travel

This article is the third in a series of research studies about Philippine communication environments. See Part 1 for an introduction to the topic of the communication environment and its relationship to culture. Read Part 2 to know more.

As part of the requirements for our Communication Environment PhD class, I took my professor and classmates to the horse races.

Santa Ana Park: A Day at the Races

January 6, 2009 was a monumental day for Philippine horseracing fans.  It was the day the first races were held at the new Santa Ana Park in Naic, Cavite. While the new place is extensive and spacious, capable of holding the sport’s growing number of racehorses, many miss the old venue once located in Makati City, close to the boundary of Manila.

The old Santa Ana Park was built in 1937 in the Art Deco style popular at the time. Among its contemporaries in architecture were the Manila Jockey Club’s San Lazaro Hippodrome in Sta. Cruz, Manila, and the Jai Alai building along Taft Avenue, both torn down some years ago to make way for modern edifices; and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office building, formerly the Quezon Institute, which the Department of Public Works and Highways has ordered demolished due to structural unsoundness.

In the case of horseracing, the buildings go, but the sport stays. It is flourishing at the new site in Naic chosen by the Philippine Racing Club.

The Architecture

The new track at Naic covers around 70 hectares, nearly three times as large as the 25-hectare facility at Makati. The old venue was cramped, unable to accommodate the horses enthusiastic players were breeding and buying, resulting in stables being built nearly on top of one another, affecting the horses’ health. Today there are clean stables arranged behind the far turn and home turn (the red roofs in picture above), with hotwalking areas inside each stable and easy access to the track for morning workouts and races.

The grandstand is of modest size compared to the old ones at Makati, but then the number of visitors here is not expected to be as high as at the old place, where track attendance was booming especially during big racing festivals and stakes race days.

The place is tall and white, looking very clean against the blue sky. Painting the edifice white connotes not only cleanliness but also purity; on a semiotic level, it could be seen as an attempt to ‘whitewash’ the sport, which suffers a degree of stigma in mainstream Philippine society because of its wagering aspect.

With lots of open seating, there’s a feeling of airiness and freedom. Leeway is given to patrons to walk all the way up to the plants edging the rail of the parade ground, which is just several feet away from the track itself. During mile races, the starting gate is right in front of the finish line, in full view from the parade ground allowing close scrutiny of the warm-up, loading, and jump-out.

The rest of the building is nondescript, with VIP rooms on the third floor, huge green-tinted glass windows overlooking the track, while the fourth floor houses racing officials – race stewards, judges, and racecallers. The spatial orientation of the building forces everyone to face towards the track and observe the activity there, reinforcing the concept that it is the sport that is the reason for the facility’s existence and the racing community’s continued sustenance over time and in different places.

The Artifacts

For visitors who know nothing about the sport, the track is a sensory overload. One can barely keep up with the barrage of information that, without a framework, is often difficult to interpret and may leave people overwhelmed, unless they have a friend in the know to explain things to them. Starting gate. Rails. Finish line. Racing programs. Jockeys. Betting matrix. And so on. The language – salitang karera - is also an artifact, one unique to this milieu.

Trophies deserve special mention here. As an artifact, for owners and trainers they symbolize more than a victory gained by one horse, one rider, in one race – they are also bragging rights and a reminder of the accomplishments of their stable. For the jockey, they commemorate personal triumphs along the timeline of his life. In other words, trophies orient achievements in spatial and temporal dimensions.

The Racegoers

People travel all the way to Naic for one reason, and that is to watch races and bet on them. Thus their activities at the venue are in line with this purpose. They may be seen studying racing programs (Dividendazo, Silip sa Tiyempo, Winning Time), texting sources such as horseowners, trainers, jockeys, grooms, and tipsters for racing tips, and scribbling their ruta (betting combinations) on scraps of paper. From time to time they glance up at the many monitors that line the interior walls of the building to view the betting matrix ( a grid of numbers that show estimated dividends for betting combinations).

When the patrons are ready, they line up in front of the betting windows to place their bets, then watch the race from the viewing area beside the track or on the monitors.

The exchange of money through betting is a significant activity in this sport; economics, therefore, is very much a key concept in this context, to a greater degree than in other sports that have no formal betting element. Racegoers communicate to each other, in words and actions, their excitement and anticipation upon placing their bets, suspense while watching the race, and elation upon winning or disappointment upon loss.

Since horseracing is not a mere game of chance that relies on the turn of the card or roll of the die, as in casino gambling, but a sport that requires knowledge about a myriad factors, being able to apply analytical methods to come up with winners leads to a feeling of vindication and even smugness when one is proven right and goes to the betting window to collect dividends. Losing a bet is equated not only with the loss of money, but also with being wrong, with error. Then the tendency is to try, try again.

At the track, there is camaraderie among the patrons, of belonging to a special group – kami (us) – na taga-karera or karerista, who are not understood by sila (them) – but then that is one of the draws of the sport, the sense of the arcane and mysterious, a flavor of the forbidden.

Click on a picture, then click again to see a full-size image.

taste more:

For many of us, the word ‘galleon’ brings to mind the times we fell asleep listening to Philippine history teachers drone on about the “galleon trade” between the Philippines and Mexico. Come exam time, we’d frantically scramble to memorize dates and places and names and other bits of trivia, without realizing the significant impact of this era upon our country’s economy during that time, and how it extends to the present day.

The National Commission for Culture and the Arts commemorates the enduring influence of the galleon trade with its Dia del Galeon Festival, which kicked off earlier today at the National Museum.

From the NCCA event handout:

With a 250-year history that connected four continents, the Galleon Trade was an essential trade route that served as a vessel for cultural exchange.

The whole world knows about the Silk Route, the Amber Road, but what about the Galleon Trade? For more than 250 years, the Philippines was the center of the world, with Asian, European and Latin American goods being traded on its very soil.  The galleon ships, the largest vessels during the time, were built by hand from Philippine hardwoods. Built by  expert seafarers, the Filipinos, these ships would travel for the next  two and a half centuries, changing the face of the world as we know it.

Via the galleons, Mexican chocolate was brought to Asia, Spanish music was brought to the Philippines, and the world was introduced to Philippine abaca and flowers like the ylang-ylang.

Somewhere in Mexico, there is an entire clan with the last name “Maganda”. They have lived there for more than 200 years.  In that same coastal region, the locals like to drink the sap of the coconut, which they call tuba.  Today Filipinos enjoy eating champorado and tamales. Coincidence – or the Galleon Trade?

What’s interesting to learn is that not only goods like shawls (manton de Manila), hemp, and sugar were traded, but also culture. Like the overland Silk Road that connected China to Africa and the Middle East, the maritime trade carried influences from around the world to the Philippines, through food, customs, art, and knowledge.

The Galleon Trade was a result of our colonial past, which, for all its disadvantages, also brought positive influences that helped shape our country into what it is today.

The NCCA has lined up other activities in connection with this event:

OPEN WORKSHOP
September 24-28

·      Lectures on arts, heritage, and indigenous impact
·      Music and movement workshops

Venue: National Museum of the Filipino People
Admission: P2,500  or P3,800 with food

REUNIÓN
October 8
An intercultural dialogue and culminating activity for workshop participants and guests; these will include presentations, creative industry exhibits, and declarations for unified action on the themes and impact of the galleon trade. Major resolutions and artistic results will be highlighted.

Venue: TBA
Admission: Open to the public

PACLAS LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES CONFERENCE
October 5,6
A forum organized by the Philippine Academic Consortium of Latin American Studies that  brings together scholars to share current research.  This year’s theme is “The Bicentennial of the Independence of Latin American Nations”.

Venues: October 5 De la Salle University, October 6 University of Sto. Tomas
Admission:  Go to www.paclas.org

ESPECTÁCULOS
October 6- October 8
A harvest of performances and media arts modules reflecting on the themes of the galleon trade through its history and impact. It will include multi-cultural performances with a  production of Juana La Loca by Mexican playwright Miguel Sabido.  The play will fuse Spanish and Filipino languages with a multinational cast.

Venue: DOT WOW CLAMSHELL
Price: TBA
For Reservations: To be announced, but please send an email to NCCA  if you are interested

NAO VICTORIA
October 5-9
A replica of a 17th-century galleon from Spain will dock at the Manila Pier for public viewing. Guests can climb aboard and experience life as it was during the period.

Venue: TBA
Admission: FREE, by donation
For Reservations: To be announced, but please send an email to NCCA if you are interested

VIAJE DEL GALEÓN
October 8–11
A four-day educational trip from Manila to Cebu with on-board activities and tours around Cebu. The conference and workshop participants will lead the activities, to be shared with youth passengers.
·      On-board seminars, interactive performances, exhibits
·      On-land Galleon Trade significance reenactments, city and heritage tours

Venue: Manila and Cebu
For Reservations: Closed, the trip is fully booked

COMMEMORATIVE and REGIONAL EVENTS
A series of commemorative events wll be held including:

·      Commemorative stamp displaying the Galleon Trade Route
·      Bilingual declamation and oratorical contests
·      Pilgrimage to 35 Philippine Heritage Churches

taste more:

This article starts a series of research studies about Philippine communication environments.

I had seen its carved facade before, on a trip with fellow fountain pen collectors to look for pens in the wilds of downtown Manila. A drive-by along that street left me intrigued. I had no idea then that a year later, I would discover the wonder of the temple’s glittering, golden interior.

In this semester’s PhD Communication Environment class at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication, our professor, Dr. Joey Lacson, said that it was best for us to learn about communication in different environments by actually visiting them. He and each of us students had to take the rest of the class to a place the others hadn’t visited before.

For her trip, Nina Villena chose to take us to Seng Guan temple in the heart of Binondo – a serendipitous random happenstance that opened my eyes and mind to a different side of my Manila.

From the outside, the temple looks like a hodgepodge of buildings that have sprouted in haphazard fashion through the years. But look closer to discover the wonderful things that abound inside.

The Communication Environment

Communication is, quite simply, the sharing of meaning. It always occurs within context, and this context is rooted in the environment. A person may use varying communication styles depending where she might be – for instance, she may use more formal and academic language while in class, and shift to a more informal way of speaking when with friends or at home.

The environment also conveys information that a person will organize and interpret to derive meaning. The semiotic model helps explain this process by conceiving data as a set of signs that bring up corresponding concepts in the mind. Signs may then be arranged into codes. Languages are examples of complex codes.

Non-verbal signs, touch (haptics), artifacts, and even space and distance (proxemics) may also be   part of a code that will impart meanings within a system of interrelated message senders and receivers.

A system cannot survive without its environment. An environment is active, and this activity creates further impact on the system. Since humans are always immersed in an environment, this reinforces the truism that it is impossible for people not to engage in communication wherever they may be.

Communication and Culture

Culture is “the complex collection of knowledge, folklore, language, rules, rituals, habits, lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, and customs that link and give a common identity to a particular group of people at a specific point in time.” These elements that comprise a culture are constructed by society, meaning that negotiation takes place between the members of that society regarding the meanings attached to these elements until agreement is reached.

The relationship between communication and culture is complex and intertwined. Cultural elements, taken as artifacts along with their constructed meanings, form the communication environment. These artifacts may also be considered as “text”, the ‘what’ of communication that is observed and subjected to textual analysis so that the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of communication may be understood.

Consequently, any part of an environment may be studied as an artifact in order to derive and interpret meaning from it – meaning that can help the observer understand the context he is in, and guide his actions and responses within that environment.

Seng  Guan Temple: A Trove of Cross-Cultural Communication

The temple, established in 1936, espouses the Mahayana style of Buddhism, specifically that of the Pure Land sect. Part of the sect’s belief system is that nirvana (cessation of existence), the ultimate goal after countless cycles of life,  is no longer achievable during modern times, but that a way to heaven (the “Pure Land”) may still be achieved by good works and endlessly chanting the name of the Buddha – “Amitabha, Amitabha.”

The Architecture

The facade of the entrance is ornately carved in a style that is distinctly Chinese, exotic to eyes not exposed to the culture. There is no gate. The lack of a barrier at the entrance projects an aura of welcome reaches out to visitors and draws them in. Just within the entrance, a jolly Maitreya Buddha greets worshippers and visitors with a smile.

A stone lion, one of a pair, stands guard in front of the Buddha statue. The carving is deep and ornate, the subject a ‘cute’ mythological creature, inviting you to run your fingers over the runnels and recesses in the stone, and reach for the ball in the lion’s mouth. Again it is an artifact that beckons one to enter, approach, and touch.

Mr. Carlos Tan, who works at the temple, offered to be our tour guide and showed us around. Practically nothing was off limits; one feels a deep sense of acceptance for and tolerance of visitors, something that one does not readily experience in churches of other faiths. Although it is not stated directly, the license to explore comes with a common-sense caveat: the temple is a place of worship, and as such a visitor must conduct himself with proper respect for the place and its purpose.

The halls are wide and expansive, with high ceilings and spaces that entice one to roam around. Having an expanse of space is made possible by the practice of not providing seats for worshippers, only red-upholstered kneelers that are tucked away in small storage rooms on off-days.

The interior of the ground floor, with three Buddha images flanked by fresh and faux flowers and offerings of fruit.

The hall on the second floor is even grander, decorated with carvings depicting scenes from the life of Sakyamuni (Gautama) Buddha. The statues are made of silk mache and are hollow. Everywhere, one sees the glint of gold and the vibrancy of red, colors that signify prosperity and happiness.

Largest and grandest of all is this hall just off the second level. It is airconditioned on days when services are held. The Buddha statues here are large and dominant, matching the scale of the room, meant to inspire awe and reverence.

The Artifacts

Inside the temple are many things that are unfamiliar to non-Buddhists but, taken in context, are obviously ritual items. There was a drum that a saffron-robed monk beat in time to the chanting of other monks and worshippers. There was a red book with gold Chinese characters stamped on its cover (sutras?). There was a stick-like object that rested on the books, something that looked like a fan or a paddle, cymbals through which yellow scarves were knotted, and cinnabar-red squat carved figures beside which were padded sticks. Were the figures struck with the sticks?

I deliberately refrained from asking Mr. Tan, preferring to experience the environment as an observer, and trying to derive meaning from what was familiar, and gauging the extent of the unfamiliar. In this instance, much was an unknown quantity.

There were always offertory tables positioned in front of the images. The tables are heavily carved, some gilded as well. The tables bear offerings of fruit and flowers, because according to Buddhist tenets, “Only vegetarian offerings are allowed,” said Mr. Tan.

The Worshippers

Through observing their stance and actions in context, it can be seen how worshippers convey their sense of faith and participate in the rituals of their religion. Two women knelt in front of the Maitreya Buddha’s image holding incense sticks and waving them while chanting Buddha’s name. At the same time, at the second floor hall, monks held a service for a deceased man. The relatives were all clad in white, their culture’s color of mourning. Since no seats are provided, worshippers either kneel or stand and chant along with the monks.

The chanting was atonal, in a language I was unfamiliar with (Chinese, presumably), and sounded utterly alien to my ears. For that reason I found it fascinating; language is not an insurmountable barrier to understanding, because all that is required is a translation. On that initial exposure, the impression I obtained from the chanting was a sense of immense antiquity, that these words had been sung in this manner for centuries, the ritual kept alive by devotion and strict adherence to tradition.

Off that hall was a room where the dead man’s picture was displayed. Red marks pocked the picture “so he can breathe,” someone explained. On an offertory table were sweetmeats in covered glass dishes and plenty of fruit. Red lamps were lit. Just outside that room, people rolled paper into the boat shape of ancient Chinese currency, paper money for the dead to use in the afterlife.

Paper printed with gold Chinese characters, rolled into the proper shape, symbolize money for use in the afterlife. To show respect for the deceased, sacks upon sacks of these are laboriously prepared.

After the service, the portraits are moved to the ancestor worship hall on the ground floor, to be displayed beside the pictures of deceased persons whose relatives are waiting for a memorial service to be held in their behalf. Offerings of canned fruit are arranged in front of them – fruit cocktail, peaches, lychees. Chinese are practical; fresh fruit, they say, will spoil.

A woman lights joss sticks that she places in a large bronze urn, one of several placed in each of the temple’s many halls. The air in the temple is fogged with the heavy fragrance of incense carrying prayers to Buddha.

Inside the ancestor hall are serried rows of shrines that carried pictures of the deceased. Some are ‘double’ shrines for couples. A picture placed in the shrine frame denotes that the person was deceased; a plain red backing, that the person the shrine is reserved for is still alive. A fee is charged by the temple for the storage of the shrines – the more prominent the position, the higher the fee. It costs around one hundred thousand pesos for a central location for a shrine.

From time to time, people entered the hall, knelt before the shrines, said a prayer or meditated, and lit joss sticks before leaving.

Mr Tan also showed us pairs of red, kidney-shaped wooden blocks used in divination, a practice that dates back to China’s prehistory, when animal entrails were used to predict the future and reveal answers to questions. One throws the blocks up in the air; depending on how they fall, the answer to the devotee’s query is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

He often used the Tagalog word misa – as in Catholic Mass – to refer to their services. It may be the word actually used by Filipino Buddhists, or it may have been his way of making concepts easy for non-Buddhists to understand.

Overall, though I could not interpret a great deal of the information I was picking up from my surroundings, I understood enough and connected it with previously-read or gleaned facts and materials that enriched my appreciation of this particular environment.

I came away refreshed in spirit by the aura of peace and tranquility permeating every fragrant corner of the temple, fascinated by its art and history, and above all deeply appreciative of the warm welcome and acceptance extended by Mr. Tan and the others at the temple.

The Seng Guan Temple is along Narra Street, near Jose Abad Santos Street, Manila.

Click on a photo, and click again to see a full-size image.

taste more:

Sometime last year I went with some penfriends to old Manila to look for NOS (new old stock) fountain pens and ink. It’s a part of the city that is the oldest, and consequently the one being consumed by inner-city decay.

Yet along its streets life thrives. Commerce is booming. There are interesting things to see – and buy. Come take a look at what we found. (Click on each picture, then click again to see full size.)

taste more:

Last July my sisters, daughters, and I visited Baguio City, staying at my aunt’s vacation home in a quiet part of town. She has a magnificent garden. I fell in love with it.

You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.

~ Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons (1964)

The temple bell stops

But I still hear the sound

coming out of the flowers.

~ Basho

(Click on each picture, then click again to see full size.)

taste more:

This is what it looks like on the train on a rainy day.

Fat drops of water pelt the windshield glass;

through the blur, people are color in motion.

The train doors whoosh open and shut

as the people of color hop on and off,

on their way to home, work, or secret destinations.

Some will find money or lust or murder  when they arrive;

others will be lucky and find love.

Those who only have lonely gray thoughts peer out the window

and wonder when the rain will stop to let sunshine in.

Below the train are streets filled with cars traversing

the city roads that wind, slick with moisture,

stretching time and the trip to wherever.

Yet the journey each one makes in their mind

is longer, more torturous in its windings,

more cunning in its twists and turns.

Far more devious are the journeys of the heart

and the color people cram the train cars hanging on to life

even as their hearts break and beg for another day, another hour

with the beloved.

Still the rain comes down relentless

washing away the doubt the sin the pain

until all that remains is the blur of love lost and gained

and beating hearts looking for the way home.

taste more:

When my sisters – one based in Dubai and the other in the US – came to Manila early this month for a three-week vacation, one of the concerns that arose was accommodation – where could they stay that is comfortable, affordable, and safe?

Filipinos, as long as they have room, open up their homes to friends and family. Hotels are too expensive especially for extended stays and families believe in staying together. I would have loved for my sisters to stay with me, but my two daughters and I, along with my househelper, her son, and her niece, live in a one-bedroom unit above a disused horseracing stable – not the best arrangements for guests. Luckily, we have an aunt who insisted that my sisters stay in her capacious “empty-nest” home.

Then a cousin from another side of the family popped up in Facebook chat to ask the same thing – “Where can I stay when I come to Manila in September?”

This time I flexed my muscles and exerted my ultra-buff mouse-clicking finger to do some research:

1. For short stays, try an affordable hotel: gohotels.ph, which promises a “place for every Juan”. The earlier you book, the cheaper the rate.

2.  For transient and extended stays, why not rent a fully-furnished room, apartment, or house? Check out roomrent.ph. This is a service provided both for tourists and property owners. The home page shows several excellent property lists sorted by cities (Makati, Mandaluyong, Quezon City, etc.) and by access to public transportation (LRT 1 and 2, MRT). There is a wide range of places (condos, flats, houses) and prices that will suit anyone’s tastes and budgets. For the impecunious traveler, there are also options for bedspace and flat-sharing.

Twin beds and aircon? Looks good. One of the rooms at www.roomrent.ph.

Hotels are, well, hotels. Rental units are cheaper and provide more space, privacy, and freedom. When my Dubai-based sister had my eldest daughter and me over to visit her in 2000, she rented a condo for our stay. She said that renting a unit rather than booking into a hotel was the preferred option for many Filipinos and others looking to make the most of their money.

Conversely, a high-school classmate who came to Manila last December with his family chose to check into a house-for-rent run by a religious organization affiliated with our school. Other friends from college have booked at the PCED Hostel at the University of the Philippines. They cite ease, convenience, and less hassle for their Manila-based families as their reasons for not staying at the old ancestral manse.

But what if you do not have easy access to places like those? That’s why I like the concept of roomrent.ph because before the Internet, word-of-mouth and the newspaper classifieds were the only places to look for rental units, and it took a lot of phone-calling to narrow down choices.

At this website, you have an entire database of properties, all arranged and sorted to make decisions easier. As the site gets more public awareness, more property owners will be posting about what they have available, to offer even more options for the traveler.

One of the rooms offered at www.roomrent.ph

taste more:

POP GOES THE WORLD By Jenny Ortuoste for Manila Standard-Today, 15 July 2010, Thursday

One Family, Many Cultures

Baguio City – It is lovely this time of the year in the City of Pines, Luzon’s “Summer Capital”. I am here with my two daughters, ages 18 and 12, and my two sisters, whose ages I will not disclose for fear of reprisal.

One sister, Aileen, has been based in Dubai for the last 16 years. The other, Tiffany, was born in Manila but moved to California’s Bay Area when she was four. This is her first visit to the land of her birth in 15 years.

Aileen and I finished our education in local schools and did not get to travel abroad until after college. While we bear the mind-broadening effects of education and travel, still we are Pinoy to the core, thoroughly acculturated with Philippine values and norms, and aware of its traditions and rituals, in particular those of the urban area we grew up in – Manila.

Aileen is more traditionally Filipino than I am in her observance of rules and rituals that I prefer to ignore. She believes one should not sleep in, even on weekends. She insists that everyone must take at least one bath a day, no matter how cold it is, nor sleep right after a shower with wet hair. She tells Tiffany not to wash her hands in cold water as she might get pasma and asks her why she eats with only a fork and not a spoon too.

My mother and stepfather imbued Tiffany with traditional Filipino values – respect for elders, the importance of family, the significance of a good education. They have The Filipino Channel at home; Tiffany watched P-Noy’s inauguration before stepping on her Manila-bound Philippine Airlines flight. She watches Mom cook dried fish and eat egg with bagoong from a jar. Uncle Joe has instructed her to bring back Hizon’s ensaymada, the kind with grated queso de bola on top.

Not having grown up in Pilipinas, she cannot speak Tagalog nor Ilonggo though she can understand a sentence or two here and there in both languages. She is clueless about the Filipino way of doing things and wonders why motorists here weave dangerously in and out of their lanes, who Kris Aquino is and why she seems to have such a big impact on Philippine society, and what pasma is and why she should care.

My daughters, who grew up exposed to American culture on TV and the internet and in books, straddle the divide between cultures. They are at ease with their Tita Tiffy’s American twang and respect Tita Aya’s strict insistence on routine.

They are the true multiculturalists in the family, who understand the nuances of both mindsets and may at times act as ‘interpreters’, having the learning advantages of mass media, education, and travel in addition to meeting and interacting with people who are from or have been exposed to other cultures.

Alex, the elder, studies at De La Salle University, where she counts Koreans, Japanese, Indians, and Italians among her classmates and professors; online, she has Australian and American friends. Her best friend, Penelope moved to Singapore recently and chats with her often about her experiences and life in general there. Erika has classmates who grew up in Indonesia, Japan, and the US.

Their fondness for Japanese anime and Korean pop music has inspired them to study those languages. Now they speak and read a little in both, as well as being aware of the various differences in societal mindsets stemming from the country’s particular culture.

The kids cosplay (costume + roleplay) their favorite characters from “Hetalia”, a Japanese anime.

With the overseas foreign worker phenomenon growing even more as Filipinos seek economic opportunities unavailable at home, there is an expanded awareness of foreign cultures that did not exist 15 years ago to the current extent.

Now Aileen, having spent the past two decades in Dubai, can tell the difference between nationals of different Western, Asian, and Arabic-speaking countries from their accents and dress. She can easily switch between British and American speech codes, saying, “Has the lorry delivered the telly to your flat yet? No? Bloody hell! ” and in the next breath “Yeah, the old TV in your apartment sucks like a Hoover. I know, right?”

Yet the norms and values that guide her behavior are Filipino. She works beyond office hours to finish a task. Before she makes a decision, she assesses its possible effects on her family, which is her priority. She keeps snacks in her desk because God forbid that she or anyone else in her sphere go hungry.

My sister at Versailles – “a transformative experience,” she says.

When Aileen and I were growing up, we received knowledge about other cultures primarily from mass media. The younger generations have the added advantages of advances in communication technology, the shared narratives of the experiences of family and friends who work and live abroad, and friendships with people from other countries in the flesh and online to create the “mental model”, as theorist Peter Senge calls it, that is the lens through which they look at the world – a multicultural lens.

Here in Baguio City, the weather is cooler than in Manila and Tiffany is grateful for the respite from the lowlands’ humidity. Aileen says it must be much like that in San Francisco, and wouldn’t she like to live here instead? Tiffany smiles, because it’s not just the climate that will induce her to stay. Would she be able to adjust? How long will it take her to learn the language and norms so that she can fit into this society better?

My daughters shrug and say, “What’s the problem?” For them, there is none. Their knowledge of different cultures and ability to compare and analyze them gives them a broader picture of the world, making them global citizens while remaining Filipino at the core.

I dig my spoon into a jar of sweet sticky Good Shepherd ube jam and marvel how the confluence of cultures resulted in these four women, my family. I wonder where the coming years will take us.

One thing I am sure of – we are Filipino, and we carry that identity embedded in our heart and soul. ***

taste more:

Should you decide to take a vacation off-planet, or be sent by the office to some distant galaxy to peddle your wares, it is essential to have a handbook that will help you negotiate the intricacies of interstellar travel. I highly recommend Douglas Adams‘ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

From the publishing corporations of Ursa Minor, the only book you’ll ever need. Image from here.

Mr. Adams died in 2001, and fans all over this planet and elsewhere in the universe and other parallel dimensions remember his life and works each year on May 25, “Towel Day“.  Users of this guidebook and readers of the author’s other works carry with them a towel and have their pictures taken with it.

Why a towel, you ask? Ah. Obviously you do not have a copy of HHGTTG yet. I strongly advise you to get one. Not only does it contain information about must-see scenic spots all over known space, it also gives the answer to the ultimate question on life, the universe, and everything. However, it does not provide the question.  Oh, yes, towels. I hadn’t forgotten. Here:

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Very sound advice, to be sure. Any person or creature possessed of even the rudiments of sentient thought will realize the necessity of having a towel with them at all times. I carry a small one in my bag whenever I leave the house, and I make sure my linen closet is stocked with an abundance of thick fluffy towels. Moreover, I always know, at any given time, where each one is.  Clearly I am a man to be reckoned with.

taste more: