Caustic Thoughts

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

Culture

She’s So Very Piang

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Would somebody tell me what in blue blazes is piang?

Why oh why among all the nations of the world have we Filipinos been cruelly selected to suffer this medically incomprehensible condition? Piang clearly does not refer to a full bone fracture or a strained muscle. Otherwise, the poor victim would be unable to manage even the faintest glimmer of the famed Filipino jollity in the worst of adversities. I have been repeatedly told though that if a piang is left untreated by a manghihilot (quack doctor + masseuse of sorts?) the afflicted individual will suffer from innumerable aches and pains for the rest of his miserable existence, whereby he will wonder if he had been chosen by a gang of invisible magical dwarves to play tricks on.
My parents must have been from an alternate dimension where the Philippines is the dominant world power and where Filipinos sit in garden cafes drinking tea, discussing Plato’s Republic and plotting total world domination. They don’t believe in piang and the manghihilot. By virtue of association, neither do I. But my in-laws do and dinner conversations occasionally take a bad turn whenever my daughter is ill for unknown reasons. 
* There’s no question about it. She has piang.
** [staring down at my MSG laced dish; no comment]
* We must bring her immediately to the manghihilot.
** [if my eyes had laser beams, there’d be a hole on my plate]
Of course, I do acknowledge that modern medicine cannot comprehend or solve everything. In a few hundred years when much will be understood, our current methods of healing by cutting, stitching and chemical bombardment will be met with no small measure of shock by the people of the future. While little is understood today, the traditions of old must be referred to for additional wisdom. There must be some truth to piang and hilot but I just wish there was at least some sort of explanation for them. Even the most obscure of eastern medical methods hazard some explanation behind their curative claims no matter how improbably mystical. No one however has ever explained what piang is. 
I’m going to go crazy if I have to bear another dinner conversation about this unknown condition that the old ones say plagues my daughter every time she has fever or an upset stomach. Somebody save me.
*Photo Credit: Webweaver

Cut and Paste

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I once got into trouble with a coworker because I made the mistake of wearing my brains on my sleeve and announcing my undying aversion to Filipino romantic melodrama. She declared me unpatriotic (oh, and I can almost hear someone from a mile away accusing me of just being pa-sosyal right about now). In the interest of promoting corporate peace and harmony (I was in charge of employee relations), I offered my apologies, shut my mouth and went on hating Piolo and company in the comfort and privacy of my other secret self. What I should have told her was that watching the polar ice caps melting from Sharon Cuneta’s eyes does not constitute patriotism. There is no excuse to love your own when it’s only capital is its appeal to the tear ducts.

Besides, how can I be unpatriotic when I stayed glued every afternoon to my grandmother’s TV set marveling at the beauty that was Tita Duran and Pancho Magallona in black and white? I loved FPJ’s smacks and kapows too far better than those by the dynamic duo in colored tights. Heck, I even went so far as to patronize the two hour song and dance movie numbers by German Moreno’s scholars in polka dots and ribbons because my yayas were my barkada and they told me Janno and Manilyn would make me a happy, psychologically balanced, socially agreeable girl. 
But that was it. I can’t offer the same love and dedication to the current stable of gooey weepers. The titles alone of today’s movies are discouraging enough. Is it just me or are almost all of today’s romantic movies prolonged cut and paste elaborations of pop songs? It’s as if all of the Filipino creative title makers had died in a nuclear explosion leaving the producers with no choice but to fish for movie titles in a vat of stale, radioactive lyrics from foreign top ten songs making the rest of the nation forever prone to the last chorus syndrome.
Did you notice too that foreign backdrops are becoming all the rage? When a story can’t carry itself with enough dignity, the prospect of seeing some actress’ breath freezing over in front of a European building is enough to justify parting with half your day’s wages at the cinema booth. So long as I retain some measure of sanity, I cannot follow John Lloyd, Bea, Angel, Piolo, KC, Richard, Sam and Toni to Milan, Paris, Venice, Santorini, Australia or even Mars. 
I’ve promised myself though to be more “patriotic.” I will watch Filipino romantic movies someday when they stop whatever they’re doing right now or when they make a movie out of Don’t Touch My Birdie.

The Dead Shall Bury the Dead

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I just came back from burying the dead. I had been gone too long but it couldn’t be helped. I needed time to accomodate the wealth of Filipino customs and traditions that I had no idea accompanied funerals and burials. It seems Christ’s biblical exhortation to let the dead bury the dead is unheeded in this largely Catholic nation. 

Nonetheless, I deeply respect tradition and I have chosen to follow its requirements among people who believe in them. Besides, Filipino SOPs for the dead are interesting cultural elements to mull over. 
 

Tradition begins as soon as embalming ends. The body is dressed in white or cream. Shoes are also prescribed but are only placed beside the body and not worn on the feet. It is believed that the wearing of shoes will encourage the soul to roam in the dead of the night which could cause some of the weak-hearted relatives to suffer from heart attacks. Aside from a rosary around the wrist, jewelry and accessories are not included. This is not because of any known superstition but because the relatives know that desperate gravediggers would rather risk a visit from the incensed soul than pass up the chance to pawn what the dead cannot bring to heaven or use as a bargaining chip in hell. 
At this point, even before the deceased gets his make-up and forced smile in place, family feuds can begin. Arguments can range from the proper placement of the water dispenser in the funeral parlor to who should get the largest cut in whatever is left of the dead person’s backyard poultry. In the meantime, while the war over dispensers and pigs rages on, the wake commences. In remote areas, the wake can last for as long as nine days. In urban areas, the body can be buried after 3-4 days but the final vigil is often held in the family home and nine days of prayer and sleepless nights continue to be observed. On these days, a local prayer leader recites nightly prayers at the speed of light in a seemingly esoteric language that only the most ancient in the assembly can make sense of. 
After the prayers, the family of the dead is expected to serve refreshements. Since the sense of loss is magnified by the day due to dwindling funds, the cheapest food options are often resorted to. That would mean serving biscuits that taste like pure sugar and instant juices that only taste like real orange juice but don’t really contain the pictured fruits on the packs. The food is a gentle reminder of how and why the deceased died of the complications of diabetes. 
While family and friends gobble up all the sugar and artificial flavors, they recount the dead person’s numerous merits and final days of agony while discretely wondering why so and so didn’t die instead. What follows after is hours of drinking bottomless coffee or alcohol accompanied by small time gambling. This, they say is the living’s way of accompanying the dead on his final journey. For many though, the noise, the presence of many and the entertainment are really the living’s way of dulling the pain, escaping real or imagined visits from the dead, speeding their own demise and winning a few coins for the trip back home. In the morning, those who stayed up all night invert their biological clocks by sleeping.
On the ninth day, a small feast is prepared. In some cases, small plans have to be abandoned on the spot. This is tha day that relatives to the nth degree and acquiantances that family members can hardly remember encountering can suddenly pop up to offer their condolences and partake of the feast. The change of plans might require the early death of the chickens in the backyard. The alternative is to break the piggy bank to buy more food in which case filing for bankruptcy must follow.
On the day of the burial, family members dress in white or black. Black used to be the traditional color. Thanks to the Chinese and the infernal Philippine climate, white has become the preferrred color. Before the procession to the cemetery, the casket is lifted in front of the house entrance and everyone in the house is asked to pass under and never look back. I did look back. I surmise that I am now to expect years of bad luck. (This is already to be expected though even if I were not cursed. The current state of affairs in our country has placed everyone in perpetual bad luck).
In the cemetery, a mass is held before the body is buried. Current financial limitations have forced many families to let their dead rot one over the other in individual cemented cases. My colleague’s relatives however believe that stacking can lead to successive deaths in the family. This is why the family has had to deplete their resources even more for a separate single lot in a memorial park that’s excrusciatingly posh. The figures in pesos can harden the arteries.
As the casket is lowered, a few relatives wail uncontrollably, vowing to follow their beloved soon, just not on that day, although a little forward step can easily send some of the more violently afflicted right into double internment. After the soil is shovelled in, names of the family members written in decorative ribbons are burned over the topsoil in an effort to yet again avert bad luck and tragedy (If every bereaved Filipino family did this, maybe the country can be saved from sinking). Everyone is afterwards treated to more food. None of the extra food is to be brought home. Fresh food is prepared at home and eating resumes.
After the burial and the nine days of prayer, forty days are counted from the day of death. On the fortieth day, more prayers and food are prepared. More of that on the first year death anniversary afterwhich the grieving family members can begin to pick up the pieces and start living again while waiting for their turns to fertilize the soil or pollute it depending on the amount of chemicals their bodies have accumulated in their lifetimes.
Throughout everything, the old and the young are in separate mental and emotional quarters. They all miss the dead but the new generation resents the ever growing number of required customs, traditions and superstitions while the old feel slighted by the rebellious disbelief of the young. It’s obvious. When all the old ones pass away, the young will begin to kill tradition and superstition. This is after all a day and age when logic is expected, where a reason for everything is required and where people are asked to report back to work 3-5 days after losing a loved one. The time will come when the dead will truly have to bury their own.

Death By Diabetes

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Dear Readers,

Someone close to me just died because of the complications of diabetes. My take on the preferred Filipino disease however, and my discovery of the real reason why poor folks in the Philippines apparently have less costly diseases and preludes to death than rich folks are for another post entirely. Right now, I simply wish to inform you that I shall be taking a brief break from serving the freshest wit and sarcasm known to man.

I am now currently knee deep in making my services available to the bereaved family. I do this even if I still do not fully understand why we must stay up all night playing mahjong and drinking killer spirits when most of us in the room are also diabetic; wear white when we are not Chinese and pray on the 9th and 40th nights when half of what the manalabtan (prayer leader of sorts?) is saying is in a tongue seemingly foreign to all known life including her own. I shall be back next week when I am done with propagating tradition, staying awake for the rest of the week, raising my blood sugar level, musing over the meaning of life and bidding my fellow being a great afterlife.

Godspeed.

Gracia El Caustica

Hurricane Fiesta

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There were a lot of things to write about last week. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss blogging about the government plot to convince people that they are stupider than they really are, the captive chickens in my in-law’s backyard, the tragedy that is American Idol and the reasons why Wyngard and Jolina shouldn’t be spewing pieces of advice and diluted expletives in Pinoy Idol. Yeah, I should have written about all that but I’ve been busy reserving all of my physical and mental energies for an expected social calamity— the town fiesta.

I grew up in a family whose idea of fun is waking up and falling asleep surrounded by books written by people who became worm fodder centuries ago. You must therefore excuse me if I still find fiestas a bit jarring. This particular fiesta isn’t anything like the city fiesta I wrote about a year ago. This one is right smack in the middle of the little village I live in and I have no choice but to be in the line of fire. 
Oh, I love the saint in whose honor all this uncontrolled eating is encouraged. I learned to love him because I found out that I have been given the license to keep on eating non-stop too. I do think though that eating loads of free food is really just a method of fattening the cow before the kill. Oh, yes, the hours after all the eating is done has a way of gradually killing you. The dishes can pile up faster than you can burp. There is also of course the floor to ceiling devastation to clean up after the tail of the hurricane has left. I suppose, it will take another week before everything is set right.
The most irritating aspect of fiestas however is the countless alcohol-saturated undead populating every street, corner, nook and cranny. It feels like being right in the middle of the set of I Am Legend with a couple of extras that really did get infected with a virus. If you aren’t careful, they’ll get you and force six liters of beer down your throat until you become an infected one too. Nightfall during fiestas is never the time to venture out of your steel reinforced fortress.
I’ve written too much. My batteries are running low cleaning starts in a couple of hours … must save… gasp… energy…

Holy Week in Bantayan

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Today is Good Friday. I am not deeply religious but I do respect and practice what is expected of us Roman Catholics during the Holy Week. I suppose it’s not just because I grew both my first permanent tooth and my first white hair with nuns (i.e. I spent an insanely large amount of time with nuns). My natural inclination to observe the Holy Week may be due to the fact that my mother is from Bantayan island.

The island is popular not just for its unexploited white sand beaches. Nearly everyone has also heard of the way the island is transformed during Good Friday. On this day the island comes alive with preparations for the evening procession. At the appointed time, residents and visitors take to the streets bearing candles and reciting prayers. The sheer number of people and candles dotting the streets seem to set the island on fire. The main attractions though are really the celebrated floats that depict various personages and scenes from Christ’s passion and death. The rich, elaborate and superfluous details on each float can make anyone forget to maintain the appropriate gravity prescribed by tradition, the occasion and the elderly. Some figures of saints are rumored to be made of ivory and cost anywhere from 2 to 3 million pesos each. 
The grandeur on Good Friday is only half of the story. The other half is within the realm of gastronomy. I am ashamed to say that part of the reason why I cannot forget Holy Week in Bantayan is because I am often ruled by my stomach. Like other Catholics, my relatives and I have always fasted and abstained as a sign of sacrifice, eating only three meals without pork and beef. It is generally assumed that pork is a major tasteful pleasure so abstaining from it is a great sacrifice for many Filipinos.
Personally though, Bantayan Holy Week table fares hardly fit my notion of sacrifice. How could it be a sacrifice to sink my teeth in seafood that is so fresh that they move and struggle to escape only moments before being decapitated? It was a guilty pleasure to forsake pork and settle for white fish steamed in plain water or shells grilled in their own juice. Bantayan, in any week of the year can make you forget that pigs, chickens and cows are edible.
Incidentally, it is due to the abundance of seafood and the obviously diminished island pig population that the people of the island are said to be exempted from abstaining from pork meat on Fridays during the Lenten season. For me though, eating pork in the face of the sea’s abundance is more of a penance. 
It is perhaps because of the general atmosphere in the island during the Holy Week that outsiders call the week the island’s fiesta. For some islanders, this is an obvious insult. While people all over the country bear somber, penitent faces on Good Friday the Bantayan islanders are sometimes thought to be in a state of enjoyment.
Nothing can be farther from the truth. I have never met more pious and faithful people in my life. What is sometimes seen as inappropriate celebration is really a rich commemoration of Christ’s life and sacrifice.
Photo credit: Powerbacks

Korean Wave

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What does an average Juan do when he is distressed by politics, demeaned by unemployment, depressed with poverty or drained by the routines of life? Does he:

(a) smoke weed
(b) drink like he has ten livers
(c) eat pork like he has no heart
(d) laugh
The answer may be all of the above depending on where you’re from. Among people I am acquainted with these days, it’s almost all of the above AND watching telenovelas. For the oppressed, depressed and suppressed Filipino, these shows offer a respite from normal life. They’re like modern weed. They can make you imagine things that don’t really happen in real life and mess with your brain. Of course, their main value is in their ability to help you forget your problems by making you commiserate with or rejoice at the troubles of lead characters.
In the Philippines the telenovela craze has come and gone in waves. The Filipino wave began decades ago when viewers were introduced to the formula: good vs. evil + lots of slapping, hair pulling, Vicks induced tears, nasal mucous + regional bias (probinsyanas in long skirts and city people in Levi’s) = good triumphing over evil without the prospect of a rematch.
This first wave was followed by the Mexicans. They had the same formula but executed it with more pomp, hair spray, fashion you wouldn’t wear if you were in your right mind and lots of gorgeous women that only our transvestite community can equal.
When we had our fill of unbelievable female beauty, the winds shifted and brought us the Taiwanese wave. Who could forget those strange men who had perfectly ironed hair that stayed in place despite adversity; smooth, white underarms despite their gender; and pore-free skins despite the nature of skin? The only great fault of Taiwanovelas was that they had men who were prettier than their ladies.
My preferred wave is the recent Korean invasion. Although I wouldn’t be caught dead following a Koreanovela (I have a reputation to uphold) I have caught snippets of their shows. I must admit. They are different and border on going against the norm in our country. 
I believe Koreanovelas are among the first to go beyond the typical external drama conflict where man vs. man equals hand to cheek contact and clumps of uprooted hair. They actually have complex characters that are not monochromatically plain good or plain evil. They actually have characters with personalities, evolving principles, changing motivations and inner conflicts that go beyond bowel constipation. In other words, they have created imaginary people that could very well be you or me with life stories that don’t always end happy like yours and mine.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to love my own. I’m just waiting for the right Filipino series. I have my hopes that we will have a better Filipino wave that I would actually want to be a follower of.
Spoiler Alert: I have an excuse to watch some parts of Tae Wang Sa Shin Gi/Legend. It is partly based on history and I am a lover of history. If you plan to watch it, prepare for an ending that will leave you either sad or clueless, as in, “What? Huh? Waaaaaa…?” The triangle they started doesn’t even have a resolution.

Home Sweet Home

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I’ve said it before. There is a practical function behind the Filipino’s tendency to keep close family ties. By nature, we really do value family but I think there is also a social reason behind this. Because we live in a poor country, we each need other people to survive. Families help individuals survive economically. Living with my in-laws despite my being vertically and horizontally grown has allowed me to survive.

I am more fortunate than others because I do not have blood-sucking in-laws who do not mind my obvious lack of marbles. To foreign eyes, this Filipino way of life may seem like mutual parasitism especially for some unfortunate foreigners who marry into families that make them feel like dispensers of state benefits. In my case, my in-laws have only really provided me with the rare opportunity to learn how to care and share. 
I am still my parent’s daughter though and their value of independence, at the expense of mutual survival and family affection, is stronger in me. Although I appreciate the family aspect of Filipino culture, I still feel the desire to call my own shots. Hence, my current search for my own house. As things are going, I might as well have dug a burrow and called it home.
The most affordable option in one subdivision close to the city is a structure that is only 20 square meters large in a 40 square meter lot. I’ve been to farms with pig pens bigger than this. You can forget about interior divisions too. The kitchen, living room and dining area all share the same space. The worst part is that one wall is also the wall of your neighbor. That means your neighbors can practically smell how much your laundry stinks and hear every syllable above a whisper. It’s like having your very own wire tap. 
Surprisingly, this wholly unattractive package will cost me P11,500 (+/-$287) a month for fifteen years! That’s more or less an entire month’s salary for an average earner. Sure, I can afford that if I don’t eat, drink, bathe and sleep for 15 years!
There are more affordable options in subdivisions in forsaken nooks that are miles away from work, school and civilization. Affordable houses in these areas are made by filling pre-fabricated slabs with cement like filling a waffle machine with waffle mix. A few years ago, several of these houses in one village took it upon themselves to take a ski ride down the slope over which they were built and land on the houses below in a heap of rubble and an assortment of rejected appliances from Japan and Korea.
It’s depressing that many Filipino families simply can’t afford decent homes. I think I’ll go dig my burrow now.

Pamalaye

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Last week I had the pleasure of experiencing a dying Filipino custom for the first time and all because I have this rare ability to smell food 10 kilometers away. Actually, I just happened to drop by a friend’s house and was happily surprised that her table had been richly laden with all of nature’s goodness as well as all of its evil—the kind that kills your heart after pleasuring your taste buds. 

Unfortunately, strangers were blocking the way. I was told that the obstacles to my happiness were my friend’s boyfriend’s family members. I had stumbled upon a pamalaye, the part of an engagement where the parents or family members of the groom formally ask for the bride’s hand in marriage. 
Apparently, among traditional families in the Philippines, wedding arrangements are discussed in between mouthfuls of insanely superfluous food. In the past, the man’s family solely sponsored the food.
My friend’s pamalaye was obviously organized hurriedly. If it had been planned and announced I would have known better than to show up salivating. I later learned that my friend’s decision to marry faster than you can say I-hate-your-cooking-future-mother-in-law was not because of temporary insanity but because she was already three months pregnant. In the Philippines of long ago, a situation like this would’ve ensured that the couple could officially choose their mode of death. They could die by clan firing squad, cord-free bungee jumping or social stigma.
These days, there is less disapproval over getting pregnant out of wedlock and getting married because of it. Since I don’t want to turn this post into a morality issue or a venue for comments on why you hate your mother-in-law, I would just like to leave my readers with a few questions to mull over. 
1. Is it absolutely necessary to get married if you get pregnant? There is no divorce in the Philippines. What are you going to do if you find out your husband likes guys better or is an escaped inmate of a mental ward?
2. What can you say about enacting a law that will make family member background investigations mandatory before couples marry? Marriage in the Philippines is also is a form of social survival. You don’t marry an individual; you marry families, cousins, the in-laws of in-laws and their pets.
3. Do you agree that you shouldn’t get pregnant if you are not emotionally or financially ready? Would you volunteer not to get laid– ever– to avoid pregnancy?
By the way, you might want to know that:
1. At least six out of seven of my guy pals who got married just because their girlfriends got pregnant are not happy. They frequently sing the line, “Regrets, I’ve had a few….” in dark videoke bars and then choke and switch to another song.
2. I didn’t get pregnant before I got married. I can almost hear you say, “So what?”
3. There was no traditional pamalaye before I got married. I had no idea there was such a thing because I lived under a western imperialist’s rock. I told my mom I would marry, or else…
4. My daughter’s life is hers. She can decide to get pregnant out of wedlock if she wants to as long as she made a conscious decision to do so OR she and her boyfriend have paychecks that can rival the Sultan of Brunei’s OR they can work harder than underpaid, overworked third world production workers. Her boyfriend must also be a good, clean, respectable man and not the spawn of the Alien and the Predator.

*Photo credit: download-free-pictures.com

Let’s Vote In

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We Filipinos are known for our ability to band together in the snap of a finger for a common cause. In recent years, that common cause has been to provide the most number of votes to Filipino contestants in international vote-in contests. That’s the secret why Filipino contestants always win something be it the first prize or the Ms. Photogenic award. That’s also why some international contest organizers know better than to go for a vote-in format when there are Filipino contestants unless the contestants talk dirt about the country and prefer sushi to adobo. Haha.

Rumor has it that the victor in the recently concluded Austrian Musical Die-Show, Vincent Bueno won because of the legendary Filipino people-text-together power. Bueno is a full Filipino who was born in Austria. He was the only Asian in the contest that was Austria’s glitzier answer to American Idol. Instead of pop songs, contestants had to battle it out by performing theater songs that required more vocal and stage prowess. Votes for the contestants came from the residents of European nations. Bueno was said to have gotten 67% of the final votes.

Of course, the rumors are just rumors but I can just imagine every single man, woman, teen, child, cat and dog with Filipino blood living in Europe sending in thousands of votes for Bueno. I can’t deny though that from my point of view, he does seem like he deserved to win. Who am I to disagree when I can only squawk while the guy can spin on stage and sing at the same time, get wet with water while performing and not slip or croak, sing and dance while apparently not breathing and sing in theater and have six pack abs?

Yes, we who don’t know a flat from a minor definitely think he’s a sensation but I wonder what real theater experts think.

*Video Credits: ronny1988FAK1911