Friday, March 30, 2012

One Day Millionaires and Drunkards

Advanced apologies to non-Philippine based readers. Majority of employees here get paid on the 15th and on the end of the month, it doesn’t have to be a Friday to be a payday, they do it mid-week if needed be and if 30th or 15th falls on a weekend or the holiday, people gets it earlier, if not later.

Everyone is drinking and having a good time on Fridays. Why is everyone drunk on a Friday night? I think the larger question here is why am I not? Why is the joke on me? Shouldn’t I be getting shit faced on a Friday night? Apparently, I’m writing this blog post while a lot of people are itching to spend their money on drinks and fun. This is the downside of working on a BPO environment.

Here in the Philippines, the phenomenon called ‘one-day-millionaire’ is observed on paydays. Commonly happens twice a month when most people are just burning to get their cash out their pockets, and greasy food in their bellies. Beer rains like there’s no tomorrow and the good times just keep rolling like a boulder down Mount Everest, you’ll be buried in the avalanche of what’s left of the good times the morning after, and most of all you don’t care.

But why do people think irrational about their cash on a Friday night? If society has a tumour I’d name it “cost of living” not to mention way of life here in the Philippines and how difficult and taxing it has been to majority of its populace. Not that the cost of living here isn’t expensive but it’s relatively tough to live comfortably. Commuting everyday on jeepneys is like being in a purgatory, can you imagine acid rain mixing with your favourite petroleum brandname carbon exhaust from vehicles stuck in traffic while you’re sitting beside a sweaty bag of grease, not much different from what you’re current state will be in if you’re riding with them? That’s just the half of it, the other half is when you start walking down the sidewalk which is equally crowded, street vendors proliferate worse than cholesterol from the clogging artery of a 400lb iron liver’ed champion by the roadside. Going on an overpass just adds a nail to the coffin, and while you’re halfway through the rain you’ll be wet, not that drenched but wet enough to catch a cold which will definitely be the case when you start riding a crowded bus, standing with the AC on full blast on a rainy day.
Welcome to the Philippines. It’s more fun here in the Philippines—not to the common Juan though.

If I think about what the majority of folks go through every day, it starts to make sense to me, not everyone is born with a spoon in their mouths whether it’s silver or gold, not everyone gets paid the same way to afford to take the taxi cab on a drizzling 2am drive home. Not everyone is as privileged as we are or as we think or opt to be. And obviously, not everyone has the same motivations in doing so. It makes sense to me that when life is too hard, be happy when you can. If you can’t be happy, two bottles of beer might talk you into a good laugh, if that didn’t work, a bucket will surely will if you don’t fall asleep first. It’s easy to pass on judgment and label people than to understand them and show empathy towards what they’re going through.

Irrational as it may be, being in a vantage point where we see them as one day millionaires judging them for their habits can feel morally upright if we stay on a social high-ground where we can comfortably say. But I’m thanking God that this exercise has been a both a blessing and a challenge to the humility, empathy and compassion that I can extend towards everyone in my attempt to step closer to enlightenment. At the end of the day I don’t think I’m any different than any of them, what’s the difference between draft beer and a bottle of merlot anyway if your motives in downing both is equally the same on a different standpoint. I guess we’re just as qualified as the next one to be Dr. Seuss on that specific instance.

What’s so wrong about wanting to be happy?

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Demystifying Inday Badiday’s Line Out


I want to be an egoist and say that I’ve lived during the time Eye to Eye was on air almost every evening of the day. Lourdes Jimenez Carvajal aka Inday Badiday has an infectious show theme song. FINE, I’ll be honest. It’s more of an over assumption that I hear her show every day, but when I hear the infectious show theme song “eeeeeeye-to-eeeeeeye” I know that she’s going to start yapping about the latest happenings in showbiz. This happened when I was too young to care about show biz, not to mention that I’m clueless about what the entire biz is. To our younger readers, this might be a ploy to make you believe that everything worth living for happened when you’re not yet born, no don’t believe that—I wasn’t born at the era of the Beatles too so that makes us even but anyway~

Inday Badiday died on September 26, 2003 but only a few people know how she lived. I know how she did though, talking about the interesting showbiz issues for 30 minutes every day her show was on air, at least on those days that I’m actually paying attention around the proximity of the television set. Back then it’s a big brown box with wooden window door plates. You part the door plate windows left and right like a curtain to reveal a tube that has moving pictures inside. There’s no other word to describe that part of my childhood than that.

Lourdes imparted a lot of things that makes her culturally significant, back then, there were no Korean-Novellas on TV and yet she says “Saranghambida, Bo” every time her show cues out. Thanks to the very talented and multilingual Faith Yongco who heard one of my random blasts-from-the-pasts-blurts in my cubicle at the office, we found conclusion to the flabbergasting catchphrase that plagued everyone for the longest time. It’s literal meaning was “I love you, Bo” with “Bo” being the nickname of her second spouse. It’s rather interesting that there’s actually a lot of backstory attached to the catchphrase and not just the catchphrase itself. According to Faith Yongco, the normal typical usage of that phrase now is “Saranghe” (sic?) and “Saranghambida” is quite the formal old-school way of saying it. I wouldn’t wonder though, Eye-to-Eye was pretty old school like LITERALLY.

Seeing that this post will be another trip down the memory lane—a lane that we can’t cover in a tiny 500 word self-imposed discipline post, let’s close this with a Happy Birthday to my lovely spouse.
Happy Birthday Ju, and since we’ve been lisinging—yeah I coined the word, brilliant eh?—to 1990’s black-boy-band songs in the pick-up on the way home last week, I’ll #nowplaying this for you.

#nowplaying I'll Make Love To You – Boyz II Men

Sunday, March 25, 2012

The Good 'ol Good Enough Stuff

I’m not a glutton for punishment, but it’s not my fault that inspiration comes to me when I’m down whether it’s writing or designing. It doesn't matter what the adversary is, getting kicked in the groin when I’m floored makes me get up (in the figurative sense) and up I shall, that’s after a significant amount of agonizing writhing.

It’s been 3 substantial years since I’ve written something I felt worthy to take public and be read by anyone, majority of the problem comes from the fact that I don’t know where my head was up in. Sometimes I see that the problem comes from the fact that nothing I produce seems to be good enough for myself. The whole time I’ve been employed was to meet a condition set by a machine for me—piece of cake—but I haven’t accomplished something I've set for myself, that’s what I intend to correct. Perhaps I have to lower my ridiculously high standards and face the fact that sometimes, ‘good enough’ is good enough.

That being said, I have all the intentions to indulge myself in things that are culturally significant to me once again, things that provoke and cultivate my creativity, I've been living under a rock for the longest time in a big box with air-conditioning within its glass walls and it should have never been the case in the first place, the whole thing stank but my nose has been out in the cold for too long. Then again, it reminds me that I wouldn’t know how nice it feels to be walking on sunshine for some good old photosynthesis. I don’t even know where that came from but love me or hate me; you’ll be seeing more of me.

#nowplaying She's Long Gone - The Black Keys