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.