Accents
Coming home slightly embarrassed
It all started in the airport, that is the Mandurriao airport. Discomfited is not the adjective of choice to describe a bona fide Ilonggo just arrived from the other side of the globe, feet now planted on native terra firma. Happy, excited, relieved -- all those, but not discomfited, much less embarrassed. Gad, but what do you get instead? The hustle-bustle throws all enthusiasm to the winds as porters flock all over the passengers on a chaotic survival-of-the-luckiest disorder.
For the sake of Bayan Ko, specifically probinsya ko (yes, Ilonggo ako nga tunay as the song goes), let differences between the contending parties at the airport be settled once and for all. What say you, Mayor Trenas? Gov. Tupas? Peace and order is alive and well in Iloilo! How about that for a headline in our local papers? Now that's news to be truly proud of -- especially for the sake of our brother porters eking out a living in the airport, their brawns tested to the extreme as they lift heavy luggage one after another.
You passed by a parked jeep, its driver sneakily urinating beside it, and you're dismayed by the tourist's comment about the whole country (your country and mine) being open for peeing. Cause for embarrassment. Period. Suggest? In long distances where a municipal restroom is far from being available, will the government please provide roadside toilets? Then we won't be seeing women folks using their patadyong (wide wrap around) for cover as they relieve themselves before reaching their destination which is still hours away. Lucky if there are gasoline stations with CR's constructed to serve those who gas up as well as the public.
You passed by the University of San Agustin and see the strikers' streamers already tattered, in pitiful mute defiance. You are led to conclude that charity is not alive and well in the hearts of the supposedly godly (?). Sigh! You wonder at cases (yes, some such exist) when charity blinks, stops being legalese, and extends its hand in reconciliation -- no questions asked, rancor wiped clean.
Filipino cuisine was at its best in this restaurant, a favorite of Pinoys satiated by the continental variety. The one embarrassed must be the smoker on the next dining table, not I. I only moved away, covering my nose as I fanned away the death-hastening smoke from the cigarette of the smoker behind us. Praise to the owner for putting up the sign SMOKING IS NOT ALLOWED IN THIS GATHERING PLACE. This cancer survivor insists ENFORCE that! Or confine the smokers to the Smoking Area. The warning of the Surgeon General about smoking being dangerous to the health does not seem to make a dent in the consciousness of many men and women. Nor the numerous cases of lung cancer.
When oh when can GSIS be a model of bureaucratic service? Pagputi sang uwak, to be cliched about it in picturesque local color. (Yes, when the crow turns white.) Never more are senior citizens' patience and arthritic knees stretched to breaking point than having business with the GSIS. May 9 was only one of the many trips we've made in this "hell hole" for the aged. At the 5th Floor of the TKK Tower, Rudy and I patiently waited for his Pensioner's ID. The aircon was insufficient to cope with the body heat exuded by the thick crowd. It was elbow-to-elbow. Move an elbow and you hit a seatmate--that is if you're fortunate to squeeze into a seating space. It seemed the real culprit for the dour, resigned, miserable faces was the temperature (this summer is really merciless) and not the excruciatingly long wait for one's turn at the counter. Or blame both, especially the latter.
Just when can GSIS transfer to a more roomy, hospitable, pleasant building where its running announcement KAHIT SAAN, KAHIT KAILAN MAASAHAN won't be a joke? One retiree sounded like a copycat of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez as he decried the GSIS' hiring of a "P300,000/month consultant (?): "With shenanigans like that, better to go the mountains and carry an armalite." If to be recalled, Sec. Gonzalez was the cabinet member who challenged the "Batasan 5" to "Mamundok na lang sila" (go to the mountains or something to that effect).
This one is GOOD NEWS as the TV's early morning edition would have it. UP Prof. Tomasito T. Talledo of the state university's Division of Social Sciences is giving a lecture on Monday, May 15, 2006, at the Training Room 1 of UP Visayas, Iloilo City.
First Lecture - 8:30 AM: "Social Science in the Philippines: Exploring Some Irreverent Questions" - This lecture explores the questions on the link between social science and the dominant mode of Filipino consciousness; the daemon of so-called relevance in social science practice; the obstacle presented by statist ideology; the relation with civilizational discourse like Pantayong Pananaw; and the often assumed but inadequately problematized notion of agency.
Second Lecture - 1:30 PM: "Construction of Identity in Central Panay: A Critical Examination of the Ethnographic Subject in the Works of Jocano and Magos" - This lecture critically examines the works of F. Landa Jocano and Alice P. Magos to lay bare how these two ethnographers constructed the identity of the Tumandok of Central Panay. It will be disclosed that these two have succumbed to an unreflexive but naïve procedure and standpoint of ethnographic realism. In this account, their ethnography can easily lend help to the powerful but nefarious forces in our society.
See you there.
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)