Mr. Vic,
I arrived home (Southern California) exatcly 6PM, hit the bed to let go of some tiredness, and came back to cyberspace four hours later.
What easily caught my eye while reading the recent issue of AJ was your yell of OOOOPPPS when somebody fell into a trap (thinking that Ricky of DC is the same as Ricky of AJ). This is the unavoidable result when you mix reading DC and AJ and you're not in the habit of contextualizing (Ricky of DC is not necessarily the same as Ricky of AJ) things.
I was in the same mindset before your big OOOOPPPS.
At Inchon Int'l Airport, Seoul (Cleanest airport wordwide, 2005 and 2006, if a hanging sign is to be believed), I was switching off the Internet connection when I read your note (...coming next: Articles & photos by Archie Macanas, also by SS, our roving correspondent in Manila, preparing to come back to the US ( and reality! )...
I don't know, but your use of the phrase "...to come back to the US ( and reality!..." opens in my mind a can of, not worms, but half-truths. One sociologist once observed that us Filipinos are living in a dreamworld: life in the Philippines is the NOW, while the FUTURE lies somewhere else.
In a situation like that, you're going to have what the country is now having: indescriminate logging, insurgency whose head keeps popping up from time to time since the country gained its independence, corruption (I think in a survey made last month, we ranked No. 1 in the world), etc.
Wait, before I get flak from whichever direction, let me restate my stand on this "now here, the future lies somehwere" issue: it is only a half-truth.
My next article to AJ will be coming up soon.
SS
*****
Welcome back home, SS! The next few days ( and nights ) would be the worse for any Balikbayan. At least for me before. I would wake up in Toronto and for the first few seconds I would think I was still in my room in Asingan. Then the reality would hit me like a pile of bricks! I would miss the people with whom I spent a few weeks and it would be years ( seems like light years ) before I could see them again.
I would miss the roosters crowing every hour on the hour starting at dawn. When one rooster crows, the rest of the damned batch would start crowing one after the other, disregarding your desire to catch a few more minutes of sleep.
Then the dogs. They would bark at anything that moves. And the tricycles. They would come and go all night making so much racket. Some operators are fond of reving up their engines just in front of your house and at 2:00 am in the morning! Geez! When this happened before I feel like taking a gun and taking an aim at the bastard, especially if I had a very bad hangover..!
I guess these things are the ones that make Philippine holidays unforgettable.---#
1 comment:
So there's a Ricky AND Archie of DC and AJ. These are FOUR different individuals. Ay-yay-yay! SS, my problem is changing my mindset coming from abroad going to the Philippines. I will never get used to cold showers. What's funny is that people say it's better to take showers in the morning because it's not supposed to be as cold. Well, it is, every single time I get under that cold shower I let out a yelp. It doesn't matter what time of day it is. Another funny story involves my daughter when I took her for a visit three years. She starting yelling that there's no "thingy" to flush the toilet. I told her from the other side of the door to use the bucket, fill it with water, and pour it into the bowl. Then she yells back, that it isn't going down. As it turned out, she was slowly pouring the water in. I had to show her the art of dumping a whole bucket of water in WITHOUT getting splashed! She wanted to take the next flight back after that ... hahaha.
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