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Thank
God, I’m a Filipino! Because if you want to find someone who can do
something well and quickly, it will be a fellow Pinoy – someone who is
too busy catering to the demands of his boss, his spouse, his kids, his
sprawling extensive family, his barkada, and has a side-line selling
used mobile phones to boot. This is the kind of person who will do
acceptable work in the most expedient manner possible. And he can do so
with limited or no funds, electricity, water and computers!
Thank
God, I’m a Filipino! While in England, people thought I was loving –
simply because I didn’t confine my affection to dogs and horses. While
in America, people thought I was cute and “too nice” – simply because I
was short and treated others with respect. And now in Manila, people
are so unused to a reasonable level of initiative, efficiency,
accountability, compassion, and the open declaration of a win-win
agenda that I have fooled other people! Were I of any other
nationality, I would be mediocre; in Manila, I am a refreshing oddity.
Thank
God, I’m a Filipino! One of 84 million curmudgeons who laugh because it
is too painful not to, who know we will never have a fiscal crisis
because it would run counter to the oligarchy’s interests, who know
that we should never drive around at 4pm lest we run into hungry
traffic cops, who know that our government is corrupt and our
countrymen are petty, but find ourselves donating to relief efforts,
paying taxes and helping each other out anyway. The idiotic optimism of
our people is responsible for paying for my high school education and
subsidizing my six years in college. The knowledge I learned – both in
success & failure, within the classroom and outside it – enabled me
to study abroad.
Thank
God, I’m a Filipino! Because speaking of idiotic optimism, if there’s
one other thing that Pinoys have in common its insanity. Don’t believe
what the media tells you – bad news sells. There is a large and growing
number of people who are not only crazy enough to stay here, they
actually love it! Who else but a Pinoy could thrive in the Philippines?
Lunatics like my long-suffering teachers, unsung and paid a pittance
their entire careers, but dearer to me than I could ever express.
Basket-cases in the public sector: rural doctors, honest government
workers (they do, indeed, exist); Weirdos in the private sector: the
charities and foundations, the Brain Gain Network, thousands of
enlightened entrepreneurs and business owners. Senseless acts of
kindness and honor happen everyday and an incredible amount of money is
made honestly in this country; unheralded and unnoticed by all.
Thank
God, I’m a Filipino! Our unfinished revolutions – which are actually
grand parties where fictional speeches are made, singing, dancing and
prayer go on into the night and you invite everyone via text to
participate – are a remarkable display of democracy. A democracy that
may not be working very well, but saves us from being invaded in the
name of “liberation”. A democracy that preys on its own people and will
eventually force everyone to wake up, keep praying (and complaining)
but CHANGE. Eventually it will
be
so detestable that we will realize that to try to change the system is
like trying to boil the ocean, but to change ourselves (pain in the
butt that it is) is the only solution. Thank God, that you drive us so
relentlessly towards personal responsibility and integrity. Without the
avarice and incompetence around us, we would remain the teenagers of
the earth: possessors of freedoms we misuse and abuse, civic duties we
neglect, and consciences we openly deride.
Thank
God, I’m a Filipino! Thank God we suffer so! No nation or individual in
the entire course of human history has become great without suffering.
Thank God for the pollution, the crime, the poverty, the squalor and
the misery. Thank God for all the people who moan and bitch and
complain, thank God for all the people who pray and weep and proclaim:
“Something has to change!”
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