Cebu and what not

So my trip is winding down in Cebu and I will return to Manila tomorrow. I have had a great time here and I finally got to see some the beaches and scenery that the Philippines is famous for. My second day here we went to a beach on Mactan island which is not far from Cebu but it took awhile to convince the taxi driver to go out that far. After getting lost a few times the driver finally found the beach that was recommended to us by some local people. It had a resort feel to it but it was filled with Filipinos and me and the Japanese girls I went were the only the foreigners there. It was very nice but the actual beach was quite small. I noticed that aside from the Japanese girls, who wore their bikinis. there was not many Filipino women in the water and the few that were there were modest and swam with their clothes on. I think Japanese girls are a bit shy and modest compared to Americans and especially Europeans, but they came off as almost scandalous compared to the Filipinos. The beach seemed more like a place for children and guys while the women relaxed in the shade under a hut somewhere. I could tell an American and a few Japanese girls coming to this place caused a bit of stir among the locals. At one point I was chilling on the beach and this guy came up to me, didn't say a word, and handed me his two year old daughter. He was holding his camera and kept nodding and gesturing at me. I thought he was asking me to take a picture of him with his daughter but I eventually realized that he just wanted me to pose with his kid for a picture. I thought it was kind of weird but he seemed really excited to have a picture of his child with me so I didn't complain. A lot of guys wanted to come and speak English with me and ask me about America and I could tell the Japanese girls were getting a lot of attention from the local guys. They all seemed nice but after awhile all the attention got kind of exhausting.

After that I went to Beverly Hills, Cebu. I was just as surprised as you are probably right now that there is even a Beverly Hills in Cebu but what's even weirder is that we went there to see a Taoist temple. The place was interesting but there was something strange about it. I saw some Filipinos coming to pray and meditate but might have been the weird pastel color scheme or the fact that the official name of the place was “Philippine Taoist Temple, Inc.” (is this some kind of business or something?) I have to admit it there was something kind of fishy about the whole place. It didn't cost any money to get in so it's not really a tourist trap but it's more like a fake tourist attraction. It would be like if the someone built a replica of Abraham Lincoln's log cabin somewhere in a Japanese park. It just seems out of place. The next day we had a conference all day with prospective clients. When I say all day, I mean all day. So my boss explained to a bunch women and their children of various ages about our NGO, what services we offer, etc. It wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't been to about six of these conferences already. It was sort of interesting though for me because the first few times I heard it, it was in Japanese and then Tagalog and since my boss cannot speak the local language, Visayas, she did it this time in English. But honestly it was pretty boring and I needed about three cups of coffee just to keep myself from passing out on the table.

The next day was far more fun. My Filipina co-worker, a couple Japanese girls, and I went to visit a home of one our clients. It was far away. It took about 3 hours to get to there but the bus went through some very beautiful mountain roads. This part of the Philippines definitely reminds of Hawaii. I think since they are both volcanic archipelagos the mountains have a similar shape. So anyway we just crossed some mountains I guess, but it was weird because I don't remember going downhill on the bus but somehow the village of Dumanjug was next to beach so we must have subtly descended. I really enjoyed my short stay in Dumanjug. The family was very nice and had lunch prepared for us when we got there. There were probably 11 people living in the house which was a decent size but only had three rooms. I remember walking through the house to use their bathroom and I was struck by one room with a wall that a few family photos, a big picture of Avril Lavigne, and Jesus. It seemed an odd combination. But anyway the sister of the mother of our client was on vacation from her job as a housemaid in Singapore and she spoke some English but because she worked in Japan her Japanese was better so we discussed in Japanese. One of the Japanese girls told me that it was really strange for her to hear an American and Filipino talking to each other in Japanese but since most of our clients are Filipino women who were married to Japanese men, I usually speak Japanese with them. In the world today, the different languages that are used today astounds me. Most people probably take for granted that English is the lingua franca of most of the world and it's true that most educated people that travel around do speak at least a bit of English. I have no problem with that since it makes my life easier but I find it strange when my Korean and Japanese housemates in Manila only have English as a common language. You could swim from Japan to Korea but even so they learn a language that originates on the opposite side of the world to communicate with each other. I just find that a bit weird.

My last day in Cebu also turned out to be my birthday and since we had no work to do and our flight wasn't leaving until the evening my Filipina co-worker, a Japanese girl, and myself went to a small island called Bohol. I wouldn't be surprised if yinz have heard of it, its actually pretty famous. They have these bizarre hills that are famous for their distinct shape. They are known as the Chocolate Hills and I haven't seen anything like it before. Supposedly they are calcium carbonate deposits that formed when the island was under the level of the sea. They are called Chocolate Hills because during the dry season there isn't much rain so the hills all turn brown.

 Aside from the hills we did various other touristy things which were fun but the place was a bit of tourist trap. I have a phobia for touristy places. Maybe because I grew up in Pittsburgh where there are no tourists but I dislike being around tourists. I think its for that reason that I like the place where I live, Quezon City. As beautiful a place Cebu is I did miss Quezon City for some reason. I have an attraction to this place that is hard to explain. Most of my friends here are always looking for their next trip out of Metro Manila to go somewhere nice and away from the city but I am the opposite. Don't get me wrong the air is filthy at times, the sidewalks can be disgusting, and usually smells bad (especially the stream that runs by my house that they definitely pump sewage into) but in a weird way I sort of enjoy it. A lot people like to go to beautiful mountains and beaches to see how nature can express itself but the city with the immense crowds of different people living in cramped quarters is an expression of human nature (sometimes at its worst) and I find that infinitely interesting. Honestly I find vacations kind of stressful. I also dislike the annual parties that people seem to look forward to so much such as Halloween, New Years, July 4^th, etc. It's not that I don't enjoy parties but I don't like being forced to put more weight on one night and if I don't have a good time it feels like a big loss.

My phobia reminds me something I read from Kierkegaard back when I was at school. The character of his sort of stream of consciousness essay was lamenting the fundamental boredom that goes hand and hand with life but at the end he insists that planned vacations, parties, etc. are actually just a shallow and brief escape. If you really want to enjoy life you have to open your mind and senses to endless depth of pure subjectivity. So watching the sweat drip off the nose of a bum on the bus can be just as enjoyable as being in a hot-tub with some Playboy playmates. I know this probably doesn't make a lot of sense but I know that some the more memorable times of life were incidents that seemed to arise out of complete arbitrariness and not the big events that I felt obliged to enjoy. It's a process of accepting the arbitrariness and emptiness of real life and laughing at it.