fun with coconuts (mga niyog) at the adventures of fresh buko

How does one open a coconut? Follow up: how does one drink and eat fresh buko juice?



Can I try?

procrastination

Went to Maynila today to attempt to extend my visa. Quick backstory: anyone who visits the Philippines from another nation can stay for 21 days. After the 21 days, you have to pay about 4000 pesos (about 90 US dollars) to extend for a standard 38 days. When I arrived in Maynila on June 14, 2008, the airport officer who was stamp my passport was too incompetent to change the stamp from June 14, to June 04, so my 21 days was cut to 11 in less than a second. I of course didn't realize this until I went to immigration to extend my visa. When I got there (about a month ago) I paid the stupid extension fee but was told that if I had had a Philippine passport I would not have to pay at all. Since I used to live in Pasay (from about 1982-1986) and used to have dual citizenship, I emailed my mother to see if she had any proof. Luckily she did and emailed me the letter, stating that I was to be considered a "Filipino" while in the Philippines. Fast forward to today at the immigration madhouse building in Intramuros (the legendary part of Maynila that Rizal made famous). I get in line, fill out the form, and prepare myself to shell out another 4000 pesos to extend my stay another 38 days. I bring the letter thinking it's worth a try. The agent looks at it and asks why I paid the extension last time. I said I didn't have the letter last time. He said "okay" and returned the letter back to me. I said "ok" back and asked what he meant by "ok". He then told me, I'm a Filipino while in the Philippines and just to show the letter when I get to the airport. I was then hit by a strange mixture of happiness, acceptance, anxiety, and annoyance. Happiness due to not having to pay. Feelings of acceptance by this nation (ah an imagined acceptance?). Anxiety, thinking about how many times I have to show this letter and explain about it at the airport in about 30 days. And annoyance that he couldn't just enter into the computer that I was exempt and should be considered a citizen. In any case, I ended up going to SM maynila since my colleagues who did have to pay had to wait around for their passports later in the afternoon.

While there I caved in and received my first haircut in the Philippines at the local Ricky Reyes (henceforth to be known as "the Reyes"). I had heard many things about haircuts here--free hairwash, having your face shaved, less than 5 dollars, and a back/neck massage to boot! --and they were surprisingly all true! Unfortunately my friend next to me got bamboozled into getting some sort of hair stimulant/relaxing treatment and hence I got suckered in as well. Overall the whole experience took over an hour, most of which was me squirming uncomfortably in my seat while getting a backrub. I honestly thought I was prepared, but it was strange. Earlier in the week I also caved into peer pressure and got my first full body massage/facial! Even the the person who gave me a facial gave me a massage afterward. Interestingly enough, it seems like every "beauty" service includes a massage, I won't be surprised that in the future that with every fill-up at the gas station, the "gasoline boy" (that's what they call attendants here) will work out the knots in your lower back. Finally since there isn't a mirror in my dorm room (probably afraid the students will never go to class, I swear, since coming to DLSU-Dasma I have never in my life seen so many boys/men primping their hair and spending hours in front of the restroom mirror) I went ahead and asked for a shave at "the Reyes". The stylist took a long time on it with his little razor blade, and while I was sitting there I wondered if he usually did this and whether I had made a bad decision. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally got to sit down and see the final product. I was horrified. The reason it took him so long was that he had shaped my sideburns to all the way down to my chin! In fact, it looked like something one of the backstreet boys would have sported back in '96. Yet, I had a dilemma. I felt guilty asking him to shave it off since he seemed to spend so much time on it, yet this feeling of guilt was quickly subsumed by my liberal sense of self and entitlement. I paid for it, I should get I what I want right? Anyway, I ended up asking for him to cut it off which did without reaction and I was soon off on my merry way. Although I ended up getting about a pound of aquanet on my head before heading out. Below are some pictures of my new (too?) short do, after I had washed out the layers of crusted hairspray and Maynila particles.

More fragments of bicol

I still haven't been able to process all the traveling (trikes, jeeps, vans, buses), sights (Mayon, churches, lignon, rain and the ocean), sounds (music from church, playing drums in front of nuns, singing karaoke on the bus), tastes (balut, fresh coconut, pili nuts, bikol express and laing!), smells (fresh seawater, fresh mountain air, the stench of palengkes) and of course the amazing people I've met (the folks at the Social Action Network, Monsignor and the sisters, and the academics over at Ateneo de Naga). Since getting back to Dasma I haven't really been able to get the memories out of me, and indeed, I still yearn for the "simple" country life of Bicol. I know these thoughts feed to a nostalgic and superficial fantasy of the provincial life but I have to admit, after spending a week in Bicol, removed from giant SMs, crazy jeep and trike drivers trying to overcharge you, laptop carrying rich kids etc., there is some essence in these stereotypical images. For now all I can do is post some of the fragments I've collected over the last week below and also a quick bullet point listing of the happenings in Bicol.

1. De La Salle bus breaking down because of some strange "magnetic force" on our first day in Bikol. It would break down constantly for the next week. We did get it blessed by the Monsignor before we headed back to Das, and I must say that forget about science, faith works!
2. Riding the jeep sabit style on the back and my first trike ride EVER! (I would follow it up by sabiting a bunch of times on the trike, you would think that 10 people can't ride on a trike, but you're wrong). Also, my favorite person in Bicol, John Bautista from the SAC mentioned that the average Trike driver earns 150 pesos a day after expenses. That's a little over 3 U.S. dollars.
3. If you don't like Pili nuts don't come here. But if you're smart you would invest in Pili nut oil. I think it's the next big thing. Serious.
4. One word: ABACA! The filipinos from the big city love"native" crafts made from Abaca. It's funny because one of the major exports of Bicol up until the commonwealth period was abaca. This economic tie to the U.S. allowed Bicol to be one of the major economic competitors to Manila for a good chunk of the 20th century.
5. The food! I love the spicyness of Bicol cuisine. Indeed the bicol express (ground up chiles and coconut milk) and laing (coconut milk and gabi leaves ) are amazing dishes. look it up and try it out if you want to change your life forever. Also, although originally from Quezon province, I discovered the best banana chips ever. And of course, eating balut for the first time in 20 years.
6. Meeting and interviewing women who pray novenas for a donation.
7. swimming in the warm waters of the Pacific ocean, with Mt. Mayon in the skyline.
8. According to the Diocese of the Philippines we live in a culture of d.e.a.t.h.
D: Divorce, E: Euthenasia, A: Abortion, T: Total Population Control, H: Homosexuality. (something tells me they were stretching a bit for the "T" part in death).
9. bats in churches! Amazing.


first day in Polanquii

Mt. Mayon...

..can fit between my hands!

somewhere outside of Tobaco, the bus breaks down. Warning: don't use dirty fuel!

sabit time on the jeepney, after waiting for 5 hours because of the breakdown

drying palay (rice) by the side of the road

a lot of old churches...


our national hero!


shrine to our miraculous sister. Apparently if you have trouble getting pregnant, you come here to pray.

i swam in these waters

waiting for the trike...any trike

st. john the baptist church, bell tower, built in the 19th century.

looking up the tower

abaca rope and pili nuts

rice farmers

catching a flash with the mayor of tiwi

halo-halo bicol style, the mayor treated all of us!

new ad campaign for korean tourists!

I'm about to pass out from eating too many halo-halos. In reality, there were some left over and I ended up eating two in a row.

the sisters cooked us a feast!

after dinner, a bit of rock n' roll. I'm borrowing the sister's sticks.

at a local abaca craft "factory"

inside joke (remember SEASSI anyone?)

the native wants food

home-made suka

My last time walking through Legazpi (for now)



it's called makahiya

sipa! (and you thought hackeysack was just for dreadlocked white hippies!)

phonograph from the early 20th century. Now who said the Philippines wasn't modern?

my first trike ride ever!

A moving fragment of Bicol

Off to Bicol

So the first component of the program is over and we're all off to Bikol for a week (a province to the west of Manila)! Last year it went from 2nd most impoverished province to the 4th...movin' on up! Below is a link to some information to Bikol. Sorry for the short post, but I'll write out my thoughts after I gather it along the road to Bikol. Hopefully there will be some amazing pictures of the volcanoe. Ingats!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicol_Region

Just in case you thought I was faking the whole thing

We got a write up in the Manila Times weekend edition. This article is a result of July 4th (Philippine Republic's former independence day) Philippine-American Friendship Day! Celebration time come on!

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/july/06/yehey/weekend/20080706week1.html

more aguinaldo, pizza hut, public tv and everything after

Pasensya po (my apologies) for taking awhile this past week on blog posts. It’s not that I haven’t been doing interesting things, it’s just hard to get away from these activities and write down stuff in front of a computer. I also have way too many pictures and videos to upload and that eats up a lot of time, especially on the connection we have here on campus. Still, I would like to say it is quite a nice respite to write down some of my fragmented thoughts in English. Although we are required, for my program to maintain a journal in Tagalog, I still find myself getting worn out by all my thoughts being focused merely on all things about the program. So frequently things in this blog find their way into my journal and vice versa (the last post on NGOs is a perfect example). But on to bigger and better things: what did I do this past weekend? First, me, my host family, and a select crew traveled to Kawit and had a tour of the (in)famous Aguinaldo house. We had the benefit of a private tour since my host dad is a professor and is real chummy chummy with the head of the museum. Highlights: going up the secret passage all the way to the top of the house, which has a nice view of Manila, the cool old flags (especially the smiley face sun and the “KKK” or Katipunan flag), the bowling alley, and of course the giant cake of the Aguinaldo house where lil’ Emilio actually waves the flag. According to the sponsor, Red Ribbon, this scene is historically accurate. Second, we headed to Manila for a bit of shopping. Although Divisoria was a bust, we ended up at Robinsons and looked around for a bit, inside Robinson’s proper, not in other stores. Since it was our last weekend with our host family, me and Edwin decided to treat them to dinner. And what better place to treat a Filipino family other than Pizza Hut!!!! (cue theme song) It was fast, rather tasty, and I would say a great success. Highlight: The stuffed crust pizza in which a hot dog gets stuffed into the outer crust. YuM!!



On Sunday we were whisked away to congested Maynila in order to appear on Channel 4 government television. Because of someone’s bright idea (Frank) and the “pushover-ness” of our program coordinators, we had to write a tula (poem) about ourselves, and read this poem on air as our personal introduction. So we all went along, even though this bright idea was presented the morning of the interview. We all ended up writing our poems on the bus and in a future post I’ll share what I came up with, but for now let’s just continue with our story. Upon reaching the station, I felt as though I was in the backstage of a television station in the communist bloc. The air con wasn’t working, they had a betamax machine, and the “green room” was crammed with people. While we were all chilling in the “green room”, we get a “suggestion” from our coordinators and Frank that we should all try and memorize our poems that we just wrote an hour ago. I’m sure all the students had one thought in their mind: “fuck that.” Or at least I thought it. Anyway, after arriving at the station at 2PM, we find out that the program doesn’t start until 4PM. Okay, no big deal, I like avoiding work anyway, and the grumpy makeup lady chose to have me go firsties on the makeup chair. I obliged, and everyone commented on how great I look with makeup. Guess who’s the next covergirl? Anyway, 4PM comes around and we are told we will go on soon. That’s fine, I like hanging out in tv stations equipped with 1970s technology anyway, so 4PM turns into 5PM and 5PM turns into 530PM. The clock finally turns to 545PM and we get word that we are next. We get rushed to the burning hot stage area and are forced to line up behind the hosts and our teachers. So we are now standing behind our seated teachers, and some other folks that are being interviewed on this public-access channel like set. I peer at the TV that shows what is being broadcasted, and all you can see is our crotches behind the talking heads. I kid you not. Anyway, 550PM rolls around and finally our program gets introduced and it is now our turn to shine. Jason goes first and begins to read his poem but gets cut off by an angry old (very light skinned) woman, a.k.a. our annoying TV host. Jason getting cut off only means one thing: the poems that we were told to create and memorize aren’t even going to be read. We end up just stating our name and where we’re from and then it’s 5:55PM, and some women get on stage and sing our program out. Good night public television! Needless to say we were all pretty pissed, yet we got some rock n’ roll pictures of the crew on the bus as we were rolling out. We ended up eating at Max’s or as it’s known in ancient sanskrit: “the house that fried chicken built.” For all those score keepers out there I’ve eaten about 4 million fried things since I arrived! Highlight: seeing Tita Terry again and getting an awesome pic with the living legend. Can someone yell FRIENDSTER!?

Yesterday, headed out to celebrate a birthday at Jollibee’s. Yes, you read that right, Jollibee’s. Indeed, they decided to do a blowout Justice League themed private party at Jollibee’s for one of our guros. Everything was surprisingly fun, although the food was terrible. Highlights: the games and silly prizes, the overwhelming use of synchronized dance routines to sexually explicit adult club dance hits, and of course the totally bading Hettie and Jollibee (whose costumes stank like sweaty old costumes usually stink).

Random thoughts:

I was invited to a birthday party and was handed a bowl of sinigang hipon (a kind of shrimp soup). Along with other delicious food I began picking at the sinigang and realized there was about a dozen pieces of whole shrimp. Yet, since I was at an outdoor birthday party and was without table, I attempted to eat the shrimp with one hand. I figured there was a correct way to peel and eat shrimp, and since I had about 12 in the bowl, I was bound to stumble upon it. I was wrong. Question: how does one peel and eat shrimp with one hand?



When Filipinos speak in English and attempt to be polite, they insert either “sir” or “ma’am” into every other line. Today it finally clicked. In Tagalog, one needs to simply selectively insert po into certain parts of the sentence in order to make it the polite form. Sir/ma’am acts in the same way. Ain’t life grand?

nagpapamakeup

in soviet union, tv eat you!

rock n' roll tour '77

rock n' roll tour '78

check your tagalog textbook!

i am vanilla sky man

I'm not quite sure what jolli is doing

i'm not quite sure what i'm doing either.

Right at this moment I’m listening to this Pilipino rapper named Gloc 9. I got turned on to him through the youth I’m working with at Bahay Kalinga. In case I never mentioned it, part of the program entails volunteer work at an NGO. What is peculiar is that Bahay Kalinga is run by the municipality, and hence is an obvious government entity. Anyway, other than that, the running joke about Bahay Kalinga is that its name should be changed to Bahay Kalungan (jailhouse). This is because the Bahay (home) that these youth live in (ages ranging from 6 to 18) has three locked rooms. One is the “play” room. The second is for the younger kids (6-12) and the rest of the older youth are crammed into the third room. This probably would not be a big deal, but the fact that there are about eight in the younger kids room and over twenty in the other room is disturbing. They younger kids have scabies that they keep passing on to each other, even though we bought medicine, we’re not sure it’s being applied properly. There is also a severe lack of clothes, as they repeatedly wear the same t-shirt everyday, and some of the younger kids do not have underwear. To make matters worse, because these youth were abandoned, in trouble with the law, or both, the law maintains that they cannot ever leave Bahay Kalinga unless a family member signs them out and a judge approves it. Unlike in the states, 18 is not the magic number here for juvenile detention, and instead of being let free, they are transferred to adult prison, which quaintly enough, is next door. Anyway, other than the saturation of hopelessness that permeates our work, the brief hours every weekday we spend their seems to lift their spirits somehow. Monday marks our last day where our program coordinators want to have our respective NGOs (in essence the people we “helped”) to perform for them and have a “send-off” for us (as if we actually need gratification). Still, although this performance was planned more for the program coordinators to enjoy a spectacle performed by those less fortunate and for the coordinators to witness their “benevolence” reflected back to them, this performance still provides a space for the youth who are continuously silenced or ignored, to express themselves and provides a moment of what my professor back home considers “play” in communication, a possible instant that subverts and overturns the intention of the dominant or hegemonic order. It is at this performance that some of the youth (no doubt inspired by Filipinos’ love of dance crews) will dance to Gloc 9’s “Huwag Kang Matakot Sumayaw.” At first I thought Gloc 9 was a jokey pop dance type rapper (you know like Will Smith) but he’s actually really good. Although he has the same nasally tone and similar flow as Eminem, (and the similarity is really uncanny) throughout his album “Diploma” he’s able to move through different beats, different syncopation, and different topics fairly easily. You can tell he’s comfortable with each line and really works at his craft. In addition for the most part, the whole album is in Tagalog. The only problem are the beat production, where it’s usually the cheesy karaoke style tone of instruments.

Anyway I started this blog entry to write about our trip to Kawit, home of Heneral Emilio Aguinaldo. There surprisingly were not that many visitors, and although the house was amazing, the curator didn’t provide much knowledge other than what could be found in a textbook. Even the giftshop had hardly any Aguinaldo or historic things for sale, and instead had the usual tourist things (coconut shells carved into animals, random bootlegged CDs, and a lot of fashion disaster hats). Below are some (a lot!) of pictures of our excursion. Two facts of interest: 1) there were a bunch of “secret” passages throughout the house. 2) His bowling alley was awesome and totally reminded me of the last scene in There Will Be Blood. Something tells me Aguinaldo was probably capable of the same thing that Daniel Day Lewis’s character was capable of as well.

the eight provinces


rizal and bonifacio

where he lies

matching the portrait?




haunted

matt and the cow

aguinaldo's moving cake

caught in the act!

kids wanted me to take a picture of them jumping off a bridge



my hero!

delicious!

boredom at the library

boredom at the library part 2

yes Max's is the house that fried chicken built

hot kalamansi