I Used to Live There! – Page 8 – Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

The Philippines is a VERY Catholic Country

May 28, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

When I think of the US, my first thought is that, for the most part, it’s a Christian country. There are churches everywhere. In even the smallest towns, there’s at least one church. However, the idea and enforcement of a separation between church and state has made the religious nature of the country a lot more toned down than it is in the Philippines.

Everywhere you look in the Philippines there are reminders that you’re in a Christian country, and definitely a Catholic Christian country. (For the purposes of this blog I’m not referring to the southern islands, which has been a stronghold of the Muslim faith for hundreds of years). There are crosses and churches, religious graffiti, art, statues, pamphlets, and even religious themed custom paint jobs on vehicles, among other things. This is especially true when you get outside of the Metro Manila area, like Antipolo, which is the town just north of Manila where I’m currently residing.

Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors and their 300 years of colonial rule, the Catholic religion has been very deeply embedded into the Filipino society. I’m sure there are varying degrees from family to family, just like there are in other countries, but people in the Philippines are overwhelmingly Catholic in the way that Arabic countries are overwhelmingly Muslim.

Sometimes, this overwhelming Catholicism can border on the bizarre, or creepy. At Muslim mosques, the call to prayer is announced from the minarets five times per day. I remember the first time I heard it in Kuwait. It was a bit unsettling, but beautiful in a way. I sometimes stopped to listen to it when I was in Kuala Lumpur. There’s something similar in the Philippines, or at least at the church in the neighborhood I’m staying in. Every day at roughly 3 PM, you can hear the sounds of children chanting the rosary over and over, using loudspeakers mounted to the church. It has a Children of the Corn vibe to it, especially since it echoes off the surrounding hills. From what I’m told, these children are lured in to perform this task with promises of food and treats afterwards.

I’ve even heard tales of religion supplanting medicine in the Philippines. Some people prefer to call a priest rather than a doctor when a person is ill. The priest comes to perform an exorcism to get rid of the bad demons that are causing the sickness. I don’t want to stray too far from the topic, but if God gave us wisdom to create medicine to heal ourselves, then isn’t it a bit rude to reject it and simply pray for miracles? Anyhow, I also found a bottle of Holy Water in the medicine cabinet, right next to the headache pills and band aids. Seriously.

Living Without Our Cats

May 28, 2010 Bradley Farless1 Comment

Right now I’m in Singapore and my cats are in the Philippines. We transported them there earlier this month by plane, but had to return to Singapore briefly to wrap up some loose ends.

So, I thought to myself that this would be a great break! No need to scoop cat turds. No need to check their food and water. No need to constantly sweep up cat hair and litter. No cats on my head, or doing gymnastics and singing competitions while I’m asleep.

But, it’s just not the same without them around.

There’s more to cats than just the drawbacks of having to look after them and every time we go somewhere on a trip I worry about them and miss them. It’s even weirder now that I’m back here in Singapore, in a house where they used to live with us.

When I open the door I keep expecting to see them standing there waiting. When I get in bed I keep checking to make sure I don’t accidentally kick a cat off the end of the bed while getting under the blanket. In the morning I keep expecting to find a cat sleeping next to me. When I see something laying on the bed or the floor out of the corner of my eye, I mistake it for one of my cats.

For all the trouble and drama they create, I miss having them around. I’m looking forward to getting back to the Philippines so I can play with them, brush them and torment them on a daily basis again.

Our cats really are part of the family.

House Cleaning Update!

May 21, 2010 Bradley Farless5 Comments

The process of cleaning this house and doing repairs is going to take longer than expected. The biggest time killer has been going into town and finding the best deals on materials like paints, cement, brushes, and other necessary items. My in-law’s house is in a rural neighborhood in a valley between two mountains, outside of Antipolo. It takes about 30 minutes to get into the town by tricycle and then walking around from small shop to small shop can eat up a whole day before you know it. Next thing you know you’re dizzy from the heat, haven’t found a damn thing and the sun is going down. Then you have to get something to eat and get back to the house before the crazies start coming out.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of progress to report since the door was put in. Nothing major anyway. The cement is done on the door and it needs to be painted. Also, I rearranged the second floor landing (which is as big as a bedroom) but I’m holding off on photos until I finish putting everything back in place. Just getting the furniture moved was a lot of hassle because everything was covered in boxes of junk that I had to either carry up to the attic or down to the curb, depending on its potential usefulness.

What I’m planning on doing with the 2nd floor landing is turning it into a small library. This house may be packed with useless crap, but it’s also packed with TONS of books, most of which are still worth reading or have a lot of practical value, like history books, encyclopedias and stuff like that. There are also manila envelopes full of college notes, papers and projects that belong to my wife and her brothers. I want to arrange it all by category and make the area useable. There’s even a couch, but you can’t get to it now because it’s buried under photo albums, Reader’s Digests, and Cosmo magazines.

The first floor is gradually improving since we’ve stocked up on cleaning supplies. We can’t take all the credit for that though. A cleaning woman came by and she broke her back getting the floor and counters cleaned. We’ll just have to maintain and improve on that.

After the initial rush of effort we burned out. I even got sick. Hell, the handyman that put in the door for us and did a few other odd jobs got sick too. I blame it on a combination of the heat and bacteria laden dust that was all over the place. I’ve never burned through a bottle of Lysol so fast in my life as I have here.

I’m recovering now. We’ve been putting in a lot more ‘do-nothing’ time this week. We spent some time in Manila too, soaking up the sights and the air conditioning. It feels good to just relax for a while after putting in so much effort cleaning and organizing a house.

After arranging all of the books in the ‘library’, I’m thinking my next project will be painting. I’m going to start off with a fresh coat of white just to get everything looking clean and attractive. Then, for our bedroom, we’re going to get creative. These are our walls, so why not? Maybe a house there, a tree over there… a field with a river. I may even get a guy to come in and do some anime graffiti on two walls if he doesn’t charge too much.

Anyway, I’ll be heading back to Singapore for about a week starting on Sunday. I have some more stuff there that I have to collect up and have shipped over. It should be fun to just hang out there for a while. Living in Singapore made the place feel like an onerous burden, but when you’re just going somewhere temporarily, you savor the experience more. I’m looking forward to having more chicken rice and jogging at Bedok Reservoir and Pasir Ris Park.

Oh, and here are some photos of cats, to liven this post up a bit:

This is Gibor, a cat that lives at my wife’s house in Antipolo. He’s the male version of Thumper and you could almost confuse the two, except Gibor doesn’t walk funny and he has a huge pair of balls that we need to get whacked off.

The Siamese in this photo is named Pepper. She snuck into our bedroom to see if she could beg for an extra serving of cat food. Notice the bootleg litter box under the desk. Thankfully we got that replaced with a real litter box and now that we have a real door installed it’s in the bathroom.

p align=”center”>Dapper, Thumper and Marble are investigating a rush mat I bought. It’s a local woven mat called a ‘banig’ that you roll out on the floor to sit or lay on when you want to relax, but haven’t showered yet.

The Standard of Beauty in the Philippines

May 21, 2010September 4, 2021 Bradley Farless30 Comments

“I look white. I stay white.”

I took the above photo in a department store in Antipolo, but these kinds of ads can be found everywhere, from in-store ads to billboards to TV and radio commercials. This slogan is the defining characteristic of the Filipino ideal of beauty. To some degree, it applies to men as well.

Filipinos have a mixed heritage that can be traced back to Malay, Korean, Chinese, and Spaniard origins, but the original inhabitants of the Philippines, called ‘Atas’ I believe, were dark skinned and had tight, curly hair and flat noses. The Spaniards referred to these people as Negritos because they resembled small native Africans.

During the course of hundreds of years of colonization the Filipinos began to associate power and dominance with people of lighter skin tones, with long straight hair and sharp, ridged noses. The word ‘Atas’ became a derogatory slur hurled by children in the schoolyard to describe someone that was ugly, dark, or to indicate a person that behaved in a primitive fashion.

Today, the average Filipino TV star, movie celebrity, music artist, and even sometimes politicians are mestizo, meaning they’re of mixed parentage, with one parent being Filipino and one parent being a foreigner, usually a Caucasian. This is also sometimes referred to informally as being tisoy or tisay, depending on whether a person is male or female, respectively. In the old days of Spanish colonial rule, these mestizos were placed on a higher social status, between pure Spaniards and pure Filipinos. That idea of being in a higher social caste based on mixed parentage has survived in the form mentioned above until today. Some mestizos take this mentality to an extreme and strut around with airs of superiority that generally piss off everyone around them.

For everyone else, there’s whitening products galore available in every ‘sari-sari’ store, grocery store, convenience store and department store in the country. Whitening soaps, whitening creams, whitening bath salts, whitening deodorant, and even whitening cleanser for the genital areas. Also, the standard hair treatment for Filipinas (female Filipinos) is to have their hair straightened and rebonded, which leaves the hair hanging straight down and flat, as far from short and curly as possible. Also, nose jobs are popular among the more well-to-do Filipinas to give them a more Caucasian looking appearance.

The end result of this is narrow ideal of beauty is that most Filipinas wind up looking the same. Oddly enough, this is more true of Filipinas in other countries, like Singapore, than it is in the Philippines themselves. I’ve seen quite a few Filipinas in the Philippines who are working hard to achieve this standard look, but in Singapore I used to joke that the Filipinas there are part of a drone army, because they all look the same and you can pick them out of a crowd from behind, without even having to see their faces.

Men in the Philippines seem to have more leeway when it comes to standards of fashion with hair and skin tone (as long as they’re not too dark), but nose jobs are still popular if affordable. Thankfully there are soap products available for men that don’t whiten the skin. I’m white enough already. In fact, I’m trying to get a tan. The sun in the Philippines is like the sun at the beach and I still equate a tan with being healthy.

This is a matter of personal taste, but I always found that diversity breeds uniqueness, and uniqueness is what’s truly beautiful. If everyone looks the same, with the same haircut, the same artificially whitened skin, the same nose job, then there’s nothing special about that ‘look’ anymore and it becomes bland and unappealing.

Singapore in Manila

May 21, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Having recently left Singapore I thought it was cool to see Singaporean restaurants in Manila, specifically in Megamall. I suppose it makes sense that there would be Singaporean restaurants here, in Manila. A large amount of Singapore’s foreign labor force comes from the Philippines and while Filipinos may eventually go home, they might still crave some Singaporean dishes like I do.

So, here’s Singapore in Manila:

We took a brief look at the menu for ‘Orchard Road’ and saw Hainanese Chicken Rice listed prominently. It’s nice to know that I’ll still be able to satisfy that craving. I hope they serve the red chili sauce with it though, or it just won’t be the same. If you’re wondering, the chicken rice is priced at roughly 6 SGD there.

The second restaurant will hopefully help me satisfy my craving for kopi, though I didn’t think about it at the time and didn’t check the menu.

“You Will Die!” … Over 20 Philippine Pesos

May 20, 2010 Bradley Farless21 Comments

Something I’ve been having issues with since coming to the Philippines earlier this month (and really on every trip to the Philippines before this) is being overcharged. You can get around that by going to stores where the prices are clearly marked on the items before buying them, but then you miss out on all the good deals keep your wallet thick. This problem goes for the markets and for services, like public transportation.

If you’re not familiar with the Philippines there are tricycles, which are a motorcycle with a sidecar, that are used for short-range transportation. The prices are set by organizations and the local government and those prices are posted inside the vehicles with a sticker. Set routes to neighborhoods outside the town proper are set by the organizations. Even so, I’m constantly arguing with people that are trying to overcharge me, like I have pesos falling out of my butt every evening and can afford to just give away extra on every transaction I make.

Tonight, we came out of the grocery store with a buggy full of items and got into a tricycle. We needed transport over about 1 km (or less) of distance to pick up our laundry. Our bags were too heavy to walk that far, especially given how crowded the streets are in the evenings in Antipolo. So, the fare should have been 20 pesos. That’s the standard. When we pulled up in front of the laundry place, my wife handed the driver 20 pesos and the jackass started demanding 40. The night before we took the same route and the jackass in that tricycle was demanding 30. I like to call this the “white tax”. While arguing with the guy I quickly pulled all of our stuff out of the sidecar in case he tried to take off with our things. Then we ignored him and went inside.

When we got our laundry we packed it away into a bag we had bought. We’d actually taken our laundry to the cleaner in black plastic trash bags because we hadn’t found a proper bag for it yet. When I looked out the window, this prick was still sitting there watching us, as if he expected us to come out and say sorry and then pay him what he was demanding.

I told my wife to ignore him and not give him anything more than what he was owed. I’m not in the Philippines to make everyone rich at the expense of our livelihood. So, when we walked out and started up the street, he started his tricycle and shot past us screaming “You will die!” Ya, good job dude. We wrote down his plate number and we’re going to report him in the morning. The fines for tricycle drivers who attempt to overcharge are pretty steep. I hope he enjoys his 1000 peso fine for trying to be a prick.

When you live on the local economy you can’t afford to let people nickel and dime you to death, and even if I had a huge wad of cash, I wouldn’t be handing it out for free, or to someone who tried to rip me off. I’m nobody’s chump.

Street Rats

May 18, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

In the Disney movie Aladdin, the idea of being a “street rat” was glorified as an honorable way of making a living, with a code of ethics and a comfortable life. In reality, things don’t work out quite that way. I’ve seen poor people on the street here in the Philippines and they don’t look like they’re having quite as good a time as Aladdin was. They’re dirty, they’re hungry and they live in a way that’s dangerous because at any moment of the night someone could take their lives. It’s not that adventurous when you think about it. It’s a torment that must be a horrible way to live. Even at my worst, I’ve always had a roof over my head and a little something to eat every day. So, I have pity for these people when I see them in the street.

In the Philippines, and perhaps everywhere, that pity has to be tempered by wariness about the real nature of the person holding the cup or the annoying children that flock around me like little vultures. Here in the Philippines there are organized begging rackets where beggars are put out on corners like a pimp would set out prostitutes in other parts of the world. The individuals doing the begging are made to look more forlorn than they may actually be, and some of them may have homes that they go home to in the evening. Most people probably learned about this activity by watching the movie Slumdog Millionaire. The same practices you see in that film are employed in the Philippines. So, you can’t be too free with your money when you see these types of people coming up to you in the road, or holding a cup out to you in front of a store.

The ones that really annoy me are the groups of kids that try to surround you and start asking for money. They even go so far as to start grabbing at your clothing. My guess is that this is to distract you while their friends start fishing in your pockets for whatever they can grab and run with. When I first visited the Philippines in 2008 I had a lot of patience for this sort of behavior, to the point that it annoyed my wife. She always shooed them away as fast as possible. I didn’t really care. My attitude about it has changed now though. I suppose that when you visit a place, those minor inconveniences seem quaint and entertaining, but when you actually move to that place and you know it’s something you’ll have to deal with on a repeating basis, the patience you had before wears thin quickly. Now, when these kids surround me and start asking for money I give them a very gruff, ‘”No!” and keep walking. If they persist, or start grabbing at my clothing, I push them away physically and tell them to “Fuck off”. That message normally gets through to them and they break off their pursuit, often accompanied by a string of expletives in Tagalog, the local language. I suppose that they think that just by being white, I must have tons of cash and I’m just holding out on them.

If you think that’s a little rough, given that these are kids, keep in mind that it’s typically organized. They do it every day. They beg as a job, rather than out of necessity, and I’d rather come across as a jackass than have my belongings stolen from my pockets while trying to play nice. Life in the Philippines isn’t just hard because the money is worth less, it’s hard because you have to be hard to survive when you’re out of the house. No one has bottomless pockets and every peso counts.

Adjusting to Limited Internet Access

May 18, 2010 Bradley Farless6 Comments

One of the things I knew I’d be dealing with after moving to the Philippines was limited internet access. In the US and in Singapore I’d come to think of the Internet as a utility, just like water. It’s just always there as long as you pay the bill, and it’s usually cheap. That’s not the case here in the Philippines. At least not for me right now.

You see, while there is DSL and I think cable Internet available in the Metro Manila area, I’m currently residing in a rural area outside of Antipolo, in Rizal Province, which is in turn north of Metro Manila by about 45 minutes. It’s in the mountains and in the US this is what you would refer to as “the boonies”. It’s out there. It’s so out there that running water is also in short supply at the moment. I think I mentioned that before, but the water only runs for about two hours in the morning so we collect water to be used throughout the day. I’d expected things to be a little difficult, but the last time I was here the water was still running. All of the inconveniences start to pile up to the point that I’m already looking forward to finding an apartment in Manila, sooner than originally planned.

Something that surprises my wife regularly is how I’m able to take this all in stride. She had the impression that I would balk at the idea of living in a place that has no air conditioning, no running water, and limited Internet access. I suppose the reason these things don’t bother me as much as they might the next person is that I spent a lot of time in the military, where doing without these things was a common occurrence while on training exercises or during deployments.

Anyhow, the main point here is that I’m having to find new ways to occupy my time. The Internet access I’m using now is a prepaid USB stick through Globe. The price isn’t too bad. It’s 5 PHP per 15 minutes with discounted options for a whole day or for a 5 day chunk of unlimited access. Still, that adds up. I was doing the math and if both of us were to keep re-applying for the 5 day unlimited access we’d wind up paying about double per month what we do for cable Internet in Singapore. That’s rough, especially considering that the quality is a fraction of what we became accustomed to.

So, I’m relearning the joy of reading. I picked up a book on Filipino history that I’m digging through. I think that’ll help me to understand the people here and help me relate, especially when I start working and/or going to school later this year. I’m also finding ways to optimize my Internet experience. One way for me to do that is to type up my blog posts in Windows Live Writer prior to connecting and then to simply publish them. Then I can use my time to surf the net, rather than sit in a browser window typing, unnecessarily burning up my prepaid time.

Of course, I don’t have a lot of free time right now. We did just get some painting materials yesterday. I want to get started on that sometime soon. I’m not sure when. We’re starting to burn out and we need some relaxation time. It’s amazing how even when we say we’re not going to do anything for a day, just picking up around the house to get ready to relax winds up taking the whole day. By the time we sit down to just surf the net or watch a movie, it’s after 10 PM.

We have another day of doing nothing planned for tomorrow. I’m hoping it’ll be successful.

Public Toilets in Malls in the Philippines

May 16, 2010 Bradley Farless2 Comments

Today while at Megamall in Manila, I had reason to visit one of the public toilets. It took me a while, because the restroom was crowded, but I finally managed to secure a stall. When I walked in, there was piss all over the floor, no toilet seat, and no toilet paper. I wasn’t expecting that, but when I saw it I remembered that it’s always that way. I first visited Manila in 2008 and noted that the public toilets never seem to have paper or even toilet seats available.

It seems like such a basic commodity to have in public restrooms that I always take for granted that some will be available. Back in 2008, I asked my wife why there aren’t any toilet seats or paper and she said it’s probably because if it were there, people would steal it. That makes sense and she’s from the Philippines so her guess is better than mine.

So, if you’re going out, even to a seemingly high end shopping center, be sure to bring your own stock of toilet paper. It wouldn’t hurt to bring antibacterial wet hand wipes either. Or, if you’re really in need of comfort, there is one other solution, which, thankfully, fit perfectly into our plans for our evening out.

On the 5th (or 4th?) floor of Megamall there are quite a few massage / pedicure / manicure / etc. type parlors. You can treat yourself, or your spouse, to one of these services and then partake of their pleasant smelling, well appointed restrooms, like the one pictured below. I don’t remember the name of the place but it’s pretty nice and my wife says she got good service there, so we’ll be going back for massages soon. More on that later!

A Night Out In Manila!

May 16, 2010 Bradley Farless3 Comments

So, we’ve been here since the 6th and tonight was the first time we’d left the Antipolo area to go out and have some fun. I guess you have to prioritize. It wouldn’t do to go out and have a good time and then come home to crappy living conditions. Not everything is done, and it probably won’t be for quite a while, but we felt we deserved some time out to relax and we took advantage of it.

So, off to Megamall we went! We met up with my brother-in-law and his wife there and had a late lunch at Sushi-ya. The food there is really good and the prices are reasonable. After that my brother-in-law and I wandered around while our wives got pedicures and then we all met up again to watch Iron Man 2. By the time that was done, it was 9:30 PM and it was time to make the long commute back to Antipolo.

The time seemed to go by so quick! There were so many other places we wanted to see while there. I think we may have to take some more relaxation days and hang out in the city, preferably in a nice air conditioned mall again.

As for the house, things seem to be progressing ok. The door is in the wall now and it’s functional, but the cement still needs to be replaced. The guy is working on the plumbing in the kitchen right now and then he’s going to do the cement all at one time. That’s fine, as long as it gets done sometime in the next few days.

We’re planning on holding off on doing the painting because we want to get the electrical installed properly first early next month. A fresh coat of paint would do wonders for this place but we have plenty of time, so I’m not all that worried about it right now.

I also found out today that not all Filipinos are ruthless criminals. Yesterday I dropped my ring in front of a store in the neighborhood and when I went back to find it, it was gone. I mentioned it to the girl that was working the counter, who lives in the neighborhood as well, and she asked around and actually found my ring. She went to the person’s house to get it back from one of their kids. So, a disaster was narrowly averted through her efforts. It also showed me just how true the ‘everyone knows everyone’ and ‘there are no secrets in a Filipino neighborhood’ sayings are.

We have another long day ahead of us tomorrow, but even though the days are full of work, they’ve also been full of action and activity, which has kept things fresh and exciting.