and dreamed of success.

Every time things went badly I would again tell my friends and anyone else (who no longer wanted to listen) “I’m going home.” But of course I didn’t.

After a year or so I stopped saying, “I’m going home.” I still wasn’t 100% committed to my new city and would say, “If things don’t work out here, then I might go home.” That’s how it was for the next couple years. “Home” was still on the other side of the country, though it beckoned less and less.

After a few years I stopped referring to (or threatening to) go home. Where I lived was now “home.” It took a few more years but eventually those other places became “where I grew up” or the “back East.” Pretty soon, I stopped dreaming of even visiting those places; truth is I dreaded it and when I infrequently went there, I couldn’t wait to “come home.”
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Of course, it took still many more years before I stopped calling myself an “East Coaster” or a “Philadelphian” and defined myself as a “local” of my current city, despite the remaining hint of an East Coast accent. Forty years has allowed me to create whatever identity I decide upon.

I suspect this is how it is for many expats in the Philippines and elsewhere. They’ve lived abroad for a few years but still think of “home” as where they came from. Their people aren’t the “locals”; they’re people from the same country they left. Maybe they even spend most of their time hanging out with those people. I know in the first years after I moved West, I spent a lot of time hanging out with other East Coasters, who I thought had a more reasonable view of the world than the fruity West Coasters did.

The difference is that while I eventually made the adjustment and came to call my new home “home” and that old home “the shithole I came from,” some expats don’t seem to make that transition. Perhaps it’s the massive differences between cultures, or that most expats are older and less flexible. In many cases the guy came to the Philippines for his wife or girlfriend and never considered it to be “home” and doesn’t want to.

But there are exceptions. I read blog pieces from a guy who’s a retired Philippines Snow Bird, spending half his year in the US and half in the Philippines. When he is spending his half year in the US he misses his “home” in the Philippines. I never hear him say he’s missing the US; that’s the place he came from and the place where much of his family lives. But his “home” is 8000 miles away.

It took years, decades really for me to make the transition. So can I really get pissed at the expats who called their Filipino neighbors the “locals,” think of home as the country they came from and get annoyed when they are referred to as “foreigners?” Actually, I can still get pissed but that’s a “me” problem, I guess. Seems to me that once you’ve made that transition – that’s “home.” The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can start to enjoy the pleasures of your new home instead of bitching about its shortcomings.

But what about Janet? I know she hasn’t yet made the transition. “Home” for her isn’t the town where we live. Home is in the Philippines, specifically Alcoy. Hell, she doesn’t even think of any island other than Cebu as home. For Janet, Mindanao is as alien and frightening as living in the U.S. We spent a few days in Dumaguete on our trip in April and despite the fact that it is closer to Alcoy than Cebu City, because it is not in Cebu it felt too far and unhomelike to Janet.

I want Janet to be able to accept our current city as “home” without giving up Cebu as “home,” as well. Perhaps I am unreasonable, wanting her to maintain a Walenda-like tightrope balance that most expats don’t maintain. I except that I have high expectations; probably why I went all the way to the Philippines to find my lovely wife in the first place.

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Does Poverty Make Filipinos Happy?

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I have to acknowledge Spike Milligan’s take on the old cliché that, “money can’t buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.” Why is it that we go to the Philippines and many of us discover happy, friendly, contented people? Something seems wrong with that picture. It’s a shock because as first worlders we’re trained to believe that the only thing that creates true and lasting happiness is cash and plenty of it.

OK, there’s love too; lots of people believe that true happiness comes from love. But sometimes love requires a bit of money also, especially if you’re planning a big Jewish wedding.

And some people will tell you that good health is the key to lifelong happiness. But try finding a decent doctor when you have $1.95 in your bank account.

So, now I have proven that happiness requires money, preferably in dollars not pesos. Why then do Filipinos, most of whom are poor with limited prospects of every being anything but poor, seem so happy? Is it possible that in fact poverty creates happiness?

Riding Carabao
OK, it’s a cliche but pretty happy kids.

Why then do Filipinos, most of whom are poor with limited prospects of every being anything but poor, seem so happy? Is it possible that in fact poverty creates happiness?

I first wondered about this question many years ago when I was on my honeymoon (with wife #2). We went to the Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago. The island of Trinidad is bustling and industrious; but Tobago is tropical, poor and laid back. In Tobago, you would not see a car under twenty years old. Few people seemed to have jobs; the few jobs were in tourism and labor was dirt cheap. And yet I observed that the people smiled – and not just while they were waiting for tips. Children laughed and played and I couldn’t help but wonder why; after all, they didn’t live in the U.S., which I had been taught was the universal source of all happiness.

Four years ago I went to Kenya for safari and vacation. Once again I observed that very poor people smiled and seemed pretty damn happy. I actually met many people who lived in mud huts and invited me into their poor homes to share a meal. What the hell did they have to smile about, I wondered? My flooring is oak hardwood; their’s is hard dirt. It made no sense and yet I loved the discovery.

It emphasized what I intuitively knew – that human happiness existed outside of our Western notion of the crap we buy to create it.

And then I came to the Philippines and met many seemingly happy people. OK, mostly I met many happy, cute Filipinas, but you get the idea.

Karaoke always makes Filipinos happy
Karaoke – the source of all happiness in the Philippines

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Last month we returned to Alcoy, Cebu for our wedding party. The entire neighborhood gathered to celebrate, play games, sing and dance for hours. They seemed happy and witnessing it truly made me happy. Why such happiness over the wedding of a daughter and a foreigner? Perhaps it was the delicious lechon that kicked off the party. Whatever the reason I loved it and my inlaws were happy that their daughter had married a foreigner who loved the Philippines culture. I don’t know whether I know the culture well enough to love it, but I love the people, or more accurately I love their happiness.

So, what’s the reason for it? I have no easy answers. I have had a lifetime of access to all that a sophisticated culture provides: a consistently full belly, nice home, good job and opportunities, a certain amount of toys, travel. And yet, like many Americans I’ve often struggled with unhappiness, sometimes breaking down into depression and despair.

Dancing Girls
Dancing Girls

When I met Janet and we began our journey together our daily online chats would emphasize the differences:

Sometimes I was worried; she was generally confident.

“What if…?” I would ask; “you mean when,” she would answer.

“I’m afraid of the future,” I would say; “life is short, live it now,” she would reply.

And always she would tell me, “be happy.”

Janet is still a newcomer but she’s lived in the U.S. long enough to know that despite our positive cash flow, Americans are not a bunch of happy campers and even her wonderful, guapo husband can be a depressed mope at times. She doesn’t understand it but gets her happiness fix by singing aloud and calling home, where the latest news is met with laughs and screams of delight.

I hear lots of expats complain, often vehemently about Filipinos and the Philippines. The air is polluted, the traffic sucks, the government is corrupt, the people are unethical, customer service is terrible, street food sucks, and worst of all – the Internet is slow. Yet most of them keep coming back and back. Why? Because Filipinos seem happier; happier than they are. And they hope some of it will rub off. So do I.

Of course, going back to my original question, it’s ridiculous to say Filipinos are happy because they are poor, any more than to suggest that many Americans are miserable because they are rich. It’s a conundrum and I’m still searching for the answer.

Yep, it’s gotta be the lechon!

Lechon after 10 minutes
Lechon after 10 minutes