deebeedee

Updates to the blogroll:

Cousin Marco has abandoned his old blog in favor of a new prison, er, home… Via Nate’s site, I find out yet another cousin has a blog: Stef is one spunky girl who’s a sophomore in high school, I believe… Nomad blogger Willie Galang has moved again. His new domain is called Blog Manila… Added Roland Tanglao’s site to the blogroll. He’s a Pinoy-Canuck who’s a certified über-geek… Just discovered conservative Pinay journalist Michelle Malkin’s blog. Check it out…

These kids wrote a piece about a house on the very street I grew up on in the Philippines. The following description proves it hasn’t changed a bit in twenty years:

…in the afternoons you’ll see skater boys doing their tricks, and kids running around the street, playing badminton and patintero.

Today (or rather yesterday - it’s one hour past midnight) was my son’s first day of school. He started 1st grade. I dropped him off at school and saw excited parents and their kids, some happy, some nervous. I recognized a parent. He was at a birthday party I attended last year. I spoke to him. His daughter is in my son’s class.

It was also garbage day. A few weeks ago we Fremont residents received a new recycling cart to replace the old recycling bins. In it was attached a covered kitchen pail. This pail is to be used for food scraps. The food scraps then need to be emptied into the “organics cart.” The organics cart was originally for yard waste only but with the addition of food scraps and food-soiled paper, high quality compost can be made out of the mix. According to the city newsletter, the following can be thrown into the organics cart: fruit, vegetables, cheese, meat, bones, poultry, seafood, bread, rice, pasta, coffee grounds, filters, and teabags.

This makes taking out the garbage a highly nauseating chore. Emptying the putrid contents of the kitchen pail into the organics cart never fails to test my gag reflex each time. It is not uncommon to see me in dry heaving fits as I walk from the trash cart outside all the way to the kitchen.

This actually reminds me of a form of food scrap collection back in the motherland. A guy would come around the neighborhood collecting food scraps from every home. He’d dump the stuff into two huge pails that hang at both ends of a bamboo pole which he then would balance on his shoulders. The stuff would reek from a block away. The guy would call out, “Kanin baboy!,” which literally means rice for the pig. Yes, the food he collected were fed to the pigs (it’s a third-world thang).

[spoiler, somewhat]

Saw X-Men 2 yesterday. In the Cerebro scene where Prof. X shows Wolverine where all the mutants in the world are, the Philippines is projected right behind Wolverine’s head and a mutant is shown hailing from Luzon. Wow, I wonder what kind of super-powers this pinoy mutant has. Maybe the guys from Komikero know.

Ok, since I just appropriated material from one of the forums I visit regularly, I think I’ll do it again. The following is from a post of mine in thepinoy.com on the practice of saying Po and Opo as a sign of respect for Filipino elders. Po (or ho) is something you tag on to a sentence when addressing older Pinoys. Opo (or oho), a variation on oo - the Filipino word for “yes,” is also used when addressing elders.

Personally, as kids growing up in Manila, we were never taught to say “Po” or “Opo.” It was never really emphasized. I never even called my older sisters “Ate.” I called them by their first names. I did address my parents as “Papa” and “Mama.”

Now that I’m older, I’ve taught myself to say “Po” and “Opo” thanks mainly to the influence of my wife. I’ve had to learn to use them with my parents-in-law and other Filipino elders in general. In fact, I’ve started using them with my parents as awkward as it may have sounded in the beginning. They only deserve to be treated with that type of respect, whether or not they have instilled it in us.

Now what puzzles me (and irks me somewhat) is when folks, especially those in Filipino-run stores (I live in the States) who don’t look any younger than me and oftentimes look a few years older than me, address me with “Po,” “Ho,” and “Opo.” Now is this a presumption of age on their part or simply a sign of courtesy given to a customer, no matter what age?