Comment posted on "No tyrants where there are no slaves Part 2" on The Brown Raise Movement http://www.thebrownraise.org/?p=1317&cpage=1#comment-2529

In my college there was only one other Pinoy, who, despite his US citizenship, displayed undeniably Pinoy traits, which ranged from the irrelevant (like his prominent accent), to the irritating (inefficient). He attempted to latch on to me; he expected me, as a kabayan whose English was better than his, to write his papers for him. He did not expect me to charge him, but I did, and he paid. I did not, and would not, have done it out of altruism. Or out of some kind of twisted brotherhood.

Obviously this was all wrong in so many ways. It’s certainly illegal to plagiarize, maybe worse morally, maybe not, to make a business out of it. How his money covered up his academic inadequacy is a splendid display of corruption.

I figured, what the heck, both parties had something to gain from this corruption; this rich, useless dude ended up passing the course and he had had a reason to “socialize” with a kabayan who would have ignored his sorry existence were it not for the business advantage. I was a highly skilled, willing-to-work student with hardly any spending money in an expensive foreign country.

I think I worked out the most win-win situation despite the criminality of it all. The alternative would have been him failing the courses, having no one to talk to (no ethnic group would take him), and me penniless and painfully embarrassed about That Other Filipino (with a US passport).

I am proud not to have put a patriotic lacquer on the fiasco the way Pinoy politicos do. Besides, how could I? I was pumping out papers for any nationality that put francs in my pocket. Business is business.

Work dignifies us while laziness diminishes our pride, indeed.

Comment posted on the "Why are we ‘a nation of servants’?" topic on The Brown Raise Movement http://www.thebrownraise.org/?p=564

I have this Cantonese friend who went to Boracay. Coming back home to HK she posted on facebook: "Back from the Philippines, I'm so dark I look like a maid". A couple months after the Philippine trip she went to Thailand. I just had to ask her what she looked like as a result of her Bangkok weekend. "What else but a prostitute", was her answer. Hilarious. So...what's worse? None of our Thai friends freaked out about her very public comment, just like I didn't freak out about her "maid's tan". Because I'm not petty enough to freak out about that, really. Was it supposed to make me feel bad?

I'm not in any way defending Tsao but I think it must be pointed out that Pinoys have been reacting so strongly to what he said in one article when the snobbery at home, here in the country, is just as, if not more intense. It's certainly ubiquitous. I'm sure some of you were discouraged by your parents to be behavioral equals of your household help. Who here wasn't raised to be more educated, have better table manners, speak better, in general not act like maids? Who here isn't guilty of ever thinking, "she looks like a maid/he looks like a driver"? Seriously. Does it hurt more when a non-Filipino speaks of our realities?

How about the uproar over that actress who, after filming in the country, commented that Manila was "filthy, polluted, slum city". Some of the indignant people were a bunch of my Mom's friends, upper-class, educated, ersatz Filipino aristocrats. Mom and I couldn't figure out what their problem was. Were they contesting the fact that Manila IS filthy, polluted, and slummy? Can ANYONE deny it? Or were they pissed off because someone foreign cunt vocalized these absolute truths? It's as if this actress (who she is is completely incidental) was violating a gag order (confidentiality agreement) by describing the city.

What I think is that we as a people are pathologically melodramatic; it cripples us. So much time and energy are wasted wallowing on shit that at best gives our realities a cheap, trivial, and temporary varnish and at worst keeps us just the way we are. Sinking.

Comment on The Warrior Lawyer | Philippine Lawyer http://thewarriorlawyer.com/2008/09/25/bloggers-as-a-social-force/#comment-61702

The voice of the internet savvy Filipino has grown noticeably tacky, banal, and frightfully common. This is due to the internet having become available to a wider demographic. One can say this is good since it suggests that the methods by which people communicate are getting increasingly more available, which helps in boosting the economy (at best) and having the common man's voice heard (at the very least).

But at what price, indeed. A few years ago when there were less Pinoys using the internet the zeitgeist was less banal. As the quantity of users increased the quality of thought and/or the refinement of expression decreased dramatically; witless, inartistic, and unaesthetic ways of communicating have become ubiquitous.

As a democratic, capitalist people, we can't ban paying customers from playing in our previously "exclusive" sandboxes just because we don't like their accents or don't find their families in our "social register".

What we end up doing is enjoying the same rights to freedom of expression as they do. They have a right to say tacky things, we have a right to comment on their tackiness.

As far as business goes....I think blog writers can be proposed to endorse certain products. They will certainly know who their readers are and what products can or can't be marketed. This would avoid you blunders such as trying to market skin whiteners to readers who work hard on their tans at Tali Beach or by the Manila Polo Club pool. Or selling foie gras to people who are happy making pesto sauce out of McCormick packets.

The higher-end blog-writer/reader whose choices have been more discriminating will not take to an endorsement contract easily unless he or she has already been using the product or service and if, by endorsing it, he or she will not be sacrificing his or her integrity.

The pesto-sauce-by-McCormick-mix reader/blogger will, however, be much more receptive to a better, classier [sic] brand of pesto mix powder. Another place to see and be seen eating Spaghetti Carbonara. Another way to dress like Boy Abunda and talk like Kris Aquino. A chance to get Richard Gutiérrez's autograph.

I find it interesting how in all Philippine arenas the "elite", who are a frustratingly fickle market, work hard to find products they can call theirs, while everybody else sits back, relaxed, letting their "advisers" (advertisers) guide their purchase decisions.

Ironic, if you take these two behavioral patterns out of this context, the latter (everybody else) would seem the more "kingly" route.

Enclave Was

I want you to get creative with me today.

Together we will create a vividly offensive, yet morbidly fascinating creature.

My aim is to assault your senses the way mine have been and continue to be by this creature. This creature is real, I see it at work.

Without your stomach turning today's tale will be bland.

Let's start with the outline. Five foot, maybe four-foot-nine without the hair.

Give it a faux-hawk, top of the crest maybe four inches above the forehead. So because of the hair, five-foot-three. Bleach this shark's fin to about mustard, cover that with dark brown, cover that with dark cherry.

And now...the mug.

Combine this: female housefly-not the small males that dot food up and fly away easily, but the big, fat, shiny, slow, low-flying, noisy female heavy as fuck with hundreds (thousands...millions) of maggot eggs incubating in her belly; with this: old toad, or bullfrog; and this: monkey. That's the creatures face. Now paint it shit-brown. Literally feces-fudge colored.

Cover the limbs with wannabe trendy knock-offs of styles spotted in expensive boutique display windows. Everything of course has been altered to fit the creature's long torso and short bowlegs. The pants are pulled up high, high on the waist of that long torso. As in wedgie-high.

The creature smells like something that eats too much fish, fish sauce, soy sauce, and MSG and enhances it with a vaguely floral, absolutely tasteless stench.

Are you excited yet?

To put movement into the sketch, to animate the creature, have it walk down an perpetual catwalk. Give it the movement of Miss Universe confident in her endless legs standing six foot in her in her five inch heels. Don't forget to figure that movement into a five-foot body with short bowlegs.

It's not a pretty sight. There is absolutely nothing inoffensive about this creature.

Did I forget to mention this creature is a male homo sapien? But not the aristocratic lady it believes itself to be. We call it La Mosca (The Fly) or La Mos-cuca (The Fly-Roach).

But oh, wait, the sound. Loud. Projecting. Falsetto. Banshee wail meets donkey heehaw meets pig squeal. Capable of piercing your noise-cancelling in ear headphones.

Now, I normally shut out as much of this creature as I can. This sort of shit causes blindness and deafness. It's got to. I'm willing to bet it causes post traumatic stress disorder, at the very least.

However...however.

Three weeks ago my ears inadvertently pricked up when I heard what must have been the tail end of the creature's shrieking, wailing, broadcast, "......Salcedo Marke-e-e-e-e-t-t-t-t!"

My jaw dropped and I slowed my pace as, in absolute nauseating horror, I listened to the Cockroach thing educating its maid-like groupies about Salcedo Market.

Salcedo Market, located in a nicer part of town. Where purveyors gather every Saturday morning to cater to clientele with distinct tastes. Expats and locals who have managed to cultivate their tastes come spend too much money in an environment that doesn't smell, look, or taste third world. A total enclave, virtually undiscovered, as of two months ago, by the gentuza, the riffraff.

I came back to Salcedo Market last Saturday after not having been by there for several weeks. It was like the goddamn Food Court at some mall, it was so full. Of shit.

I can't even begin to tell you the name of anyone I saw there (not that I wanna know). The Cockroach-Fly-Monster must have laid its eggs right, insidious creature that it is, because there was a sea of call-centerish maggotry squirming and squealing and shrieking their d2 na me drivel all over the dining area.

I had a vision of tour buses going around to call-centers postshift to pick up people for the weekly Salcedo Market Cultural Outing Field Trip.

It was a blessing we found two seats around a corner of a small table, the only one without a tablecloth. Talk about a place having been comandeered.

I know, this is, after all, a democracy. There are no rules banning anybody from these places. Multi-demographic consumption is a suggestive of disposable income, which I guess is a sign of economic improvement. The vendors must be happy, because there are more purchases.

So whoopee-doo, are you all happy now? I hope you aren't too thrilled. Just like when concerned locals are saddened by their beautiful beaches being spoiled by tourists, I'm lamenting the inevitable rot brought about by the invasion of these creatures.

I need to take some Baygon to the office to stop that creature from laying more eggs. Fucking piece of shit. Needs to get shot.

Who are the McPinoys?

My Analysis of Class Distinction in the Filipino perspective, which, for obvious reasons, doesn't describe other cultures in other countries.

PLU - (Filipino People Like Us) - Our families are in many ways parallels and have been for generations: went to the same schools, may even be related to each other somehow. More often than not our grandparents are people like us. A lot of us are relatively Nouveau Pauvre, since the heyday of our families happened in prior generations. Many of us are heirs of nothing but a "good" last name and a sense of superiority. If there were an equivalent elsewhere it would be the impoverished English aristocracy. Multiple generations have had college educations or their equivalent. PLU don't try very hard to impress and tend to be quite blasé about things. So blasé that we are generally quite a boring and undynamic kind. We are bunch of repressed, decadent, negligent, neglectful, complacent, double-standard, corrupt, corruptible, spoiled, have a hard-to-tame sense of entitlement, don't think the rules apply to us, facetious, out-of-shape, quick-aging, and way too Same-Old-Same-Old....


MCPINOY (Middle Class Filipino)
a. Upper McPinoy (Upper Middle-class Filipino) - these are the New People. Essentially middle class people with money. As with most nouveau riche, they will be noticeably wealthier than PLU. They have probably gone to school with PLU and might even hang out with PLU but if their parents and grandparents know ours it hasn't been for long and probably nothing beyond casual acquaintance. If they carry on the same path their children might be PLU, and their grandkids will most likely be. They are the parvenus, culture vultures, eager red wine beavers, Louis Vuitton toting, Instituto Cervantes attending, Embassy-going. From seemingly
out-of-nowhere, these people come into the radar when they marry into or date PLU, and/or become nouveaux connoisseurs of some socio-cultural phenomenon like red wine, art collections, mainstream fashion design/publishing. Their grandparents likely to be the first with college education.

Upper McPinoy are the most interesting class of Filipinos to watch. They are definitely the most dynamic; this upward mobility is a very powerful force and has an economic impact because for a variety of reasons, among which a desire to prove, these guys spend quite a bit of money. Their drive is quite a force to be reckoned with. The transition from McPinoy to Upper McPinoy is a monumental feat in that it entails a hyper-conscious and extremely dedicated restructuring and redefining of one's behavior and mannerisms, tastes in food, movies, music, clothing, company and art. The Marcos couple, particularly Imelda, is my model for this. Or, if you wish, an American equivalent would be Martha Kostyra of Jersey City, NJ. Most of you know her as Martha Stewart of NYC and CT.


b. McPinoy (Middle Class Filipino) - Think Upper McPinoy without the lofty cultural aspirations. These guys are middle-class, hard-working, relatively educated, simple people who find no practical reason to speak perfect English or learn another language unless it is part of their job. They may have been put through school with OFW money. If they do not impose simplistic middle class values at home their kids
may very easily aspire to be Upper McPinoy. This class will not be able to see above & beyond Upper McPinoy because their untrained eye cannot see the nuances that distinguish one from the other. Their parents may have gone to college.

This is the Starbucks crowd, they are Mall Rats, and the target market you want if you wanna make a buck by franchising a chain this country. Special occasions merit dinner at Italianni's; for them the cliché pasta with Carbonara and Pesto sauces are novelty eats.

Lines are very blurred between McPinoy and Lower McPinoy. They may just as well be one class. Both these kinds of people tend to misuse the term Coño and apply it to everybody whom they percieve to be in a class above them.

With this class and all below it there is an affinity for Korean telenovelas, Megastar Ate Shawie, Kafoso vs. Kapuso, etc.


c. Lower McPinoy (Lower Middle Class Filipino) - Probably the first generation to go to college. These are the legion who may sit next to you at a cubicle farm and you can't help but notice that they might as well be the siblings of your household help since they have similar tastes and behave very similarly.


LOWER CLASS
a. Employed as - household help, security guards, market vendors. No college education.

b. Unemployed

These guys may or may not be squatting.

Freedom Is A State of Mind

I used to love going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings when I was in recovery in San Francisco. Every single day I went to at least one meeting and when I had the whole day to myself I'd go to three, even five.

One thing that weighed most importantly in what made a meeting worth attending was whether it was frequented by the people with whom I shared quarters in the rehab.

Naturally, if they went, I didn't. Out of the maybe 60 people at the rehab there were only about two I could tolerate running into at a meeting. It was understood that I had my own thing going, which piqued curiosity somewhat. When asked what meeting I was going to I would lie; I wanted to keep the useless hordes away from a good meeting the way environmentalists attempt to keep tourists away from virgin beaches.

There was something for every flavor of sobriety. If I wanted to hear a tranny's life story, there was a meeting for it. A couple hours later there would be a choice of language. There was also a location option - you want to go to the foggy part of town, or the sunny part of town? There were meetings where the coffee was good and there was Coffee-Mate....and in others were there was good coffee, Splenda, half & half and Coffee-Mate. Some meetings served cookies and cakes. Some even had beef jerky and Caramel Diet Pepsi.

You could opt to go WASP male alcoholic on Nob Hill, Black recovering crack head South of Market , Latino in the Mission District, Haight Street Hippy, Castro Queen. You could even go to a No Scents Allowed meeting if your sinuses weren't doing too good.

It was like having 2 or 3 parties going on at a given time. The freedom of choice was like a high in itself.

And then in Makati I got squeezed into four meetings a week, seeing the same people, as it were, week-to-week. The same people who were either useless ornaments or annoying individuals. People whose stories didn't inspire me and who didn't deserve to know details of my story.

These people must have taken it personally that I wouldn't share much of myself with them. If they thought I was one of those assholes who thinks he's better than everybody else, they were right.

Rather than finding a maintenance plan for what had been a successful program in San Francisco, I found a group of chain-smoking, sugar-addicted, big-fish-in-little-pond with unhealthy habits and cloying personalities. Aloofness, for its absence in that group, would have been a virtue.

There was no possibility for my own brand of sobriety here unless I would wing it and do my own thing.

Understanding that micro-culture and juxtaposing it the macro has helped me see what exactly has been choking me in this country. It is the lack of options.

One may argue that anything is possible, even in this country. However true that may be, the fact that there is usually only one road for everyone to take to get to a certain destination limits the sense of personal freedom immeasurably. The road less travelled, if I may indulge myself a cliché, is depressingly rare.

And for a picky mothafucka like me, having only one way to do something is just as much of a prison as having no way to do it.

Pre Greyhound

One blazingly hot New England summer day I jumped on the first of several Greyhounds that would take me from Boston to San Francisco. The trip took four uncomfortable, dirty, inconvenient, and chaotic days and I will never forget how fascinated I was with the differences in landscape, climate, and people that I observed throughout the journey.

I really have nothing say when asked (by myself in self-reflection and by others in curiosity) why I did it.

Here is something I wrote a day before I got on that bus. It still doesn't answer the question, but it is a vivid reminder of how excruciatingly abstract my motivations could be.


I got no needle & thread.
I got no magic wand.
But I do weave webs.

The only way that I am content is to be floating dead center in a web of reality whose structure I had intricately and obsessively personalized. Such has been so in every city or community I've dwelled in. I've always had a VIP pass to my reality; no it didn't come for free-it was and is a result of my web-weaving. Some may call it schemes and manipulations, but towards what? Schemes and manipulations produce money, sex, and power. The three things I am most intimidated by.

I need to weave my own little ShitShow, where I enjoy the benefits and privileges of Those Who Call The Shots without having to bear with the pain of Calling The Shots, Aiming The Shots, And Shooting The Shots.

I aim to personify the term "extra-hierarchical", where I can and do exist alongside the hierarchy/ies, past and present.

You see, I can't quite be King Arthur, anyone on his Round Table, nor any of his subjects. I must be Merlin, subject of none and ruler of only his own little reality.

And when does this end?

When my web of reality is patched up, deformed, and groaning with the weight , it must be put to sleep while it's still whole.

I refuse to watch it get dessicated and fed to the vultures. It must quit before it gets fired. Like I did. No looking back, no visiting the gravesite even.

Only the memories I bring to the new venue; it's really the only way to preserve the most valuable parts of the exiting reality, the only method of keeping the volume crisp.

Chasing an impossible dream? Bullshit. It's possible because I've built a couple....and boy, what a dream THAT was. I lived it.

Destination SFO.