Telling It As It Is. A Reply to The Wary Diplomat’s Blog Entry.

I was supposed to be studying for the National Medical Aptitude Test but while I was looking for my study material in my very disorganized hard drive, (I find it very disappointing that a thing which could automatically reboot, shutdown, or correct itself CAN NOT automically organize itself!) I found several articles which I had written and which never made it to the public view...so I am posting them here.

This article was written in response to my friend's blog entry about me. Unfortunately, she had erased her blog and had a new one, which doesn't feature yours truly.



悲欢离合. Joys and sorrows; partings and reunions. This is what traveling ultimately teaches a person.

Plane rides always give me a feeling of metaphysical suspension between the place left behind and the place of destination. It takes two hours from Tagbilaran to Manila; two hours; a good time to adjust from the slow and lazy life of Tagbilaran to the fast paced, time conscious life of Manila; from carinderias to MacDonalds, from Garden Café to Starbucks. When I was still in University, I already had this feeling that Tagbilaran wasn’t quite home anymore but I can’t quite call Manila that either. I had this premonition that I would constantly be hovering over the gray area between A and B. This feeling became more intense when I lagged behind my batch mates by one year after I decided to take a semester off from school and to take a minor in International Business. Different new faces from one class to another came and went and the old ones, well, reality had a way of distancing people to blur. So you see Wary Diplomat, I already had the premonition back then, this angst that I would always be swinging.

It came to a shock to my family when I told them that I was leaving for China . After all, none of them knew that I was really serious about going although, they heard me mentioned it over dinner once or twice before. Only my mother and my younger brother were at home when I left. Two hours after, I was already at the port boarding the last ferry to Cebu. I didn’t wait, I couldn’t. In hindsight, I think I was more like avoiding having to say a long goodbye with my family. I was never good with goodbyes, even until now, I’d rather leave in silence. 12 hours later in China, I saw the family pictures my younger brother so thoughtfully tucked into my backpack at the last minute. Wary diplomat, I didn’t gather enough courage to leave, I simply didn’t have time to check if I had enough of it which I didn’t. I had the feeling again I once had during plane rides. I spent a long time that night trying to sleep, staring at the ceiling cracks, shivering from February winter cold.

I studied at an exclusive school for girls and went to the best university in the country. I could sense that people treated me differently because of this, even admired me. However, it is an entirely different world abroad. No one knows what THE Ateneo was; or Holy Spirit was; or who the Corres were; HECK they didn’t even know that the Philippines was on the map!! In China, I was a tabula rasa to the people, they didn’t know anything about me and if ever I had worth, I had to prove it to them. I experienced discrimination, something absolutely new to me. When I was used to given preferential treatment because of my background, I had to give way to someone else because I didn’t have blue eyes or that my nose wasn’t long. I was given a lower salary not because it was at par to my competence but because it was the price they deemed right to my skin color. I was cheated off my contract, made to do manual labor; carrying heavy buckets of food, cleaning toilets, laundering children’s clothes when I had 3 house helps at home just so I didn’t have to do anything! The first impulse was to call home, get my Congressman Uncle to wage war against the city of Jiangmen unless they honor my contract, or worse, ask my mom to pick me up and bring me home! But, I didn’t do any of those ridiculously childish thoughts. Instead I tried to be diplomatic and mature about it and talked to my superior but when it still didn’t work, I screwed them up at their own game. I signed another contract just so I could get my bonus and then left the school without notice. In one year and five months, I realized that to be too trusting is not always good; to be kind is not always the right thing to do. I came to learn that no one can really be there for you; that one is ultimately alone, and so one has to be strong enough to stand up for one’s self.

Karma. The law of equal and opposite reaction. Yin and yang. Tears in Jiangmen, happiness in Beijing. Bliss came in the form of a walking hairball (hihihi). And after a month or so of seeing each other at work for only ten minutes, once a week; I successfully managed to make a lover out of a stranger. I learned to allow myself to fall. I rode at the back of his bicycle around WuDaoKou laughing myself silly. I willingly gave my hand to be held in public places. It was liberating not to care about who might see me, or what other people might think (“Ang landi landi, sa harap ng maraming tao, nagpapahawak ng kamay!”), or what they would say to my family, or what my family would do!! I honestly think that if I were still in Tagbilaran, I would never get to know the tingling five o’clock feeling of knowing that his bicycle was outside waiting for me. I know I would never have come to know the excitement of seeing someone I had just said goodbye to on the phone. I would never get to experience that want for everything to be perfect to please another. I would never get to know why people sometimes have that silly smile without any reason at all. Wary diplomat, this is what it has done to me; it liberated me from the senseless shackles of what I’ve been taught to do and not to do and to make for myself my own mould. Of course it came to pass that I cried but as cliché as it might sound, I would never have it any other way.