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

20 years later...

Last Sunday I went to visit my kamaganak (extended family) that I haven’t seen in twenty years. Needless to say, I didn’t recognize any of them. Although some of my cousins’s faces and names seemed familiar, their children, my pamangkin (nephews and nieces) were not. I even met what technically would be called my granddaughter. The big joke was that she should call me Lolo (grandpa) Allan. Still, it was strange having these teenagers and twenty year olds call me tito (uncle), when tito is what I call my elders. (My nieces call me Uncle Allan back home) I occasionally would slip up and call my kuyas or ates (older cousins) tito or tita, simply because they were about double my age. Still, I’m glad to say, it was the first time I actually felt at home in the Philippines. It was the first time I actually felt genuine care and concern from Filipinos. This is not to say that the teachers and staff at the program, or my classmates, or my host family don’t give a fuck about me, the opposite is true. They all very much care about me, but in a professional sense. I know that it is a service they are providing, and although there are of course moral obligations: I am a “human” being after all, I also know that at the end of the day, the only thing that ties us together is a loose friendship and a bureaucratic network.

In Imus however I finally felt home sick. There were all these conversations about my family back in the states, how they are doing, what are they up to, if so and so is still fat (you can guess who they are talking about), if so and so is still working, if so and so lives close to so and so etc. In Imus, I actually felt somewhat comfortable speaking Tagalog. Unlike at the program and around other students, I didn’t feel like I was under pressure (for a grade or for some weird interstudent competition), I finally felt like people wanted to hear what I was trying to express, rather than just if my grammar was correct. Although they obviously corrected me and guided me in my speech, they were also the most encouraging out of everyone that I had previously spoken to. I think they were impressed that I really wanted to learn Tagalog as well as Philippine culture and history, that I really wanted to hear how they experience life and expressed themselves in their language, rather than force them to enter into the uncomfortable lingual space of English. They kept repeating how whenever some of my other extended family members from the U.S. visited, they would be mahiyain (embarrassed) to speak up, because they were afraid of making mistakes in English. Moreover they get confused whenever people speak in English too fast, or use too many slang terms, so they just nod their heads, pretend they understand, and smile. I don’t want to leave the impression that they are in some way less apt to understand English, or do not have the ability to comprehend English, rather I would like to point out that from this I gather that a less real, or less honest form of communication occurs during these brief visits. Moreover although my visit was very short (about 6 hours), I felt like I expressed more about myself than I usually do at family gatherings in the U.S. Still they were very appreciative of my father and mother’s visits, as well as my older brother and sister, since they speak Tagalog and always try to make time to check-in while they are in the Philippines. Yet, as previously mentioned I actually felt homesick, or at least, I really wished members of my immediate family were there to experience all of these things at the same time. Still, I’m glad I went on my own, just so I could attempt to articulate, in Tagalog, my own autobiography, without utilizing one of my family members as a translator or a crutch. At this point, I really don’t know how to translate my feelings into this text, and I know that this will be a recurring feeling. Still I know that at this moment, I truly desire to meet and get to know further the rest of my family spread out across the Philippines, and to let them know that although I might have “forgotten” their faces and names over the two decades I’ve been away, I never forgot that they were here, and I hope they never forget that I am here as well.

Some quick and random lines of what I did and what I saw while visiting family in Imus.

1. The Pac-Man’s fight, delayed of course, but libre!

2. I found out that my Kuyas work as seamen (another popular gendered OFW labor) on cruise ships and my nephew is about to set sail for a year next month. (they also only get about a 2 hour break when they are at port)

3. I broke my oath of sobriety (sorry mom and pebs) by drinking Red Wine with ice…YUM!

4. My granddaughter really appreciates all the dolls my mom gives her.

5. Every one of my cousins own sari-sari stores, and my Kuya Jun owns a pedi-cab. (how cool is that?)

6. I went with all my pamangkin to the internet café in order to “mag-myspace” and “mag-facebook”. I ended up playing counter-strike on the LAN with all of them (11 of us in all). I really sucked and shot my teammates a lot. I was able to pay for all of us for an hour with about 100 pisos (a little over 2 bucks). Which leads to number 7:

7. Me and my ates compared prices and standards of living between the U.S. and the Philippines. They asked me if life was hard in the U.S., I said yes, but then I had to backtrack because of all the things like what Americans take as a global standard: appliances, decent transportation, living space, groceries, hospitals etc. are not common the Philippines.

8. Two of my ates are guros. (yay education!)

9. My little niece (who isn’t that little) is in college to be a nurse. She wouldn’t mind going to the U.S., but is weary of the discrimination and the possible labor scams. My family is totally on fucking point. (Yay family!)

4 hours short in intramuros

One fine Saturday afternoon we escaped from Dasmarinas and got to frolic in intramuros for a few hours. The battery on my camera ran out, but I think you get the point.


i like this portrait the most


catching some shade with our man J-Riz

an original, not a copy (to be said in a high fidelity tone)

tools of the Doc

I like seeing these things more than portraits

It's huge!

tunneling into the PAST!

careful where you aim that thing big boy!

our relationship in a nutshell

i just really like the picture

in a half step with rizal

green is the color of my true love's carriage.

a tunnel to the chapel or a golf course, your pick.

behind me is where they drown prisoners

(i'm so happy to be where they drown prisoners)

kabayo

look at Linda the tourist!