Caustic Thoughts

Random funny thoughts with a taste of Pinoy and a hint of acid.

witandwisdom

Teacher Entrepreneurs

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You know how they say that teaching is a noble profession. I’m not about to argue with that. In fact, I love teaching and I did teach for two years while working as an HR officer for a school. I admit that I liked teaching better than the emotional mayhem of employee office intrigue that struck my office on a daily basis. So why didn’t I choose to pursue teaching?

After two years of excruciating spider veins and hoarse vocal chords, all I had was the so called psychological fulfillment benefit of teaching (which is really debatable because I personally know teachers who confuse fulfillment with the satisfaction of knowing that they finally know better than a whole classroom full of people). I had mouths to feed; I wasn’t earning well and I wasn’t about to go through the beaten path of supplemental earning. It’s not because I have any real moral qualms about it. It’s really because I’ve never been good at selling.

I remember my husband’s stories about studying in a public school. They were expected to buy from their teacher’s hidden store of edible merchandise. My husband was at a better position than his classmates. He was the designated seller (and was therefore entitled to leftover freebies) while his teacher diverted the attention of the roving principal.

Unlike my husband, I studied in a private school and vending to students and parents is strictly prohibited in most private schools. Of course, I know better now. Private school teachers don’t sell food like some public school teachers do and they definitely don’t sell to students unless they’d like to get a one way ticket to unemployment. Some private school teachers however inconspicuously carry glossy Avon, Sara Lee and Natasha catalogs while principals, coordinators and HR officers (like me) discreetly look the other way or even secretly place orders themselves.

Okay so there’s nothing inherently wrong with a teacher selling during her free time but they didn’t have to if they were paid right.

Dendrophilian

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My husband once told me that I was raised so freakishly different that letting me roam around the city alone would be similar to leaving a blind new born kitten in the middle of a national highway. I was more than over protected. I practically grew up in another planet and never even knew it until I got married and left the Andromeda galaxy for Earth. This is probably why my husband is always afraid that I might end up half dead in a canal because I took a lollipop from a stranger.

What my husband doesn’t know is that my new job has taken me to a far worse highway than anywhere I’ve ever been on. Everyday I commute through the information super highway and the things I see and hear make the news seem like a fairy tale.

Just recently, a writing assignment has brought me to Dendrophilian’s YouTube page. Dendrophilian is a self confessed atheist and a pedophilia supporter. I am not so immersed in my self delusion to think that Dendrophilian belongs to an entirely new breed. I know there are people like him and that society says their presence is a fact of life. What is discomforting is that one of his videos in support of pedophilia sounds like a dignified rational sociological thesis defense, not a violent rant against the conventions of society. What is even more surprising is that this man has more than two thousand subscribers and has been repeatedly praised for his logic and intelligence. His two videos in support of pedophilia have been viewed thousands of times, have each been rated with three stars and have combined favorite votes of more than a hundred… HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS…

… makes me want to pack my children’s things in time for the next interstellar bus ride to Andromeda.

Hard Work for Pennies

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“Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have no doubt that the great Emerson was partly referring to psychological rewards for the common diligent worker. I think though that he was also referring to financial preparation for retirement and old age.

I suppose if you are diligent enough, you will be able to harvest your just rewards. In the Philippines though, diligence is simply not sufficient. You would also have to be blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit to help you make old age comfortable. For those who don’t know the difference between the stock market and the wet market, the future can be dim.

Take for example a former colleague who retired two years ago at the age of 60. She had been a teacher for thirty years and worked five days a week for twelve hours a day or more. She received a staggering P100,000 ($2,139) for her three decades of service. She definitely was not a delinquent but even a lifetime of honest work earned her less than what most political thieves earn in a day.

She’s not the only one who has a bleak future ahead of her. Young professionals who have no aptitude for business and have no desire to wipe the asses of foreign patients abroad have to prepare for their future with measly incomes that can barely tide over the day’s needs. Cities outside of the capital offer young professionals at the staff level an average income of P7,000-P10,000 ($150-$214) a month for 24-26 days of work for eight hours a day. Upscale offices offer a little more at around P15,000 ($321) a month for the same amount of work. Of course, first time employees would be lucky if they receive the mandated basic salary. I know a nurse who earns a mere P150 ($3.21) for an 8 hour work day.

The only way to prepare for old age is to find your way to one of the multi national companies that offer high salaries and numerous benefits. In my province, there are only about four companies that fall under this category and only one of them is hiring 10-20 people every year until they stop hiring in 2010. That can hardly help the thousands of graduates every year and the approximately 100,000 or so unemployed in my province and the surrounding regions.

Now how exactly can mere hard work in the Philippines prepare for the hours and ages that will follow the twilight of a worker’s best years?

The Filipina in the Eyes of the World

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My sister is a doctorate student abroad. Her studies have already brought her around the world for free as an academic scholar and her performance so far has been nothing short of stellar. When new foreign acquaintances learn of her academic achievements and that she is a Filipina, they express such tremendous astonishment to the point of almost being inadvertently insulting.

There is hardly any doubt that my sister’s foreign friends think in much the same way as a lot of other foreign personalities, stars and tourists who are asked the embarrassingly undying question, “What do you think of Filipinas?” As most of us never tire of hearing, a lot of people seem to think Filipinas are lovely, caring, loving and nothing else. It is as if there is a great void that excludes intelligence, wisdom, strength and talent. It is as if the adjectives that people use to describe the Filipina collective identity fit only the stereotypical roles of the Filipina as a caregiver, domestic helper and mail order bride.

What a lot of people do not know is that the Philippines is not a factory for ideal women who care for older men in their retirement. This country, like any other country in the world is also the home of women of achievement and distinction.

In the American music and film industry alone, a handful of talented women with Filipina blood have rubbed elbows with foreign stars. Perhaps some do not know that, regardless of whether they recognize their biological heritage or not, Tia Carrera, Nicole Scherzinger, Vanessa Minillo and Vanessa Hudgens all draw part of their talent from their Filipino bloodlines.

But the smattering of Filipina-Americans in Hollywood is just the tip of the iceberg. More than just entertainers, singers and dancers, there are also Filipinas who are award winning international performers like Lea Salonga and Cecil Licad. Salonga has performed major roles in Miss Saigon and Les Miserables in Broadway and has been awarded a Tony and an Olivier, besting other senior performers. Licad is a premier international pianist who has performed intricate Rachmaninoff pieces in Carnegie Hall. She has played with the London Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony among others and has become the youngest female to be given the Leventritt Gold Medal.

Outside of the performing arts, our country also boasts of being the place of origin of Filipina visual artists Pacita Abad and Virginia Cruz Santos. Abad has conquered the world with 3,500 trapunto paintings of sewn fabric in 70 countries and has had a total of 40 exhibits mounted in the different continents and cities of the world including Paris, New York and Washington D.C. Santos on the other hand is a mistress in contemporary art. Some may not have known it but Santos was the creative hand behind Dory of Finding Nemo, Cow Girl of Toy Story 2, and Helen Parr and Dash of the Incredibles.

More than just artists, Filipinas are also artist entrepreneurs and you only need to look up the names of Monique Lhuillier and Josie Natori to appreciate that. Lhuillier specializes in bridal gowns but has designed other formal pieces for the elite women of Hollywood and is now a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Natori is the founder and CEO of the Natori Company, a top luxury brand of women’s clothes and lingerie sold in Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom.

Art and business are not the only areas of excellence for Filipinas and we have Josette Biyo to prove that. Competing against 4,000 teachers around the globe, Biyo won the 2002 Intel Science and Engineering fair in Louisville, Kentucky and became the first Asian to win the Intel Excellence in Teaching Award. Today, there is a Filipina name etched among the stars as minor planet 13241 is now named Planet Biyo.

If the question is about the contribution of the Filipina to the world, then we can proudly say that we have Corazon Aquino, the renowned champion of freedom, human rights and democracy. Aquino was Asia’s first female president and has been distinguished as Time’s Woman of the Year for 1986 and one of Time’s Asian heroes for 2006.

The list can go on indefinitely but the point should have already been clearly made. The Filipina is not something you can define in a dictionary or a travel guide. The Filipina is someone who has a right to define her own identity without the assistance of people who think they know and understand. The Filipina is someone who has as much a right to be a citizen of the world as anyone else.

*For more of the many faces of the Filipina you can go to the Filipina Writing Project. This writing project is sponsored by Barangay.ph, Kababayan.ph, MyUSMailbox.com and RegaloService.com.

Ms. Ugly No More

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I just recently finished a job order for a set of articles on cosmetic plastic surgery. In the end, the sight of Tara Reid’s monstrous stomach, Michael Jackson’s diminishing nose, Vivica Fox’s squiggly looking breast and Michael Douglass’ bleeding wounds were enough to send me sick and nauseated to my bed.

It was therefore a most unfortunate incident that I yet again, came across the topic on the local news. The Beverly Hills Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Institute apparently just concluded a contest for “Miss Ugly No More” with Lou Victorioso taking the top prize. The contest featured (you guessed it) retokadas or women who had undergone various cosmetic plastic surgery procedures and non-surgical aesthetic procedures.

Let’s get this straight. I personally feel conservatives have no business preaching to people who want to go under the knife. Nonetheless, we can all say what we want and I say that the “before” pictures of the top three showed more vibrant and youthful women then the stiff copies of western beauties that they had been molded into.

I also think that the contest’s title, theme and concept were a direct affront to my genetic heritage. Everything about it implies that flat noses, small breasts, chubbiness and “normal” skin tone all denote ugliness. This means that I, my husband, everyone I know and millions of average people in the Philippines have all been denied the blessings of nature and collectively been made the butt of a cruel cosmic joke.

At the very least, the concept of the contest is archaic. Anyone would be a fool to subscribe to western ideals of beauty in this day and age when flat nosed Asians and black Africans sashay through international contests with no need to apologize for their genes.

As a footnote, I remember reading quite distinctly that even western doctors do not claim that they will be able to produce perfection. People who choose to undergo cosmetic plastic surgery should have realistic expectations because you can only (luckily) be improved and not perfected. So those promotional ads and billboards for the contest that made the contestants look like they were kidnapped, experimented on by aliens and returned in super model bodies are all “male bovine manure”.

Co-Sleeping with Babies

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My husband used to say that I have a slightly Americanized way of thinking and doing things. This is of course, not my personal choice. I was simply raised this way.

So when I had my first shot at motherhood, I immediately let my baby sleep in a crib beside my bed on our first night out of the hospital. My friends and family were promptly scandalized. My decision was virtually unprecedented among my circle of acquaintances.

On the first night and the next four days after that my baby literally drove all the spirits out of my body with loud seemingly ceaseless crying spells. My husband and I eventually lost all hope, energy and every ounce of sanity in our nerve wracked bodies that we simply decided to hug her close in our bed and let her persist in tormenting the neighbors. Surprisingly she stopped crying. She is now a toddler and still sleeps in our bed and has always had uninterrupted sleep at night. I have since thrown my Americanized sleep training along with my baby’s crib out of our Filipino house.

This is probably why I was puzzled and alarmed by the news that according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, numerous infants and babies die in adult beds. This implies that co-sleeping is not a safe practice and which is probably why we television addicts have become familiar with scenes of American babies sleeping in separate rooms.

This kind of makes me wonder about the differences in sleeping equipment and patterns between Filipinos and Americans. I don’t have the statistics for my country but all the Filipino parents I have ever known have always slept with their babies and none of those babies ever died. What’s the difference between co-sleeping here and there? Why do some American babies die?

Filipino Respondents

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It is not new for a number of people around the world to sign up for studies and surveys to earn a little cash. In the Philippines however, a similar practice is taking a slightly unconventional turn.

piggy bank

Two days ago I had a chance to watch Jessica Soho’s show on Philippine television. One of her features was about how some Filipino individuals, families and entire neighborhoods consent to becoming prospects or respondents. This is not anything like American controlled-double-blind-placebo stuff kind of studies. Prospects here in the Philippines allow their teeth to be extracted by dentistry students and their faces to be exorcised of acne by neophyte aestheticians. Some use different kinds of whitening lotions on each of their arms to see which brand is more effective. One respondent lost all her teeth and is now a respondent recruiter. She performs the task with great alacrity for less than half a dollar per recruited respondent.

There is nothing really inherently wrong about this kind of practice. Sadly though, it is another picture of how much people have been pushed to desperation. While officials entertain ASEAN foreign dignitaries to a culinary extravaganza that probably cost millions, people who practically live in hovels subsist on pennies that they earn by losing all their teeth, having their faces practiced on and coloring their arms differently.

The Rise of the Killer Supplements

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There was a point in time when both physical and mental illnesses were thought to have been curable by bleeding a patient senseless or confining him until he was convinced that there were worse things than death. Modern science has since labelled such methods as primitive and inhuman.

On a similar note, it seems highly probable that fifty or so years from now, our present methods will also meet with some disapproval. Painful surgical incisions, side effect promoting medications and hormone scrambling psychotropic drugs will eventually be viewed with vomit inducing distaste. If history were allowed to go through its natural course, current medical practices will eventually transition to less frightening solutions. The problem however with recent trends is the temptation to preempt history.

Enter the evil dark lords of pseudo supplement-dom and their quest to rule the financial market. They all have the same scripts, “There are no miracle cures but we’re better than scalpels and a few stitches and medications that make you queasy ’cause we’re all natural. You can even get your money back if you can manage to navigate your way through the fine print of our intentionally muddled return policy.”

yellow suplement capsules

No one can probably blame patients who can’t afford highway robbery surgical operations and who are desperate for side effect free relief. I too would admittedly shrink from pumping my body full with chemicals. It would still however, be the height of insanity to put your life in the hands of cash starved backyard ghost companies that put a bad name on real reputable supplements.

Pseudo supplements are not called drugs and medicines for a reason. It is because their claims of providing treatment are scientifically unfounded. They will rule the world though if we amazingly persist in being stupid.

Screwed

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It’s been five months since I first began as a home based web content writer. I must say that it has done me a whole lot of good. I have finally fulfilled my life long dream of becoming a hermit.

laptop

From my makeshift office that’s probably smaller than Paris Hilton’s closet, I have little to amuse me in between exercising my fingers sore. Everyday, I grow perilously close to attracting cobwebs in my stationary position and becoming a cellulite infested, halitosis prone social retard. It’s a great wonder that I haven’t been seeing my dead relatives outside my window yet.

Nonetheless, there are still advantages to being an online writer. At least now I know that a muscle car is not a cleaning agent brand; that diabetes can kill you with a heart attack; that dogs can’t eat chocolate; and that there are more screwed super stars than just Lohan, Spears and Hilton.

Yeah, I have just matured into an introverted walking encyclopedia who can practically rattle off to my imaginary friends about anything under the sun.

Golden Friendship Park

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I just finished eating my breakfast the other day when I noticed a sign outside the restaurant. It pointed to Golden Friendship Park. I remarked to my companion that I didn’t know that the park was called that even though I had already lived almost four years in the city. He said he’d show me why the park carried such a name.

He took me for a walk and pointed at the park benches. Nearly each bench was occupied by a homeless individual. “The park is just like a friend’s home,” he began. “You can’t sleep on someone else’s furniture if it didn’t belong to your best friend.”

He then directed my attention to a makeshift donut shop at the center of the park where street kids, who seemed like they could each down a calf, milled around for yesterday’s donuts to be handed out. “Who but a friend would allow such sponsored treats in the morning?”

“In the evening,” he continued. “Prostitutes and intoxicated students barely out of their teen years take their turn at other park amusements. No one but a tolerant friend would allow such liberal abuse of his property.”

I couldn’t help but agree that the park had been aptly named.

messy room