When life doesnt seem to be adding up… Blame math.

In my 24 years 11 months and 28 days on this planet, I’ve encountered my fair share of filipinos that make crazy icky stuff crawl up my spine in the worst possible way. I have not, however, until now had felt loath and discompassion towards another person of whom I share the same honorable ancestor with. If it was Jose Rizal who met this absurd woman, he would have stuck his mighty pen through her eyeballs and slapped him with an unabridged version of El Filibusterismo left and right. I however, would want to just let the steam off of my tingled spine and let my honorable ancestors take care of her soul when they all meet her sometime in the future.

I walked into the office with all the positivity that I can muster becuase it was a wonderful day in Las Vegas. Sitting in front of my Boss, who is hawaiian-filipino, was a tiny older lady speaking (trying though) in a familiar sounding english. She boasted of the thickest promdi accent I have ever heard. I’ve heard of better accented english from people who have not stepped foot on american soil (including the US embassy in Manila). I am not here to complain about her accent (I have one too, for all I know), rather I am here to report to you reader how someone would rather pass herself as chinese (no offense to the chinese and their descendants) rather than Filipino.

She says she tells people she is asian, or chinese or japanese rather than proudly saying "I am a Filipino". She hails from Cebu, and from what I have gathered she is married to an american, does not have TFC at home, or so she says and would rather go to europe than go back home to the Philippines.

I expressed my optimism about going back home to the Philippines raise my kids the way I was raised and start a business there. My Boss Weilani, who has never been there, shares this sentiment. We both understand the potential of the Philippines in both cultural, artistic and of course business wise. She raises her daughter with the same strict and loving discipline her tatay raised her.

This cebuana loaths at the idea of going home. (No offense towards cabuanos as well) She complains that her relatives suck all the money out of her. She says that her relatives make "parinig" about how they need help on certain things, maybe they really do need help, right? She hates that now she has money that her family asks her to give them money every single time. I figured in my head the reason why she had wanted a better life in the first place? To become better off in life and step on the unfortunate others? No one can be that mean… right?

She complains how there is rampant corruption back home and that here in the States there is none. This, of course we had a laugh out of, my Boss and I. We had explained to her that the worst biggots and thieves are the same people who pluck their piece of your paycheck everymonth before it even gets directly deposited to you checking account. We had explained to her the War in Iraq and Afghanistan… That this is purely a war that makes these manipulative and powerful people richer at the price of the lives of innocent and hard working citizens. We paused to hear her reaction. She paused with us. I guess she just didn’t want to digest this piece of logical information.

Deep inside I thought, here is a woman who said that she will never go back to live again in the Philippines. She does not want to be called Filipino, she’d rather be mistaken as chinese or japanese.

Yes our country has got a big share of things we can be ashamed of. Yes we might not have the cleanest government or streets, nor do we have good paying jobs. What we do have though is a sense of pride, of history and of good values. For some reason she has turned her back on her homeland. I wish I can figure out why she is the way she is.

Now that I have almost finished writing this, I can say that my anger towards her is turning into pitty. I wonder if one day she will realize that she is living in a country where you don’t have people stealing your money becuase you are voluntarily giving it to them (the crooks). I hope one day that she might see that she lives in a society where your childrens classmate might come to school on a monday and kill them one by one becuase he saw it on TV, heard it from a song or was influenced by his friends. I hope she sees that she is in a world where respect for oneself, elders and your neighbor has been long forgotten. I pray she see’s that the songs, litterature and entertainment do not preach hope, love and good values, rather it hypnotizes you to spend spend spend, kill kill kill and fuck fuck fuck. I hope she realizes that she lives in a society that will forget her when she is old and frail and useless, that she will be sent to a nursing home to become an unappreciated grandparent. I hope one day she will realize that she lives in a country where people die of loneliness… the same people who wish they were just in a tropical country sipping iced tea under a coconut tree, not worry about credit card debt, interest rates or a threat of terrorist attacks or even their neighbor coming to kill them at night. For her sake I hope for all of these.

She is not ashamed of being a Filipino… No she’s not.

I am ashamed that she IS Filipino…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.