Filipino Voices

I was quite inspired by Marck’s full disclosure article X-List: Five Things I Do to Contribute to the Decay of Filipino Society. In it, he preempts his foray into political commentary by first publishing a list of personal practices of his that are, shall we say, “un-Filipino”. The thinking there is that it is better for us to come out with our own dirty laundry before we start pointing out others’. That way we all don’t end up looking like the Jimmy Swaggarts and Cory Aquinos of this world whenever we get on our little soap boxes or have ourselves photographed kneeling before a crucifix clutching a rosary.

So I thought, I’d do the Pinoy thing, give Marck a “great idea mate!” nod in the process, and make gaya-gaya.

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On top of what Marck already mentioned (many of which I am also guilty of), here is my list:

1. I used to have a weekly P100 lagay budget for my daily drive to work.

Back in the late nineties I didn’t believe in observing the odd-even law which banned my car from using Manila’s streets every Friday. I worked out that I have about a 1-in-5 chance of being caught every Friday which equates to the equivalent of P70 a month fee for undocumented “immunity” from the odd-even scheme — assuming of course that my P100 “bid” is always successful whenever I get stopped.

If a week passes and I don’t get stopped by a man-in-blue, I deposit the P100 in my savings account. And the financial institutions allocate my money to the capital-needy.

Everybody wins!

2. On my last visit to Manila, I discovered the joys of bribing security guards as well.

The annoying thing about BF Homes Paranaque is that you have to enter and leave that subdivision from the same gate. That’s because us poor sods who lack a “homeowner’s sticker” are required to leave their licenses at the gate of entry. So if you’re visiting someone there coming from the North and decide you want to check out the Alabang Town Centre after, well, you work it out. For P20 to P30 you get to save at least P100 in fuel costs and about two hours of travel time.

Side note:

US Infantryman: No guts, no glory!

US Marine: No pain, no gain!

Pinoy Sikyo: No ID, no entry!

ha ha!

(Disclaimer: I’d like to make a full disclosure that this is by no means an original joke of mine, in case chuck, decides to point this bit of trivia out.)

At the end of all that, a humble sikyo gets a free beer, less greenhouse gases were released into Manila’s toxic air, and P70 (net of the lagay) remains in my bank account to be allocated by our venerable financial institutions to the capital-needy.

Everybody wins!

3. Back in college when we were making ligaw-ligaw the kolehiyalas, the three criteria I subscribed to along with my peers were maputi, mayaman, and malambing.

Emphasis on the maputi part. My lame retrospective excuse here is that this seems to be consistent with our society’s tastes in the first place. Just take stock of the hues of our celebrities and the abundance of skin whitening creme brands and hair-straightening kits selling like hotcakes out there.

Then again, taste in women is personal. So maybe one shouldn’t judge…

One thing’s for sure, a collective taste for straight-haired fair-skinned ladies opens a lot of doors for the average straight-haired fair skinned Pinay aspiring to gain employment in one of them SM Malls. Those pesos (net of food, jeepney fare, and “allowance” for a philandering alcoholic husband) then end up in a bank account to be allocated by our venerable financial institutions to the capital-needy.

Everyone wins!

4. Living here in Australia today, I must say I miss cheap labour every now and then.

I often find myself mowing my lawn or cleaning crud out of my gutter and thinking of the P100 we used to pay our local all-around handyman to do those and more. I think of cheap labour whenever furniture we ordered after checking it out fully-assembled in a showroom is delivered in a million pieces with assembly instructions enclosed in a flat box.

At the office, although it is a bit heartwarming to see our CIO take his turn putting away the dishes in our tea room as he honours his designated day on our floor’s kitchen duty roster, I gotta admit to a bit of grumbling as I do it when it is MY day. I miss the office all-around we had back in Makati whose primary responsibility was to man the photocopier and wash the dishes.

But then technology and cheap telecoms were invented and all of a sudden there was a way to tap all that cheap labour First World dwellers have come to miss that would otherwise be drinking beer in the middle of the day on a sidewalk. Those dollars (net of expenditure on karaoke machines, celphone trinkets, fake Tommy Hilfigers, and daily Starbucks lattes) then end up in a bank account to be allocated by our venerable financial institutions to the capital-needy.

Everyone wins!

and finally; before the usual suspects point it out…

5. I run a Website and maintain an online persona whose main reason for existence is to question — and diss — just about every cultural trait, nuance, and quirk of the Pinoy.

That, plus an inclination to link back to that website at every opportunity, specially after I discovered the commercial wonders of PayPal and Google Adsense.

In this case, me and my ego wins!

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Which brings us to my latest epiphany:

Being a loser is all in the mind. Winning is an attitude and a way of life.

Labo ba?

So there we have it, my gaya-gaya (emulation is the highest form of flattery, Marck) list of five things I do to contribute to the decay of the Philippines (which, it seems, turns out quite a few winners).

A bit of full-disclosure often helps. Ultimately it was Michael Douglas’s character’s full-disclosure of his affair to his wife in the seminal movie Fatal Attraction that enabled him to triumph over the deranged mistress played by Glen Close.