...You tail an ambulance just to beat the traffic.
...Instead of "I beg your pardon?" you say "Ha?"
...You're always late.
...You ask people you have just met how many children they have and what their spouses do for a living.
...You stand out because you talk and act loudly and with exaggeration.
I opted to begin with quotes from “You Know You’re a Filipino If…” because this book puts in a plain and humorous manner those annoying Filipino habits which would otherwise be considered politically incorrect to mention out loud. The last one is admittedly my original, though.
Political incorrectness is that particular defense against those who choose to not go blindly when they see Pinoys acting in an, well, unorthodox manner. Most people, Pinoy and foreigners alike, do not easily get away with criticizing these quirky Pinoy habits. Take Malu Fernandez as an example. She made unprecedented comments about OFWs she was with during a flight she took on her way to Greece [and back]. In the article she wrote, she said:
However I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the
majority of the OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there. The
duty-free shop was overrun with Filipino workers selling cell phones and
perfume. Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped
in a plane with all of them.While I was on the plane (where the seats were so
small I had bruises on my legs), my only consolation was the entertainment on
the small flat screen in front of me. But it was busted, so I heaved a sigh,
popped my sleeping pills and dozed off to the sounds of gum chewing and endless
yelling of “HOY! Kumusta ka na? At taga sann ka? Domestic helper ka rin ba?”
Translation: “Hey there? Where are you from? Are you a domestic helper as well?”
I though I had died and God had sent me to my very own private hell.On my way
back, I had to bravely take the economy flight once more. This time I had
already resigned myself to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can with
all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while Jo Malone evaporated
into thin air.All in all, it’s been a pretty good summer. Jetting from the
Aegean Sea to the Pacific may sound a bit pretentious until you wake up in
economy class smelling like air freshener. [source]
In yet another article:
As all of you know I have just returned from a wonderful holiday in the
Mediterranean. To cut on some costs for this impromptu vacation I was forced to
fly economy class which I absolutely do not wish on my worst enemy. I was,
however, encouraged by my travel agent to try out Emirates since it won the best
economy class, so with great trepidation I flew on Emirates via Dubai,
completely forgetting that Dubai is the hub for all the Filipino migrant
workers. Call me whatever you like but when you are trapped in economy class
that is filled to the brim with migrant workers the smell gets a little funky
after nine hours of flying. [source]
It has been months since the article was emailed to me. The mood of that forwarded mail was contempt towards Ms. Fernandez. And it was indeed contempt that I felt. There truly was a glaring feeling as if she was singling out OFWs and that she hated them or at least being with them. However disturbing her article was, I could not help but ask if, even by some small possibility, could she have been just saying the truth? Something so condescending and politically incorrect, but the truth nonetheless??
Just last month, true enough, I think I began to see what Ms. Fernandez was incriminated for saying.
I was on my way to the KLCC airport to catch my flight to Bangkok. I took a shuttle bus from the city to the airport. I took the front most row in the bus and, since I saw that the bus was hardly half full, I comfortably occupied even the seat beside mine. A few moments before the driver closed the bus doors, two familiar faces boarded the bus. It was a man and a woman, maybe in their early 50s, who had skin color similar to mine. I knew that I didn’t have an idea in the world who the man and woman were, but they were nonetheless familiar.
“Buti na lang umabot tayo,” the man told the woman as they occupied the seats just behind mine.
“Ah,” I thought, “Pinoy pala.”
But the pleasant feeling of affinity only lasted up to that point.
The whole one hour and fifteen minute-trip to the airport, the two were talking, ever so loudly, to each other, as if they were the only ones on the bus. The bus was barely empty and none of the other passengers had the same unrefined attitude as the two which made their irritating and screeching talk and laughter resound all the more. Ang ingay, p’re, sobra! I had my earphones on, but the loud talk made its way to my eardrums, disallowing me a brief rest to alleviate a migraine I have been having the whole day that had just passed. I didn’t even pay attention to what silly things they were talking about. Every sound that they made didn’t come to me as comprehensible words so much as they sounded like loud buzzing and ringing.
“My god! Hindi ba sila nahihiya? Sila lang kaya ang maingay dito!” I thought angrily.
And since they irked me, quite a bit, the whole ride to the airport, I made it a point that before we parted ways, I would steal a shot of “BOY AND KRIS”, for posterity’s sake, of course:
*****
A couple of weeks ago, on the other hand, I went to Kota Kinabalu. My friends and I were quite amused at how even in the most remote areas of the island, there were Filipinos. We gladly listened to their stories of why they were working in Malaysia and how they got there. All of the instances, really without exception, when asked where they were from, they would answer “Sulu” or “Zamboanga”, and when asked why they left and migrated to Kota Kinabalu, they would give a reply “Umiiwas lang kami sa gulo [sa Mindanao].”
We understood perfectly where they were coming from. We didn’t pity them at all because of what had happened to them—to have been left no choice but to exile themselves to a land not their own. If anything, we were relieved. The kind of relief that even just a family or two have been freed from the danger of the war in Mindanao.
Safe to say, I developed a pleasant outlook on the Pinoys we met in KK during our stay. But it didn’t take long for some idiots to [almost] ruin that positive disposition.
There I was, walking along the shores of Manukan Island in KK’s Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park, when yours truly was confronted by familiar distasteful behavior.
I heard the de facto national anthem of the Philippines, Flo Rida’s “Low”, of course, blaring out from some cheap boom box somewhere along the beach. There was no doubt in my mind that I was a few steps away from a notorious pet peeve of mine—Pinoy Jologs.
Apple Bottom Jeans, boots with the fur [the fur], the whole club was looking at her…she hit the floor, next thing you know, Shawty got low, low, low, low, low, LOWWW…
True enough, a few meters from our table were a bunch of rowdy and NOTABLY NOISY individuals who were partying, dancing, and singing, in broad daylight, mind you, to MY wit’s end. At that point, I could only assume that they were Filipinos because I have yet to obtain any confirmation to that effect.
As if on cue, I walked past the group and two beer-bellied half-wits started singing some Tagalog love song. You know how that goes…at the very moment a girl passes by, these machismo Pinoy epitomes of tambays acknowledge her and pay tribute to her beauty by intentionally-but-unintentionally singing, in a patent lasenggo volume, some love song like “Ang halik mo, na-mi-miss ko…”
After the guys finish their short song number, the rest of the group screams and breaks into patent inuman ng mga tambay tuwing pista behavior. They didn’t know, of course, that I could understand, perfectly well, all their remarks and comments they were shouting at each other. A couple of those statements were about me.
I walked away from this mob, but as I was doing so, I took one more look and noticed that at least two girls, in their two-piece swimwear, those with culottes as bottoms, dancing atop their beach table, ala Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You. I looked around, but none of the other vacationers were engaged in such bakya pandemonium.
It also didn’t help that they were a not-so-attractive bunch. Matabungks outfits for the girls. Beer bellies for the guys. And of course, Tighty whities ala trunks for the most not-so-attractive of them all.
Nakakahiya, ‘di ba? What? Hindi ka nahihiya? Well, ako oo.
Well maybe the wisest thing for me to do at this point is to just desist, lest people out there would crucify me, as they did Malu Fernandez. I could say that I find similarities in my view and Ms. Fernandez’s. Noisy and unattractive people annoy us. We both turn this annoyance into criticism and sarcasm that form part of our humor. But a stark difference is that nowhere in this post will it seem like I am singling out a particular group of Filipinos. When I say Filipinos are infuriatingly noisy and seemingly lacking of discipline, I don’t mean OFWs, rich, poor, adults, kids, men, or women. I mean that we ALL have a tendency to display such behavior. It is not because we are actually undisciplined. Uneducated. Or unrefined. That is because we are not.
It is just how we Pinoys are. We can be irritatingly quirky sometimes, but we are pleasantly entertaining most of the time. Nakakahiya, oo. Pwede ding nakakairita. Pero madalas nakakatawa lang talaga.
[cue boisterous Pinoy laughter]
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