The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Two friends of mine, both of whom live in Canada, recently wrote articles about life in different countries. These articles piqued my interest, so I’m pointing you their way.

Germany, after the second world war, really tried repentance and it

succeeded in a way. But I think the price is starting to show. You

don’t realize it when you live in Germany or grow up there, but there

is a deep seated negativity about oneself, about the things that we, as

a nation have done. I think this is seeping even further into it. Hey,

Hitler wanted to create a superior Master Race, so anybody who is

better should not show this, we are just a good group of simple people,

no harm ever came from those, right?

I think that’s the biggest

problem, there is a lot of good things in Germany but Germany is really

building itself into a brick wall. Looking back now to my own school

time and work there I come to realize it.

I did realize a

different attitude when I moved to Canada, how intelligence is rewarded

not punished (at large), while in Germany everybody just tries to fit

in and “not stick out”.

Now,

let it be said that the Philippines is perhaps physically the most

beautiful country I’ve ever visited. Volcanos, beaches, rice terraces,

rainforest, seascapes and hilltops, misty mountains and steaming flat

plains… the quality of light is incredible. It is rich in natural

resources, and it’s been said by more knowledgeable Asiaphiles than me

that if the Philippines ever got its shit together (i.e. elected

officials of an ilk different than the

stream-of-nightmare-consciousness thieves and bandits they’ve elected

for generations who’ve used the national treasury as a personal slush

fund… anyone else, how ’bout?), it could take enormous advantage of

the fact that it’s the only large English-speaking country in Asia.

Could capitalize on its relationship with the United States to push for

preferential trade relations. Could host UN agencies, multinational

corporations, and NGO headquarters. Could supply translators and

executives to the whole region. It’s a shame, really, the wasted

potential and all the grab-the-money-and-run consequences of poor

government and brain drain: urban decay, traffic like nowhere else on

earth, the worst air quality I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve lived in

Delhi), bureaucratic corruption and paralysis. It’s tragic.

And

every born-and-raised-in-the-Philippines-Filipino I’ve ever met outside

the Philippines has a tragic story. I mean, we all have tragic stories.

But they’ll tell you their tragic story inside of five minutes of the

first hello, I guess is the difference. The culture of

immigration-into-servitude among lower-middle class Filipinos has

created a kind of widespread normalization of long-term seperation of

parents from children, wives from husbands, families from clan, that

I’ve never been able to fully wrap my head around. It is not in any way

unusual to meet Filipinas who have spouses, children, families, houses,

jobs, and whole lives waiting for them in stasis back in the

Philippines – while they toil away as domestics, nannies, and

entertainers, in isolation and obscurity and at very low rates of pay,

in Hong Kong condos and Dubai highrise compounds and faceless Canadian

suburbs. There is this “what can I do? I must do this…” flap of the hands, sorrowful upturning of the face, when you talk to them about their situation. Why

are you so far from your family? Don’t you miss them? Isn’t there

ANYTHING you could do back home? When are you going to see your

children again? Don’t know, bahala na. By no means are

Filipinos alone in being migrant workers working terrible jobs far from

home and sending remittances back to keep the family afloat, I do

realize this. It happens all over the world. I think it’s these

Filipinos’ incomparable propensity to communicate the difficulty of

their circumstances, and somehow plead for assistance while seeming

entirely unable to act on their own behalf, that really gets to me.

I’ve highlighted the Tagalog phrase bahala na above, because I think it’s a telling indicator of the Philippines’ number one problem. It’s a Filipino expression that’s kind of hard to translate — think of it like the Arabic word en’shallah, or perhaps the English expression “whatever” when used as a Gen-X dismissal. Perhaps P.J. O’Rourke’s translation of bahala na in his book Holidays in Hell is the most apt: he interpreted it as “You must have me mistaken for someone who gives a shit.”

Bonus reading: Get Real Philippines, a site that points out what’s wrong with the Philippines and what can be done about it.