On different aspects of my life here

So I was thinking that I would write about some different aspects of my daily life and experiences here. I have met a lot of people here from different parts of the world and walks of life. When I meet rich students from the local universities I am stuck just how similar they are to Americans. They talk with American accents, drive big cars, have way nicer condos or houses than I have, and just in general remind me of Americans. People frequently tell me, sometimes as if they are embarrassed, that they come from “colonial” families. They seem to represent an elite here but this is one aspect of Filipino society that I am not interested in. I still find it hard to believe that American culture is so popular around the world and especially here. I was talking to a Spanish guy and I asked him if he saw any of Spain left here in the Philippines since the Spanish have been here for almost 400 years. He said the Philippines has become completely American and I agree with him in a sense but I don't see that as completely a bad thing. The Philippines has a long and complex history with more powerful countries interference and cultural influence and so the nation now seems to have an eclectic mix of cultures. There are supposedly towns where they still speak Spanish and I even heard that there is a city somewhere where the local people speak English with strong American accents. I heard there was a US military base there at some point and the locals were close to the Americans even though there aren't any Americans left, they retained their accent for some reason. The American influence in the Philippines is definitely obvious and I thought it was interesting to here some of the French and Germans complain that but honestly I have no sympathy for them. Maybe its because of my American background but I have little patience for Europeans that insult other cultures they consider to be inferior. I hate that kind of snobbish crap. One German girl even tried to tell me in front of a bunch of Filipinos that Filipinos are some of the most depressed people in the the world because of how poor and corrupt the country is and their lack of a strong cultural identity. I got upset and argued with her. I don't know where she found those statistics but regardless, I think it is just rude to say that kind of crap in front of Filipinos. It reminds of when I met this guy from Chicago at a bar here and the first thing he told me before any of the usual small talk that you have with people you just meet, that America is "finished". I discussed with him and I didn't necessarily disagree with all of his opinions I just think that insulting someone's country to someone you just met is poor form. 

Sometimes people here describe America to me as an amazing place and don't get me wrong I love America but I try to explain the reality to them. American government also has corruption and there are plenty of problems in America nowadays. People also sometimes treat me with a lot of undeserved respect just because I am American. They are polite to me, call me sir, and share their desire with me that the Philippines become more like America. We can discuss that but what I make sure to convey is that I am no different than them. I'm just a sauce who happened to be born in Pittsburgh and spent my teenage years drinking and doing other irresponsible crap. I made through university somehow but fundamentally Filipinos have nothing to learn from me. I came here to learn from them.

Aside from the students and other volunteers I have met some other characters. I remember I was walking with my dad at the Chinese garden in Rizal park and this guy came out of nowhere and felt the need to reassure me of his love for America. He was super excited and I think a little bit crazy somewhere but he told us:

“Some of my countrymen, they don't like America. They say they are conquerors but I know the truth. America saved the people of Iraq and Iran. You save people and liberate the world!”

He said more but I don't really remember most of it. I just laughed while he was talking but I thanked him afterwords. I have never agreed with the war in Iraq but hearing a Filipino congratulate me on something that I thought was the one of the biggest mistakes of US foreign policy in my lifetime was interesting in and of itself. Throughout my education I have gotten a lot of different perspectives on world politics and Americas role and it's not always negative like I would have thought. While I was living in Hawaii I remember talking to a Hawaiian guy and he was telling that Honolulu is not Hawaii. Hawaii is a paradise. This city is just a part of America that forced its way over here. I asked him if he was upset about how the US government treated Hawaiians and just said it was better the US than the Japanese. That was their options.

I remember another conversation I had with a guy from Chile in a bar in Vancouver and I was asking him about Allende and Pinochet and if he was upset with how the CIA was involved in planting Pinochet in power. He told me it was one of the best things for Chile and he continued to say that when the US government acts in South America to undermine the local government it is usually in the best interest of the people. I was definitely surprised by this and I have met a lot of South Americans who told me similar but also the complete opposite. Personally I don't like the idea that the CIA works sometimes to undermine the democracies and governments of other countries and I think Pinochet was perhaps important for the growth of the economy of Chile but I don't see how anyone can be comfortable with his disregard for human rights and the welfare of the majority of his people.

Another interesting thing was when a Korean guy personally thanked me for the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. He was teaching a Korean class at a community center in Manila and I went for the first class since we are friends and I teach Japanese there also. He gave a presentation about Korean history and the atomic bomb and thus the end of the WW2 was part of it. I was sitting in a classroom of Filipinos and when he showed a picture of the atomic bomb and thanked me for America ending the war and Japanese colonization of Korea and all the Filipinos always murmured their thanks also. I have to say it was bizarre for me to hear that. I have very mixed views about the atomic bomb. Even if I can agree with some the arguments that the bomb was important to quickly end the war and perhaps did save lives, the tragedy of the atomic bomb is what strikes me. I went to Hiroshima and the peace museum there. That was very difficult for me and since I am not a poet it is hard for me to adequately express my feelings at that time. I also met a woman who told me that she saw the bomb when she was child and with my relatively weak Japanese skill at the time it was impossible to say anything meaningful. Even if she spoke fluent English I don't even know what I could say aside from recognizing the tragedy. I have always thought that Obama should go to Hiroshima while he is president not to “apologize” for America but to recognize the gravity of the decision and set the stage to move on from this nuclear legacy. Even with all of his rhetoric about a “nuclear-free world” he still has not gone there and it seems that his rhetoric is just that, rhetoric...

I could also write about an interesting experience I had last Sunday. Five lawyers from Japan came to Maligaya House to interview our clients about a lawsuit we are filing. The law in Japan is that if there is a child with a Japanese parent born outside of Japan, to acquire Japanese nationality they have to contact the Japanese embassy within three months. The average Filipino or Japanese doesn't know this and so when they try to acquire the nationality later on for their kid, the Japanese embassy rejects them. There was even a case where the Japanese man promised to file the birth certificate of his child in his family registry in Japan and took all of the documents to Japan where he supposedly destroyed them so their would be no record of his wife and children in the Philippines. So we are filing a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government in an effort to ascertain Japanese citizenship for the kids. The lawyers came just to get the statements from the clients and next month a dozen of the Filipinos are going to represent the others in court with our lawyers (who are also volunteers). We are hoping to change the Japanese law because a three month time limit is too strict and these Japanese-Filipino children have the right to citizenship.

My role on Sunday was to interpret Japanese to English. Some of the lawyers spoke decent English so I helped translate for the lawyers who did not know much English. The first interview went smoothly. The client only had one child and she spoke decent English so we could finish in an hour or so. The second interview was a completely different story. That lady spoke almost no English but knew some broken Japanese. So I had to translate the question from the lawyer to English and then my co-worker translated that into Tagalog. Especially since she had four children with this Japanese guy, it took a long time. The problem was that we were talking about events that happened like 15 years ago and so her memory was a bit fuzzy. Not only was there a language barrier but her story occasionally changed and so me and the lawyer were getting frustrated by the end. It took 4 hours and I couldn't take my lunch until 3 o'clock but by the end it was all OK and it worked out. I don't like to brag but by the end of the day I was thinking that when I first started studying Japanese two and a half years ago I had no idea that I would be able to translate between a Japanese lawyer and a Filipino lady. That being said my Tagalog also is getting a bit better. I practice with my friends and my co-worker.

My teaching of Japanese is going smoothly and is getting easier each time I go there. My first lesson was sort of difficult for me because I did not know how much Japanese they understood and had learned. In a sense it is not a serious class. I don't get any money for it and the kids don't have to pay but they are surprisingly very serious students. I haven't really prepared any lesson plans. I like to just improvise. I always go there with something new that I can teach them in my mind but I try and find out what they want to learn and go from there. It's pretty relaxed and there are usually under ten students so I can really work with each one of them. I think I am a much better Japanese teacher than English teacher. I don't English grammar and I can't explain the rules to people that are trying to learn but I worked hard to understand Japanese and I know what the hard parts are. Overall it is pretty rewarding for me to teach, I like the kids, and it helps me remember some of the older grammar that I don't use that much.

On Volunteering

When I was asked to give a speech about volunteering I was very excited because I thought it would be a good opportunity to inspire people but I quickly realized I really had no idea what to say. Up until that point I never thought deeply about my life as a volunteer and so I did not prepare anything for that speech except for somehow inserting Pittsburgh and the Steelers. I have become reflective lately about what exactly I am doing here and with my life.

At this point I volunteer for two NGOs, one is Maligaya House which I wrote about before but I will explain my daily life a bit more so you and myself included can get a better understanding. My day to day work is actually quite boring. I mean my NGO offers legal support to these Filipino women and the majority of my work is translated Japanese documents into English and occasionally vice-versa. If you think that translating Filipino birth certificates into Japanese for 8 hours is fun then well you might as well just get a job as a bureaucrat. When I first arrived I was struck by just how hard it is to sit in an office and work on a computer all day. I got this weird twitch in my eye and it was very hard for me to get up in the morning. Simultaneously it was hard for me to get accustomed to the Philippines. I was constantly sweating in the heat, I would get weird pains in my muscles maybe from the heat, the massive amount of pollution and noise is not easy to get used to, and overall I did not know why I had come here in the first place. Over time however I began to get used to Maligaya House and developed a love for the Philippines. In a sense I'm not a very good volunteer because I didn't gave any thought about the struggles of Japanese-Filipino children before I arrived. So unlike normal volunteers I am not idealistically motivated. I have seen quite a few interns and volunteers come to and leave Maligaya House by now and presently we are pretty much stripped bare. There is only myself, my boss, and a social worker that works there. We have some Japanese exchange students come in occasionally but only about once a week or so. Almost all of the volunteers that I met were Japanese girls that felt compassion for the Japanese-Filipino children and their condition. Throughout my time here I have also grown to care about these kids and their mothers.

One thing about this job is that I meet very unfortunate women and children abandoned by the husband/father. Being a young guy I never gave much thought to condition of women and what affects their lives. Now almost on a daily basis I am confronted with these women and their broken families and you can really see the damage caused. Filipinos are not one to complain and it is quite rare for them to really breakdown in front of me. They usually try to maintain a good face but it is obvious of the struggles they go through.

Occasionally, I go on house visits with my co-worker to analyze their living conditions and meet their family. Usually they live in modest homes with three generations living under one roof. The families are always warm with us when we come and usually prepare food. It's rare for me to meet a client who actually has a job. Unemployment is rampant here and it seems to be the case that they had cast their hopes on this Japanese guy but it did not work out. There are lots of reasons why the guy would abandon his wife and child. For our clients it is not usually the case that they met just once or a few times and became pregnant and the guy runs away from his responsibility. The sad thing is that a lot of our clients were married and he either used to live with her and her family in the Philippines and was fully aware of the child. I can understand the fear of commitment by guy who was on vacation and inadvertently got a girl pregnant but I have no sympathy for those that walk away from their responsibilities as a father or husband.

Of course the woman is emotionally devastated and the kids has to grow up without a father but this is really a blow to the entire family. The Philippines is a poor country and if a member of a family can get married to a guy from a wealthy country then the whole family sees this as an opportunity to a better life.

Anyway, I don't want to get too cheesy but it'll suffice to say that I am moved by the women and children that I work with. Now my second volunteering at Visayan Forum is very different. Visayan Forum is dedicated to fighting human trafficking. It's a noble cause. Human trafficking is one of the most despicable aspects of the world. It can sometimes lead to virtual slavery for the victims or at least some sort of exploitation. It's pretty terrible and its the third largest black market in the world today; behind both drugs and weapons. It's practiced by unscrupulous individuals who exploit the vulnerability of poor and uneducated people. They usually promise them something great but if the victims go along then they can quickly realize that they are not going to become a waitress in Paris but end up in a brothel in the Ivory Coast as one group Filipino women found out recently. Now the problem with this issue is that there is always going to be people migrating to find work and I heard from a guy that one third of the GDP of the Philippines comes from migrant workers who go to richer countries to work as housemaid or something like this. I met a family where one woman works as a housemaid in Singapore is able to support a family of 6 back in the Philippines on that income alone. So in this case I think she found a good opportunity to support her extended family but then where do you draw the line between exploitation and migrant labor since by definition immigrant labor must be cheaper than if the firms hired locally? That's a tough one but I do feel that the government could at least try to protect its citizens that work abroad but at same time this exportation of labor is not beneficial for the Philippine economy. At the same time, the demand exists because of a lack of jobs and opportunities here so it's a kind of which came first the chicken or the egg scenario. Will the Philippine government always be unable to foster job growth and entrepreneurship as long as the qualified workers are constantly looking to work outside the country or is it the government's fault for not protecting the local industry and remaining passive hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are forced to find work elsewhere? As always, it is more complicated then this.

Yeah so Visayan Forum helps raise awareness of the problem of human trafficking in vulnerable areas and has half-way houses for the victims to help them get back on their feet. Some of the victims really go through terrible sometimes like there was a Filipino woman who worked as a house-maid in Saudi Arabia that was tortured and murdered by the family she was taking care of. Interestingly and tragically a similar story happened recently with two Indonesian house-maids in Saudi Arabia. I don't know what that says about Saudi Arabia but people here are not happy.

Now my role for Visayan Forum has absolutely nothing to do with this. I just teach Japanese to Filipino kids in a kind of poor neighborhood on Saturday mornings. It's nice and I like the kids. They aren't really kids actually, they are from 15 to 20 years old. They all have an interest in Japan and their previous Japanese teacher had to go back to Japan so I took the responsibility. Now this brings me back to the speech that was coerced into giving.

I said that it was always better to be apart of the solution even if you can only offer a little. I do believe that but I see no “solution” for these problems. In the case of Maligaya House, there will always be irresponsible guys that will walk away from their responsibilities, that's a given, so it would appear that our role is just damage control for the ladies and the children. However, I can see a future where Maligaya House will not be necessary and that will be when the Japanese government begins to rule family court cases unbiasedly and not arbitrarily protect the Japanese. It's not just Filipinos that have a problem. Americans, Europeans, and Koreans have all petitioned the Japanese family court for custody of their child or other requests and the Japanese court is notorious for siding with the Japanese regardless of the circumstances. For Visayan Forum, I don't see an end to human trafficking in my life time and they will probably be stuck to operating mainly as relief to the victims which is definitely important but it is hard to make progress in prevention. The best path to a better situation I think is raising awareness and educating those who could be tempted by the recruiters and also the Philippine government doing more to guarantee its citizen's well-being.

I do see the gravity of these problems and issues but I am not convinced that my involvement will have a significant impact. That's not a reason to quit however but just a more realistic way to analyze the situation because I get frustrated with idealistic people that seem annoyed that human trafficking still exists even though they spent 2 months here working to eradicate it. Ideals are not entirely bad and I respect some idealistic figures in history that helped make the world a better place. But I have little patience for the superficial idealism that is so rampant on college campuses. So where do I find motivation to get up in the morning and work hard for no tangible benefit in return? I feel like there is an element inside of me that just doesn't take my life seriously. It's like I gave up on life a long time ago and so at this point it makes sense to offer myself in terms of serving other people. Some people might think this is depressing but I disagree. I feel liberated from any preconceived ambitions and now able to live my life the way I want and I see no reason to justify myself to anyone. I am happy here so I don't see any reason to have anxiety about the future. I follow my heart to wherever it leads and if that is working to get rid of landmines in Vietnam or fighting for the rights of transsexuals in Thailand then that's OK with me.  

On Poverty

It was kind of late, probably around 11:30, while I was walking home I bought a cigarette off of a 5 year old girl. I didn't think about it at the time since it is quite common but afterwords I started to think about how some people would find it appalling that such a young girl would have to be out on the street all night selling cigarettes and begging for money. There are a few of these girls that hang out on my street, during the day they put on their school uniforms and go to elementary school but their parents apparently force them to “work” all night begging for money or selling cigarettes. The girls are very sweet and nice. It's funny because when I walk to work sometimes I see them going to school and they always say “Good morning friend!” but at night they take a completely different tone and tell me that they need money for food. I have given them money before but I was quickly reprimanded by a local woman and told they I shouldn't give them money. She told me that they probably have enough food but it's a like an Oliver Twist type situation with their parents just collecting the money.

To be honest it is kind of rare to see adults begging for money and they seem to enlist their children because it is hard to say no to these cute kids. I have a tendency to give to homeless people when I am in the mood to and while I lived in Vancouver I definitely got used to seeing homeless people on a daily basis. The question of poverty is a hard one. Unfortunately a lot of the homeless in Vancouver are using drugs so not only do you not want to give them money, they usually make no sense at all.

I remember after a tough night at a club, for reasons I won't write here, I was abandoned by my friends who I came with so I sought consolation from the local crack head. I bought a six-pack for the two of us and I told him my problems with the vague hope that talking to someone would make me feel better. I think he told me his name was Jason and he was definitely completely out of his mind. I was disappointed because he didn't listen to anything I was saying and he just kept talking about Lee Harvey Oswald and how he was his hero. When I asked him why he like him and if he really hated JFK he had apparently never even heard of Kennedy so I have no idea how he came idolize Lee Harvey Oswald. I discussed with some other homeless people in different places but I have come to no real understanding about the reason why there is poverty or what is a good strategy to help fight it.

It is inevitable that there will be rich and poor people which is probably enough for some people to cope with. For me it is hard to see people suffering but I wouldn't take up the Marxist cause to redistribute wealth. Some government programs do help people but they are usually flawed somehow and unfortunately it seems that there will always be some people who because of drugs or just a lack of motivation, choose not to make their lives better.

When I first arrived here I was struck by the number of poor people I see everyday. I have since then became desensitized and used to seeing little kids taking baths in dirty puddles and old people scavenging through garbage bags for some food. Sometimes I feel like I've lost my compassion but then I think that I was never really compassionate before. My feelings of sadness were stronger then because I was not used to seeing people live this way but I did not help them then as I don't help them now. I've walked through some slums here and you might think that it would be a depressing place but I got to admit I am never sad when I leave. People routinely call me “Joe” or “Sam” because that was a common name of the US soldiers that were stationed here. There are lots of children playing all sorts of games (I see lots of Pogs here which I think went out of style in America like 15 years ago) and people doing laundry and just living their life. I do stand out in those places and people do notice when I walk by and sometimes come outside and say hello and are usually friendly. They do not hound me for money all the time. They have too much pride for that. Slums actually are quite interesting because you see just how creative people can be with limited resources. There is a sort of poetic beauty to seeing an old women sweeping up the trash outside her house while the local river gives off a overpowering stench from the untreated sewage that is pumped into. They may be economically depressed but their communities are thriving. I am much more interested in going to these places than the touristy developed part of the Philippines. I am involved a little bit since I go every Saturday to teach Japanese to some kids in a relatively poor neighborhood but what I do won't really make their life better. I am just helping to satisfy their interest in Japanese culture. I am not interested in poverty because I am idealistic or have some cheesy ambitions. I am sort of masochistic somewhere I think and I always felt frustrated for some reason that I did not suffer so much in my childhood. I was superficially jealous of people who had real problems because I felt that they had a better understanding of life compared to me and my sheltered upbringing.

I remember when I was waiting with a few Japanese girls for a friend of mine there was a little boy, probably about 5 or so, asking me for money. Since I was waiting there I couldn't walk away and I guess the kid thought that if he just asked me 5,000 times I would eventually give in. I tried to ignore him but then for some reason my Japanese friend starting talking about Adolf Hitler. Sometimes I have conversations with people that try to analyze Hitler's legacy “objectively” and try to discover some positive aspects of the man. I always get uncomfortable and usually pissed off when people try to do this and I think hearing a Japanese girl tell me that she was impressed with his “achievements” of empowering Germany just put me off a bit. So then I looked down at the young boy and saw that he was staring at me intently. His nose and mouth were covered in dried glue, children here sniff the glue to alleviate the hunger pains, and his gaze was strong. I engaged him in a spur of the moment staring contest to test his will and I was impressed with his resilience. He never relented and just stared back at me with a resolve I rarely see. I was the one that eventually backed off. The ambiguity of having a staring contest with an impoverished Filipino boy while over-hearing a couple Japanese girls idly talk about the good parts of Hitler did not escape me. I never gave the kid any money but he did make me reflect on the character of impoverished people. Far from being a weak victim he demonstrated a level strength that I do not usually see in more privileged people. Maybe the high from glue gave him strength just as some people on PCP do amazing physical feats like taking the full shock of Tazer and then beating the crap out of a cop. Maybe in the future the kid will work his way out of his present state and make his life better but statistics are not his side. Some social scientists theorize that a lot of people become poor because of some sort of predisposition to being bad with money; that there are people that are just “weak” and won't be able to succeed. The boy is just an example but I am always impressed at the emotional and mental strength of the poor people here and the amount of effort they expend just to make ends meet. It is not apart of Filipino culture to be poor. The reasons why the Philippines is poorer than neighboring countries are complicated and the hindrances to progress are not easy to understand. There are of course lazy people here. I see them all the time, some guys just chill all day and depend on their family and don't seem to try to find work at all. I don't have much sympathy for those guys but those people live in all countries and are represented by all races and ethnicities. Filipinos are very much aware of the better living conditions in other countries and they work hard to make their country better but they have a lot of obstacles on their path such as a corrupt government that has history of squandering money.

When I try to understand something I try to avoid generalizations. I like to work from specifics and eventually attempt to form a comprehensive understanding. I have talked and gave money to a lot of homeless, been to slums, read theories about poverty but I still have no idea why poverty exists or how it can be effectively fought. Should we just passively accept this aspect of society as an inevitability? Promoting education seems to be a no-brainer and I think it is definitely true that education does help in making opportunities more available but what good is an education for a Filipino if there are no jobs? It forces them to leave their families so while they personally may make money in foreign countries, their country continues to be poor. And should the government supplement impoverished people's income with Welfare or programs like that? Some Americans think that Welfare is a waste of money and actually contributes to keeping people poor by taking away incentives to find work and people sometimes just squander the money on booze or gambling. It is debatable but I personally have no problem with Welfare and if I had to choose I would want my taxes to pay for a deadbeat's bottle of Jack Daniels then contribute to building a bomb that kills people in far away countries. I do volunteer here and maybe contribute to making some Filipinos lives better and so sometimes I feel exempt from giving to the poor but I don't like this attitude. I also know that even if I gave money to these people everyday it wouldn't really solve anything and I would probably just end up poor as well. I am still at a loss of what I should do to contribute to some sort of solution.

My Dad here

So my dad just left here a few days ago and returned to Pittsburgh and it was great to see him and I was happy to show him some of the different places in Manila. As you can imagine, this area is massive and there is a diverse bunch of neighborhoods and cities that make up all of Metro Manila. Manila itself is actually not that big but when its combined with all the other neighboring cities it becomes huge. I took him first to the baranguay (its Tagalog for neighborhood) in Manila city where I will be teaching Japanese.

I didn't know beforehand what was going to happen and I thought that we were going to sit in on my friend's Korean class and then I would teach a bit of Japanese but I was surprised that it was actually a kind of town hall meeting. There was a a local election across the Philippines about a week before he arrived and this was the first chance for the newly elected candidates to explain their plans for the next six years and the audience also had an opportunity to ask questions. The interesting thing is that in Philippine local politics there are both adult and youth baranguay captains which are like local officials. Shortly after the election there was a town hall meeting for the adult baranguay captains and the local people but the meeting we ended up going to was actually the youth meeting so the average age of the children there was about 5 or 6. It was kind of funny because some of the guys up there were going off about fighting the vices of the community and stopping the delinquent behavior of kids at night while his audience were bored out of their mind. The children were nice and surprisingly sat through the whole thing (probably they were forced to by their parents).The whole event wasn't what I expected but it made me reflect on a fundamental difference between Americans and Filipinos in how they understand democracy.

In America I think it is safe to assume that the majority of Americans have a top-down appreciation of politics. The President and Congress are continually in the news and the governors to a lesser extent. But when it comes to the state level or even local politics I have still not had a political discussion with someone that revolved around the Pennsylvania state senate but I did occasionally hear people criticize the mayor of Pittsburgh. It's quite common for people to feel disconnected from the politicians in Washington because of the obscure, ear-marked legislation and the continual focus on the distant parts of the world. But American's frustration with national politics doesn't seem translate into an interest in what's happening locally. I mean people must vote for local politicians and state government but I have a feeling that most of their constituency are retired people who don't have cable and watch local news all day. Not only were these kids vaguely interested (at least they showed up) in what these young politicians had to say but it was lively and interesting.

I was telling my co-worker that I was surprised that Filipinos take these local elections seriously. The campaigns also were kind of ridiculous, it was two weeks of parades and parties. I was telling my co-worker that I was surprised that people here seemed to care so much about this and she explained what should have been obvious, that local politicians are responsible for the implementation of the national programs. It doesn't matter how good a program sounds but if the people implementing it in the community are inept it will probably fail. People here still vote and care about the national elections but like Americans, feel disconnected from the political elite. The government here has a bad history of being corrupt and self-serving and I get the feeling that only the very idealistic political science students at university take what the President or Senators say seriously. I heard it is quite common here for actors and actresses to get elected solely because people recognize their name. It seems like a joke to me but I think it points to the fact that Filipinos see the ineffectualness of their national government so invest their energy in politicians they actually know them and are willing to work with them personally. One of my friends there did admit that the youth baranguay captains known as “SK” actually wastes a lot of money because they squander money budgeted to them by the government on basketball tournaments. I thought it was funny when one lady told me that she disagreed with even having SK because the children become accustomed to corruption. I it was interesting that she saw politics as naturally corrupting. I do agree with her on that one.

After this I took my dad to the vaguely historical part of Manila. Where they have the old Spanish city and a bunch of national monuments commemorating various national heroes of the Philippines. I went there by myself on the second day I was here and was somehow deemed an expert so every time a new intern came here I have ended up showing them that part of the city. So with my dad was my fifth times going there. I know the place well now but I do discover new things each time I go. I've wrote about before how it is interesting for me to go the Spanish city which was the center of European colonial power in Asia at a time and to see its present decrepit state. It seems they are trying to revitalize the area with new construction but its possible they are still rebuilding from World War Two.

Another place I took my dad was the Muslim area of Manila known as Quiapo. Before we arrived there I took him to this famous bridge known as Mendiola Bridge. It's infamous for tragic political rallies that took place there. It became notorious when Ferdinand Marcos (the dictator of the Philippines during the 70s and 80s) violently suppressed a peaceful demonstration. It became a symbol for Corazon Aquino who led the People's Power Revolution to throw out Marcos and reinstate democracy in the Philippines. The ironic thing is that a lot of farmers who supported her because of her promises to reform the agriculture system ended up protesting their because she never followed up with what she said. She also had the protests violently put down and 19 people died. Corazon was the savior of democracy in the Philippines but still a large chunk of people saw no difference between her and her predecessor. Its ironic that they bridge went from being the symbol of an oppressive dictatorial government to one of general disillusionment with the government itself.

Now Quiapo is well known for the cheap crap you can buy there. You can find knock-offs of almost anything for extremely cheap but since neither me or my dad are interested in shopping we instead headed for a famous mosque. It's actually can't be all that famous since when I went there the first time, even the people in Quiapo that I asked directions from haven't heard of it but that might be related to the fact Filipinos are just bad at giving directions. Someone told me that if you ask a Filipino directions and they don't know the place they will probably make up something random because they feel bad about not being able to help. I understand that to a certain extent but sending someone off in a random direction and acting like you know what you're talking about does not help anyone. I have become quite skeptical of directions that Filipinos give me.

Anyway, the Golden Mosque is famous because it was built under Marcos to commemorate a visit by Muammar al-Gaddafi to the Philippines. If you don't know, Gaddafi is the dictator of Libya who was responsible for supporting terrorism and is generally a controversial character. Supposedly Marcos's wife Imelda and him were good friends. How this happened, since Gaddafi is a self-proclaimed Bedouin and strict Muslim who only sleeps in tents and Imelda is a glamorous and fashionable Christian, I have no idea. The funny thing is that he actually canceled his visit to the Philippines but they kept the mosque there anyway. The Philippines already has a fairly large Muslim population so I am not surprised that Marcos sought to reach out to them this way. The area is quite poor and supposedly dangerous but I have had no problems there. We were lucky and there was some event at the mosque so the local people there were friendly with us and even gave us a brief tour of the outside of it. It was better than the first time I went there when the guy in charge of security only let me and my friends sit on a bench and look at the gate outside the mosque.

After this, we went to the opposite side of Metro Manila, to a city called Makati. Makati is the business district of Manila and is really built up. We went to this American military cemetery there which was similar to the pictures I've seen of Arlington Cemetery. It was actually pretty serene and idyllic but the one thing that surprised me was the number of Filipinos that were in the American military at the time. The Philippines was technically a territory of the United States so the Filipinos that fought the Japanese were apart of the American armed forces. It is moving to see the names of all those people who died and occasionally I would see a name from a guy from Pennsylvania and I couldn't help but think that it is completely crazy that this young guy could have been from Pittsburgh and sent all the way to opposite side of the world to fight this war.

The cemetery is situated right next to Makati and so after that we walked around a bit. It was a national holiday so a lot of stores were closed and most people had no work so it was almost completely empty. It was kind of odd actually because Makati is a modern city and at times looks like New York or Vancouver but it felt like a ghost town. The massive skyscrapers and sophisticated underpasses were there but hardly any people. I couldn't help but contrast it with the baranguay my office is in or where I will teach Japanese. Those neighborhoods are quite poor and occasionally smell like shit because of all the dogs and chickens the sewage that's pumped into the streams. You get lungfuls of car exhaust from these old diesel engines and I swear they use leaded gas sometimes. It is dirty but at least there's life. There are kids running around and people enjoying themselves one way or the other. You get the feeling of being a real community and the people are friendly most of the time and I can eat dinner in any baranguay around Manila for about 75 cents. Makati is nice but I am not comfortable there. I shouldn't really judge it based on that one day since it was holiday but I've been there on normal days and my experience is getting ripped off on taxis and that there were bunch of American and Filipino businessmen walking around. It's not my place.

My dad mentioned to me that Manila seems like a city of microcosms that are actually quite separate from the rest of the city and don't really speak to each other. Some the local people around where I work might venture down to Makati every now and then to go to the massive malls there. Makati is a center of foreign businesses and most of the Japanese and Western companies that operate in the Philippines are based there. I find it hard to believe that those buys make out to poorer neighborhoods in Manila or Quezon City and anyway most of them are supplied with private drivers that drive them around the city. I think this is a common policy to prevent any of the foreigners from getting robbed or killed and thus hurting the company's reputation.

My neighborhood is kind of ambiguous since I live right in between two famous universities that the current prime minister and a lot of other notable politicians graduated from. One of the schools, the University of the Philippines, is a massive school with about 57,000 students and is also government funded and the other Ateneo University is a private school where the countries elite go. UP supposedly has the best education but also surprisingly is quite a dangerous place. I am told the fraternities are especially dangerous and even recently one guy from a fraternity was arrested for lobbing a live grenade into a classroom of law students. Luckily no one was killed but a poor girl lost both her legs. The universities might attract the country's elite but the area is actually quite poor and I think there are few thousand squatters who live on the outskirts of UP's huge campus. What is also surprising is that these poor guys who live here are rarely to blame for the criminal activity, well the petty thieves probably do come from the slums but the serious crimes such as the rape and murder are usually perpetrated by the "elite" students with politically connected families. One guy told me that when you go to bar don't be afraid of the poorer looking tough guys, they might take your wallet or stab you but its the rich guys that are the most dangerous. Some of them are so well connected with the police and politicians that will blow your head off without a second thought. But people like to tell a lot of stories. Living between universities means I meet a lot of foreign exchange students (mainly from Europe) which is cool but I am definitely glad I am done with school at the moment. The attitude of a lot of students around here makes me angry sometimes and its not the violent fraternities that make me mad even though poor guys have been beaten by baseball bats in middle of lectures and they found the body of girl a couple weeks ago who was raped and killed. Those guys are definitely crazy and do not fit with my extremely tame experience at UBC but I just have a problem with the elitism that idealistic people occasionally carry with them.

Anyway, I'm glad my dad could here since it gave me a chance to see the place and better understand the area. It was also kind of bittersweet for me because seeing my dad made kind of homesick for Pittsburgh, but you know whatever, I'll survive.